Bush botched investigation

Did political use of terror alerts sacrifice London?

Back in August last year, I posted on a particularly comical episode in which then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in an interview with Tim Russert discussed how terror alerts in the weeks around the Democratic National Convention had been based on information over two years old. Funny they should bring it up just then, right?

A scandal then erupted concerning the public release by the Bush Administration of the name of a deep undercover terror informant, Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan. See Juan Cole's contemporaneous postings for all the details: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

Now after the terrible spectacle in London last week, it appears that the at best incompetent handling of the Kahn matter (at worst, it was done for a cheap Republican political boost) prematurely thwarted an important investigation that otherwise might have uncovered the entire terror cell responsible for the atrocities.

Complete details are posted at AMERICAblog.

It is just outrageous that there has ever been a perception that President Bush and his staff of thieving clowns have ever cared a whit about protecting the people of America or the world from the sadistic, skulking violence that they themselves create with the bombs and abuses of their Terror War.