Officials Warn of Possibility of Attack Around Sept. 11

This was also on the the New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 11 - A group of F.B.I. counterterrorism analysts warned this week of possible terrorist attacks in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago around Sept. 11, but officials cautioned on Thursday that they were skeptical about the seriousness of the threat.

The warning grew out of intelligence developed from an overseas source indicating that terrorists might seek to steal fuel tanker trucks in order to inflict "mass casualties" by staging an anniversary attack, officials said.

The information led F.B.I. joint terrorism task forces in Los Angeles and Newark to alert other government and law enforcement officials privately this week about the threat, law enforcement officials said. Several government officials in Washington who were briefed on the threat said it was described as credible and specific enough to warrant attention.

Talk about the Bush Propaganda Machine giving us another terrorist warning to scare us into toeing their political line. It is interesting that the Times story continues saying:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation was planning to send out another confidential law enforcement bulletin on Thursday to qualify the earlier one and emphasize that the threat of a possible tanker attack had not been verified.

"The information is uncorroborated, and the source is of questionable reliability," said Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security. "This information continues to be evaluated by the intelligence community."

Domestic security officials have long thought that tanker trucks could be used in terrorist attacks. New York, Los Angeles and Chicago are considered at the top of potential targets, along with Washington and Las Vegas, because of their size, high profiles, symbolic value and past plots by Al Qaeda.

New York City's police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, said in a statement that the department was aware of the threat.

"The New York City Police Department already has measures in place to protect against truck bombs and other threats," Mr. Kelly said. "We are expanding those measures, not in response to this latest information, but as part of ongoing refinements to our overall counter terrorism posture."

Let's face it. If there are going to be any terrorist attacks against the U.S., they will probably occur against U.S. troops in Iraq, where the terrorists have the advantage of striking when and where they please, close to home and where they can easily disappear. Any attack against the continental U.S. by al Qaeda or any other terrorist group will require an enormous amount of time and resources to pull such an attack off, against a heightened level of U.S. security. I'm not saying such an attack is not possible, but rather such an attack is not probable. This is just another example of a make-news story which benefits the Bush White House in their reiteration of the party line talking points on the linking of the war in Iraq to September 11th. It is just another scare tactic to force the American public away from questioning the Bush war in Iraq.