ISN'T THAT RICH?:

Never Forget What? (FRANK RICH, September 14, 2002, NY Times)

Candor is so little prized in Washington that you want to shake the hand of anyone who dares commit it. So cheers to Andrew Card, the president's chief of staff, for telling The Times's Elisabeth Bumiller the real reason that his boss withheld his full-frontal move on Saddam Hussein until September: "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." Mr. Card has taken some heat for talking about a war in which many may die as if it were the rollout of a new S.U.V. But he wasn't lying, and history has already proved him right. This campaign has been so well timed and executed that the new product already owns the market. The unofficial motto of the 9/11 anniversary may have been "Never forget," but by 9/12, if not before, the war on Al Qaeda was already fading from memory as the world was invited to test-drive the war on Iraq.

Al Qaeda may be forgotten, but it's not gone - apparently even from the suburbs of Buffalo, as CBS News first reported last night. At least two-thirds of its top leadership remains at large. A draft version of a U.N. report on our failure to shut down its cash flow says that "Al Qaeda is by all accounts `fit and well' and poised to strike again at its leisure."[...]

What happens if Al Qaeda attacks the U.S., or if Afghanistan or Pakistan falls while we're at war in Iraq? Can we continue to meet all our commitments with an all-volunteer army? As budget deficits spiral into the foreseeable future, where will we get the tens of billions of dollars we need to support the post-Saddam Iraq that we will surely inherit? Is Saddam our new focus because he's the most catastrophic threat or is there another agenda that should be spelled out, whether it involves oil or unfinished Bush family business?

This is the candid talk we need to have. Maybe the administration can make the case that we can simultaneously whip Al Qaeda and Saddam, secure Afghanistan for keeps, tame the rest of the "axis of evil," guzzle gas in perpetuity and keep cutting taxes (for some of us). If that's so, and someone else's children will be marching on Baghdad, what patriot would not stand up and say "Let's roll"?

You'd think he would have spiked this column after the arrest of the al-Qaeda cell in Buffalo, which he mentions himself, proved the premise of his story wrong [Agents Arrest Terror Suspects Outside Buffalo (DON VAN NATTA Jr. and PHILIP SHENON, September 14, 2002, NY Times)] :

Federal authorities tonight arrested five men of Arab background in a suburb outside Buffalo on suspicion they were linked to a terrorist group operating in the United States, federal law enforcement officials said.

But having failed to do so, he looks like a complete fool today as we arrest the original 20th hijacker, [U.S. Says Suspect Tied to 9/11 and Qaeda Is Captured in Raid (JAMES RISEN, September 14, 2002, NY Times)]:

Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who investigators say is a high-ranking operative for Al Qaeda and one of the few people still alive who know the inside details of the Sept. 11 plot, has been captured and is in custody, American officials said today.

Mr. bin al-Shibh was captured during a shootout in Karachi, Pakistan, in a joint American and Pakistani operation within the last few days, American officials said.

His capture, first reported by ABC News, is one of the most significant counterterrorism successes since the attacks on the United States, the officials said.

As many as 10 suspected Islamic militants were captured and two others were killed during the shootout in Karachi on Wednesday, the anniversary of the attacks, American officials said Friday. Other members of Al Qaeda were among those captured in the shootout, the officials said. Six Pakistani policemen were wounded in the joint operation. [...]

American officials said they knew that Mr. bin al-Shibh was at the location when the operation was set in motion.

Strange isn't it, that someone like Mr. Rich, who thinks the government should eradicate poverty, end racism, provide health care, cleanse the environment, supervise the economy, etc., etc., etc. ad infinitum...doesn't think that same government can run a criminal investigation (of al Qaeda) while it fights a tin-pot dictator (Saddam)? Posted by Orrin Judd at September 14, 2002 1:02 PM