Al Quaeda threatens assasination, cynicism red alert issued

[mburbank]

Al-Qaeda planning major assassination to disrupt US vote


WASHINGTON (AFP) - Al-Qaeda is reportedly planning a high-level assassination against a US or foreign leader to disrupt the US presidential election, that will be set in motion by a new tape from its leader Osama bin Laden.


Quoting from unnamed US intelligence officials, The Washington Times said besides the United States, two possible places where the assassination would take place are Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

The assassination would signal the launch of more terrorist attacks involving "multiple targets in multiple venues" across the United States, the officials said.

They said the "very detailed" plans were found on a laptop computer of suspected Al-Qaeda computer expert Naeem Noor Khan, arrested in Pakistan last month.

"The goal of the next attack is twofold: to damage the US economy and to undermine the US election," an intelligence official said, referring to the November 2 presidential election pitting Republican President George W. Bush and Democrat John Kerry.

"The view of Al-Qaeda is 'anybody but Bush,'" said the official.

The officials said the likely trigger for Al-Qaeda's new terrorist campaign would be a new video and audio message from bin Laden, which they expected to surface soon.

"The message likely will be the signal for the attack to be launched," one official said.





Now you know why the Bush administration leaked Kahns name, fucking up British and pakastani intelligence ops.

So THIS little tidbit would have more credability.


"The view of Al-Qaeda is 'anybody but Bush,'" said the official.

Huh. Seriously? Al Quaeda's stated goals aren't so much a worldwide Jihad against the great Satan, their just really into politics? So, if you're planning on voting for anybody but Bush, you and the terrorists have the same goals? Golly! It said that on Kahn's laptop? That would mean voting for anybody but W would be pretty unpatriotic. Wow. I guess they already have affected the elections, then.

I think the only thing to do, now that we know, is cancel the elections. I mean, if we know Al Quaeda wants
'anybody but Bush,' shouldn't we just keep him as president and skip the democratic process? I mean, what kind of American would vote for 'anybody but Bush' now we know that's Al Quaeda's goal?



Sweet Jesus. Even if every word of that report is true, an official statement from the administration that
"The view of Al-Qaeda is 'anybody but Bush,' " is as cynical a political ploy as I've seen in my lifetime. Do these people have at last no shame at all?

[El Blanco]

Now you know why the Bush administration leaked Kahns name, fucking up British and pakastani intelligence ops.

Actually, it was because the media was crawling up their ass to justify the warning about the financial centers last week. You know, the one you said wasn't real and was just a ploy?

Now you want to bitch and moan because you got to know the informant and it ended up a british sting operation?

You want to be in on the briefings? Want to get to ride along on the next raid?

How about the CIA gives the phone numbers of all their assets?

Its like some people are bending over backwards to create this damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't situation. And to be quite honest, its coming off as real petty.

[conus]

Actually, it was because the media was crawling up their ass to justify the warning about the financial centers last week.

Rumsfeld: "You know, Sir, these big media folks are pretty upset ."

Bush: "You're right, Don. Let's give them this Kahn fella's name."

[mburbank]

Exactly. The media have been 'crawling up their ass' to give the number of prisoners at Gitmo for more than two years, and the administration hasn't given that yet, let alone their names, ages, etc. If the media hadn't 'crawled up their ass' about kids under the age of fifteen being held their, they'd never had admitted that. The Supreme Court (you know, the ones who made W president?) are currently crawlking up their ass about their treatment of Gitmo prsioners, and even THAT isn't making them move muich faster. So don't for an instant believe the typical Bush fiction about the liberal press and his ass.

The so called liberal press gave the whole WMD case a free pass, up to and including the so called 'liberal' NY times, which devoted more thn three times the coverage to apologizing about Jason blair as they did to recanting printing WMD stories without any investigation at all.

