Not a wolf, a canary

It was a tough gamble for the Bush administration, when it detected signs of a possible new imminent terrorist attack last week. If the new strike doesn’t come soon, will officials be blamed for crying “Wolf”?

They made the right decision and issued the warning, advising all citizens to maintain a condition of high alert. Like the canary in a coal mine, which stops singing when it senses deadly gas, the administration has shared its sense of fresh danger with the American public.

We know that the Taliban network can and will launch new terror attacks until the combination of military, economic and diplomatic pressure prevails. The FBI was right in telling us that one seems to be coming soon, even if it did not come. And the warning conceivably has an additional motive. Could the FBI have planned to stir up new communications among the terrorists, leading to productive new intercepts?