It Works the Same Way in Any Country

So Dick Cheney thinks Ned Lamont---elected democratically by a majority of voters reflecting the American majority opinion about the Iraq war---helps al-Qaeda types.

And Bill Kristol is right up Cheney's ass with a big old "yass-SUH!"

And Fox's Bush house shill Cal Thomas is painting Lamont's victory as "the capture of the Democratic Party by its Taliban wing."

Where have we heard something like this before? How about here:

"Yeah, bin Laden urging people, essentially, to vote for Kerry." (What the tape actually said is here)

Or this:

"Does anyone truly doubt that Osama's video is little more than a crude, evil attempt to aid John Kerry's efforts to defeat President Bush?"

Or this:

"A vote for Kerry is a vote for European anti-Semitism. And terrorists. In Iraq...and Israel. It's a vote for Hamas and Hezbollah, Syria and Iran."

Bush and the far Right have been painting those who disagree with them as traitors, kooks, and fifth columnists ever since they stole the election in 2000, and every time it looks as though their hold on power is weakening they never hesitate to get out the Terror-Bait and all but call up the pitchforks and torches till they've scared the public back into line. Interestingly enough, Bush and the rest of his drones and Storm Troopers admitted the bin Laden tape helped him get re-elected, once the smear tactics no longer served any use, and never batted an eye at the turnabout. Talk about flip-flop. Goering would be proud. One wonders where today's McCarthy is? How can it have taken him so long to organize a dog-and-pony show?

Ron Suskind offered a look at bin Laden's intended impact in his description of how CIA experts viewed the tape when it was released in 2004. When it comes time to decide who is truly giving aid and comfort to the enemy, it would be worthwhile to remember that in 2004, it was Bush, not a liberal Democrat, whom bin Laden most likely saw as an ally in his war on the infidels. And that Bush himself well knew it.

In the final pages of The One Per Cent Doctrine, Suskind writes:

“As the sun began to set on Friday, October 29 (2004), they gathered on the seventh floor. The new that day was the so-called “October Surprise” broadcast by bin Laden. He hadn’t shown himself in nearly a year. But now, four days before the election, his spectral presence echoed into every American home. It was a surprisingly complete statement by the al Qaeda leader about his motivations, his actions, and his view of the current American landscape. He praised Allah and, through most of the eighteen minutes, attacked Bush, tapping diverse sources from Michael Moore’s movie Fahrenheit 9/11 to statements he’d made to CNN, Time magazine, various outlets of the mainstream media, much reviled by the administration, and interviews with liberal journalists. He mocked Bush for being stupid, and deceptive, and corrupted by big oil and big business entanglements, like those with Halliburton. At the end, he managed to be dismissive of Kerry, but it was an afterthought in his “anyone but Bush” treatise (snip)

Inside the CIA, of course, the analysis moved on a different track. They had spent years, as had a similar bin Laden unit at FBI, parsing each expressed word of the al-Qaeda leader and his deputy, Zawahiri. What they’d learned over nearly a decade is that bin Laden speaks only for strategic reasons---and those reasons are debated with often startling depth inside the organization’s leadership. Their assessments, at day’s end, are a distillate of the kind of secret, internal conversations that the American public, and by association the wider world community, were not sanctioned to hear: strategic analysis.

Today’s conclusion: bin Laden’s message was clearly designed to assist the President’s re-election.

At the five o’clock meeting, once various reports on the latest threats were delivered, (Deputy Director) John McLaughlin opened the issue with the consensus view: “Bin Laden certainly did a nice favor today for the President.”

Around the table there were nods. (snip) (Deputy Associate Director of Intelligence) Jami Miscik talked about how bin Laden---being challenged by Zarqawi’s rise---clearly understands how his primacy as al Qaeda’s leader was supported by the continuation of his eye-to-eye struggle with Bush. “Certainly,” she offered, “he would want Bush to keep doing what he’s doing for a few more years.”

But an ocean of hard truths before them---such as what did it say about U.S. policies that bin Laden would want Bush reelected---remained untouched. (snip)

Yet there were some who’d already arrived at this shoreline among those at the very top of the government. While CIA glimpsed at the issue of bin Laden’s motivations and turned away, there were those who understood just how acutely this heated, global dialogue---of ideas and message and the preservation of power, of us and them---was a mirror game, a two-way street. On that score, any number of NSC principals could tell you something so dizzying that not even they will touch it: that Bush’s ratings track with bin Laden’s ratings in the Arab world.

No one doubts that George W. Bush is earnest when he thinks of the victims of 9/11 and speaks of his longing to bring the culprits to justice. Yet he is an ambitious man, atop a nation of ambitious and complex desires, who knows that when the al Qaeda leader displays his forceful presence, his own approval ratings rise, and vice versa."

It is to our everlasting shame that we as a people became so morally and intellectually debased that we not only voted this man back into office, but continue to excuse his outrages. Only an election like that of Connecticutt's offers even a glimmer of hope tha we may be finding our way out of this darkness.