So, now you're saying Please don't tell me what I'm saying, and for sure do not tell other people what I am saying. A discussion does not consist of me saying A and you replying, "Ah! So you're saying B!"
I did not say that it is OK for anyone to make common cause with bad guys. I said that knowing who some of them are is an aid to finding more of them. That is not a "split hair," it is an elementary fact.
Be careful here. I am not "defending Norquist" from things he actually did, if in fact they were wrong. I am not on some mission here to claim that he is pure in all of this. I don't claim to know. What I do know is that this document which has been presented to us as containing "documented facts" contains a whole bunch of documented facts that don't tell us anything, but are being presented as if they are some sort of damning indictment.
Playing creepy organ music while telling us that some guy met in a car with Karl Rove and they talked about -- dun da DUN dun -- how to get more votes, is a trick. It is a hackneyed rhetorical trick, and when I see it, my BS detector goes on.
So I read on a little more, and I see that Osama bin Laden and al Qa'eda have been plopped into a story with Norquist, and this time it's because there's some guy at the White House that Norquist knows (no claim is made that Norquist had anything to do with him working there) whose late father was involved in all of this. Wait a minute. That's an even dirtier trick. Now the author is taking third-party mud, once dead, and throwing it at Norquist. Why Norquist? If that story is true, the White House has some more vetting to do. But instead of aiming the venom at the White House, Gaffney spews it at Norquist.
I have to conclude, after seeing a bunch of that kind of stuff, that this is a hit piece. OK, so Gaffney is on some kind of jihad. If it was against terrorists, I might be glad. But it isn't. It's against Norquist. It is a vituperative personal attack, plainly motivated by animosity, and powered by every rhetorical trick that Gaffney can summon.
Don't try to sell me this as one Saint's effort to save the Republic. It isn't that, so just stop it. National security professionals do not go on the radio and in the magazines to hurl sticks, rocks, grass, and anything else they can grab, at one specific individual as part of our ongoing anti-terrorism efforts.
If it came as a surprise to Gaffney that creepy people would be attracted by an opportunity for political access, he shouldn't have been. I doubt others were that naive, because that motion is as old as the hills. The question is whether it is dangerous. Gaffney claims it is. I don't think it's half as dangerous as not knowing who they are. I'm sure every diplomat in the Chinese embassy is a spy. Do we deport them all? No. We watch them. Spies we know about are useful, even though they're spies, because they help us find out who the other spies are that we don't know.
The problem we had after 9/11 was that we were embarrassingly ignorant about these networks. Books will be written about how that happened. For sure, Mistakes Were Made. But we can't blame Grover Norquist for that; he's a domestic politics guy with no brief in that area whatsoever.
Who did make those mistakes? And why, if our Mystery Correspondent is to be believed, are they now trying to stick Norquist with their bill?
Wahabbis! Wahabbis right here in River City! And it's all this guy's fault, say the guys whose job it was to watch for that stuff and who were caught flat-footed on 9/11.
I say it's a hit piece, and it is not motivated by any desire to improve the security of the United States. If anything, it's probably mildly harmful to the security of the United States because if there were more of those creeps out there who might have exposed themselves to us, they will now be inclined to continue to hide. The good news is, we probably have better ways of finding them now, so it may not matter.
