Vote for the October Surprise

[Rspaight]

Conspriracy theories ahoy! Clearly there will be some sort of dirty trickery afoot just before the election on the part of BushCo, but what will it be? Voting for this poll sponsored by Diebold.

Ryan

[lukpac]

WMD's seem most plausible to me - capture of Osama just seems a bit *too* coincidental. I can't imagine a terror attack, although a "foiled" terror attack is plausible, I suppose.

[Rspaight]

I actually considered including a "Reagan dies" option, but got rid of it when my first list was too long. Oh, well.

So how many times do you figure GWB is gonna say "Win one for the Gipper" between now and November? I'm betting: every damn speech he makes.

And all the wingers who got upset about the "partisanship" at the Wellstone memorial will think that's just fine and dandy.

You heard it here first.

Ryan

[Rspaight]

Oh, and as recently as this past Wednesday, Bush was criticizing Reagan's capitulation to terrorists:

The terrorist movement feeds on the appearance of inevitability. It claims to rise on the currents of history, using past America withdrawals from Somalia and Beirut to sustain this myth and to gain new followers.

I guess that line is gonna get cut from the ol' stump speech.

Ryan

[Rspaight]

Not that I really believe anything I read on the Drudge Report, but if this pans out, I'd like to say I told you so. This is beginning to sound like a massive taxpayer-funded campaign rally.

CLINTON DISAPPOINTMENT: LEFT OFF FUNERAL SPEAKERS LIST

Former President Bill Clinton has privately expressed anger he has apparently been left off the speakers list of Friday's Reagan State Funeral, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

"President Clinton really held out all hope the funeral would be a nonpartisan event, like Nixon's was," a top Clinton source said on Tuesday morning. "He's angry and disappointed neither he nor President Carter have been asked to speak, as of yet."

The top source says Clinton has been critical that both Bush presidents will address the crowd gathered at National Cathedral.

Nixon's vice president Gerald Ford did not speak at Nixon's funeral.

Clinton's inner circle is convinced Nancy Reagan has personally shut out Clinton from any high-profile participation.

"It is a state funeral, using tax dollars," the top Clinton insider explained.

Former President George H.W. Bush, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney will join President Bush in eulogizing Ronald Reagan, Reagan's office announced. Presiding over the service will be former Sen. John Danforth of Missouri, who is an ordained Episcopal priest. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and the Rabbi Harold Kusher will give readings, while Irish tenor Ronan Tynan will sing.

The eulogy is being prepared by President Bush's chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson, who also wrote the president's moving speech for a memorial service in the same cathedral after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Developing...

[Rspaight]

I hate it when people steal my ideas.

http://www.octobersurprise.net/

I like my choices better, anyway. (Diebold theft would not be an October surprise.) Humph.

Ryan

[Rspaight]

Bolding mine.

July Surprise?
by John B. Judis, Spencer Ackerman & Massoud Ansari

Post date: 07.07.04
Issue date: 07.19.04

Late last month, President Bush lost his greatest advantage in his bid for reelection. A poll conducted by ABC News and The Washington Post discovered that challenger John Kerry was running even with the president on the critical question of whom voters trust to handle the war on terrorism. Largely as a result of the deteriorating occupation of Iraq, Bush lost what was, in April, a seemingly prohibitive 21-point advantage on his signature issue. But, even as the president's poll numbers were sliding, his administration was implementing a plan to insure the public's confidence in his hunt for Al Qaeda.

This spring, the administration significantly increased its pressure on Pakistan to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, or the Taliban's Mullah Mohammed Omar, all of whom are believed to be hiding in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan. A succession of high-level American officials--from outgoing CIA Director George Tenet to Secretary of State Colin Powell to Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca to State Department counterterrorism chief Cofer Black to a top CIA South Asia official--have visited Pakistan in recent months to urge General Pervez Musharraf's government to do more in the war on terrorism. In April, Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, publicly chided the Pakistanis for providing a "sanctuary" for Al Qaeda and Taliban forces crossing the Afghan border. "The problem has not been solved and needs to be solved, the sooner the better," he said.

