Ahab Has A Blog.

Even the hawkish should be outraged with the way King George the Dry has prosecuted the "War on Terror". U/S attacked by UBL, so we go after the Taliban as UBL frolics in the mountains. Taliban routed, rogue state no longer a complete playground for No-good-niks. Al Qaeda forced to scatter. So far, we get it.

Next, go attack Iraq, leaving a country in chaos and giving The Base a new base, a virtual playground, a rallying point, a propaganda victory, and lots of easy targets. Meanwhile, forgetting to do the mop-up of actually getting The Bad Guy.

Which brings us to the recent, suspect terror alerts. We'll happily grant that, despite the allegations that they are based on old information and released after the DNC for political effect, it's still possible that there is credible, recent information and a solid basis for the announcements. It's hard to see this administration NOT toying with the timing for political effect - they've already all but torn up the Republican's Defenders of America card by revealing, for political purposes, the identify of a CIA agent.

But maybe, just maybe there's a real terror alert here. Or, maybe not:

"Al Qaeda is regrouping. We know that," says an agent with the National Security Agency. "We've allowed them to rebuild because we diverted our attention from their activities in Afghanistan so we could invade Iraq. That was a strategic error and, somewhere down the road, we will pay for it. But they are not ready yet to launch another coordinated attack on the level of September 11, 2001."

When No Such Agency starts leaking info and policy advice to the press like this, it's pretty clear that the administration has gone off the deep end. It's getting harder to imagine Dubya winning the election (or the Presidency) without an October Surprise of UBL magnitude.