i said recently that the problem with the october alq surprise idea is that the cadmin needs to be careful not to paint itself into a corner wrt the no-appeasement thingy - ie if it seems that an alq attack on amsoil would rally the sheeple into 'staying the course', then alq would be disinclined to attack, and mite keep her fingers crossed that democracy actually works in the us.

now we get this lovely piece on blitzer http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0405/27/wbr.01.html

"KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Miles, it's something that we've heard a lot about, a possible al Qaeda plot to influence elections. But there's their hasn't been a lot of discussion about what the objectives might be. So we checked in with some terror experts to find out.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA (voice-over): Terror experts say it's not about who wins the U.S. election, it's about impact.

M.J. GOHEL, ASIA-PACIFIC FOUNDATION: If, for instance, say, George Bush was in the lead in the opinion polls right now and an attack took place and that changes the equation as it did, for instance in Spain, then al Qaeda would feel that it has scored a major success.

ARENA: Al Qaeda affiliates attacked Spain just before its elections in March. Some suggests that cemented an overwhelming win for the socialist party.

ASHCROFT: We believe, for example, the attack in Spain is one that is viewed by al Qaeda as particularly effective in advancing al Qaeda objectives.

ARENA: The attack did result in Spain pulling its troops out of Iraq. Experts say the less Western influence in Iraq, the better for al Qaeda.

GOHEL: Iraq is a key battleground for the terrorists. The terrorists want to turn Iraq into another Taliban Afghanistan. They would like to see the premature withdrawal of the U.S.-led coalition forces.

ARENA: Neither John Kerry nor the president has said troops pulled out of Iraq any time soon. But there is some speculation that al Qaeda believes it has a better chance of winning in Iraq if John Kerry is in the White House.

BEN VENZKE, INTELCENTER: Al Qaeda feels that Bush is, even despite casualties, right or wrong for staying there is going to stay much longer than possibly what they might hope a Democratic administration would.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA: While U.S. officials say they're concerned of an attack as early as this summer, some experts believe if al Qaeda strikes with the election in mind it will do that just before November 2.

And while much attention is focused on the political conventions, experts say al Qaeda usually hits targets that it can hit on any day of the week -- Miles."

so on one hand we've got safire claiming theres no difference between jfk2/gwb2 for the domestic audience http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/opinion/26SAFI.html
and on the other we've got the CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT (are terror and election issues under the auspices of 'justice'?) saying that alq wants kerry cos he'll be easier to beat in iraq, despite kerrys call for more troops et al...

theres a problems with this argument:
despite 43 repeating that iraq is the central front of TWOT, the cool thing about asymetric wars is that u dont have to play by the purported rules... we are 33 months and counting without a terrorist attack in am. if alq had a brain, they wouldnt fight america in iraq. from d&goliath to hannibal to suntzu and everyone in between, the rule and logic has been pretty straightfwd. remember, alq purportedly attacked america at home b4 the iraq thingy - so the grievance was about america herself, not her belligerence in iraq - so the idea that alq primary concern is iraq is presumably wrong. and the idea that alq is trying to defeat america where her military is the strongest is just dumb. thats why they have 'sleeper cells' and are 'decentralised' and all the rest.

check this lovely contribution from kelli:
"ARENA: Al Qaeda affiliates attacked Spain just before its elections in March. Some suggests that cemented an overwhelming win for the socialist party."
lets be clear - the official shorthand re madrid is '1.alq blew up trains, 2. the spaniards appeased and voted for zap 3. pulled outta iraq' - but this is misleading. a fuller version of events would include the fact that after the bombs exploded, aznar personally got on the phone and called all the media outlets and inexplicably told them to blame eta (and, also inexplicably, there was the rush UN resolution the same day) - the spaniards apparently dont like being lied to and voted for zapatero.

despite the fact that most spaniards didnt wanna be in iraq, aznar still had a 10 point margin (or so) before 311 - and it seems to be the case that aznar would have won the election except for the apparently unnecessary lies re eta - it is widely presumed that if aznar had simply said 'this wont do, we'll do what we can to bring these people to justice' then he'd still be in charge today. my hypothesis is that aznar must have been set up somehow (cia?) and was promised support if he went with the blame-eta routine - even in the face of etas denials and the whitevanwithkoran evidence and the alq signature 'simultaneity'. its difficult to imagine that he'd make such an egregious judgement error - especially given the campaigning blackout and all that.

our friend kelli seems to know all this - hence distancing herself from the simplistic interpretation with her '*Some suggest* that cemented an overwhelming win for the socialist party' (this is the same trick 43 used in the niger/sotu fiasco 'british intelligence tells us nigeraniumblahblah') even while she carefully lays out all the presumed implications that alq will therefore attack on us soil to try to get kerry into iraq.

all is not well in paradise...