Sunday, September 02, 2012

Having a Hard Time Believing...

..that nobody from the administration knew about this UBL SEAL book before last week.  The Daily Mail has the scoop; 60 Minutes will be on it tonight; the Democratic National Convention begins Tuesday, the same day the book hits the shelves (moved up from an original availability on 9/11 to prevent the notion it was a political book).  Meanwhile it's clear the killing of bin Laden was one of the greatest Occomplishments but bragging about such things can be considered bad form--as evidenced by the group of ex-SEALS campaigning against it right now.

So just wondering here.  Having some mysterious SEAL pop up and give us a blow-by-blow reminder of the raid days before the national convention--exactly what is the downside of that for the Dems?   It gets the story circulating without having to circulate it.  They can remain detached or even express mock outrage, while answering new press questions about the raid.  At this point the only narrative detail the book seems to undermine is the claim that UBL could have been taken alive, something few care about.   If they had no foreknowledge it sounds like a wonderful political gift from the gods.

Clearly some government entities are rightfully outraged and may even succeed in shutting down the book or taking the profits but from a political perspective it sounds like the kind of thing Karl Rove might be accused of dreaming up for Bush.  Yeah, Occam's Razor suggests the guy is simply trying to cash in on his fame and that could be the end of it.  But it will be interesting to see how this story progresses in light of the SEAL PAC.

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