Connecting Over-Connected Dots

John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, writing in the LATimes as they do every month or so, take the lead as apologists for al-Qaeda, coughing up a hairball of excuses for London's Tube Terrorists. As is so often the case, the Leftist logic is flawed beyond any hope of resuscitation.

Here's just one example. First, they quote London's Socialist mayor Ken Livingstone:

Last week, London's mayor, "Red" Ken Livingstone, said, "I don't just denounce the suicide bombers. I denounce those governments that use indiscriminate slaughter to advance their foreign policy" — which presumably means Israel and the U.S. "The bombings would never have happened if the West had simply left the Arab nations alone in the wake of the First World War, rather than trying to control the flow of oil."

Then, exactly 59 words later, they write:

Tube bomber Shahzad Tanweer was much exercised about India's conduct in Kashmir, for instance.

What, exactly, is the connection between the alleged efforts to control oil and Kashmir? I remember pictures of temples, green forests and Himalyan peaks in teh Kashmir geography section of my brain ... but no oil wells are present.

Is there anyone anywhere who thinks that without international interest in helping the clueless Arabs develop their oil resources, the Arabs would still be riding camels in abject poverty, pereferring their perfect religion to wealth? Not in a million jihads.

"Contol" is a far-fetched word to use when describing US-Arab oil relations. Have Mickelthwait and Wooldridge forgotten the 1970s and the oil crisis? Have they not looked at the cost of oil?

More proof that the LAT lives in its own world, and as it struggles to drag us into it, they sit around and scratch their heads over why their circulation is declining.