This public pressure would be appropriate, even laudable, had it not been accompanied by an unseemly private insistence that the Pakistanis deliver these high-value targets (HVTs) before Americans go to the polls in November. The Bush administration denies it has geared the war on terrorism to the electoral calendar. "Our attitude and actions have been the same since September 11 in terms of getting high-value targets off the street, and that doesn't change because of an election," says National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack. But The New Republic has learned that Pakistani security officials have been told they must produce HVTs by the election. According to one source in Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), "The Pakistani government is really desperate and wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the [upcoming] U.S. elections." Introducing target dates for Al Qaeda captures is a new twist in U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism relations--according to a recently departed intelligence official, "no timetable[s]" were discussed in 2002 or 2003--but the November election is apparently bringing a new deadline pressure to the hunt. Another official, this one from the Pakistani Interior Ministry, which is responsible for internal security, explains, "The Musharraf government has a history of rescuing the Bush administration. They now want Musharraf to bail them out when they are facing hard times in the coming elections." (These sources insisted on remaining anonymous. Under Pakistan's Official Secrets Act, an official leaking information to the press can be imprisoned for up to ten years.)

A third source, an official who works under ISI's director, Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq, informed tnr that the Pakistanis "have been told at every level that apprehension or killing of HVTs before [the] election is [an] absolute must." What's more, this source claims that Bush administration officials have told their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in mind for announcing this achievement: "The last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad and during [ul-Haq's] meetings in Washington." Says McCormack: "I'm aware of no such comment." But according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July"--the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

The Bush administration has matched this public and private pressure with enticements and implicit threats. During his March visit to Islamabad, Powell designated Pakistan a major non-nato ally, a status that allows its military to purchase a wider array of U.S. weaponry. Powell pointedly refused to criticize Musharraf for pardoning nuclear physicist A.Q. Khan--who, the previous month, had admitted exporting nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea, and Libya--declaring Khan's transgressions an "internal" Pakistani issue. In addition, the administration is pushing a five-year, $3 billion aid package for Pakistan through Congress over Democratic concerns about the country's proliferation of nuclear technology and lack of democratic reform.

But Powell conspicuously did not commit the United States to selling F-16s to Pakistan, which it desperately wants in order to tilt the regional balance of power against India. And the Pakistanis fear that, if they don't produce an HVT, they won't get the planes. Equally, they fear that, if they don't deliver, either Bush or a prospective Kerry administration would turn its attention to the apparent role of Pakistan's security establishment in facilitating Khan's illicit proliferation network. One Pakistani general recently in Washington confided in a journalist, "If we don't find these guys by the election, they are going to stick this whole nuclear mess up our asshole."

Pakistani perceptions of U.S. politics reinforce these worries. "In Pakistan, there has been a folk belief that, whenever there's a Republican administration in office, relations with Pakistan have been very good," says Khalid Hasan, a U.S. correspondent for the Lahore-based Daily Times. By contrast, there's also a "folk belief that the Democrats are always pro-India." Recent history has validated those beliefs. The Clinton administration inherited close ties to Pakistan, forged a decade earlier in collaboration against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But, by the time Clinton left office, the United States had tilted toward India, and Pakistan was under U.S. sanctions for its nuclear activities. All this has given Musharraf reason not just to respond to pressure from Bush, but to feel invested in him--and to worry that Kerry, who called the Khan affair a "disaster," and who has proposed tough new curbs on nuclear proliferation, would adopt an icier line.

