I just got back from CNN and I haven’t seen the interview and only a few items from the transcript. Still this kind of reminds me of the old joke from SNL News which went something like this “And today ‘Siskel and Ebert” officially changed its name to ‘The fat guy and the other one.’”
No matter how you slice this, George W. Bush is the man Osama’s worried about and Kerry’s “the other one.”
I know it’s not like Osama endorsed Kerry, but short of saying “You, the one who agrees with me about so much, you say you will ‘destroy us’; well, we laugh at your summits!”
I don’t think it’s obvious the tape will play this way politically, but I see nothing wrong with the Bush campaign trying to make that happen.
Again: no matter how you slice it or how unfair it might be to Kerry, a vote against Bush will be seen as a repudiation of everything Bush stands for around the world. That’s why the PLO has basically endorsed Kerry. That’s why the Guardian is desperate that Kerry win. That’s why El Baradai and his friends at the New York Times want Kerry to win. That’s why Michael Moore is such a loyal Democrat all of a sudden.
And that’s why al Qaeda wants Bush to lose.
This doesn’t automatically mean by any stretch of the imagination that Kerry voters are pro-al Qaeda, anti-American, wimps or any of the rest. It does mean, in my humble opinion, that they’re wrong.