Authorities in New York who responded to the threat of a terrorist attack against the city’s subway system are being widely criticized as a result of a report that the Iraqi informant who originally gave the information was probably lying through his teeth:

The alleged threat that led to heightened security on New York subways last week may have been a hoax on the part of an Iraqi informant attempting to get money in exchange for information, U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials said yesterday.

The informant has since disappeared in Iraq, and the Defense Department has not been able to locate him, city and federal officials said.

U.S. troops in Iraq captured three suspects south of Baghdad who the informant said were involved in the alleged plot.

But none of the suspects, including two who were given polygraph examinations, corroborated the informant’s allegations or appeared to have any connection to a terrorist plot, according to intelligence officials.

The city lifted the alert Monday after the time period identified by the informant passed without incident

Not only was the report probably bogus, but city officials – including Mayor Bloomberg – evidently took the report much more seriously than the federal government:

Department of Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke, who called the threat “noncredible” last week, declined to elaborate yesterday.

“The intelligence community has not found any evidence to substantiate the threat information,” Knocke said. The FBI also declined to comment in detail.

The question we should be asking is did the New York authorities act correctly by putting the city on a high state of alert even though the people whose job it is to keep us secure thought there was no reason to be alarmed?

To my mind, this question goes to the very heart of what homeland security should be: How safe can we afford to be?

On the one hand, you have the loony left who believes that every threat is actually part of a deep, dark plot by George Bush to divert attention from one thing or another so that he and his pals can impose a dictatorship on the rest of us. According to this school of thought, the War on Terror is always placed in quotation marks because it actually never existed, that in fact al Qaeda and its offshoots are figments of the Bush Administration’s imagination and that the terrorist fanatics who flew planes into buildings aren’t really a threat.

This September 10 mindset may be emotionally satisfying in that it comforts one to know that since in their heart of hearts the moonbats know George Bush will never line them up against a wall and shoot them, they can live their lives the way we all did prior to 9/11; without the fear of a sudden and horrible death overtaking them on a bright, cloudless day.

The rest of us, on the other hand, must live in the real world. And that is what makes the response by New York City authorities to this threat – even though it was pooh-poohed by Homeland Security bigshots in Washington – illustrative of how all of us are still learning to live with the threat of terror in the homeland.

It’s important to remember when trying to judge officials in New York that this particular threat did not occur in a vacuum. One need only be reminded of the London subway bombings to realize that prudence in the face of threats of this nature can be the only course for elected officials who take their responsibility seriously to keep the citizens of their city safe . It is also well to remember that the level of confidence we all have in federal authorities to judge the relative merits of any terrorist threat is colored by the fact that most of this same crew missed the “big one” on 9/11.

The result is that we are being whipsawed back and forth between overcautiousness and an almost sublime forgetfulness about the consequences of being wrong only once. Thus, homeland security can become a politicized outgrowth of our own projected fears; either government is lying for some ulterior motive or, more ominously, they aren’t telling us the whole story so as not to upset us.

The latter attitude can be found this week especially on conservative blogs as the unfolding story of (depending on your point of view) a troubled young Joel Hinrichs who committed suicide outside the University of Oklahoma stadium while 80,000 fans were enjoying that most American pastimes of watching a college football game or, if you prefer, a jihadist convert looking to become a martyr and take hundreds of infidels with him on his journey to see Allah.

It may in fact turn out that Mr. Hinrichs was simply a depressed college student with delusions of martyrdom. Or, his death may in fact reveal a a terrorist cell in the heartland of America. The fact that the discussion on blogs relates more to why the story isn’t being covered by the MSM says volumes about this Soviet-style mindset that posits the notion that things are being withheld from us because the truth would be too uncomfortable or would reflect badly on Muslims, or even that any revelations regarding Mr. Hinrich’s associations would prove what a lousy job the Homeland Security Department is doing to protect us.

Other incidents in California recently – both at UCLA where a bomb was discovered in the courtyard of an apartment building and the suicide of a student in San Diego are also being bandied about the blogs as something suspiciously like terrorists screwing up before they can hurt the general populace. Again, it is wise and prudent to approach these incidents with that thought uppermost in our minds while at the same time not jumping to conclusions that, in retrospect, would prove alarmist.

The fact is, we’re still feeling our way in this new country. And being the adaptable race we are, I’m sure that a majority of us will eventually find that common sense balance between panic and ennui. But until that day comes, I would hope that we not criticize the authorities for doing the right thing and acting to protect us from threats that could turn out to be acts of terror.