Schumer: Book shows NYC still Qaida target

[sabra]

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/14849884.htm

Schumer: Book shows NYC still Qaida target
Associated Press

NEW YORK - A reported plot by al-Qaida terrorists to kill thousands of New Yorkers by spreading cyanide gas in the subway underscores the folly of a Homeland Security Department cutback of funds for major cities, a Democratic lawmaker said Sunday.

"This is just more evidence that what Homeland Security did to us was terribly misguided and just wrong," Sen. Charles Schumer said. "It shows that New York is the prime target, and shows the importance of prior intelligence and of manpower."

New York lawmakers, and state and municipal officials, have pledged efforts to reverse a recent decision by the federal agency to cut New York's federal anti-terror allocations by 40 percent, some $83 million less than the $207 million it received in 2005.

The cyanide plot is described in a new book, "The One Percent Doctrine," by author Ron Suskind and excerpted in the current issue of Time magazine.

[Igel]

1. That's a not a necessary conclusion.

It might be a valid conclusion on other grounds, so it's not an invalid conclusion, but you get get there based on just what's in the Time article.

If an attack against NYC is called off in 4/03, the conclusion you can draw is that in 3/03 it was a target. It's fairly irrelevant as to NYC's status as a target in 6/06. The claim that NYC stopped being a target is perhaps just a tad more likely to be inferred; which is to say, barely at all.

Good rhetoric. Fallacious, but rhetoric and logic aren't always the same.