I understand the need to attack, attack, attack when you are the opposition party. Really, I do. I remember what it was like pre-1994, when the Republicans were an amusing side-note to what was going on in DC. But this is just silly to the extreme:
Tony Blair just caught all suspected London terrorists in one week, George Bush can’t catch any 9/11 suspects in four years
There are so many reasons why this is breathtakingly stupid. Take a few minutes and see what you can come up with.
KC
I’ve got one: the bombers in this case didn’t kill themselves.
Alright, that’s kind of stupid. I’m just glad they’ve nabbed these guys.
albedo
Ummm…it hasn’t been four years yet?
mac Buckets
I’ll start:
1) It’s a run-on sentence.
Jay
George Bush can’t catch any 9/11 suspects in four years
THEY’RE ALL DEAD.
neil
That’s a pretty good one, albedo.
How about this one: There are probably more suspected terrorists at large in London.
And since nobody has claimed it, I’ll just claim the obvious one that neither of those two men can be credited with any actions which can reasonably be described as “catching”.
I will also feature, for your enjoyment, an alternate snarky partisan headline.
British police catch suspected suicide bombers without scanning library records, using secret wiretaps, or authorizing torture
But I’m not sure if that’s true.
Anderson
Another distinction: Only Blair was really trying?
Geek, Esq.
“All suspected London terrorists?”
WTF does that mean?
Steve
Well, I do sort of feel like we could have done a little more to catch that Osama guy. And as we all know, if you take your eye off the ball, the ball may come back and attack you.
Sojourner
Last I heard Bin Laden is still alive. Has something changed?
Tim F
Bin laden doesn’t count because he’s really, really hard to find. At least that’s what the Special Forces team tracking him said before they got shipped to Iraq in 2002. Where they couldn’t find WMDs. Hmm, maybe Bin Laden doesn’t exist either.
Jeff G
I think it was the great Daryl Zero who put it best when he said
Not sure he was talking about bin Laden, but then again, Daryl is really no rightwing ideologue, so the lesson still stands…
KC
That makes me laugh, Tim F.
SoCalJustice
Khaled Sheikh Muhammed, Ramzi Binalshibh, Zacarias Moussaoui….
Anderson
The reason to distinguish OBL is that Blair hasn’t caught him, either. (Yet.)
Stormy70
I cry Horse Hockey. We just had Seal casualties in Afghanistan, and just because the Special Opps teams are not phoning their secret missions into the media and left wing groups, does not mean they have not been fighting Al Qeida in Afghanistan. Bin Laden is some loser in a cave who can’t even prove he is alive anymore by holding up today’s paper on videotape. I think he’s dead, and I hope he is burning in the deepest part of Hell.
We have special opps all over the world, sorry they didn’t know to notify the left.
Harry Atkinson
Bush has been proven incompetent in the so-called war against terrorism, and maybe someday even his blogbot multi-purpose apologists will face up to the facts.
Meanwhile, even Gallup shows the Little President’s numbers in the crapper. 44% approval, his lowest for this poll ever. Big News is eating this one up.
ARROW
Who did you hear this from, and how would they know? Maybe an intercepted communication to his troops in London and elsewhere on the frontlines of terrorism? The WoT is much bigger than bin Laden. And while I would like to see him drawn and quartered, something tells me the war that is being fought, is being fought without much leadership from bin Laden.
It seems to me the British have the benefit of dealing with relative amateurs in an environment that is much more sensitive to the issue. Not to mention the cameras they have to aid in identifying the terrorists. If the FBI and CIA would have been allowed to share information back in August of 2001, there is a good chance we would have been able to stop 9/11. You can thank Janet Reno and her minion, Jamie Gorelick, for the policies that kept us from finding these terrorists before they acted.
Tim F
Yep. Horse hockey.
Nathan Lanier
It’s not surprising considering just about everything posted on that blog is breathtakingly stupid. You’ve gotta love the Bill O’reilly style capitalism, though.
eileen from OH
Yeah, it’s stoopid. But it also highlights something that gets thrown at Dems all the time. Namely, that “we” thought catching terrorists involved a police-style, investigative approach – which was oh-so “pre 911.” Except have ya noticed? The vague-ey “war on terror” has morphed into a “struggle against Islamic extremists.” Getting a little more specific.
Anyhow, t’would appear that in Britain right now, it was good ol’ investigative police work, coupled with some damn fine intelligence work, that nabbed these scum-suckers.
I’m guessing since they also got them alive that there will be some heavy-duty panic in Asshole Terrorist Land,as their contacts wonder who is gonna be given up. And I further guess that it will go a lot further to actually disrupting the terrorist networks than we ever could by bombing the shit our of Iraq. Or Mecca.
eileen from OH
Stormy70
Media matters = Left Wing Propaganda.
We’ve had special opps casualties in Afghanistan lately, so they are not all in Iraq. Wishful thinking.
After they blew their bombs, not before. I’d rather they be taken out before they blow up 50 people on the tubes.
jg
But its still fact. Just because its ‘good news’ for the left doesn’t mean it aint a fact that the right has to accept. The fact that there are special ops guys in afghanistan right now has nothing to do with their best unit being pulled out in march 02.
Tim F
Huh, my magic rightwing eight ball just came up, “attack the source.” It’s spooky.
Tim F
Links for people who think MMFA has cooties.
There you go, Stormy. All cleaned up and Brock-free. You can thank me later.
Bob
Wasn’t one of the guys named Asswipe or Asshat, and he was building a terrorist camp in Oregon and was nabbed in 2002, but the Justice Department said to let him go?
Maybe our law enforcement is conservationist. You know, catch-and-release. That way they won’t go extinct!
