Carpe Datum

July Surprise

Conservative Intellectual: "Of course, 2 + 2 = 5. Well, unless
you are an America-hating liberal who wants Al Qaeda
to kill our children and convert us all to Islam."
(Image credit: Steve Jackson Games)

Josh Marshall asks a question to which he should already know the answer:

See CNN's Breaking News Alert: "Security forces have captured a high-level al Qaeda operative in a raid in central Pakistan, Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat said."

Then, after you see that, remember that we noted in May and then The New Republic reported out extensively early this month, that this White House has been telling the Pakistanis for months that they wanted to see a big-time al Qaida leader -- hopefully bin Laden -- produced during the Democratic convention.

Reuters is reporting that the guy they've served up may be a Tanzanian involved in the 1998 African embassy bombings. So apparently they couldn't come up with bin Laden himself. [...]

So I'd be very, very curious to hear whether when, oh say, CNN goes on about how this al Qaida guy has been hauled in they will mention at all, or with any consistency, that one of the most respected political magazines in the United States reported just weeks ago on the pressure the administration has been placing on the Pakistanis to serve up an al Qaida bad guy on this day.

Will they make the obvious connection? Or will they just ignore it?

Of course, the answer is "no". Networks and newspapers, your bastions of the so-called liberal media, are just reporting it straight. We captured a terrorist bad guy over in Pakistan on Sunday, and the news was released, oh what a coincidence, by Pakistan on the day of John Kerry's acceptance speech. No context, nothing. Thanks, corporate media!

This is just the latest, but perhaps the most blatant, example of how this administration has placed politics and, really, political dirty tricks above national security itself, and along the way persisted in defining political deviance down until tactics we used to associate with banana republics start to seem commonplace here.

See, normally when an ally like Pakistan would capture a terrorist high up on the organizational ladder, they want to keep it quiet for a long time while they question the guy and try to root out his contacts, etc. It's very peculiar that they are outing this capture so quickly. Maybe they have good reasons, of course. Maybe the reports of a "July surprise" from Pakistan during the convention are all wrong.

Has this administration given you any reasons to give it the benefit of the doubt on such things?

Oh, and speaking of timing, it's time for another Friday Afternoon Document Dump. For some reason, the administration was just FORCED to wait a full 15 days later than usual, the day after the Democratic Convention ended, to release the news that this year's $400+ billion deficit will be the largest in history. I want to know when the fiscal conservatives in the Republican party turned into such pussies. If Democrats can pull off a switch to become known as the party of fiscal sanity (not to mention military sanity), Republicans won't have a leg to stand on.

But yeah, you go right on giving the Boy King the benefit of the doubt. I'm sure he's being totally up front with all of us on things. Lots of things he knows that we don't, you see. Uh huh. Yeah, that budget deficit was a big national security secret, lots of classified stuff in there we can't see. Whatever.

Posted by Observer at July 30, 2004 02:49 PM