Wrote Kevin Drum yesterday:
Four weeks ago, John Judis, Spencer Ackerman, and Massoud Ansari reported in The New Republic that the administration was turning the screws on the Pakistanis to round up an al-Qaeda bigshot before the election. That seemed plausible to me, but the additional specification that they had been told the capture should be announced on “the first three days of the Democratic National Convention” seemed like a bit of a stretch.Silly me. The Pakistanis, apparently eager to please, have done their part right on time.
Scary, isn’t it? Maybe it’s time to get measured for a tinfoil hat after all.
Given that most people probably didn’t even know about the arrest (it hardly preempted convention coverage), I have a hard time buying into this theory. Really, this is a major arrest that was over-shadowed by the convention, not the other way around. Surely it would have been politically better for the administraton to have this information come out next week.
Only the arrest of Osama would have been enough to disrupt coverage of the DNC.
Further, when the reaction to a major arrest in the war on terror (the 1998 bombings killed over 200 people) is “see: Republican dirty tricks” it is clear that one has been overly consumed with partisanship.
And I reiterate: if the goal here was to disrupt “Kerry’s Night” it was a miserable failure.
My question to Keven; If you had seen the guy n a 7-11 on “Kerry’s Night” would you have reported it to the cops? Even though it might spoil said night for your candidate? I think how that question is answered would tell us a great deal about seriousness about (and even belief in the WOT).
I’m also getting tired of hearing that every single thing that happens, good or bad, is do to Bush machinations. It sounds to me like the Left is coming close to worshiping him: after all, he is all-powerful and controls and knows everything. Pretty funny from a group that doesn’t believe “in all that superstition.”
Comment by Meezer — Friday, July 30, 2024 @ 8:50 am
P.S> You can worship a god you hate. The pagans worshiped all kinds of dreadful beings that weren’t exactly kind and merciful.
Comment by Meezer — Friday, July 30, 2024 @ 8:52 am
You forgot to mention that Bush is also an idiot and has no control of the English language. This, of course, goes hand-in-hand with his controlling the largest right-wing conspiracy ever.
At least, that’s what they keep saying.
I’m so tired of this. It is so depressing. I guess I’m lucky I only get a bit of American news coverage here (Japan). If I was back in the States, I might have gone mad by now.
Comment by misterhung — Friday, July 30, 2024 @ 9:15 am
For the theory of political machinations being responsible for the timing of the arrest, or the announcemet thereof to work one would have to assume that more than one out of a thousand Americans knows the name Ghailani.
I am not sure that one out of a hundred Americans could say which two embassies were bombed in 1998. I’m about as interested and engaged as it’s possible to be, I even know how to spell Tanzania. My first reaction was the Pakis arrested who?
Comment by Peter — Friday, July 30, 2024 @ 9:23 am
What did I tell you about reading Kevin Drum?
Comment by John Lemon — Friday, July 30, 2024 @ 4:59 pm