Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Crazy Curt

I can't believe I get to be ruled by these idiots in Pennsylvania.

WASHINGTON - Late one night in June, Rep. Curt Weldon (R., Pa.) stood up in a largely empty House chamber and made an incendiary charge.

With dramatic rhetorical flourish, he said that a secret military intelligence program called Able Danger fingered Mohamed Atta and two other al-Qaeda hijackers before the 9/11 attacks - and that the government had failed to act.

"Not only did our military identify the Mohamed Atta cell, our military made a recommendation in September of 2000 to bring in the FBI to take out the cell of Mohamed Atta," he said.

Within days of the attacks, he said, he gave the same information - a pre-9/11 chart with Atta's name - to Stephen Hadley, then deputy national security adviser, to show how the government dropped the ball.

But Weldon's story, which unleashed a wave of national media attention as well as probes and congressional hearings, is unraveling.

He now says that he's not sure the chart had a picture of Atta, as he has sometimes maintained, and that he has been relying on the memory of an intelligence analyst who helped produce it.

Meanwhile, other key players in the story, including Hadley, contradict Weldon, saying they never saw Atta's picture. Moreover, several government investigations have failed to find any documentation so far that the program had identified hijackers before the attacks, and Weldon has begun to allow that there are parts of his story that may not be proven.

Yet even as his story triggers more and more questions, Weldon is making explosive new allegations. He says a high-level source has told him that terrorist leader Osama bin Laden has died in Iran, where he has been in hiding.


Yes, because Persian Iran is the logical place for bin Laden to be.

Please, 7th district voters, get rid of this idiot:

Facing what could become an unexpectedly competitive bid for reelection, Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) promised to unleash “the Army of Curt” against Joe Sestak, a retired vice admiral in the U.S. Navy and his likely opponent in the November midterm elections.

Asked about his opponent last week, Weldon told reporters, “We’ll run the most aggressive campaign in 20 years. [Just] because you have a couple of stars does not mean you should come in [to the race]. ... But I respect him.”

Sestak has built a solid campaign organization since retiring from the Navy on Jan. 1. After announcing he would run for Congress last month, he persuaded two Democrats to clear the field for him, raised $150,000 in less than a month and hired Barry Sweitzer, a well-known Democratic media consultant in Philadelphia who works for Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D).

Informed of Weldon’s comments, Sestak said, “We believe voters will prefer a career naval officer to a career politician,” adding that during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan he commanded 30 ships and 15,000 sailors that were part of the George Washington Carrier Battle Group.