- It's official. I'm a conspiracy theorist.
-
- I'm probably one of thousands - maybe tens of thousands
- who believe George W. Bush will do anything to retain control of the
White House. It's not safe to have a healthy dose of skepticism like this
these days. But this has to be said. I don't believe the country is going
to be attacked by al-Qaeda anytime soon. I don't care how specific the
so-called threat is. I don't care how many targets have been identified.
I don't care how solid this new information is. I don't buy any of it.
What I do believe is whenever Bush's approval ratings start slipping, the
administration issues a terrorist warning saying an attack is imminent.
Coincidence? I don't think so.
-
- Consider the evidence.
-
- This past Memorial Day weekend right through mid-June,
Bush's approval ratings yo-yoed due to bad news coming out of the war in
Iraq. By mid-June, 51 percent of Americans disapproved of the way Bush
was handling the war in Iraq, up about four points from May, according
to polling results from Zogby, Gallup and Pew.
-
- Bush was taking a beating in the press in May and June
because of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the high number of military
casualties the U.S. suffered in Iraq. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, on
May 26, Attorney General John Ashcroft held a press conference warning
the public that al-Qaeda "wants to hit America hard." Ashcroft
didn't release specific information because he didn't have any. He said
that somewhere in this country seven al-Qaeda operatives were planning
an attack. That's hardly information that warrants a press conference.
His announcement didn't even elevate a change in the color-coded terrorist
alert system. In fact, it was all a smokescreen to change the news cycle.
It worked. Bush's numbers went back up soon after Ashcroft's press conference.
-
- However, the Wall Street Journal reported a couple of
days later that the Department of Homeland Security found that Ashcroft's
dire warnings of an attack on American soil "had been known for some
time" and "was not new or specific enough to merit an announcement
or other action."
-
- Ashcroft cried wolf on a half-dozen other occasions too;
last July 4, last Christmas and right before the Super Bowl, to name a
few. Those alleged terrorist threats identified banks, shopping malls,
power plants and stadiums, obvious targets for a militant group that wants
to rack up a high number of casualties.
-
- So when Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge announced
Sunday that terrorists want to blow up the New York Stock Exchange and
the Citicorp building in Manhattan's financial district, the World Bank
and International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC, and the Prudential Building
in Newark, NJ, the threat seemed more real, more imminent, because, for
the first time, we got specific information. But as far as I'm concerned,
the Bush administration picked those targets out of a hat. The only way
this administration can rebuild its credibility is if one of those targets
is blown up or an attack is thwarted.
-
- Why? It just so happens that every single terrorist warning
was issued whenever Bush's approval ratings lagged and when bad news was
coming out of the war in Iraq, such as the failure to find any weapons
of mass destruction, the huge financial cost of the war and a shortage
of troops. Need evidence? Check pollingreport.com and then check the Department
of Homeland Security and the Justice Department web sites and you'll see
how the terrorist warnings were issued at the same time Bush started to
fall behind in the polls.
-
- The Australian newspaper, The Age, ran a Reuters story
that quoted unnamed senior U.S. officials as saying that the constant flow
of terrorist warnings since March 2003 "may also just be a ploy to
shore up the president's [sic] job approval ratings or divert attention
from the increasingly unpopular Iraq campaign."
-
- A few weeks before the Democratic National Convention,
The New Republic ran a story alleging that senior Pakistani intelligence
officials were pressured by members of the Bush administration to make
arrests of so-called high valued terrorists during the Democratic National
Convention, in an attempt to boost Bush's standing in the polls during
a time when John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, would have
likely received a bounce in percentage points for his campaign.
-
- The July 7 article, "July Surprise," said a
Pakistani official was told by a White House aide "that it would be
best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT [high value targets] were announced
on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July.' - the first three days
of the Democratic National Convention in Boston."
-
-
- That event actually occurred on July 29 when Reuters
reported that an unidentified U.S. official confirmed that Pakistan arrested
"a senior al Qaeda member wanted by the United States in connection
with the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa" all of
which lends credibility to the fact that the White House will do whatever
it has to do to make sure Bush is elected.
-
- Here's more proof. Last week, at the end of the Democratic
National Convention a Newsweek poll showed Democratic presidential nominee
John Kerry leading Bush in the polls 52 percent to 44 percent. Less than
three days later, Ridge, Bush's Homeland Security chief, announces that
al-Qaeda wants to blow up targets in New York, New Jersey and Washington,
DC. The jury's still out on whether the latest terrorist alert will put
Bush ahead of Kerry in the race for the White House.
-
- Bush has said on numerous occasions that America is safer
since the overthrow of Iraq's former dictator Saddam Hussein. But on Monday,
Bush told reporters "America is in danger." Last Friday, while
campaigning in Missouri and other battleground states Bush said, "America
has turned a corner." Talk about flip-flopping.
-
- - Jason Leopold is the former Los Angeles bureau chief
of Dow Jones Newswires where he spent two years covering the energy crisis
and the Enron bankruptcy. He just finished writing a book about the crisis,
due out in December through Rowman & Littlefield.
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