corrente

Remember the noxious little meme (spread by, of all people, Kevin Drum, back) that somehow Bush's critics are to blame for blowing the cover of an AQ mole, because they "panicked" Him?

I mean, sheesh! Everybody knows Bush listens only and exactly to the base, so how the heck were critics going to panic him?

Anyhow, this noxious little meme is now being spread by none other than Dick "John" Morris:

Besieged by critics who claimed that it was raising the terror threat to staunch Kerry's momentum as he emerged from his convention, the Bush people felt obliged to release the fact that the British and Pakistanis had arrested al Qaeda computer guru Mohammed Nasin Noor Khan in Pakistan on July 13.

This unfortunate release of information reportedly crippled ongoing British efforts to use Khan — or at least his computer and e-mail — to communicate with, and therefore identify, his al Qaeda colleagues.

Once the terrorists read in the newspaper or saw on CNN that Khan was in Western custody, his usefulness to our intelligence services was fatally compromised. One British intelligence figure explained, in classic understatement, "It made our task more difficult."

Why did the Bush administration feel obliged to reveal the source of the intelligence that impelled it to ratchet up the terror alert? Because the Michael Moores of the world would not respect the terror warning without proof — even if this evidence compromised efforts to get more intelligence.
(via the just-another-organ-of-the-VWRC New York Post)

Really, isn't this the silliest thing you've ever heard? Bush is trying to get Michael Moore to respect him? I don't think so. It would take a lot more than trashing a priceless intelligence asset to do that!

Welcome to the accountability society! Oh, wait... Accountability is for other people. People who aren't Inerrant Boy. I forgot.