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As much as adding one more conspiracy to Bush’s resume might appeal to you, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani is hardly a household name in the war on terror. Capturing him in Pakistan doesn’t have any effect whatsoever on anyone’s perception of the campaign.

Also, and I can’t understand how this could be lost on anyone, the convention is over.

I guess the administration and its allies have to have a hands-off policy to Al Qaida now, eh? Because that’s in the best interest of the Kerry campaign?

Sure was funny timing though. Almost as nonpartisan as having Ralph Reed as political commetary on Kerry’s speech. I love how Ralph has remade his image as mainstream. Perhaps they’ll get Peltier( see the post on Independents) to comment on Bush’s speech.

This is a very troubling standard. Are any achievements in Iraq or victories against Al Qaida between now and the election going to be questioned for funny timing? My guess is that yes, they are.

I can just imagine it. If Osama himself is captured between now and November, does anyone doubt that the left is going to deplore the fact? Howl and moan about unfair it is? Does it not trouble the left even a little that they are now in the position of rooting against America on the battlefield?

Martin, there’s no jusdgement made in the article. I actually applaud Bush for finally laying some smack down on Pakistan. Unfortunately it’s clear that we can only expect it in an election year.

The intelligence community seems pretty bent out of shape about it, though. The LA Times quotes a US counter-terrorism official saying,

“He’s been on the run since 1998 so you have five years of critical intelligence that can be mined: where he has been, who he has been with, how his operations worked,” the official said.

“Now, anything that he was involved in is being shredded, burned and, thrown in a river,” the official said. “We have to assume anyone affiliated with this guy is on the run … when usually, we can get great stuff as long as we can keep it quiet.”

Several U.S. officials said it was unclear why Pakistan publicized the arrest. A spokeswoman at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington said she had no information on such details.

And I guess now we owe Pakistan - a country we know sells nuclear weapon technology and assistence to failed states that support terrorists - some F-16’s.

It’s good to know that Bush has created a strong network of true allies who share our values and our committment to defeat terrorism. Hoo-Rah!

I don’t find the standard troubling, Martin. When a news story runs saying they have info that the White House has requested of Pakistan the arrest or killing of an HVT by specific dates, then Pakistan produces an arrest of someone presented as an HVT on one of the requested dates, then the news reports this arrest right before John Kerry’s speech, I would call that suspicious.

Suspicious. The timing of that news article claiming Pakistan was to deliver major Al-Qaeda arrests on certain dates for the campaign. The timing is curious indeed. It certainly is advantageous for the Kerry campaign I mean.

That’s the problem with the conspiracy theory of history. No event happens without meaning, no event just happens without someone pulling the strings as part of an overall plan.

You libs should know better than to think the vast right wing conspiracy would actually leak such damaging info to a reporter about the truth of such events. Unless… unless they wanted you to believe that. Hmmm.

They wanted you to claim such a thing were true thereby discrediting your cause and the Kerry campaign for being so gullible. …Rove you are a genius.

Eric, give us a break, man. The Whitehouse and Pentagon go through fluctuations of acting like a sieve regarding information they try to keep a lid on. That dog don’t hunt!

twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight of July? Well I wonder why they wanted it to happen then? Maybe if there was a Democratic Convention every week, Bush would eventually catch all of Al-Qaeda.

This guy was actually caught on Sunday, but it wasn’t released to the news until 5 hours before Kerry acceptance speech. BushCo is so desperate it’s hilarious.

BushCo is so desperate to win the election that they just keep killing, capturing and hounding Al Qaida figures. Where is the outrage?

They’re so desperate to win, that they’ve pushed an economic policy that’s making the economy grow like crazy. They’ve extended drug benefits to low income seniors. They’re trying to extend democratic government throughout the middle east. And they’ve irritated France, our most important and beloved ally in the whole world!

And all of this just to win an election! Wake up, America, to this evil being perpetrated right before your eyes!

You libs should know better than to think the vast right wing conspiracy would actually leak such damaging info to a reporter about the truth of such events

Eric, if you’d bothered to read the New Republic article, you’d know the Pakistanis leaked it,

“One Pakistani general recently in Washington confided in a journalist, “If we don’t find these guys by the election, they are going to stick this whole nuclear mess up our asshole.”

they’ve pushed an economic policy that’s making the economy grow like crazy.

