Shakes here...
I'll go ahead and let the Wall Street Journal sum it up for us:
U.K. Plot Puts Terrorism Back in U.S. Political Campaigns
Terrorism returns front and center to the American political agenda.
Republicans have long planned to make counterterrorism a central theme of this year's congressional campaign, painting Democrats as weak on the issue. Today's London arrests force the issue back to the front of voters' minds, two days after Ned Lamont's victory in Connecticut over incumbent Sen. Joe Lieberman sparked a spate of Republican assertions, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, that the results showed Democrats are shirking from confronting terrorists. The RNC released a Web video titled “Weak and Wrong: Meet the Defeat-o-crats.”
Shortly after this morning's announcement, Lieberman–now running as an independent–released a statement saying “this should serve as the latest, most serious evidence that we are in a war against a brutal enemy that intends to attack us over and over again in the most indiscriminate way.”
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee says a Democratic Congress would better fight terror by enacting more of the 9/11 Commission's reforms. The plank is the eighth item on a nine-point platform, after gas prices, the minimum wage, health care, and other economic pledges.
Meantime, President Bush plans to make a statement at noon (EDT) about the U.K. plot. Bush will make his remarks during a previously scheduled trip to Green Bay, Wis. White House spokesman Tony Snow said Bush talked at length to British Prime Minister Tony Blair about the plot on Sunday and again on Wednesday.
Hmm. Bush was speaking for days about this plot to commit "mass murder on an unimaginable scale" but never mentioned anything to American travelers about it? What say you, Bob Orr?
Bob Orr just said on The Early Show on CBS that the U.S. government has known about this for a few days. He wonders why, if knowledge of this plot is a few days old, additional safety measures to protect travelers have not been put in place until today.
Why indeed. Why, if you know that travelers are at risk because of a plot to blow up airliners in midair, do you not advise travelers the minute you know?
Good question.
