Forgive my cynicism

But this just seems a little ridiculous.

Apparently we "foiled" an attack on the Library Tower here in Los Angeles. A few people were arrested in some unnamed South Asian country.

But how far along was this polt? They refuse to tell us. Was it anything more than a few nutjobs meeting to talk about the idea? Had people been hired? Had they already learned how to fly planes?

This is the first time Dubya's given us any specifics about any plot that has been "foiled." We constantly hear how he's made us "safer" and how he's stopped terrorists from attacking, but we never hear details. This strikes me as an awfully convenient little nugget to give us (apparently it happened in 2002) right as people are starting to question whether or not Bush's "give me more power to make you safe" is making sense.

More importantly - there was no suggestion that the illegal wiretapping in any way facilitated anything. There was not suggestion that the massive curtailing of civil liberties helped in any way - indeed, it's unlikely that they did, given it all happened abroad.

And what's this about the mayor of Los Angeles not being informed? Do you think that maybe if this were Houston (i.e. Republican city) the mayor might have heard about it a little more directly? (Cf. the famous M, "We prefer not to get our bad news from CNN.")

To me this is just another cynical use of information by the Dubya Administration to string the unthinking along and make them believe that this incompetent, corrupt, mendacious, malfeasant administration is actually doing something effective.