The last refuge of a scoundrel ...

It's not exactly a new message, but there's been a resurgence in the last few days of the "terrorists want Kerry to win" meme. "Dick-in-chief" Cheney raised some hackles back on Sept. 7th with his "warning" that "if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again." But while he's backed off that explicit assertion, some other repubbbs are picking it up and running with it. The Chicago Tribune (registration required) reported on Friday that:

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage alleged Friday that insurgents have stepped up their deadly assaults in Iraq because they want to "influence the election against President Bush." [snip] Armitage said, in part, that officials expected "that the violence will increase, both to try to have an effect on our elections in early November, as well as to try to thwart the ability to have elections in Iraq in January."After Armitage had apparently ended the news conference by saying, "Thank you very much," a reporter asked him to clarify his statement linking the violence in Iraq to the elections, according to the transcript."It's quite obvious that they would like to raise [the] costs to President Bush. I think this is their cynical effort to do that and to somehow influence our elections, and they will fail," Armitage said."They are trying to influence the election against President Bush," he added.

Similarly, on Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume, pundit Morton Kondracke claimed,

There's clearly a campaign going to raise the level of casualties. And I think this is a rolling tent is what we're seeing, you know, like 1968 in Vietnam, designed to discourage the United States from persisting in the -- and maybe even trying to help elect [Senator] John Kerry for all I know. (Link here, courtesy the Center for American Progress)

Dennis Hastert joined the chorus at a campaign rally on Saturday, claiming that Al Quaeda "would like to influence this election."

When a reporter asked Hastert if he thought al Qaeda would operate with more comfort if Kerry were elected, the speaker said, "That's my opinion, yes."

And CNN's Bill Schneider jumped on the fearmongering bandwagon Sunday, stating:

I think Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda network, who I am certain follow American politics, look at the messages coming out on their tapes. They seem to follow politics very closely. They would very much like to defeat President Bush. But the question is, can they pull off the same trick that they pulled off in Spain? (link here, about 2/3 of the way down the page.)

Now, what troubles me about this isn't just the complete lack of any evidence whatsoever for ANY of these statements, nor the confirmed willingness of the GOP to lie, lie and lie again for political gain. No, what bothers me is that the American public isn't raising holy hell about the disgusting politicization of the war in Iraq and the 9/11 attacks. Where, oh where is our sense of outrage? And if this type of bullshit doesn't trigger it, what on earth will?