Campaigns Wary About October Surprise

Makoto916 writes "CNN.com has an article on how both campaigns are speculating on what the so called "October Surprise" is going to be. From the capture of Bin Laden, to the economy falling through the floor, just about everything is considered. "

Comments

Didn't you know?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the capture of Bin Laden, to the economy falling through the floor, just about everything is considered.

They've already caught Bin Laden, they've just been holding him in secret so they could announce his 'sudden capture' a week before the elections.
/tinfoilmode

Seriously though, when Saddam got picked up a year ago I was surprised that they didn't actually try this using him. I guess they needed to announce a victory at that point in the war, despite a boogeyman on the loose being better for controlling the populace than one in jail. Speaking of which, we havn't heard a word about him since his capture, maybe the show trial starts just in time for the election?

Re:Didn't you know?

[Anonymous Coward]

> My personal hypothesis: Osama is dead. He hasn't
> starred in any videos

Actually, I think part of the reason for this is that:

1) the CIA constantly analyses the videos (and audios) for signs of where they were shot. The next time you watch a movie, try to figure out where it's actually shot (instead of where they movie producers want you to think it's shot). If you put any care into analysing what in the audio and video of the movie (and what's missing), you'd at least be able to get a very good idea where it could be shot.

2) Osama is *tall*. He sticks out like a sore thumb in an arab crowd. He'd be easily found, even if he had plastic surgery.

These two facts conspire against Osama. If the CIA can get an approximate idea where Osama is (through his broadcasts), catching him will only be a matter of time. Osama knows this, so he's letting his second in command (who blends into an arab crowd easily) do his dirty work.

Osama is a no dummy. I wouldn't be surprised if Osama is in the last place you'd expect him. For all we know he's hiding in plain sight. He could be "working" in New York as a taxi driver. Yes it is far fetched, but you have to admit that it an inocious way of talking to operatives who act as passengers.

Re:Didn't you know?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Osama bin Laden, contrary to rumor, never made it out of Tora Bora. I had the chance to interview some of the SF soldiers who were there --there were about two dozen of them. Everything that moved got bombed. Everything that had a heat signature got bombed. Everything that set off the interferometers got bombed. Everything that didn't move or have a heat signature or set off the interferometers got bombed. The area was enclosed with a hard perimeter, meaning that some human being somewhere had real-time eyeballs on every square foot of that perimeter during the entire operation, either from the ground or from the air via loitering aircraft or Predators. Nobody got out.

When the troops went in to clear the caves, they didn't find bodies. They didn't even find pieces of bodies. They found fragments. A piece of jawbone with a molar in it, a fingertip, a scrap of skin with some hair attached. It was awe-inspiring and terrifying.

The idea that Osama bin Laden and his cadre just slipped out the back door with a vehicle and enough supplies to get them out of the mountains and into Pakistan is laughable in the extreme.

Why does the administration not mention this? Well, they have, indirectly, but why not come right out and say so? The reason there wasn't a screaming press release and banner headlines the next day is that we have no DNA from Osama bin Laden so there's no way for us to positively identify any of the human remains recovered as being from him. Even if we ruled out all the remains recovered, that still wouldn't be conclusive because lots and lots of men were essentially pulverized during the bombing, leaving nothing large enough to recover.

So because we can't conclusively prove that we got him, we have to concede the possibility that he might have clicked his heels together and said "there's no place like Islamabad." It's im-fucking-possible ...but it's still possible. You know what I mean?

So instead we go with indirect evidence. Has Osama bin Laden been seen since December 2001? No. Has he been heard? No. (There were some audiotapes. Some were obviously older than 12/01. Some were recorded by persons other than bin Laden. None were both contemporaneous and genuine.) Has he communicated in any way that we could intercept? No, and we can intercept anything from smoke signals to a whisper in a Jakarta nightclub. Has he given any orders, participated in any summits, done --in short --any of the things he did regularly prior to 12/01? No.

He has, in other words, disappeared from the face of the earth. For nearly three years. Which, if you know about bin Laden's personality, is something that he would have a very hard time accomplishing if he were still corporeal and animate.

