archy

What the --
Kevin over at Calpundit has posted a disturbing quote from Glenn Reynolds. Kevin can't figure out what the hell he's getting at and neither can I.

The story linked above is right to heap scorn on Condi Rice's statement that the attacks were unimaginable before they happened. There was plenty of reason to imagine them before they happened. That in itself doesn't mean that they could have, or even should have, been prevented -- I can imagine a lot of things that I couldn't prevent -- but Rice's statement has always struck me as absurd to the point of being insulting.

Even as a semi-traitorous, Bush-hating liberal, I find the suggestion that there might have been some reason to let those nineteen terrorists fly four planes full of people into four buildings full of people (the fact that they missed one of the buildings is beside the point) to be completely outrageous. What on earth could he mean? Bush's reelection might be more difficult if he actually had to base it on his policies rather than a reflex rally around the leader response to threat? This blow was necessary to mobilize the American people into discarding the Bill of Rights? Do we have some kind of Ultra-like hotline into their communications that stopping the hijackings would have exposed? We needed this to lure fifth-columnist pacifists into the open?

The kindest explanation I can think of is that Reynolds has started inserting weasel phrases like "or even should have" into his prose as a matter of habit and this one just slipped by on autopilot. His mouth got ahead of his brain I hope something like that's true, because the other possibility is means he's finally slipped over the edge from merely annoying to dangerously unhinged.