As reported in the New Republic on the 19th: The July Surprise is right on schedule.
[Editor’s Note: This afternoon, Pakistan’s interior minister, Faisal Saleh Hayyat, announced that Pakistani forces had captured Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian Al Qaeda operative wanted in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The timing of this announcement should be of particular interest to readers of The New Republic. Earlier this month, John B. Judis, Spencer Ackerman, and Massoud Ansari broke the story of how the Bush administration was pressuring Pakistani officials to apprehend high-value targets (HVTs) in time for the November elections–and in particular, to coincide with the Democratic National Convention. Although the capture took place in central Pakistan “a few days back,” the announcement came just hours before John Kerry will give his acceptance speech in Boston.]
The timing is ever so convenient and suspicious. Previously, the word in Pakistan was that the US government very much wanted to capture someone very high up in the Al Qaeda organization so that it could be timed to take the wind out of the Dem’s sails during the Boston convention.
And here it is, the night of the biggest speech in John Kerry’s life. Hmm.
But according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that “it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July”–the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.
Hmm, indeed.
