This Space for Rent

The July Surprise

On Sunday, the Pakistanis captured a fairly important Al Qaeda operative (Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, who may have been the fellow who planned the 1998 bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. MSNBC reports that Mr. Ghailani is cooperating, which is the PC way of saying being tortured). Big news, isn't it? News that you'd think that would be reported on Sunday or Monday, right?

Wrong. How about Thursday instead?

A couple of weeks ago, The New Republic claimed that the Bushies had strongly encouraged Pakistan to produce a senior Al Qaeda operative at the time of the Democratic Convention. Now, what could be happening on Thursday? Oh, right, John Kerry is making his pro-forma acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention.

What a coincidence! I mean, the chances are a million to one that the GOP would be so lucky to be able to delay a public announcement about the (otherwise ignored) War On Terror™ until it just happened to be at the same time as something that would otherwise kick Maximum Leader Genius in the ass. And to happen the 20 or so times that it's happened now, why, Maximum Leader Genius must be the luckiest unelected despot in the whole wide world.