Spinning clockwise and rotating counterclockwise

I noticed this article and while the point is just a small one (it won't take me a month to think about it) I want to make it nonetheless.

Here is the article:
France Doesn't Believe Paris Was Militants' Target

Compare this with the warning of Ashcroft a couple weeks ago that terrorists were 90% ready to commit an attack. Here's the point: Ashcroft is pushing the credibility of the threat while the opposite is happening in France.

According to Ashcroft the information prompting the new warning wasn't new which begs a few questions. If it wasn't new information why issue a new warning with such dire statements as terrorists are 90% ready for an attack? How in hell can you say that terrorists are 90% ready for an attack? Do you know this? Is this new information? Why give precise numbers when your information seems to be far from precise? How long does it take to prepare the remaining 10% of the terrorist attack? Most of these questions are just nonsensical prompted by the nonsensical inconsistencies and illogicalities of the warning which in total lead me to think, whether right or wrong, that he is trying to oversell the threat.

Here is an AP article from a couple days after the warning entitled Terrorism warning justified, officials say. It includes the following passage,

Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse reiterated Thursday that his agency has not seen any change in the "steady stream of threat reporting."

"We do not have any new intelligence or specific information about al-Qaida planning an attack," he said.

Sort of makes one wonder.

At the opposite end you have the French Interior Ministry denying that Paris was a terrorist target saying, "One cannot draw from this information any indication about the preparation of a possible attack in Paris." The information in question is that

The warrant, used to detain Ahmed and the other suspect in Milan, quotes members of the group as saying they planned a rehearsal of an attack in Paris using mobile phone technology. The Milan prosecutor's office said the method was similar to that used in the Madrid bombings.

The political motivations for the Bush administration to err on the side of warning and/or to use warnings as political tools have been thoroughly discussed, but why would the French be interested in making their public believe they are not targets? A Frenchman might say that it, like the opposition to the Iraq war because of the lack of sufficient evidence of WMD, shows the French (even European) levelheadedness and reliance on facts before reaching conclusions. These are admirable qualities but I'm too cynical to believe that there aren't political motives behind it. I think it has to do with the French conception of terrorism's motives and goals.

The attacks in Madrid made sense to Europeans in the same way that attacks against the UK, Italy, or Poland would make sense to them. Such attacks are comprehensible in the light of these countries' support for the war in Iraq. If an attack was perpetrated against France I think the French and other Europeans would be confused. They might ask, But what did France do to deserve this? The answer is that terrorism is not a mechanism for awarding desserts. Terrorism is a crime and, like many crimes, does not seek to give people something they deserve, but rather something they don't deserve. It is also a mistake to think that the terrorists behind 9/11 and 3/11 are only interested in destroying the US and its war allies or in removing troops from Iraq per se. I think it's safe to say that their targets are wider and include all of the West with relatively little direct relation to which countries are involved in this latest intervention in the Middle East.

So, now to my cynical interpretation of the French statements. The political reason for denying a threat against Paris is not complicated. Chirac gained from opposing the Iraq war. If Paris, despite that opposition which seemed in part aimed at keeping France off the terrorists' hit list, is in the sights of terrorists then the opposition will have lost some of its raison d'etre and Chirac will lose what he gained from it.

The attitudes of both governments are dishonest. Both could have objectionable impacts in the long term. The French attitude could breed a sense that they truly are not targets (I don't think their government right now honestly believes that Paris is not a target.) which could lead to an otherwise avertable attack not being prevented because of the illusion of security. In the instances where it is using the warnings as political tools (which isn't every time, but neither do I think it's rare) it will succeed eventually in creating enough fear that they (or more likely their successors) will be able to govern without having to field questions, without accountability and without opposition.