Political-Commentary.com

Bank Robbery

If the police have information that a bank is about to be robbed, do they put this information in the newspapers? Not typically, even though this type of information might make the police chief look good in his reelection effort. Instead, they just prevent the robbery.

Is there a reason why the Bush Administration could not follow a similar policy? Rather than telling everyone that the terrorists are targeting certain targets, why not just use this information to prevent the attacks?

To a skeptic, it appears what is going on here is pure politics. If Tom Ridge warns that an attack may occur -- and it does -- the Bush Administation can say "See, we warned you, so we weren't sleeping on the job, and we can't be blamed for not preventing the attack."

Gross Incompetence

In an interview with Wolf Blitzer yesterday, Condi Rice made the following comment:

"And the problem is that when you're trying to strike a balance between giving enough information to the public so that they know that you're dealing with a specific, credible, different kind of threat than you've dealt with in the past, you're always weighing that against kind of operational considerations. We've tried to strike a balance. We think for the most part, we've struck a balance, but it's indeed a very difficult balance to strike."

In other words, the administration is walking a fine line. On the one hand, it could follow a policy of doing what is best for the county, which would mean saying nothing about someone working undercover within Al Qaeda. On the other hand, it could follow a policy of doing what is best for the Bush reelection effort, which would mean broadcasting to the world that it arrested an Al Qaeda person who now is working undercover.

Here, the Bush administration decided its own political survival was more important than having an informant within Al Qaeda. Rice's defense appears to be:

"BLITZER: There is some suggestion that by releasing his identity here in the United States, you compromised a Pakistani intelligence sting operation, because he was effectively being used by the Pakistanis to try to find other al Qaeda operatives. Is that true?

"RICE: Well, I don't know what might have been going on in Pakistan. "

She doesn't know what might have been going on in Pakistan!! Could there be a more damning statement about the incompetence of this Administration? They claim to be on top of the fight against terror, but they don't even know that one of our allies has a mole within Al Qaeda? And they didn't even bother to check with our allies before releasing this guy's name?

Chalabi Under Arrest

Ahmad Chalabi is under arrest for counterfeiting. There is no way to know whether there is any validity to this charge. However, this is bad news for Bush.

If there is validity to the charge, it further reinforces the awful mistake the U.S. made when it backed Chalabi. If there is no validity to the charge, it indicates that Bush has installed a corrupt regime that is using the Iraqi judicial system against its political enemies. Either way, Bush made big mistakes.