Goodbye green, blue, yellow, orange and red. Hello … well, they’re still working on that.

 

The Obama administration has decided to discard one of the most visible reminders of the post-Sept. 11 anti-terror policies installed by President George W. Bush: the color-coded warning system. 

 

An eight-year fixture at airports and government buildings (and comedy routines), the system—which critics said was too vague and amounted to a political scare tactic—will be discontinued once the Department of Homeland Security figures out a replacement. The plan reportedly is to craft something that’s more descriptive and less reliant on colors.

 

One idea being considered is to go from five threat tiers to two: elevated and imminent. When imminent is used, government officials would be expected to be as specific as possible in describing the threat without jeopardizing national security, according to the Associated Press. Also, imminent threats would be characterized as something not lasting longer than a week.

 

It is not true, as Jay Leno once said, that the government will be adding “plaid in case we were ever attacked by Scotland.”

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Color-Coded Terror Alerts May End (by Eileen Sullivan, Associated Press)

U.S. to Drop Color-Coded Terror Alerts (by John Schwartz, New York Times)