Got this one via ThinkProgress. There’s a poll out there in the New York Sun that shows “most people dislike the United Nations”. Now, while TP rather effectively debunks that crap, what I’d like to look at is the question itself:

Fifty-seven percent of the 800 telephone interviewees said they “agree” that if “the U.N. cannot be reformed and made more effective, it should be scrapped altogether and a more effective international organization should take its place.”

Gotta love really, really skewed polling questions. I’ve got one for them.

Agree or disagree: Unless George Bush can demonstrate that he has a brain larger than a walnut, he has to sit in the corner and think about what he’s done until the 2008 election.

[tags]surveys, polls, united nations, media[/tags]

So our Mighty Leader delivered his big 9/11 speech yesterday. It was unsurprising in almost every way. He tugged on heartstrings:

I’ve stood with families gathered on a grassy field in Pennsylvania, who take bittersweet pride in loved ones who refused to be victims — and gave America our first victory in the war on terror. I’ve sat beside young mothers with children who are now five years old — and still long for the daddies who will never cradle them in their arms.

He babbled about Iraq:

We’re training Iraqi troops so they can defend their nation. We’re helping Iraq’s unity government grow in strength and serve its people. We will not leave until this work is done. Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq, the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone.

He way overblew the significance of his war:

This struggle has been called a clash of civilizations. In truth, it is a struggle for civilization. We are fighting to maintain the way of life enjoyed by free nations.

And then he finished up with a statement that was meant to sound profound but ended up confusing:

Dangerous enemies have declared their intention to destroy our way of life. They’re not the first to try, and their fate will be the same as those who tried before. Nine-Eleven showed us why.

So… Bush still thinks they’re connected, he still think she’s FDR leading the world toward a better tomorrow, and he still sounds like an idiot. Same old, same old. I was actually hoping for an actual moving, powerful speech.

[tags]bush, 9/11, speech, politics, iraq, war, terrorism[/tags]

 

That’s the big question, isn’t it? There have been some very suspicious audio recordings from him in the past few months, but no video and certainly no real action from the guy since 2003. And with the anniversary of the attacks upon us, as well as a looming election and recent reports showing not just regular ol’ negligence, but WILLFUL negligence, it’s worth considering what’s going on.

Now, the fact that we haven’t seen him three years leads us to believe one of two things: he’s in hiding or we got him and kept it quiet. And in the latter case, either he’s dead or he’s been captured. That leaves us with three distinct possibilities for the current state of the man.

Put on your helmets, it’s going to get a little bumpy.

CASE #1: Osama bin Laden is still alive and free. Here’s the most obvious scenario. For this case to be true we would have to look at the events as either evidence of malice or stupidity, so for this exercise I’d say keep the blog’s title in mind.

From 2001 to 2006, Bush seems to have missed every opportunity to catch or stop the man. The famous August 6th briefing, Tora Bora, constant reminders that we kiiiiinda know where he is and that we’re doing “everything we can” to get him have yielded thus far no reports of bin Laden’s body or his capture, and we have yet to hear about an actual Al Qaeda plot that’s been foiled.

At the same time, Bush and his boys have done nothing but trumpet out scary statements about all the awful things bin Laden would do to us if he ever got the chance, but if you keep voting republican maybe we can stop him! Tapes have come out periodically (despite being not entirely reliable), and we know Zawahiri is still in power with no mention of a missing leader.

Add it all up, that no one has said bin Laden is gone, that his name is still invoked, and despite the complete lack of his surfacing it would seem that he’s still alive, perhaps in hiding. To this effect, the Clan will tell us that it means our methods are working, as he’s too scared to actually come out of his hidey-hole.

Regardless, his very existence is a reminder that Bush has failed in his most basic promise: to get us the man who caused 9/11.

CASE #2: Osama bin Laden is in captivity. Now things are getting hairier. It’s worth noting that Bush quietly broke up the CIA group Alec Station, which was intended to hunt bin Laden, back in 2005. At the same time, as mentioned, the man hasn’t made any video tapes since 2003. Oh sure, Zawahiri has, but the most we’ll get out of bin Laden is a rather questionable audio tape.

Okay, so maybe we got him. We have to look at why the administration wouldn’t have said anything about it. Bush was all focused on the Iraq War from the moment he stepped into office. But could he stay solely focused on that? On some level he still has to realize that Osama is a threat, and that he is al Qaeda’s most successful recruiting agent.

And why get him secretly? Because he still needs the bogeyman. Had bin Laden been eliminated in 2001, there would have been no support for a war in Iraq two years later. Most all of that support, much as Bush tries to rewrite history, came from the belief that Iraq was an extension of the war against terrorism.

So a public attack would end the war. That would be it. Most would shrug at WMDs because so many others have them, and it would require far more than the dubious evidence we got.

