Akkam’s Razor

All through my later grade school years, there were annual Halloween warnings of razor blades in apples as well as poisoned candy. To my knowledge, this a mostly an Urban Rumor, spread easily in the pre-internet days. But if you grew up in the 80s, this has some resonance with you.

On Friday, occuring curiously enough on the same day as the second presidential debate, a report was issued regarding the discovery of school information found on CD-ROMS on a dead Iraqi. This information refered to 12 schools, and reportedly included floor plans and security assessments.

Now, in light of suggestions that the administration is “gaming” the terror warnings to influence poll performance, this release is certainly suspect. Even more suspect is the downploaying of these reports after 5pm. (Traditionally, bad news is released on late-Friday afternoons because there typically is no audience to hear or see them). Was the Bush team hoping to benefit from such a release? It wasn’t addressed in the debate. Which brings me to a second observation…Why does Al Qaeda hate the swing states?

For starters, there is no link to any terrorist activity. This dead Iraqi who was in posession of said CD-ROM was either an education or medical professional who was doing research (and as a filthy liberal, must have been assumed to have been an insurgent and shot). Like every one of the other “gotcha” moments of the war on terror (We got Bin Laden, no we didn’t. Those trucks were WMD factories. No they weren’t. We found an air force buried in the desert. No we didn’t) this one was promptly hyped then dropped.

It is interesting that the states involved were largely swing states. I plan to analyze those counties by previous registration and election results, as well as descriptive demographics and poll performance. We’ll see.