EXPLAIN THIS CHATTER

Ok, help me out here, somone please explain this to me: If the intel guys hear all this chatter going on out there, why can't they pin point where the chatter is taking place or coming from? Example: If i'm at home and my buddy and I am talking about cutting my hair short, and the intel guys hear that, why can't they just come to my house and say "Hey, we heard you wanted to cut your hair short"! Make sense to anyone? Where do we have these microphones at? Did we plant them somewhere and say forget about em?

There's lots of bugaboos and whoops to human intel.

Chatter in the most often reported cases is second or third or fourth hand gossip and web site postings like "I hear this is gonna be a good one." Or intercepted phone messages in code. Two guys talking about a real haircut (in a major east coast city) may send the terror alert up.

It's usually full of poop, but they don't want to arrest the squeaky wheel either since he's obviously a lead. Where the "whoops" comes in is when people like Osama were once considered more valuable on the ground... when they "had him" they thought his banking transactions, etc would lead to the 'culprits' of any attacks. Turns out he was one mad mofo unto himself.

But when the Government specifically uses the word "chatter" to describe a possible attack and warn us, keep in mind 'chatter' is a far less strong word than 'INTELLIGENCE' and MUCH of chatter is COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE.

Think of the reverse, the US used news outlets like Fox to deliver chatter (some real, some not) to Saddam.

I hear this Shock & Awe will be amazing!!!

BS - zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[Edited on 24-12-2003 by RANT]