I'm furious.

I'm not angry that the government put us on Orange Alert in large part because of a claim, made by a captured al-Qaeda member, that a dirty bomb was going to be exploded somewhere in America this week. That was a pretty sound decision, I think.

I'm not even angry that they didn't bother to give him a polygraph test until days after they acted on the information; better safe than sorry!

What pisses me off is that absolutely no mention was made of the fact that the three targets he mentioned were New York, Washington and Florida — not until after the information was determined to be false!

Oh, the government made some mention about dirty bombs, and extra pairs of eyes being added "at theme parks in Florida and California", but never once did they make reference to a specific threat against any particular location! According to Google News, this fact never made the news media until ten hours ago.

MacDill Air Force Base, which our media have thoughtfully revealed as the command center for the upcoming Gulf War, is right here in Tampa. Does anyone really believe that with a specific threat against Florida, the terrorists would choose a theme park over the nerve center of the military operation in the Middle East?

I can handle knowing that my life is in danger. But I'm really pissed off at discovering that my life — as well as the lives of my friends and loved ones — was under a specific threat and our government didn't even have the decency to let us know.