ARROW
If bombing terrorists in Iraq just brings out more terrorists, why wouldn’t prosecuting terrorists in the criminal justice system do the same thing?
albedo
I think the logic is that bombing/occupying Iraq is creating a new generation of terrorists. Prosecuting terrorists in the justice system hardly gives a huge swath of the arab population similar blanket justification for hating us.
Stormy70
Fighting against terrorists breeds new terrorists. Ok, as long as they all die a horrible death.
DougJ
Just goes to show how easily the war on terror can be won when you don’t have the ACLU and moveon.org on your back.
Imagine how the libruls would complain if our cops shot to kill the way the Brits do. Look at the results, though…
Bob Munck
Does the answer have anything to do with not having caught the person or persons who sent out the anthrax? That used to be an act of terrorism, until someone realized that we had no way of proving that they were brown people.
albedo
Oh, definitely. Because there’s no liberal advocacy groups in Merrie Olde, nope. And, let’s see, Georgie “Porgie” Galloway is a congressman from California, Ken Livingstone is the mayor of the West Village…
Mike
“Sojourner Says:
THEY’RE ALL DEAD.
Last I heard Bin Laden is still alive. Has something changed?”
Then IF the Terrorists Tony Blair caught are in fact connected to Al Quaida, which they very well might be, then this blog is lying because they in fact HAVEN’T all been caught, and your post is completely irrelevant.
Sojourner
When are you enlisting? Or do you prefer to let others fight the war you’re so gung ho about? Even you must have heard that recruiters aren’t meeting their numbers.
Sojourner
Clearly, he was alive as of 10/2004. I’m sure if somebody had caught/killed him, we would have heard. Otherwise, there’s no reason to assume anything other than he’s quite happy as Bush’s actions realize Bin Laden’s every wet dream.
Sojourner
Did anybody understand this?
DougJ
Bin Laden has done nothing but produce low quality music videos since we smoked him out of Afghanistan. Who cares whether or not he is alive?
We’ve got Saddam in chains and Bin Laden on the run. Freedom is on the march.
ARROW
They probably would love us for arresting the “criminals” and trying them under non-islamic law. Yes, exactly what happened after we criminally prosecuted the first group of WTC bombers. Right? How much has terrorism gone up if you exclude Iraq from the statistics?
Sojourner
The beauty of what the Brits did was to go after the people who actually attacked them. Wrong-way Bush went after the folks who didn’t.
ppGaz
The mind boggles.
ARROW
Are you suggesting we shouldn’t have gone into Afghanistan? It seems to me the one’s that attacked us on 9/11 are dead!
Sojourner
I’m sorry. I should have been clear. I forgot that you need to have things explained slowly and carefully.
No.
I’m suggesting we should have kept our troops there rather than going into Iraq.
albedo
link
Looks like a bunch. I don’t think there’s any “except Iraq” stats on terror out there, and anyway excluding Iraq from terrorism incident statistics is a little convenient for your argument, no?
You can’t seriously be arguing that the ME muslim community’s overall reaction to prosecuting a few crazies is the same as its reaction to us sending our entire ground force into Iraq. Because that would be completely, well, crazy.
DougJ
“How much has terrorism gone up if you exclude Iraq from the statistics?”
Better to fight them in the desserts of Iraq than in the streets of the United States.
A question for you liberals: if there was no terrorist element in Iraq, then where did all those suicide bombers come from?
ppGaz
Question for you, Doug:
How many terrorists were there 4 years ago today?
How many are there today?
Explain your answer.
albedo
The desserts of Iraq…is that like French Silk Camel Pie? Figs Foster?
I don’t think anyone’s saying there was “no” terrorist element in Iraq previously. Just that there was about a zillion times more in ,oh let’s see, the Sudan, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Malaysia, Indonesia, North Korea, Egypt and Saudi Arabia for starters.
Could it be that a lot/most of the suicide bombers got inspired by seeing their country invaded? Or from having a family member get killed? No, surely not. Must all be Wahhabist terrorists that previously existed, rank and file, in Iraq.
Kimmitt
You know, this just reminded me of how little of a crap Bush gives about bringing the man who killed 3,000 innocent Americans to justice. Thanks, John. Now I’ll be seething all day.
Sojourner
And how many times do we hear the Bushies claim that the Dems still have a pre- 9/11 mind set.
John S.
What desserts do you suggest we fight them in?
Chocolate Mousse? Tapioca Pudding? Strawberry Shortcake?
I find that to be a rather silly premise.
ppGaz
Baked AlQaeda?
Zarqawi Zabaglione?
eileen from OH
DougJ, I’m on to you. You’re really one of us, ain’t ya? And this is all a big put on. You are such a wascally wabbit. But I’ll play. . .
Lemme see, I’m thinkin’ maybe some of ’em might be the friends and loved ones of the “collateral damage” that the war in Iraq has produced. If MY innocent baby or child was blown away by some foreign dudes, I sure-as-shit wouldn’t take it. Or mebbe they’re the guys who, like guys everywhere, sat around and bitched until it got real personal. Or mebbe it’s the guys hanging around in other Arab countries who hadn’t done much because we were waaaay over there in America. But, wait, now we’re right next door!
Of course, the whole flypaper theory always leaves something out. I wonder how the Iraqis like being told how we made their country a sewer in order to draw the rats from all over the Middle East.
There ain’t a FINITE number of terrorists out there, Dougster. We could kill all the existing ones today and have twice the number tomorrow.
But you know this because you’ve been having us all on. I, for one, am not fooled!
eileen from OH
albedo
Terrormisu?
DougJ
“You’re really one of us, ain’t ya?”
We’re all Americans, aren’t we? Even those of us — or should I say those of YOU — who hate America.
ppGaz
[Spit take!]
Please send me a new keyboard. My old one is now covered with Coca Cola.
