Cole says what we have all been thinking

Juan Cole suggests that which has crossed our minds and that which the polite British chaps chose to avoid. First it was "the Plame Identity", for the sequel and possibly more damaging turn of events, we now have "the Packistani Supremacy". Cole goes as far as to suggest that this all might been a result of Presidential Reelection Campaign Related Program Activities™ (And yes, I intend to flog the program activities pony until a village in texas get back their idiot, or that same jackass, accepts a party invitation from Queen Beatrix) First saw this Kos, heres Cole on Khan:

Anyway, Khan had been secretly apprehended by Pakistani military intelligence in mid-July, and had been turned into a double agent. He was actively helping investigators penetrate further into al-Qaeda cells and activities via computer, and was still cooperating when the "senior Bush administration" figure told Jehl about him.

Pakistani military intelligence (Inter-Services Intelligence) told Reuters,

' "He sent encoded e-mails and received encoded replies. He's a great hacker and even the U.S. agents said he was a computer whiz . . . He was cooperating with interrogators on Sunday and Monday and sent e-mails on both days . . ."



In other words, the Bush administration just blew the cover of one of the most important assets inside al-Qaeda that the US has ever had.

As I Flashback to the "Dukes of Hazzard" and wonder if Cooter would have so royally screwed the pooch. As I posted previously, The charming Brits stopped short of placing blame for their "hurried up" raid, on this leak, But Juan is an American, charming as he may be.....:

The announcement of Khan's name forced the British to arrest 12 members of an al-Qaeda cell prematurely, before they had finished gathering the necessary evidence against them via Khan. Apparently they feared that the cell members would scatter as soon as they saw that Khan had been compromised. (They would have known he was a double agent, since they got emails from him Sunday and Monday!) One of the twelve has already had to be released for lack of evidence, a further fall-out of the Bush SNAFU. It would be interesting to know if other cell members managed to flee.

I suggested earlier that George might wish to take on a new nom de guerre, I suggested King Merde(s) because every thing the dude touches turns to shit, this latest misadventure confirms the legitimacy of the title.

Why in the world would Bush administration officials out a double agent working for Pakistan and the US against al-Qaeda? In a way, the motivation does not matter. If the Reuters story is true, this slip is a major screw-up that casts the gravest doubts on the competency of the administration to fight a war on terror. Either the motive was political calculation, or it was sheer stupidity. They don't deserve to be in power either way.

Sing it Brother, Shout it from the rooftops. Dubya is looking more and more each day like a composite characature of Gilligan, Gomer Pyle, Cooter, and my favorite, Cletus the slackjawed Yokel competing at the special olympics in the govermentin competition. Cole lets the other shoe drop:

So one scenario goes like this. Bush gets the reports that Eisa al-Hindi had been casing the financial institutions, and there was an update as recently as January 2004 in the al-Qaeda file. So this could be a live operation. If Bush doesn't announce it, and al-Qaeda did strike the institutions, then the fact that he knew of the plot beforehand would sink him if it came out (and it would) before the election. So he has to announce the plot. But if he announces it, people are going to suspect that he is wagging the dog and trying to shore up his popularity by playing the terrorism card. So he has to be able to give a credible account of how he got the information. So when the press is skeptical and critical, he decides to give up Khan so as to strengthen his case. In this scenario, he or someone in his immediate circle decides that a mere double agent inside al-Qaeda can be sacrificed if it helps Bush get reelected in the short term.

By now it should be abundantly clear that when this administration speaks, thry are using words from a different dictionary, than the rest of us. In this dictionary, Clear means dirty, up means down, heathy means "the Bald Mountain nature preserve, politics equals policy, Conservation means Halliburton will conserve the US treasury in its numbered Swiss Bank accounts, and the War on Terror means the destruction of everything that is good about America. Following this line I feel a need to quote Digby again.

One of the secrets of conservative America is how often it has welcomed Republican defeats.

That's no surprise. You have to be either a fool or a patriot to feel the duty to govern after a Republican has been in power. They come in to office, reward themselves and their rich friends, totally fuck up the country and then leave the mess for the Democrats to clean up. Then they use their time out of office assassinating the characters of the Democrats for fun and profit preparing the way for them to get back into office and fuck it all up again. These people are not interested in governing in a democratic system, which takes negotiation, compromise and patience. They are about power which requires far less complexity.

Blotchy the Babboon assed, Dauphin has dug us into a Marianas trench type of hole in pursuit of that irresistable snipe of a war on yet another verb. If only the fourth estate, was not bound and gagged, slowly starving to death in a closet of some long abandoned house, We might never have allowed this spectacularly incopetent adventure to progress, if started at all, to the ninth ring of hell.