bin Laden's Latest
Jesus Christ I really, really, really hate this guy.
The content strongly suggests that the tape's fairly recent. He offers a truce...which I really wish we could accept, but--what with him being a mass murdering psycho responsibly for brutally murdering 3,000 American citizens--we can't. Stop me if you've heard this one, but if we'd have had a minimally competent president and had dusted this guy's sorry theocratic ass at Tora Bora we wouldn't still be dealing with this crap.
sigh
Political predictions are easy here: the right will use this tape to indict the left for failing to fall into lock-step with the president, noting that our enemies are now using our dissent against us. (Note: check this prediction. If it's wrong I'll eat my words.)
They'll fail, however, to note that bin Laden is also using our own administration's dishonesty against us, e.g. by alluding to the Downing Street Memo. So that's awesome; it means we get abused by that stuff twice--once when Bush deceives us and then again when bin Laden uses that deceit for propaganda purposes. Jesus, it's like we're caught in no-man's land in a battle between a psychopathic theocrat and a lying, spoiled, dissolute rich kid playing at being president.
Well that's just great.
On the other hand, bin Laden says something that presupposes that he may think that the administration was right about the "flypaper" strategy in Iraq. Of course we can't believe anything that guy says, but there it is anyway.
Jesus Christ I really, really, really hate this guy.
The content strongly suggests that the tape's fairly recent. He offers a truce...which I really wish we could accept, but--what with him being a mass murdering psycho responsibly for brutally murdering 3,000 American citizens--we can't. Stop me if you've heard this one, but if we'd have had a minimally competent president and had dusted this guy's sorry theocratic ass at Tora Bora we wouldn't still be dealing with this crap.
sigh
Political predictions are easy here: the right will use this tape to indict the left for failing to fall into lock-step with the president, noting that our enemies are now using our dissent against us. (Note: check this prediction. If it's wrong I'll eat my words.)
They'll fail, however, to note that bin Laden is also using our own administration's dishonesty against us, e.g. by alluding to the Downing Street Memo. So that's awesome; it means we get abused by that stuff twice--once when Bush deceives us and then again when bin Laden uses that deceit for propaganda purposes. Jesus, it's like we're caught in no-man's land in a battle between a psychopathic theocrat and a lying, spoiled, dissolute rich kid playing at being president.
Well that's just great.
On the other hand, bin Laden says something that presupposes that he may think that the administration was right about the "flypaper" strategy in Iraq. Of course we can't believe anything that guy says, but there it is anyway.
posted by Winston Smith at
2:34 PM
10 Comments:
Ignore anything bin Laden says about the polls.
Keep speaking your mind. Dissent is patriotic.
OK, sarcasm aside, even Bill Clinton asked that America speak with a unified voice about Kosovo. (Yeah, it's true---I'll scout up the links if you honestly can't locate them yourself.)
The only thing giving these desperate and largely defeated maniacs any hope whatsoever is that we will fold our winning hand. Even the Muslim world, particularly the people of Iraq, has turned against their unquestionable barbarism.
Jill Carroll. Margaret Hassan, RIP.
Invading Iraq might have been imprudent, but it was not wrong.
If you want our troops withdrawn immediately because we cannot win and you don't want the last American man or woman to die for "a mistake," I respect that.
If your position is somewhat short of that, and that quitting is not an option, then now is the time to send that message, somehow someway.
It's not about Bush anymore.
Wrong, Tom.
It's about two things. It's about:
(1) The maniacs who attacked us
and
(2) The incompetent fool who failed to take them out for it.
You seem convinced we could have got bin Laden at Tora Bora. I am not.
(Since the article was written, it has been determined that bin Laden was indeed there. However, the US was by no means certain of it at the time, and the article argues the logistical complications, if not impossibility, of completely sealing the area.)
In response to Tom Van Dyke:
I guess we will never really know will we, SINCE WE DIDN'T EVEN TRY!!!!
[God, these smug right-wing bastards make me want to vomit, with their cock-sure attitude.]
Question for any one who has actually read the transcript of bin Laden's tape (I suspect there are very few among us who have), which book titled "Rogue State" is bin Laden referring to - Noam Chomsky's or the other guy? Is Osama a member of the Oprah book club or WTF??? He must have access to fairly current publications, which is difficult from a cave in Waziristan....
Looks like I've made yet another new friend, WS. It's a gift, I tell you, a gift.
Oh, and WS---was it foul-mouthed lefties, upset at a story that Democrats took Abramoff money, who shut down the Washington Post's comments section?
If so, they'll need a place to go and it looks like we're both going to be making a lot more new friends.
The Washington Post's comments section was closed down by the anti-ombudsman they hired who couldn't accept the fact that statements made in an article by one of her reporters were completely, patently false, as was amply demonstrated to her.
http://firedoglake.blogspot.com/2006_01_15_firedoglake_archive.html#113754655377150563
Furthermore, it would have been embarrassingly easy for that reporter to actually check the facts, rather than regurgitating right-wing talking points designed to take the heat off the criminal enterprise that is today's Republican party. Let's see how hard this is, shall we?
Put in Jack Abramoff's name in ANY election cycle and see what you get. Mmkay?
http://tray.com/cgi-win/indexhtml.exe?MBF=NAME
Here's more on the ridiculous amount of spin that needs to be applied before it looks like Jack-off was an equal-opportunity corrupter.
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/
If this thread
is an accurate record of what was posted before the thread in question was shut down, then it's clear that perhaps Tom should've taken the Great Communicators' advice in a different matter to "Trust, but verify".
My informal survey via the find function of my updated Foxfire browser shows 3 craps and CYAs. one mention of s*** and bull**** apiece and no other 'cuss words' or profanity invoked there.
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Actually, because it was such small potatoes and I am lazy, I properly weasel-worded it as a question. :-)
Also, because I honestly lacked certainty.
I did pick up the claim that there was an automatical profanity filter that knocked out the most egregious stuff.
But in the larger but also more particular sense, I see our host as the guest of honor of a circular firing squad. To me that's probative.
In rhetoric, one either seeks to condemn or convince, to preach to the choir or to the unconverted.
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