Check out this bunch of silliness that was written in a weak attempt to downplay any connections between Al Qaeda and Iraq:
People who work on the Hill have meetings with lobbyists and interest groups all the time, sometimes this means Senator X is really a pawn of Industry Y, but sometimes it means that Senator X needs to tell Industry Y that he can’t help them out and wants to do it in a respectful way. When Adrianna was meeting with the FBI, that did mean she was in league with the Feds, but it didn’t mean that the Soprano family was. Tony met with Johnny Sack a whole bunch of times, sometimes to conspire with him, sometimes to tell him to fuck off. Neville Chamberlain was pursuing an unwise policy during his meetings with Hitler in Munich, but he wasn’t in cahoots with Hitler. Don Rumsfeld met with Saddam Hussein in the 80s to collaborate on their common interest in checking Iranian power, but that doesn’t mean they were working together in 2003 or 1991.
Dear Matt:
1.) Senators and Industry personnel are not terrorists and despotic dictators. Analogy dead.
BTW- I might note that ‘just the appearance of impropriety’ between congressman and industry was enough for almost the entire Democratic party to vote for CFR.
2.) Adrianna, Tony, Johnny Sack are fictional characters. Analogy dead.
BTW- The powers that be (in this case, a fictional FBI), have been up all three of their asses with a baseball bat and a flashlight. The same can not be said about the real life case you aretryingto analogize.
3.) Neville Chamberlain never engaged in an act of terrorism or gassed the populations of Newcastle, Carlisle and Windermere. Analogy dead.
BTW- Neville Chamberlain’s policy sounds alot like the Democratic party talking points regarding North Korea.
Matt’s fundamental problem here is that he is using analogies that don’t reflect reality. What is reported as fact, andt hat all of us except a few coneheads in the media elite understand, is that there was a relationship between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. What makes this special is that both of these characters are trouble.
I don’t think that Iraq had much if anything to do with 9/11- and I would say they had NOTHING to do with 9/11 if I could speak in terms of certainties regarding the issue. But since you can know what you don’t know (as Cheney has stated over and over), you sort of have to stick to your gut instincts and the record of behavior for Al Qaeda and Saddam. And while this may confuse our liberal elites, I have a pretty firm idea of their intentions.
Marble
But they shook HANDS!!!!!!
/LLL
Ricky
Hey, he made it through the post without mentioning college, so give the chap some credit for starting to recognize that he’s in the adult world.
Kimmitt
BTW- Neville Chamberlain’s policy sounds alot like the Democratic party talking points regarding North Korea.
You can tell this because the US has abandoned the defense of South Korea and turned it over to Pyongyang. Also, Hitler had nukes. Brilliant!
John Cole
Kimmitt- Have you suffered a blow to the head? Your posting has been erratic and ridiculous for a couple weeks now.
The Democrats (including Jogsh Marsahall as point man) have been advocating bilateral talks and a continuation oif the Clinton policy (appeasement, essentially), for the last 3 years.
The Bush administration has refused to rewqard NK with precisely what they want- one on one talks, and has been working on a multi-lateral regional soloution including containment, involving all the players in the region.
Get a grip, Kimmitt. I will give you credit, though- when you are wrong, you are WRONG.
Kimmitt
The policy I advocate is as follows: Toast for Nukes.
It works like this — we give the North Koreans toast, and they don’t develop nukes which they then sell to the highest bidder on the black market.
It’s not the best plan, since the North Koreans are assholes and tend to game us for more toast than we originally planned to ship them. Also, the North Korean regime is in the running for “most evil organization on the planet.” However, since they can turn Seoul into a smoking crater in fifteen minutes, they’ve kind of got us by the short hairs.
We are not pursuing Chamberlain’s policy toward Hitler, we are pursuing Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush’s policy toward the USSR — containment. We have ceded no land whatsoever to the North Koreans, and we are penning them in with the most heavily militarized border in the world. However, our security concerns regarding free-floating nuclear weapons are so enormous that I think it’s worth sending the North Koreans toast to keep them from developing and selling nukes.
I understand that there is a difference of opinion here, and I think that this is one of the nuances of foreign policy where either of us could end up being right. But nobody is “appeasing” the North Koreans. Both sides are “containing” them; the difference lies in the strategy followed to contain them. One seeks to buy nonproliferation with toast, while the other seeks to hurry regime change with confrontation. Both nonproliferation and regime change are worthy goals, so balancing between them is not a straightforward process.
John Cole
We tried toast for nukes, and they built nukes anyway.
See Framework, Agreed.
Kimmitt
My understanding is this:
US: Okay, here’s your toast. Now, no nukes, got it?
North Korea: We’re building uranium nukes.
US: WTF! We gave you toast!
North Korea: The agreement was only for plutonium nukes. Now give us more toast, dumbass!
US: FU! There’s no way we’re giving your slimy ass more toast.
North Korea: I’m gonna draw this out for a long time in an effort to convince you both that I am serious and that you want to give me toast more than I want to give you nukes.
US: No, seriously, FU.
…and that’s where things now stand.
Dean
Kimmitt:
See 1991 North-South Agreement, and 1989 IAEA/NPT agreement, for where North Korea agreed on no nukes, regardless of plutonium OR uranium nukes.
BTW, your exchange, above, in no way explains why or how giving them any toast now should lead to them not developing nukes.
Which begs the question why you think giving them toast will lead to them not developing nukes?
Kimmitt
I think it’s a good risk; we’ve got plenty of toast.
Slartibartfast
Yeah, what the hell. But…isn’t the definition of insanity something like: doing the same thing over and over, hoping for a different outcome?
Kimmitt
I’m not sure “twice” counts as “over and over.”
That said, this is, once again, an area where either side could be right; it’s a judgement call. But, again, neither side is doing anything which even vaguely resembles giving Hitler the Sudentenland.