Yes, Let's Focus on the War on Terror

Last Friday The Wall Street Journal edit page folks did a reality check.

The 8/10 terror plot failed, they wrote, because

"a large number of people" had been under surveillance, with [British] police monitoring "spending, travel and communications."

As if on cue, they continued, the Democrats came out with their usual line that “the Iraq war is a diversion and provocation” from the war on terror.

Good point. Now would they have us concentrate on surveillance? But the Democrats and the media yelled blue murder last year

when it was leaked that the government was monitoring some communications outside the context of a law known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Would they have us concentrate on the terrorists’ spending? But The New York Times yelled bloody murder when it turned out that the feds were monitoring terrorists fund transfers at an international bank clearing house.

Just what would the Democrats have us focus on? 80-year-old fundamentalist Christian grandmothers?

The president’s critics

should be reminded that the British and other European legal systems generally permit far more intrusive surveillance and detention policies than the Bush Administration has ever contemplated.

In that sense, you could say, the Bush administration has been outrageously going it alone instead of cooperating with and aligning itself with our allies.