Bush shoots for ‘Jaws,’ delivers ‘Jaws 2’

Keith Olbermann Anchor, 'Countdown' • Profile

West Yorkshire in England has a new chief police constable.

Upon his appointment, Sir Norman Bettison made one of the strangest comments of the year:

“The threat of terrorism,” he says, “is lurking out there like ‘Jaws 2.’”

Sir Norman did not exactly mine the richest ore for his analogy of warning. A critic once said of the flopping sequel to the classic film: “You’re gonna need a better screenplay.”

But this obscure British police official has reminded us that terrorism is still being sold to the public in that country — and in this — as if it were a thrilling horror movie and we were the naughty teenagers about to be its victims.

And it underscores the fact that President Bush took this tack, exactly a week ago tonight, in his terror-related passage in the State of the Union.

A passage that was almost lost amid all the talk about Iraq and health care and bipartisanship and the fellow who saved the stranger from an oncoming subway train in New York City.

But a passage ludicrous and deceitful. Frightening in its hollow conviction.

Frightening, in that the president who spoke it tried for “Jaws” but got “Jaws 2.”

I am indebted to David Swanson, press secretary for Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential campaign, who has blogged about the dubious 96 words in Mr. Bush’s address this year and who has concluded that of the four counter-terror claims the president made, he went 0-for-4.

“We cannot know the full extent of the attacks that we and our allies have prevented,” Mr. Bush noted, “but here is some of what we do know: We stopped an al-Qaida plot to fly a hijacked airplane into the tallest building on the West Coast.”

This would, of course, sir, be the purported plot to knock down the 73-story building in Los Angeles, the one once known as the Library Tower — the one you personally revealed so breathlessly a year ago next month.

It was embarrassing enough that you mistakenly referred to the structure as the “Liberty Tower.”

But within hours it was also revealed that authorities in Los Angeles had had no idea you were going to make any of the details — whether serious or fanciful — public.

Who terrorized Southern California that day, Mr. Bush?

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