During a recent seven hour deposition as part of a racial profiling lawsuit against Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, attorney David Bodney grilled the Sheriff over specific references to the “reconquista” conspiracy theory in his 2008 book, “Joe’s Law: America’s Toughest Sheriff Takes on Illegal Immigration, Drugs and Everything Else That Threatens America.”

Bodney points out that, in his book, Arpaio repeatedly referenced a “growing movement” among Mexican nationals and Mexican-Americans that contends “that massive immigration over the border will speed and guarantee the reconquista of these lands, returning them to Mexico.” Arpaio also wrote that his parents’ migration from Italy “never constituted a reconquest” of the U.S. because they didn’t “regard any inch of American soil as somehow belonging to Italy.” When probed, Arpaio plead ignorance and pinned the blame on his book’s co-author, Len Sherman:

BODNEY: You were at least, according to the cover, listed as the lead author?

ARPAIO: Yes.

BODNEY: Does the book reflect yours views?

ARPAIO: Uhhh…I’m not sure to the best of my knowledge. I haven’t reviewed the book recently. In fact, I haven’t even read the book. [...]

BODNEY: In Joe’s Law you refer to the illegal immigration problem and about the Mexicans who want to take back Arizona and parts of the United States. A “reconquista.” Do you remember that?

ARPAIO: Once again, I’m going to say my co-author did a lot of research and many parts of the book was attributed to him…this is something injected by the co-author and I’m not familiar with that whole situation.

Watch it:

Arpaio also indicated that he doesn’t agree with subtitle of his own book and doesn’t remember telling GQ magazine, “You know what it is? It’s this civil rights, all that crap” or stating that his Sheriff’s office was “becoming a full-fledged anti-immigration agency.” Arpaio is currently being investigated by both the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

(HT: Feathered Bastard)

What’s more pathetic than Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) claiming “credit” for the failed Christmas Day attack? Conservative commentators hailing that attack as a “success.”

Yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol argued that, even though Nigerian extremist Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab only managed to set fire to his own groin, subsequent security measures undertaken by the Obama administration ulltimately represented a success for the Saudi/Yemeni Al Qaeda franchise:

KRISTOL: Closing the embassy in Yemen last night — I mean, I don’t — you know, no one wants State Department officials to be put at risk and all that, but that is a sign of weakness.

Closing the embassy? We can’t protect our own embassy in Yemen, a place we have Special Operations forces, a place we say we’re working with the government on the front lines of the war on terror, and there’s a terror threat and we close the embassy? That’s a victory for Al Qaida. This last week has been a victory for Al Qaida in that region, I’m afraid. [...]

Britt Hume agreed:

HUME: I might say, you know, we keep talking about this failed attack, this failed attempt. I mean, it surely didn’t succeed on the scale on which it was intended, but look at the consequences.

It set in motion all kinds of security procedures which — for several days which made absolutely no sense, by the way, at U.S. airports. Certainly, we would not be closing the embassy in Yemen in the absence of these events. Yemen is — was — a month ago was a hotbed. It’s a hotbed today.

You know, if I were the Al Qaida people, I think Bill’s right. They could look at this as a success. This was — this was an attack that didn’t succeed on the scale it was expected to but did succeed.

It is true that one of the goals of terrorism is to elicit a wild over-reaction from the target government, resulting in greater publicity and a larger pool of potential recruits for the terrorists’ cause, and so any response has to be balanced against that. For a great example of how not to react, we can look to the Bush administration’s “war on terror”: The promulgation of an existential struggle, preventive war, the adoption of secret detention and torture, all of which have proved to be disastrous for U.S. security and a propaganda and a recruiting bonanza for Al Qaeda and affiliated extremists. As committed supporters of the “war on terror” approach, Hume and Kristol have little choice but to ignore those consequences, which makes their little freak-out over some flaming underpants and a temporarily closed embassy all the more ridiculous. You really couldn’t ask for a clearer example of the cynicism that underlies Kristol’s and Hume’s “analysis,” though. So committed are they to scoring political points that they’re willing to represent failed attack as a success simply because it resulted in some tighter security measures.

On a related note, I think most people have come to understand that the “war on terror” is not a useful frame for understanding the threat of Islamic extremism or the policies required to deal with it. It is, however, a useful frame for Republicans winning elections. Which is why, despite the concept having been discredited among national security analysts and policymakers, Fox News and conservative activists continue to push it. But in doing so, they’re functioning as some of Al Qaeda’s best publicists.