Bush's strategy could work. In large part because of the increased U.S. pressure, Musharraf has, over the last several months, significantly increased military activity in the tribal areas--regions that enjoy considerable autonomy from Islamabad and where, until Musharraf sided with the United States in the war on terrorism, Pakistani soldiers had never set foot in the nation's 50-year history. Thousands of Pakistani troops fought a pitched battle in late March against tribesmen and their Al Qaeda affiliates in South Waziristan in hopes of capturing Zawahiri. The fighting escalated significantly in June. Attacks on army camps in the tribal areas brought fierce retaliation, leaving over 100 tribal and foreign militants and Pakistani soldiers dead in three days. Last month, Pakistan killed a powerful Waziristan warlord and Qaeda ally, Nek Mohammed, in a dramatic rocket attack that villagers said bore American fingerprints. (They claim a U.S. spy plane had been circling overhead.) Through these efforts, the Pakistanis could bring in bin Laden, Mullah Omar, or Zawahiri--a significant victory in the war on terrorism that would bolster Bush's reputation among voters.

But there is a reason many Pakistanis and some American officials had previously been reluctant to carry the war on terrorism into the tribal areas. A Pakistani offensive in that region, aided by American high-tech weaponry and perhaps Special Forces, could unite tribal chieftains against the central government and precipitate a border war without actually capturing any of the HVTs. Military action in the tribal areas "has a domestic fallout, both religious and ethnic," Pakistani Foreign Minister Mian Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri complained to the Los Angeles Times last year. Some American intelligence officials agree. "Pakistan just can't risk a civil war in that area of their country. They can't afford a western border that is unstable," says a senior intelligence official, who anonymously authored the recent Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror and who says he has not heard that the current pressures on Pakistan are geared to the election. "We may be at the point where [Musharraf] has done almost as much as he can."

Pushing Musharraf to go after Al Qaeda in the tribal areas may be a good idea despite the risks. But, if that is the case, it was a good idea in 2002 and 2003. Why the switch now? Top Pakistanis think they know: This year, the president's reelection is at stake.

Massoud Ansari reported from Karachi.

[Patrick M]

July Surprise?
by John B. Judis, Spencer Ackerman & Massoud Ansari

U.S. Embassy Bombings Suspect Arrested

Thursday, July 29, 2004

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan has arrested a Tanzanian Al Qaeda (search) suspect wanted by the United States in the 1998 bombings at U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the interior minister said Friday. He said the suspect was cooperating and had given authorities "very valuable" information.

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani (search) — who is on the FBI's list of 22 most wanted terrorists, with a reward of up to $25 million on his head — was arrested Sunday in the eastern city of Gujrat along with at least 15 other people, Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayyat told The Associated Press.

He said Ghailani has given authorities some useful information. Hayyat would not speculate on whether the suspect was planning any attacks in the United States or Pakistan.

"It would be premature to say anything about this, but obviously we have certain information, some very valuable and useful leads have been acquired," he said.

A U.S. official confirmed the capture of Ghailani and said it is a significant development because he is an Al Qaeda operative and facilitator who has been indicted for his role in the east Africa bombings.

Ghailani may be able to shed further light on the 1998 embassy bombings or have information about terror cells or Al Qaeda operatives, particularly in east Africa, the official said on condition of anonymity.

Mohammed Sadiq Odeh (search), who was convicted in the African embassy bombings, told the FBI that he joined the rest of the East Africa Al Qaeda cell in Nairobi on Aug. 6, 1998 and flew to Karachi on a Kenyan Airways flight before the bombs even exploded, according to a court transcript. That was the last known sighting of Ghailani until his arrest six years later.

Hayyat said Ghailani had apparently been living in Pakistan for some time, but it was not clear how long, or how he entered the country. Gujrat is an industrial city surrounded by rice and sugar cane fields, not known as a haven for militancy or extremism.

"This is a big success," Hayyat told Pakistan's Geo television network. "As a result of our investigation, it became clear that he was a major figure wanted for the bombings," Hayyat said.

Hayyat said Ghailani was being held at an undisclosed location in Pakistan, but indicated he might be turned over to U.S. authorities after investigations are completed. An intelligence official told The Associated Press he was being held at a facility in the eastern city of Lahore.

Ghailani, thought to be in his early 30s, was indicted on Dec. 16, 1998 in the Southern District of New York for his alleged role in the embassy bombings, which killed more than 200 people, including 12 Americans.

