We all know Bush is attempting to conflate what has been portrayed as a success in the war on terror with spying on Americans. The two don't really have anything to do with each other. But Bush has thrown this almost two year old story out there when the Houses of Congress are talking some pretty serious allegations against him. And of course, some media sources are carrying his water for him, working hard to portray the foiling of this plot as some kind of grand success, showing the strength of new alliances with countries we aspire to be like. This
piece from AP is an example of what I mean.
You'll notice that it provides an implied timeline. It talks about the "capture" of Khalid Sheik Mohammed in Pakistan in 2003.
One paragraph after this date is provided, the author writes about the foiling of the Malaysian plot to fly a plane into the Liberry Tower. He writes that the plot was broken up following a raid in an unnamed Southeast Asian country. He does not provide a date for this event. The implication, whether intentional or not,is that the two events are sequential, with the arrest of Mohammed coming first.
This is not what happened.
You remember this guy, dontcha?
I was genuinely happy when they caught this motherfucker in March, 2003. He was a bad man, a terrorist in search of venture capital. But then we had to go and screw that up by waterboarding him. We compounded that by holding his children. One CIA officer described them as a valuable tool to use against KSM, saying they would be the lever that broke Mohammed. Left me much disturbed and not feeling so righeous about the capture of this bad, bad guy any longer.
But, please note that KSM was captured in March, 2003.
I'm sure there is some kind of credibility to Bush's LA scare story, but the timing is damned odd. The AP story from today concludes wiht this paragraph:
Meantime, aides are denying that release of the information is aimed at shoring up support for Bush's embattled domestic eavesdropping program.
It's hilarious that "aides" are compelled to make such statements to reporters.
Today, more details of the shoe bomber hijacking into the Liberry Tower plot were released. These details reveal much about the weakness of Bush's policy on national security issues. As well, his image is weakening in regards to this, his former sole strong point in polling.
The reason this plot unraveled has no discernable relationship to Khalid Shiek Mohammed. One of the plotters turned himself into Malaysian police, in 2002:
A Malaysian recruited by al-Qaida to pilot a plane in a second wave of Sept. 11-style attacks on the United States pulled out after observing the carnage of the first assaults, Southeast Asian officials said Friday.
President Bush on Thursday disclosed an alleged plot to hijack an airliner and fly it into a skyscraper in Los Angeles. He said cooperation between Washington and several Asian countries helped expose it.
The plan never appeared close to the stage where it could be put into execution.
---
Adding details to Bush's outline, security officials and terrorism experts in Southeast Asia on Friday said Malaysian engineer Zaini Zakaria was among three men al-Qaida was preparing to take part in an attack on the U.S. West coast.
---
Zaini, who has been detained without trial in Malaysia since he surrendered in December 2002, told Malaysian interrogators that he "didn't want that kind of Jihad," an official familiar with the interrogation told the AP.
A senior police officer involved in the interrogation, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Zaini told his Malaysian interrogators "he was not prepared to die as a martyr, so he backed out."
---
Zaini, a native of the northeastern state of Kelantan, was doing some odd jobs before he surrendered to Malaysian authorities in Kelantan in December 2002, apparently because he was worried about an ill relative, said his former lawyer Saiful Izham Ramli.
---
He said Zaini was principally wanted by authorities for his links with Jemaah Islamiyah, a common charge for which scores of suspects are being held in a high-security prison in Kamunting under a law that allows indefinite detention without trial.
So what did we learn here? Zaini, in December 2002, turned himself in. He was wanted not for planning a terrorist plot, but for being a member of an Islamic revolutionary group. He revealed the bombing plot during interrogation. Was this just blind luck on the part of the Malaysians? Or did they have information on Zaini's involvement that prompted them to question him about the plot? The AP says that international spying by the US was involved in breaking up this plot, but I just don't see it.
The AP reporting on this portray's Bush as taking responsibility for the foiling of the plot is curious:
"It took the combined efforts of several countries to break up this plot," Bush said. "By working together, we stopped a catastrophic attack on our homeland."
Bush clearly takes credit here for breaking up a plot that was probably no longer viable. And why the association with Khalid Sheik Mohammed in some of their reporting on this?
I think Bush's administrative team is running on bullshit fumes. Throwing a bunch of dirt in the air to obscure legislative scrutiny into his spying programs. The Bush team is desperate and gasping.