Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Iraqi terrorists and the SOTU, continued

Yesterday, we discussed the report of Iraqi terrorists poised to strike in the United States, a fiendish plot supposedly uncovered when certain documents were captured. Bob Fertik develops the thesis that these documents -- which no outsider has yet seen -- constitute a Rovian trick, developed in time for the State of the Union speech.
After reviewing the three published versions of this story (below), it's perfectly clear there are no credible facts - no independently verified documents, no identified witnesses, and no suspects. The whole story hinges on a single document, which was not seen by any of the reporters and probably does not exist.

Doesn't anyone in the Corporate Media remember the utterly bogus Niger forgery (created by Michael Ledeen and his Italian intelligence cronies) that helped launch the war - and led to the Wilson-Plame scandal that put Scooter Libby on trial?

Even Dan Rather had the journalistic integrity to publish his source documents on the Internet. Too bad Rather was fed forgeries by Karl Rove via Roger Stone and his wife Nydia, who posed as the mysterious "Lucy Ramirez" who delivered the forgeries to truthteller Bill Burkett. (Rove's authorship explains why the Bush Administration never prosecuted Burkett or anyone else for forging federal documents, ignoring the urgent pleas of rightwing bloggers.)

Also note the vague references to "suspects" in all the reports. Were any "suspects" captured or even identified? Of course not - they never existed.
The same thought occurred to Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast:
It's just too convenient. The ONLY times we have terrorist threats or reports of attacks planned are when the Crawford Caligula is on the ropes. Here we are, a day before he has to deliver the State of the Union Address to a hostile Congress, the bloodbath in Iraq gets worse by the say, surge or no surge, and all of a sudden, we not only have what is purported to be a new al-Qaeda video, but suddenly there's a report that Iraqi insurgents had been planning attacks inside the US...
I can't help but recall the heady days of 2004, when the cable news channels regaled us nearly every day with new terror alerts. Yellow...orange...scarlet...crimson...

And how many terror alerts have we had since the close of that campaign...?

As you search your memories, you may want to recall John Hurt's magnificently evil line in V for Vendetta:
"I want this country to realize that we stand on the edge of oblivion. I want everyone to remember *why* they need us!"

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think you are correct Joseph. #2 Al queda is out pimping Bush too. The place that picked up that tape is kinda interesting... a DC organization called SITE. All bios and time lines are hazy on their website but why would al queda give an American organization a tape? Don't the real ones use Al Jazzera?
And did al queda who we never hear about until Dick Cheney goes on tv, really blow up a helicopter in Iraq?
I certainly hope Rove had nothing to do with murdering MORE Americans.
And while everyone is watching war war war, the Medicare drug companies that paid for meds last year are denying ALL expensive drugs.

Anonymous said...

The color alerts were nothing more than Pavlonian conditioning of citizens. Some responded as hoped by the admin, others didn't. A poorly conducted experiment on a national scale.

Anonymous said...

But the Bad Guys will kill us here if we don't send more troops to get killed there! And Saddam's hiding WMDs in his coffin! And Al Kayda knows where we keep our airplanes! And Al Zarqawi's planning death & destruction!

If you're not with us, you must be too smugly sane.

Anonymous said...

Just more agent provocateurs being paid by shadowy fascists to yell boo at America IMHO.

Anonymous said...

Yes, this will fit nicely into the "War on terra" speech I think we'll hear again tonight. It's the only way to steer clear of talking too much about the failed policy in Iraq while still maintaining the false corollary of launching preemptive attacks "over there," so they don't attack us "over here." So sad and so very dangerous.

Kim in PA

Anonymous said...

WHY IS THIS JERK ALWAYS STANDING IN FRONT OF STAR OF DAVID SYMBOLS?

Anonymous said...

I second what Bozos said about Rathergate. Also -- I spent enough time staring at those damn National Guard letters myself, and reading every analysis I could find of them, to know there was no way they could have been produced on a computer.

It would have taken someone with a 35 year old IBM Executive typewriter in working order, plus a copy machine of similar vintage, to come up with all the small irregularities and variations those documents display. And even then, it would have required more time and effort than even Karl Rove is likely to have been willing to put into it not to have left traces of the deception.

The documents were real enough -- it was only the trail that was corrupted.

Joseph Cannon said...

I should have emphasized that Fertik's theory of Rathergate was his own (not that I necessarily think he's wrong). I devoted a fair amount a time to those memos, in the days when few read this blog. And my own conclusion is that they were not produced with Microsoft Word, as alleged. They COULD have been done on a computer -- you can do amazing stuff with Photoshop and a good fontmaker program. But starrout's theory makes sense.

Peter of Lone Tree said...

"And Al Kayda knows where we keep our airplanes!" -- Surge Protector

Fear not, Surge Protector. We have a former member of the Texas Air National Guard protecting us. And not one bomb was dropped by the Viet Cong anywhere in the state of Texas during the entire Vietnam War.

Anonymous said...

To the best of knowledge, not a single claim of the documents being forged has stood up to scrutiny. Not one. It's a shame that even left-wing bloggers were convinced by the barking dogs of the right and continue to spread the myth. IMO they were real.