Sunday, July 17, 2005
What's the diff?
Interesting and well-done story on NBC's Dateline tonight, about al Qaeda's continuing connections with Liberian ex-dictator Charles Taylor. As the story unfolded, I noticed an echo ... and soon realized that the story was parallel in many ways to the Niger / Saddam / Wilson story.
Enemy using disorganized African countries to acquire money and weapons; Bush administration softpedaling or covering up. Specifically, we paved the way for Taylor to take a cushy exile in Nigeria, and because we need Nigeria's oil, we're allowing him to continue dealing with Osama's folks from his "house arrest". This is arguably justifiable in the heat of war (enemy of my enemy and all that) but it still doesn't look good.
What's not parallel: No members of the Party of Treason are screaming about this situation. Why? Because in this case administration incompetence leads to NOT fighting the enemy. Letting the enemy grow strong is always OK with Democrats, even when it should give them a great chance to issue valid criticism of Bush. In the Niger / Saddam case, the questionable intelligence led to FIGHTING the enemy, which is never OK with Democrats. ¶ 7:49 PM
Enemy using disorganized African countries to acquire money and weapons; Bush administration softpedaling or covering up. Specifically, we paved the way for Taylor to take a cushy exile in Nigeria, and because we need Nigeria's oil, we're allowing him to continue dealing with Osama's folks from his "house arrest". This is arguably justifiable in the heat of war (enemy of my enemy and all that) but it still doesn't look good.
What's not parallel: No members of the Party of Treason are screaming about this situation. Why? Because in this case administration incompetence leads to NOT fighting the enemy. Letting the enemy grow strong is always OK with Democrats, even when it should give them a great chance to issue valid criticism of Bush. In the Niger / Saddam case, the questionable intelligence led to FIGHTING the enemy, which is never OK with Democrats. ¶ 7:49 PM
