THE BRITS HAVE REALLY GOOD INTELLIGENCE...

...so said one of the guests on today's Washington Journal. David Heyman of the Center for Strategic & International Studies was making this point amidst talk about our own terror preparedness in this country. It was kind of an aside, but he was basically saying that the British have a lot of experience with terrorism (thanks to the IRA) and that they have accordingly developed an intelligence service among the best in the world.

Two questions came immediately to mind: 1) why then did they know not about yesterday's plot and 2) why do pro-war types pretend to not take seriously the contentions in the Downing Street memos that, among other things, the case against Saddam Hussein was "thin"?

And Justin Raimondo takes up the question of the Netanyahu warning today at antiwar.com. The first reports were that Netanyahu was warned by Scotland Yard before the attacks, then stories were changed--"clarified"--that Netanyahu was warned to stay in his hotel only after the first explosion.

Raimondo makes the obvious connection that since the conference at which Netanyahu was to speak was at a hotel above one of the subway stations that was hit that Netanyahu was being targeted.

Hmmm...this story will never make it into the mainstream media, but there it was for all to see on the AP page yesterday at news.yahoo.com.

NEVER COMPLETELY SAFE

In his Washington Journal appearance, Heyman also conceded that no matter what anyone does in any country, terrorism will never be out of the realm of possibility. Everyone knows this, yet people still want to know, as one emailer to the program did, "are our chemical plants adequately protected," and so forth.

Of course reasonable steps should be taken to deter those who might be planning to commit atrocities, but let's get it clear--there is nothing anybody, not even His Holiness George W. Bush, can do to completely stop terrorism.

But a very wise first step is to stop antagonizing other countries and other cultures--i.e., pull out of Iraq now. Not in October 2006 (the month before the midterm elections, natch), not whenever Bush decides to get around to it--now. Today. Let's have the troops home by this weekend. And then maybe we can avoid 7/8 or 7/9 or 8/14 or Terror Wednesday or Sunday Bloody Sunday or whatever we'll call the next horrible terror attack on New York or L.A. or wherever. Because they want us out and we have no reason to be there--no WMD, no links to al Qaida. Why isn't everyone clamoring for withdrawal? Bush is a fake, a dimwit, and a very dangerous person--spank his ass and get our troops home now so we don't have to live in fear.