Update [2005-7-15 13:20:20 by Armando]: Bumped. Folks might have missed this under the avalanche of Rove-Gate. As Markos and Steve Soto suspected, the GOP's willingness to put their political fortunes before the War on Terror has had serious repercussions. How many others? God only knows. Thanks Mike Pridmore for jogging our memory.
Undermining the War on Terror for political gain. Sound familiar? This happened during the campaign last year. And the chickens came home to roost. In London apparently. A Welch-like moment - "Finally sirs, have you no decency?" Does anything matter besides their power? Apparently not.
"Bush admin may be responsible for botching effort to thwart London bombing" That's the title of
a post on
americablog:
ABC News just reported that the British authorities say they have evidence that the London attacks last week were an operation planned by Al Qaeda for the last two years. This was an operation the Brits thought they caught and stopped in time, but they were wrong. The piece of the puzzle ABC missed is that this is an operation the Bush administration helped botch last year.
[Edits by Armando for clarity]
This is yet another case of this administration abusing intelligence assets for political gain. Fits right in with Rove/Plame and Iraq/WMD. Heck, a lack of understanding of intelligence led to 9/11 in the first place.
Update [2005-7-14 21:58:43 by kevin lyda]: Atrios points out
another blog with
background on the story.
Update [2005-7-14 22:26:23 by Armando]: By Armando. From Tyoma's diary, from AmericaBlog:
- The London bombers, per ABC, are connected to an Al Qaeda plot planned two years ago in Lahore, Pakistan.
- Pakistani authorities recovered the laptop of a captured Al Qaeda leader, Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, on July 13, 2004. On that laptop, they found plans for a coordinated series of attacks on the London subway. According to an expert interviewed by ABC, "there is absolutely no doubt that Khan was part of a worldwide Al Qaeda operation, not just in the United States but also in Great Britain and throughout the west."
- ABC reports that names in the computer matched a suspected cell of Britain's of Pakistani decent, many of who lived near the town of Luton, England. According to ABC, authorities thought they had stopped the subway plot with the arrest of more than a dozen people last year. Obviously, they hadn't.
- Those arrests were the arrests that the Bush administration botched by announcing a heightened security alert the week of the Democratic Convention. Because the US let the cat out of the bag, the media got a hold of Khan's name, his Al Qaeda contacts found out he was co-opted, and they fled. The Brits had to have a high speed chase to catch some of them as they fled, and, according to press reports, the Brits and Pakistanis both fear that some slipped away.
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