Good Police Work Foiled Terror Threat (Get A Bucket)

Star Tribune ^ | August 11, 2006 | Editorial Staff

[ButThreeLeftsDo]

Experts characterize the terrorist threat foiled early Thursday in London as the "most serious" since Sept. 11, 2001. This was the real deal, about which details will become available as the investigation continues. Candidate George W. Bush loved to lampoon the Clinton administration's emphasis on law enforcement and the legal system as tools against terrorism. They were too wimpy for him; a good, strong military action against a terror-sponsoring state was more his kind of action. And so military action we got. In Afghanistan it was essential, but in Iraq it was not. There it has increased manyfold the number of terrorists targeting the United States and worldwide animosity toward it.

Meanwhile, patient, meticulous police work in Britain and elsewhere identified and monitored this plot by a smallish, nonstate group of criminal terrorists until the need to take them down became urgent.

[ButThreeLeftsDo]

No doubt, British intelligence and their policing arms are to be praised for stopping this latest threat.

However, if the Bush administration had employed the same tactics to uncover this as did the Brits....this newspaper would have been the FIRST to decry their "illegal methods".

[MikeA]

Oh please, Bush didn't "mock" the use of police, only treating the terror war as merely a law enforcement matter and nothing more. Bush never claimed police have no role in this effort. Far from it. He merely correctly commented on the Clinton predilection for making the fight against terrorism a one dimensional effort that involved only police work. But this plot was not broken because of indictments, but because of the kinds of surveillance techniques LIBERALS LIKE THIS WRITER OPPOSED that allowed Al Qaeda communictions to be monitored.

[ButThreeLeftsDo]

Very well put, Mike.

[RedRover]

Tsk, tsk. Playing politics with terrorism.

US law enforcement has stopped domestic plots since 9-11. The (accurate) criticism of Democrats is that they believe the ONLY response to terrorism is law enforcement--at home AND abroad.

[gaijin]

The Brits were on the case cuz NSA did the intercepts.

NSA ain't zactly COPS, I think, but just as long as the job gets done...