[Mb-civic] The Nexus of Politics and Terror (Keith Olbermann)

[Mike Blaxill]

The Nexus of Politics and Terror (Keith
Olbermann)

Secaucus - Last Thursday on Countdown, I referred
to the latest terror threat - the reported bomb
plot against the New York City subway system - in
terms of its timing. President Bush’s speech
about the war on terror had come earlier the same
day, as had the breaking news of the possible
indictment of Karl Rove in the CIA leak
investigation.

I suggested that in the last three years there
had been about 13 similar coincidences - a
political downturn for the administration,
followed by a “terror event” - a change in alert
status, an arrest, a warning.

We figured we’d better put that list of
coincidences on the public record. We did so this
evening on the television program, with ten of
these examples. The other three are listed at the
end of the main list, out of chronological order.
The contraction was made purely for the sake of
television timing considerations, and permitted
us to get the live reaction of the former
Undersecretary of Homeland Security, Asa
Hutchinson.

We bring you these coincidences, reminding you,
and ourselves here, that perhaps the simplest
piece of wisdom in the world is called “the
logical fallacy.” Just because Event “A” occurs,
and then Event “B” occurs, that does not
automatically mean that Event “A” caused Event
“B.”

But one set of comments from an informed observer
seems particularly relevant as we examine these
coincidences.

On May 10th of this year, after his resignation,
former Secretary of Homeland Security Ridge
looked back on the terror alert level changes,
issued on his watch.

Mr. Ridge said: “More often than not we were the
least inclined to raise it. Sometimes we
disagreed with the intelligence assessment.
Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was
good, you don’t necessarily put the country on
(alert)
 there were times when some people were
really aggressive about raising it, and we said
‘for that?’”

Please, judge for yourself....

click link below for the rest of the story
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/