Editorial: Bush cries wolf once too often

Last Sunday President George W. Bush's Director of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, said intelligence had been received that suggested an al Qaeda attack was possible and declared a high level alert for a number of New York financial institutions including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. These targets are thought to have been obtained from an al Qaeda computer engineer, one of several operatives captured by Pakistan last month.

But it seems the information thus obtained was at least three years old, according to both the New York Times and Washington Post, which have spoken to officials analysing the material. In other words, the information predated September 11, 2001, and the intelligence agencies are not sure whether al Qaeda has been able to update its information since then. Furthermore, much of the information on the buildings had been obtained from the internet or other "open sources". An official told the Post: "What we've uncovered is a collection operation rather than the launching of an attack." If so, it seems a flimsy basis for a security alert. It can only reinforce suspicion that the timing has more to do with the President's election campaign than any signs of an imminent threat.

"We are a nation in danger," said Mr Bush. "We are doing everything we can in our power to confront the danger." The sight of armed security cordons moving around the financial district can be guaranteed to maintain the climate of fear that gripped the United States after September 11 and which, according to Herald correspondent Graham Reid's report published yesterday, permeates the country still. The mood is regularly reinforced. In May it was reported that al Qaeda and other terrorist groups were in the US preparing for "a major attack within months". Last month Mr Ridge issued another warning, again to a counterpoint from intelligence officials that they had received nothing specific. Mr Ridge's people let out word that they were discussing contingency plans in the event of an attack on the eve of the election or election day itself.

Scaremongering, you might think, would be a double-edged sword for Mr Bush. While it plays to his stated pose of a "war President", it is also an admission that his response to the original attack on New York and Washington has made the US no safer. Whatever gains he made by dispersing al Qaeda from camps in Afghanistan have probably been negated by the recruitment he will have generated for Islamic militants with his invasion and occupation of Iraq. Inquiries into both September 11 and the ill-conceived Iraqi adventure have exposed the limitations of American intelligence agencies and the propensity of the political leadership to exaggerate threats wildly for its own purpose.

But the President's Democrat opponent, Senator John Kerry, has to tread cautiously in the face of these alerts. Mr Bush may be in danger of becoming the boy who cried wolf but Mr Kerry will be aware the wolf in that parable eventually did strike. He can only treat these warnings seriously and call for better precautions. For all the political benefit the threat may bring Mr Bush, the odds on a strike at the US before the election have to be counted high.

The President and his policies so divide the West and antagonise the Arab world that his re-election is very much in the interests of Islamic militants. The aim, after all, is strict religious rule of Islamic states and the easiest way to generate support for that cause is to make a common enemy of the infidel.

Vague terror alerts simply play into their hands, probably exaggerating the terrorists' power and inflating their image in their homelands - all for not much public benefit. There is not much the public can usefully do when it hears these warnings, and the precautions the authorities can take do not need to be blared from the rooftops. This time the White House might have cried wolf once too often.