Just because it needs to be said again:
Do we even remember “all that” now? The lunacy that appeared after 9/11 that asked us to look for the “root causes” to explain why America may have “provoked” spoiled mama’s boys like bin Laden and Mohammed Atta to murder Americans at work? Do we recall the successive litany of “you cannot win in Afghanistan/you cannot reconstruct such a mess/you cannot jumpstart democracy there”? And do we have memory still of “Sharon the war criminal,” and “the apartheid wall,” and, of course, “Jeningrad,” the supposed Israeli-engineered Stalingrad
nick
1 there are “root causes” to explain why ubl thought he was “provoked”
by usa
and CIA has also murdered innocents abroad
2 We all did not say “you cannot win in Afghanistan” so you are also a liar
and there still is NO democracy there!
3 Sharon is a war criminal re that regugee camp
4 DOD bought thousands of body bags no us!
and 1400 dead is near the 300 estimate
5 the Jews are SO happ ywe invaded IRaq
we did not say electiosn wouldnt work – jsut that they are NOT legimaite without Sunnis
we dont forget that UBL is still not caught
yes toadys botched the war.
yes Three- and four-star generals who went on television or ran for office were principled dissidents who “told the truth”
officers in the field allowed world to see abu garib (sic)
and other war crimes
Bob
I start hearing a buzz in my ears when one of these Hoover Institution guys starts talking about about “elite” anything as if anyone opposed to the war against Iraq is sitting around in the conversatory in his smoking jacket talking with Miss Scarlet and Colonel Mustard.
Osama ‘s kin were sitting around the table with George H.W. when the planes hit the WTC, so I guess this chump wasn’t talking about the bin Ladens as global elite.
Women is Afghanistan are as bad off now as they were, the opium production is setting records, the President of Afg is unsafe without a battalion of US soldier. The Soviets held the country for a decade. We’ve still got a way to go to match them, unless you are saying that the Soviets were successful there.
We will stay in Iraq because that was the plan all along. Control the oil, project our military power throughout the region. The WMDs, the elections, the bad guy Saddam, it’s all irrelevant. BushCo has just made a major acquisition and doesn’t mind spending as much of your tax dollars and as many of your lives in order to protect it.
Bob
Speaking of Joe Wilson, how has that investigation about exposing Valerie Plame’s CIA identity going? Maybe now that we’ve got Gonzales in Justice we can expect a quick resolution, relying on torturing the White House staff to get an answer.
Or not.
The Sanity Inspector
Watching the peace creeps above gnaw ankles reminds me of a college history class I had, long ago. The revisionist author of our textbook hated the West so much that, in the section on World War II, it seemed that the biggest crime of the war was the assassination of the Vichy Admiral Darlan. Perspective, my dear anarcho-stupidists; perspective!
Remember, the head-choppers don’t care how much you hate Bush; they’d commit jihad on you as quickly as on better. Fortunately, your set isn’t in power for the time being–thank God the grownups are in charge!
And VDH is a splendid propagandist–it’s a shame there isn’t a nicer word for it, for I really appreciate his work in keeping our morale up these past three & a half years.
Kimmitt
Fortunately, your set isn’t in power for the time being–thank God the grownups are in charge!
Those saying this really ought to point out how the Bush Administration improved Clinton’s antiterror policy before the wakeup call of 9/11.
SDN
Kimmit:
Can’t improve what never existed. And of course, Clinton had many attacks on America, and did nothing. Bush had one… and took care of business.
Terry
Increasingly the comment threads here are beginning to resemble the paranoid, nihilistic and deranged rantings that one can find on threads at atrios and DU. This is understandable given that at least two of the commenters here, nick and Kimmitt, have been certified as nuts…Bob is perhaps problematic in terms of actual clinical diagnosis, but it hardly matters in that he’s clearly a moron lost in the maze of left-wing theory and dogma to which his limited mental faculities have been exposed lo these many years.
