Saw New York Governor George Pataki on Fox today. Someone asked him about Howard Dean’s comments to the effect that the Bush administration times the release of information about terrorists threats to disrupt the Kerry campaign. Pataki had the right response saying, “Governor Dean is an embarassment” and moved on. What’s the point of giving more airtime to yet another Dean conspiracy theory?
In a related topic, Henry Hanks points out that some on the Left, such as Al Franken, have attempted to soft pedal and revise Dean’s earlier airing of claims that Bush might have been warned by Saudi Arabia about the 9/11 attacks ahead of time.
Franken said on his radio show (emphasis added),
He said on the Diane Rehm show, “The problem about redacting everything about Saudi Arabia is that it gives, uh, it gives conspiracy theories some credence.” He said, “For example, I saw an interesting theory on the internet that said that oh, uh, you know, that, uh, the Saudis warned Bush about 9/11. Now there’s absolutely no evidence for that,” etc.
But what Dean actually said was,
REHM: Why do you think he’s suppressing that report?
DEAN: I don’t know. There are many theories about it. The most interesting theory that I’ve heard so far, which is nothing more than a theory, I can’t — think it can’t be proved, is that he was warned ahead of time by the Saudis. Now, who knows what the real situation is, but the trouble is by suppressing that kind of information, you lead to those kinds of theories, whether they have any truth to them or not, and then eventually they get repeated as fact. So I think the president is taking a great risk by suppressing the clear — the key information that needs to go to the Kean commission.
You have to think Karl Rove is still kicking himself that he didn’t find a way to get the Democrats to nominate Dean.