Blanket alert to a general threat

[Dunderman]

I saw Bowling for Columbine Sunday, and Michael Moore said how politicians and reporters are so good at getting people frightened that they don’t even need a reason any more, cutting to a clip of George W Bush saying (paraphrased) “We have issued a blanket alert in response to a general threat against us. It’s not the first time a blanket alert has been issued, but we hope it will be the last.”.

Now, what was this about? Does this statement say anything at all? What’s the threat? What does the alert mean? Who’s being alerted? Was there more said before or after the part showed in the film, clarifying the meaning?

Note that this post is not intended to start a discussion about Michael Moore, Bowling for Columbine, any wars, George W Bush, gun control, school shootings or tapioca pudding. I just want to know where this clip was from and what Bush meant by saying it.

[Duck_Duck_Goose]

October, 2001. Hop in the Wayback Machine–World Trade Center, Taliban, anthrax in letters.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/terrorism/combating/bush_10-11b.html

PRESIDENT BUSH’S NEWS CONFERENCE

October 11, 2001

< snip >

PRESIDENT BUSH: Sure. Today, the Justice Department did issue a blanket alert. It was in recognition of a general threat we received. This is not the first time the Justice Department have acted like this. I hope it’s the last, but given the attitude of the evildoers, it may not be.

Here’s the whole thing, in context. First the reporter asks him this:

REPORTER: Thank you, sir. You said that the threat is ongoing and indeed, the deadly virus of anthrax was found in three Florida people this week. Osama bin Laden’s spokesman says storms of planes are yet to be hijacked.

Your FBI warned just today that terrorists attacks could be happening again in the next couple of days. If the FBI knows of a credible threat, can you assure the public that you would take the precaution of locking down any system involved, whether it’s buildings, airports, water systems, to prevent more deaths? And most importantly, is there anything you can say to Americans who feel helpless to protect themselves and their families from the next wave of attacks if there are more to come? What can people do to protect themselves?

And then Bush says that the Justice Department has issued a general alert. He then goes on to say:

I have urged my – our fellow Americans to go about their lives, to fly on airplanes, to travel, to go to work. But I also want to encourage them by telling them that our government is on full alert and that the alert put out today by the Justice Department was such an action.

Now, if we receive specific intelligence, where we – a credible threat that targets a specific building or city or facility, I can assure you, our government will do everything possible to protect the citizens around, in or near that facility. And let me give you one example of a specific threat we received. You may remember recently there was a lot of discussion about crop-dusters. We received knowledge that perhaps an al-Qaida operative was prepared to use a crop-duster to spray a biological weapon or a chemical weapon on American people, and so we responded. We contacted every crop dust location, airports from which crop-dusters leave. We notified crop-duster manufacturers to a potential threat. We knew full well that in order for a crop-duster to become a weapon of mass destruction would require a retrofitting, and so we talked to machine shops around where crop-dusters are located.

Moore took it out of context. Read (and remembered) in context, it was the strained comment of a man who’s had a huge fcking "holy sht" crisis dumped squarely in his lap and is struggling to cope. They just didn’t know what was going to happen next. Everything so far had been like something out of the movies. For all he knew, Osama Bin Laden could be targeting this very press conference with Scuds, and Muslim fanatics might be flying smallpox-loaded cropdusters over Texas.

All he can think of to tell people is, “Keep your eyes open, and watch your back.”

Moore makes it sound more manipulative than it really was by taking it out of its proper context.