He is suspected of buying the truck used as the vehicle bomb in the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in which 12 people were killed.

He could face the death penalty if convicted of the charges, which include murder of U.S. nationals outside the United States, conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals outside the United States, and attack on a federal facility resulting in death.

Ghailani, who also goes by the names "Foopie," "Fupi" and "Ahmed the Tanzanian," was also one of seven wanted Al Qaeda suspects that the FBI and Justice Department asked for help in finding in May to help avert a possible terror attack over the summer in the United States.

Pakistan had said earlier that some of the 16 suspects arrested Sunday were from Africa, but had not said whether they were linked to Al Qaeda.

Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, who is in charge of coordinating Pakistan's counterterrorism effort, told AP that Ghailani's wife, an Uzbek woman, was also arrested, along with several of his children.

It was not clear if the suspects were planning any attacks in Pakistan or simply using the country to hide out.

"They had arrived in Gujrat recently but we don't know where they came from or how they got into the country," Cheema said.

The suspects were captured by police and intelligence agents during a raid on a house in the industrial city of Gujrat early Sunday after a 12-hour long shootout.

The authorities also recovered two AK-47 rifles, plastic chemicals, two computers, computer diskettes, and a "large amount" of foreign currency at the home, where the suspects had moved last month.

Cheema said the raid in Gujrat was carried out on information from a suspected Pakistani militant who was arrested in a separate operation in eastern Punjab province.

Hayyat announced the arrest after midnight in Pakistan in an interview with Geo television, an unusually late hour considering the arrests were made Sunday and authorities had known but not revealed the man's identity for some days.

Pakistani leaders have rejected allegations they time the announcements of major terror arrests for maximum impact, though several other arrests have come on the eve of important Pakistan-U.S. summits. Al Qaeda suspect Ramzi Binalshibh (search) was nabbed in Karachi on Sept. 11, 2002, the one year anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Pakistan, which became a key ally of the United States in its war on terror after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in America, has so far arrested more than 500 Al Qaeda suspects from different parts of the country.

They included Al Qaeda No. 3 leader, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (search), who was arrested in March 2003 during a raid in Rawalpindi, a city near Islamabad. Almost all the foreign suspects, including Mohammed, were later handed over to the U.S. officials.

Ramzi Binalshibh and Abu Zubaydah, two other Al Qaeda leaders, were also arrested in Pakistan.

Al Qaeda chief Usama bin Laden (search) and his right hand man, Ayman al-Zawahri, are believed to be hiding in the rugged tribal frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but there has been no hard evidence on their whereabouts.

[Patrick M]

Report: Zarqawi captured on Syrian-Iraq border
7/30/2004 6:00:00 PM GMT.

Source: Al Bawaba

Reports in Kuwait on Friday said a man assumed to be Al Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi has been captured near the Syrian border.

The report claimed that the man was captured during a joint operation by U.S. occupation forces and Iraqi police, Al Siyasah newspaper, quoting Iraqi sources, said Friday.

It also said that the suspect was caught in a white shirt and jeans, and he gave no resistance when he realized his hideout was besieged, according to Iraqi police.

The U.S. and Iraqi investigators are trying to identify the captive and has sent his DNA sample for testing, the unconfirmed report indicated.

Zarqawi is the most wanted suspect in Iraq and has a U.S. bounty of $25 million on his head.

[lukpac]

Campaigns worry about last-minute surprise

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In the presidential campaign's closing weeks, Democrats are bracing for an "October surprise," an event so dramatic it could influence the election's outcome. The capture of Osama bin Laden, for instance.

It's part of American political lore: the party out of power worries about a last-minute surprise engineered by the party in power. Now that October has arrived and the election is just a month away, speculation is rife among Democrats that President Bush and political mastermind Karl Rove have some tricks up their sleeves.

"I assume that it will be something," said House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California. "We have to be ready for that."

With the war in Iraq going badly and people concerned about terrorism, there also seems to be a better than usual chance for a significant event beyond either party's control.

