So key Republican senators are opposed to kangaroo courts to try terrorists and enemy combatants in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. So says the Post. Good for them. And I guess it goes without saying, good for the country.
It occurred to me a couple days ago that maybe the last hail mary pass these jokers in the White House would come up with was engineering a bum’s rush October congressional debate on the rules to govern trials of captured enemy combatants and accused terrorists.
You can pretty much figure how it would work. Come up with a bill that would be pretty much impossible for Democrats to vote for. Maybe the procedure would involve allowing Dick Cheney to evaluate the evidence and determine whether a particular individual was a threat. That or perhaps ritual dunking. In any case, you intentionally write a bill that Democrats can’t stomach. Then you figure some Dems just won’t be willing to vote against it, so you split those folks off and sow dissenssion and acrimony in the opposition. Then you cue up the 30 second commercials, customizable for each candidate, ‘Terrorists are at our gates and ENTER CANDIDATE NAME HERE voted against President Bush’s terrorist punishment bill. We can’t trust ENTER CANDIDATE NAME HERE. On November 7th, vote for ENTER GOP CANDIDATE NAME HERE.‘
I can’t say I don’t think it might not be effective. But apparently it won’t be that easy for them to pull off.
I don’t know about you. I’ve been in sort of a haze. But am I wrong to think the old song and dance just isn’t quite working for them this time? I can only imagine what we’re going to see over the next two months. And fear is a powerful weapon. But somehow we seem to have arrived at the chicken with its head cut off stage of the game. As the BS gets less believeable the ante keeps getting upped until now we seem to be at the stage of an infinite regress into historical parody.
Now it’s not just the Long War and Islamofascism. But it’s fascism and communism and 1939 and the totalitarians. And it’s the Sunnis in Anbar province and al Qaida’s Iraq subsidiary and if it’s not them, the deracinated transnational terror cells than it might be the Iranian state and their quest for nuclear weapons. Either way we’ve done a great job of fighting the terrorists but things are as dangerous as they’ve ever been. And also it’s just like World War II. And the totalitarians also.
Is the jig up?
A new chapter in the federal criminal probe of House Approps chair Jerry Lewis (R-CA). Now it’s a fishy property deal tied to some folks who got some of Lewis’s famed earmark love.
Why is the FBI going after Tom DeLay’s wife? That and other news of the day in today’s Daily Muck.
Washington GOP Senate candidate McGavick returns campaign cash tied to federal bribery probe.
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Epiphany Watch: Arizona GOPers call RNC Chair Mehlman a liar.
Also in the News: rats urgently seek new marine transportion.
Maybe I’m missing something. But President Bush’s announcement today of the transfer fourteen accused terrorists from secret prisons abroad to Guantanamo Bay seems pretty elementary in terms of political strategy, no?
As we speculated last night, President Bush wants to gin up a hail mary pre-election political fight over the constitution (no pun intended) of military tribunals for accused terrorists. This election-timed stunt is intended to put fourteen faces on the president’s fight over the rules for his kangaroo courts.
So now, you’re either with Bush or you’re with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
What am I missing exactly?
Remember: It’s all about the politics.