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

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

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.

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.

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.