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Not necessarily, especially when you compare them to the terror alerts in the years following 2004. Even if he's not correct about the reason for fear in particular, it is exceptionally fishy that there was a significant spike leading up to the election and then for the next couple years only a handful of alerts petering out to the point few can remember any after 2004. Furthermore, as the study I posted shows, every alert does cause an increase in approval.
What's your argument for why there was a significant spike prior to the election and then virtually nothing after? I find it exceptionally hard to believe that terrorists just stopped planning things after the election and we stopped looking for them. We were no more safer in the summer of 2004 then we were in the winter of 2005.
And coming from an administration which had no problems with using falsehoods in its justifications (especially after Rummy's statement where he admitted part of his job was to lie to the press), it does logically conclude that there was politicization of the alerts.
From the original article:
Bush's former homeland security adviser, Frances Townsend, told the Associated Press today that politics never played a role in determining alert levels. She noted that in the weeks before the electio two videotapes, including one from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, were released that she said contained "very graphic" and "threatening" messages.
"Never were politics ever discussed in this context in my presence," she said.
From an article in Dec. 2003:
Terrorist logic is to disrupt the 2004 election | Oakland Tribune | Find Articles at BNET
Terrorist logic is to disrupt the 2004 election
We can't know whether terrorists will strike during the coming presidential campaign, the first since the beginning of the war on terrorism. But the recent terrorist bombings in Istanbul, which took more than 50 lives, make it easier to imagine something similar happening here again. And history suggests that striking during major elections is an effective terrorist tool. It suggests that the way in which we respond will determine whether we're capable of winning this war.
Recently, I co-chaired a meeting hosted by CNBC of more than 200 senior business and government executives, many of them specialists in security and terrorism-related issues. Almost three-quarters of them predicted the United States likely would see a major terrorist strike before the end of 2004. A similar number predicted the assault would be greater than those of 9-11, possibly involving weapons of mass destruction. It was the sense of the group that such an attack likely would generate additional support for President Bush.
These are serious people, not prone to hysteria or panic -- military officers, policy-makers, scientists, researchers and others who have studied such issues for a long time. They know that in country after country, elections have held an irresistible lure for terrorists.
From the terrorist perspective, attacking in an election year makes perfect sense. The objective of terrorism is not so much to strike a blow against a particular physical target as it is to strike a psychological blow against a target audience. Elections heighten the stakes because a blow during an election is a blow against a society's political foundations.
In light of this, don't you think it's pretty obvious that we would see an increase in threats and corresponding alerts in the months leading up to the election? To me, this offers a perfectly reasonable explanation for why we saw an increasing number of alerts that dropped off after the election.
If there's an obvious explanation in front of me, I'm not going to go out of my way to find a conspiracy.