E-Mail This Article to a Friend Bush’s fake war on terror Three-year-old warnings, phony reforms, and a suspiciously timed arrest in Pakistan

GEORGE W. BUSH is staking his claim to the presidency on his supposed strength in dealing with terrorism. But two developments this week show once again that though the president has mastered the politics of terrorism, his grasp of its substance is pathetically inadequate.

Last weekend Bush’s much-mocked secretary of homeland security, Tom Ridge, announced that Al Qaeda was planning attacks on five financial institutions in and around New York City and Washington, DC. Unlike previous such warnings, this one was said to be based on specific information. Accordingly, the alert was raised from yellow to orange in only a few locations, sparing the nation’s hardware stores another run on plastic sheeting and duct tape. The White House was praised for learning from its past mistakes.

Then, on Monday, we learned the truth. It turned out that the data on which Ridge was relying were three to four years old, and that there was little evidence to suggest that the threat is any higher now than it has been in the past, notwithstanding subsequent talk of new information that appeared largely aimed at butt-covering. On the other hand, there was incontrovertible evidence that the Democratic Party had just concluded a successful convention. Perhaps a certain Republican president whose job-approval rating is stuck below 50 percent might have wanted to get the media to change the subject.

But that wasn’t the only terrorism-related development that took place on Monday. Appearing in the Rose Garden, President Bush endorsed the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission to create a new post — that of national-intelligence director — and to form a counterterrorism center. Bush’s statement would appear to get a political albatross off his back. The Democratic presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry, has been publicly demanding that Bush adopt the commission’s recommendations in full. But, as is often the case, Bush’s rhetoric fell considerably short of reality.

The 9/11 Commission had recommended a national-intelligence director with real power to negotiate turf wars and settle disputes among the government’s various intelligence services. Above all, the commission-backed reorganization is aimed at resolving the untenable situation of having one person serve as both director of the CIA and director of central intelligence — the latter a coordinating function with little actual power.

Unfortunately, the director’s position as proposed by Bush would have little power either, lacking any real budgetary authority or the ability to hire and fire. Several news accounts noted that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld — an opponent of a strong national-intelligence director — stood by Bush as he made his announcement. Perhaps he wanted to make sure the president followed the script.

Rumsfeld’s opposition is suspect because he’s got turf to protect. Nevertheless, it must be conceded that some experts believe having a strong national-intelligence director is a bad idea. That debate will not be resolved here. But let’s remember a few facts. The bipartisan 9/11 Commission has been widely praised for the way it conducted itself. Chairman Thomas Kean, a Republican, and Vice-Chairman Lee Hamilton, a Democrat, by all accounts worked well together and produced a report that is far more credible and useful than many similar efforts. Kerry, who does believe in a strong-director system, is among the Senate’s leading experts on terrorism.

In other words, there is much to suggest that the commission’s recommendations are good ideas. Bush, predictably, has neither adopted nor rejected them, instead embracing a watered-down version for political purposes. As former senator Gary Hart, himself an expert on security issues, said of Bush in an interview with the New York Times, "All he’s trying to do is get through the next three months and work out the details later. He just wants to be seen as doing something right now."

One thing Bush could do right now is look into the FBI’s role. We have yet to learn why cautionary reports from FBI agents about young Arab men seeking flight lessons were ignored, including FBI agent Coleen Rowley’s specific concerns about terrorism suspect Zacharias Moussaoui. Most notorious is the case of Sibel Edmonds, an FBI translator who discovered that warnings about skyscrapers had been ignored because of a badly done translation. Her superiors reacted to her whistle-blowing activities by firing her, with Attorney General John Ashcroft ordering that public information about her case be classified and removed from Web sites. In an open letter to the 9/11 Commission posted on several Web sites earlier this week, Edmonds charges that the FBI continues to be permeated by a culture of incompetence and cover-up, and remains more concerned with avoiding blame than with unearthing terrorist threats.

Worst of all, the misguided war in Iraq has diverted attention and resources away from the struggle against Al Qaeda. The Bush administration’s response to this criticism, as ever, has been to play politics. Recently, the New Republic published an extraordinary article reporting that American officials have been pressuring Pakistani officials to capture Osama bin Laden and/or other high-ranking Al Qaeda figures. A high-ranking Pakistani source — who risked a 10-year prison sentence if he were identified — told the magazine that the White House had made it clear it was an "absolute must" for such actions to be carried out before the November election, and that the "last 10 days of July" were ideal.

Well, now. Last Thursday, the Pakistani government said it had arrested Al Qaeda agent Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, suspected of involvement in the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Ghailani had apparently been nabbed several days earlier, but the announcement wasn’t made until a few hours before John Kerry was to deliver his acceptance speech. Amazingly, the arrest got little media attention. But the timing couldn’t have been more suspicious.

Terrorism remains the most critical threat facing us. Yet we have a president who has thoroughly politicized his approach — endorsing hollow reforms, letting his people scare us on the basis of three-year-old information, silencing critics, possibly even coordinating counterterrorism efforts with key dates on the election schedule. It’s sad, and it’s a lot worse than sad. The American people must wake up before it’s too late.

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