It truly is a commentary on the sad state of affairs in the media when the Bush administration can perform such blatantly transparent political manipulation of matters supposedly related to national security, and no one in the mainstream media (outside the editorial pages) dares to suggest the connection.

One excellent example is the manipulation of the “terror alerts” in the 2004 elections. Even at the time, it was clear that the alerts were ginned up; one alert was supposedly called on the basis information that was several years old, and virtually all others had just as little if even less justification. And there was little doubt they were fake anyway, seeing as how each terror alert just happened to be timed for maximum effect when Kerry was about to get a jump in the polls. And then after the election was over, the alerts stopped, dead cold. And yet, even today, the press is unwilling to go the full distance and call the fake alerts for what they were–even though Tom Ridge, the administration’s own head of Homeland Security, came out and said that the alerts were baseless in terms of actual security.

More recently was the timing of the sentencing of Saddam Hussein–an event that simply “happened” to get scheduled two days before politically charged and vitally important midterm elections in the U.S. Despite cries of protest from the administration that they “had nothing to do with the selection of the date” for the sentencing, the fact is that the Bush administration has powerful influence over the Iraqi government, and anyone who thinks that they gave up ultimate control over Hussein and every aspect of his trial is fooling themselves. And, yet again, the mainstream press refused to call the scheduling for what it so obviously was.

This inability of the media to call a spade a spade has likely encouraged the administration to engage in their latest bit of political timing: it was just reported that Saddam’s execution will take place within the next 30 days. While it could come “any time,” there is the somewhat interesting “coincidence” that Bush’s penultimate State of the Union Address falls within that same 30 days. How much do you want to wager that the execution will not take place in the 3 days after the State of the Union? I’ll bet the odds are far worse for that than the 10% they statistically deserve.

And again, there is little doubt that the media will again remain silent on yet another flagrant and unabashed bit of theatrical scheduling to try to help Bush out politically.

Hat tip to TMP and reader “RP” for the call.

Update: Saddam will likely be hanged this weekend, well before Bush’s SotU address. The timing, therefore, is of less significance on this case, though still remains significant in the two others mentioned.

Update #2: Well, then again, maybe timing was an issue here. New reports say that Bush tried to get the Iraqis to delay the execution by two weeks. While released as an attempt to make it seem like the Bush administration was not responsible for the fluster-cluck of an execution, it also means that the administration was aiming for a date that would have been just a few days before Bush’s State of the Union speech. So my original thesis still stands.