The War Against Some Terrorists is becoming a Three Stooges movie.

Did the Bush Administration Burn a Key al-Qaeda Double Agent?

Simon Cameron-Moore and Peter Graff of Reuters reveal the explosive information that the Bush administration blew the cover Monday of double agent Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan. On Sunday August 1, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced a new alert against an al-Qaeda plot concerning fincial institutions in New York and Washington, DC. Pressed for details by the New York Times, some Bush administration official revealed that the information came from a recently arrested man in Pakistan named "Khan." The New York Times published his name on Monday. [...] In other words, the Bush administration just blew the cover of one of the most important assets inside al-Qaeda that the US has ever had.

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It's a good thing I got my pictures of DC when I did. I couldn't now.

Washington lockdown
The extreme perimeter around the symbols of power in the nation's capital demonstrates the impossibility of barricading and random-searching our way to national security.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge rang the terror bell on Aug. 1, and 24 hours later, the federal police raised a high-security perimeter around the U.S. Capitol complex and the Supreme Court, at least a mile in circumference, with 14 vehicle checkpoints, including one at the corner where I live. Washington is getting a taste of life in a police state. My neighbors are used to security. We live in the "bubble" around the federal buildings on Capitol Hill. We always get extra attention from the U.S. Capitol Police, the Supreme Court Police, the Park Police, John Ashcroft's security detail (he lives around the corner) and D.C.'s city police, so we don't worry too much about petty crime on my block. But terrorism? We can't help thinking of it now. Since Ridge raised the national threat alert level, we're living in a lockdown here: cement "Jersey" barricades with guards, some toting automatic rifles; ubiquitous surveillance, seen and unseen; and random searches, K-9 sniffs and I.D. checks. And thanks to banks of new floodlights, the sun no longer sets on Capitol Hill.

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