Friday, July 13, 2007

Operation Constant Vigilance


As noted in the comments in the previous post, more people seem comfortable with cakes than espionage but I did want to mention one thing from the Milton Bearden lunch the other day before heading into the weekend. Asked how (Hindu) Bollywood movies and (Arab) Al Jazeera news broadcasts were changing the conservative culture of Afghanistan, Bearden demured but did note that President Bush was so obsessed with the idea that the Al Jazeera news crawl was sending coded messages to Al Qadea that he ordered the text to be constantly run through an NSA Cray super computer to dry to crack the code. It was such a big deal to him that in Bearden's words it resembled "Captain Queeg and the strawberries".

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Bush then insisted that if you played the audio book of Knights Under the Prophets Banner backwards it says "death to America, kill George Bush". Nevermind that it says that going forwards, but still, eh?

3 comments:

Bill Norris said...

This made me think of you.

Margaret Porter said...

Bill--I (and my spousal unit) are grateful for that link. We love learning that other people are as weird as us. Or rather, me, as I'm the one who imports candy bars from overseas. The U.S. Agriculture Dept. in the Customs Area of Logan Airport will back me up on this.

When Over there I consume mass quantities of UK Kit Kats and anything Cadbury's.

The stuff Over Here should be traded under entirely different names, if you ask me.

Weasel, I didn't comment about the spy stuff because I feared they might come after me. Cakes just seemed so much safer.

Wisdom Weasel said...

Ahh, that is a fine article

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