{"id":6579,"date":"2006-02-09T14:47:30","date_gmt":"2006-02-09T19:47:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6579"},"modified":"2006-02-09T14:47:30","modified_gmt":"2006-02-09T19:47:30","slug":"about-that-disrupted-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/about-that-disrupted-attack\/","title":{"rendered":"About that disrupted attack…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before we get into the big news story of the day — Bush’s comments today about a thwarted terrorist attack in Los Angeles in 2002 — let’s consider a brief step back<\/a> to last October.<\/p>\n

About four months ago, the president claimed, for the first time, that his administration had disrupted “at least ten serious al Qaeda terrorist plots<\/a> since September the 11th [2001], including three al Qaeda plots to attack inside the United States.” As it turned out, some of the “serious plots” were actually half-baked plans<\/a> that were never going to happen. Regardless, in an Oct. 6 speech, Bush specifically pointed to a thwarted attack on the Library Tower<\/a> in Los Angeles from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to today. In one of the infamous “major speeches” on the war on terror, Bush pointed to a thwarted attack on the Library Tower<\/a> in Los Angeles from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. To be fair, Bush included<\/a> a couple of new details — shoe-bombs were apparently part of the plot — but the president essentially made major headlines today for repeating a four-month-old claim.<\/p>\n

Does this have something to do with the warrantless-search program? Apparently not<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So, why is this a major story today? The Washington Post’s Dan Froomkin thinks the White House has pulled another fast one<\/a> on the press corps. I think he’s right.<\/p>\n

White House spokesman Scott McClellan whipped up the press corps early this morning with word that Bush would offer hitherto secret information about the plot to crash a plane into Los Angeles’s tallest building.<\/p>\n

Reporters were abuzz, and CNN even pulled away from its live coverage of a news conference announcing murder charges for a British man whose American wife and baby were shot to death last month in Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

But now we’re all left scratching our heads a bit. Why is the White House suddenly offering all these details, even though they are unrelated to the central issue preoccupying official Washington, namely whether Bush’s secret surveillance plan is illegal? Could it just be an attempt to change the subject?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I hope that last question was rhetorical because the answer seems so painfully obvious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before we get into the big news story of the day — Bush’s comments today about a thwarted terrorist attack in Los Angeles in 2002 — let’s consider a brief step back to last October. About four months ago, the president claimed, for the first time, that his administration had disrupted “at least ten serious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}