Why we're cynical

Anonymous Liberal asks why we're so cynical. Here's his answer:

President Bush said the following in his speech this past Wednesday:

Within months of September the 11th, 2001, we captured a man known as Abu Zubaydah. We believe that Zubaydah was a senior terrorist leader and a trusted associate of Osama bin Laden. . . . Abu Zubaydah also provided information that helped stop a terrorist attack being planned for inside the United States -- an attack about which we had no previous information. Zubaydah told us that al Qaeda operatives were planning to launch an attack in the U.S., and provided physical descriptions of the operatives and information on their general location. Based on the information he provided, the operatives were detained -- one while traveling to the United States.

Wow, that sounds like scary stuff. Thank goodness disaster was averted. But why so vague? Just what was this "attack being planned for inside the United States" and who was the evil mastermind apprehended at the border?

Well, an article in Sunday's New York Times fills in the picture a little more:

Mr. Zubaydah . . . identified Jose Padilla, an American citizen who has been charged with terrorism-related crimes. But Mr. Zubaydah dismissed Mr. Padilla as a maladroit extremist whose hope to construct a dirty bomb, using conventional explosives to disperse radioactive materials, was far-fetched. He told his questioners that Mr. Padilla was ignorant on the subject of nuclear physics and believed he could separate plutonium from nuclear material by rapidly swinging over his head a bucket filled with fissionable material.

Oh.