White House Distractions and London Resolve

In contrast to the White House way to deal with terrorism -- take the world to war -- London is treating its transit bombing case as a police matter. Their police work has been swift, effective, and productive. After the 7/7 bombing, they had located the suspects' family homes within hours. Shortly after yesterday's bombs, they had collected enough evidence to identify suspects and later produce images of them. Today they shot a suspect in the Tube.

Their homeland security seems fast and domestic, while ours seems political and spread too thin.

For Karl Rove in 2003, apparently terrorism was something that urgently needed to be dealt with not at home but "over there." The CIA leak is about efforts to discredit a source that contradicted the Bush efforts to justify starting a war. Rove would not be in trouble if he had not become preoccupied with proving that Joseph Wilson was wrong about Africa.

Notice the focus here: For Rove, politics means making certain that people are frightened, rather than making sure people are safe. Because Bush had declared in a State of the Union address that Saddam Hussein had gone to Africa seeking materials for nuclear weapons, the White House had to expend great energy by its most powerful players -- Libby, Rove -- to discredit anyone who may tell a different story.

They still are expending energy as they try to mop up this messy game of smear.

In effect, the Bush policy has been to forsake homeland security so that we can send soldiers to Iraq. The CIA leak is such a critical story because it demonstrates how much attention the White House pays to guaranteeing its own PR, and not guaranteeing the interests and safety of citizens.

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My city's U.S. Postal Service is slow, as I suspect is most of California's. How is the mail in New Mexico?

The slow mail means I get magazines and journals after everyone else.

I only now am finding out how great the July 25 edition of the New Yorker is. Tobias Wolff's story, "Awaiting Orders," is the first instance of a gay military character I've seen appear in such a mainstream periodical. What's more, the story is classic Tobias Wolff in its wry and restrained look at basic human interactions. I love his take on families, his sense of timing, and a use of point-of-view that I think he can rightly call his own.

Seymour Hersh offers his usual top-notch reporting in "Get Out the Vote: Did Washington Campaign in Iraq's Election?" Hersh has an uncanny ability to find sources who are very inside and willing to open up. This story, about the State Department peddling of influence in Iraq's election, has already been discussed in the blogosphere and elsewhere.

William Finnegan's report on "The Terrorism Beat: The City's Defense Command Centers" paints a vivid portrait of the effort of the NYPD to monitor terrorism. Finnegan does a remarkable job of weaving in how the NYPD was on the scene to gather information in the wake of the 7/7 London bombings (the issue was released, of course, before yesterday's bombing), as well as at the Madrid bombs.

I was struck, in particular, by one case Finnegan discusses in which the NYPD followed a young Pakistani immigrant who recruited a teen-ager from Staten Island for a plan to bomb the subway station at 34th St. and Herald Square. The police found no evidence that the two had any connection with any other organization. They were, "Lone wolves...Homegrown, but inspired globally."

Certainly many wannabe bombers have no connection to any organization or state. Such examples illustrate again the weaknesses in Bush arguments that fighting terrorism is best done in Iraq.

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