TallDave
don’t think anyone’s saying there was “no” terrorist element in Iraq previously. Just that there was about a zillion times more in ,oh let’s see, the Sudan, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Malaysia, Indonesia, North Korea, Egypt and Saudi Arabia for starters.
Your point being… what? That we should have invaded those countries and toppled their nominally friendly gov’ts instead of Hussein?
Could it be that a lot/most of the suicide bombers got inspired by seeing their country invaded?
Yes, I agree, our invasion of Saudi Arabia is responsible for a lot/most of the 9/11 hijackers.
TallDave
I wonder how the Iraqis like being told how we made their country a sewer in order to draw the rats from all over the Middle East.
I wonder how they liked being stuffed in mass graves by Saddam by the hundreds of thousands and raped/tortured by his security goons. Notice the “right track” poll numbers in Iraq have soared in the last couple years? Apparently relatively free and democratic flypaper country beats blood-soaked police state dotted with rape rooms and mass graves.
DougJ
“Notice the “right track” poll numbers in Iraq have soared in the last couple years?”
Do they have any polls from when Saddam was still in power? I’m guessing not, but I’m curious what the “right track” numbers were like from then. If they were lower then than now — as they probably are — it goes to show we did the right thing by going in.
TallDave
You know, this just reminded me of how little of a crap Bush gives about bringing the man who killed 3,000 innocent Americans to justice.
I keep seeing criticisms like this, but what I don’t see is any plan that Bush isn’t already pursuing. Sounds like “I hate Bush, therefore he’s never doing enough.” reasoning.
And no, sending 200,000 troops to Afghanistan is not going to find Osama any faster.
TallDave
DougJ,
At the time, the poll questions went like this:
“Do you think Saddam has Iraq on the right track, or would you like to be tortured to death?”
DougJ
“And no, sending 200,000 troops to Afghanistan is not going to find Osama any faster.”
Sending troops to Iran and Syria might though ;)
albedo
My point being that this whole meme of “we’re taking it to the terrorists by invading Iraq,” is fucking ludicrous.
Straw man. Although, as a matter of fact, OBL’s major beef with the US for years was our military presence in SA. But straw man, anyway.
TallDave
Couldn’t hurt.
Probably all we’ll need to do is give support to Iranian pro-democracy insurgents, kind of like we did with th Northern Alliance.
You know, something pretty amazing that doesn’t get mentioned is how the Northern Alliance have mostly bought into the whole Afghan democracy and been surprisingly well-behaved. I remember a lot of people complained about how unsavory they were — and they were right. So the fact they’ve been cautiously amenable to laying down arms is pretty impressive.
DougJ
TallDave: Great joke about how the right-track poll question would have gone under Saddam.
I think your right that we could probably get a Northern Alliance style uprising going in Iran. If we could then just run some bombing raids and put, say 5 or 10 thousand boots on the ground, we could probably run the Ayatollahs out and put in a Democracy. Maybe we’d find Osama while we were at it.
Freedom is on the march.
TallDave
Straw man.
It was your argument that terrorists were angry about us invading their country, so why you’re calling your own argument a strawman I don’t know; maybe it’s some sort of seppuke debating technique. But OK, I agree, it is a straw man: your argument is so silly it’s only appropriate use is to be knocked down.
My point being that this whole meme of “we’re taking it to the terrorists by invading Iraq,” is fucking ludicrous.
In fact, liberating Iraq was a strategic stroke of military genius that fundamentally changed the nature of the war on terror, similar to Sherman’s March to the Sea or Patton’s charge to the German 3rd Army’s flanks. It removed the need for troops on Saudi soil, ended the perpetually festering sanctions regime that punished ordinary Iraqis and bred resentment of the U.S. among Muslims, created a democratic example in the middle of the Mideast, and forced Al Qaeda to try to fight a defensive war on Islamic turf, one it has very little hope of winning. And in the course of fighting that war they’ve not only been forced to murder Iraqi Muslims by the thousands, which has not gone unnoticed by other Muslims, but are also now seen as fighting against democracy. In the wake of that carnage and the spectacle of free Iraqis joyfully waving purple fingers on January 30th, Islam is increasingly drawn to democracy and less inclined to accept terrorism as a legitimate means of political expression. This trend does not bode well for Al Qaeda.
stickler
There’s a whole lot of stupid on this thread, and a lot of it has DougJ’s name attached to it.
But this is too much:
Sending troops to Iran and Syria might though.
Hey, Doug? Do you even give a crap how militarily insane it is to contemplate invading Iran? Do you have even the slightest damned clue what that might entail? Pick up a map, you yellow-bellied warmonging buttwheeze. Look at the Straits of Hormuz; the mountains; the plains. Look at the population of Iran — just as a hint, you illiterate ignoramus, it’s a lot bigger than Iraq — and think what pacifying that many angry Shiites might mean.
And what do we do if Osama isn’t in Iran? You clearly think we live in a fantasy world where America has unlimited numbers of soldiers and unlimited wealth. How many unjustified invasions will it take?
And will you put your saggy butt where your mouth is, and enlist?
DougJ
“And what do we do if Osama isn’t in Iran?”
(1) Establish the democracy the Iranian people have been craving for years.
(2) Go into Syria.
TallDave
stickier,
Yeah, I remember when they said that about Afghanistan too.
And will you put your saggy butt where your mouth is, and enlist?
We could ask you the same thing. But if you’re arguing only the military people should decide when we go to war, or even have opinions on the war — great! BTW, they’re about 80% Republican, so expect some changes.
DougJ
“But if you’re arguing only the military people should decide when we go to war, or even have opinions on the war—great!”
From what I’ve heard, if it were up to the men in uniform, we would have gone into Iran quite a while ago. Apparently, that’s where many of the “foreign fighers” are coming from.
Aaron
You people are sick.
Truly.
