Mickey Kaus: OBL Tape a "Straddle" on Bush or Kerry

Continuing to prove that exclamation points aren't only for junior-high girls, Mickey Kaus continues his ridiculous spinning that OBL wants Bush as President, or at least is neutral on him:

Insta-OBL: 1) At least judging from the Drudge transcript, it doesn't read like a pro-Kerry pitch. It's a straddle!

Gee, that's awfully funny, Mick. I guess the fact that OBL releases the tape on election eve, finally confirming he's alive, isn't meant to denigrate Bush as a terrorist-fighter at all.

And I guess it doesn't mean much that he's picking up Michael Moore/John Kerry/Terry McAuliffe themes:

In the video, Bin Laden accused Bush of misleading Americans by saying the attack was carried out because al-Qaida "hates freedom." The terrorist leader said his followers have left alone countries that do not threaten Muslims.

Hm. Bill Maher says that three times a show. Is he, too, a Bush supporter?

Bin Laden suggested Bush was slow to react to the Sept. 11 attacks, giving the hijackers more time than they expected. At the time of the attacks, the president was listening to schoolchildren in Florida reading a book.

"It never occurred to us that the commander in chief of the American armed forces would leave 50,000 of his citizens in the two towers to face these horrors alone," he said, referring to the number of people who worked at the World Trade Center.

"It appeared to him (Bush) that a little girl's talk about her goat and its butting was more important than the planes and their butting of the skyscrapers. That gave us three times the required time to carry out the operations, thank God," he said.

Hmmmm... that picks up directly on a John Kerry attack. If he's "straddling" between the men, I wonder, where are the Swift Vets references? Seems to me he might have poked fun at Kerry's three, ahem, Purple Hearts. Everyone else has (except partisan liberals, natch).

Bin Laden compared the Bush administration to repressive Arab regimes "in that half of them are ruled by the military and the other half are ruled by the sons of kings and presidents."

He said the resemblance became clear when Bush's father was president and visited Arab countries.

"He wound up being impressed by the royal and military regimes and envied them for staying decades in their positions and embezzling the nation's money with no supervision," bin Laden said.

"He passed on tyranny and oppression to his son, and they called it the Patriot Act, under the pretext of fighting terror. Bush the father did well in placing his sons as governors and did not forget to pass on the expertise in fraud from the leaders of the (Mideast) region to Florida to use it in critical moments."

Jeepers, Mickey, I see a lot of anti-Bush rhetoric, and yet no anti-Kerry rhetoric.

I guess Osama bin Ladin is "straddling" his choice, "wrestling with the issues" between them, much as Andrew Sullivan was since the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court announcement of forced gay marriage and, oh, three days ago.

Perhaps Osama bin Ladin, too, is an "independent eagle," a sort of Guiliani-Schwarzenegger-McCain Republican.

Keep me posted, Mick. You're analysis is, err, entertaining, at the very least.

posted by Ace at 11:48 PM

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