(As posted on surreally dot com)

Our lovely government is issuing warnings that another terrorist attack is "impending." Again with the "we don't know where, when or how, but it's coming" kind of comments.

It's the worst kind of warning that our government could be giving us. Ever since 9/11, our country's stress level has shot through the roof to the point where we've turned against each other based simply on genetics or religious worship, forgetting that those are the same circumstances that forced a lot of our ancestors to flee here. And everyone is terrified that the next attack will take them down, so it's raising the stress even more.

What's the use of issuing a general warning? So we'll all be watching everyone else instead of ourselves? That guy in the car next to me on his cell phone -- he's probably triangulating with his terrorist buddies to coordinate an attack, y'know. That nervous looking dude in the Carl's Jr., he might have a few sticks of dynamite strapped to his chest. And hey, let's go burn down a few mosques while we're at it, since we all know that the terrorists are Muslims and probably hold meetings there, right?

In some ways, I can see how they'd want to put out a warning -- if something happens, the government can say "we told you so, look at how our intelligence is bringing us info," and if something doesn't, they can say they prevented it. If we didn't receive a warning and something happened, we'd be berating our government for its lack of ability at intelligence-gathering and homeland defense. Well, dammit, if they're getting information, why don't they put it towards stopping whatever it is that's coming our way? We can level an entire country in the Middle East, but we can't ferret out some terrorists here.