The system is "blinking red"

Last week, I commented on the report in the NY Times that al-Qaeda was regrouping in Pakistan and said I wondered whether this was a) a sign of one more Bush failure or b) one more Bush attempt to change the subject from his failed war in Iraq.

Today Frank Rich tells us that not only was option (a) correct, but the reason this is being leaked now is that once again the system is "blinking red" and nobody at the White House is paying attention:

The intelligence and counterterrorism officials back then [summer 2001] were privately sounding urgent warnings like those in last week’s Times, culminating in the President’s Daily Brief titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” The system “was blinking red,” as the C.I.A. chief George Tenet would later tell the 9/11 commission. But no one, from the White House on down, wanted to hear it.

The White House doesn’t want to hear it now, either. That’s why terrorism experts are trying to get its attention by going public, and not just through The Times. Michael Scheuer, the former head of the C.I.A. bin Laden unit, told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann last week that the Taliban and Al Qaeda, having regrouped in Afghanistan and Pakistan, “are going to detonate a nuclear device inside the United States” (the real United States, that is, not the fictional stand-in where this same scenario can be found on “24”). Al Qaeda is “on the march” rather than on the run, the Georgetown University and West Point terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman told Congress. Tony Blair is pulling troops out of Iraq not because Basra is calm enough to be entrusted to Iraqi forces — it’s “not ready for transition,” according to the Pentagon’s last report — but to shift some British resources to the losing battle against the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.

I hope that comment about a "nuclear device" doesn't mean a nuclear bomb. I think we could deal with a "dirty bomb" type of incident relatively well. A nuclear bomb in the heart of a big city, on the other hand, is another thing altogether. I don't even want to contemplate what that would do to what little is left of our democracy when idiots like Bush and Cheney are in charge.