William K. Wolfrum Chronicles

The U.S. media has gotten to the heart of the matter on terrorism - we are a much safer nation now. Until we’re not.

“Chertoff: U.S. ‘Unequivocally’ Safer Now From Attacks”

The United States is “unequivocally” safer from terrorist attacks than it was six years ago, but security gaps remain, notably for private airplanes and small boats, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said today.

In testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee, Chertoff said his department would shortly unveil plans to tighten security for private planes coming to the United States from overseas and screen the aircraft for radiological or nuclear material before they take off.

You are safer. Unequivocally. Until you aren’t.

‘These Tapes Are Always Propaganda’

Without more specifics about a threat from al Qaeda, Chertoff said he did not plan to raise the threat level. Instead, he reiterated his warning that in recent months the nation has faced a heightened threat from a resurgent al Qaeda.

“They have done more recruiting of Western Europeans for terrorism. We saw some of the evidence of that in the German and the Danish plot. They have, at least until recently, had a pretty safe environment in certain parts of the frontier area of Pakistan in which they could train,” Chertoff said. “They have reconstituted some of their leadership at a midlevel. So they’ve had opportunities to rebuild some of the capabilities that we’ve been degrading over the last few years.”

Today the CIA issued a similar warning as Director Michael Hayden said, “Our analysts assess with high confidence that al Qaeda’s central leadership is planning high impact plots against the U.S. homeland.”

So remember folks, you’re safe. But be afraid. Be terribly, terribly afraid.

–WKW

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 8th, 2007 at 5:54 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.