Wag the Pundits
It is vital to act on terror information, no matter the news cycle.
WSJ.com
If the subject weren't so serious we'd chalk it all up to the August news doldrums. The Bush Administration makes some breakthrough antiterror arrests and promptly shares some of its new information with the public. For its trouble, it then finds itself subject to handwringing "news analyses" wondering whether the timing was politically motivated and editorials lecturing on the temperature of terror warnings as if we were talking about Goldilocks's porridge.
Please. At Manhattan's Citicorp building and in the financial district where we sit, there just isn't much debate about this at all. People are happy to have the information, even if some of the building surveillance that's been described is several years old.
Everyone knows enough about al Qaeda's modus operandi by now to understand that the group plans years in advance and doesn't easily give up on targets. They also understand that the same people nitpicking now would be the first to point the finger if there was an attack and such information had been withheld.
The key player here appears to be an al Qaeda communications officer and terror planner named Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, who was arrested three weeks ago in Pakistan. On his computer, authorities discovered documents and photographs indicating extensive surveillance of buildings in New York, New Jersey and Washington, D.C. Also arrested in Pakistan last month was Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, wanted by the U.S. for his role in the 1998 African embassy bombings--an attack that was five years in the planning.
Information from Mr. Khan apparently also pointed to targets in Britain, including Heathrow Airport. That led to the arrest in and around London this week of 12 more suspects, including an alleged senior al Qaeda figure named Abu Musa al Hindi. U.S. officials described the arrests as "part of this web that emanates from Pakistan" and suggested that other operations based on the Khan information were still ongoing.
Meanwhile, after an apparently unrelated sting operation, the FBI announced the arrest yesterday of two Muslim men in Albany on charges of money laundering and conspiracy in connection with a plot to kill the Pakistani ambassador in New York. The two were reported to be affiliated with the al Qaeda-linked terror group Ansar al Islam.
It would be foolish to suggest that these important arrests have neutralized the al Qaeda threat. But they will surely prove disruptive to the group's operations world-wide. Other cells will not know to what extent their own activities may have been compromised. These arrests are also another empirical nail in the coffin of the theory that Iraq has been a big distraction from the broader war on terror.
And what about all those allies we've supposedly alienated? They seem quite happy to help the U.S., thank you, if only for their own self-interest. Just this week Pakistani Prime Minister designate Shaukat Aziz escaped an assassination attempt, and the Musharraf government seems more committed to the war on terror than ever. Somehow we doubt they need to be ordered to round up terror suspects on a U.S. political schedule, as one Washington political magazine recently theorized.
Joe Lieberman has, as usual, been warning the Democrats away from the fever swamps here, saying nobody "in their right mind" would believe that President Bush would "scare people for political reasons." And John Kerry has at least been smart enough to stay above the fray. But the Democratic contender would probably be wise to actively rein in the likes of Howard Dean, who was still rambling conspiratorially as of Wednesday night.
Speculation about the timing of arrests and the motives for terror warnings doesn't do anything to reassure voters that the Democratic Party is serious about protecting them. We're pretty sure most Americans see the latest blows to al Qaeda as unalloyed good news, even if some of the credit has to go to the Bush Administration.
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