I’m still trying to figure out how this benefits McCain, and how “he is in the center of the drama as it unfolds”. Seems like he’s on the periphery of every news story I’ve read-- Betancourt is in the center of the drama. But still, the idea that Bush tells McCain to go Colombia for some undisclosed reason and McCain agrees to do that is a pretty wild assumption. Give us some actual evidence, not just speculation.
Keep in mind that the defeat of the Colombian free trade deal is a recent event, and something the McCain is trying to establish as a delineator between himself and Obama. Free trade-- something Obama claims to be in favor of but doesn’t seem to do much about. I’m still trying to understand what “fair trade” means. Sounds like plain ol’ protectionism to me.
I must admit that the idea that the timing was manipulated was the first thing that crossed my mind when the story was first broadcast.
But I don’t know how much government involvement there is in the Colombian drug trade anymore. The trade has every reason to want to continue seeing draconian laws against drug use in the US, as the product itself is not particularly valuable - it’s its illegality that drives the price high, and the Republicans are very dedicated to continuing this policy. At one time, the “drug lord” in Colombia effectively ruled the place, but I don’t know how much influence remains. However, whoever the government is, they get enormous financial aid from the US because of the “War on Drugs.” Again, they have every reason to want a continuation of a Republican presidency.
Let’s say that this plan had been in place, and there was a one month window during which they felt it could be executed. I find it entirely believeable that the government might have chosen to coordinate it with McCain’s arrival. I do *not * believe that the entire plan was instigated or executed by or for the US.
I was giving an example; it could have been any time window, or no window at all - just a single opportunity .
As for why, simply association with glory is good for the polling image. Yes, it would be better in October, but McCain was coming now, and for all I know this rescue may only have been possible around now. Hell, for all I know, it may have had nothing to do with McCain’s arrival. All I was saying was that I found it plausible that the exact timing *might * have been shifted to coincide with McCain’s visit, but not that the plan itself was motivated by or in anyway connected to McCain or for that matter, the White House.
Well, if we were discussing this in IMO, I guess that would be fine. But since this is GD, we’re supposed to be debating things. I don’t know how to debate the idea that it is within the realm of possibilities. Almost anything is.
The benefit to McCain is so miniscule, the gain by Colombia to risk such a delicate operation so paltry that it seems implausible for either party to be involved in such a conspiracy. In fact, any hint of the Colombians doing this for political gains would make the Democrats in Congress even less likely to vote for the trade pact than they are now. For McCain to go through all the trouble of traveling to Colombia to bask in the glow of 4 watt light bulb just doesn’t pass muster.
If quoting your own thread title back at you constitutes a “caricature”, then that is an indication of what a caricature the thread was to begin with.
You can make up all kinds of scenarios about McCain (or Obama as a Muslim sleeper agent as per Bricker’s example) or the Kennedy assassination or election fraud or the October surprise or anything else, as long as you accept the basic premise of any good conspiracy theory - the fact that there is no evidence establishes that it could have happened.
Could it have happened? Sure, in the sense that it is not completely impossible. In the same way, McCain could have black children that he is hiding. Does that mean that the rumor is worth discussing?
I rather think it is not. Until you can come up with a birth certificate with the name Jamal McCain, or evidence that McCain was in country because he was tipped off by the White House instead of because he wants to highlight Obama’s rejection of the Columbian free trade agreement, that is.
In answer to your question, Liberal, no: I highly doubt this was engineered to benefit Senator McCain.
I’m no big fan of the man, and I’m not looking under stones for every possible conspiracy, but I argue thus: if this was engineered to benefit McCain, then it was done very poorly.
No joke. You could have engineered a better PR moment. I could have. All major newscasts would have photos of McCain shaking hands with the hostages, McCain on the phone negotiating the hostages’ release, McCain in front of strategic maps showing the rescue plan, etc. McCain’s numbers would have a noticeable bump. A former hostage would be on the news saying “Thank God for Senator McCain for rescuing us. I’m gonna vote for him because he’s tough on terror!” Every news article about the hostages would casually mention that it was due to Senator McCain’s toughness, grit, heroism, his hardline stance against Globbal Terra, and his tax-cut policy that the hostages were released, and did we mention McCain was offering tax cuts?
