Irresponsible Speculations: The GOP’s 2006 October Surprise

I was just shooting the shit the other night at Drinking Liberally when a Liberal Drinker posed a question to the table: what will be the GOP’s October surprise this year? I hadn’t really thought about it, but I guess my subconcious had, because a very definite answer snapped into focus.

Recently it was revealed that the Bush Administration has long known about the Pakistani expansion of its Kushtub nuclear facility to enable the creation of up to 500 kg of plutonium per year, enough to build as many as 40 weapons, and had concealed this knowledge from Congress. Many observers theorize that the Administration was trying to preserve the controversial nuclear cooperation deal with India that was before Congress. That may be so, but I don’t think that scenario makes sense. The disclosure of possible escalation in the South Asian arms race by Pakistan only reinforces the case for cooperation with India within the GOP, and it could undermine the case of Democrats who think we shouldn’t expand our assistance to India.

If, however, the Bush Administration was concealing their knowledge at the request of the Pakistanis, so that they could make ‘facts on the ground’ before disclosure, then the Paks would be indebted. Further, if the Bush Administration takes no action to forstall the Paks’ plans, which it hasn’t, that is an even bigger favor, given the rather craven double-standard America would be demonstrating for nuclear proliferation. One set of rules for our friends, and a different one for everyone else (Iran and North Korea, for instance). Looked at in this way, the question becomes, what have the Paks done for us lately?

The answer is, surprisingly little. The Bush Administration is not in habit of doing gratuitous favors. So what might the Bushies have gotten that they’re not talking about?

We know that the S.O.P. for the capture of high-value terrorist targets is to quietly capture them without letting their networks know they’ve been compromised, interrogating them while their operative knowledge is still useful, and later staging a capture and announcing the victory. This is what ISI (the Pak intelligence service) and the CIA reportedly did with Sheikh Mohammed in 2003.

Last month, came news of the poorly justified closing of the CIA’s bin Laden task force, dispersing dozens of analysts with the most relevant knowledge about bin Laden to other counter-terror desks. It is possible to justify just about any bureaucratic action with bountiful bullshit, but this move just did not make sense from a PR standpoint. The message is clearly sent that bin Laden no longer warrants devoting personnel resources to his capture. That is not a good message for the mid-terms.

Unless…

When you add the peices together and consider them as a whole instead of disparate events – a major tit-fot-tat with Pakistan, with no obvious tat coming from Pakistan; the closing of the CIA’s bin Laden task force, with seeming obliviousness to the PR impact of the move, from a PR-driven Adminstration; the imminent mid-term elections in which an overwhelming majority of Americans are saying they want Democrats to control Congress – you have a recipe for a very surprising October surprise, indeed. One that all of us have been expecting every election cycle since 2001.

The Administration is going to stage and announce the capture of Ossama bin Laden for the mid-term elections in an attempt to hold on to Congress. And bin Laden is already in custody, and has been for at least two or three months. Lately, even good news provides fairly small and unsustained bounces for GOP numbers. They didn’t want the bounce to fizzle in inervening months, so they are holding the news for right before the election, possibly just days before.

This has been an irresponsible speculation.