Bush's 'domestic spying' order saved New York from second attack

Buried in today's breathless Washington Post story about President Bush's "domestic spying" order is this factoid: the action stopped more terrorist attacks on American soil.

"Officials have privately credited the eavesdropping with the apprehension of Iyman Faris, a truck driver who pleaded guilty in 2003 to planning to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge" in New York, Post reporter Peter Baker mentions in the 13th paragraph of the 23-paragraph article.

"Bush said other plots have been disrupted as well," Baker continues casually. The reporter shows no interest in telling the readers what those plots might have been.

The Post editors obviously have decided to undermine such counterterrorism activity. Their hearts bleed through the inflammatory 1970s-style headline, "President Says He Ordered NSA Domestic Spying," and placement of the story on the top-right of the front page of the Sunday paper.

"Domestic spying" was a favored term of the Left in their successful 1970s crusades to gut the nation's security, intelligence and counterintelligence capabilities.

Beneath the front page article is an above-the-fold "analysis" by Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer titled "Pushing the Limits of Wartime Powers."

The lead paragraph in that "analysis" - Postspeak for a front-page editorial disguised as news - reads as follows:

"In his four-year campaign against al Qaeda, President Bush has turned the U.S. national security apparatus inward to collect information on Americans on a scale unmatched since the intelligence reforms of the 1970s."

Again, we see inflammatory language: "to collect information on Americans." Not to collect information on terrorists in America, or terrorist suspects in America, or terrorist infrastructure in America, but "on Americans."

If President Bush pushed the limits of wartime powers after 9/11, good for him. He should keep pushing.