When something that comes close to the truth appears in the ideological production complex, it is immediately registered as merely crazy:
(HuffPo)[ Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-New York)] alleged that bin Laden was let go because “the previous administration… knew very well that if they would capture al Qaeda there would be no justification for an invasion in Iraq.”
[MSNBC host David Shuster], incredulous, pushed back: “You really believe that?”
“Oh, there’s no question about that because the leader of the military operation in the United States called back our military, called them back from going after the head of al Qaeda because there was a sense that they didn’t want to capture him.”
Shuster began talking over Hinchey: “You can accuse them of malfeasance, you can accuse them of dropping the ball, of having an awful plan, and all of them would be justified, but to suggest that they would deliberately let, deliberately let Osama bin Laden get away so they could justify the war in Iraq… That will strike a lot of people as crazy.”
Why is it easy to believe in the link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda than Hinchey’s claim? The Saddam/Al-Qaeda connection is far more fantastic than the allegation that Bush did not want to capture bin Laden because it would have made his Iraq plans more difficult to enact.
And Barack W Bush keeps it up.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/world/…
Both ideas are wrong and a little far-fetched, but if I had to label one as crazier, I’d say Hinchey’s wins.
Republicans require an “enemy” (a live and potentially dangerous enemy) for their rhetoric to have any appeal. That enemy can be Communists, gays, or Muslim extremists, it doesn’t really matter. But there does need to be an enemy. Without an enemy, their ranting actually sounds quite insane to a majority of American ears, and they would never be able to elect anyone. That’s why they let bin Laden get away back in ’02.
If you search for the motive in each case it will reveal much. There is very little to no motive for Iraq/Saddam to have a link to Al-Qaeda. They disagree about much. Most of all Saddam has no reason to link himself and his own personal safety his and country’s sovereignty to a crazy ideological group. Saddam was accused of much of the Islamic world as running Iraq in too secular of a fashion and in fact Saddam was an asshole and crazy but he was not a religious fundamentalist.
On the other hand Bin Laden has no reason to link with secular Muslims or he would risk alienating his religious base. He also has the support of countries like Syria and Afghanistan that are far more in line with his ideology.
When you break it down it would be a pure tactical blunder for either of these two parties to work together extensively. You can accuse them both of many things but neither Bin Laden or Saddam are stupid.
The same can be said about Bush. He actually has a motive for invading Iraq and therefore had a motive to not catch Bin Laden. You can’t prove it in court but a reasonable person would have to seriously suspect Bush ignored Bin Laden if you look at the circumstantial evidence.
Again the link cannot be proven by us but also remember Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-New York) has access to much more security briefing than you and I. He himself does not have a lot of motive to go after Bush anymore now that he is out of office and Hinchey has nothing to gain politically and everything to lose to keep chasing after him. He is obviously trying to get to the root of what actually happened and I would trust his intuition as he has more knowledge than me or anyone else reading about this here on the SLOG.
“Why is it *easier* to believe in the link…”
it is a fact that the bush administration and the defense department let the northern alliance attack tora bora instead of sending in the 10th mountain or the seals or delta force or bombing the literal fuck out of it with a tactical nuke. i read the day to day accounts of the lackadaisical, 10:30 – 3:30 daily assault with breaks for tea. why did they choose that method?
it’s only a “crazy” question when your function is to protect the status quo.
And then there’s this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PGmnz5Ow…
Where Bush blatantly says they don’t know or care where Bin Laden is (at the 1:20 mark). This was six months after 9/11.
It’s not a bizarre claim at all; it’s a much straight-forward hypothesis than the rationalizations of the Republicans.
After the Gulf of Tonkin how could anyone deny the fact that the USA manufactures its enemies and invents threats when there are none?
Please file this post under “DUH”.
Wait a minute. Do you mean to tell me that the Military Industrial Complex might benefit from “not finding” Osama bin Laden? Shocking. Really shocking.
Capturing bin Laden is bad for business. Period.
Finally the truth is coming out. I can’t wait for the day when it is admitted that 9/11 was an inside job.
Remember the Maine!!!!
Because it’s true.
Just like every war, other than WW II, has been started by a false pretext. Which if you’d study history, you’d know.
Wars don’t start themselves. They have to be engineered to have an act of outrage to bolster public support.
@12 – except that war – even so, the original war was supposed to be against al-Qaeda, who aren’t IN either Iraq or Afghanistan, and continue to get most of their volunteers from Saudi Arabia.
Ah, the Maine. Indeed. Over and over and over again.
My objection to this theory is the same as my objection to the theory that 9/11 was an inside job: Bush was not intelligent enough to think up something like this or see it carried out, and the Bush administration was too full of leaks and competing agendas to keep anything so important a secret. Conspiracies require a basic level of competence that W lacked. Think about the sort of person he was and you realize is it’s more plausible that he just fucked up the entire thing from beginning to end.
@14- The Axis manufactured a reason for starting WW II.
@17 – 9/11 wasn’t an inside job per se. The event, just like Pearl Harbor, happened. But, unlike Pearl Harbor, we went off mission and attacked the Chinese for the attack by the Japanese.