Selectively disclosing sensitive information that will no doubt enable al Qaeda to change its tactics, the President today elaborated on a foiled plot to fly an airplane into the "Liberty" (sic) Tower in Los Angeles. The President managed--Keith Donnellan style--to refer to the Library Tower (now known as the US Bank Tower--who needs a library, anyway, when you've got liberty? You'll hate the library as much as they hate our liberty). Dan Froomkin notices that the President forgot to assert that his persistent and contumacious violation of FISA and the Constitution in some way contributed to saving the Library Tower. Froomkin also notes that the President is not above waving his hand at multiple, vaguely outlined, frustrated threats to our security when the PR occasion demands. "How many possible men are there in that doorway?" asked Willard Quine, in On What There Is. "As many as it takes to keep you scared," this Adminstration wants us to believe, and those men are wearing explosive shoes of the kind the hapless Richard Reid had such trouble with. The New York Times (Feb. 9, online edition--registration required) obligingly runs a photo of the Library Tower with an airliner cruising past in the near distance.
(Postscript: There's after all only so much room on page one--in other news today, it seems that Scooter Libby may have turned on the Vice-President, and "other superiors." Meanwhile, back in the New York Times, CIA Director Porter Goss--in "Loose Lips Sink Spies"--argues that "those who choose to bypass the law and go straight to the press [with classified information] are not noble, honorable or patriotic...they are committing a criminal act that potentially places American lives at risk." As E. Howard Hunt had Arthur Bremmer write, "Irony abounds.")
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