Bob
Terry, here’s a left-wing theory: Valerie Plame was outed as a CIA agent by someone in the White House apparatus to punish Joe Wilson, her ambassador husband who had publicly exposed the whole “yellowcake from Niger” story to be a fraud originally perpetrated by the Bush Administration in order whip up support for the invasion of Iraq.
Let’s bring Justice to the White House.
Bob
Sanity Inspector, the head choppers wouldn’t be chopping American heads if Americans hadn’t invaded Iraq, removed all civil authority, killed tens of thousands and left the rest in serious deep anarchistic shit.
Is chopping heads bad? You bet. Their existence and sway in the current landscape falls on the US invasion and no plan for the occupation other than to let the free market rule. That shiny blade is part of the free market.
By the way, there was a good book written before WWII, TOTAL ESPIONAGE, about how those who became the Vichy Govt. had been working treasonously with the Nazis to overthrow the duly-elected French socialist government. Many in France’s monied classes and the adjunct military classes thought their investments would do better with Nazis than with socialists.
There are some who now believe that the Bush Family, with its long history of business with international fascism, may in fact represent a fifth column to destroy the U.S. After all, capital knows no borders, but people do.
Terry
Bob:
The Senate Intelligence Committee report refuted completely the charges by former diplomat Joseph Wilson that the Bush administration ignored his conclusion, based on several days in Niger, that Iraq had not sought to buy uranium in that country. Democrats and many in the press claimed that Wilson refuted the 16-word sentence Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech, noting that British intelligence reported that Iraq sought to buy uranium in Africa.
But British intelligence stands by that finding, and the committee noted that Wilson confirmed that Iraq had approached Niger, whose main exports are uranium and goats, and intelligence analysts concluded that his report added nothing else to their previous knowledge. And the Commission’s report flatly denied Wilson’s statements that his wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame, had nothing to do with his mission to Niger — it quotes Plame’s memo taking credit for the appointment.
And Bob, I believe I can remove the question I had earlier raised about whether or not you were nuts.I note that in your most recent post that you close with this: “There are some who now believe that the Bush Family, with its long history of business with international fascism, may in fact represent a fifth column to destroy the U.S.” If you aren’t completely nuts, then you should be institutionalized to protect yourself, as well as the rest of American society from such paranoid schizophrenia.
Aaron
>
Daniel Pearl.
Explain, Bob, explain.
Bob
Earth to Terry and others around here:
The Incas were not communists, the Bush administration lied in order to get the invasion of Iraq going and your stupid broad misstatements aren’t going to change anything.
However…
But that’s not what we’re talking about, is it? We’re talking about the outing of a CIA agent, which is a felony under US law. Remember? It’s just how long BushCo can stall until one of the underlings takes the fall for the big cruel bully boy on the top.
Bob
Aaron,
Daniel Pearl was an investigative reporter who was captured and killed by a murky group operating within the borders of that American ally, Pakistan.
Perhaps Pakistan is someplace else we can invade in order to bring democracy. And maybe we can take away their atomic weapons too, so that they don’t spread any more bomb-building information around the world.
George Saras
Well, Bob, you’ve been a busy little nutjob this weekend, having posted enough brain hemorrhages to fill a fair sized bucket. I found your slanders against the Bush family and the President not up to your usual standard, however.
The problem for the anti-Bushies like Bob is that these charges might have had an impact in the recent election if the left hadn’t spent much of the past two years trying to argue that the president is evil personified.
We’ve had Howard Dean (and Bob) spreading the rumor that the Saudis warned Bush about 9/11. Ted Kennedy contended – in an argument that defies logic – that the war on Iraq was “planned in Texas” to benefit the president politically. We’ve had Michael Moore making the case that the war in Afghanistan was about a natural gas pipeline and oil company profits. We’ve had Paul Krugman arguing in the pages of the New York Times that Bush is trying to destroy democracy. We’ve had the antiwar left arguing, again and again, that Bush is the second coming of Hitler. I suspect that after a while, the public just tunes out this stuff.
