If it's Monday, it must be al-Queda...

There are innumerable reports about an alleged terror threat to carry out car bombing in the East Coast...soon. Or sometime soon. This "alarming" intelligence comes straight from the al-Queda coffe klatch in Pakistan, apparently, and has Tom Ridge in a dither, to be sure. I thought he was resigning? (Hell, if I had his job, I'd resign -- I get to run around like Chicken Little while all of the funding that is rightfully mine, is being spent to half-ass our way through a country that simply wasn't a threat EVER? Sign me up!)

In any case, I'm a little skeptical of the veracity of any information that might leak out of Pakistan. Not that I don't doubt that there are a bajillion al-Queda operatives wandering free and clear in this lovely neck of the world. However, knowing a smidgen of how "terrorists cells" operate doesn't give a whole lot of credence to this information. If one were to study the resistance of any war -- WWII, for instance -- and choose to use those models as an example of what al-Queda emulates, it would make sense that any of that information would be thoroughly bogus, because one arm of the cell wouldn't know what the other one is doing. That's the way the cells stay safely operating. It's a very clear approach to "resistance" (I do loathe to use this word in relation to a-Q, but the parallels are the strongest in terms of understanding tactical approaches). In fact, it would make complete and utter sense to have a bevy of incorrect and, in fact, highly detailed fake information at the disposal of some members of a cell in order to sew chaos, fear, and panic as well as divert attention from the real and actual targets. Does it strike anyone as odd to not question the messenger in this regard? In journalistic parlance, "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." But, as journalism is now becoming a lost and forgotten art form (akin to underwater basket weaving or some such), actually verifying sources is de classe. In this case, verifying highly anonymous sources who may be close to people who want nothing more than to make you get panicky and do something stupid while misdirecting you in every possible way...makes for not very reliable (even if highly repeated, as these "threats" seem to be) information. Color me unimpressed, I suppose.

The only way to truly break the cell up, is to infiltrate the exact cell that you're working on finding...i.e. the cell that might be operating in Paterson, New Jersey, for instance. Isn't that where most of the 9/11 guys happened to be hanging out? Might it not be reasonable to assume that Paterson still holds a few leftovers, hangers on, or god forbid, a whole different cell operating concurrently but disconnectedly to the 9/11 group? And once infiltrating, being able to extract information from that cell alone, to shut it down. This is, unfortunately, a systemic approach, and very time and labor intensive (two things we're not particularly fond of here, I think). If all of the billions of dollars that we were pissing away in Iraq were to be redirected appropriately, however, I'm fully confident that this slow and treacherous cell extinction process could occur. But, we pissed that away, right and proper because if we actually were in a safe and comfortable place, why would we need GWB?

All of this screed, of course, probably puts me on the top 10 list of people most likely to get raided by some random illegitimate arm of the justice department. I guess for once I'd like to see common sense win out over fear, hysteria, and insecurity. Just once. Maybe next life.

(The weird thing is -- this is a win-win situation for those in power: if they predict it and nothing happens, they can say, "Oh, we were just doing our jobs well." If they predict it and something happens, they can say, "Oh, see, we were right, but we weren't given enough resources and martial law to enact the kind of security we thought you should have." Sigh.)