Osama bin Laden is dead.

Definitely

[vijaya_chandra]

From the capture of Bin Laden, to the economy falling through the floor, just about everything is considered.

Ms.Benajir Bhutto, the ex-PM of Pakistan had already claimed that Laden's hiding in the house of the president of Pakistan.
So the first surprise mentioned is definitely going to be true.

The second!! It can't be true. My personal fortune teller says my earnings from the stocks I hold'd be atleast 2 millions in the next 3-4 months. Now that is a real reason why it can't be true

terrorist swing voters?

[AdamBa]

Half-amusing, half-scary piece from kausfiles (from back in June), speculating that different groups of terrorists might favor different candidates: Quote: "The prospect ahead of us might not be just competing ad campaigns for the U.S. presidency but competing terror campaigns for the U.S. presidency, with anti-Bush bombs going off in Baghdad and pro-Bush bombs going off in New York."

- adam

Bush - gone?

[rueger]

Ah heck - if we're talking consiracy theories, try this.

What happenes to the election of a terrorist attack takes out George W? Do you still go to the polls? Do you get Cheney by defualt? And how long could he delay the election before going foward?

And does anyone think that he hasn't already considered the possibility and planned for it?

A quick thought.

[ImaLamer]

First, let me say I'm as liberal as they come and voting for Kerry. No sense in you trying to guess which side I sit on.

Okay, that being said, I would think that the news of a capture on Osama would actually hurt George W. Bush somewhat. I know a lot of people, undecided types, who think that Bush already failed when it came to capturing Bin Laden. If he was on ice somewhere and came out of the closet now it would be obvious to most that it was all just a conspiracy.

Furthermore, if Osama was "captured" between now and the election people like myself would just point out that Bush did good and I would tell people that Bush did his job and now we don't need him anymore.

I scares me to think that people would actually credit Bush with an Osama capture. He, himself, did nothing - it would all be the work of troops or foreign fighters. Seems to me that the blame for failure always goes to the guy on top but the credit is given to the men who were actually responsible. Look at Iraq. People blame all of the bad things on Saddam, not his henchmen who enforced his policies.

Just thinking... not trying to prove a point.

Re:A quick thought.

[sg3000]

> people would actually credit Bush with an Osama capture. He,
> himself, did nothing - it would all be the work of troops or
> foreign fighters

I'm sure you didn't mean the past tense.

My understanding is that we have few, if any, troops actively searching for Osama bin Laden. During active military options, we had only 12,000-15,000 troops in Afghanistan (as opposed to more than 140k in Iraq). The Bush administration has outsourced that job to Pakistan, which is disturbing. As Bill Clinton said in August, "Why did we put our No. 1 security threat in the hands of the Pakistanis, with us playing the supporting role, and put all our military resources into Iraq -- which was I think at best our No. 5 security threat?"

Bush moved many of the Arab-speaking translators from the Osama search efforts and put them in Iraq. Bob Graham said that General Tommy Franks lamented the fact that predator drone craft were being shifted towards Iraq as early as February 2002 [Source: Miami Times, September 5, 2004].

So if any U.S. troops are left looking for Osama, and they find him, it will be in spite of Bush, not because of him.

Then who was on the planes to Pakistan?

[leftie]

You are wrong. I don't know if OBL is alive, but there were abundant survivors from the caves of Tora Bora who were allowed through the lines of the warlords and were flown out of Afghanistan to Pakistan by Pakistani ISI. There were more than 1000 Al Queda and Taliban troops flown out by Pakistani ISI.

Also, the SpecOps soldiers would not know what was happened on the front lines. US SpecOps personnel were withdrawn from the front lines when the warlords took over the fight at Tora Bora.

Bush or Kerry getting killed very unlikely

[jgardn]

The last thing Bush wants is for Kerry to get shot before the elections; the same goes for Kerry towards Bush. Why is that? It is because if that were to happen, we would have a civil war on our hands, with extremists from both sides of the aisle shooting at each other.

