Peter King Should Label Imus's Cold a Terrorist Threat
Rep. Peter King has not yet learned the lesson that many other Imus in the Morning guests know well: the question, “how are you,” when posed to the I-Man, will not be met with a benign response.
“I have cancer,” he told King, a Republican from New York. “I have emphysema. I have a horrible cold. My stomach is sore from coughing. My little finger on my right hand is bent.”
Surely King, who will likely to be elected the next Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee in the House, doesn’t have time for this sort of whining; he’s about to become a very powerful man, a fact not lost on Imus.
“Who knows what I might want or need, or what Bernie might want or need?” he said.
Right now, what King wants, and what he thinks the country needs, is to label Wikileaks, the group that over the weekend made public hundreds of thousands of confidential cables concerning U.S. foreign policy, a terrorist organization.
“We are facing a new type of enemy called 21st century technology, and I think we have to start thinking outside the box,” King said.
He believes the definition for what constitutes a terrorist organization should be expanded to include a foreign entity like Wikileaks that “day in and day out is encouraging, and helping, and aiding, and abetting terrorists.”
Once it is declared a terrorist organization, the U.S. can seize Wikieleaks’ assets, and go after anybody who tries to help them. “The world has changed,” King said. “The threat had changed, and I think we should change with it.”
The New York Times published some of the leaked information, but redacted portions that editors at the paper and members of the Obama administration deemed too sensitive.
“Obviously if the formula for a new weapon is there, the New York Times can figure out that that’s damaging to our national security,” King said, alluding to the paper’s arrogance. But seemingly innocuous facts could be anything but. “By realizing when we found something out, where we were when we found something out, that could really blow the cover of sources that we have in governments or in countries around the world.”
King is curious why U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, has yet to stop Wikileaks, which put forth its first big leak a few months ago. Though he agreed with Imus’s point that “some stuff was pretty cool to know,” King noted, “Government is serious, and international diplomacy and war is very serious too.”
Sounds like someone might be better suited as Chairman of the Party Pooper Committee.
-Julie Kanfer
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