Terror alert will be lowered

[bfez1]

Terror alert will to be lowered from orange - the second highest level - to yellow, U.S. officials say.

[sunny shine]

That makes me feel more at ease, but not less cautious.

[mf_dolphin]

I'm sure as soon as the war starts it will go right back up...

[wx247]

Congrats and kudos to the administration. It doesn't take much to raise the alert level, but it takes some courage to lower it.

Good job Admin!

Garrett

[chadtm80]

I feel that should leave it at its current spot..... But i dont know chit so i stand behind my administration

[wx247]

It is a difficult decision to be made on behalf of the administration. I think the general consensus was that if they kept it at orange too long, if there was a heightened state of alert they had nowhere to increase to next except red. Also... complacency factors in as well. If the admin. had left the terror alert level at orange for a long time, as time wore on the urgentness of the orange level would be lost...and again there is nowhere to move up from there except red.

Garrett

[sunny shine]

Terror Alert has now been lowered to "Elevated"

[gator]

I think the whole notion of the "terror level" indicator is silly. It gets attention now because it is still "new" and the media can jump all over it. Once the new-ness wears off, no one will give much regard to it. Such satiation by the media to wring out every last drop of value in a story will be the undoing of its effectiveness.

The bigger issue here is that of fear... and more speciffically: control. A lot of folks hate to think that they do not have control over every single aspect of their existence. That's why they store up gallons of water... and rolls of Duct Tape... thinking that this will give them more control over the situation.

Well, I've got news for these folks:

There have always been malicious people who have intentionally done things to hurt others...
There have always been people willing to die for causes that they feel are important...
Sometimes *we* are on the end that desires to do these things...
And all of this existed long before 9/11...

Safety is not something that can be measured by a scale. This whole terror alert color scheme is nothing more than an attempt to manipulate us into thinking that we have some tangible control over what happens next...

But alas, we are no more able to predict terrorist activity than we are to predict the weather...

I choose to live my life on my terms, and that means that I won't let the government decide for me how "scared" I should be that terrorists are going to do something...

When the bomb hits my house, I'll be scared...

But not until then.

- gator.

[JQ Public]

I heard it was dropped b/c Companies were complaining to the white house that they did not want to be liable for spending more money to protect their buildings/workers. If that is why they lowered the terror alerts it is definitly a shady act :|

[StormCrazyIowan]

Well said Gator! I never paid much attention to it anyhow, I choose to live my life as I would any normal day. Yes, something could happen due to terrorist activity, but I have just as much chance of being hurt or killed every day when I get in my car!! All I can say is I will live to the fullest everyday, no regrets, you never know what will happen!

[JQ Public]

Good point.

[Stephanie]

Excellent point Gator!

JQ - It's always about money, now isn't it? Until the federal government begins to help foot the bill, there will be more instances like this - just like that story about the sheriff in I believe it was Florida that was posted in another thread.

Now, if the federal government is willing to back down so easily on their alert system, what does that say about the leadership in general? I believe that they backed down also since some of the information that they received was incorrect, but they need to do a better job in validating that information before raising/lowering the alert level. If this continues to happen, noone is going to pay attention and you'll have a situation like the story of the boy that cried wolf. Not a good precedent at all.