Orange Alert...or here we go again...

[iflitifloat]

Posted: 12/22/03 at 8:03am

Does this have any impact anymore? I've realized that I've adopted the it's-a-holiday-of-course-the-alert-level's-gonna-go-up attitude. I think I've become desensitized.

I feel badly, though, because my 80-something year old mom is flying in from the midwest tomorrow. I'm sure that this has totally freaked her out. Not to mention that the last time she flew in, they all but strip-searched her. Seriously...they detained her in a separate area, made her take her shoes off, and confiscated the nail-clippers out of her carry-on. She's ancient, tiny (78 lbs), and was terrified. I understand, sort of, about the nail clippers....but the rest? Come on, a national security risk? I think not.

But back to the heightened alert level...does it make you do anything differently?

[ErikJ972]

Posted: 12/22/03 at 8:14am

My biggest problem with the alert? What does the administration want me as an average citizen to do about it? I'm told to stay vigilant. Well what does that mean? Be on the lookout for suspicious people from the middle east? I'm warned of public places that may be targets, but also told not to avoid them. So instead the vague sense of fear is created. And the administration gets to have it both ways. If something does happen they can say "we told you so." But more likely something will not happen and they can say "we're protecting you."

[Auggie27]

Posted: 12/22/03 at 8:32am

Hey, y'all, calm down! We GOT 'em! (Saddam, yawn, Hussein) Don't you know we are safer? Remember, "we have to fight the terrorists OVER THERE, so they won't come HERE?" I don't know about the rest of you whiny wimps, but I'm gonna take my president's message to heart, and today cruise slowly through Penn Station, jump on that subway, and just KNOW that 'cause I won't come face to face with the man whose dental exam/head lice comb-out is still being played 24/7... I can go about my all-American business without a care in my empty, spending-obsessed head. Orange alert? My alert is red (white and blue).

[broadwayguy2]

Posted: 12/22/03 at 9:00am

amen Erik.

Besides, I feel like I am in preschool again where you have the colored cards and they indicate how you behaved that day.. green if you were good, red if you were bad.. yada yada yada

It also reminds me of the boy who cried wolf.

[MasterLcZ]

Posted: 12/22/03 at 9:45am

I'm trimming my tree with duct tape right now!

[thirdrowcenter]

Posted: 12/22/03 at 10:04am

I do like to see the National Guard and police checking out cars and trucks when I am about to enter a tunnel or go over a bridge. I have theatre tickets the day before and the day after Christmas. I must say I wish I didn't have to be in the Times Square area, I guess I'm just freaking.

[iflitifloat]

Posted: 12/22/03 at 10:27am

Third Row...but what are they checking for? Presumably someone who looks 'suspicious'. Um, Middle Eastern, perhaps? Oddly enough, it makes me feel safer, too, until I think about it. A bunch of kids in National Guard uniforms are probably not going to sniff out carefully concealed contraband. Hell, the FBI has trouble doing that.

After 9/11, I had total paranoia about crossing the GW Bridge. I did it, but I wasn't happy. I also wouldn't let my daughter go shopping in Willowbrook Mall, because I was sure that was a target. A couple of the hijackers had been seen there the weekend before 9/11 and it made sense to me that a mall would be a good target and that if *they* knew the place, their friends probably did, too. And then it all got piled on deeper when I found out that Mohammed Atta and another one of the pilots had actually been staying in a motel less than a mile from my house, and had frequented my local seafood store, and had eaten at Izumi. It was all too close to home, and I had to come to terms with the fact that life has to go on and that I can't insulate myself from all the different possibilities. Still, fear is a terrible thing. You can make yourself go about your business, but that nagging sense of unsafe-ness makes it all a little less enjoyable.

Sorry for the disjointed ramble...

[RobbO]

Posted: 12/22/03 at 11:14am

i tell ya. i was walking thru times square when i read on the ticker-thingy about the nation's alert level going up and the quote from tom ridge.

just like when i see the "falling rock" signs on the highway, i did not know whether to speed up my trip thru the city or slow down and look out for danger. what's a boy to do?!?

[BwayLover]

Posted: 12/22/03 at 1:48pm

Ok, not to sound patronizing or anything... But I have a few things to tell you all. Living in Israel, I know a little about this stuff.

Yes, be vigilant. That's the best advice your government can give you, so don't knock it. Keep your eyes open to anything suspicious- a middle eastern man looking very nervous, a bag with no one to claim it, that sort of thing. It doesn't mean you have to be SCARED- just be AWARE. Awareness can prevent a lot of things, and that's what you don't understand. As an Israeli, these things come naturally to me, because ever since I was a little girl I was taught to be aware of my surroundings. If you make fun of it, well.... No wonder you feel like ordinary citizens can't do anything to help. THIS is how you help. Do you know how many terrorist attacks here were prevented because of ordinary people? Hundreds.

