Mullings: An American Cyber-column By Rich Galen

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Bad Politics; Bad Policy

Rich Galen

Friday August 6, 2004

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I was not at my best Monday afternoon on Fox. I was on "The Big Story" which was billboarded on the foxnews.com website as follows:

President Bush and John Kerry offer different takes on the economy as they campaign for some of the same votes in Davenport, Iowa.
FNC's Wendell Goler and "Campaign" Carl Cameron will have the latest from the trail.
We'll also hear from Republican strategist Rich Galen and Democratic strategist Michael Brown.

We didn't hear much of anything from either of us because when Judge Andrew Napolitano - who was hosting - asked Brown about why there was no bounce from the Democratic convention Brown said it was because President Bush's administration had used flawed and outdated information for political purposes in announcing the threat to financial institutions in New York and Washington on Sunday.

That was the end of that conversation.

If the segment went another 3:30, then I talked for another 3:30. I said that the conversation was going no farther if Brown was going to sing into the political slime of repeating an unfounded and untrue allegation by that recognized expert in national security affairs - Howard Dean.

I pointed out that the NY Times had reported that very morning that a crucial piece of information had come into the government's hands just this past Friday.

Yesterday morning, following up, the NY Times' Richard W. Stevenson and Douglas Jehl reported on a conversation with a senior US intelligence official:

"'What you saw in the U.K. was a result in part of information gained' from the arrest last month of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, the Pakistani computer engineer whose capture led the Central Intelligence Agency to computer files detailing the reconnaissance of financial institutions in the United States."

Brown said he hadn't read the NY Times but he, obviously, had read the Democratic National Committee's talking points.

The argument spilled over into the newsroom, the make-up room, the elevator and the lobby to the point where a producer called me on my cell phone to see if everything was all right.

I said that I was not about to get into a fist fight with a guy who is 6-4 and weighs about 260, as I'm about five-mumble-and-a-half and weigh 100 lbs less.

Reports of arrests of terrorists in Pakistan, Great Britain and even Albany, New York have no impact on these people. They truly believe that because they would use national security as a political tool, that President Bush would, as well.

This cannot be permitted to become an acceptable component of political discourse in America. The Democrats - especially the Washington, DC Democrats - must not be allowed to:

A. send goofballs like Howard Dean out on Sunday talk shows to say whatever garbage comes out of his mouth, then;
B. claim they can't control what a goofball like Howard Dean says, and then;
C. use, as evidence of the legitimacy of his position, the fact that it was reported upon by their friends in the popular press.

I am not one to question anyone's patriotism and I am not doing so now. But by raising this kind of factually specious and intellectually hollow charge, they are moving perilously close to giving - however unwittingly - aid and comfort to a very real and very dangerous enemy.

Speaking of the NY Times, its op-ed page yesterday morning featured a piece by another noted scholar on geopolitics and national security, Bruce Springsteen. Mr. Springsteen's piece pined for a lost sense of American "humility" not once, but twice within three paragraphs.

This, from a man who has made a career out of billing himself as "The Boss."

Memo to Mr. Springsteen: In future, you might want to actually read things like this before they are submitted in your name.

On the Secret Decoder Ring Page today: The appropriate excerpts from Springsteen's op-ed piece; A SHOCKING letter from a Senior Citizen opposed to the re-election of President Bush and a nice Mullfoto of the day.

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