Vote Kerry

In relation to estimation of the Bush administration, the notion of “rock bottom” is a scale error. There is no lower bound.

OK, good point rd.

You know, if you wanted to go down the rabbit hole with this one, it wouldn’t take much effort.

Just assume that Khan’s value as a source had dropped, or his handlers had decided it was time to bring him in, or his jig was up, for whatever other reason. It then makes a lot of political sense for The Administration to “accidentally” leak both his name and his informant status.

Why?

Well, because this “blown source” story would then give the White House a very good excuse to refuse to go into detail when issuing future Terror Alerts.

Right? Right?

Debunking this particular bit of conspiracy-mongering is left as an exercise for the reader.

I’m wondering about the incompetence angle (assuming the reports are true). Here’s the seed of an idea: the initial reports seem to have named this person as only “Khan”. But Khan is a common name in Pakistan.

This scenario comes to mind:

a) an unnamed administration official is pressed for a name, comes up with “Khan” on the spur of the moment, and pats himself on his back for his cleverness. Beltway nookie points!

b) “You idiot Bob, his name really _is_ Khan.” “Ooops. Sorree.”

c) an unnamed official in Pakistani intelligence reads the paper, does a spit-take. “Okay, okay, what can we do to save this situation?” Conveniently the phone rings.

C.

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American hostages beheaded under Carter: 0

Wait a second: According to Cole, one scenario is as follows: the Bush administration reacts to the intelligence by raising the terror alerts; the president’s political opponents, including, I think, most everyone here at CT, castigate the president for the decision, charging him with playing politics, though they don’t have the slightest bit of evidence for the charge; the administration, concerned that the terror alerts aren’t thought credible by the American people (due in large part to the influence of the administration’s opponents attacks, responds by revealing the intelligence that led to the terror alert. This last part, Cole tells us, is pure politics, and for that Bush shouldn’t be reelected.

I have a feeling that there’s a different story to be told about the last time wag the dog accusations were made. The lesson of those politically opportunistic attacks–which we know now caused the Clinton administration to be more cautious in its attacks on al Qaeda, out of concern for domestic political appearnces–was that the accusations do harm to American foreign policy, and that the Republicans shouldn’t have made them.

Now, of course, the lesson is entirely different. There’s a principle here: Republicans are always wrong–as high minded as the self righteous can be Petty and small don’t adequately describe some of the critics on the scene.

And that’s without even saying that Cole likely has it wrong.

Nick lets Thomas off quite gently on this one. The way to make terror alerts credible is to issue them when threats are imminent and based on credible evidence from reliable sources, and by sharing evidence with congressional committee members from both sides of the aisle – NOT BY BURNING INTELLIGENCE SOURCES. The Admin wasn’t even going to publicize that their info was 4 years old until journalists found it out first.

The loyal opposition has an obligation to criticize the Bush regime when they are politicizing national security. As a comparison, see Ryan C. Hendrickson’s article in the Winter 2002 issue of “Armed Forces & Society”. He’s not convinced that the “wag the dog” accusations against Clinton have much merit.

It should be noted that Reuters says that “The New York Times obtained Khan’s name independently, and U.S. officials confirmed it when it appeared in the paper the next morning.” It may be that the Bush officials figured that Khan’s usefulness was already at an end, since the NYT had already done something so stupid and/or amorally calculating as to blow his cover. Belle, perhaps your post should instead be titled, “Read Newsday.”

Nick–some evidence of wrongdoing is usually required to make an accusation of wrongdoing credible. You don’t offer any evidence.

brian g– By the logic of your post, the most recent terror alert was credible. Yet so many of the administration’s critics didn’t find it credible. Why aren’t they to blame for what happened as a result of their unfounded criticisms?

Matt, as ever the queen of the non sequitur, quotes “one thing” that Nick said.

For the record, here’s what Nick said, just a bit up the page: “don’t cry wolf; don’t establish a pattern of playing the terror card at times that just coincidentally the Democrats are doing well; and don’t turn fucking terror warnings into re-election adverts for your boss.”

As it happens, I think that the accusations of wrongdoing–which, as I said, in my view require evidence–are Nick’s assertion that the current administration has “cried wolf” (that is, has lied to the citizens of this country about a threat, presumably for some benefit), and Nick’s suggestion, however coyly worded, that the current administration has used terror alerts for political gain. Boiled down, these two accusations turn out to be the same serious accusation of wrongdoing.

And there’s no evidence for it. Even now, after Matt’s interesting response.

To be perfectly clear: I don’t think that the accusation that someone used a terror alert as a “re-election advert” is an accusation of wrongdoing. (It may be an accusation that someone has poor judgment.)

Finally, it seems to me that, even though we all now realize that there’s little reason to think that US officials were responsible for the al Qaeda member’s name being published (that is, that this is all the result of some Bush administration critics overreading the evidence and overreacting), there may in some circumstances be a good reason for publishing some such information, even if it causes some harm in the war effort. Waging a successful war campaign, it seems to me, requires the government to have the confidence of the citizens. To the extent that that confidence is undermined without reason (as in this case, where some have insisted–as Nick did–that the terror alerts were orchestrated simply for political purposes), the government must weigh the two harms and make its choice.