FRANK RICH: Shuffling Off to Crawford, 2007 Edition

[kevinmc]

THE cases of Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch were ugly enough. So surely someone in the White House might have the good taste to draw the line at exploiting the murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. But nothing is out of bounds for a government that puts the darkest arts of politics and public relations above even the exigencies of war.

As Jane Mayer told the story in last week’s New Yorker, Mariane Pearl was called by Alberto Gonzales with some good news in March: the Justice Department was releasing a transcript in which the long-incarcerated Qaeda thug Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed to the beheading of her husband. But there was something off about Mr. Gonzales’s news. It was almost four years old.

Condoleezza Rice had called Ms. Pearl to tell her in confidence about the very same confession back in 2003; it was also reported that year in The Journal and elsewhere. What’s more, the confession was suspect; another terrorist had been convicted in the Pearl case in Pakistan in 2002. There is no known corroborating evidence that Mohammed, the 9/11 ringleader who has taken credit for many horrific crimes while in American custody, was responsible for this particular murder. None of his claims, particularly those possibly coerced by torture, can be taken as gospel solely on our truth-challenged attorney general’s say-so.

Ms. Pearl recognized a publicity ploy when she saw it. And this one wasn’t subtle. Mr. Gonzales released the Mohammed transcript just as the latest Justice Department scandal was catching fire, with newly disclosed e-mail exchanges revealing the extent of White House collaboration in the United States attorney firings. Had the attorney general succeeded in enlisting Daniel Pearl’s widow as a player in his stunt, it might have diverted attention from a fracas then engulfing President Bush on his Latin American tour.

Though he failed this time, Mr. Gonzales’s P.R. manipulation of the war on terror hasn’t always been so fruitless. To upstage increasingly contentious Congressional restlessness about Iraq in 2006, he put on a widely viewed show to announce an alleged plot by men in Miami to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago and conduct a “full ground war.” He said at the time the men “swore allegiance to Al Qaeda” but, funnily enough, last week this case was conspicuously missing from a long new White House “fact sheet” listing all the terrorist plots it had foiled.........

http://freedemocracy.blogspot.com/2007/08/frank-rich-shuffling-off-to-crawford.html

[babylonsister]

1. I can feel the disgust dripping off Mr. Rich, and I share it. Rec'd. nt

[MasonJar]

2. A very succinct look at the disaster that is the Bushistas.

[Botany]

3. I loves me some Frank Rich

al Qaeda in Iraq = 9/11 = bin Laden

Total B.S. but bush keeps selling

[unhappycamper]

4. Frank Rich is a national treasure.

Thanks for posting. k&r

[OneBlueSky]

5. seems to me I recall the chimp trundling off to Crawford in August, 2001 . . .

and about a month later, the shit hit the fan . . . given the Executive Orders he's signed recently effectively making him dictator in times of emergency, my tinfoil hat is starting to vibrate ever so slighly . . . all of the indicators point to something tragic coming our way within the month -- thus enabling the Boy King to declare himself "leader for life" by cancelling the 2008 elections and declaring the powers of Congress "temporarily" null and void . . . in the interst of national security, you understand . . .

as I've pointed out before, Bush didn't sign those orders to benefit some future president . . . he intends to use them, and all he needs is a triggering event . . . which his Black Ops crew can easily provide whenever and wherever he (and/or Cheney) wishes . . .

either Congress doesn't see this, in which case they're beyond incompetent . . . or they do see it and choose to ignore it, in which case they're morally and ethically bankrupt -- and on the verge of becoming accessories to a crime of global proportions . . .

Impeach Them NOW! . . . while you (and we) still have a chance . . .

[dragon82a]

6. Dead Zone Surrounds Crawford, Texas

Dead Zone Surrounds Crawford, Texas

Crawford, Texas - A group of students from Baylor University accidentally stumbled upon a dead zone centered in Crawford, Texas and the surrounding vicinity. The students were trying to capture honey bees in order to measure the infiltration rate of African killer bees into the local colonies. When they failed to find a single bee within a four mile circumference they grew suspicious. They then began to realize that there were no birds singing, no squirrels climbing trees and no ants crawling on the ground. Furthermore, all of the bushes and plants in the area had lost their foliage and appeared dry and brittle. Upon reporting their findings to their project supervisor, Baylor University dispatched a group of scientists who confirmed that this was indeed a dead zone.

An environmental anomaly, dead zones are areas that are almost completely absent of life and are generally found near scenes of natural or man made catastrophes. It is extremely rare to find one like this where there is no record of any unusual biological occurrence.

Professor Pixly Quigins, a leading expert in advanced biology at Baylor University, postulated that "There appears to be a negative energy at play here, an energy that is inhospitable to all living things. It is almost as though there is an evil presence that is keeping all of God's creatures away. In four days of intense searching all we have been able to find is a diseased rat and two cockroaches."

[groovedaddy]

8. The "diseased rat" is there on vacation - one of the two coackroaches

has since resigned.

[rodeodance]

7. No one can doubt Mr. Bush's triumph in the P.R. war:

And so the president, firm in his resolve against "Al Qaeda in Iraq," heads toward another August break in Crawford while Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan remains determined to strike in America. No one can doubt Mr. Bush's triumph in the P.R. war: There are more American troops than ever mired in Iraq, sent there by a fresh round of White House fictions. And the real war? The enemy that did attack us six years ago, sad to say, is likely to persist in its nasty habit of operating in the reality-based world that our president disdains.