Terrorists like to be vague

People are suddenly upset that president Bush and/or the government "didn’t do anything" in response to vague warnings of possible terrorist activity last August.  Democrat Senator John Edwards said that "There should have been bells and whistles going off" because of the information that US intelligence had available.  The information was: 1) the FBI was suspicious about the number of Arab students enrolling at a flight school in Phoeniz, AZ, and they made reference to a possible connection to Osama bin Laden; 2) the arrest of a suspected terrorist in Minnesota; and 3) a report given to president Bush explaining Osama bin Laden’s past terrorist attacks.  Now the media (and others, like Sen. Edwards) are running around saying things like "why didn’t we do anything to prevent the attacks?"

Nothing could have been done to predict the attacks.  The intelligence did not contain specific information about an attack; namely, it did not indicate a date, location, or method of attack.  And even if we did suspect that someone would fly a plane into a building, there isn’t anything that we can do about that.  We can’t shut the nation down.  If we did, for example, shut down the airlines in August in response to these "warning signs," what good would that have done?  First of all, the attacks didn’t occur until September, and second, we would just have to open them right back up again, unless we planned on waiting for the terrorists to come out and say "ok, you win, we were going to fly some planes into buildings but since you shut the airlines down, we can’t, so now, you can open them up and we’ll cancel our plans."

When the public hears this news now, they think "see?  The FBI knew that Osama bin Laden was up to something!"  But the public had no idea who that person was 8 months ago.  The only reason "bells and whistles" might go off now is that now we KNOW that Osama bin Laden flew some planes into some buildings.  Before that, hearing the name Osama bin Laden would certainly not set off any bells and whistles.

It’s not uncommon for our country or any country to receive threats.  And it’s certainly not in the best interest of the nation to inform the public of every single threat of possible terrorist activity.  It wouldn’t provide any safety, it wouldn’t predict or prevent any attacks, it would cause the public to get worked up and live in fear, and it would reveal our intelligence to any possible attackers.