CHENEY THREATENS VOTERS WITH TERRORIST REPRISALS

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

7. Not confirmed: It may have been hoped that the conquered nation would serve as a honey-pot to attract militants from the region, causing them to fight against our troops instead of planning attacks against civilians. (This was described by David Warren as the flypaper strategy.) It seems to have worked out that way, but it's not known if this was a deliberate part of the plan. Many of the defenders who died in the war were not actually Iraqis.

Funny quote from Josh Marshall:

As a TPM reader put it to me both hilariously and brilliantly more than a year ago, this 'fly paper' thesis is like saying we're going to build one super dirty hospital where we can fight the germs on our own terms.

And the Iraqi civilians are the patients.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Those particular surgical strikes were on which country involved in terrorism?

Sudan and Afghanistan.

[Undertoad]

Those weren't the ones that were called Wag the Dog.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Those weren't the ones that were called Wag the Dog.

Yes they were.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Those [Sudan and Afghanistan] weren't the ones that were called Wag the Dog.

As a result of bombings on the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Clinton deperately sought 1) proof of who did it, and 2) an appropriate response. Item one is not disputed. This was the event that demonstrated al Qaeda was something more than a financing group for terrorism; the first time that the al Qaeda branch of Muslim Brotherhood was considered a serious threat.

from Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies
If we though this was the best time to hit the Afghan camps, he would order it and take the heat for "Wag the Dog" criticism that we all knew would happen, for the media and congressional reaction that would say that he was using a military strike to divert attention from his deposition in the investigation. (Wag the Dog was a movie that had been released that year, in which fictional presidential advisors created an artifical crisis with Albania to attack it and divert attention from domestic problems. Ironically, Clinton was blamed for a "Wag the Dog" strategy in 1998 dealing with the real threat from al Qaeda but no one labeled Bush's 2003 war on Iraq as a "Wag the Dog" move even thought the "crisis" was manufacturered and the Bush political advisor Karl Rove was telling Republicans to "run on the war".)

Furthermore, this was not the only time Clinton had attempted military strikes on al Qaeda. This particular strike, of course, was easily predicted by Pakistan who saw numerous US destroyer conjugating. The Pakistan Navy told their government in advance AND the US had to inform Pakistan in advance so that Pakistan would not assume an Indian surprise attack. All this probably alerted al Qaeda who quickly abandoned the targeted camps. Which begs the question of who really is the American ally? The one who warns al Qaeda and promotes nuclear proliferation?

But yes, the Sudan and Afghanistan reprisals were unjustified accusations of Clinton doing Wag the Dog. Since right wing extremist commentators don't accuse George Jr of same, then many of us don't accuse George of playing the same game. Yes, it begs the question - what are your sources of information? Based upon facts or based upon political agenda spin - ie Rush Limbaugh?

[Happy Monkey]

Here's a depressing article on Rove's tactics in elections.

Some of [Judge Mark] Kennedy's campaign commercials touted his volunteer work, including one that showed him holding hands with children. "We were trying to counter the positives from that ad," a former Rove staffer told me, explaining that some within the See camp initiated a whisper campaign that Kennedy was a pedophile. "It was our standard practice to use the University of Alabama Law School to disseminate whisper-campaign information," the staffer went on. "That was a major device we used for the transmission of this stuff.