delayed--well yes---the guy was "captured" (retaining the bbc quotation marks, which i like for some reason) sunday and the infotainment was released yesterday.

on the discussion more broadly:
there is something about the collapsing of policy into personal political ambitions that i object to fundamentally.

analytically, it seems a pathway straight to institutional narcissism, which is the fastest way to insure that an institution cuts itself off from feedback loops and becomes irrational--this following the market logic outlined by hayek no less.

a descriptive statement that traces a logic by means of which this collapse can be understood does nothing to allay that. it simply indicates that from a particular viewpoint, a rationality can be specified.

while for you, art, ancillary committments makes this not a problem, it surely is one from viewpoints that are not shaped by those same committments.

if you could apply the above critique to any institution, things get even worse when you are considering a state apparatus.
that it would actively manipulate information flows to conform to the political objectives of the incumbent seems but a further index of the extent to which this administration would prefer to cut itself off from any feedback, any dissent, if they can manage it.

so at the symbolic level, this kind of activity is unsettling at the least.

politically, it seems even worse. systematic distortion of information seems one way in which the right has tried to counter the unseemly effects of this "democratic" process--for example, if environmental groups issue reports that condemn corporate actions for particular effects, a rightwing thinktank can be counted on to hire pet scientists to prove the contrary.
the reports circulate as points of reference that are not generally seen for arguments aimed at right listeners on am radio and repeated in tv outlets on the order of fox.
there is no easy way to construct counter arguments. you have to either actively engaged in researching all issues, or you go passive, not trusting any information, hiding in your living room, watching tv.
if the state is also actively involved in the same process, then it works toward making rational decisions by the electorate as difficult as possible--which opens wider the sapce for the politics of slogan and image, which seems the kind of bankrupt territory most comfortable for the karlroves of the world.

i dont see anything good about this.

There are different gradations of acceptability in politics. All politicians may indulge in "politicking" (obviously), but that doesn't mean that some actions don't stretch the bounds of political acceptability. It's not as simple as "they all do that." Not everyone is willing to break into the offices of a political opponent, for instance.

Furthermore, I don't accept your categorizations of my thinking. According to your statements, I am either:

1. naive
2. partisan
3. hopelessly unrealistic

Isn't there room for one to both acknowledge the failings of our leaders/system yet still strive for a higher standard?

First and foremost we are not talking about anything illegal in trying to push people to accomplish tasks prior to the election.

Second, it goes well beyond a case of "they all do that" as it's a case of "they all do that and it doesn't hurt the process". If the increased pressure works, is that not good for the country? If it doesn't, was it somehow wrong? No, I don't think so.

Every political campaign times the launch of every press release for maximum bang. Is this a failing of our system? How do you propose that this be controlled? Should we put a silence period into effect around each party's convention and hold the news till afterwards? Shall we set time limits on how quickly news can be released around conventions(or nearer the election)?

There is already a mechanism to control this behavior and that's our votes. You see a politician (or his campaign) doing something you disagree with and you don't vote for him.

As I stated in the opening post, no crime has been committed. Thanks for reiterating that.

Simply releasing a press briefing is a little different then sculpting foreign policy for maximum effect. There is illegal wrong and there is dirty trick wrong. Just because something does not fall into the former category doesn't disqualify it for inclusion in the latter.

How do I propose that we control this? With the very mechanism that you described: our votes. This is exact reason that I'm bringing this to everyone's attention.

To be frank, I'm less concerned with the actual events that were referenced in this post then by the lackadaisical attitude towards deception that I've been encountering. How far does a leader have to go before they cross the line?

Here's another theory, the Kerry media got a unconfirmed report that a high level Al Queada operative got captured in Pakistan. Knowing that this news might break during the Democratic Convention and steal some of Kerry's thunder they {the liberal media} make up a story about the Bush administration putting pressure on Pakistan so it appears that the Bush administration is playing politics with the news when or if in fact the report is confirmed.

Yup it's out there, just as the other theories being expressed are.

The truth is actually probably more to the middle, Pakistan has been under pressure from Washington for a long, long time. This is probably why they have had their military up in the mountains conducting raids for months. It was probably a tremendous stroke of luck that they caught this fellow when they did. The Pakastanis probably don't give a rat's ass it was during the Democratic Convention, their just glad it's one less thing Washington has to bitch about.

That ignores all the unnamed sources and the breaking of the original story, so your "liberal media" theory actually makes more sense, believe it or not. Now, you could more credibly argue that Pakistan had planted the story for some reason, but that still doesn't make much sense.

So comparing it to burglary has what to do with the discussion?

I didn't compare it to burglary...I simply used burglary as an example of a political extreme that doesn't fall into your category of "they all do it."

To restate the question in my earlier post, how much is too much? Where do you draw the line?

If this is just about the Bush administration stepping up pressure before an election, then, I don't see a problem here. After all, he wants to get elected, and whether or not he is I'd like to see OBL and Co. caught. The problem would arise if the administration had been dragging its feet earlier and NOT catching guys so they could scoop them up in the next couple of months. Notice that not even unnamed sources are claiming this is the case.

Absolutely. This whole thing is a non-issue. No criminality. Not even anything unethical IMO. Oh well, to each his own.

Well the assumption is that if the Pakistani's can deliver on a schedule we give them, they could have delivered on earlier scheduling. And if we give them a schedule by way of political agenda, then any attacks that this particular HVT was involved in the planning or executing of prior to capture (not much in America, but jesus shit look at Iraq) were enriched by his involvement and, therefor, casualty lists were higher than they could have been on account of his freedom, or the administrations political agenda as it were.

Ehhhh yeah, it's worth another post.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=5852866

So basically we also got high terror alerts on the tail end of the DNC because of this bust, and our best intelligence couldn't figure out that this is older than 9/11 before they have Tom Ridge put out terror warnings.

On the upshot, they were right about the "financial targets."

How long before the 9/11 attacks do you think recon reports were generated? The fact that information is "old" has no relevance. They are "unsure if the group's surveillance continues" which is a far cry from knowing that it doesn't. Despite the ridiculous assertions that these terror alerts are Bush's way of campaigning, they can't NOT do something based on this information.

As far as your claims that the increased pressure to deliver somehow equates to previous feet dragging, that's a mighty big leap to a conclusion. Do you think, maybe just maybe, it's possible that we are getting closer to capturing people after all our efforts and an increased push is warranted? Even if you don't believe that's true at this point do you at least admit that it's a possibility?

I consider the "World Trade Center" to have been a financial target, and for the administration to take al Qaeda's pre-9/11 recon and come out and say "We've got specific info that financial center's are being targeted," I think it's absurd. The age of that info, then, does have relevance.

Yeah, it's possible that this is a big effort for them. But I prefer to lend at least some credibility to the article at the head of this thread and come to the conclusion that hand picked dates that have political advantage might not be picked for strategic reasons (except in the case of Art's notion that a single Com-in-Chief throughout 8 years is strategic, which is true).

So since they already targeted a financial institution that must be it then? They couldn't possibly target another? OBL and others have stated that financial centers are a primary foundation for American globalization and the support of Israel.

As stated previously, it takes a long time to plan such things and being three years old means little when you consider the fact that the intelligence used to accomplish the 9/11 attacks had elements at least this old.

No matter how you slice it, they can not stand idly by while a possible attack is imminent.