A few days ago, Fox News, in covering the Connecticut primary, asked if Democrats had forgotten the lessons of 9/11.
Ned Lamont won. A victory for anti-war Democrats, dominating the news cycle, and even bumping some Israel/Lebanon war stories from the lead.
Today, a massive terrorist plot is apparently disrupted. Threat levels are put at Red (“attack imminent”) for the first time, and Bush just got finished with a live statement, where he said that the terror plot arrests in London are a “stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists.”
A “stark reminder,” people. On the day after a major momentum shift towards anti-war candidates, and the release of a poll that says that 3/5ths of the American people oppose the war.
Something to consider. Cicero’s quotation of Cassius’ maxim still applies: Cui Bono? Who benefits?
Well, Rove did tell Lieberman that his boss would do anything he could to help…
Funny, I’d noticed that too. It also coincides quite nicely with our home secretary’s speech yesterday condemning opponents of anti-terror laws and hinting that civil liberties and freedoms were from a bygone age …
I’m not quite THAT paranoid.
Yet.
If stands for “islamic fascism”
whatever else can be said about the “explosives disguised as common liquids to be brought onboard” plot foiled in the UK, I am already amazed at the new meme creation courtesy of the Chief Executive’s sound bite.
Islamic Facists for the win…that is top notch “linguistery” and very skillfull “concepturing”….
Yeah, that thought had utterly crossed my mind.
D.
So why, when terrorist plots were allegedly uncovered right here in the US not three or four months ago, did we not go to Red?
‘Cause, baby, it wasn’t a time for conveniently-placed spin. Hell, where was the fanefare when those neo Nazi bastards with enough hydrogen cyanide to clear out a city got busted here in Texas? I bet Joe Average wasn’t even aware that happened, let alone that it constituted a larger threat to more people than some nebulous, possibly fictitious terrorists.
Spin, thy name is Rove.
I’m right there with you! Timing is everything, and he’s losing the battle big time!
After retiring as Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge did admit that the administration used the alerts for political reasons.
Nice to see I’m not the only one who’s skeptical about this whole issue.
Can you find a citation of that?
Not only does the current admin have motivation for manipulating this kind of thing, but Al Qaida has a vested interest in keeping the Bush admin going, too – Bush fuels the terror and hate that these fundementalists thirst for.
“Hmm, what if those damned Democrats don’t give us enough air time or enough fear-mongering… we better do what we can to keep the oil-hungry Bushies in office…”
Huh.
I would have thought the right timing for this was BEFORE the primary.
Here you go!
More here with a timeline.
If they did that before the primary, then they would be helping a Democrat (however iffy a democrat he is) keep a seat in the Senate. This way, they figure they can weaken the Democratic candidate…
To clarify – there may well be terrorists involved here. The explosive in question is some fairly nasty stuff called TATP, popular because it’s difficult to detect and easy to make. Also, highly volatile:
http://www.ats.org/news.php?id=116
My point that I bungled making is that I agree that it’s *awfully* coincidental that the scare stick of alerts just happened to come out roundabout the time that one of the administration’s primary allies in the Democrat camp got his crazy ass punked. Not to mention (making connection here) that gosh! to possibly further socially engineer the situation, the price of oil just coincidentally dropped at the same time. It’s reaching, I admit, but again – who benefits? Terrorist bad guys caught! Politcal shift minimized! And look, oil went down, too!
It’s not about reality, folks, it’s about how you can make reality *appear*.