Our Friend Pakistan and Other Mental Pretzels
Marty Kaplan
Director, Norman Lear Center and Professor at the USC Annenberg School
HuffPost
Posted: 05/ 2/11
On the same day that Americans are test-driving the idea that Osama bin Laden lived on the outskirts of Pakistan's West Point, undetected, for six years, Orly Taitz goes to the 9th Circuit Appeals Court to prove that President Obama's long-form birth certificate is a forgery.
As they say in conspiracy-land, there are no coincidences.
If you believe that Pakistan is our ally in the war on al Qaeda, then you have to square that belief with what we now know about bin Laden's last years. Maybe building a luxury compound in Abbottabad illustrates the brilliance of hiding in plain sight; surely no one in the Pakistani intelligence services could have been expected to look for him there. Or maybe they knew all along that someone who looked a lot like bin Laden lived in there, but it took half-a-dozen years to be certain he wasn't a fiendishly clever decoy. Or maybe they knew it was bin Laden, but the ISI, the IB and MI -- the three Pakistani intelligence agencies -- are like a country of their own, not to be conflated with the nation we call our ally.
Birthers, too, need to be mental contortionists to hold fast to their belief that the president is not a natural-born American. Not only do they have to include the White House and the state of Hawaii in the plot to issue counterfeit documents; they are also required to maintain that the Honolulu newspapers were co-conspirators nearly 50 years ago.
(More here.)
Director, Norman Lear Center and Professor at the USC Annenberg School
HuffPost
Posted: 05/ 2/11
On the same day that Americans are test-driving the idea that Osama bin Laden lived on the outskirts of Pakistan's West Point, undetected, for six years, Orly Taitz goes to the 9th Circuit Appeals Court to prove that President Obama's long-form birth certificate is a forgery.
As they say in conspiracy-land, there are no coincidences.
If you believe that Pakistan is our ally in the war on al Qaeda, then you have to square that belief with what we now know about bin Laden's last years. Maybe building a luxury compound in Abbottabad illustrates the brilliance of hiding in plain sight; surely no one in the Pakistani intelligence services could have been expected to look for him there. Or maybe they knew all along that someone who looked a lot like bin Laden lived in there, but it took half-a-dozen years to be certain he wasn't a fiendishly clever decoy. Or maybe they knew it was bin Laden, but the ISI, the IB and MI -- the three Pakistani intelligence agencies -- are like a country of their own, not to be conflated with the nation we call our ally.
Birthers, too, need to be mental contortionists to hold fast to their belief that the president is not a natural-born American. Not only do they have to include the White House and the state of Hawaii in the plot to issue counterfeit documents; they are also required to maintain that the Honolulu newspapers were co-conspirators nearly 50 years ago.
(More here.)
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