Sen. Biden Offers National Security Plan

WASHINGTON - Democratic Sen. Joe Biden, a White House hopeful, said Thursday that the al-Qaida terrorist network clearly wants to strike the United States again, perhaps with an attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001.

"I believe they're planning something as large and complex as 9/11," Biden told an audience at the National Press Club four days before the fifth anniversary of the attacks.

"If you look at their modus operandi, that's how they have proceeded. That's how they have worked. And, I believe that's what they're doing," said Biden, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"We have a lot of their leadership on the run, some of which we've captured," Biden said. However, "they're patient," he said, and it could be years before they go after the United States again.

"These folks are in it for the long haul," he said.

Biden made the remarks during a question-and-answer session after delivering a speech in which he criticized the Bush administration's foreign policy and national security strategy as "a dangerous combination of ideology and some incompetence." He also offered a plan for making the country safer.

The six-term Delaware senator is one of several prominent Democrats offering policy proposals. Biden has indicated that he's interested in seeking his party's nomination a second time. He ran in 1988 but dropped out of the race after it was revealed that he had lifted portions of a speech from a British politician without attribution.

Among Biden's proposals:

-Implementing the security-strengthening recommendations from the bipartisan commission that studied the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

-Working to prevent potential threats to the country's security rather than relying on a strategy of "military pre-emption."

-Building effective alliances with like-minded countries and with international organizations to pool resources, information, ideas and power.

-Developing "institutions of democracy" - political parties as well as an independent media and judicial system - in the Middle East and beyond. ......