As for the damned if you do damned if you don't, I can see how you see it that way but I think if you scratch the surface of that argument it's crap. Keeping the names of the energy task force secret? No damn reason at all. Keeping all information about all Gitmo 'detainees' secret? Maybe some arguable reasons, but since the Britts released the gitmo detainees we sent them in less than twenty four hours, I think it could be a case of overzealousness at best, cobvering up mistakes at worst. Like I said, arguable. Keeping Jose Padilla incimunicado for months? Arguable but pretty unconstitutional. Keeping the name of a suspect ACTIVELY YIELDING USUABLE INFORMATION TO OUR ALLIES, MAKING ACTUALL CAPTURE OF ACTUAL AL QUAEDA MEMBERS POSSIBLE? See, I think that one, you might keep under your hat and if the big bad media makes it tough on you, well, you're the COMMANDER IN FUCKING CHIEF and you suck it up, even if it costs you politically. And maybe, maybe if this dministration hadn't been so hyper secretive about every last detail of everything connected to anything ever, maybe the big bad villanous press wouldn't be so quick to accuse them of being full of shit.

And you know what? Damned if you do damned if you don't is a fairly good job description for Comander in Chief of the World's Last Superpower, and it's the job of a free press to make it hard on the President, a job they haven't done at all until very recently. A free press is supposed to keep the President as close to the straight and narrow as they can, not cheerlead for him.

They fucked up. They zigged when they should have zagged. They found it politically expedient to release a useful name, just the way they've found it politically expedient to keep secrets which are probably a lot less important to national security, like where Chenney goes Duck Hunting or Multiple Bypass Recieving when he's supposed to be working. If they get pummeled for it, that's what the press is SUPPOSED to do to the Boss when he fucks up. But I'm sure it wasn't his fault. It never is. I'm sure it was some unknown way down the line and it wasn't his supervisors fault, and no one in chrge of anyone could possibly be at fault.

Maybe Lyndy England did it.

[mburbank]

Washington Post Says Iraq Coverage Flawed


WASHINGTON - Editors at The Washington Post acknowledge they underplayed stories questioning President Bush's claims of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein in the months leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.


In the story published Thursday in the newspaper, Post media critic Howard Kurtz writes that editors resisted stories that questioned whether Bush had evidence that Saddam was hiding weapons of mass destruction.

"We did our job but we didn't do enough, and I blame myself mightily for not pushing harder," assistant managing editor Bob Woodward says in the story. "We should have warned readers we had information that the basis for this was shakier" than many believed.

Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks told Kurtz, "There was an attitude among editors: Look, we're going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?"

Executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. said, "We were so focused on trying to figure out what the administration was doing that we were not giving the same play to people who said it wouldn't be a good idea to go to war and were questioning the administration's rationale."

In his more-than-3,000-word story, Kurtz writes, "The result was coverage that, despite flashes of groundbreaking reporting, in hindsight looks strikingly one-sided at times."

A number of critics have faulted the American news media for not being more skeptical about the Bush administration's claims before the beginning of the war in March 2003. In the year and a half since Saddam was toppled, U.S. troops have yet to discover any weapons of mass destruction.

In a study published in March by the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, researchers wrote: "If the White House acted like a WMD story was important, ... so too did the media. If the White House ignored a story (or an angle on a story), the media were likely to as well."

In May, The New York Times criticized its own reporting on Iraq, saying it found "a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been" and acknowledging it sometimes "fell for misinformation" from exile Iraqi sources.






I guess The Bushies miss the good old days when the big bad media wasn't so mean and nasty.

[Preechr]

Well, Lyndie did just about everything else, so....

National Security =~ Proprietary Information =~ "We just don't want to tell you, Ok?"

The job of the press is to figure out WHY they don't want to tell people stuff, and I'm wondering if there are any members of the fourth estate still capable of sorting that out. Is politics, or any any industry for that matter, possible to understand in full detail by anyone not directly, vocationally, involved? Do we have a political class, or need one? Razor's edge specialization has changed education and employment in recent history... If politics has followed the same path, what does that say about the job of the media? Are the press doomed to be political play-things from now on?

It's funny to watch media industry codgers look down their noses at blogging and the internet in this sort of light...

[conus]

So they're redeemed now? I read that article this morning. Hard not to since it was on the front page. I was reminded of fundamentalist Christians like Charles Colson, who decide to commit crimes, commit them, confess and are then forgiven by Jesus.

I wonder if this means the press will be more "left" in the future. I sure hope so. I really look foreward to opening my mainstream newspaper to the Labor Section.