Saturday, October 01, 2005
Top Sharks and Other Fish Stories
Sometimes you hear something in the news that sounds a wee bit off-base but you can’t exactly pinpoint the problem so you shrug your shoulders and go on to the next column.
And only weeks or months later when someone articulates the idea that made you feel so leery in the first place, you realize your innermost self knew all along; something just wasn’t quite right, even if at the time, you couldn’t exactly say what it was.
A story by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball of Newsweek on MSNBC’s news web site laid out in words past unease for many--the troubling pattern of White House assurances of Iraqi progress by way of the latest capture or killing of “the second-most-wanted al-Qaeda leader in Iraq.” AGAIN.
Scott Shields of MyDD blog is perplexed by how often top operational guys are being collared or killed. He asks, “Just how many 'Number 2,' 'Number 3,' and 'Number 4' men can bin Laden and Zarqawi possibly have, anyway?”
Assessing information supported by a reality-based world is not the White House way; they accept no constraints. If Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is still out there, then whoever we snatch has got to be the number one or two sand tiger shark in the tank, got it?
The article reports:
The document reveals a less than lofty dollar amount on the head of the latest fish killed. For a number two guy, Abu Azzam had a relatively modest reward: $50,000. Rewards go up as high as $25 million for the truly big shark, $1 million for the minnows and $50,000 for the guppies.
Only this past May the number three guy, Abu Faraj Farj al-Libbi was nabbed; and in June on “Inside Washington,” conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer gloated over the capture of the “number two guy in…Sabul.” But wait...the number two man is the very same person as the number three terrorist
According to a news reports by The Guardian in London, al-Libbi was the number three operative; but in the spin-weary brain of Krauthammer, he got promoted; and any viewer would have reasonably thought we'd nabbed both the number two and number three guy. Kinna like the misguided notion of progress with Bush's latest fish story.
Sometimes you hear something in the news that sounds a wee bit off-base but you can’t exactly pinpoint the problem so you shrug your shoulders and go on to the next column.
And only weeks or months later when someone articulates the idea that made you feel so leery in the first place, you realize your innermost self knew all along; something just wasn’t quite right, even if at the time, you couldn’t exactly say what it was.
A story by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball of Newsweek on MSNBC’s news web site laid out in words past unease for many--the troubling pattern of White House assurances of Iraqi progress by way of the latest capture or killing of “the second-most-wanted al-Qaeda leader in Iraq.” AGAIN.
Scott Shields of MyDD blog is perplexed by how often top operational guys are being collared or killed. He asks, “Just how many 'Number 2,' 'Number 3,' and 'Number 4' men can bin Laden and Zarqawi possibly have, anyway?”
Assessing information supported by a reality-based world is not the White House way; they accept no constraints. If Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is still out there, then whoever we snatch has got to be the number one or two sand tiger shark in the tank, got it?
The article reports:
In a brief Rose Garden appearance Wednesday morning, Bush seized on the killing of Abu Azzam by joint U.S-Iraqi forces in a shootout last Sunday as fresh evidence that the United States is turning the tide against the Iraqi insurgency.
[...]
Shields did a little research; actually a simple check, he readily admits. “[N]othing more than the press release” by the Iraqi Interim Government.Bush’s comments came one day after Gen. Richard Myers, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon that the U.S. military considered Abu Azzam the “No. 2 Al Qaeda operative in Iraq, next to Zarqawi.”
The document reveals a less than lofty dollar amount on the head of the latest fish killed. For a number two guy, Abu Azzam had a relatively modest reward: $50,000. Rewards go up as high as $25 million for the truly big shark, $1 million for the minnows and $50,000 for the guppies.
Only this past May the number three guy, Abu Faraj Farj al-Libbi was nabbed; and in June on “Inside Washington,” conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer gloated over the capture of the “number two guy in…Sabul.” But wait...the number two man is the very same person as the number three terrorist
According to a news reports by The Guardian in London, al-Libbi was the number three operative; but in the spin-weary brain of Krauthammer, he got promoted; and any viewer would have reasonably thought we'd nabbed both the number two and number three guy. Kinna like the misguided notion of progress with Bush's latest fish story.
// posted by Howling Latina @ 9:31 PM 
