Listen to Ross and Burbank weekdays on KIRO Radio 97.3 FM
 Ross+Burbank


Is it really what it seems?

May 9, 2012 @ 9:04 am (Updated: 9:15 am - 5/9/12 )

All of us are obviously delighted that al Qaeda's latest plot was foiled. And what a story! The guy who volunteered to blow up his new improved underwear was actually a double agent! Planted by Saudi Arabia!

And the CIA wanted to keep him there, but this plot was apparently so far along that the only way to stop it was for the agent himself to volunteer as the suicide bomber. And he not only turns over the bomb, he pinpoints his senior commander, who is then promptly blown up by a drone.

I have to say, this is a very reassuring victory in the battle formerly known as the war on terrorism.

The only thing not reassuring about this reassuring victory -- is reading about it on a BAJILLION websites!

Of all the top secret secrets the US government has, wouldn't this be at the tippy tippy top? The only thing we should know about this guy is that: he got the bomb, and then, so sad, there's an accident, and a smudge in the desert somewhere.

At least that's the story you put out.

But instead there's this flood of details so that now, al Qaeda knows that everyone who volunteers to blow himself up is a double agent.

How could something like this get leaked. Unless that was the whole point.

The old double-pysch. Maybe the guy in fact wasn't a double agent, and they captured a real suicide bomber but they deliberately put it out that he was a double agent, and he's being paid a million bucks, and there are others like him, implying that the whole suicide corps is compromised, so that now al Qaeda has to purge all their suicide bombers, crippling their operation.

Could we be that good?

If we are, I guess I should probably not be saying anything.

So never mind.

More Ross and Burbank

MyNorthwest.com - Purpose of Comments statement
Bonneville Media encourages site users to express their opinions by posting comments. Our goal is to maintain a civil dialogue in which readers feel comfortable. At times, the comments can descend to personal attacks. Please do not engage in such behavior. We encourage your thoughtful comments which: have a positive and constructive tone, are on topic, are respectful toward others and their opinions. Bonneville reserves the right to remove comments which do not conform to these criteria.

Comments (51)


  • Add A Comment

  • SeattleD wrote...
    And what is Romney planning when it comes to terrorists?
    May 9, 2012 7:22 pm
    Tax cuts for millionaires.

    OK, I admit, I've never heard Romney say anything relevant about how he'd keep America safe. He's blown some hot air about Iran, but never even said what he'd do about that.

    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • SeattleD wrote...
    I'd like to correct an error I made in my last post
    May 9, 2012 7:25 pm
    I wrote "Romney"

    I really meant to type "Dumney".

    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • It's me! Ha ha! wrote...
    Funny isn't it.
    May 9, 2012 8:54 pm
    That the 3 left wing stooges seem to show up at the same time.
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • Chuck Gould wrote...
    Remarks by Mary C. Curtis, on Politics Daily, address the unfortunate spirit of this forum
    May 10, 2012 7:42 am
    America the Peevish; When Debate Descends to Name Calling (by Mary C. Curtis)

    Demonize your opponent. Technically, it's nothing new. But Republicans are finding that it is possible to go too far, especially if you get caught. Party leaders are backing away from a fund-raising document that suggests using "fear" to motivate donors and paints Democrats as cartoon caricatures: President Obama is the Joker, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Cruella DeVille and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Scooby-Doo.

    It's pretty hard to get worked up over such excess, as Democratic outrage resembles Claude Rains' sly Captain Renault in "Casablanca," shocked that such dirty dealings are going on.

    But it is depressing that attacks that start by parsing complex issues -- from health-care reform to national security concerns -- quickly descend into school-yard taunts. The GOP PowerPoint, first reported by Politico, was catchy and occasionally funny, but it offended because it's ultimately so silly. If you are comfortable in your beliefs, isn't that enough?

    Disagreement has become a battle to the death, with the other guy not just wrong but inhuman, dangerous even. It's easy to put horns on his head and to exact retribution whenever possible.

    Though I have no doubt the intentions are based on Church doctrine on one side and civil rights on the other, it was troubling that the Catholic Archdiocese and Washington, D.C., could not reach a more conciliatory solution in the matter of medical insurance at Catholic Charities in the district. The archdiocese decided to cut health coverage for spouses of all future Catholic Charities employees rather than provide benefits to same-sex partners; the city would not adjust its decision or provide a waiver for the Church. When the city and the Catholic Church had a similar spat in San Francisco, they reached a compromise allowing insured employees to add anyone legally in their home -- parent, child or partner -- to their health-care package. Compromise, however, has come to mean capitulation. The result in Washington will be fewer people with health insurance.

    Standing on principle looks nothing like strength. Instead, it has taken on a tone of defensiveness. And it happens on both sides.

    As I prepared to leave for the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville last month, excited to talk with some of the 600 delegates who traveled to this first-ever event and – let's face it – wondering what Sarah Palin was like up close, I was surprised at the reaction from people who I thought were more open-minded.

