What Al Qaeda believes in is mayhem

The Pentagon has been forced to release names of some of the prisoners at Guantanamo. What it still won’t release: heights and weights. Which might reveal something about hunger strikes at Gitmo. Remember them?

New White House press secretary Tony Insert-Snow-Related-Pun-Here had his first televised Gaggle today. Seemed smarter than McClellan, and a better obfuscator. And you can evidently make him cry by bringing up cancer, which should enliven otherwise slow news days. On NSA data-mining: “You are jumping to conclusions about a program the existence of which we will neither confirm nor deny.” So it’s their fault that you’re stonewalling them? Actually, despite saying that he didn’t “want to hug the tar baby” of talking about a story he wouldn’t confirm, he did actually defend the program, without confirming its existence, based on the details of the USA Today story, without confirming their accuracy.

Took him less than ten minutes to adopt the Bush regime stance of condescending arrogance: “Let me remind you — it’s a war on terror.” Also, “Al Qaeda does not believe in transparency. What Al Qaeda believes in is mayhem.” And the Bush regime? It doesn’t believe in transparency either; it believes it will have another beer.