My mother, not known for her tinfoil millinery, mentioned to me that someone official had predicted that the U.S. would nab Osama bin Laden within the year.

She speculates that if this is being publicly predicted, then the government already has him in the bag and is waiting to unveil him at the moment when it will do GW’s poll results the most good (say, November). On the one hand, I don’t put anything past the current administration. On the other, I pointed out to her that a number of people speculated that the U.S. military captured Saddam long before it was made public. This apparently was not the case, but what’s interesting is the number of stories (mostly outside the USA) indicating that the Kurds caught him and then handed him off.

So who knows what the hell is going on. The source of the ObL prediction is a Lt Colonel. I have no idea how I should read that. What to make of the fact that it’s not a senior officer or senior administration official? Clearly senior administration officials are quite happy to stick their feet in their mouths to score political points. So I wouldn’t put it past them to leak this if it were true. Then again, intentionally leaking it via a Lt. Col. would be smart, as it keeps the higher-ups out of the mess, makes it easier to bury the story, and may give it more credibility because the leaker is close to the action. Then again, this may just be an officer being cocky. The military may have some useful intel on him, but his mouth is writing checks that his troops may not be able to cash. Certainly, this is the most plausible scenario. Or perhaps this is an officer being sloppy. ObL really is in the bag, and this guy can’t keep a secret.

You just can’t tell with these guys.

I had dinner last night with some friends, Drew and Farooq, and rather than watch George II deliver a pack of lies, platitudes, and empty promises, I insisted that we talk.

Inevitably, talk turned to politics. Now, neither of these guys has any love for our current Dear Leader, but I was surprised at their antipathy towards Dean, which was not so much because of any of Dean’s policies, or even his personal style, but what the mainstream media has told us his style is: angry.

This surprised me on a couple of levels. Both of these guys are much smarter than me, and generally very well-informed. But in this case, they were making a judgment A) based not on platforms and policy, but on personality, and B) based not so much on the person’s actual personality as the conventional-wisdom story of that person’s personality.

Now, I’ve been impressed by Dean–I haven’t decided for certain that I’ll vote for him, but it is looking that way. So I have my own biases. But when Farooq showed us how Dean is depicted on the Drudge Report, of all sources, to back up his point, I was a bit appalled.

Aside from cracking that Dean’s too unstable to be the man with his finger on the button, both of them seemed to believe strongly that we need a safe bet candidate like Kerry to have any hopes of defeating Bush in November. I’ve been thinking about this, and I don’t agree.

I suspect that if the election is anything but a blowout (which is very unlikely), it will be rigged. All it will take is a discreet call to Wally O’Dell and some voting machines “patched” in some close races.

Which is why we would need to gamble on a blowout. A safe candidate like Kerry might edge Bush in a fair fight, but without a blowout, and–in a rigged election–certain to lose. A riskier candidate like Dean might have a greater chance of losing a fair vote. In an election, though, where the opposition can rig the outcome a little but not a lot, we need someone who has some chance at beating the spread.

This tinfoil-hat logic isn’t the reason I’m tending towards Dean, but it is something I’m tossing around.