Politics

Newsweek reports (original) that the Department of Homeland Security is looking into ways to postpone the November Presidential election in the case of an Al Qaeda attack. But the success of March’s Madrid railway bombings in influencing the Spanish elections—as well as intercepted “chatter” among Qaeda operatives—has led analysts to conclude “they want to interfere with the elections,” says one official. Forcing a delay in elections is every bit as much interference, if not more so, as an attack which causes people to change their vote. This is so obvious that I have trouble believing that it’s escaped the Bush administration. ...

Gosh, that’s unfortunate. Some of Bush’s service records were destroyed in 1996 and 1997. By accident. This should be easy enough to resolve; since Bush wasn’t the only guy whose records were lost, one assumes that there’d be an official record of the accident. Perhaps even a postmortem. Memos. That sort of thing. Except that I can’t help noticing that Lt. Colonel Bill Burkett said, in February of this year, that members of George Bush’s staff purged the National Guard files in 1997. Damned confluence of dates. Now, the records that Burkett says were destroyed were not the records that the Defense Department just admitted to destroying accidentally, so this is not exactly a smoking gun. I think the time period is still suggestive, however. If you believe Burkett, it’s not a stretch to suspect that the Texas Air National Guard was not the only organization willing to clean up Bush’s records. ...

Then, in Rwanda. Now, in Sudan. This is pretty much for me so that I don’t forget to read these regularly. On a semi-detached, attempting dispassionate note, the Rwanda blog is a new twist on the Pepys and Sei Shonagon blogs: historical events retold in the blog — dare I say it? — medium. I think it works.

On the Fourth of July, I choose to commemorate the holiday with the words of one of the very first Harvard intellectual leftists, a moonbat and a traitor if there ever was one; a man whose reputation among the ruling classes was far worse than any Moore or Chomsky. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you one of the most important men of the American Revolution, the loud-mouthed angry revolutionary, Samuel Adams. ...

Game quotes are a key part of the Ambercon experience. Thusly, my jotted notes from the weekend. They’re all funny from my perspective, and probably from the perspective of those who were in the games. Maybe not so much for others. Also my note-taking is terrible and unreliable.

I’m not so sure about this new Democrat talking point (original). “The Republican National Convention is going to feature at least three guys who aren’t exactly in lock-step with the Bushies. John McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Rudolph Giuliani are all set to get a prime time speaking slot. That’s John McCain who opposed Bush’s tax cut and has been critical on the administration’s disastrous record in Iraq, and the pro-choice Arnold and Rudy.” ...

Once again, it turns out that newly discovered WMD aren’t actually WMD after all. However, Poland and the US agree that the chaos in Iraq has resulted in a great opportunity for Al Qaeda to get access to previously unavailable Iraqi scientists with WMD know-how. Well, OK, they don’t put it precisely like that. Sixteen rocket warheads found last week in south-central Iraq by Polish troops did not contain deadly chemicals, a coalition spokesman said yesterday, but U.S. and Polish officials agreed that insurgents loyal to former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and foreign terrorist fighters are trying to buy such old weapons or purchase the services of Iraqi scientists who know how to make them. ...

Ouch.

The saga of the anonymous CIA author continues. According to the Boston Phoenix, Michael Scheuer is compelled to publish anonymously because of CIA restrictions. He’d rather let his name out, but can’t. This means I was more or less wrong in my fevered speculations a couple of weeks ago. He’s pissed off, but he’s not a kamikaze. Although I suppose if he gets fired in the next couple of months, there’s something to be said for the notion that he’s too angry to care about his career.

Nader is cozying up with the far right, yes. He’s cutting into Kerry’s support, yes. It is still wrong to play legalistic games (original) in order to keep him off the ballot (original). I don’t doubt that Nader may have violated the letter of the law in Arizona, and maybe he doesn’t yet qualify for the Florida ballot on a technicality. Great. Does that mean it’s morally right to control ballot access? Fuck no. Controlling ballot access is a method of controlling who can be elected, pure and simple. It is a way to say “minority opinions of a certain size don’t count.” I dislike Nader vastly, but let the hypocritical bastard run.