Has anyone noticed that all the "real" arrests in the "war on terror" (ie not the farcical dirty bomber, or the Miami losers), have been made by either the British government or the Canadian government ? No violations of freedom. No ignoring the constitution. Just good old fashioned police work and thoroughness by these two foreign governments. Kind of puts a slap in the face to our governments protest it the needs the illegal wiretapping and Patriot Act to function, doesn't it ?.

Just a couple observations:

1. I don't think we should feel too good once it becomes apparent, as it has, that our leaders need our enemies as much as our enemies need us to justify their policies and positions. Would that our leaders had found a wise way to sternly and ruthlessly deal with those aligned against us without giving them too much credit. Now, everytime a politician passes the word "terrorist" I cringe at what he or she is really saying: that our existence is defined by our opposition to them. I wish instead that we were defined by some sort of demonstrable moral superiority and not some tacit understanding of an agreed-upon historical greatness;

2. It is very difficult to claim any kind of moral high ground when newspapers in our country (ok, so it was the NY Post, but still) refer to Osama bin Laden as Satan. Again, isn't this giving a mere homocidal zealot more credit than he should be due? Regardless of how baseless his actions are, of how evil he appears to us, should we really be stooping to the level of those who refer to America as the Great Satan and burn our flag?

The fact that the Brits, who oppose Gunatanamo and torture and eroding civil rights, stopped this plot in its tracks only goes to show that those programs are not necessary.

The US caught nobody. Had this event happened it would've happened just as on 9/11, with our military unaware and unresponsive until it was too late or completely over.

Of course, the political machine is always ready. Protecting the American people from the truth like our lives depended on it.

I'm very thankful the plot was discovered and prevented before anyone was killed. Good on British Intelligence, and thank goodness Bush can't legitimately take credit for their work. And I think Smileyy nailed it. It's time to dispel the notion that George Bush is "tough on terror" when his lack of action in August 2001 and almost all his actions since then have placed Americans in greater danger of terrorist attacks, not less.

It's not news that there are Islamic terrorists who want to kill Americans. That has been evident for decades. And there are probably many more of them than there were in September, 2001. Abu Graib and the whole aggressive war of choice in Iraq and that country's descent into bloody chaos have been very successful recruiting tools for Al Qaida. And if George W. Bush "doesn't spend much time thinking about Osama bin Laden" I'd like to know why the hell not. Now would be a good time to START thinking about him again, Mr. President. You're a sorry excuse for a world leader, but for the moment, you're the only president we have. Start behaving like one.

to turn around the anti-Republican poll numbers. This is just like the constant terror alerts leading up to the 2004 election. Expect more of this as November gets closer. They probably wanted to wait longer for this, but felt like they had to act now. ("They" being Rove, the RNC, the White House)

This is all so very unsurprising.

Hey, the terrorists were British. In using the 1+1= War theory, it makes perfect sense. We must take Britain out of the picture.

Personally, I think we can get Israel to handle this for us.

http://www.williamkwolfrum.com/?p=45

--WKW

I propose that supporters of the Iraq War have the burden of proving how, exactly, a) that conflict is related to the "war on terror," and B) how it advances said war. I don't mean by spouting meaningless platitudes about how "staying on the offensive" since 9/11 has made us safer and how Saddam was supposedly, at some point in the future, going to supply WMD's to terrorists. I mean by offering specific ideas that refute the following:

That the massive amounts of manpower, blood and treasure that have been, and continue to be, pissed away into desert sand wouldn't have been better spent finding Osama bin Laden, thoroughly eliminating the now-resurgent Taliban and re-building Afghanistan; how emboldening Iran and increasing its power by eliminating its greatest enemy and political counterweight makes the U.S. safer; how destabilizing a country by turning it into a chaotic shitstorm of sectarian violence doesn't create an environment that is hospitable for terrorist training and recruitment; how killing thousands of Iraqi civilians, directly or indirectly, is supposed to earn us goodwill in the Arab and Muslim world that can be used to gain allies in the war on terror; how the U.S.'s half-assed, corrupt, incomplete and incompetent reconstruction of Iraq is supposed to convince the Iraqi people that we actually give a shit about them and their country in the long-term.

According to a close Lieberman adviser, the President's political guru, Karl Rove, has reached out to the Lieberman camp with a message straight from the Oval Office: "The boss wants to help. Whatever we can do, we will do." - from ABC News

So, now we have a "foiled" "terror" "plot" and a "red" alert. How much more of the GOP's help for Joe can America afford?

I'm not very partial to conspiricy theories but there are a few things about today's headlines that make me suspicious:

1. The announcement and arrests occurred the day after our primary elections, even though the plotters have evidently been followed for months;

2. The timing of the arrests was known in advance to Bush and Company for several days and Bush appeared on camera, on schedule, with a carefully crafted speech that told us to be afraid, very afraid, and attempted to link his surveillance activities and our counterterrorism efforts to the discovery of this plot;

3. So far as has been reported, the British police, not our counterterrorism officials were responsible for breaking up this attempt;

4. According to some news reports this type of threat has been well known to our homeland security officials since the 1990's when a similar plot was accidentally discovered in the Philippines, yet we have not deployed the technology to detect the chemicals which terrorists would use, due to budget constraints.

I'm not saying that there is no terrorist threat, only that the Bush Administration had no role in protecting us in this case, and in fact has neglected to install the necessary equipment in airports to detect these kinds of explosives. Instead, what I see is an opportunistic attempt to manufacture fear without actually doing anything to protect us, and using the situation to justify their irrational militarism and attack on our civil liberties.