The Boston Herald asks why Kerry has not forcefully denounced Howard Dean for his comments questioning whether the latest terror warning was politically motivated:

With pals like Dean, Kerry's in trouble

We have one question for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry: Why is Howard Dean still associated with your campaign?

Dean's comments over the weekend, insinuating that the Bush administration was playing politics with the latest terror threat, should not only be harshly criticized by Kerry, it's reason enough to demand Dean stop campaigning for the Kerry/Edwards ticket.

``How much of this is real and how much of this is politics?'' Dean said on CNN Sunday. ``Every time something happens that's not good for President Bush he plays his trump card, which is terrorism.''

Dean didn't bother to reconcile his vile accusation with the fact that senior intelligence officials have said much of the detail of the planned attacks on financial centers had been gathered in ``the past 36 hours.''

``There may be more to come,'' according to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. But officials decided, ``We better get out with what we know now.''

And why would that be? To step on a purported post-convention bounce for Kerry? How blinded by partisan cynicism can Howard Dean be?

The information outlined by federal officials Sunday included these security specifics about the New York Stock Exchange, CitiGroup Center, Prudential Financial, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund: Security camera placement, pedestrian traffic, structural features that might ``prevent the buildings from toppling down,'' and the degree of incline of entrances to underground garages.

The level of detail is chilling to the bone. It would have been a total dereliction of duty for federal officials not to share that information immediately.

Sen. Joe Lieberman said, ``I don't think anybody who is in their right mind would think the president or the secretary of homeland security would raise an alert level and scare people for political purposes. That's outrageous.''

Howard Dean is a fool and worse, he's a dangerous fool. Fortunately, Democratic primary voters saw that. Doesn't the man who touted his own judgment and experience at the Democratic National Convention last week see it, too? We've yet to hear a peep out of John Kerry denouncing Dean's comments. And that, too, is outrageous.

This next quote from a different editorial shows the no-win situation the Bush administration is in when it comes to these terror warnings:

There is a peculiar dilemma built into the work of stopping and readying for mega-terrorism. For all the money, time and disruption demanded, success itself often looks like failure and real failure itself is most certainly catastrophic. Some might ask, ``If there was no attack in Boston, wasn't all that money and effort a waste of public funds?''

We will never know. The highly publicized massive security presence certainly sent a message. Were terrorists convinced that Boston was not a soft and easy target?

When it comes to terrorism, it is near impossible to demonstrate success with complete certainty. It is only really possible to document failure, as was demonstrated through the work of the 9/11 commission.

***

It is only after an incident that the direct sequence of communications, people and actions can be lined up with accuracy. And of course, at that point, it is disastrously too late.

Sunday I said that Dean's comments were disgusting. Unfortunately many on the left seem to agree with him.

The left has set themselves up for political gain no matter what happens. If Bush issues a terror warning, they suggest it is politically motivated. If the warning turns out to be true and an attack occurs, they blame Bush for failing to stop the attack. If an attack occurs and no warning was issued even though we had intelligence that it might happen, the left will start screaming to impeach Bush for not warning the victims and doing more to prevent the attack.

Now I ask, who is it that is using the terrorism issue for political gain? By making these accusations, the left gives people reason to not take these warnings serious. That is a shame, because it may end up getting people killed. The left should not be rewarded in November for these tactics.

Update: Don't fall for all the headlines saying the information that resulted in the latest terror warning is years old. First of all, most previous Al Qaeda attacks took years to plan so the fact that some information is a few years old does not mean that the plot was abandoned. Second the stories behind these headlines are burying the fact that some of the intelligence is more recent as this NY Post article shows:

Officials who examined the information concluded that the most recent surveillance of the buildings was done in January. There was additional surveillance last year, a law-enforcement source said.

See Michelle Malkin and Patterico for more.