# What if ObL "endorses" Kerry? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 23, 2004, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-obl-endorses-kerry/241711 "2004-04-23T21:36:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2004, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-obl-endorses-kerry/241711/21 "2004-04-24T03:39:51Z")
Oh, by the way, that FrontPageMag story is based on [this](http://www.tehrantimes.com/archives/Description.asp?Da=2/8/2004&Cat=2&Num=026) generic campaign e-mail that the Mehr NewsAgency received. As someone on [this](http://www.eyeranian.net/2004/03/05,816.shtml) cite points out: > [@](#): > > To receive such emails from Kerry, I don’t think you need to be some one special. You just need to go to his website and sign up the mailing list of his supporters. I guess someone at Tehran Times(or Mehr News Agency) played a silly trick on his boss by signing him to Kerry’s campain mailing list. Boy, it’s going to be a long hard time til November debunking all the propaganda and lies from the Right! ---
**Author:** ![Tigers2B1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc29f/32.png) [@Tigers2B1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tigers2B1)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2004, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-obl-endorses-kerry/241711/22 "2004-04-24T03:40:58Z")
Sorry — that should read that “they really want **Bush** to win” — since Kerry is the one that will kill their nation. My bad. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2004, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-obl-endorses-kerry/241711/23 "2004-04-24T04:19:06Z")
I agree that from everything we’ve seen, it’s very likely that bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership in general are hoping for Bush to win. Two of their chief goals are to incite Muslim anger against the US and to isolate the US politically from the rest of the world. Bush’s policies have unfortunately played right into their hands on both accounts. Another four years of Bush looks like a pretty safe bet for four more years of policies that alarm and anger ME Muslims and fail to win support from others. I don’t think any firm conclusions can be drawn from this about whether or how al-Qaeda would try to influence US elections directly. On the one hand, a pre-election terrorist attack would probably inflame many Americans into a nuke-'em-all retaliatory fever which would pay off for the more bellicose Bush. On the other hand, since Bush is campaigning partly on the assertion that his policies have made America safer, another terrorist attack would probably make a lot of American voters feel angry and betrayed about his Administration’s failure to prevent it (as IMHO a lot of Spanish voters felt after March 11). Moreover, as al-Qaeda organizations have grown more diverse and acephalous, I doubt that bin Laden is directly calling all that many of the shots anymore. I’m sure that there are many terrorists who are convinced that attacking the US is a good thing regardless of time or circumstances, and aren’t going to worry about incorporating election year strategizing into their schemes. ---
**Author:** ![annaplurabelle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/919ad9/32.png) [@annaplurabelle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/annaplurabelle)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2004, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-obl-endorses-kerry/241711/24 "2004-04-24T04:58:55Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > On the one hand, a pre-election terrorist attack would probably inflame many Americans into a nuke-'em-all retaliatory fever which would pay off for the more bellicose Bush. On the other hand, since Bush is campaigning partly on the assertion that his policies have made America safer, another terrorist attack would probably make a lot of American voters feel angry and betrayed about his Administration’s failure to prevent it (as IMHO a lot of Spanish voters felt after March 11). You would think so. But the polls suggest otherwise. Even though people say they _don’t_ feel safer, they still support Bush on national security. How to explain that??? ---
**Author:** ![pervert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bbe5ce/32.png) [@pervert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pervert)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2004, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-obl-endorses-kerry/241711/25 "2004-04-24T05:01:53Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > Why? I don’t see the parallel with the Arizona situation. Doh! Total brain fart on my part… I meant boost for bush. I can’t imagine what cause me to miss all of the characters in his name. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2004, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-obl-endorses-kerry/241711/26 "2004-04-24T05:57:13Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > On the one hand, a pre-election terrorist attack would probably inflame many Americans into a nuke-'em-all retaliatory fever which would pay off for the more bellicose Bush. On the other hand, since Bush is campaigning partly on the assertion that his policies have made America safer, another terrorist attack would probably make a lot of American voters feel angry and betrayed about his Administration’s failure to prevent it (as IMHO a lot of Spanish voters felt after March 11). I tend to agree more with your first hand and with **annaplurabelle** ’s take on this for two reasons: (1) I think just about any sitting President is likely to see an attack on our nation work in his favor at the polls just because of the rallying around the flag effect, coupled with not wanting to change horses in mid-stream. (2) In Bush’s case, he has indeed staked out the ground of **acting** tough on this security issue. Just like being “tough on crime” by supporting the death penalty seems to garner fairly strong support (especially during a crime spree) independent of evidence on whether or not it is an effective way to fight crime, I think this stance’s of Bush does tend to serve him well in the eyes of much of the public, irregardless of what the true consequences of his policies would be in terms of U.S. security. As for another attack making voters feel angry and betrayed by the Administration, unfortunately I think the evidence that the Administration could/should have prevented it and that they failure was specifically theirs would have to be really compelling and overwhelming for this to become a real factor. (Perhaps one scenario would be if something happened with something coming in through a shipping cargo container, given that many Dems in Congress have called the Administration to task for not inspecting a higher percentage…or even all…of them. But, even then, I don’t know how much blame would stick specifically to the Adminstration.) ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2004, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-obl-endorses-kerry/241711/27 "2004-04-24T06:09:35Z")
> [@Tigers2B1 (from National Review)](#): > > the terrorists want the political parties of the pro-American right to lose, as they did in Spain. Logically, then, that implies that the terrorists want the parties of the anti-American left to win. That has to be a very unwelcome implication for those parties. By the way, this logic is totally fucked…First is the absurb implication that the Left in the U.S. is “anti-American”. (Actually, even the idea that the left in these other countries is “anti-American,” rather than just opposed to some ways in which America is behaving especially under Bush, is overly-simplistic at best.) Second, it does not necessarily follow that Osama wants the same thing for the U.S. as he wants for other countries (even if we assume he was trying to influence the Spanish election in the way it got influenced…which is itself a supposition). He may be quite happy to see the free world divided against itself with an increasingly-bellicose U.S. taking unilateral actions (or ones with limited international support) that increasingly marginalize it’s popularity not only in large parts of the Muslim world but even with its European allies, etc. ---
**Author:** ![griffin77](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3d9bf3/32.png) [@griffin77](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin77)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2004, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-obl-endorses-kerry/241711/28 "2004-04-24T07:23:52Z")
[http://www.workingforchange.com/comic.cfm?itemid=16710](http://www.workingforchange.com/comic.cfm?itemid=16710) ---
**Author:** ![t-keela](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a3d4f5/32.png) [@t-keela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/t-keela)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2004, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-obl-endorses-kerry/241711/29 "2004-04-24T08:10:10Z")
I admit that I’ve been working a lot and could’ve missed it. Did OBL show his face recently? Last time I heard anything about a him, he was secretly being held captive in Pakistan and was Bush’s “ace in the hole” to be revealed right before the election. I can’t imagine Al Qaeda wanting Bush to lose. This way they get to kill all the Americans they want and don’t have to leave home. If they really wanted the US out of the middle east they would’ve hid out and made nice until we came home and then went back to business as usual. No, I think this war is exactly what they wanted. It gives them a means of acting out their fantasy (Destroy the Satan). It just fullfills prophesy…makes them even more devoted to their cause. ---
**Author:** ![Tigers2B1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc29f/32.png) [@Tigers2B1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tigers2B1)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2004, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-obl-endorses-kerry/241711/30 "2004-04-24T14:57:17Z")
> [@jshore](#): > > By the way, this logic is totally fucked…First is the absurb implication that the Left in the U.S. is “anti-American”. (Actually, even the idea that the left in these other countries is “anti-American,” rather than just opposed to some ways in which America is behaving especially under Bush, is overly-simplistic at best.) Second, it does not necessarily follow that Osama wants the same thing for the U.S. as he wants for other countries (even if we assume he was trying to influence the Spanish election in the way it got influenced…which is itself a supposition). He may be quite happy to see the free world divided against itself with an increasingly-bellicose U.S. taking unilateral actions (or ones with limited international support) that increasingly marginalize it’s popularity not only in large parts of the Muslim world but even with its European allies, etc. Oh, I don’t believe the left is “anti-American” as stated and, therefore I don’t follow the logic used in those quotes. What I do believe is that both cites were appropriate ‘acknowledgments’ to the posts to which they were responding. Since, from experience here, it’s likely that those unsupported quotes will go unchallanged. They’re more of a parody of some of the posts that tend to go unchallenged on this board **IF** ‘left leaning.’ So ----- **jshore** , each was no more “totally fucked” than the unsupported claim that Osama himself endorses Bush because Kerry is scary “sneaky.” And no more “totally fucked” than the subsequent unsupported claim that an unknown al Queda group supported Bush over Kerry because – “Kerry will kill our nation while it sleeps because he and the Democrats have the cunning to embellish blasphemy and present it to the Arab and Muslim nation as civilization.” Note that last statement, purporting to come from this al Queda group, lauds not only Kerry’s cunning but the cunning of all Democrats. Now IF Kerry and the Democrats are so “sneaky” and so “cunning” isn’t it logical to think that these quotes might have come from Kerry himself!! ---
