Anyone Else See a Pattern Here?

So it looks like another "outing" from the Bush Administration, only this time it's not for revenge, it's simply for another (short-term) fear-generated poll boost.



Turns out that the Al Qaeda "mole" that the U.S. secretly arrested in July was working undercover to help authorities track down Al Qaeda militants in Britain and the U.S.



But when Bush started to struggle in the polls, and another Orange Alert was needed to boost his polls once again by scaring the bejeezus out of the American people (and pushing Democratic New York City that much closer to bankruptcy through budget-busting security measures), what's a REAL fight against Al Qaeda weighed against a few poll points?

LONDON (Reuters) - The revelation that a mole within al Qaeda was exposed after Washington launched its "orange alert" this month has SHOCKED security experts, who say the outing of the source may have SET BACK the war on terror.



Reuters learned from Pakistani intelligence sources on Friday that computer expert Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, arrested secretly in July, was working UNDER COVER to HELP the authorities track down al Qaeda militants in Britain and the United States when his name appeared in U.S. newspapers.



"After his capture he admitted being an al Qaeda member and agreed to send e-mails to his contacts," a Pakistani intelligence source told Reuters. "He sent encoded e-mails and received encoded replies. He's a great hacker and even the U.S. agents said he was a computer whiz."



Last Sunday, U.S. officials told reporters that someone held secretly by Pakistan was the source of the bulk of the information justifying the alert. The New York Times obtained Khan's name independently, and U.S. officials confirmed it when it appeared in the paper the next morning.



None of those reports mentioned at the time that Khan had been under cover helping the authorities catch al Qaeda suspects, and that his value in that regard was DESTROYED by making his name public.

Full story here.



And even MSNBC stops carrying Bush's water long enough to report on this.



It continues to astound me how any thinking person who isn't actually making money off the Iraq War can continue to support this bunch of cynical, vindictive, criminals.



UPDATE: Digby puts it far more succinctly:

If Bill Clinton could deal with the "wag the dog" nonsense while he was being impeached, I think these guys should be able to keep their fucking mouths shut when Howard Dean gives them a hard time on CNN.