Conspicuously, there is not. McCain’s position in these news articles seems curiously… absent, in some cases.
Call it paranoia, if you like, but I believe that if Karl Rove and his sinister minions had engineered this hostage release to benefit Senator McCain’s standing in the polls, Rove could’ve done it better.
This, incidentally, is the same reasoning I use against the Kennedy assassination conspiracy. If there was a conspiracy then they went out of their way to do a crappy job it, and barely bothered covering up their tracks.
What’s the answer to a thread on the existence of God? Or the ethics of abortion? Or pretty much anything outside of GQ? I think some people will say yes, and some no, and some will be somewhere on the maybe continuum.
For this topic, I’ve explained (three times, I think) why I think it is reasonable to formulate a null hypothesis that it is unlikely that the Bush/Cheney administration would neglect to seize an opportunity that might benefit the Republican party. Even removing the McCain factor altogether, this June event is completely in line with the much anticipated October Surprise. It looks good on the national security radar. That could be why the White House moved so quickly to balance the Colombian “This was all our idea and all our people” mantra with its own “But we contributed the key intelligence.”
I really think that there’s a debate to be had here if the opposing side would do as I have done, and list out reasons why it would have been unlikely. There’s been a little of that, but certainly none from you or a couple others. Again, I’ll list my reasons. It is likely because:
[ul]
[li] It is typical of the Bush/Cheney MO — engage in deception (surreptitiously informing McCain and then denying it did so) for political gain[/li][li] Republicans are doing very poorly in the perception department[/li][li] McCain’s trip, according to MSNBC pundits, did not make sense in the context of his campaign[/li][li] The trip’s ostensible purpose, discussing Colombia’s role in NAFTA, is of very little use with respect to the US economy, which was McCain’s focus at the time[/li][li] McCain, it could be argued, is as deceitful and unprincipled as Bush/Cheney, since he seized the opportunity to criticize Obama, weasling about how the circumstances exempted him; therefore, it cannot be a matter that he held a moral high ground immunizing him from participating in such a scam[/li][li] The risk is very low, since as evidenced by this thread, dissent is apt to be labeled as crackpot[/li] All channels of communication were manned by mutually sympathetic people, from the White House, to the Colombian government, to the McCain campaign[/ul]Those are some of the items that, when considered as a whole, raised the curiosity of those discussing it on MSNBC that morning. And mine as well. I think it is worthy of reasoned discussion and debate.
You have some very good points, Liberal, in that Bush and Company have demonstrated very few ethics.
Nevertheless, I maintain in order for means, motive and opportunity to matter, there must first have been a murder. I don’t see one here; if they were trying to engineer a ratings boost for McCain, they did it in the most incompetent way imaginable.
Well, having studied statistics in my time, I’d suggest not over-complicating the definition of your null hypothesis. Try instead:
H[sub]0[/sub]: They did it to help McCain and other Republicans.
H[sub]A[/sub]: They didn’t do it to help McCain and other Republicans.
As a follow-up, double-check the significance of the null hypothesis. Even if it was true, how much “help” is McCain (and the Republicans generally) going to get out of this? Unlike issues of abortion or God, three months from now, who will care? No crime was committed, as far I can tell. Even construing this in the worst possible light… what does it matter?
Well, no-one’s stopping you from trying, but I don’t see a lot of effort to take this seriously.
No argument there. They clearly did not milk it for all it was worth. At least not yet. And I’m not sure it would have been appropriate to tip the hat too far. “Hey! Look at me with these hostages! How did I ever know they’d be there!?” There is more than sufficient fodder, however, for a Steve Schmidt ad campaign complete with images of McCain meeting with the Colombian president and the hostages cheering their release. “He is trusted with state secrets by world leaders,” says the voice-over.