Now, bin Laden in prison would have obvious benefits. We would have the ability to question him and get every piece of information we could ever want concerning the who, where, and what of 9/11 and the other attacks. We would know who’s at the top, who plans what, where the main hideouts are, and who was at fault for what’s already happened.

Remember those audio tapes? Voice analysts say it’s bin Laden, but the tone and the content are a lot different. An imprisoned bin Laden would be unable to be video taped, because it would show him in a cell or they would risk doing it in public. However, audio? Of course. Beat him, hold him in a small cell, do whatever and you could get the man to say “If you want me to win, vote John Kerry”.

And, of course, the CIA unit wouldn’t need to be around.

CASE #3: Osama bin Laden is dead: There is, unfortunately, one major downside to the idea that bin Laden is alive and in captivity. Namely, if this were the case, then we would have undoubtedly the biggest blackmailing tool in our possession.

You would think that we could thus bargain with the terrorists using him as our chip, but obviously we’d never want to release him for any reason. Conversely, al Qaeda would be furious, to put it mildly, that their frontman was captured by the enemy. Attacks would increase immensely in order to ’scare’ the United States into releasing him. It would be very difficult to avoid this backlash in the event of capture.

On the other hand, a publicly dead bin Laden would do little good for al Qaeda. Their frontman is dead, and thus their most effective recruiting tool is gone. Those they would like to get to join will see this as evidence that America is winning and be less likely to join. They can’t declare war on America for killing him as that would risk exposing this weakness and could damage them further.

Thus, they keep it quiet. Zawahiri takes the role of public frontman and bin Laden’s tapes are forged. The quality of them is fairly bad, so the declaration that they are “certainly” bin Laden is questionable at best. More than that, it’s possible that they aren’t bin Laden at all but CIA concocted.

They keep bin Laden’s death hidden, thus giving Bush is bogeyman and al Qaeda keeps up its public image.

Would al Qaeda keep it quiet, though? It’s worth asking whether or not al Qaeda actually would create a war on America publicly if bin Laden had been captured. It’s as equally likely as it is unlikely.

The first problem would be that, provided the operation was done quietly, all the United States would have to do is deny it. We’d get into a “you have Osama!” “No we don’t. Why, did you lose him?” kind of situation. From al Qaeda’s perspective, this would be devastating as it would make them look desparate and incompetent.

More than that, al Qaeda is not a standard military enemy. They don’t have a headquarters, they don’t have a set base of operations, locations, or even set people. For a rebel terrorist group, the ability to pack up and move on is paramount, as being rooted anywhere will inevitably lead to capture.

And so, they would also need to be able to operate in the case of losing even the most crucial members. Bin Laden gets captured, al Qaeda packs up and moves on without missing a beat. Now, they wouldn’t want to let it be known that bin Laden is gone because he’s such an effective recruiting tool, but it would be fairly easy to keep people from trying to see him with claims that he has to stay hidden or somesuch.

So with that in mind, the administration could still use him to scare, the terrorists could use him to recruit, and no real progress is made regardless.

Will they let us know? Of course not. At this point, the only option is to say he’s out and free. Incompetence looks better than dishonesty. With the war, saying we were wrong about EVERYTHING is acceptable over admitting that we overlooked evidence that contradicted us. The administration pleads constant ignorance over every single screwup between 2001 and now and this is unlikely to change.

This would explain Bush’s extra vehemence in wanting to keep his secret prisons and trials. Now, terrorists in secret prisons is nothing new, but constantly invoking the name of a captured terrorist would be. Should bin Laden be alive and in one of these facilities, the discovery of him would be a bombshell that would be nigh impossible for the president to recover from.

Oh sure, there would be an undertone of relief that he’s captured, but the furor over being lied to for years on end simply for political gain would be impossible to ignore, no matter how much he and the Snowball tell us it was in order to “aid the War on Terror”.

This opens up a rather scary possibility. The secret CIA facilities is a huge controversy now, and they will undoubtedly be decided upon in the recent months. If not right before the elections, right after. Now, if the civil rights fighters win and these prisons are shut down, and then it’s revealed that bin Laden -was- being held, you can bet the nation would be at each others’ throats.

The liberals would be on the conservatives for supporting this, the conservatives would be at the liberals’ throats for letting bin Laden go, the administration would be frothing at the mouth over their secrets being revealed and a hell of a lot of people would be running with pitchforks and torches at the White House for the lies.

The end result: Either we have a president who is incompetent or a president who is acting in secret and, to an extent, in collaboration with al Qaeda to keep it all hush-hush. We’ll likely never really know what happened, since there’s always the possibility that if Osama is held somewhere, he’ll just *poof* away.

If anyone has their own theories, I’d love to hear them.

[tags]bin laden, al qaeda, terrorism, bush, cia, politics, 9/11[/tags]

I’ll get back to writing tomorrow. I have an interesting piece lined up.

In the meantime, watch this video of Olbermann from Crooks and Liars. It’s a work of art.