    One told me she didn't know how I could go because she wouldn't be able to even be near them, political disagreement being a contagious disease, I suppose. Others feared for my safety, as though a journalist with a notepad and tape recorder would be the prime target for a beat-down in the middle of the Opryland resort.

    I didn't get this much hand-wringing solicitude from friends when I reported a story on Confederate heritage groups, and traveled to meetings where folks refused to salute the American flag "because you can't serve two masters" and punctuated solemn renditions of "Dixie" with a rebel yell.

    Some tea party activists had indeed earned bad reputations, with crude signs, some disruptive behavior and the occasional firearm at rallies. But no group wants to be judged by its most extreme rhetoric. I figured the best way to get to know what someone believes was to just ask.

    My first night in Nashville, sitting with three delegates from Florida, we all managed to get through dinner with no raised voices or food fights. Different roads had led them to friendship and their pro-small government, anti-health-care bill stance. We even had an interesting discussion of states' rights vs. federal rule after I said that Supreme Court intervention overturning laws forbidding marriage between blacks and whites made it possible for me to marry my husband years later.

    But on the larger stage, nuances disappeared, with countless references to the president as a socialist, communist and fascist. "I have nothing against him personally," folks would say before unloading a barrage of insults, one comparing him unfavorably to Mussolini. While delegates expressed some resentment at being defined by Tom Tancredo's speech advocating civics literacy tests as a voting prerequisite, they greeted the former Colorado congressman with loud applause and stood in a long line to chat and take pictures. A convention organizer said: "Congressman Tancredo had a gift for understatement."

    Also popular in Nashville was former Judge Roy Moore, famous for his refusal to obey a federal judge's order to move a Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama Supreme Court building. His appeal was religious and muscular, as he excoriated President Obama for "denying we are a Christian nation" and called for "300 million people armed in the cause of liberty."

    The terms revolt and revolution were tossed about throughout the convention weekend, with those claiming to be true patriots warning, often with a disingenuous wink, that the prospect of armed conflict against the duly elected U.S. government was at hand. Media were placed firmly placed in the unpatriotic, villainous category. Amy Kremer of Tea Party Express led a wave of jeers toward the back of the room where media representatives camped on a platform. "We do not need the media -- at all," she said. I was in the audience at the time, sharing a pleasant breakfast with a nice older couple from California, who looked a little embarrassed. "She's going too far," they said, not daring to stand and join the crowd in shouts of "go home" since we had just been talking about family and other normal stuff. (We've been in touch since. They approved of my stories and invited me to their home.)

    When conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart took over, he continued the"liberal media" bashing, saying he was going to organize a tea party at "Sixth Avenue in Manhattan," so the patriots could stand in the way of the rich elite and their beach getaways at the Hamptons. I was relieved to know he wasn't talking about me, living as I do far away on the North Carolina-South Carolina border in a lifestyle so modest that thieves recently turned their noses up at my non-flat-screen behemoth of a barely working TV.

    On the one side, accusations of "racist" and "scary," on the other, "Whole Foods" and "al-Qaeda" sympathizers. Partisan politics is defined by catch phrases and characterizations that barely make sense. The insults flying left and right remind me of a five-page handwritten letter I received when I wrote about the Confederate flag then atop the South Carolina statehouse. It was so filled with hate that by the end, the author had stopped communicating in complete sentences, content to just scrawl random insults until she ran out of steam.

    Is there any hope that the 50-state "civility tour" of former Iowa Rep. Jim Leach, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, is taking grass root? The Coffee Party, with more than 87,000 fans and counting, hopes its March 13 National Coffee Party Day will draw believers in its mission to give "voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government." So now you have to join a group to calmly chat? Some how, I don't know if anything not powered by outrage has a chance.

    That simplistic sniping is not a new phenomenon brings little comfort. You'd think we'd know better by now.

    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • deltta wrote...
    Wow
    May 15, 2012 9:02 am
    Do they still invite you to family gatherings? If I ever had to sit next to uncle "Chuck" I would have stepped in front of a bus
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • istj04 wrote...
    Loose lips sink. . . .suicide bombers??
    May 10, 2012 7:58 am
    In WW II, a story like this would have gotten the government's attention in a MOST NEGATIVE WAY (ask the newspaper that put a crossword puzzle involving the word "Overlord" what happened!). Not sure that "hypothesizing" the Intelligence community's "tactics" is gonna get Al-Qaida to back off on anything. Perhaps vaporizing them off the face of the planet (like a few hundred thousand Japanese found out at Hiroshima and Nagasaki) might. It certainly ended WW II.
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • SeattleD wrote...
    Mitt Dumney finally reveals how he'll fight terrorism
    May 10, 2012 11:38 am
    He's going to hold the terrorists down and chop off their hair.
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }