MOONBATS TAKE WING

The capture of Saddam Hussein has had the effect of nightfall in a bat cave--out they come in droves.

Mad-as-a-hatter Albright now thinks the military has Osama bin Laden squirriled away somewhere, saving him for a rainy day.

Congressman Jim McDermott thinks Saddam's capture was timed to help Bush, somehow.

Democrats.com calls McDermott "brave" for saying so. And the moonbat brigades don't stop there. Based on the writings of Josh Marshall and anonymous blogger "Swopa," the left has hastily constructed an entire conspiracy around the timing of Saddam's capture.

Here's the outline. Marshall reported a couple of weeks ago that a Congressman said that Saddam would be captured soon (can't find the link, and Swopa's site appears to be down at the moment, but Dems.com has Marshall figuring in this thing). That Congressman is Ray La Hood (R-Il)--he made his comments off the cuff in a press briefing, and it's pretty clear that he was just shooting off his mouth. Then a week or so later, the Iraqi Governing Council announces that it will set up a war crimes tribunal to deal with members of the ancien regime, obviously including Saddam Hussein should he be captured. Then, lo and behold, Saddam is captured. A nice, tight, tidy little timeline, no?

Except that it doesn't make a lick of sense. As PeoriaPundit notes, if we were really *this close* to catching Saddam a couple weeks ago (when La Hood made his comments), would the CIA, military or Bush administration tell bigmouthed Congressmen? The record shows a fairly testy relationship between the administration and Congress on the very subject of loose lips with classified information. The record also shows a fairly tight circle of higher-ups in Washington knew about the capture on Saturday--President Bush, told by SecDef Rumsfeld, with Condi Rice also in the loop along with VP Cheney and CIA Director George Tenet. Reporters who saw Cheney and Rumsfeld Saturday night noted an unexplainable change in their demeanor, as though they were happier than usual about something significant. Does that suggest a conspiracy in the works for weeks, or a developing good news story? I'd say the latter. The information chain on Saddam's capture went from the 4th ID which captured him, through CPA director Paul Bremmer, to Rumsfeld, and from him to the others, or at least that's my read. Congressmen from Peoria don't seem to figure into the story here, as far as I can see.

As for the Iraqi war crimes tribunal, according to that cog in the vast right-wing conspiracy CBS, it has been in the works "for months." And does anyone think that some sort of war crimes set-up hasn't been in the works since Saddam fell? It's a natural turn of events, along the lines (but hopefully more effectively slapped together) of what has been done in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. And why would it matter whether the new Iraq set up its trial mechanism before or after Saddam's capture? Iraq isn't even a sovereign country yet.

One bigmouthed Peoria congressman plus a very obvious course of events plus the capture of one of the world's most notorious criminals does not a conspiracy make. It doesn't even pass the laugh test.

But that doesn't stop Dems.com from floating it, does it?

Here's a conspiracy theory for ya. These people know what they're doing. It's a form of dialectic in which you implant ideas and let them take on a life of their own. It also allows you to gradually move people to your point of view, by posing radical and then sensible positions, slowly shifting the sensible position ever closer to the radical view that you hold. In the past few weeks we have seen the left proffer a range of conspiracies about the war--Howard Dean and the Bush-knew-911 theory; Madeline Albright and the Osama capture theory; and now the Saddam capture theory from McDermott et al. Hillary Clinton has also put a wild theory or two out there from time to time, as have Dennis Kucinich, Cynthia McKinney, Michael Moore, etc. In the pols' cases, most of the time they proffer the theory only to meet criticism. They retreat from the theory, but it now has a life all its own. It feeds on tenuous connections, and is sustained by a certain lack of critical thought or examination from those who find it appealing. Others add to it, a blogger here, a DU poster there, and it all at one time had the imprimatur of a real, live politician or national leader.

It's an effort to sap resolve and sway the easily persuadable that the war is a sham, that there is no victory and no good in it, that the administration is untrustworthy and should be removed.

You think I'm nuts? Then explain why the Dems and lefties keep doing it. Paranoia alone does not explain their actions, though it does go some distance down the road. Why do they spout theories they know will get them criticized, and that they know have no basis in fact?

MORE: Or maybe some Democrats have simply chosen to side with the terrorists.

UPDATE: And now Albright is backpedalling. That's how it works--float the theory, then disown it. Before long she'll float another one, then disown that. But the net effect is that the theory is out there, giving credence to the truly wacky left and playing right into the hands of the Arab street that people like Albright care so much about not offending.

Either people like Albright and Dean know what they're doing, or they're simply paranoid idiots. Take your pick.

MORE: Maybe this is what La Hood was talking about. US troops wrapped Saddamite villages in barbed wire and swept up the males, interrogating them whether or not they knew where Saddam was. This was in early December. By mid-December, the 4th ID had its man. The tactic was, of course, offensive to liberals. If we listened to them, Saddam would still be in his spider hole, and we would still not have all those papers he carried that led to a slew of arrests.