Just as his NSA spying program and the war on terror were being criticized the most, President Bush told a dramatic story of thwarting a terrorist plot to fly a plane into the Library Tower in Los Angeles.
President Bush said that terrorists planned to use "shoe bombs to breach the cockpit door."
The question on everyone's mind is: Why now? Why did Bush decide after four years that now we needed to know about the plot to fly a plane into the Liberty Tower - wait, it wasn't the Liberty Tower - it was called the Library Tower. I guess the plot wasn't important enough for Bush to remember the name of the target. (The tower is now called the US Bank Tower, which is not, as you can see, Liberty)
Bush needs a PR boost, and decided to use this issue. He decided that this would make Americans support the illegal domestic spying - polling shows that Americans are against warrantless wiretapping at the moment. But this case does not help his point.
Asian authorities captured the suspects before anything happened. And warrantless wiretapping was not mentioned in the capturing of the suspects.
And there are questions as to whether the plot was really that serious at all.
The intelligence officials, who declined to be identified because they did not want to criticize the White House publicly, said there is deep disagreement within the intelligence community over the seriousness of the scheme to attack the 73-story building and whether it was ever much more than talk.
So Bush's shining example, his big defense of all his bungling, illegal programs... may not have even been a real threat. Oops. Try again next time, George.
My take, made up. Anyone as powerful as the president could plant the evidence, and even if it did happen, it is just a power gaining tactic. The government should have been obligated to tell about that when it happend.
I think it actually happened, but not the exact facts that Bush said.
Like in math, political arguments should only be real if fully real.
In that case, nothing would be real
under today's standards maybe. It's called corruption. It's what people should strive to stop.