Joe posted on the “Obama is incompetent.” theme that the GOP is working on when it comes to Syria.
But the hard core Obama haters in the GOP (A not insignificant portion of the Party.) has another idea in mind entirely. While they’d never deny anything that denigrates Obama, Pamela Gellar at Atlas Shrugs, Rush Limbaugh, The Gateway Pundit and The Blaze did a little merry-go-round about the Obama administration actually being in on the conspiracy to conduct the attacks and lay the blame on the Assad regime. It started with this article by Yossef Bodansky on oilprice.com. Limbaugh cites the article and after going on about it extensively he closes with this.
I just want to make one thing very clear here.
I am simply being honest with you. I get two e-mails on Saturday from two different friends, ostensibly (you talk about over the transom, talk about out of the blue) that they don’t believe it. Because they’ve worked on in the region, lived there, done business there, and they don’t believe Bashar’s capable of doing it, and there’s no upside for it. In fact, that Bashar’s probably paranoid, ’cause what is Obama doing in the Middle East? The regime’s agenda appears to be eliminating dictators in favor of Muslim radicals.
He got rid of Mubarak. He’s a dictator. He might have been a horrible guy, but he was stable. Khadafy may have been a horrible guy, but he was stable. We’re getting rid of all of these dictators — which, of course, sounds great — but they’re being replaced with Muslim radicals, i.e., the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Al-Qaeda is basically who’s in Syria. If they get rid of Bashar in Syria, it will be Al-Qaeda. Muslim radicals. Sharia is on the march in the Middle East is what’s taking place here.
The point is that Bashar may be looking at this, seeing this, and of course wouldn’t smile upon it. He’d be considered one of these dictators that the US is targeting and taking out. I’m not asserting any of this to be true. I just found it now in a very credible place, and you know me. I don’t go with the flow of conventional wisdom — and I’m not a conspiracy kook, either. This makes perfect sense to me that Bashar could be set up. So I’m just putting this out as a possibility, because it’s already out there. I didn’t put it out there.
I’m just reminding you and sharing with you what’s there.
It’s up to you.
You know the old, “We report, you decide” thing here.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This has been done before, folks, as I mentioned. It’s been done before in Sarajevo in 1995. But aren’t we preparing in our country for Al-Qaeda to possibly use chemical/biological weapons on us? What’s so hard to believe that they could do it in Syria?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, one quick thing: Bodansky does not identify his sources in this story, and I want to be very clear about this. He does not identify them. There are numerous sources, but he doesn’t ID ’em, and so we gotta be careful here. It could be that his sources are Israeli intelligence, in which case he wouldn’t ID them, but he doesn’t ID the sources.
So keep that in mind.
The emphasis there is all mine. I’m just finding it a touch ludicrous that Limbaugh is claiming that he is in no way a “conspiracy kook” even as he refers to questionable conspiracy theories, like it being a fact that the Muslims in Sarajevo committed the Markale gas attacks when it isn’t clear cut at all.
As I noted before, this is all based on an article by Yossef Brodansky, whose credentials basically began as a Republican in the DoD during the Reagan Administration, so perhaps it isn’t surprising that Limbaugh presents as fact an assertion made by Brodansky in another article.
Of course there is one thing Limbaugh gets right. Brodansky’s article, which criticizes the Obama administration for not presenting any proof of their version of the story (Though they have presented classified briefings that have persuaded people.), presented not one shred of evidence other than uncredited statements that anything Brodansky wrote about actually happened. It doesn’t matter, though. The idea is working its way around the conservative blogosphere.