**Author:** ![Mojo\_the\_Monkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eada6e/32.png) [@Mojo\_the\_Monkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mojo_the_Monkey)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2004, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-obl-endorses-kerry/241711/31 "2004-04-24T21:51:50Z")
> [@annaplurabelle](#): > > Yes. It wasn’t _Bin Laden_ per se, though. Couldn’t access the original news report (in the aftermath of the Spain attack), but here is an excerpt posted on a [blog](http://www.etalkinghead.com/news/archives/al-qaeda-group-endorses-bush-for-president-2004-03-18.html): I didn’t see it on that particular blog, but yes, that’s the statement that I read… ---
**Author:** ![Sevastopol](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cdc98d/32.png) [@Sevastopol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sevastopol)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2004, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-obl-endorses-kerry/241711/32 "2004-04-25T02:18:01Z")
Hardly anybody follows the news at the best of times. Sure, interest will peak for a day or 2 in times of crisis. Add the fact that in the pre-election weeks the airwaves will be saturated with promotions for various candidates. But some foreigner, on poor quality home video, speaking Arabic? Won’t get a look-in with Joe Public. ---
**Author:** ![KidCharlemagne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ed8c4c/32.png) [@KidCharlemagne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KidCharlemagne)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2004, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-obl-endorses-kerry/241711/33 "2004-04-25T13:00:07Z")
What **Kimsitsu** said. The point of terrorism is to invite reprisal against the general population for use as a recruiting tool. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2004, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-obl-endorses-kerry/241711/34 "2004-04-26T13:35:34Z")
The premise is absurd. Instead of OBL endorsing Kerry, what if George III had endorsed John Adams? Or if Hitler had endorsed FDR? Or Charles Manson had endorsed Nixon? Who cares? BinLaden is a madman, and the electorate should not be taking direction from lunatics. Unfortunately, a non-trivial portion of Americans might work the logic as follows: 1- Bin Laden is evil 2- Bush opposes BinLaden 3- Therefore, Bush must be good 4- Kerry opposes Bush 5- Therefore, BinLaden must support Kerry Actually, if BinLaden’s goal is to have a global war between Moslems and Christians and Jews, who would better play the devil for him than GWB? ---
**Author:** ![cmason32](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@cmason32](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmason32)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2004, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-obl-endorses-kerry/241711/35 "2004-04-28T06:24:01Z")
> [@annaplurabelle](#): > > You would think so. But the polls suggest otherwise. Even though people say they _don’t_ feel safer, they still support Bush on national security. How to explain that??? Since when do people ever vote in their own interest? The poorest county in the United States (Loup County, Kansas) had a per capita personal income of $6,235 in 2002 and voted overwhelmingly for Bush (over 80% of the county voted for him). A rural farmer in Pennsylvania answered, when asked why he and his neighbors voted for Bush, “They’re tired of everything being wonderful on Wall Street and terrible on Main Street.” In other words, they voted Republican to get back at the Enrons of the world. Makes perfect sense, no? ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2004, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-obl-endorses-kerry/241711/36 "2004-04-28T06:34:43Z")
Er, Osama Bin Laden has already endorsed a candidate. He endorsed Bush. As he explained, his goal is to increase Arab anger at America, and Bush has done a great job for him so far, plus not even accomplishing the things Al Qaeda expected them to do, like making Bin Laden himself into a “martyr.” ---
**Author:** ![pervert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bbe5ce/32.png) [@pervert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pervert)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2004, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-obl-endorses-kerry/241711/37 "2004-04-28T06:51:28Z")
> [@KidCharlemagne](#): > > What **Kimsitsu** said. The point of terrorism is to invite reprisal against the general population for use as a recruiting tool. So they can get more people to invite reprisals against their families to encourage them to join the group and help them invite reprisals against their children so they will grow up to … I really don’t think this is the way they plan their activities. A cite disproving my opinion would be appreciated. ---
**Author:** ![KidCharlemagne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ed8c4c/32.png) [@KidCharlemagne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KidCharlemagne)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2004, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-obl-endorses-kerry/241711/38 "2004-04-28T12:33:27Z")
> [@pervert](#): > > So they can get more people to invite reprisals against their families to encourage them to join the group and help them invite reprisals against their children so they will grow up to … > > I really don’t think this is the way they plan their activities. A cite disproving my opinion would be appreciated. Well I certainly can’t “disprove” an opinion. I’ve gotta run out but here is a more in depth explanation of the reasoning: [http://denbeste.nu/cd\_log\_entries/2003/01/Palestinianfuckup.shtml](http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/01/Palestinianfuckup.shtml) ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2004, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-obl-endorses-kerry/241711/39 "2004-04-28T17:58:03Z")
**Moderator’s Note:** **Alaricthegoth** , please don’t [copy-and-paste entire articles into your posts](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?postid=2079030#post2079030). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-obl-endorses-kerry/241711.md?page=1)