Both sides know the possibilities: a major setback in Iraq or Afghanistan, a terrorist strike against the United States, a nuclear test by North Korea, an economic shock.

Three years after Bush said he wanted bin Laden "dead or alive," the capture of the fugitive al Qaeda leader tops nearly everyone's list as a supreme example of the kind of October surprise that could help seal Bush's re-election.

Democrat John Kerry made the failure to track down bin Laden a central part of his criticism of Bush in Thursday's first presidential debate. The Massachusetts senator claimed that Bush lost sight of that goal when he ordered the invasion of Iraq.

Some conspiracy buffs suggest bin Laden already has been captured or perhaps has been trapped by Pakistan in a cave, and will be produced just before the November 2 election.

No matter how far fetched, some Democrats have helped add to the speculation.

"I think it would be outrageous, frankly, but you know, there's those kind of rumors out there," former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told ABC.

Even if bin Laden remains elusive, the capture of a major terrorist leader -- bin Laden deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri or Iraq's Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of a militant group that has claimed to have beheaded two American hostages -- could provide an October boost for Bush.

But Ross Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University, said the administration risks a backlash.

"Producing a high-level al Qaeda leader would immediately invite suspicion about whether this person has been cooling his heels in a safe house some place," Baker said.

Perhaps the best late campaign season development might not be an actual surprise in Iraq, but a decline in the violence there.

Bush is no stranger to October surprises; his family has been on the receiving end.

The revelation of Bush's drunken-driving arrest as a young man came right before the 2000 election.

The Friday before the 1992 election, former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who served in the Reagan and first Bush administration, was indicted in the Democratic-inspired investigation of the Iran-Contra affair. That posed yet another worry for the elder Bush's re-election bid, which failed.

Usually speculated-upon October surprises fail to materialize. There was talk that the Carter administration would produce a deal in 1980 to free the U.S. hostages in Iran. In 1968 and again in 1972 came speculation that a deal to end the war in Vietnam might be at hand.

Yet the Suez Canal crisis in the fall of 1956 contributed to Dwight Eisenhower's re-election landslide, historians suggest.

As Election Day draws nearer, Bush's options for election-influencing actions are dwindling.

With three tax cuts under his belt, there is not enough time for a new stimulus if the economy takes a sudden turn for the worse, perhaps reflected in a bad jobs report on October 8 -- the last unemployment report before the election -- or in a stock market swoon.

Bush could release more crude oil from the national reserve to combat rising fuel prices. But he accused President Clinton of doing just that to help Democrat Al Gore right before the 2000 election. And Bush already has used some of those reserves to help refiners offset hurricane losses -- with little impact on rising fuel prices.

One "Hail Mary" pass could be for Vice President Dick Cheney to leave the ticket -- perhaps to be replaced by a popular moderate such as former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

Republican strategists scoff at such talk. But if Bush starts to fall behind, he and his advisers might want to try harder to reach out to moderates who dislike Cheney intensely. Cheney, who has had four heart attacks, could cite health concerns.

"The notion is that the October surprise is a Halloween trick for politicians. But the strongest possibility this time is something happening that nobody controls," said Princeton political science professor Fred Greenstein.

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

[Xenu]

Shit. They killed Janet Leigh!

[Beatlesfan03]

So do we count No WMDs as a surprise or is it still no early?

[Ess Ay Cee Dee]

I'm predicting a 20-30 cents a gallon drop in gas prices by Halloween weekend. Mark my words...

[Crummy Old Label Avatar]

Maybe Bush will take credit for the Dexter Capitol Cee Dee box? I mean, he's desperate and will grab at anything at this point.

I voted for "foiled terrorist attack". But I predict a combination of a "thwarted" attack and mysteriously low gas prices.

[Sound]

He wears jeans and flannel shirts so much now a days, I'm surprised one of the choices isn't "splits the seam of his pants to go after the highly educated undecided vote."
He's the president of the United States, put on a freakin' tie.