GREG DJEREJIAN IS UNIMPRESSED with Josh Marshall’s claims of a July surprise being underway.
UPDATE: Jan Haugland has comments, too: “If this recent accusation is true, Bush has already won the terror war decisively, just waiting for the perfect time to cash in the prize.”
I have to say, I’ve never heard of Ahmed Ghailani. Neither, I strongly suspect, have very many potential voters. Which to me makes it absurd to argue that Bush is trying to upstage Kerry by yelling “look! we captured Ahmed Ghailani!” — to an inevitable chorus of “who?”
I mean, Osama, or Zarqawi, maybe. But if you set the threshold this low, then the prediction becomes trivial: “They’ll probably try to make hay out of any Al Qaeda guy they capture close to the Convention.”
Yes. But that’s not news. That’s the normal order of business.
MORE: Tom Maguire observes:
MORE: Actually, the TNR second paragraph was “This spring, the administration significantly increased its pressure on Pakistan to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, or the Taliban’s Mullah Mohammed Omar…”, so I can be a bit flexible. But Number 22? No crow for me, thanks, but I may have some Buffalo Wings later. Unless the networks cut away, forget it.
Yeah, like that’s going to happen. Tom has many more useful links. And LT Smash collects many comments, some rather overheated. It seems that the people playing up Ghailani’s importance are mostly Bush critics, which should tell you all you need to know about what’s going on here.