Libs Hamstring Interrogators as Next 9/11 Attack Looms

The timing couldn't be worse.

With clear evidence that al-Qaida plans for the next 9/11 attack on America are well under way, media hysteria over the Iraqi prison abuse scandal has the U.S. intelligence establishment on the ropes over its interrogation tactics.

As a result, military and CIA interrogators, whose responsibility it is to extract information from terrorist suspects, have been warned to be on their best behavior. And that means they won't be doing anything that could remotely be interpreted as bringing undue pressure on the bad guys to talk.

Meanwhile, just last month the FBI issued frightening warnings indicating that plans for a spectacular attack sometime before November's election are in the works.

"Police fear five empty suitcases left at Penn Station, New York FBI headquarters and other security hot spots in early April were a test by terrorists bent on a Madrid-type attack on commuter rails," reported the New York Post just days before interrogators got the word to go easy on terrorist suspects.

None of the suitcases contained any personal effects whatsoever, setting off smoke alarms in U.S. intelligence circles about the possibility of an impending attack.

Weeks before the discovery of the suspicious suitcases, an empty 44-foot-long tanker truck went missing from a Pennsauken, N.J., parking lot. This potential 18-wheel bomb has the a capacity to hold 9,200 gallons of chemical explosives.

In intelligence circles, tanker trucks are regarded as one of the common tools of the global terrorist trade.

Last month, an al-Qaida plot involving three tanker trucks was foiled in Amman, Jordan. The plan: Drive the vehicular bombs, loaded with weapons of mass destruction, into Jordanian security headquarters and the U.S. Embassy. Expected death toll: 80,000.

With only one-third as many trucks perhaps at al-Qaida's disposal, the U.S. could get lucky and the death toll here could be less than 25,000 or so.

The Jordanians were able to foil the deadly al-Qaida plot using their notoriously brutal interrogation tactics, which worked so well that Jordan was able to broadcast the plotters' confessions on TV.

But don't look for anything like that to happen here - not as long as Ted Kennedy, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton are on the warpath about the mistreatment of terrorist suspects in U.S. custody.

Whatever al-Qaida has in mind for its next 9/11 attack, America's enemies can carry on secure in the knowledge that top Democrats and their media handmaidens are hell-bent on ensuring that the U.S. intelligence establishment doesn't do anything to interfere.

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