I know the situation is very different in the states, but still- being careless has consequences. And the fact that Saddam has been caught doesn't mean s**t, excuse me- he's been hiding in a cave for the past year and a half anyway. There are still American soldiers beng killed in Iraq. And sorry to sound so blunt, but a terrorist attack can happen in the United States again.

[Al Dente]

Posted: 12/22/03 at 2:51pm

I will only say this, as far as NYC is concerned, we have never NOT been at "orange". We have been at this color level since 9/11 happened. I wanted to point that out in case it's of any *comfort* to any of you.

[newyorkuniq]

Posted: 12/22/03 at 4:06pm

well they seem to be taking this one more seriously than usual. I guess from the specific "chatter" they said was heard.It doesn't "scare" me but I ride thwe subway alot and fly out of LGA fairly often so it does make me somewhat nervous.

[thirdrowcenter]

Posted: 12/22/03 at 5:54pm

They mention a female suicide (homicide) bomber this time. I guess this means beware of pregnant women, gulp. All kidding aside, I'm nervous.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 12/22/03 at 6:19pm

I'm startled by tbe number of readers at this site who somehow thought my "we got 'em!" post (above) was in earnest. I've clearly failed in my attempt at irony, so I apologize if my stab at satire -- trying to sound like flag-waving C&W star Charlie Daniels, maybe -- was so lame as to be undetectable. To Broadway lover and those of you who wrote me privately: I really DO NOT believe the capture of the lice-infested and cavity-prone Mr. Hussein made us safer.

[iflitifloat]

Posted: 12/22/03 at 6:58pm

One wonders how far one must go before sarcasm becomes un-missable.

[DofB5]

Posted: 12/22/03 at 7:06pm

I know how some of you feel about NOT knowing how to feel. We're told to go about our work but at the same time we see secruity guards going around the floor several times a day. Ours is a government building that is open to the public sooooo the only thing I can say is expect the worse, hope for the best and know where the exits are.

If an alarm goes off--me and my fish are outta there!

D

[iflitifloat]

Posted: 12/22/03 at 8:53pm

We've had Hazmat training at work. Scary.

[ErikJ972]

Posted: 12/22/03 at 10:16pm

It's funny. Back when all this started I was working at a developmental center that provided long term care for developmentally disabled adults. Whenever the terror level would rise they would pull this flimsy gate they had constructed across the main entrance. Other entrances were blocked by orange cones. So when you pulled up to work, you had to come up to the gate where they stationed some poor maintenance man to check IDs. I always wondered how orange cones were going to stop terrorists, or why terrorists would want to strike a developmental center to begin with. What I found more disturbing, during normal times the campus was wide open and our clients were easy targets for anyone to come pluck off campus and do with them whatever they wanted. But I guess that was OK.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 12/23/03 at 8:36am

Two letters in the Times today speak volumes:

"...If, as the President claims, the world is safer now that S. H. is in custody, then why has he raised the nation's terror alert to high? Over the past week, Mr. Bush's pundits have slammed Dean for stating that the world is no safer after Hussein's capture--yet, based on this weekend's developments, isn't it clear that Mr. Bush agrees?"

"...Perhaps if the Administration hadn't put so many of its resources into ousting Hussein -- indeed a bad man, but hardly a threat to our national secruity -- and instead had focussed on the all too real threat of Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, we wouldn't find ourselves looking once again into the frightened faces of state and national officials as they tell us, once again, to brace for the unimaginable..."

Amen.

[iflitifloat]

Posted: 12/23/03 at 9:48am

Exactly. S.H., though a VERY bad man, never caused me, personally, a moment's worry. ObinL and Al Qaeda scare the sh*t out of me...probably because he/they have demonstrated, graphically, the extent of their hatred and their sophisticated ability to demonstrate said hatred. Even I, left leaning peacenik (now there's a word I haven't seen or used in 30-odd years, probably with good reason...) that I am, thought it made sense to find Osama. The shift in focus to S.H. after 9/11 made no sense to me then or now. Nope, we're no safer now than we were two weeks ago. And probably much less.

That being said, I'm off to Newark Airport to pick up mom...hoping they don't traumatize her too much *this* trip.

[thirdrowcenter]

Posted: 12/23/03 at 10:24am

I knew the cells would be dormant and then attack us from within.
Nothing was going to change that. It is only a matter of when.
They attacked the world trade center under Clinton and came back and attacked it under Bush.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 12/23/03 at 1:03pm

I think it's interesting that we have heightened alert for every holiday, yet 9/11 wasn't a holiday in particular and that is the event from which the threat alerts were created.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 12/23/03 at 1:32pm

Here's a great analysis of the problem with the system. When even the Heritage Foundation is critical, you know something's really out of whack. (This must be confusing to Roxy, who, we can assume from his published works here, has no critical faculties when it comes to this issue. Because, you know, he and he alone was in NYC on 9/11.)
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