Being Burketted

I try not to make sweeping claims about things for which I cannot possibly know the answer, but like most people I often have some sort of feeling about what the answer will be nonetheless. This is because when you examine certain odd claims your intuition and deductive powers kick in even when you don’t have all the evidence. I have that feeling about the Able Danger story, which is why I haven’t written about it.

First of all, anything that Curt Weldon is involved with is automatically suspect. It just is. He’s a nutball who shouldn’t be let anywhere near a position of real authority. That doesn’t mean he’s automatically wrong, of course, but when you combine it with the fact that his evidence is based upon memory, documents have disappeared and the guy backing up the claim has subtly changed his story — let’s just say my skeptical antenna are way, way up. Something is wrong with this picture. Particularly this part:

As to the timing of why this is all coming out only now, Shaffer revealed in his appearance on NPR’s Talk of the Nation Wednesday that it was Weldon’s idea to make a fuss over Able Danger being shut down, only after Shaffer and Phillpott recently approached him to get support for funding their new data mining proposal.

C’mon.

And if JPod and his ilk get covered in ignominy over it, so much the better. They want so much for it to be true, particularly the part about the 9/11 commission blowing these allegations off. They also want to blame it on Jamie Gorelick, which makes no sense whatsoever but it will mean they can exonerate the poor little Pentagon which just didn’t know what to do. (And did you know that Jamie Gorelick once worked at the Pentagon too, a long time ago? Coincidence? I think not…)

The whole thing sounds incredibly dicey to me. I’m not saying it’s impossible. I’m open to seeing some real evidence — I’d be happy to see Rummy’s Pentagon nailed for a cover-up. But I have a feeling that this is a Burkett special.

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