This is something that most of us who read DailyKos have known for a long time: Osama's message near the end of the 2004 election helped Bush get re-elected. This diary is a re-print of an article by journalist Robert Parry, which examines "symbiotic relationship" between the neo-conmen and Bin Laden. In his book "The One Percent Doctrine", Ron Suskind briefly mentions that CIA analysts concluded that Bin Laden's message was intended to help Bush get re-elected.
I'm pretty new to the site and I'm not sure if this has been diaried about before, but I saw this article this morning and wanted to share it. The article follows, and I hope I've fixed it enough to not violate fair use.
CIA: Osama Helped Bush in '04
By Robert Parry
July 4, 2006
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/070306.html
On Oct. 29, 2004, just four days before the U.S. presidential election, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin-Laden released a videotape denouncing George W. Bush. Some Bush supporters quickly spun the diatribe as "Osama's endorsement of John Kerry." But behind the walls of the CIA, analysts had concluded the opposite: that bin-Laden was trying to help Bush gain a second term.
This stunning CIA disclosure is tucked away in a brief passage near the end of Ron Suskind's The One Percent Doctrine, which draws heavily from CIA insiders....
...But the CIA analysts also felt that bin-Laden might have recognized how Bush's policies - including the Guantanamo prison camp, the Abu Ghraib scandal and the endless bloodshed in Iraq - were serving al-Qaeda's strategic goals for recruiting a new generation of jihadists.
One immediate consequence of bin-Laden breaking nearly a year of silence to issue the videotape the weekend before the U.S. presidential election was to give the Bush campaign a much needed boost. From a virtual dead heat, Bush opened up a six-point lead, according to one poll.
Those are excpts from the first few paragraphs of the article. I find this article disturbing, but the conclusion is obvious. Extremism begets extremism, and Bush and bin Laden are great recruuting tools for each other. I'm glad to hear that the CIA recognizes how bin Laden helped Bush win the 2004 election; I wish this had been disclosed sooner.