Monday morning quarterbacks on Bin Laden. Do you really think Bush was out there creating the operational planning for Tora Bora?
and I distinctly recall being told that the WOT would include police, finance, etc. – so it’s not some sort of “fallback” when they change the moniker. It’s always been a combination of things.
Jesus, I give Clinton the benefit of the doubt about the Sudan and the cruise missile strikes – I mean, I don’t think you could have swung Afghanistan before 9/11 – I hope you guys can re-consider on Bush. It’s tough decisions all around and we really can only guess on the hypothetical results of different choices.
Steve
Another talking points-only guy has joined us. Hooray.
albedo
Huh? What I wrote was in response to this statement of yours
which I took to be sarcastic. As in, your actual point was, “Well, we didn’t invade SA, and we still got attacked.” To which I was pointing out that a) our military presence in SA was, at least ostensibly, a motive for the 9/11 attacks, and b) that’s immaterial in any case to what’s happening in Iraq.
Sowwy you got confused.
John B.
AHHHHHHHHHH! This thread is making my head hurt. Ok, let me try. Invading Afganistan: good. Leaving Afganistan: bad. Invading Iraq: bad. Leaving Iraq: good.
If the current president had been a democrat in this republican-controlled congress, he would have been impeached about two years ago. There has been more lying and deliberate deception by this administration than all the earlier ones COMBINED. If democrats get a majority in congress in 2006, which is unlikley but possible, Bush better hire even more lawyers, because he’ll be in trouble. Actions have consequences, even if you’re a republican.
eileen from OH
My bestest friend DougJ sez:
Oh-HO! You aren’t really trying to make me mad are you, Doug?
That is SOOOO CUTE!!
(Pssst, don’t worry – I won’t blow your cover as an agent provocateur. But for Gawd’s sake, don’t tell Karl.)
eileen from OH
BoZ the Rider
I’ve only got six words for all of you here:
Project for the New American Century (PNAC)
The US government isn’t throwing us into Afghanistan or Iraq because we’ll bring freedom to oppressed people, we’re there because PNAC’s agenda depends on us being there. I’m not saying 9/11 was a staged terror attack, but I’m not denying the possibility either. All I know is that our current Presidency (and some of Congress) have been using the 21st Century’s PEARL HARBOR event to draw us into war. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, yet we’re there.
We’re there for one reason: oil. Not because the United States needs cheaper oil, but because with oil comes power. The Neoconservatives whose goal it is to bring about PNAC’s agenda are using these wars to control the flow of oil from the Mideast and Caspian regions away from China.
Why China? Because in 15-20 years they will be the world’s hyperpower. China’s military will rival the United States’. Their economy will be stronger than ours (in a way it already is). There are only three ways to stop China:
– get other nations to join us in cutting off trade
– control the oil and stunt their growth
– go to war
Unfortunately too many US corporations have setup shop in China using slave labor to produce cheap goods which they sell for huge profit back home. They pad the pockets in Washington, so the first option isn’t going to happen.
Control the OIL? Already underway I’d say. The Taliban wouldn’t sign the oil pipeline from the Caspian to India, so they had to go while Hamid Kharzi, forumer board member of Unocal Oil, becomes prez and signs the deal.
Go to war with China? Not likely to happen soon, given the first option and the fact that no one in the world, not even American citizens, would buy into that idea just yet. They’d have to “attack us” first! (nudge nudge wink wink)
Why bother doing all this? Because the Neocons want to rule the world. Not crazy guy on throne ruling, but basically controlling all world affairs through our military might. Setting up permanant military bases across the globe allows our armies to attack anyone not following along within a couple days, not weeks.
All this is laid out in the PNAC article, “REBUILDING AMERICA’S DEFENCES.” When in Rome…
I know lots of you folks are all for this. You want the United States to control the world’s decisions. You think we’re the shining beacon upon the hill. Hate to burst the bubbles of fantasy, but those days are over unless the citizens stand up and take back their nation. People go on and on about “so long as We the People can stand up, we’re ok from these guys.” Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be working well…
This nation was founded on the ideals of freedom, honor, ethical reason, and to establish a sanctuary for liberty. What will you do when those things are gone?
“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”
– Thomas Jefferson
TallDave
albedo,
You don’t seem to know what “strawman” means. It’s a deliberately weak argument. I didn’t make an argument, I made an observation that proves your argument is silly.
a) We didn’t invade Saudi Arabia.
b) You said terrrists were angry we invaded their country. It’s not immaterial to point out instances where terrorists are angry regardless of whether we invaded their country.
albedo
I mean, we need to make sure Iraq is basically functioning before we pull out. And yes, Saddam and the Baathists being gone is a good thing.
What galls me in these discussions is 1) the suggestion that the intent of the invasion had anything whatsoever to do with humanitarian relief, and 2) the notion that Iraq pre-invasion was some festering hotbed of terrorism that we’re fortutiously dealing with now.
On the first point, any improvements in Iraqi civil society are, at this point, completely hypothetical as there’s no electricity and there are IEDs blowing up every thirty minutes. Not to mention, we invaded Iraq because of all their WMDs. But, you know, it’s great how now we’re doing all of this to spread freedom. I love how these Goopers are such selfless human-rights freedom fighters – they should join Amnesty International!
On the second point, I think these dunderheads actually believe that we need to be over there frantically waving our arms and making loud noises to distract the terrorists (whoever they might be) from the fact that America continues to exist. It would be funny if it weren’t so pathetically stupid.
TallDave
Boz,
Yes, we all need to put tinfoil on our heads so PNAC can’t use their mind-control rays on us.
So they want America to be the pre-eminent military power for the next 100 years. What’s wrong with that? Maybe you’d prefer Germany, or Russia? China?
TallDave
albedo,
There’s more electricity in Iraq now than pre-war. Civil improvements happen every day. Freedom and democracy for Iraqis and humanitarian concerns were specifically enumerated in the war resolution.
