Charlie Black "Invited Terrorists To Manipulate Our Politics"

Black may have done just what Clarke said he did, but this is not the first time that a Wingnutter has said something similar and got caught at it. Can't remember the details now, but a GOP chair in a southern state went so far as to say that a terrorist attack was what we, dim-witted Americans, need, so that we would all wake the hell up, realize what a genius Junior is and vote GOP. I'm thinking that this fine pronouncement was made during campaign 2006 but before the 2006 elections.

Perhaps that was why Clarke couldn't come up with anything better to say about Black's comments.

The simple fact is, the "terrorists" already know that they can scare the hell out of the American voter or simply have Osama say insulting things about Bush and get him re-elected. Even the CIA critters were unanimous that, in 2004, only days before the election when Osama appeared with a message for Americans, during which he insulted Bush and made fun of him reading "a book about a child's pet goat" while the country was under attack, Al Qaeda had voted and they were voting for Bush.

Whatever else may be said of Osama bin Laden, and I have quite a few choice words, he isn't stupid. He has been studying us for years, while we knew next to nothing about him. He knew damn well that the best way to get Bush re-elected, in a close campaign, was to insult him.

Osama needs Bush as Bush needs Osama. Why else would the Bush administration allow him to escape at Tora Bora in December, 2001 and, unless they are cretin idiots, that is exactly what they did.

Wanted Dead Or Alive. Uh huh.

Here's what I can't figure out. The worst foreign attack on U.S. soil since the war of 1812 happens during a Republican administration, the people, whom we are told are responsible for those attacks, are still free and yet Americans, according to the latest polls, trust McCain more than Obama on terrorism. Why?

Clarke: Charlie Black Basically Said To Terrorists, ‘Yes You Can Manipulate Our Politics, Come And Do It’»

Yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) distanced himself from chief strategist Charlie Black’s comments that a terrorist attack would be a “big advantage” to the McCain campaign. “If he said that, and I do not know the context, I strenuously disagree,” McCain told reporters.

Later in the day on MSNBC, former counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke told Keith Olbermann that if McCain was serious in his outrage, he should fire Black immediately. He also criticized Black for basically encouraging terrorists such as Osama bin Laden to manipulate American politics:

CLARKE: Well, Charlie Black knows a lot about politics but he doesn’t know much about terrorism. If he did, he would know that Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and all the al Qaeda leadership, watch U.S. politics very closely. We’ve even had cases where in interviews, bin Laden quoted opinion polls from European public opinion polls.

(It doesn't take a terrorism expert to know that.)

So, yes, they understand that they can manipulate politics as they tried to in the Spanish election with the attacks there. And to say, “Yes, you can manipulate our politics, come and do it,” is an invitation that the McCain campaign shouldn’t be anywhere near.

Unfortunately, conservatives are often putting out such invitations. Last week, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton said that if Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is elected president, the United States would “simply have more embassy bombings, more bombings of our warships like the Cole, more World Trade Center attacks.” Rep. Steve King (R-IA) claimed that such a result would lead to terrorists declaring “victory in this war on terror.”

Transcript:

RICHARD CLARKE, FMR. NSC COUNTERTERROR CHIEF: It`s great to be here, Keith.

OLBERMANN: Did Charlie Black just erase any remaining line between counterterrorism and scaring people for political gain?

CLARKE: I think that line was erased in 2004. It`s been erased in every election since 9/11. Now, what Charlie Black did is reveal their thinking, not that they wanted a terrorist attack, but that they do plan to run by scaring us. They`re using the same playbook they`ve been using for years because it works.

And if McCain is sincere in saying that he`s shocked, that there`s gambling going on in his casino, then he ought to part with Charlie Black. I mean, Charlie Black ought to be gone tomorrow morning so that we can say, once and for all, that this campaign is not going to be a campaign about fear and about saying that one guy is soft on terrorism and if you vote for him, there will be another terrorist attack; all the sorts of things that we`ve heard in the past.

OLBERMANN: Yes, just somebody once saying, this is not going to be a mixture of politics, presidential politics and the necessary counterterrorism because this is the darkest part of it. You can argue the politics forever and blame game forever, but — the darkest part of this, I think, and I`d like your opinion on it, is that we`re necessarily faced with, if there are any legitimate warnings or any plots that come up between now and November, they now have to be seen through the prism of what Black has just said.

CLARKE: Well, that`s right. And the fact that we now know from Tom Ridge and others, that when there were threats released in 2004, well, they were largely exaggerated and blown up. So, we`re now in the situation where the American people won`t believe a warning, if there were a real one — but McCain can stop all of that. He can stop talking about Hamas has endorsed Obama; he can stop all of this sort of innuendoes and go to the issues-based campaign he said he was going to do.

And the way he does that is by tomorrow morning announcing the resignation of Charlie Black and saying that he wants to run on the issues and not as the “scare candidate,” not as the scaremonger and not as the scarecrow. […]

CLARKE: Well, Charlie Black knows a lot about politics but he doesn’t know much about terrorism. If he did, he would know that Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and all the al Qaeda leadership, watch U.S. politics very closely. We’ve even had cases where in interviews, bin Laden quoted opinion polls from European public opinion polls.

So, yes, they understand that they can manipulate politics as they tried to in the Spanish election with the attacks there. And to say, “Yes, you can manipulate our politics, come and do it,” is an invitation that the McCain campaign shouldn’t be anywhere near.

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The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.