Sinking Feeling

some righty bloggers have been getting email tips about a major story coming out in the moonie times that will hurt john kerry's campaign. a kossite has posted the story, and most people are brushing it off as a non-event. the washington times isn't exactly a credible newspaper, i suppose.

the whole thing sounds like a hair-brained smear job:

John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, is being given money by an Albanian terrorist organization known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA or UCK in Albanian).

The KLA is currently smuggling weapons into Kosovo as part of a plot to attack American and other UN peacekeepers, should the UN Security Counsel refuse their demand for Kosovo's secession from Serbia and Montenegro.

About the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA/UCK)

In order to fully understand the significance of John Kerry's involvement with the KLA it is first necessary to understand what sort of an organization the KLA is. The KLA is a terrorist organization with ties to Osama bin Laden and the Iranian government. The KLA's main objective is to break Kosovo, which has been an integral part of Serbia for centuries, away from Serbia.

The KLA began on the radical fringe of Kosovo-Albanian politics, originally made up of diehard Marxist-Leninists as well as by descendants of the fascist militias raised by the Italians in World War II. [1]

The KLA made its military debut in February 1996 with the bombing of several camps housing Serbian refugees from wars in Croatia and Bosnia.

... snip ...

interesting. this organization 'apparently' has ties to the iranian government. gee, i wonder where this is going.

update:

the kla opposed milosevic. i have a feeling that anyone who tries to run this story will get laughed out of the country. hopefully. fingers crossed.

update:

well, after poking around the internet, it seems that the story of the KLA is a complicated one. some of them are guilty of committing war crimes against serbs. in the context of such a horrible civil war, i doubt that anyone really comes out smelling like roses. in any case, i think this whole story, if it is indeed the big story the righty bloggers are talking about, will not hurt kerry's campaign. the people who use it to smear him will only end up looking *really* desperate.

i hate this election. so many rumors, so much anxiety, and the constant, nearly irresistible temptation to go off half-cocked, ready to believe anything and everything. i need to take up drinking.