Following up on an earlier post, reader R.M. suggested I missed the really interesting part of Dick Cheney’s interview with WDAY’s Scott Hennen. In retrospect, R.M. is probably right.
Q: Are the terrorists trying to influence our election in your view?
Cheney: I think they’re very much aware of our political calendar here, I really do. And when you see the kinds of things that happened this year, for example, when the Democratic Party in Connecticut purged Joe Lieberman, in effect, drummed him out of the party on the grounds that he had supported the President in the global war on terror, that sends a message to the terrorists overseas that their basic strategy of trying to break the will of the American people may, in fact, work. [..]
Q: I have a Pentagon source that tells me there are websites out there that they’ve just recently translated that actually refer to the election and ask for an up-tick in violence to try and influence the election, is that accurate?
Cheney: I wouldn’t be surprised. It sounds right to me.
Do you ever get the impression that these guys just aren’t well?
Right, terrorists are monitoring Joe Lieberman’s race in Connecticut, and despite the fact that al Qaeda believes that “prolonging the war is in [their] interest,” they’re somehow looking forward to Ned Lamont’s victory. And, of course, it’s entirely believable that Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon has intercepted recently-intercepted communiqués suggesting a connection between terrorism and the midterm elections — but Defense Department officials only leaked word to a talk show host in North Dakota.
I feel sorry for parody writers who have to try and exaggerate this nonsense into something farcical.
For what it’s worth, Cheney’s argument seems to be the Bush gang’s favorite — terrorists are practically Charlie Cooks in the Middle East. From just the last week:
Cheney: “[T]he terrorists are actually involved and want to involve themselves in our electoral process, which must mean they want a change.”
Bush: “There’s certainly a stepped up level of violence, and we’re heading into an election.”
Tony Snow: “[I]t is possible that [terrorists] are trying to use violence right now as a way of influencing the elections.”
Rumsfeld: “Here they are, getting up every day saying, ‘We’ve got an election in two weeks in America, gang, and we want to change horses over there because we don’t like the folks we’re having to deal with now; they’re a little tough on us. So let’s get out there and let’s make some noise.'”
How painfully ridiculous. First, Bush has already admitted that there’s no intelligence to suggest that terrorists are trying to influence the elections.
And second, if terrorists were intent on affecting our campaign cycle, who, exactly, would they want to help? Al Qaeda wants the war in Iraq to continue, the RNC is paying considerable amounts of money to publicize enemy propaganda film, and the CIA has intelligence showing that bin Laden has timed messages to help Bush politically, for fear that a Democrat might undermine al Qaeda’s gameplan.
Maybe we should just start calling the GOP the Manchurian Party?