Be Afraid...Ned Lamont Wants The Terrorist to Win

So, the dramatic arrests, the disruption in international air travel, the negative impact on airline stocks, the drastic increase in check in times at US airports, all of that and more happened because the Bush Administration wanted to get Ned Lamont's victory over Joe Lieberman off of the top of the news.

Certainly, that's the implication in this NBC report.

A senior British official knowledgeable about the case said British police were planning to continue to run surveillance for at least another week to try to obtain more evidence, while American officials pressured them to arrest the suspects sooner. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case.

In contrast to previous reports, the official suggested an attack was not imminent, saying the suspects had not yet purchased any airline tickets. In fact, some did not even have passports.

"Some did not even have passports." Let's assume that British bureaucracy is as efficient as its American counterpart. From the time of application, figure a couple of weeks until a passport is delivered. So, this "imminent" attack was dependent, in part, on the efficiency of the British passport office and mail system. Talk about split second timing.

The Tattered Coat has a great summary of the Bush Adminstration's intervention into an active terror investigation for political purposes.

For the GOP, the short term political importance of getting the Lamont victory, and the developing sense that America had fully turned against the Iraq War, off the news was reason enough to disrupt an active terror investigation. The disruption hurt the legal case against the terrorists — it will be much harder to convict them without passports or airline tickets. The GOP was so insistent on the timing that they threatened to “render” the lead suspect if the British did not comply with their wishes.

The war on terror is all that Bush and his neocon allies have left. Of course, before 9/11 they didn't even have that. You might say that 9/11 was the best day in the history of both the Bush Administration and the neocon movement.