Minutes away from a scheduled phone interview on Israeli TV 10 with newscaster Shlomi Eldar, Aboul Aish called Eldar’s cellphone, screaming and weeping in Arabic and Hebrew. The doctor’s home had been struck by a shell:

“Oh God, oh my God, my daughters have been killed. They’ve killed my children. . . . Could somebody please come to us?”

Yes, you read that right, the Democrats apparently want to let Bush have expanded wiretapping powers, because if they don’t they’re worried that the White House will claim they’re soft on terror.

They really just don’t get it, do they?

As Digby says:

I don’t know what it’s going to take to convince Democrats that trying to “out-tough” each other or especially trying to “out-tough” the GOP is always playing to the Republican’s strength — the authoritarian lizard brain. If this keeps up, by the time we get to the election, the Democratic candidate will be vying with the Republican over who will be the first to sign a new law legalizing torture for double parking. We don’t win that way, never have, never will.

It’s the same old Democrats, once again willing to throw away civil liberties in an attempt to not be seen as wimps, and letting the Republicans frame yet another issue to their advantage. Then they’ll wonder why so much of their base seems to be less than enthusiastic about getting out and voting for them in 2008.

Mr. Bush, I don’t recognize the world you paint. I find your speech a form of sheer propaganda, having almost no relationship to reality. And I am very, very worried that you will allow to happen to the Oil Gulf what you allowed to happen to New Orleans. After watching you for five years I have become convinced that you don’t have the slightest idea what you are doing in Iraq, that you are just reacting and playing it by ear. You can’t do that, George. This Iraq thing is extremely complex. It needs serious, concerted thought by high-powered people, not just your cronies and yes-men and ideologues of various stripes (from Right to far-Right). You might just need the help of Iran and Syria to get Iraq right. Did you ever think of that? Iraq is the biggest policy failure in US history so far. You need to get a handle on it, the way you do on tax cuts for the billionaires (you’ve been very effective in making your rich friends richer). Otherwise all that extra treasure you’ve thrown to your tuxedoed “base” is going to go right down the tubes, drowned in a world of $20 a gallon gasoline.

You can’t “stay the course” because you don’t have a course. Get one.

Cole goes through the text of Bush’s remarks and debunks most of his ill-informed arguments about how we should be dealing with both al-Qaeda and Iraq. This one’s definitely worth a read.

Bush has given us the worst of all possible worlds– a half-finished job against al-Qaeda, an Iraqi imbroglio that could still explode into civil or even regional war– and which serves as an al-Qaeda recruiting tool–, a government starved for funds, an enormous windfall for the rich at the expense of the middle class (which saw average wages actually fall recently), and an inability to respond effectively to a major urban catastrophe.

Four years after September 11, al-Qaeda’s leadership should have been behind bars or dead. Four years after September 11, Afghanistan should have been stabilized. Four years after September 11, the government should have been ready to save lives in an urban disaster.

Bush recently started likening his poorly conceived and misnamed “war on terror” to World War II.

What his handlers have forgotten is how long World War II lasted for the United States.

Four years.

In four years, Roosevelt and allies defeated Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. In four years, Bush hasn’t managed even to corner Bin Laden and a few hundred scruffy terrorists; or to extract himself from the deserts of Iraq; or to put the government’s finances in good order so that it can deal with crises like Katrina.

Four years. I think about the victims of 9/11, and now 7/7. We have let you down.

Go and read the whole piece for an excellent overview of how Bush has bungled the so-called “war on terror” since 9/11/2001.

The problem is that a CIA agent apparently planted a key piece of evidence that was used to convict him, and it’s likely that the Libyans were in no way involved.

Police last night told Tony Blair that they need sweeping new powers to counter the terrorist threat, including the right to detain a suspect for up to three months without charge instead of the current 14 days.

Senior officers also want powers to attack and close down websites, and a new criminal offence of using the internet to prepare acts of terrorism, to “suppress inappropriate internet usage”.

They also want to make it a criminal offence for suspects to refuse to cooperate in giving the police full access to computer files by refusing to disclose their encryption keys.

The police would also like to see much clearer information given to the public about the threat level, the creation of a specialist border security agency and further discussions about the use of phonetap evidence in terrorist cases

Three months detention without charge? Restrictions on Internet usage? Apparently the British police have learned the wrong lessons from America’s Patriot Act.

[via IP]

New York City will begin making random checks of bags and backpacks at subway stations, commuter railways and on buses, officials announced today in the wake of a second wave of bombings on the London transit system.

Anyone who actually thinks this is going to do anything to prevent a bombing in the NYC subway system is just fooling themselves. Security expert Bruce Schneier sums it up:

It’s another “movie plot threat.” It’s another “public relations security system.” It’s a waste of money, it substantially reduces our liberties, and it won’t make us any safer.

To make matters even worse, NYC police officials have said that if they find contraband (such as drugs or guns) during these “random” searches, they’ll make arrests, and that’s an end run around the protections provided by the Fourth Amendment.

In other words, New Yorkers get to give up liberties and aren’t even getting the devils’ bargain of actual security in return

An Associated Press survey of longtime students of international terrorism finds them ever more convinced, in the aftermath of London’s bloody Thursday, that the world has entered a long siege in a new kind of war. They believe that al-Qaida is mutating into a global insurgency, a possible prototype for other 21st-century movements, technologically astute, almost leaderless. And the way out is far from clear.

In fact, says Michael Scheuer, the ex-CIA analyst, rather than move toward solutions, the United States took a big step backward by invading Iraq.

Now, he said, “we’re at the point where jihad is self-sustaining,” where Islamic “holy warriors” in Iraq fight America with or without allegiance to al-Qaida’s bin Laden.

While Bush continues to spout off about how we’re bravely fighting the war on terror, he’s actually making things worse and worse by motivating the very extremists he claims to want to stop.

[via Daily Kos]

Bush called him a �top general� and �a major facilitator and chief planner for the Al- Qaeda network�. Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, said he was �a very important figure�. Yet the backslapping in Washington and Islamabad has astonished European terrorism experts, who point out that the Libyan was neither on the FBI�s most wanted list, nor on that of the State Department �rewards for justice� programme.

Just who is this guy then?

�Al-Libbi is just a �middle-level� leader,� said Jean-Charles Brisard, a French intelligence investigator and leading expert on terrorism finance. �Pakistan and US authorities have completely overestimated his role and importance. He was never more than a regional facilitator between Al-Qaeda and local Pakistani Islamic groups.�

How many times do we have to go through this dog-and-pony show anyway?

[via Informed Comment]