I’ve always suspected you don’t read the news, Martin: Q2 “consumer spending fell to the weakest rate since the slowdown of 2001” - GDP “slowed sharply in the April-June quarter”.

And the IRS reports that “Adjusted for inflation, the income of all Americans fell 9.2 percent from 2000”

Martin, when you and Bush tell us that the US is experiencing super growth, it just makes you both look silly.

But on the plus side, ” inflation pressures eased with a key GDP inflation gauge that excludes energy and food [which most Americans apparently consider unimportant - AP] rising at an annual rate of just 1.8 percent in the second quarter”

They’ve extended drug benefits to low income seniors.

Luckily, the pharmaceutical companies that are actually running the program were able to raise their prices before it kicked in. Don’t worry folks, our drug companies aren’t losing any money. Mission accomplished.

They’re trying to extend democratic government throughout the middle east.

…Without trying to solve the Israeli/Palestinian problem. That’s just dumb.

I admire your cheerleading, Martin. Too bad your team isn’t giving you much to work with.

Martin, I seriously doubt the capture was orchestrated for the Dems Convention. It was just a joke on my part. The Pakistani’s did the job not Bush.

The news release may have been politically timed.As we all know, most “news organizations” simply wait around for press releases. This is more an indictment of them than Bush.

What worries me is what happened when Ronald Reagan was a candidate and his campaign engaged in unnoffical and illegal back door diplomacy with Iran during the hostage crisis. We all know about the arms and drugs deals made back then. I do worry what these same groups of men are willing to do this time around.

Martin, I seriously doubt the capture was orchestrated for the Dems Convention.

If you read the article, that’s exactly what the Pakistani sources are claiming.

And then they raise the threat level, (based on years old reports). Of course, it wouldn’t be timed to overshadow any perceived bounce or excitement from the previous week’s Democratic convention? Notice they also buried the budget deficit announcement on Friday?

And then they raise the threat level, (based on years old reports). Of course, it wouldn’t be timed to overshadow any perceived bounce or excitement from the previous week’s Democratic convention. Notice they also buried the budget deficit announcement on Friday?

I like how the administration is concocting all kinds of contorted rationalizations to justify the alert. Now they say they have a super secret source to corroborate the four year old information.

But the new information “did not specify targets in the United States or say when an attack might be planned.”

When they throw in al Qaeda’s interest in attacking before the elections - a purely theoretical assumption based on nothing more than a guess that the Madrid bombings might have been staged to disrupt Spains elections - it starts looking really fishy.

I think its fairly ludicrous to make a statement that says something like: between now and the election, the Bush administration will try to deliver a high priority target. Well duh. Think of the opposite “between now and election the Bush administration will do its best to make sure there are -no- priority targets delivered. That’s also fairly ludicrous.

Since the war on terror began, the military has caught or killed what, to me, seems like about 1 “high importance” target every two months or so, with some greater and some fewer depending on the time period. Constructing a theory which predicts, essentialy, that the trend will continue and then says “see! that proves the conspiracy” is not a very strong argument. In fact, its sort of a weak way of trying to insinuate that the administration doesn’t try to deliver targets unless there is an election up for grabs, which is pretty easily disproven by a quick lexis-nexus search for events in the last year.

Basically this kind of ultra-convenient reasoning is designed to allow partisans to chalk up any Bush success to something more sinister, thereby allowing one to disregard notable progress in the war, and to dismiss major developments, that should be applauded, as party favors.

If bin Laden were caught the day before the election, there would be some people who would start talking conspiracy theory. But that kind of opinion-formation requires a pre-existing need to condemn a major breakthrough as a parlor trick. In short, it requires a -want- on the part of the observer, specifically a desire to see Bush as “the bad guy.” The rest of us would probably just be happy that Osama (or any other major Al Queda figure) was caught.

I would have dismissed it as that too, if it hadn’t been for the specific info in the TNR report.

They reported - weeks before the Democratic convention - Pakistani military leaders saying that the Bush administration asked for a HVT during the convention. Pakistan got one the weekend before the convention, and went public just a couple hours before Kerry accepted the nomination.

Coincidence? I doubt it. The timing’s too tight. Add in the fact that US intelligence is mad as hell that Pakistan went public without first bleeding this guy dry of every single piece of info on his terrorist buddies, and it adds up to a political stunt.

I’m glad they got the guy. Too bad every year isn’t an election year.