Played?

[Undertoad]

Watch the other shoe as it drops:

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/r...20030809.shtml

WASHINGTON -- Former international weapons inspector David Kay, now seeking Iraqi weapons of mass destruction for the Pentagon, has privately reported successes that are planned to be revealed to the public in mid-September.

Kay has told his superiors he has found substantial evidence of biological weapons in Iraq, plus considerable missile development. He has been less successful in locating chemical weapons, and has not yet begun a substantial effort to locate progress toward nuclear arms.

Senior officials in the Bush administration believe Kay's weapons discoveries should have been revealed as they were made. However, a decision, approved by President Bush, was made to wait until more was discovered and then announce it -- probably in September.

Bold mine. So, is this the timeline?
<ul><li> Bush decides to withhold WMD findings until September

<li> Bush tells Ari Fleisher to sheepishly tell the "16 words" story on his last day of employment. (One CNNer described it as a "going away gift" -- but for whom? read on)

<li> Press eats it up during slow summer news cycle

<li> White House, w/ new press secretary, offers no other news for a while

<li> D candidates eat it up (Kucinich foaming @ mouth, Dean's "Bush lied!" etc.)

<li> Story plays all summer

<li> September, announcements of WMD findings

<li> Entire story flops back to side of justified war

<li> Three months before Iowa, the Ds are heavily divided, appearing leaderless with half pushing a disappearing and now vaguely anti-American agenda</ul>
That's assuming that the Novak column is true. But if this item is true:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...2411&printer=1

LONDON (AFP) - The British government is soon to present new evidence that Iraq had produced biological weapons, it was reported.

Intelligence officials were producing another dossier on Iraqi arms, and "there is said to be hard evidence of cover-up programmes designed to conceal weapons of mass destruction", the British magazine "The Economist" said in its latest issue.

"We would hope to be able to demonstrate in the fullness of time that almost all the information in the dossier (published by the government last September) was accurate", a government insider told the magazine.

The dossier that led to the 16 words? I forget. I think it was. In any case, there it all is, and we wait.

[elSicomoro]

Okay, so if the Novak article is true, Bush is trying to play the Dems by holding off on this until September? Is that the gist of this, UT?

And the Brits are trying to prove that the first dossier is no b.s., right?

[Undertoad]

Yeah. (I could've saved all those words...)

[elSicomoro]

Okay.

Now granted, we don't know how true any of this shit is at this point. However, since we're already speculating here, why would Dubya wait until September to release this?

Possible reasons:
--The Bush administration wants to make sure it is absolutely certain they're right on this one.
--The Bush administration wants to uplift the spirits of Americans, and with 9/11 coming up in less than a month, it's the perfect time to reveal the info.
--This was leaked out to further incense the Democrats, perhaps to further marginalize them.
--Bush is going to play 9/11 like a fiddle for political gain.

I'll go with all of the above, but of course, let's see if it actually happens first.

Now, the British dossier...well, you could go with the same reasons, just change "Bush administration" to "Blair government".

(Incidentally, I was generally pleased with the Town Hall Meeting last night. Sure, you had typical Democrat rhetoric, but it was nice to hear what they had to say.

And Sharpton stole the show.)

[Undertoad]

Played was me this time - the Kay report is in now, and apparently nothing has been found "yet". (Or played was Novak - again?)

Now the Kay committee is saying that their final report is September 2004. Which is strange because it looks like it couldn't have been timed more politically. But I bet, this time, it's a head feint to get people to stay quiet about the WMD question: "We could well release information three months before the election." This makes it hard for any candidate to make WMD a major angle.

(It turns out Kay is a SAIC guy!)

[Torrere]

Releasing the report just before elections would be very politically potent, and I would even venture to call it immoral. It's something that Karl Rove and friends would do, similar to but much more significant than releasing information about the CIA Predator that missled the SUV of Al-Qaeda operatives on the day of the mid-term elections.

And the beauty of it is that the report could give a false positive (or at least a false lead) for WMD, and there probably wouldn't be enough time to disprove it until Bush was re-elected.