Your ignorance would be amusing if you didn’t expect people to take your comments seriously.
W.B. Reeves
Its interesting that the folks who make up the “Iraq is a ripsnorting success” chorale always miss the obvious. 9/11 was a provocation. It was intended to provoke an unmeasured response.
It is a fundamental obligation of all believers in Islam to defend the Islamic community (Umma) from attacks by unbelievers. This is why Bin Laden constantly harped on the U.S. Military presence in Saudi Arabia. It is also the reason why thousands of Moslems, including Bin Laden, flocked to Afghanistan to join the fight against the Soviet occupation.
The Afghan resistance is Bin Laden’s model. He believes that Jihadism not only defeated the Soviet military but that it was Allah’s instrument in destroying the Soviet Union itself. He believed that similar methods could defeat the U.S. in the same fashion. I don’t believe he ever thought that the U.S. would roll over after 9/11. On the contrary, his whole purpose was to provoke a massive military incursion into the heart of the Islamic world in a rerun of the Soviet debacle.
Unfortunately for him, the U.S. didn’t follow the part he had written for them. At least not at first. At the time I thought that the Afghan campaign had been brilliant in its outflanking of Bin Laden’s scheme. Rather than a massive invasion a la the Soviets, the U.S. chose to play a supporting role to indigenous anti-Taliban forces on the ground, thereby denying Bin Laden the war of attrition that would re-ignite the Jihadist movement.
Unfortunately for US, it turned out that this was not at all the case. Rather than being motivated by a shrewd perception of Bin Laden’s strategy, our limited engagement in Afghanistan was dictated by a desire to hold our forces in reserve for a massive military incursion into Iraq.
So in the end Bin Laden got what he wanted despite his miscalculation. A war of attrition with the U.S. in the heart the Islamic world and a Jihadist magnet. The bonus being that we knocked off the third major secularist regime in the region outside of Turkey and Syria. We are now poised to see it replaced by a quasi-fundamentalist regime. Considering that Jihadism is the bastard offspring of Islamic fundamentalism, this hardly qualifies as a victory.
albedo
Two points:
One, this is faulty logic. Just because, in the case of 9/11, terrorists were angry at us for different reasons than invading their country, does not mean that in the case of Iraq, they’re not angry at us for the invasion. That’s like your car not starting because of a dead battery one time, and from then on assuming it must be the battery. This is freshman level logic class stuff.
Two, it’s doubly faulty logic since OBL’s main impetus for plotting these attacks was our military presence in Saudi Arabia.
ppGaz
Best assessment I’ve seen on these pages so far.
A refreshing change from the “last throes”, “bring it on” horseshit peddled by the war shills in here on a daily basis.
Thank you.
—–/
All we need now is a government — here — that can do a rational assessment. The one we have now can’t find its ass with both hands, an ass map, and an ass tracking service.
albedo
Not according to this (not to mention every single news story on the subject I’ve read).
According to the WaPo article: “Asked what the government’s priorities should be, Iraqis put “inadequate electricity” first, ahead of “crime,” which was fourth, “the presence of coalition forces,” which ranked seventh, and “terrorists,” which ranked eighth.”
Wow. Their electricity must have been really bad pre-war.
No doubt. I am not a moonbat hoping for an embarassment over there. I know our soldiers are doing a very hard, very good job.
Oh, come on, man. You can’t be that obtuse. Don’t you remember the WMD chorus? Visions of mushroom clouds? There may ultimately be solid and lasting humanitarian rewards for our having invaded Iraq, and I hope there are, but the revisionism inherent in claiming that this was done to aid Iraqis is sickeningly dishonest and beneath contempt.
Al Maviva
I think we can pronounce it officially – this comments section has turned into Eschaton, South, meets Free Republic. I haven’t seen this big of a collection of talking point spewing, ranting, nasty left wingers since… well, since the last time I visited Kos. There’s even the token triumphalist righties here and there… not exactly reflecting credit on the cause. On the positive side of the coin, your hit count is probably going through the roof. I’d sell some ads if I was you.
On the downside, I don’t think any sort of discourse is really possible here any more.
If I wanted to hear somebody using words they don’t understand, or to get shit thrown at me, I’d feed my infant son some tacos, take off his diapers and hang out with him for a couple hours. Reading over this set of comments above, I realize that on the off chance a comment I make is constructive, it will be met with Sojourner’s one liner “I know you are, but what am I” rejoinders, Albedo’s completely missing the humor, and Darrel’s saber rattling, and wondering why I didn’t just suggest an invasion of North Korea. There’s no use talking around here, it’s just a free fire zone, and I’m starting to get a vibe that visiting the comments section here is like being stuck in an echo-ey tunnel with a bunch of people on crack screaming all at once. Discourse is a conversation between people, with the possibility that communications broadcast will be received, and the possibility that the broadcaster will have reception too. This place – it’s come to be like watching people scream at a wall for a while, and then somebody new comes along with diametrically opposed views, and then just screams at the same wall for a while, with everybody getting louder and nastier because the wall won’t agree. It’s a hideous caricature of a conversation, it’s a little league version of Ann Coulter and Paul Begala at their worst. Y’all want to know why politics today sucks? It’s because of jackasses like us. There was a comments thread a bit further down about a candidate who calls George Bush a sonofabitch. The left’s feeling, is we need a lot more political discourse like that – the Dems should stop taking it. The right does this too, the case of Hillary Clinton comes to mind. And I have no stomach for it any more. Do you really think good politics is calling somebody a c***sucker or a dyke? I’ve been to a lot of shithole countries around the world where they did stuff like that for a while. In fact, political parties often really truly got tough, murdering the opposition, breaking the laws to shut them out of elections, and so forth. I came back to the U.S. with the mindset that politics is about arbitraging disputes, taking them off the front burner and putting them on simmer – not about escalating diferences and then fighting with any method, legal or otherwise, for an absolute win.
