The Art of Politics

Get A Clue

Blessed with perfect hindsight, Pinkerton says it was Bin Laden in the Trade Towers with the Airliner...

Perhaps the sickliest polemic written yet, this Newsday column is a new low in intellectual dishonesty.

At every turn this ill-informed rant either misrepresents the facts or requires a carnival funhouse mirror in order to warp appearances. Japan determined to attack the US? This lame attempt at equivalence? Japan had not attacked the United States prior, whereas Al Qaeda had a long history of open warfare. From declaring the PDB memo a "blunt warning" to somehow interpreting Bin Laden's "determination" as specific actionable intelligence, this screed comes off like the guy at the end of the movie who blithely remarks how it should have been obvious whodunit. With hindsight, claims of the blindingly obvious come easy, as well as claims to have been able to find the needle in the stack of needles. Since it was so clearly spelled out, it surely was a mistake not to abandon all overseas intelligence and only focus on this particular assessment of Bin Laden's "determination" - cancel the surveillance overseas boys, don't bother with the suitcase nukes or bioweapons concerns...

"Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside The United States" - to proclaim this a warning of any specificity requires the belief that the reader doesn't consider it outright obvious.

The heroic depiction of Ben-Veniste, so cleverly tricking Rice into betraying the title of a classified memo - if only Robert Novak could have tricked his source into giving up Valerie Plame's name on national television, I mean as long as we're scorecarding pure genius in handing out classified information. I'd give cash to find whatever prattle was dished out on that topic.

It's clear the author has a mind of concrete - all mixed up and permanently set. When the next ads for Bush show the WTC, and the Republican convention comes around showing the President at Ground Zero, I sure hope Pinkerton has his webcam set up so we can see the vein in his forehead pop.

Posted by MEC2 at April 11, 2004 02:01 AM