Bush administration accused of politicizing terror threat

Allan Woods, CanWest News Service
Published: Saturday, August 12, 2006

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is under fire for trying to make political gains from the foiled London terror plot after Vice-President Dick Cheney, one day before and in full knowledge of the impending arrests, warned that the electoral defeat of a pro-Iraq war Democrat would only encourage "al-Qaida types."

Cheney's comments about the defeat of Senator Joseph Leiberman, a Democrat from Connecticut, are being viewed as a crass political effort to rehabilitate President George W. Bush and his Republican party in the eyes of the American public in the lead-up to the country's mid-term elections this November.

"There is nothing Americans want more than to win the war on terror," read the lead editorial in Thursday's New York Times, which was critical of Cheney. "It comes like a punch to the gut, at times like these, when our leaders blatantly use the nation's trauma for political gain. We never get used to this." ...


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