A Bush Speech, A NYC Terror Threat, and a 37% Approval Rating

What do those three things have in common? Quite a bit, I think.

CBS came out with a poll today showing that Bush has an approval rating of 37%, the lowest so far in his presidency for that particular poll. I'd be willing to bet that the Bush Regime's own internal polling was showing a similar number for the last few days. This number will certainly drop even further when Karl Rove gets indicted.

Meanwhile, CBS also posted this article titled "'Credible Threat' to NYC Subways." I found that title particularly interesting because at the bottom of the article's first paragraph, it says "[b]ut Homeland Security officials in Washington downplayed the threat, saying it was of "'doubtful credibility.'"

Of course, we've seen all this before. The Bush Administration often issues terror alerts for purely political purposes. It was a standard Bush tool during the run-up to last year's presidential election. Hell, Tom Ridge, after he resigned as head of Homeland Security, even complained about how the Bush Administration routinely did this.
But what I'd like to know is exactly how old the information forming the basis for this current NYC threat really is.

All the CBS article stated on this was that this threat "was picked up in chatter on the Internet." This MSNBC article stated: "The law enforcement official in New York said that city officials had known about the threat at least since Monday, but held the information until two or three al-Qaida operatives were arrested in Iraq within the past 24 hours." The article said nothing about how long the Bush Administration has known about this particular "threat."

The Bush Administration loves to take old, dubious terror threats and dress them up like new ones when the political need arises. Who could forget this ridiculous use of old threats in August of 2004:

The US administration admits that new warnings of attacks on American cities were based on information gathered by al-Qaeda up to four years ago.

Security was tightened around US financial institutions earlier this week after raids in Pakistan recovered documents reportedly naming them.

Homeland security adviser Frances Townsend said some of the information recovered was collected in 2000/2001.

So excuse me if I don't go out and buy duct tape everytime I hear about one of these terror alerts. The announcement of this latest NYC threat was particular suspicious given that (1) Homeland Security came right out and admitted that was of "doubtful credibility;" and (2) Bush "coincidently" gave a "major" speech on Iraq and terrorism this morning wherein he said a lot of scary things, like this little gem:

Some have also argued that extremism has been strengthened by the actions of our coalition in Iraq, claiming that our presence in that country has somehow caused or triggered the rage of radicals. I would remind them that we were not in Iraq on September 11, 2001, and al Qaeda attacked us anyway. The hatred of the radicals existed before Iraq was an issue, and it will exist after Iraq is no longer an excuse.

Frightening stuff. But given the timing of all this, I'm just not buying it, George -- not this time.