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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. "
What would surprise me is if Bush and Kerry jointly announced that they have both been living a lie, and are both gay lovers. Also, there'd have to be a male intern coming forward claiming sexual harassment.
Anything else would not be a surprise.
When will Windows be ready for the desktop?
I'm not paranoid enough to believe that the US gov't is holding Mr. bin Laden at an undisclosed location, waiting for the right moment.
OTOH, I would have no problem in believing that the amount of forces dedicated to his capture has been stepped up in the last few weeks.
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.
...but it's still possible. You know what I mean?
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
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.
I write in my journal
> Osama bin Laden is dead.
...
What's scary is that Osama bin Laden has the capability to speak to us from the dead!
Because Colin Powell told a senate panel in 2003 that Osama bin Laden was still alive, and the hunt for him continues, although Bush has outsourced the search effort to Pakistan for some reason.
The fact is on September 17, 2001, Bush told the American people "I want justice. And there's an old poster out West, I recall, that says, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive.'" [Source: ABC News, Sept 17, 2001]
In March of 2003, Bush significantly reversed this position, saying, "I don't know where he is. I have no idea and I really don't care. It's not that important." [referenced in the Boston Globe, 6/5/2004]
Since then, Bush worked to forget Osama bin Laden, or at least get the American people to. As was reported in the Washington Post on Aug 12, 2004, since the beginning of 2003, Bush mentioned Osama bin Laden's name on only 10 occasions, but not at any length. In contrast, he mentioned Saddam Hussein's name on more then 300 occasions.
In fact, during the first Presidential debate. Kerry talked directly about Osama bin Laden, which forced Bush to finally do so.
===================
BUSH: Never...when I was running -- when we had the debate in 2000, never dreamt I'd be doing that.
But the enemy attacked us, Jim
KERRY: Jim, the president just said something extraordinarily revealing and frankly very important in this debate. In answer to your question about Iraq and sending people into Iraq, he just said, "The enemy attacked us."
Saddam Hussein didn't attack us. Osama bin Laden attacked us.
===================
Clearly, Bush's scheme of trying to get the public to forget about Osama bin Laden who attacked us on 9/11 unraveled during the debate.
As for an October surprise, if Bush has avoided capturing Osama bin Laden in order to score political points just before the election, then I can think of nothing more despicable. That would be politicizing the 9/11 attacks in a way that I think even Bush is incapable of.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Some facts about the Spanish election: it was a close race before the attack, due in part of the opposition to the war from the Spanish people and thus opposed to the government being part of the coalition and the most important fact and probably decisive factor: the government lied and blamed it right away on ETA, the Basque separatist group, which has blood on its hands but was never involved in such a terrorist attack targetting random civilians.
So the US interpretation that this is just Spaniards caving in to terrorists is wrong and is just another example of how you don't get the rest of the world and this is in part due to the US media not doing a good enough job going past he sound bites.
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.
The audio messages he has taped since the Tora Bora bombing have been confirmed to be Bin Laden's voice. Confirmed by the CIA, the world media, other intelligence agencies, confirmed by the Bin Laden family members and captured Al Quida members.
It's provable that some of those messages were taped long after 12/01. Because they mention events that occurred as recently as the past year.
It's also been surmised that Bin Laden got into Pakistan months prior to the US bombings of Tora Bora. He was given months of warning to move, many suspect that's exactly what he did.
General Tommy Franks said recently that there was no firm intelligence that Bin Laden was ever in Tora Bora. Bomb it to hell and back, how could it kill him if he wasn't there?
Why can't he be found? The intelligence community has suggested he uses notes, passed hand to hand, and his taped recordings in order to communicate with his followers. They say he could be in Pakistani badlands or possibly Cashmere. Either location would making finding him neigh on impossible.
There's a big difference between wishful thinking and facts on the ground. Wish him dead with the rest of us, but the facts and most experts believe Osama Bin Laden is still alive.