More dots

Look, I don't know if this means anything, but I had the Saturday
Morning Today Show on and the gentleman pictured on the right,
one Ron Noble, Secretary General of the international police agency Interpol, said something to the effect that Michael Chertoff's "gut" is a fairly accurate meter of "terrorist" activity. He also disclosed that al Qaeda plans on killing "four million of us." Where he came by this information Noble would not say.

I think I heard him tell Lester Holt something to the effect that if the United States withdraws from Iraq now the terrorist will follow us home. It was a strikingly similar comment to the oft repeated administration bromide "We're fighting terrorist in Iraq so we don't have to fight'em here." He continued with some alarmist shit about securing our borders and passport date. In fact, just a couple of days ago Noble told government propaganda network Voice Of America (VOA),

Interpol Secretary-General Ron Noble told VOA the organization set up a database of lost or stolen passports in 2002 as an anti-terrorist measure. But, he says, even though it was fully automated in 2005, only a handful of the organization's 186 member governments are hooked up to the database and taking advantage of it.

"In my view, every country in the world should make it their highest priority to scan passports of visitors against Interpol's global database. But my point is, right now, as I speak to you, only 17 countries in the entire world are doing this.

"And in my view, in the 21st century, in the century in which we find ourselves following the September 11th attacks, the world needs to change the way in which it fights terrorism globally by sharing information instantly and immediately with countries around the world. That's not happening, and it needs to happen."

Look, I'm not one of these anti-One World Government nuts, I actually think a stronger United Nations would be a good thing, but...well, let's just read a little of Mr. Noble's official Interpol bio:

Mr Noble previously served as the United States Department of Treasury’s first Undersecretary for Enforcement (1993-1996), where he was in charge of some of the US’s then-largest law enforcement agencies, including the Secret Service, Customs Service, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and Office of Foreign Assets Control. Prior to that, he served as an Assistant US Attorney and Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the US Department of Justice (1984-1989).

Noble worked for both in the Clinton and George H.W. "Poppy" Bush administrations, hence the "Bipartisan Bullshit" label, so this signifies nothing other than the fact the guy's a career bureaucrat.

However the internesting thing is, Michael Chertoff, professional Skeletor look-alike and Director of Homeland Security, says on July 10, he has a "gut feeling" that al Qaeda terrorists may attack the United States this summer. Then President Bush and Chertoff downplay and backpeddle Chertoff's "gut feeling" a couple of days later. Yet on the same day, July 12, a National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) report is released titled "Al-Qaida Better Positioned to Strike the West."

So, O.K., boys, which is it? Are we under a real threat of a major terrorist attack or are Washington/corporationist bureaucrats just trying to scare the pee-jeezus out of us?