Today's Washington Post spells out weaknesses in the Bush administration's plans to protect us from biological terrorist attacks. If the article is a reasonable snap-shot of the Bush administration's bio-terror policies, then it appears a larger failure is going unaddressed: with all the focus on al Qaeda's ability or inability to make sophisticated bio-weapons, and with the attention paid to how effectively or ineffectively the administration is monitoring for selected bio-agents, the administration appears to be thinking in World War I era terms, in which the threat is a nation-state lobbing germ warfare weapons into the trenches, rather than in terms of terrorist attacks waged by scrappy, resourceful terrorists who find ways to use meager resources and exploit major weaknesses. Al Qaeda does not need sophisticated bio-weapons as long as the administration refuses to take needed steps to make sure that the food supply is safe, that chemical plants and water treatment facilities are secured, etc. Beef supplies could be easily contaminated with deadly E. coli, for example, but the Bush administration is siding with the food industry to ensure that we can't track the tainted meat back to its source. For more detailed information on the unsecured facilities that could be used as bio-weapons, see this report. Meanwhile, the New York Times is reporting that a CIA counterterrorism official believes the administration seriously misunderstands al Qaeda. If that's not bad enough, keep in mind that these unregulated vulnerabilities could be exploited by a homegrown terrorist, such as the next Timothy McVeigh, or a sociopath without ideological goals. And an accident, even without the guiding hand of a terroristic villain, could easily reach tragic proportions, while the Bush administration continues to place corporate special interests over the public interest.