Bush is claiming credit for something he didn't do.

Kinda long. Basically the "major speech" that included "new information" on the US terror efforts exaggerated the Bush admin's success. Not a surprise, just documented. Unbelievably, Jose Padilla was counted as a "disrupted" terror plot.

And let me say again. Charge Jose Padilla. Charge him or let him go. He is a US citizen arrested on US soil and is being held in indefinite detention in a military brig in South Carolina being denied access to his lawyer. Tell me again about the freedoms you're protecting, George.


WASHINGTON — In the spring of 2003, Los Angeles police officials were summoned to a briefing with the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force and told that the 73-story Library Tower might have been the target of a terrorist plot similar to that of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings.

When the plot was disclosed last year, authorities said publicly that they had viewed the claims by captured Al Qaeda chieftain Khalid Shaikh Mohammed with skepticism. They said that, at best, the alleged plot was something that had been discussed but never put into action.

By the time anybody knew about it, the threat — if there had been one — had passed, federal counter-terrorism officials said Friday.

Still, the broader idea for attacks on West Coast buildings that included the Library Tower was one of the cases President Bush was referring to when he said that three potential terrorist plots within the United States had been "disrupted" since Sept. 11, 2001. In his policy address Thursday, Bush spoke at length about terrorists and their organizations, saying that at least 10 plots had been foiled worldwide by the U.S. and its allies, including plots in the U.S. ......

On Friday, the White House responded to questions seeking clarification on the potential attacks by referring inquiries to the FBI or other counter-terrorism agencies. The FBI referred the questions to the White House.

"I'm not going to have more to say on those matters at this point," McClellan said.

He said the list of foiled plots had been prepared by "the intelligence community" and was released late in the day, hours after Bush's speech, because officials needed to make sure the information it contained would not jeopardize national security.

The White House acknowledged that many of the plots cited by Bush were based on previously known information. But it would not comment on whether Bush and his administration had claimed credit for thwarting terrorist plots in the United States that, in reality, had not risen to the level of a "serious" operational plot at all, as some federal counter-terrorism officials maintained.

A case in point, the U.S. counter-terrorism authorities said, is the alleged plot that included the Library Tower. ......

Those men were soon captured, however, and the plot never progressed past the planning stages, according to several counter-terrorism officials.

"To take that and make it into a disrupted plot is just ludicrous," said one senior FBI official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in accordance with departmental guidelines.

A second U.S.-based plot on the White House list involves the case of Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen accused by the administration of being an enemy combatant who plotted to blow up apartment buildings. Padilla was arrested in 2002 and is being held by the U.S. military. However, senior law enforcement officials who know about his case said they had not found any indication that the idea had developed into an actual plan.