The Big Speech

Steno Sue’s involvement is the big clue.

Josh Marshall wrote about this piece in the Washington Post last night and this morning amends his impression of the importance of the story:

Two points seem clear to me.

1) The chaos in Iraq has opened the place up to serious infiltration by all manner of bad-actors from around the region — a development which is not a justification for administration policy, but an example of its failure.

2) The administration is far from weaned of its propensity for using manipulated or just plain bogus intelligence to advance its policy or cover its tracks. One veteran journalist/sage whose take on things I never discount tells me this morning: “Yes, the more I think of it, the more the timing is suspicious, and reminiscent of the last Sept. 11 ‘celebration.’ Ridge saying there is a new Al Q threat in the US (but not issuing an alert, because they know that alerts are now politically counterproductive). The Wolfowitz opeds on terrorism. I’d watch for Bush to make a reference to the Post article, or at least to its contents, in his speech tonight. The main difference this year is that they are using the Post rather than the Times to do their leaking.”

Sounds right to me.

“Terrorists are in Iraq just like we always said.”

“Iran also harbored them.”

” They killed 3,000 Americans.”

“We will kill them before they come over here and kill us all in our beds.”

“The UN must give us lots of money.”

“Support the troops.”

“I have a big codpiece.”

“May God bless the United States of America”