ATTACK 'LIKELY'

Panel warns biological attack likely by 2013

WASHINGTON—The United States can expect a terrorist attack using nuclear or more likely biological weapons before 2013, reports a bipartisan commission in a study being briefed Tuesday to Vice President-elect Joe Biden. It suggests the Obama administration bolster efforts to counter and prepare for germ warfare by terrorists.

"Our margin of safety is shrinking, not growing," states the report, obtained by The Associated Press.

Left I on the News is excellent in tearing apart news stories and thinks this one's a lot of hokum.

"Likely"? That's not a scientific term, but according to another report, the opening sentence of the summary says such an attack "is more likely than not," which says there's at least a 51% chance of such an attack.

Talk about blatant fear-mongering. My guess is these sensational stories sell a certain mind-set to the public, when they're not being trampled to death at mall entrances ('tis the season to patriotically spend).

Edger at the OOIBC writes

Boo! The boogeymen are out to get you.

This story is all over the left blogs today, and most of what I read is people lapping it up as easily and thoughtlessly as the 26 percenters lapped up all of Bush's years of Rovian manipulations, and using it as justification for "pragmatic" hide their heads in the sand denial of Barack Obama's obvious militarist tendencies and full intentions to continue the war on terror memes and determination to militarily dominate the earth while blaming the blowback on "terrists" on behalf of the corporatocracy that rules America.

Today NPR featured this story in its news, too. Along with coverage about "India's 9/11" over the holiday weekend, was the story of this report. ("Report: WMD Attack Inevitable Before 2013"). WMD? WTF! Haven't the media pushed this before?

Before that NPR Day-to-Day segment came an afternoon staple on our local NPR station: The Story, which talked about what happened in Mumbai and then lead into a story told by a man who'd been on a plane hijacked by PLO sympathisers back in the 1970s ("A Tourist and Terrorists").

He talks with Dick Gordon about what it was like to find himself in the middle of an international terrorist incident long before the world was so familiar with terrorism.

These kinds of programs just put terrorist=damn Arabs/Palestinians in peoples' minds. Whether it's intentional, I don't know, but it makes me question media's pushing a particular narrative - that of fear - more and more.