Keith Olbermann Quotes on Government (5 Quotes)

Homeland Security issues warnings of further terrorist attempts to use airplanes for suicide attacks. Number five. December 17, 2003. 911 Commission co-chair Thomas Keane says the attacks were preventable. The next day, a federal appeals court says the government cannot detain suspected radiation bomber Jose Padilla indefinitely without charges. And the chief U. S. weapons inspector in Iraq, Dr. David Kay, who has previously announced he has found no weapons of mass destruction there, announces he will resign his post. December 21, 2003. Four days later, the Sunday before Christmas.

As I tried to emphasize in the commentary, hindsight plus the logical fallacy can be a dangerous combination. But can you look at the list of the 10 juxtapositions, especially the two that pertain to around the time of the Democratic Convention last year And obviously, there are lists that are longer that have been compiled elsewhere that are based on different criteria and are of different merit. But can you look at that list of 10 juxtapositions and say that, in your heart, you're comfortable that not once were political considerations a factor in any of the counterterrorism statements or actions of the government

The coincidences that I listed tonight could have the most distressing of possible explanations or the most encouraging of possible explanations or a mixture. But there's a larger issue, and I hope you have an idea of how to address it. Last Thursday, when New York City issued that warning within hours of that Karl Rove story, there were enough people who doubted the authenticity of the warning or who worried that the process had been contaminated in some way by politics, that they just did not believe it. What does the government have to do to eliminate the perception, even if it is a terrible tragic misperception that some of our leaders on this subject would cry wolf

This is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection - or at least amelioration - against all threats conventional, radiological, or biological. It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water.

At 517 p.m. Eastern time, seven hours after the President's speech has begun, New York officials disclose a bomb threat to the city's subway system based on information supplied by the federal government. A Homeland Security spokesman says the intelligence upon which the disclosure is based is of doubtful credibility. And it later proves that New York City had known of the threat for at least three days and had increased police presence in the subways long before making the announcement at that particular time. Local New York television station WNBC reports it had the story of the threats days in advance of the announcement but was asked by high-ranking federal officials in New York and Washington to hold off on its story. Less than four days after having revealed the threat, Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York says, 'Since the period of the threat now seems to be passing, I think over the immediate future we'll slowly be winding down the enhanced security.' While news organizations ranging from the New York Post to NBC News quotes sources who say there was reason to believe the informant who triggered the warning simply made it up, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official tells the New York Times, quote, 'there was no there there.'