WASHINGTON: The political unity in the United States behind the war on terrorism lasted just 10 days after last week’s congressional elections.

The Senate leadership of the opposition Democratic Party, staggered by unexpected losses in both houses of Congress, turned on the person they held most responsible for the defeat — Republican President George W. Bush.

Senator Richard Shelby, a Democrat who has headed the Intelligence Committee in the Senate, criticized the intelligence agencies — the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation — which he said have fallen down in their jobs in the war on terrorism.

But he put the blame on the White House. “They are so focused on Iraq that they aren’t paying adequate attention to the war on terror,” he said.

In his strenuous campaigning for Republican candidates, Bush pushed his idea for a Homeland Security Department, an umbrella counter-terrorism organization that would include 170,000 employees from more than a dozen existing agencies, including the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Border Patrol and Coast Guard.

But he also touted his plan to make war on Iraq if the Iraqi government doesn’t allow full access to United Nations weapons inspectors and disarm.

The defeated Democrats also turned on their own leadership, saying that their party had no unified message to respond to Bush and to attract voters.

The Democratic leadership, in turn, have now turned on Bush. But so have some conservative Republicans who said that the US government has gone too far in the war on terrorism by collecting huge amounts of information — credit-card purchases, library records, fingerprints and even, in some cases, close-up pictures of the iris of people’s eyes as a form of identification.

The Democrats suggested that warnings by Osama bin Laden, now thought by US intelligence agencies to be alive and functioning, are a sign that the Bush administration’s war on terrorism has been mostly political sound and fury, signifying very little in the actual war on terrorism.

Osama’s organization shrewdly released an audiotape warning of new attacks this past week, just after the American elections, when it would have the most political impact in the United States.

Osama might not have a firm understanding of the American political system, but he apparently knows a thing or two about the news business, and he — or his advisers — were aware that there was a journalistic vacuum after the non-stop political coverage in the US press and television. He filled that vacuum with his warning.

The Democratic criticism of Bush followed the tape’s release, and now the war on terrorism is in the political arena.

At the same time, counter-terrorism efforts at airports appeared to have stalled for administrative and technical reasons.

Under new legislation, airline pilots will now be allowed — and in some airlines, required — to carry guns in the cockpit. But that measure is far from simple to carry out. The pilots will have to be trained to use firearms, and the presence of so many firearms in airports is, in itself, worrying to some airport officials. Some are certain to be lost or stolen, and the firearms training will take time and money.—dpa