Without providing details, police said Thursday that the number of critical response patrol vehicles was increased, and that special attention was being paid to hotels in midtown and downtown Manhattan.

So IF the losers come wheeling up in their vans packed to the gills with amfo, the first people killed are the first responders? Yep, that's a plan...

New York Police Step Up Patrols of Hotels - Yahoo! News

The document, an intelligence report from February 2002, said it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, "was intentionally misleading the debriefers" in making claims about Iraqi support for Al Qaeda's work with illicit weapons.

Bluntly, it was recognized well before the war in Iraq started that it would have nothing to do with the war or terror. Since we also know that those WMDs were a lie, what then was the valid reason for going into Iraq?

To put that in plainer terms, with no national security interest, those interests were being easily handled under the UN sanctions US presence in the gulf already, and certainly nothing amounting to either a clear or present danger, the war in Iraq is best classified as "waging agressive war."

Report Warned Bush Team About Intelligence Suspicions - New York Times

"State sponsors like Syria and Iran have a long history of collaboration with terrorists and they deserve no patience from the victims of terror," he said. "The United States makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those who support and harbor them. Any government that chooses to be an ally of terror has chosen to be an enemy of civilization and the civilized world must hold those regimes to account."

So what he's saying is our pull out plan is to evacuate Iraq through Iran or Syria? Well this time he'd actually have something, maybe. Both Syria and Iran have been longtime sponsors of groups fighting the Israelis, so he'd have managed to get the first one of his reasons for invading Iraq right, but not by invading Iraq.

If Bush's idea of global stability is to beat the crap out of the wasp's nest that is the middle east, maybe he should have a wasp's nest brought to the south lawn and try it in person to see how well that works.

Bush Tries to Revive Support for Iraq War - Yahoo! News

Yet if anyone knew who was actually responsible for the White House's trumpeting of the Niger claims, it would seem from the Repubblica report that Hadley did. He also knew that the CIA, which had initially rejected the Italian claims, was not to blame. Hadley's meeting with Pollari, at precisely the time when the Niger forgeries came into the possession of the U.S. government, may explain the seemingly hysterical White House overreaction to Wilson's article almost a year later.

The infamous "16 words" don't trace to CIA, but instead to Stephen Hadley. They also think that White House was out to get CIA for not backing them up. Interesting fit with the leak of Plame and Brewster-Jennings & Associates...

Yellowcake Story Leads to White House, Not CIA

A US State Department official told Reuters this year: "I just cannot imagine how any US soldier can be subject to some kind of foreign proceeding for criminal liability when he is in a tank in a war zone as part of an international coalition."

Well, you can stop imagining it, Spain has made the request.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Spain orders arrest of US soldiers over death

They locked his cat in the attic for two days without food or water - you can still see the scratch marks on the door. "They thought I might be using the cat to spread plague," Kurtz explains.

They also confiscated his wife's body. Hope's ashes now sit on the mantelpiece in Kurtz's study. "They still have bits of her," Kurtz says.

Here it is, the "War on Terror" at work.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | 'This is right out of Hitler's handbook'

Stephen Ulph, an analyst at the US-based Jamestown Foundation, said the letter presented a number of problems. There had been no clarification as to how it was intercepted and no independent corroboration of its authenticity. He also found it remarkable that a letter between two al-Qaeda leaders should spell out strategy in such an explanatory way, as if these basic details were the subject of doubt.

And here are still more people who don't buy it...

FT.com / Home UK - Experts query authenticity of ‘al-Qaeda letter’

"We in Al Qaeda Organization announce that there is no truth to these claims, which are only based on the imagination of the politicians of the Black (White) House and their slaves,"

And you thought this was all confusing before?

Al Qaeda in Iraq says Zawahri letter is fake: Web

The sources said an informant in Iraq who provided the tip had told investigators about a terrorist plot involving New York's subway system. That informant admitted he gave false information, the sources said.

And now we can look forward to this being touted as a success of the anti-terror measures.

"I have a list of 13 terror attacks that have been prevented by..."

CNN.com - Sources:�Tip on N.Y. subway�threat a hoax - Oct 11, 2005

The White House initially would not give details of the 10 plots that Bush mentioned in his morning speech before the National Endowment for Democracy, saying some information remained classified. But in the evening, the White House released a fact sheet with a brief, and vague, description of each.

No. This is not credible in any way shape or form. They have been saying for years that these guys operate on a cell system, so busting one has zero impact on any others. There is NO reason not to try and publicize these as they happen. Saying it happened is not enough.

Bush: U.S. Foiled at Least 10 Terror Plots