Bush seeks political gains from foiled plot

That's the headline on an AFP story and boy does it zero in on this mornings media circus. It's the Republican strategy of overwhelming farce; Create campaign stunts that frighten the American people and disrupt the economy, Deride the Democrats for things they never said.

Ya! I said campaign stunts! Think about it. The English police have already detected and caught the terrorist... then at a good point in the news cycle, the terror level is raised here in the U.S.. Cheney started yesterday with his usual nonsense about terrorist not breaking the will of the American people. But hey DICK! The cat's out of the bag.

"Weeks before September 11th, this is going to play big," said another White House official, who also spoke on condition of not being named, adding that some Democratic candidates won't "look as appealing" under the circumstances. - AFP, August 11, 2006

Let's take a deep breath and have a closer look.

...Peter Clarke, the head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch, said the surveillance involved in disrupting the plot had been "unprecedented" and had involved police forces in the UK and internationally.

Sources told the BBC the "principal characters" suspected of being involved in the plot were British-born, some with links to Pakistan.

A senior Pakistani security official told the AFP news agency that Pakistani intelligence agencies helped British authorities foil the plot.

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said: "Pakistan played a very important role in uncovering and breaking this international terrorist network.

"There were some arrests in Pakistan which were co-ordinated with arrests in the UK."... (from BBC NEWS)

No troop movements, no air strikes, just police work. Terrorists are criminal. The police in Pakistan and the UK detected and arrested the terrorists.

The simple truth is that the Republican politicians keep trying to make the threat from terrorists look bigger so they can look bigger. Unfortunately they're so busy trying to score political points that they're not taking care of business. And that's not just my personal observation.

... FOREIGN POLICY and the Center for American Progress teamed up to survey more than 100 of America’s top foreign-policy experts—Republicans and Democrats alike. The FOREIGN POLICY/Center for American Progress Terrorism Index is the first comprehensive effort to mine the highest echelons of America’s foreign-policy establishment for their assessment of how the United States is fighting the Global War on Terror. Our aim was to draw some definitive conclusions about the war’s priorities, policies, and progress from the very people who have run America’s national security apparatus over the past half century. Participants include people who have served as secretary of state, national security advisor, retired top commanders from the U.S. military, seasoned members of the intelligence community, and distinguished academics and journalists. Nearly 80 percent of the index participants have worked in the U.S. government—of these more than half were in the executive branch, one third in the military, and 17 percent in the intelligence community.

Despite today’s highly politicized national security environment, the index results show striking consensus across political party lines. A bipartisan majority (84 percent) of the index’s experts say the United States is not winning the war on terror. Eighty-six percent of the index’s experts see a world today that is growing more dangerous for Americans. Overall, they agree that the U.S. government is falling short in its homeland security efforts. More than 8 in 10 expect an attack on the scale of 9/11 within a decade. These dark conclusions appear to stem from the experts’ belief that the U.S. national security apparatus is in serious disrepair. “Foreign-policy experts have never been in so much agreement about an administration’s performance abroad,” says Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and an index participant. “The reason is that it’s clear to nearly all that Bush and his team have had a totally unrealistic view of what they can accomplish with military force and threats of force.”

Respondents sharply criticized U.S. efforts in a number of key areas of national security, including public diplomacy, intelligence, and homeland security. Nearly all of the departments and agencies responsible for fighting the war on terror received poor marks. The experts also said that recent reforms of the national security apparatus have done little to make Americans safer. ... (The Terrorism Index)