Yesterday, we were accused of being overly cynical when we opined that we thought the new “terror alert” had much more to do with politics — and with Bush’s troublesome poll numbers — than with any real intelligence suggesting any increased danger in the northeast.

This morning, it’s widely reported that the information underlying this alert is primarily from before 9/11.

Much of the information that led the authorities to raise the terror alert at several large financial institutions in the New York City and Washington areas was three or four years old, intelligence and law enforcement officials said on Monday. They reported that they had not yet found concrete evidence that a terror plot or preparatory surveillance operations were still under way.

Fuck.