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Idiot of the Day: John Gibson

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I was thinking yesterday about Oklahoma City, and about how things might have been different if a left wing radical had blown up the Federal Building instead of a right wing radical. Bill Clinton, surely, would have been personally blamed by many on the right. Indeed, some on the right tried, at first, to excuse McVeigh’s actions as an understandable response to the clear effort by Clinton and Janet Reno to install a socialist-secular-totalitarian state in America. Oklahoma City would certainly not seem as distant to us now as it does; I doubt that David Horowitz or Glenn Reynolds would go more than a paragraph before denouncing leftist terrorists and their obvious collaborators, Islamic radicals.

Which brings us, of course, to John Gibson. Yesterday Gibson dredged up some hidden bits of wisdom from Laurie Mylorie and Jayna Davis. Apparently, there is a ton of hidden evidence demonstrating the culpability of the Iraqi state in the Oklahoma City bombing. Take note:

The whole thing stinks of Iraq. Ramzi Yousef, an Iraqi agent that was involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and his associates were allegedly talking to Terry Nichols in 1994 about how to build a fertilizer bomb.

Of course, Yousef was a member of Al Qaeda, and his connection to Iraq has been thoroughly debunked; Mylorie was unaware, apparently, that two people can share a name. The potential connection of Nichols to Al Qaeda actually has a bit to stand on, as Richard Clarke notes in Against All Enemies. We cannot prove that Nichols didn’t meet with members of Al Qaeda in the Phillipines, for example.

The most fascinating part, for me, is the “the whole thing stinks of Iraq” bit. Perhaps someone could explain to me why the Iraqi state, presumably in revenge for the Gulf War, would blow up, in secret, the Oklahoma City Federal Building? I agree that it’s a prime target for Iraqi terrorism, and that if we assume that all unsolved bombings that have occured over the past thirty years are the work of Iraqi intelligence, then it quite fits their pattern of random, non-sensical attacks. But why, precisely, ought we to do that? Terrorist attacks usually have a purpose; terror. Accordingly, terrorist very rarely keep their actions secret, as it kind of defeats the whole purpose of the terrorist enterprise. . .

It gets better. It would be wrong to say that there is no evidence to support the Gibson/Dayna/Mylorie thesis. In fact, there is a great deal of evidence running directly counter to it, in no small part because we currently hold Terry Nichols and Ramzi Yousef, held Tim McVeigh until we killed him, and currently have the entirety of the Iraqi intelligence service archives. That the three principles vigorously deny any connection to Iraq, and that no evidence of Iraqi culpability has actually been found, might indicate to some that there’s nothing going on here. But:

So now the question: So if there is all this evidence, why has the U.S. government ignored it?

Well, for one thing, I submit George W. Bush didn’t ignore it after September 11, 2001. He realized then that Iraq was behind a lot of the attacks on the U.S. and it was time for it to stop.

But before September 11th, he did ignore it and so did the Clinton administration. The lawyer who is suing told Rita he didn’t think the previous administration was willing to go to war over the Murrah Building bombing.

OK. But why keep it secret now?

The answer is Tim McVeigh and the U.S. government were each doing their part to hide the real players. Government prosecutors said there was no “John Doe No. 2” even though dozens of people saw him. McVeigh insisted all the way to the grave that he acted alone, when everybody including his lawyer knew he was lying.

If McVeigh were just the grunt — mixing the chemicals, driving the truck, setting the timer, and running off — guilty though he might be, if the bombing was a plot by a foreign government, his lawyer would have had a chance at the sentencing hearing to argue that others were more responsible and McVeigh should not be executed.

The fear that the McVeigh execution might have been an error — and a mistaken execution — could put the federal death penalty itself in jeopardy. The fear of losing the federal death penalty could explain why the U.S. government does not appear to be anxious to act on evidence it has that Iraq may have been involved in the Oklahoma City bombing.

OK.

I’m sorry, choking.

Still choking.

Now crying.

Sorry to make you read all that. Anyway, Gibson seems to be suggesting that Iraqi involvement would imperil the Federal Death Penalty. Okay, let that sink in for a moment. First, you have to believe that McVeigh wouldn’t have received death if he was working with Iraqis, rather than on his own, which is pretty absurd. Second, you have to assume that the Bush administration would have kept this secret in the entire build up to the invasion for, um, some reason. Third, you have to assume that Terry Nichols, absolutely desperate to avoid his own death sentence, would nonetheless refrain from breathing a word of the conspiracy to the authorities. Yep.

Why do we see this? It nicely completes the circle for wingnuts. Only Muslims are terrorists. White Christian boys, to the extent they were involved at all, were clearly the pawns of evil Iraqis. The right, even the extreme right, believes in freedom, Christ, and the free market, not in blowing up Federal Buildings. Yep, has to be the damn Iraqis.

I wonder, seriously, what percentage of FOX News viewers are dumb enough to eat this shit. I would hope that the number is rather small.

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