"Al Qaeda Plot" to Kill Tony Blair Thwarted

The men were described as "Lithuanian." Lithuanian what, they did not say, and when they do not say, I think we all know where the smart money lay.

For some time I've been greatly amused by Mickey Kaus' hysterical attempts to claim that Al Qaeda are real George Bush fans. He's a Kerry supporter, and so he obviously doesn't want to support the same candidate as bin Ladin; his wild spinning for the "Bin Ladin For Bush" theory is rich in both chuckles and pathos.

Okay, Mick:

If your theory is that "Bin Ladin loves Bush because Bush plays right into his sinister scheme of provoking a War of Civilizations," shouldn't bin Ladin also be, errrm, a big fan of Tony Blair as well?

Tony Blair is one of Bush's few major-nation allies in this thing; indeed, it is often said that Tony Blair, and not George Bush, provides the moral and rhetorical support for Bush's wider war on terrorism (i.e., the war in Iraq).

So what we have is Al Qaeda attempting to evict one Bush ally from office in favor of the Spanish socialist peacenik, and now we have Al Qaeda plotting to kill his main ally.

At some point, Mickey, you're going to subordinate your fanciful and self-pleasing theories to the actual empirical evidence at hand.

The anticipated "No Theory That Is This Self-Satisfying Can Ever Be Abandoned" Spin: Bin Ladin loves Bush, and only Bush, because while a Tony Blair exudes finesse, reserve, and rhetorical persuasiveness, Bush does not. Bush "helps" bin Ladin's plan to recruit most Muslims into a World War on the West whereas a lot of extremist Muslims listen to Tony Blair and say to themselves, "You know, that English guy makes an awful lot of sense. Maybe this jihad we're all so crazy about isn't such a cool idea after all."

Thus, Al Qaeda plots to kill or drive from office all of Bush's smarter-and-more-reasonable allies, while leaving The Great Blundering Crusader-Satan in office.

That will be his response.

What other possible response is there?