This new Bin Laden tape has the right wingers acting like idiots. On the one hand, they are thrilled because they feel any reminder of the terrorist "threat" is good for the GOP. That's nothing new, I know.
But on the other hand, they have to understand that if one thinks about it even a little, it hurts Bush, since he should have got Bin Laden already, so they are stuck trying to figure a way out of that narrative. The best they can come up with is that Bin Laden either sounds like a Democrat or as the NY Times wingnut op-ed columnist David Brooks opines:
Download Brooks: I mean on one hand he's a malevolent guy who killed three thousand Americans, but you read this thing and it's like he's been sitting around reading lefty blogs and one of these childish people posting rants at the bottom of the page (garbled) Noam Chomsky and all this stuff.
That's right, Bin Laden sounds just like a lefty blogger, or worse, Chomsky. I tell you what, I'll line up anything I've ever written against Wanker Brooks. I promise you, his average of being right is well below the Mendoza line. In fact, let's look at this January 2005 essay by Chomsky:
Let's just imagine what the policies might be of an independent Iraq, independent, sovereign Iraq, let's say more or less democratic, what are the policies likely to be?
Well there's going to be a Shiite majority, so they'll have some significant influence over policy. The first thing they'll do is reestablish relations with Iran. Now they don't particularly like Iran, but they don't want to go to war with them so they'll move toward what was happening already even under Saddam, that is, restoring some sort of friendly relations with Iran.
That's the last thing the United States wants. It has worked very hard to try to isolate Iran. The next thing that might happen is that a Shiite-controlled, more or less democratic Iraq might stir up feelings in the Shiite areas of Saudi Arabia, which happen to be right nearby and which happen to be where all the oil is. So you might find what in Washington must be the ultimate nightmare-a Shiite region which controls most of the world's oil and is independent.
Hmmm....does that sound like loony left ravings to you? Contrast that to the fact checking I found for Brook's January 29, 2005 NYT op-ed from the aptly named "David Brooks is a moron". 'Nuff said.
(thanks to Nicole for her help)
