BlogWood: MT Archives

Schools and terror: be scared, stay scared

Remember: a scared electorate invariably votes to stay the course. It’s in W’s best interests to keep us nervous and jittery.

Here’s what most every news outlet is saying about the schools / terror scare:

It began two weeks ago with the discovery that a suspected Iraqi insurgent was in possession of information about schools in Florida and five other states.

The information included a single page from a Lee County schools handbook.

As a precaution, the FBI alerted state authorities.

By Friday, school districts in the Tampa Bay area were sending letters to parents and principals. News of the discovery was moving on national news wires, and a day earlier a local TV station played it as the lead story at 11 p.m.

Hoping to head off further anxiety, Florida law enforcement and education officials held a news conference Friday to downplay the reports. They also defended their decision not to make the information public.

"We believe your children are as safe in school as they are at home," said Florida Education Secretary John Winn, who first learned of the incident Thursday.

The widespread reaction to the discovery underscores the extent to which school districts, three years after the Sept. 11 attacks, react with extreme caution to any potential threat.

"But there was no specific threat to Florida schools," said Mike McHargue, Florida Department of Law Enforcement director of investigation. "Rather there was a single page from (Lee County's) local school code of conduct (handbook)."

The page was a list of four busing zones for the district's schools. No Florida school floor plans were recovered, contrary to some reports in national media, said FDLE Deputy Commissioner Scotty Sanderson.

Lee County's sheriff and superintendent were notified of the information within hours, state officials said. "Upon discussion with local officials we decided there was no specific threat," McHargue said. "No public good would be served by going public with that information."

School district officials in Georgia, Michigan, New Jersey, Oregon and California also were told by federal officials that information about their districts was on a computer disc found in Iraq. The disc was discovered after the arrest of a suspected Iraqi insurgent in Baghdad.

Here’s what they’re leaving out.

it could not be established that this man had any ties to terrorism. He did have a connection to civic groups doing planning for schools in Iraq, the official said.

A person with no known ties to terrorists who is helping to plan and rebuild schools in Iraq downloaded some school plans from the Internet. Be afraid.