[promoted by BooMan. I was just starting to put this together when I realized Catnip has done a fine job already]

This is interesting.

Screaming front page headlines at Daily Kos “Did BushCo Tip off London Bombers?” and at AMERICAblog “Bush admin may be responsible for botching effort to thwart London bombing”…

The Daily Kos story is based on the AMERICAblog story about an ABC news piece that attempts to link Bushco to the London bombings after the administration basically outed an Al Quaeda mole which they then blamed Pakistan for last year.

Confused yet?

Let me try to clear it up a bit for you.

According to John at AMERICAblog:

ABC News just reported that the British authorities say they have evidence that the London attacks last week were an operation planned by Al Qaeda for the last two years. This was an operation the Brits thought they caught and stopped in time, but they were wrong. The piece of the puzzle ABC missed is that this is an operation the Bush administration helped botch last year.

Okay. So, John sees this news report, ties this into the story of Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan and the wheels begin spinning thusly on AMERICAblog:

I.e., last year Bush botched the effort to thwart the London subway attacks.

  1. The London bombers, per ABC, are connected to an Al Qaeda plot planned two years ago in Lahore, Pakistan.
  2. Pakistani authorities recovered the laptop of a captured Al Qaeda leader, Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, on July 13, 2004. On that laptop, they found plans for a coordinated series of attacks on the London subway. According to an expert interviewed by ABC, “there is absolutely no doubt that Khan was part of a worldwide Al Qaeda operation, not just in the United States but also in Great Britain and throughout the west.”

Also important, but not reported by ABC this evening, after his arrest Khan started working for our side – sending emails to his other Al Qaeda buddies, working as our mole.

  1. ABC reports that names in Khan’s computer matched a suspected cell of Britain’s of Pakistani decent, many of who lived near the town of Luton, England. According to ABC, authorities thought they had stopped the subway plot with the arrest of more than a dozen people last year associated with Khan. Obviously, they hadn’t.
  2. Those arrests were the arrests that the Bush administration botched by announcing a heightened security alert the week of the Democratic Convention, and giving the press too much information about WHY they raised the alert, thus putting the media on the tale of, who else, but Mr. Khan.

Because the US let the cat out of the bag, the media got a hold of Khan’s name and published the fact that he had been captured – his Al Qaeda contacts thus found out their “buddy” was actually a mole, and they fled. Our sole source inside Al Qaeda was destroyed. As a result, the Brits had to have a high speed chase to catch some of Khan’s Al Qaeda associates as they fled, and, according to press reports, the Brits and Pakistanis both fear that some slipped away.

Again, these were guys involved with the plot to blow up the London subway last week. Some may have escaped because of Bush administration negligence involving a leak.

For more background, check out AMERICAblog. It’s much too long to post here.

Alright – wait a minute here. There are a whole lot of suppositions going on here that could actually fall into <gasp> conspiracy theory territory.

This, from the ABC news story:

Officials tell ABC News the London bombers have been connected to an al Qaeda plot planned two years ago in the Pakistani city of Lahore.

The laptop computer of Naeem Noor Khan, a captured al Qaeda leader, contained plans for a coordinated series of attacks on the London subway system, as well as on financial buildings in both New York and Washington.

“There’s absolutely no doubt he was part of an al Qaeda operation aimed at not only the United States but Great Britain,” explained Alexis Debat, a former official in the French Defense Ministry who is now a senior terrorism consultant for ABC News.

At the time, authorities thought they had foiled the London subway plot by arresting more than a dozen young Britons of Pakistani descent last August in Luton, a city known for its ties to terrorism.

“For some time, the locus of terrorism in Britain has been around the Luton area and in some of the northern cities,” said Michael Clark, professor of defense at King’s College in London.

Security officials tell ABC News they have discovered links between the eldest of the London bombers, Mohammed Sadique Khan, 30, and the original group in Luton. Officials also believe it was not a coincidence the subway bombers all met at the Luton train station last week.

“It is very likely this group was activated last year after the other group was arrested,” Debat said.

Okay. Anonymous sources. I can live with that. But, take a look at those last two paragraphs. This group apparently developed after the Khan outing. Does that mean that his outing was responsible for last week’s bombings or that, as our friendly lefty blogs are now screaming, perhaps Bushco was responsible for them?

Wait.a.minute.

As much as I’d maybe like to see some link since this is “leak week” in Washington DC, I don’t think these revelations justify those blog headlines at all. Really. This is a stretch, I’d say.

What do you think? I’m wide open to criticism here because I don’t know if I’m buying what they’re trying to sell me at this point. You analyze. You decide.

Update [2005-7-15 0:31:52 by catnip]:

From the Belfast Telegraph:

Pakistani authorities also claimed yesterday that British intelligence have also asked to speak to Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, a computer technician held last year in Lahore who has links with the UK.
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