News of the Tautological

The Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web Today has a regular feature that they call News of the Tautological, where they post an amusing headline using circular logic, for example, from yesterday:

Olmert: No Peace Unless Attacks Stop"--headline, Associated Press, Jan. 9

Now we have the troofer version of this, with an article addressing the argument that the Bush administration, hardly known for its widespread competence, could not have carried out such a ridiculously complicated plot.

Many who deny government complicity in 9/11/01 maintain that some of the best evidence against official involvement in the crime of the century lies in the Bush administration's unbroken record of sheer incompetence, an argument bolstered by the perception that key members of the administration, notably The Commander Guy, spent that entire day running around like headless chickens.

On the contrary, they did no such thing. Rather, the administration was highly competent and enormously successful that day -- they just had different criteria for success than would sane people. And they've been highly competent ever since. You just have to adjust your standards for evaluating success, then view the past six years through the PNAC/neocon lens. Let's review some of their primary accomplishments -- on 9/11 and in the six eternal years since:

Of course they argue their point, by insisting that of course they are competent, because they pulled off this ridiculously complicated plot and managed to blame it on Al Qaeda.

They got the entire world to believe that a ragtag organization called Al Qaeda, fronted by a seriously ill guy in a cave armed with only a laptop and a phone, managed to orchestrate an unbelievably complex plan that had involved years of planning and training, much money, split-second timing and ridiculously good luck.

Once again, they are beyond parody.