YES, THE POLICE CAN FIGHT TERRORISM

The conservatives have repeatedly claimed that only the armed forces can really fight the terrorists and that leads to all sorts of other nonsense, like Mark Levin's call to increase the DoD budget by 50%, that we can do without.

Here's another example of the police doing a good job all by themselves.

14 arrested in Belgium for links to terrorism
By Steven Erlanger
Published: December 11, 2008
International Herald Tribune

The Belgian police arrested 14 people suspected of terrorist links in raids Thursday, including one man thought to have been planning a suicide attack who had "said goodbye to his loved ones," said the federal prosecutor in Brussels, Johan Delmulle.

Lieve Pellens, a spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor's office, said in an interview by telephone that those arrested included Malika el-Aroud, 49, who calls herself a female warrior for Al Qaeda and writes jihadist screeds on the Internet under the name Oum Obeyda.

Pellens said in the interview that she believed the cases against the 14 arrested were strong, based on a year of investigation, surveillance and wiretapping carried out by a team of 80 police officers.