Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Tinfoil hat time: How Clarke could have been "out of the loop" after all
As we noted in our roundup last night (back), Josh Marshall remarks that "Clarke, as we've said, was the counter-terrorism coordinator at NSC. That means he ran the inter-agency process on terrorism issues. Cheney says Clarke wasn't in the loop; but that means that he actually ran the loop."
Sure that nails Cheney... But what if...
What if Josh wasn't being cynical enough...
What it there was a lie within the lie (We are, after all, dealing with POTL.)
What if .... We already know there is a shadow government (AP, though the story is, oddly, mostly about President Eisenhower). And in the nature of the case, we can't really know when the shadow government is running the real government, can we? And we've also been reading (here at Corrente, and via Harpers, though not, oddly, in the mainstream media) about CEO COM LINK (here, and here), which is a secure, exclusive telephone system that allows CEOs to speak directly with Tom Ridge, and which has already been activated four times (that we know of).
What if the covert WOT—that is, the non-Iraqi part that involves wholesale assassination of AQ operatives, a la Operation Phoenix (back)—has been privatized—contracted out by the shadow government and run through CEO COM LINK or its equivalent?
If this is true, Clarke would then be, indeed, "out of the loop," but left in place for show, to conceal where the real action is: the shadow government and whatever private armies it's running.
No! They would never do that!
One small fact that would support this idea is that Clarke is the one who, on 9/11, ordered the President into Air Force One on its trip to Louisiana and then Omaha. Clarke's book hints that Bush didn't take kindly to that, and as we all know, Bush takes things very, very personally. It would be entirely typical of Bush to leave Clarke in place, and to leave Clarke thinking he was doing real work, and bypassing him all the while.
Readers? A late night paranoid fantasy? It's dark under the table, so I've got to go to bed.
Sure that nails Cheney... But what if...
What if Josh wasn't being cynical enough...
What it there was a lie within the lie (We are, after all, dealing with POTL.)
What if .... We already know there is a shadow government (AP, though the story is, oddly, mostly about President Eisenhower). And in the nature of the case, we can't really know when the shadow government is running the real government, can we? And we've also been reading (here at Corrente, and via Harpers, though not, oddly, in the mainstream media) about CEO COM LINK (here, and here), which is a secure, exclusive telephone system that allows CEOs to speak directly with Tom Ridge, and which has already been activated four times (that we know of).
What if the covert WOT—that is, the non-Iraqi part that involves wholesale assassination of AQ operatives, a la Operation Phoenix (back)—has been privatized—contracted out by the shadow government and run through CEO COM LINK or its equivalent?
If this is true, Clarke would then be, indeed, "out of the loop," but left in place for show, to conceal where the real action is: the shadow government and whatever private armies it's running.
No! They would never do that!
One small fact that would support this idea is that Clarke is the one who, on 9/11, ordered the President into Air Force One on its trip to Louisiana and then Omaha. Clarke's book hints that Bush didn't take kindly to that, and as we all know, Bush takes things very, very personally. It would be entirely typical of Bush to leave Clarke in place, and to leave Clarke thinking he was doing real work, and bypassing him all the while.
Readers? A late night paranoid fantasy? It's dark under the table, so I've got to go to bed.
