in order to boost bush's chance for election in 2004, republicans are planning to engineer another major terrorist attack on US soil, according to prominent conservative columnist
bill safire in his predictions for 2004 published yesterday:
13. The "October surprise" affecting our election will be (a) the capture of bin Laden in Yemen; (b) the daring escape of Saddam;
(c) a major terror attack in the U.S.; (d) finding a buried bag of anthrax in Tikrit.
My picks: ...13. (c) ...
further, safire's answer to a separate question concerning israel was qualified with the disclaimer
"This last one is pure, unsourced thumb-sucking; Sharon didn't return my call," indicating that the other answers involved some research. since safire's right-wing connections go back to at least the nixon administration, he would doubtless be able to find out inside information on republican dirty tricks.
ok, tinfoil hats off. and i'll take off this yellow-journalism jacket... right.
look i could construct a relatively plausible scenario for a terror-related october surprise by the administration. such as they finally start talking about the white supremacist terrorists in tyler, and it happens that one of them was still on the loose, but was apprehended just as he was about to make a chemical strike. well you can't be too safe, so we're taking domestic terrorism very seriously now, and they round up environmental activists because they might have ties to earth first, and some of those anti-war protesters had a more sinister agenda, and oh look! some of them were volunteering for howard dean! whaddaya know. but don't worry, the elections will still be held on tuesday, and the DHS will be there in force to ensure your safety. please report any suspicious looking individuals at the polling places, etc.
but that's not the point. we were talking the other week about the possibility of an october surprise and how some of the SCLM were jumping on madeline albright for even raising the possibility. i think it's a very good idea to have attention called to this in order to "innoculate" the public to it in case something does happen. this safire article is an excellent opportunity to do just that. i would expect the reaction to be along the lines of "safire must be off his meds," to which we could reply, "yeah we know that, but he did raise the possibility..." then safire will claim he was just making a joke, and oh my, look at the liberals overreact! whatever. at least it gets it out there in the public consciousness.
the guy i would love to see promote this meme? ross perot. not sure how we could get that to happen, but he'd be perfect. after all, he knows about the "republican dirty tricks squad" and is viewed as a little bit of a crank. then again, his dire predictions about NAFTA engendering a "giant sucking sound to the south" seem to have been pretty much on-target, so who knows? if ross were to come out saying, "democrats you need to watch out for that october surprise!" a lot of people would listen. even more people would be talking about it, if only in the context of "perot, what a nut!"
staging a major terrorist attack is a bit over the top for me, but the idea that the republicans might try something isn't nuts at all. the reagan campaign made a deal with the iranians to hold on to the american hostages until reagan was inaugurated. that's not conspiracy theory, that's historical fact.
in addition to the idea of preparing the public for whatever might happen, my hope is that if the idea is out there to the point that anything they try will either be ineffective or even backfire on them because people are half expecting it, that will deter them from trying anything in the first place.
and just for kicks, i'm going to try a little poll thingie so you can answer safire's question.