Bush administration may be responsible for botching effort to thwart London bombing

This is potentially a huge story.

Update: More on this from Juan Cole.

Update II: Yet more from Cole, who quotes a translated story from the French newspaper Liberation suggesting that one of the London bombers may have slipped through the radar because of the fouled-up Summer 2004 operation against the Noor Khan-linked cell.

Cole concludes, "If Mohammad Sadique Khan [the bomber] had been named by Noor Khan in Pakistan, and managed to escape British surveillance because the Bush administration splashed details of an ongoing investigation all over the press to throw John Kerry into the shade, that really is criminal."