These four candidates (Bush, Cheney, Kerry, Edwards) are protected by the US Military. They are the single most important target to defend.

It is critical to our union that the presidential candidates be elected by the people, not appointed by natural disasters or conspiracies.

didn't Osama need a dialysis machine?

[taxman_10m]

I find it very hard to believe that he has survived this long and crossed as many snow covered mountains as he did to get to his current possible location all while carrying a dialysis machine. It seems more reasonable to me that we bunker busted whatever cave he was hiding out at in Afghanistan and neither us nor his follows will ever find his remains.

Price of oil.

[Masker]

I actually think that a major drop in the price of oil & subsequent uptick in the stock market is a possible "October Surprise". Why would they do this?

o Oil is at the 20-year high, ~$50/barrel.
o Prince Bandar bin Sultan has already said (though long enough ago that people have forgotten) he'll step up production to cut prices for the election.
o Even a small drop in oil prices will cause the stock markets to rise.

It's a question of timing, I guess, when to drop prices so that everyone gets a nice gas-pump price reduction, but I'm waiting for it to happen.

Imagine if prices went back down to ~$40/barrel: stock market up, gas prices down & still ~$10/barrel up from a year ago. <sarcasm>Everyone wins!</sarcasm>

Badnarik as the otober surprise.....

[isotope23]

I think Badnarik's campaign is going to throw some battelground states to kerry, and let him win.

The interesting thing is the main stream media and polling is either prohibiting his name being mentioned, and/or not including him in the polls.
I saw this for myself, as the other night CNN had Penn Jillette on live in Vegas. Although he has publicly endorsed Badnarik, he did not say his name on the air, (although he hinted at it) Big deal you say?

well apparently Fox has prohibited its guests from mentioning him:

http://www.registerguard.com/news/2004/09/26/ed. co l.nathan.0926.html

here is the relevant part :

"My friend Dean Ahmad, former treasurer of the national Libertarian Party and a representative of Muslims for Badnarik, was invited to appear on Fox News' ``O'Reilly Factor,'' but was told by the producers not to mention Badnarik's name on the air. "

Now I am not saying conspiracy, but news networks are supposed to be impartial, and what could be more partisan than stopping guests from mentioning a presidential candidate who is on the ballot in 49 states?

I wish someone could get ahold of Penn and verify whether or not he was prohibited from mentioning Badnariks name...

Re:So I guess you know better than the CIA

[overunderunderdone]

You say the audio tapes aren't genuine? I guess you know better than the CIA and the rest of the world's intelligence agencies, because they say he is alive.

No, as a matter of fact they don't. They *believe* the tapes are genuine, but to quote the CIA press release "the poor quality of the tape made it impossible to verify it was bin Laden's voice with 100 percent certainty." Of course finding WMD in Iraq was a "slam dunk", so take the CIA's testimony for what it's worth.

Outside voice experts have concluded that it is NOT genuine. However it is an *extremely* poor quality recording so their methods can't conclude for certain that it is a fake. Of course that cuts the other way too. Those that think it's a fake see the extremely poor quality as an argument in their favor... An impostor would intentionally use poor quality to confound accurate analysis.

Without any absolute proof the CIA and the administration are operating under the assumption that he is alive. But the theory that he is in fact dead, and the tapes are fakes while at odds with the official policy has plenty of adherents. The parent poster overstated the case... we KNOW for a certain fact that a significant number of Al Queada escaped from Tora Bora, but on the other hand we know that an even larger number did NOT. The fact that Bin Laden has not shown his face despite the huge benefit it would be to him to prove to the world that he is alive and operating is awfully suggestive.

His last known location was subjected to heavy bombing shortly after his presence there was confirmed (by radio intercepts). On top of that he was a very sick man in very arduous circumstances without access to the medical care his kidney condition required. The only subsequent proof we have of his continued existence is a very poor quality recording whose authenticity is debated by the experts and unprovable either way. It's possible he's still alive, but I tend to think it's more likely that he is dead.