Archive for June 9, 2011

A Dead Rat

7
2 years ago
by Monotreme in

Osama bin Laden’s for­mer home in Abbot­tabad, Pak­istan. He moved away May 2 and left no for­ward­ing address, and all mail sent to him is being returned.

The Asso­ci­ated Press is report­ing that the May 2 raid on Osama bin Laden’s Abbot­tabad, Pak­istan com­pound has resulted in a trea­sure trove of infor­ma­tion for Amer­i­can intelligence.

While intel­li­gence sources stop short of gloat­ing that they have destroyed al Qaida, the arti­cle by Kim­berly Dozier clearly indi­cates CIA offi­cials and oth­ers feel they have the upper hand in this bat­tle of the war.

(Kim­berly Dozier’s byline indi­cates that she is the “AP Intel­li­gence Writer”. How cool would that job title be? Looks good on a busi­ness card.)

Navy SEALs retrieved five com­put­ers, 10 hard dri­ves, 110 jump dri­ves and a hand­writ­ten jour­nal from the bin Laden compound.

Ana­lysts (speak­ing anony­mously) report that there is a com­plete chain of emails and other doc­u­ments that shed light on the rela­tion­ships between the var­i­ous oper­a­tives and hangers-​​on in the al Qaida orga­ni­za­tion. They think two al Qaida mem­bers have altered travel plans to avoid what they believe is an impend­ing U.S. raid.

Does any­one think that tor­tur­ing bin Laden would’ve pro­vided more infor­ma­tion than what ana­lysts say they are get­ting from him now, even in death?

Ryan Dyin’ on the Vine

59
2 years ago
by filistro in

On April 15, 2011, House Repub­li­cans voted almost unan­i­mously for the Paul Ryan bud­get, thus putting their leg­isla­tive seal of approval on the plan…and putting their polit­i­cal hides on the line for it, too. Repub­li­can strate­gists, spin­ners and talk­ing heads imme­di­ately began try­ing to sell the plan to vot­ers by say­ing Ryan’s plan was “coura­geous,” and the Amer­i­can pub­lic “grasped the neces­sity of get­ting seri­ous about the deficit.”

Almost two months have passed, and by now the polling tra­jec­tory has become clear enough to show us whether all those care­ful talk­ing points were effec­tive. Do the Repub­li­cans really have the pub­lic with them on this? The most telling indi­ca­tor of opin­ion on most issues is how polling begins to arc either upward or down­ward from its early base­line. (more…)

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