It's been largely speculation, up until now, that domestic terrorism is not a significant component of this administration's "war on terror." But in its handling of the Texas cyanide bomb case, it's becoming especially apparent that this is precisely the case.
Either that, or the nation's intelligence problems related to terrorism have gotten, if anything, worse since Sept. 11.
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It's bad enough that the public is so ill-informed about the case -- even though, as previously noted, we have now officially found more weapons of mass destruction in the hands of fanatical extremists in Texas than we have in Iraq. Maybe now that Bush has quietly abandoned the latter search, he could direct that team to his home state.
But what's really problematic is the kind of intelligence-gathering gap this lack of communication actually represents. Certainly it raises questions about how thoroughly, and with what energy, the current investigation is being pursued. It's especially important to determine whether there are more of these bombs out there, as several of the news reports so far have suggested.
Once again, one can only wonder how this case would have been handled had these been Islamist extremists.
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