I mean, once you’ve killed thousands in a war to boost Halliburton’s profits, repealed the Constitution, and destroyed democracy, isn’t cocaine use kind of mild?
Ian Wood
Kimmit writes,
“Those saying this really ought to point out how the Bush Administration improved Clinton’s antiterror policy before the wakeup call of 9/11.”
Go here.
Sample:
Read the rest for the evidence.
Robin Roberts
Bob, its really amazing how many of your opinions are dependant on the hard work you do ignoring reality.
Plame wasn’t outed to “punish” Wilson, her status was leaked to show that Wilson’s own statements were not objective and credible.
The nonsense about the Bush family being in league with “international fascism” is just more nutty slanders.
Kimmitt
That’s interesting information, but it doesn’t address the basic critique of the Bush Administration, which is that its policy priorities were excessively geared toward state actors to the point of outright ignorance of nonstate actors.
Thank you for the background, though.
Bob
George Saras, I never said anything about the Saudis warning George Bush about 9/11. Hell, the CIA warned George Bush about 9/11. The FBI warned the Administration. Richard Clarke warned them. Considering that most of the hijackers were Saudi with connections to Saudi power and wealth, any suggestion that the Saudis didn’t warn Bush about all these guys with connections to Osama going to flight schools in the US to learn to fly jetliners but not how to land them would be most interesting to investigate. But, of course, all the Saudi stuff was excised from official reports by the Administration.
Who knows where the war was planned, but the fact that leaks keep coming out that Cheney’s energy task force at the beginning of this administration specifically earmarked the Iraqi oilfields to be liberated for our corporations suggests that it might be nice to know what the bully boys of oil were plotting in the early hours of 2001.
Natural gas pipeline? Go read about the aid that Colin Powell oversaw to the Taliban, read the fine print.
And George, weren’t you going to share the joys of growing up under fascism, where neighbors disappeared?
Robin Roberts, leaking someone’s status as an undercover CIA agent “to show that” her spouse’s “statements were not credible” is still a big fucking felony. Whoever did it should be in jail, not on the White House staff. Anyone covering up is an accessory after the fact. Finds cells for them. You know that’s why Bush retained a criminal lawyer last summer. There is nothing in the law that says you can violate it to make political gain. To say as much is just dumb.
And speaking of dumb, RR, do you still believe that the Incas were communists and the conquistadors were capitalists, and that was why the Spaniards won, or do you disavow yourself of your mentor?
Ian Wood, the restructuring of intelligence was to weed out those in the CIA who would actually consider that reality is more important than what the President wants to hear, and to put some of the covert stuff directly under military control in order to keep it from oversight by elected officials. It’s a shell game that’s been going on since there were competing intelligence units. The ONI competed with the ASA and the CIA. The FBI, under Hoover, competed with all of them. It’s the nature of the intelligence game. The first step for Dubya to take to get intelligence information to the executive branch is to take the beans out of his ears.
George Saras
Bob, I have asked Dr. Keller to take a look at you. It has become increasingly evident in recent days that you have stopped taking your meds. The good doctor assures me that you are relatively “stable” when appropriately medicated. On the other hand, if you fail to take your prescriptions as directed, I am told that the family will opt for that surgical lobotomy procedure that almost everyone was hoping to avoid. Personally, I thought you had already had the procedure, based on your writing.
Bob
George, did they do a lot of lobotomies to dissenters after the fascists took over in Greece?
Bob
George, did they do a lot of lobotomies to dissenters after the fascists took over in Greece?
George Saras
Bob, one of the first signs of a less than fully successful frontal lobotomy is a tendency to stutter and/or repeat oneself. This is a reflection of the fact that the surgeon didn’t quite remove all of the malignant brain cells. Bob, you need to schedule additional surgery as rapidly as possible.
Kimmitt
Bob, one of the first signs of a less than fully successful frontal lobotomy is a tendency to stutter and/or repeat oneself.
Cite?