What it comes down to is that in the real world, the personal isn’t political, or at least it doesn’t have to be. The idea that all political questions must be personalized, and vice versa, is complete bullshit. You could live in a dogshit country, run by complete skells, and your life would be pretty good, for the most part, if you had your family, enough food to eat, reasonable security from crime, and a library card to a decently outfitted public library. And decent beer, or at least plentiful vodka. Most of the rest of this political stuff is just so much horseshit, and that people are happy spending their time screaming at each other here, and elsewhere around the web… well, it doesn’t sadden me, so much as it baffles me that y’all are so stupid as to take this shit so seriously. And the calls to keep escalating the rhetoric, and so forth – well, I have a pretty good idea where that leads, since the left took that approach in the early 70’s, and the far right took the same approach in the early 90’s. Bloodshed lies that way, eventually. But if that’s what y’all want – if calling somebody a shit-for-brains is your version of a winning political argument, then go for it. By all means – show those Republicans you’re tough – call every one of ’em a motherf***er to their faces. Show those pussy Dems you can’t stand ’em, and call ’em traitors.
As for me, I’m outta this joint. As common decency in these threads went on life support and then got Schiavo-ed, it made me realize how stupid it was to even engage people whose idea of discourse is name calling and logic chopping. The Trotskyites have won, by the way, just in case you missed it. We have personalized the political, and every aspect of our discourse on life is now lived at the tactical political level. Well, at least those of us who visit here, and a lot of the other politically oriented web sites around have done it, we have all started to sound like these grotesques who call themselves political consultants. And frankly, I’m starting to realize it’s a stupid waste of time, and starting to think that I need to reject any notion of giving a shit about most political issues. There are only five or six questions that matter, and people spend 90% of their time screaming about stupid little partisan advantage-seeking. That’s moronic. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, most of the people in the leadership of both parties are a bunch of mountebanks, and not worth fighting for. If you are carrying water for the partisans, you have a fiend for a master, and they have a fool for a servant. Orwell was right – common decency is much more important than all the smelly little orthodoxies. And there are much better things in life than anonymously screaming at some idiot, who is just retaliating for some dumb comment you made, over some pseudo-scandal that really doesn’t matter anyhow. You know what that means? It means we were probably basically right to take out Saddam. It also means that Amnesty is probably right, when you strip out their rhetoric, about Gitmo. It means that Karl Rove is a shit, not because he outed Joe Wilson’s wife (Wilson’s an indecent shit too, if you missed that) but because he’s just another nasty political consultant; and it means a lot of folks in the media are shits too, for their part in encouraging the dog fights. We’re shits too, for buying it. I think I’ve got this thing about figured it out, and I hope y’all have the chance to do so, if you’re not to busy asserting, or fighting off allegations, that Jeff Gannon is Bush’s secret lover.
I’ll be off enjoying a scotch in my garden, and thinking about my tomato plants, which matter a lot more to my family than anything Karl Rove, Judith Miller, or Max Clelland choose to do. You’re welcome to join me. But if you say even one more word about Valerie Plame, or Bill Clinton’s dick, I’m gonna use you to fertilize the damn tomato plants.
Al Maviva, out.
albedo
Apparently you missed my “terrormisu” joke. It was quite funny.
rilkefan
TallDave, if you actually read that chart you’ll see that the power level has been fluctuating and is currently above pre-war levels (if you believe the admin #s, which seems a reckless thing to do) (albedo, note that your link is a few months out of date given his true-but-misleading use of “are” and “above”) but not by much with assorted footnotes concerning distribution and demand and off-grid production. You’ll also notice that “pre-war” was quite a while ago. And if you were interested in understanding why power levels are only now at or around sanction-level Iraq (and much below what the admin has been promising), you’d have to accept that the admin has been incompetent to an astounding degree.
TallDave
TallDave, if you actually read that chart you’ll see that the power level has been fluctuating and is currently above pre-war levels
Yes, if you actually read my comment, that’s exactly what I said: it’s above prewar levels.
if you believe the admin #s
It’s put together by the liberal Brookings Institute, not the admin.
you’d have to accept that the admin has been incompetent to an astounding degree
No, I’d only have to accept that power plants take a long time to build, terrorists are making it more difficult to build, and that blaming the admin, which is the main force behind improving the situation, is incredibly stupid.
TallDave
albedo,
Not according to this … every nws story
You mean… the press is biased??? No….
According to the WaPo article: “Asked what the government’s priorities should be, Iraqis put “inadequate electricity” first
Which mainly shows security isn’t that bad, if electricity is a bigger concern for Iraqis. In the Saddam days, not being put in mass graves was probably people’s biggest concern. Of course, Saddam didn’t allow polls to be taken.
The biggest reason Iraq has an electricity problem is that the economy grew 50% last year and is growing at 35% this year. Electric demand is skyrocketing. Even under ideal circumstances it would be difficult to keep up.
croatoan
On September 11, 2001, the president said:
At Ground Zero three days later, he said:
Nearly four years later, and after a longer time than it took us to win World War II against two modern industrialized countries with large militaries, Osama bin Laden is still on the loose. I guess it depends on what the meaning of “soon” is.
And before you flip-flop and say that finding bin Laden is a law enforement problem and not a miitary problem, as we’ve been told time and again, how come we could find and arrest Aimal Khan Kasi, who killed two CIA agents in front of CIA headquarters, in 4-1/2 years when he was hiding in the same exact part of the world as bin Laden? Sure, we’ll track you down if you kill two people, but kill 3000 and you get a pass.
