The New Republic claims that the Bush Administration has ordered the government of Pakistan to capture Usama bin Laden and other major terrorism and Taliban fugitives during the DNC convention in July.
This magazine, which I have long respected and often hated, has now made itself fit to stand beside The National Enquirer and the World News. Next, we’ll learn about the traumatic childhood of a half-man, half-pig adolescent living in Georgia and that the Virgin Mary works as a cocktail waitress in the lounge at the Holiday Inn in Meridian, Mississippi.
More frighteningly, the Major Media–also known as Kerry’s publicity department–will treat this as a “serious news story.” Tom Brokaw will talk to some communist Navy admiral from the IPS who will agree wholeheartedly that the Administration is capable of making such an arrangement.
I’ll take a gamble: John B. Judis, Spencer Ackerman, Massoud Ansari never interviewed an “unnamed Pakistani intelligence official,” though they might have paid some Pakistani (it’s not a wealthy country) to agree to some statement they had already written. Instead, these three made up the story from whole cloth, having learned from the New York Times and former TNR reporters that fiction is easier than news.
Elvis, anyone?