COX Newspapers Washington Bureau

Home > Window on Washington > Archives > 2006 > August > 10 > Entry

Timing

By Ken Herman | Thursday, August 10, 2006, 12:33 PM

The White House’s Wednesday attack on Democrats as weaklings in the war on terror came as administration officials knew of the pending British arrests of terror suspects who allegedly planned to down several planes.

White House spokesman Tony Snow today said Bush had ” been extensively briefed over the last few days as the operation that took place became more and more imminent.” Bush also spoke twice with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, according to Snow.

Vice President Cheney and top GOP leaders on Wednesday ripped into the Democrats after war supporter Joe Lieberman’s loss in the Connecticut Democratic Senate primary on Tuesday.

Snow was asked today if the administration knew on Wednesday that the story was going to break today.

” I don’t want to get into operational details. This was not — however, it was not explicit — let me put it this way, I don’t want to encourage that line of thought. I don’t think it’s fully accurate, but I also don’t want — I know it’s frustrating, but we really don’t want to get too much into who knew what, where, when,” he said.

The White House and the GOP, in a coordinated effort, had moved quickly on Wednesday to portray Democrats as weak on national defense. Cheney, in an extraordinary procedure, took questions from wire service reporters during a conference call as he was in Wyoming. Cheney rarely, if ever, takes questions from groups of reporters.

Cheney said Lieberman’s defeat indicates the Democrats “dominant view” is “the basic, fundamental notion that somehow we can retreat behind our oceans and not be actively engaged in this conflict and be safe here at home, which clearly we know we won’t — we can’t be. So we have to be actively engaged not only in Afghanistan and Iraq, but on a global basis if we’re going to succeed in prevailing in this long-term conflict.”

Bush, upon arrival in Green Bay today for several events, said the arrests are a “a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation.”

“It is a mistake to believe there is no threat to the United States of America, and that is why we’ve given our officials the tools they need to protect our people,” Bush said

Permalink | |