"Dated intelligence" - so was 9/11's
The news media have been trumpeting that the high alert level in New York and surrounding areas was based on dated "intelligence," years old.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said today that captured terrorist computer files containing some of the information were updated as recently as January.

Murdoc Online takes a look at today's MSNBC screen shot. Then he wondered whether we'd still be looking at the Two Towers today if the same accusation had been made just after 9/11/01, and has a "doctored" screenshot of the site's 9/13/01 masthead as an illustration. Today MSNBC implies that the raised alert in New York is an over-reaction. Would they have made the same accusation three years ago if a raised alert had prevented the hijackings? After all, the 9/11 intelligence that came to light after the attacks dated in some cases to before 1988.

Yes, probably.

My prediction: there will be no attack (in the next several weeks, anyway). Before the end of this week, Kerry staffers will be accusing Bush of political opportunism in issuing the alert. By the end of next week, so will Kerry, implicitly, yes, but unmistakably.

Update: Return readers will note that this post reads rather differently from what I first posted. That's because I misread Murdoc's post at first. I mistakenly thought the grab from 9/13/01 was real, but Murdoc emailed me to explain,

... the second "screenschot" is really a modification of the first, cooked up by my editing skills, such as they are. It's not a real screen grab.

My intent was to illustrate show what we might have seen had outdated intelligence and estimates led to security alerts and fighter patrols on 9/10/01. We would be looking at jets streaking past the still-standing Twin Towers and listening to cries of fear-mongering from the media and opponents of the administration. And we'd have no appreciation for what had been averted.

I agree that we will probably not be attacked within the next week, at least not in the way that the security alert implied. But we won't really ever know if the lack of an attack was due to the security or if there was never going to be an attack. How about those planes around Christmas? Another intel screw-up, right? As far as we know, though, the groundings and hyped security could have prevented suicide hijackings into the Eiffel Tower and Big Ben. Or they could have been nothing. Or maybe they were operations by our intelligence agencies designed to flush out suspected terrorists.