Red State on Kessler on Satellite Phones

Happy Christmasy Yuletydings to yon PostWatchers. I've been keeping my sacred pledge to blog less during Christmas week.

Meantime, one "streiff" at Red State.org writes about a Glenn Kessler story, File the Bin Laden Phone Leak Under 'Urban Myths.' on A2. The gist is that it just ain't true, as President Bush claimed when defending warrantless NSA eavesdropping, that Osama bin Laden stopped using satellite phones after it was leaked in the media.

I hope I'm not showing my ignorance by saying I'm not familiar with streiff at Red State, a site I browse. But he challenges Kessler at a level of detail I'm not capable of.

Meanwhile I have two observations. One, if you read carefully, the story claims a bit less than the headline promises. Kessler:

Causal effects are hard to prove, but other factors could have persuaded bin Laden to turn off his satellite phone in August 1998. A day earlier, the United States had fired dozens of cruise missiles at his training camps, missing him by hours.

Though aimed at puncturing Bush, this is also a defensive move by Kessler. File Bush's claim under 'Urban Myths'--but of course I could be wrong, other factors could have persuaded.....

Two, the fact that his activity was reported somewhere else before doesn't mean that bin Laden & Co. knew that. It's a big world. The torrent of information that gushes out of our hydrants is almost unfathomable, and the percentage of satellite phone reports compared to All Reporting On Everything would be expressed as a decimal point followed by lots of zeros.

In other words, saying somebody else did it first isn't a defense.