More on the 10 Foiled Plots

Yesterday's Washington Post had a followup article on the 10 foiled plots Bush mentioned a few weeks ago.

"A White House list of 10 terrorist plots disrupted by the United States has confused counterterrorism experts and officials, who say they cannot distinguish between the importance of some incidents on the list and others that were left off." For example, Richard Reid, the shoe bomber. "Intelligence officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the White House overstated the gravity of the plots by saying that they had been foiled, when most were far from ready to be executed." Also pointed out was the threat index was not raised from yellow during the most of incidents listed. And of course, here's the money quote: "We don't know how they came to the conclusions they came to...It's safe to say that most of the [intelligence] community doesn't think it's worth very much."

Remember how this went? Bush mentioned them in his speech, the press questioned Scott McClellan about the 10 and he said "Well, those are two off the top of my head. I'll be glad to see what additional information we can get you. Some of that information is classified, though." Then later that day they released the Fact Sheet. My personal guess, Bush mentioned it, either off the cuff or more likely via a speech that wasn't properly vetted (hey how many plots do you think he should say we foiled?) and they had to make up a list. Either way, this sounds like politicizing terrorism, I'm shocked, just shocked.