Bin Laden joins the list of terrorists who gets a pass from the Bush administration. It’s also been nearly four years since the anthrax attacks, with no arrests. A.Q. Khan runs a nuclear WalMart in Pakistan, and gets pardoned without comment from the US. The administration passed up two chances to kill Abu Musab Zarqawi before the invasion of Iraq.
Now Bush is punting on the Global War on Terror, now the Global
JihadKampfStruggle Against Violent Extremism, “pushing the idea that the long-term struggle is as much an ideological battle as a military mission.” Excuse me, Mr. 44% Approval Rating, but I thought that diplomacy was a disconcerting pre-September 11 mindset. If Bush is just going to follow Kerry’s strategy, why didn’t we just elect Kerry?And the president has told us time and time again that Iraq is a central front on the War on Terror, but we’re bugging out starting next year. Did we win, or are we surrendering?
Of course, on September 11, Bush also said, “Immediately following the first attack, I implemented our government’s emergency response plans,” which is kind of true if he meant, “I read My Pet Goat with a bunch of schoolkids, sat on my ass for 10 minutes after being told we’d been attacked again, then ran like a scared rabbit all over the country.”
TallDave
Oh, come on, man. You can’t be that obtuse. Don’t you remember the WMD chorus?
Yes, I remember every country in the world agreeing Iraq possessed WMD stockpiles. I remember Democrats saying he had them and would use them. I also remember Bush giving numerous speeches about Iraqi democracy, and a war resolution that enumerated various humanitarian concerns.
TallDave
but the revisionism inherent in claiming that this was done to aid Iraqis is sickeningly dishonest and beneath contempt.
Funny, I feel the same way about revisionists who claim it wasn’t done to aid Iraqis.
W.B. Reeves
Of course this dodges the question of whether it will be true tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that.
phil
The bomber Eric Rudolph was able to hide for years in the mountains of North Carolina, and he didn’t have a network of people dedicated to his protection as OBL does.
The thing is, while he was hiding he wasn’t able to plan let alone pull off any more abortion clinic bombings.
We have drastically reduced Al Qaeda’s effectiveness because they have to devote most of their energy to not being caught/killed.
It is ridiculous that people who worship a president who turned down an offer from the Sudan to hand over Bin Laden criticize because we have not pulled off some fancy targeted assassination like they see in action movies.
Defense Guy
Al Maviva is correct, the comments threads of this site are becoming unreadable. I think a good chunk of the blame is on Sojourner and ppGaz who cannot write an uninsulting thread or even seem to accept that others might have different opinions. They can pre-emptivly stick it where the sun don’t shine.
If the shit doesn’t change, there will soon be no point in commenting here anymore. Not a threat John, just the way it is, and your stuff is the same as it ever was.
albedo
Right, and that’s why the UN authorized military force…oh wait, never mind.
The Dems were wrong, too, I agree.
Errmm, yeah. Look, you can conveniently frame this thing however you want now. You can say it was done to shake up Lebanese civil society, if it pleases you. But I refuse to accept the right’s self-congratulatory ex post facto humanitarian posturing. Not to mention the finger-wagging you guys have been doing towards the left from your newly found moral high ground. It’s just totally disingenuous and revisionist.
Stormy70
The bribed UN, full of despots and genocide enabling cowards.
Bush mentioned the humanitarian issues in all his major speeches before the Iraq War. This has been addressed numerous times, and I am tired of posting his speeches for people who refuse to listen to a word President Bush says. Google it for yourself if you are really interested, but don’t try to claim the right is revisionist.
BoZ the Rider
I wouldn’t say that its the Right who are revisionist…. Both have their moments in 1984-land. But this administration has been the worst that I have knowledge of.
2001: Powell & Rice Declare Iraq Has No WMD and Is Not a Threat This is of course up until the PEARL HARBOR event known forever as 9/11. My how things changed after that…
“F*** Saddam. We’re taking him out.” – GWB March 2002
This statement was made a full year before the invasion. A YEAR. It confirms what the so-called Downing Street Memos said in APRIL, that there was a change in attitude, and the policy was more important than evidence.
UN Resolution 1441 was put into effect in early NOVEMBER, 2002. This says to me that the White House was simply playing diplomat while they prepared for their war.
I say this becaue they continued to tell the world and American people that we’re taking the diplomatic channels. It was completely about the weapons of mass destruction as far as we knew. We were told that large US army in Kuwait was merely diplomatic pressure, a “just in case” sorta thing. But it’s amazing that rather come out and admit their failure (and lies), they switch gears to the humanitarian aspect of all this, because thats something the public will buy for a while as well.
What will they try to sell us next?
“Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
– Thomas Jefferson
Bob
Now that democracy is in Iraq, when do they get to vote whether we stay or leave?
Kimmitt
Let me draw you an analogy. I’m from Chicago, and our football team is mediocre in its good years. In general, however, it sucks. Now, I know nothing about running a football team. I wouldn’t have the faintest clue of where to begin in terms of evaluating player prospects, hiring appropriate staff, or creating a team atmosphere in training camp.
I do know, however, that the Bears keep losing a lot of games.
It’s been almost four years.
Stormy70
Try being a Cowboys fan lately.
Sojourner
But the reason for the problems with the electricity IS the lack of security.
Sojourner
Except that the polls are reflecting the growing belief among the American public that the Bush administration lied to them about the reason for going to war, which was WMD.
Luddite
“Another distinction: Only Blair was really trying”?
DING DING DING!
Ladies and Gentlemen we have a winner!
End. Of. Thread.
Floyd McWilliams
Lemme see, I’m thinkin’ maybe some of ‘em might be the friends and loved ones of the “collateral damage” that the war in Iraq has produced. If MY innocent baby or child was blown away by some foreign dudes, I sure-as-shit wouldn’t take it.
So where are the French terrorists who attacked Americans over collateral damage during D-Day?
Or the Korean terrorists?
