We interrupt this convention bounce to bring you a terror warning

John Kerry and anybody campaigning on his behalf, including Howard Dean, should not say that Ridge's terror alerts are politically motivated. It isn't a provable allegation and if there is an attack, the sound bite will be used to demolish Kerry's presidential aspirations. So I'll stop short of calling them false, because I don't know that they are. Infact,I am sure the intelligence on which the warnings are based is legitimate. It is just three or four years old.

All of us on the consumer side of news should be well aware that these announcements can and probably will be used for political benefit by the administration. With the New Republic's revelations that the US was pressuring Pakistan to capture Bin Laden during the Democratic National Convention, and loosely worded terror Warnings that seem to follow positive democratic announcements or events that reflect poorly on the administration, it is within reason to suspect the administration's motivations for issuing these alerts.

For example, the day after Edwards was chosen to complete the Democratic ticket, Ridge was on TV announcing terrorist activities. I predicted then, in a post in which I raised the national threat level that we would see something around the Democratic Convention. We did. During the convention itself, Pakistan delivered a small reward to Bush in the form of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani. Three days after Kerry accepted the nomination, Ridge is back on TV gravely warning us of something that happened three years ago, that might still be happening today, but in reality, is a gigantic shaggy dog story.

Don't get me wrong. I am glad that Pakistan found a cache of ancient Al Qaeda intel. However, the fact that our intelligence agencies are panicking about three-year-old intelligence says a lot about what they know and don't know about what is going on right now. Answer: They don't know much. Ridge's willingness to ratchet up the threat level willy nilly is evidence of the administration's lack of sophistication and general unpreparedness in their approach to dealing with a large, stealthy adversary like Al Qaeda.

The question before us is not whether the threat warnings are politically motivated. Though Kerry can't say so, it seems obvious to this observer that Bush is using the threat warning system to knock the Democrats off balance during the election year. It won't work if Democrats don't take the bait. Kerry was right to distance himself from Dean. Kerry hit the right tone:

We are not going to get into a debate over whether the announcement was politically motivated, because it's clear that the dangers we face are real and that we are not as safe as we can or should be," Brooke Anderson, deputy communications director for Kerry's national security team, said Tuesday.

Enough with the warnings. Get serious about the real threat, Bush. Call Congress back from vacation to get moving on the 9/11 commission's recommendations, as John Kerry suggests.