Idaho Statesman -- Moonbat Central?

As you might guess, the leading newspaper here in Idaho, the Idaho Statesman, has a fairly moderate editorial policy, in general. As you might also guess, they get letters every week complaining about how communistic they are -- after all, this is Idaho. (They do have one moderately liberal local columnist, and frequently have syndicated columns by well-known national liberals, as a way of demonstrating "balance"). They also get plenty of letters from the moonbattier segments of the local populace, which they print without comment. One of them in particular caught my eye this week (last letter down, from "Ruth Barkley" of Boise):

Justification for war?

"Sept. 11, Pearl Harbor, Gulf of Tonkin, Reichstag fire, and similar events in history have much in common.
"These events created a turning point of public opinion that justified a nation going to war, and they were either intentionally perpetrated or facilitated by the "victim country."
"If you think America incapable of manufacturing the events of Sept. 11 to suppress all opposition as it intentionally transitions into a fascist, totalitarian state, please research "Operation Northwoods."
"Operation Northwoods was a 1962 U.S. Pentagon plan to justify an invasion of Cuba. The plan called for assassinations of Cubans living in Florida, and a fake "Communist" terror campaign in that state and Washington. It also planned for sinking of a boatload of Cuban refugees, a "Cuban" air force attack on an American jetliner, and a "Cuban" sinking of a U.S. warship.
"No credible investigation of the events of Sept. 11 occurred because they would not stand up to even the most basic scrutiny. Read "Crossing the Rubicon; The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil." It clearly shows that the U.S. government was the only group with the motive, means, and opportunity to pull off the attack."

This stuff is straight out of Democratic Underground -- the nuttier sections. "Operation Northwoods" is something that moonbats over there always pull out whenever they want to "prove" that the U.S. military will do anything to destroy our civil rights. Interestingly, I don't notice them putting comments in any threads about the French about how the French military plans to kill lots of Algerians, even though that's what they were doing in the early 60s. Anyway, if you want to take Ruth's advice and "research Operation Northwoods", here's the Google search -- for the best laughs, I especially recommend the stuff at Rense.com, which also has lots of fun UFO conspiracy-theory articles on the front page.

Normally, I'd let stuff like this slide without a Letter To The Editor; today, though, the paper printed a syndicated editorial from Wayne Madsen, conspiracy-theorist extraordinaire (he has 147 citations at Rense.com). The Statesman doesn't have the editorial on their web site, but you can read it here. Madsen is so far out that he calls Daily Kos and DU "neo-con propagandists".

Madsen is probably most famous among submariners for his piece suggesting that USS Cole was actually attacked by a cruise missile fired by an Israeli submarine, rather than the terrorists seen by the crew:

"The former CIA agent who worked with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York and New Jersey stated that the USS Cole was hit by a specially-configured Popeye cruise missile launched from an Israeli Dolphin-class submarine. Israeli tests of the missile in May 2000 in the waters off Sri Lanka demonstrated it could hit a target 930 miles away. The ex-CIA agent also stated that Ambassador Bodine threw John O’Neill and his team out of Yemen lest their investigation began uncovering evidence that the Cole was not blown up by an explosive-laden boat but by an Israeli cruise missile.
"The former CIA agent said the reason for the Israeli attack was to further galvanize U.S. public opinion against both Al Qaeda and the Democrats in the weeks prior to the 2000 presidential elections. The Bush-Cheney team could blame the Democrats for not taking the Al Qaeda threat seriously. However, this is exactly the tact the Bush administration took after taking office: failure to support the CIA-FBI’s Alex Station, pressuring John O’Neill and other agents like Minneapolis agent Coleen Rowley and others across the nation who detected activity involving Arab flight students, and pulling the plug on a major data mining operation directed against Al Qaeda code named Able Danger, which was being jointly run by the DIA and the Special Operations Command."

The guy's a complete loon, but my guess is that the Idaho Stateman editorial staff doesn't realize that, having not explored the tinfoil hat/black helicopter side of the 'net like I have. I'll see if I can put a sufficiently snarky LTTE together... I'll let you know what happens.