Taking Advantage Of Their Ineptitude

by Steve

There are obvious benefits to holding office and using the levers of power to take advantage of your own ineptitude.

The Brits told Bush about the plot and investigation last Friday.

Bush and the Poodle talked twice over the weekend about the investigation.

Lieberman loses Tuesday.

Cheney, Tony Snow, and Kenny-Boy Mehlman are ready immediately with the GOP talking points that a Lieberman loss shows the Democrats are weak on terror and ready to turn their party over to far left, soft on terror crazies. They get to run with this narrative for at least one news cycle.

For reaffirmation of their talking points and as a defense of the Coalition’s debacle in Iraq, the Brits suddenly announce the arrests yesterday, and Bush has his “this shows I am right” talking points ready to go.

The Brits disrupt the plot and make the arrests, but jump a day or two early before they were able to get a line on the five that are still at large, instead of waiting another day or so until just before the weekend trial run to see if they can get all five of the remaining plotters.

Taking advantage of a terror plot allowed by your own inattentiveness is nothing new for this administration. Stoking the fears of the populace for political purposes is nothing new for this administration. And there is now a gleeful group of vulnerable GOP incumbents who are only too ready to talk about nothing but “fear and smear” between now and November, because they can’t afford to talk about their record of failure these last six years.

The investigation and capture of these plotters was facilitated with good old fashioned intelligence, using NSA intercepts of overseas transmissions that are not at the center of the dispute here at home, since they involve at least one if not both participants overseas. But even if there is a US connection that the FBI is investigating now, the point remains that there are five plotters still out there, including the ringleader and financial backers in Pakistan, that should not have been able to plot this five years after 9/11 if Bush had been successful in his war on terror. Instead, we have 138,000 troops tied down as targets in Iraq who are doing little if anything to impede Al Qaeda while the Taliban regains a home base in Afghanistan and while Pervez Musharraf gives us the finger in Pakistan.