It would not have been appropriate to tip the hat too far? I’m not sure I follow the logic, Liberal: they engineered the timing of the release of hostages that nobody knew about, to give John McCain a benefit which nobody can detect, in an effort to raise his standings in the polls by an unmeasureable amount?
That seems far-fetched to me. If it’s worth engineering in the first place, they should’ve got more out of it. To now say, “aha! They only wanted to get just enough benefit out of it that we wouldn’t suspect a thing! But I’m too smart for that!” … well, it might strike some as the battle cry of the paranoid.
Actually, people did detect it, and not just the screenwriter. Reporters asked him about it that very day. He denied it, and then it was left to rest. The benefit is not trivial, especially given the images of the Colombian president toasting McCain in celebration and confiding in him as the operation was underway. Respectfully, if you don’t see the value in these kinds of photo ops for presidential campaign ads, then you are lacking in political savvy what people like Steve Schmidt have in spades.
Respectfully, I do in fact understand what the putative value might be, if I saw any photo ops such as you describe. The problem is, I don’t see any tremendous McCain boosting in the limited places where I get my news (particularly MSN.com and CNN.com, and on the local news radio).
Yes, if this were being inflated into a giant McCain fest, it would be of value. I simply don’t see that happening to the degree you appear to see it; therefore, I question whether this is a legitimate attempt to engineer a McCain event, or whether it’s just a news event that happens to have McCain in it.
Of course, the fact that mcCain does not seem to have actually reaped the benefits does not mean that it was not an attempt by the administration to pull a fast one.
I suspect, however, that this thread got derailed by a couple of missteps in the OP. The first is the title and the second are phrases employed in the OP such as “. . . US led rescue of hostages. . .” Intended or not, the impression directly conveyed by the OP was that the accusation was that the U.S. government had conspired with the Colombian government to arrange a hostage rescue of U.S. citizens at exactly the same time that Senator McCain was going to visit Colombia for the purposes of good campaign images.
I think the initial reaction to that perception of the OP was not too far off. By any account that I have read, the rescue had been planned for nearly a year or more than a year, (requiring the planting of operatives/spies in the FARC headquarters among other things–a process that canot have occurred in only a few weeks). When the the action was planned, there is no way that anyone could have known that McCain would be the successful nominee while Romney, Huckabee, and other candidates have no ties to the Colombian government.
From reading Liberal’s subsequent posts, however, I suspect that what he intended to say was a bit more modest. Suppose the plan to rescue the hostages had been under way for months and an approximate target date had been chosen a few weeks ago. Suppose, further, that the Colombians did tell the White House the target date (hardly an unreasonable assumption). It would not have been difficult for the White House to look on this as a new opportunity to give McCain a little publicity boost by suggesting that he schedule a trip to coincide with the rescue. If the rescue fails, he can land on Colombian soil expressing deep regret that the mission was unsuccessful (if the government even acknowledged that it had been attempted) and no harm is done, but if the mission is successful, McCain gets a good photo op and a boost to his claim to be able to “work with” the anti-terrorist leaders of other nations.
I have no dog in this fight and I don’t really care whether the White House did or did not either arrange or suggest the McCain trip on a particular date, but I do get tired of watching you folks appear to be talking past each other.
The value just isn’t there, Tom. Where do you think “fighting FARC terrorists in Colombia” ranks on the priority of American voters’ concern? And who is going to remember this in November?
Don’t try to drag me into this. Few in the U.S. could find Colombia on a map, of course. Had the story been played as “fighting terrorists” and “bringing captives home” rather than outwitting FARC, the argument for a conspiracy might have been stronger. Of course, we don’t know whether the MSM simply dropped the ball on how it was “supposed” to have reported the story.
My only reason for posting was to get Liberal to see how his OP might have been read differently than he intended and to get his opponents to see how his intention might differ from his presentation.
