U.S. stopped 9/11-style attack in 2002 in L.A.

From Breitbart/AP:

Under fire for eavesdropping on Americans, President Bush said Thursday that spy work stretching from the U.S. to Asia helped thwart terrorists plotting to use shoe bombs to hijack an airliner and crash it into the tallest skyscraper on the West Coast.

"It took the combined efforts of several countries to break up this plot," Bush said. "By working together we stopped a catastrophic attack on our homeland."

Some information about the foiled attack was disclosed last year, but Bush offered more details to highlight international cooperation in fighting terrorists. He did not say whether information about the West Coast plot was collected by his administration's program to monitor _ without court warrants _ some calls and e-mails between people overseas and in the U.S. when links to terrorism are suspected.

"Under fire for eavesdropping" should read "Under fire by liberals for using surveillance", since a majority of Americans have no problem with the whole "Bush spied, terrorists died" incident.

Hey, wait a minute! If Bush created Hurricane Katrina to wipe out New Orleans for the GOP's electoral gains, then he's an idiot for stopping the L.A. attacks, right? After all, L.A. is a reliably blue city in a navy blue state! Man, maybe there's something to this "Bush is a dunce" theory after all! Dammit, George, think of your party next time before you foil a terrorist attack!

For those of you on the left, the prior paragraph was sarcasm.

Also, we don't know if the "domestic eavesdropping" stopped the attack on L.A. or not. If you're a liberal, you had better hope not, lest you be exposed (once again) for your miserably wrongheaded views on fighting terrorism. I'm not sure if the left realizes it, but we are at war with an enemy that wants us all dead, regardless of our ideologies. Bush is trying to stop it, whether you leftist idiots like it or not.

Look, as a libertarian, I have concerns with domestic eavesdropping without a warrant, and I'd be lying if I said otherwise. However, until it looks like the program is being used for any reason other than monitoring terror suspects, I'm going to temper my "slippery slope" instincts for the time being. Plus, as I've said before, if prior presidents (Dems and GOP) and prior precedents (court rulings) argued for and allowed similar situations (and indeed, Clinton used warrantless non-terrorism-related searches on Aldrich Ames, overseas corporations, and anti-abortion clergy), I see no reason why Bush's terrorist-specific monitoring should be different.