Sour Grapes
Of course we're Fair and Balanced!

2004-04-08

Smoking Gun

Just last night I was discussing with my wife the importance of the so-called Smoking Gun back in the days of Watergate. At the time, she had been living in Australia for a dozen or so years, would be there for another few years, and was therefore not really tuned in. As I understood it, the Smoking Gun was the hard, incontrovertible evidence that would amply demonstrate the guilt of Richard M. Nixon and his cohorts to their die-hard supporters. As a definite non-supporter, I convinced almost from the beginning. But even I, cynic and skeptic, was surprised by the extent of the corruption and dirty tricks.



Likewise, in more recent history, I have long believed that this Bush Administration was up to no good in many, many areas, not the least of which was the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq. But increasingly, despite 40-some years of nursing my cynicism and skepticism, I am being surprised by the extremes to which they have apparently gone. Today, via Atrios, Billmon, Kevin Drum and Michael Froomkin, I learned [again?] that the infamous President's Daily Brief¹ for 6 August 2001 was titled BIN LADEN DETERMINED TO ATTACK INSIDE UNITED STATES. How can anyone still buy this Administration's line?



It turns out this is not really new news. Open Source Politics had posted this information nearly 7 months ago, attributing it to an expired MSNBC link.



¹Thanks to Steven Aftergood's excellent Secrecy News for this and the next link.






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