Nah, I don't buy it. I think they've got a wildcard

People are talking about battles we can and can't win with respect to whether the Roberts confirmation should be given up without a fight and that we progressives should concentrate our energies on the Plame scandal. That's all well and good and well reasoned, I might add. The only small catch to that logic is that we might not "win" the Plame fight. They'd sooner give up UBL than King Rove or who knows who else is involved (Queen Cheney's being talked about again now?).

More concretely, they're probably fairly sure of Rook UBL's whereabouts, and now that al Qaida's become more like the ELF than Earth First! (autonomous cells without a need for a figurehead), spying on who does and does not talk with UBL is practically worthless. Moreover, outing the old bearded bastard probably won't increase or decrease the likelihood of terror attacks here by much I would venture to guess. Capturing him, though, would rid Republicans of most all worries. It's the ultimate of ends justifying the means because who wouldn't want to see him eat the chicken at Gitmo, eh? And just in time for the runup to the 2006 election season...

That's not to say we shouldn't fight to keep Plame in the public eye, but we should be aware of the possibilities of what they might do when we get too close to check-mate.

[apologies for all the edits: first time I wrote it, I was distracted]