Defeatist Paranoid Wingnuts in the CIA, too?

Oh, boy, here it comes.

You know all these traitorous notions I've so shamelessly purveyed over the last year? By personal e-mail, in the comment sections of other people's blogs, and now, on this blog?

You know my pernicious habit of spreading cynicism about the Bush administration? My ill-disguised glee in radiating defeatism about the War on Terror as currently pursued?

And did I mention my burning, evil desire to infect others, by my very mode of reasoning, with the same general insanity? Why, I'm virtually a walking barrel of neurotoxins! When bits stream out of my modem and onto the internet, it's tantamount to a terror attack.

Boy, do you ever not want your sister to marry me.

Specifically, what about my wingnut theory about how Bin Laden might help re-elect Dubya - not by surrendering unconditionally, but ... by staging another major terror attack? That's gotta be the most slanderous thing anybody could say about either of them, isn't it? Bush helped by Bin Laden? Bin Laden helping Bush? The strange-bedfellows politics has got to stop somewhere, doesn't it?

Well, about that rank agit-prop poison, that blot on the body of civil discourse, brace yourself: it's about to go mainstream, according to a Guardian article, "Bush told he is playing into Bin Laden's hands".

[The anonymous author of a forthcoming book, a CIA analyst] who published an analysis of al-Qaida last year called Through Our Enemies' Eyes, thinks it quite possible that another devastating strike against the US could come during the election campaign, not with the intention of changing the administration, as was the case in the Madrid bombing, but of keeping the same one in place.

"I'm very sure they can't have a better administration for them than the one they have now," he said.

"One way to keep the Republicans in power is to mount an attack that would rally the country around the president."

[...] the stridency of his warnings about al-Qaida led him to be moved from a highly sensitive job in the late 90s.

But Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of operations at the CIA counter-terrorism centre, said he had been vindicated by events. "He is very well respected, and looked on as a serious student of the subject."

Anonymous believes Mr Bush is taking the US in exactly the direction Bin Laden wants, towards all-out confrontation with Islam under the banner of spreading democracy.

My only quibble is with The Guardian's headline. Bush is being told that he's playing into Bin Laden's hands? That may be too generous by half - Bush must know very well that Al Qaeda has been useful to him politically. If he doesn't know, I wonder why his braintrust wouldn't bother to exlain it to him? Why indeed? Well, perhaps because ... Oh no, I feel another paranoid conspiracy fugue state coming on. I think I'll go lie down now.