Or the Vietnamese terrorists?
Or the Panamanian terrorists?
JH
croatoan Says:
“how come we could find and arrest Aimal Khan Kasi, who killed two CIA agents in front of CIA headquarters, in 4-1/2 years when he was hiding in the same exact part of the world as bin Laden?”
Hmmmn, maybe because Bin Laden is the leader and financier of the group and Kasi is a nobody, foot soldier. Maybe, he commands more loyalty and has a larger group of people protecting him?
“Bin Laden joins the list of terrorists who gets a pass from the Bush administration.”
As opposed to what? The eight year full court press put on him by Clinton and Richard “Barney Fife” Clarke?
“A.Q. Khan runs a nuclear WalMart in Pakistan, and gets pardoned without comment from the US.”
When did his Wal Mart open for business and sell all his technology to Libya and Iran, etc.? Oh yeah that’s right during the Clinton Administration. When was his Wal Mart shut down? Oh yeah, during the Bush Administration.
“Excuse me, Mr. 44% Approval Rating”
I love liberals ranting about Bush’s approval rating. Mysteriously, Clinton had an approval rating of >60% but could never break 50% in the only polls that ever mattered. Bush, on the other hand, can never seem to break out of the mid-forties yet, he won 51% of the vote nine months ago.
Also, pointing to Media Matters as a source for the claim that there we aren’t pursuing Bin Laden in Afghanistan is laughable. They cite a New Yorker Magazine article which vaguely claims that the 5th Special Forces Division specializing in the Middle East was sent from Afghanistan to Iraq. That proves what? I’ll clue you in. Iraq is in the Middle East and Afghanistan is in Central Asia. People in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East speak Arabic while Afghanis speak Urdu. If this is accurate, it merely means that the %th Div. was sent back to its area of operational expertise. In case you haven’t heard, the terrorist training camps that were busy training Arabs to be terrorists 24/7 all during the 1990’s with complete impunity have now been shut down. There aren’t many, if any, Arabs left in Afghanistan so the 5th Divison’s departure doesn’t mean anything. We now have more troops in Afghanistan than we did in 2001. They include thousands of special forces along with Army Rangers, Green Berets and other highly trained untis like the 10th Mountain Division. One unit being returned to the region of their expertise proves nothing.
Citing Richard Clarke as a source is a joke. “Barney Fife” Clarke was the NSC’s counter-terrorism expert when Bin Laden bombed the African Embassies [the Barney Fife comparison isn’t really accurate because Barney at least got to have a gun with one bullet]. Clarke’s response? In his own book, he admits that he advised that other giant of counter terrorsim, Bill Clinton to bomb the Sudanese aspirin factory that they told us was manufacturing presursor chemicals for Iraq’s WMD program. Wait, that would be a connection bewtween Al Qaeda and Iraq and Clarke told us that there was never a connection. Oh well, facts don’t matter if you hate Bush.
Sojourner
So what does that make Bush, Cheney and Rice? Clarke raised the red flag about Bin Laden. They ignored it.
Knemon
“That used to be an act of terrorism, until someone realized that we had no way of proving that they were brown people.”
Psst.
You guys (The Progressive Forces Of Truth and Justice) are the only ones talking about “brown people” these days.
You seem to do it a lot, too.
Knemon
“9/11 was a provocation. It was intended to provoke an unmeasured response.”
You know this how?
Knemon
“Y’all want to know why politics today sucks? It’s because of jackasses like us.”
Amen. That comment was pure genius.
“The bomber Eric Rudolph was able to hide for years in the mountains of North Carolina, and he didn’t have a network of people dedicated to his protection”
Like fun he didn’t.
Knemon
“Now that democracy is in Iraq, when do they get to vote whether we stay or leave?”
They did. Sorta. They (well, 70% of them) voted in an interim parliament, which then elected its own leadership, which has not (yet) asked us to leave.
Representative democracy fever – catch it!
Sojourner
Only time will tell just how representative it is. If the Iraqi Consitution fails to treat women as equal to men, this whole exercise has to be considered a failure.
BoZ the Rider
But the representatives have said we should go. A couple of them were very serious in the matter that the United States needs to leave immediately.
The people want us out, the government is telling us to get out, yet we stay. They see us as the problem, and unfortunately they’re somewhat right…
First and foremost, security is horrible. As one Iraqi official put it, it’s a low-grade civil war there. We need more troops, but no other nation is willing to send some, and the guy upstairs refuses to send more (we have more troops, they’re just scattered across the globe).
Second, because reconstruction has been terribly slow because we don’t have enough troops to secure what we need in infrastructure to be able to build. You need water to make concrete, you need electricity to power tools.
W.B. Reeves
Well I agree with at least one thing you’ve said.
I was wondering if anyone here would recognize this for the howler it is.
Knemon
Reeves – My Asheville buddies told me that people were leaving food and clothing out for Rudolph. I hope that isn’t true, but suspect it is. Lotta weird stuff going on in that neck of the woods.
Sojourner – If the constitution is all Sharia’d up it will certainly be disappointing, but I think your statement goes a little far. Would you rather live in a democracy, albeit a conservative and patriarchal one, or a Peoples’ Arab Socialist Republic in which men and women are “equal” – equally property of the state/King Mustache?
Boz – Sure, some of the elected representatives want us gone, yesterday. The majority don’t – or at least, the leadership they selected doesn’t.
People like to make the Vietnam analogy – well, doubling our troop strength would be a big step in that direction. LBJ doubled down, then doubled again, and probably would have done it a third time had he stayed in office.
Sojourner
I would rather live in a country where women have the same rights as men. Anything less than that is unacceptable for a country claiming to be a democracy. The reality is this little experiment has cost, what? Almost half a trillion American dollars? If the Iraqi women lose out, it will have been a tremendous waste of money.