Lamont said in his victory speech that the time had come to "fix George Bush's failed foreign policy." Yet, as Martin Peretz pointed out in the Wall Street Journal, on Iran, the looming long-term Islamist threat, Lamont's views are risible. Lamont's alternative to the Bush Iran policy is to "bring in allies" and "use carrots as well as sticks."

Where has this man been? Negotiators with Iran have had carrots coming out of their ears in three years of fruitless negotiations. Allies? We let the British, French and Germans negotiate with Iran for those three years, only to have Iran brazenly begin accelerated uranium enrichment that continues to this day.

LAMONT: No, I think on the contrary. What this election showed is that a lot of people in Connecticut think that the invasion of Iraq has nothing to do with our war on terror. It's been a terrible distraction.

Here you are talking about the failed terrorist plot today. It originated in Pakistan, goes through London, and here we have 132,000 of our bravest troops stuck in the middle of a civil war in Iraq.

The investigation into the suspected Al-Qaeda leader in Britain and his UK associates was considered by Eliza Manningham-Buller, MI5’s director-general, to be the security service’s single most important line of inquiry. He is suspected of being behind two “pipelines” which saw potential terrorist recruits being sent for training at camps in Pakistan and to join the “holy war” in Iraq.

The Al-Qaeda leader — who cannot be named for legal reasons— acts as a suspected hub in a network of extremist groups. These include Kashmiri and north African groups based in this country. He is linked to a second suspect also in Britain who has “played a major role in facilitating support for the Iraq jihad”.

A third associate is an Iraqi who came to Britain in 2004 and worked on providing support for British extremists who wanted to travel to Iraq to fight the “holy war”.

MI5 said he acquired weapons in preparation for an unspecified attack in Britain. He was detained in January last year pending deportation to Iraq.

We also are much stronger when we work in concert with our allies, when we have shared intelligence. And I think that we've taken our eye off the ball there a little bit, and I think it's time to focus.