NYT: Will Osama Help W.?

[sr_pacifica]

by Maureen Dowd


WASHINGTON — Some people thought the October surprise would be the president producing Osama.

Instead, it was Osama producing yet another video taunting the president and lecturing America.

After bin Laden's pre-election commentary from his anchor desk at a secure, undisclosed location, many TV chatterers and Republicans postulated that the evildoer's campaign intrusion would help the president.

O.B.L., they said, might re-elect W.

They follow the Bush strategists' reasoning that since President Bush rates higher than John Kerry on fighting terror, anytime Americans get rattled about Iraq and Al Qaeda, it's a plus for the president. And Republicans can keep claiming that Al Qaeda wants the "weak" Democrat elected, even as some intelligence experts suggest the terrorists prefer that the belligerent Mr. Bush stay in power because he has been a boon to jihadist recruiting, with his disastrous occupation of Iraq and his true believer, us-versus-them, my-Christian-God's-directing-my-foreign-policy vibe.

The Bushies' campaign pitch follows their usual backward logic: Because we have failed to make you safe, you should re-elect us to make you safer. Because we haven't caught Osama in three years, you need us to catch Osama in the next four years. Because we didn't bother to secure explosives in Iraq, you can count on us to make sure those explosives aren't used against you.

More at

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/31/opinion/31dowd.html?hp

[niyad]

1. funny if the tape turns out to be phony. wouldn't it

[nefarious]

2. I think the tape was a feat of Karl Rove engineering

Connect the dots...

This time he's not spouting jihad-revolution rhetoric, with overthrow of imperial oppressors and invaders as the will of Allah. No guns, RPG's, swords or daggers were included in the background.

Let's see: somewhere along the line Osama bin Laden got savvy about American politics, and decided to adopt Michael Moore's and Howard Dean's philosophies about failures of Bush to react or even care, and failures of foreign policy in the middle east.

What Karl did was create an Osama bin Laden who's taking the side of the Democrats, so that his appearance and message will associate an evil terrorist individual and organization with our party. By association, the conclusion of any informed voter would be to choose the candidate who is not associated, has a different philosophy, and a reputation for being tough on terrorists.

Since Osama Headroom's commercial was a 527 (Bush Cheney 04 can't directly pay him without seeming like terrorists themselves) he could not directly endorse any candidate. But we know which Republican party he's working for. That would be the PNAC neo-con fascist imperialists.

[sr_pacifica]

6. I like what you wrote.

Your third paragraph. I don't know about "informed voter" though. A truly informed voter would be "connecting the dots."

[nefarious]

7. by "informed"

I mean casually informed... someone who watched the news and read the translated captions. And later (surprisingly) came to the conclusion that bin Laden was using Moore's/Dean's talking points, so therefore he must be siding with the democrats. If democrats get elected, bin Laden will become the Willie Horton of the next four years - he's ready to show up in your neighborhood to do some crimes.

Rove's fear-mongering psyops for the ignorant masses. Should earn him the first place finish for this week's Conservative Idiots - unless it can be shown that Rumsfeld disapproved of any orders to guard or destroy the al Qaqaa munitions dump.

[ninainsf]

3. I don't buy it

Seeing that Osama is still out there just indicates a failure of the current administration. He's had almost 3 years to find Osama. What would make anyone believe another 4 years would help?

[sr_pacifica]

4. Logic is not the strong point of Bushies n/t

[It was not a pretzel]

5. Channel 4 News

in the UK just said that the tape seems to help Bush, at least according to the people they interviewed.

It defies logic, but it's not surprising that in Europe at least that Americans have a cliched reputation of being a bit dense.