At the Corner, Steve Hayward writes:
Although I haven’t seen this anywhere yet (not that I’m looking especially hard), I’m sure there’s a right-winger or disappointed birther out there somewhere who thinks we’ve known about bin Laden’s whereabouts all along, and that President Obama wanted to knock him off in the fall of next year as the ultimate October Surprise, but had to move up the timetable because of WikiLeaks, or a crease in Hillary’s pantsuit, or something. Although the White House isn’t helping itself very much with its serial fumbles in the aftermath, I hope this particular conspiracy doesn’t catch on.
I do recall that there were a lot of folks on the left who believed this about President Bush in 2004. What Christopher Hitchens wrote about the matter then applies now (with “Axelrod” swapped out for “Rove”):
AdvertisementWhat will it take to convince these people that this is not a year, or a time, to be dicking around? Americans are patrolling a front line in Afghanistan, where it would be impossible with 10 times the troop strength to protect all potential voters on Oct. 9 [the date of Afghan elections in 2004] from Taliban/al-Qaida murder and sabotage. We are invited to believe that these hard-pressed soldiers of ours take time off to keep Osama Bin Laden in a secret cave, ready to uncork him when they get a call from Karl Rove? For shame.
Recall this infamous moment involving Larry King and Walter Cronkite, a few years before the latter passed away, and the former retired from his chat show. (Video captured by the Media Research Center.) For shame indeed:
KING: Walter Cronkite, the legendary journalist and old friend, a great man in the history of broadcast journalists, and maybe the most revered person ever to go on camera. Let’s first play a little bit of this tape, in which bin Laden, released today, directly addresses the American people. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OSAMA BIN LADEN (through translator): Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands. Any nation that does not attack us will not be attacked.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: OK, Walter. What do you make of this?
CRONKITE: Well, I make it out to be initially the reaction that it’s a threat to us, that unless we make peace with him, in a sense, we can expect further attacks. He did not say that precisely, but it sounds like that when he says…
KING: The warning.
CRONKITE: What we just heard. So now the question is basically right now, how will this affect the election? And I have a feeling that it could tilt the election a bit. In fact, I’m a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing.
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Plus ça change: Greg Pollowitz responds to Hayward, “Your right-winger/birther with the theory that we’ve know bin Laden’s whereabouts all along is named Michael Moore.” As Pollowitz notes, Moore will be on CNN tonight with Piers Morgan, King’s successor, to discuss what the Rhetorican dubs “Fahrenheit 2011.”
Don’t forget about Madeline Albright conspiracy theories about the capture of Saddam Hussein.
Truth be told, the whole thing as a botched October surprised makes sense. Look at that situation room picture. Note that Obama is NOT seated at the head of the table in the big chair. He was yanked off a golf course (and is still wearing his golf shirt in the picture) without even a chance to change clothes. If he had been there at the beginning of the meeting, he’d have been in the big chair with Biden to his right. The fact that he’s not suggests that the internet accounts of Panetta making the call, not Obama, ring true.
I think that Obama knew about Bin Laden’s location and was planning to take him out next year as an October surprise to get the voters’ attention off the lousy economy ($6 gas, 10% unemployment and inflation, etc.). His advisers know it’s not going to improve between now and then, and will in fact get worse. There’s going to be a poop sandwich on the voters’ plate, but they figured if they put an Osama cookie with it, the voters would gobble that up and vote for Obama, forgetting about the economic poop sandwich on the plate. Now that’s out the window, because of Panetta’s call.
After the Tet offensive in Vietnam, good ol’ Wally opened his sagging jowls and told America that we had lost the war, even though the offensive turned disaterous for the North Vietnamese, who were pushed back and defeated at every point they assaulted, suffering tremendous loses.
Thanks to the other media vermin of his ilk (and the list is disgustingly long) in the liberal agenda-driven media, The American public has been duped into accepting a belief that we are somehow nationally guilty for the freedoms and prosperity we enjoy(ed).
Their propaganda victory in Vietnam convinced these self-appointed policy thugs that they, not the people, know what’s best for us.
With unlimited finacial support from scum Eurotrash like George Soros, our media overseers are determined to to dismantle and trash the America our Founding Fathers envisioned and our forefather fought to win and preserve.
To paraphrase “Absolute power of the press corrupts absolutely.”
Mr. Hayward and his fellow regressives should be so lucky as to have us right-wingers engaged in Obama/bin laden conspiracies. The president has totally lost his mojo. Who cares whether he could cause the death of bin laden on command. We’re now engaged in arguing the best candidate for the next presidential election. Unlike the looney left we’re not consumed with every thought being of what’s-his-name, the president-for-now.
Obama isn’t all that interested in foreign affairs – recall that he wants to turn the US into some other country, and that can only be accomplished domestically (or by overwhelming invasion from outside, which isn’t in the cards, even after Iran goes nuclear with that technology it’s developing for, ahh, peaceful purposes). I doubt that it would even occur to Obama to pull a foreign affairs success out of his hat as an October Surprise. He’s still counting on “green jobs” or some such unicorn-fart magic to save his presidency.
As things are progressing now, the only time Obama seems to be remotely worthy of the office he occupies is when he channels his perpetual nemesis, Bush. This is not the sort of thing of which great campaigns are made – “Sure I’m a girly-man, but vote for me anyway, on the off chance that I’ll occasionally act like some other more successful guy!”