Politics: Onward from New Hampshire

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
I hope they keep Cheney out front, and I hope it gets nastier and nastier. Kerry doesn't have to say a word.

S_A_M

Listen to Powell, right now.

Read the early summary of the Commision. Clinton fucked up, w/o question. It turns political, Bush wins big.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by bilmore
You mean the one that was made about 22 days before we began bombing Afghanistan?

Yes. You're missing or ignoring my point.

[Holy shit! Did we actually bomb Afghanistan? Did we ever fight he Taliban? Here's one on point:
http://www.ucomics.com/boondocks/ ]

S_A_M

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
Yes. You're missing or ignoring my point.

The point being that there was a lot of sentiment for going after Iraq after years of sanctions? And your point means what, in the context that, after those discussions were held and those comments made, we went after Afghanistan?

I mean, is it supposed to be a liability that people were expressing views all over the board at the start of the conversation, and that things were then winnowed down to what even you regard as a proper action? I guess I just don't see what you think this means.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
SAM, we didn't need a meeting we needed to go into Afghanistan. As I understand it Clarke did suggest this, and the administration had a plan ready on this before 9/11. At that point, however, how would that have stopped 9/11? The guys were here, they knew how to fly.

I am not sure the American people would have supported going into Afghanistan until 9/11 happened. I doubt we could have gotten UN support for invading Afghanistan before 9/11 and I think the French and the Germans would have tried to stop us and poison the world community against us. I think the Dems would have viewed this as unilateral US aggression.

And I think if we had invaded Afghanistan prior to 9/11, it would have accelerated the terrorist's plans.

The thing that would have been most likely to have prevented 9/11 is if that FBI guy who was concerned about young Arab males in flying school was allowed to further investigate it. Remember that? They stopped the investigation because it was racial profiling of Arabs/muslim as terrorists.

Even now the muslims are screaming that we are racial profiling muslims when we investigate terrorists. Yeah we are. I wonder why.

If we don't stop this politically correct nonsense, we are sure to have another terrorist attack in the US. It is muslims who are launching these terrorist attacks. Is it all muslims? No, of course, not, but it isn't non-muslims. Are there other threats to the US? Sure, but right now, the most serious threat is by muslims groups. And unfortunately for all of us, the moderate muslims have not done much to help stop this threat.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by bilmore
I mean, is it supposed to be a liability that people were expressing views all over the board at the start of the conversation, and that things were then winnowed down to what even you regard as a proper action? I guess I just don't see what you think this means.

Yes. Their point, echoed by Jimmy C., is that the whole Afghanistan thing was a beard to give us an excuse to go after Iraq. 9/11 had nothing to do with it. Bush forced an entire country to go to war to finish a job his dad started. the main people in his admin didn't stop him from taking out this vendetta.

The sick part of these theories is the motive- what possible motivation is there for the fantasies- none.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Yes. Their point, echoed by Jimmy C., is that the whole Afghanistan thing was a beard to give us an excuse to go after Iraq. 9/11 had nothing to do with it. Bush forced an entire country to go to war to finish a job his dad started. the main people in his admin didn't stop him from taking out this vendetta.

The sick part of these theories is the motive- what possible motivation is there for the fantasies- none.

The loons advancing this theory that GWB was finishing off SH because of some personal vendetta inspired by his father are as wacky as those who claimed Clinton was invovled in cocaine smuggling and murders. Actually, the Bush father-son conspiracy is even wackier.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Yes. Their point, echoed by Jimmy C., is that the whole Afghanistan thing was a beard to give us an excuse to go after Iraq. 9/11 had nothing to do with it. Bush forced an entire country to go to war to finish a job his dad started. the main people in his admin didn't stop him from taking out this vendetta.

The sick part of these theories is the motive- what possible motivation is there for the fantasies- none.

This would be the same Jimmy Carter who wrote that godawful letter to all the security council types pre-Kuwait urging them to stop the evil Bush I, because Kuwait and Saddam should have the opportunity to work out Saddam's invasion between themselves, peacefully?

Shrewd man.

[Not Me]

Then stop this nonsense.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...26/wfbi126.xml

Analysts at the RFU were already swamped with intelligence warnings about possible attacks elsewhere in the world. "There are 2,000 flight schools around America and 200,000 students," said one official. "The bureau just didn't have the manpower to do something on this scale."

One obvious shortcut - looking only at flight-school students from the Middle East - was rejected. It would breach the FBI's own procedures to prevent racial discrimination. "There are rules to be followed strictly or we lay ourselves open to complaint and to lawsuits," said a former agent. "We can't get involved in what would amount to racial profiling."

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Listen to Powell, right now.

Read the early summary of the Commision. Clinton fucked up, w/o question. It turns political, Bush wins big.

I am listening. Good presentation. Nice to hear it.

I'll read the summary -- but then I'll want you to explain what Clinton _could_ and _should_ have done from about 1997 forward while he was being sued and impeached -- and what Lott, Delay, etc. would have allowed.

P.S. to Bilmore --

Look. My statement was that Rumsfeld's comment "was an eye-opener". That's all. I guess the point was that it may have shown the Iraq fixation at a time when the government was discussing responses to 9/11 and there was no evidence of Iraqi involvement in 9/11. [There still is not.] Come on -- a suggestion to bomb Iraq after 9/11 makes very little rational sense. That's all.

S_A_M

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
I'll want you to explain what Clinton _could_ and _should_ have done from about 1997 forward while he was being sued and impeached --

So Paula Jones is responsible for 9/11?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Yes. Their point, echoed by Jimmy C., is that the whole Afghanistan thing was a beard to give us an excuse to go after Iraq. 9/11 had nothing to do with it. Bush forced an entire country to go to war to finish a job his dad started. the main people in his admin didn't stop him from taking out this vendetta.

The sick part of these theories is the motive- what possible motivation is there for the fantasies- none.

The suggestion is that you have a bunch of ex-cold warriors who came into office with an eight-year-old agenda (of which terrorism is not a part) and who have been conducting a foreign policy that's not helping us against terrorism. Why the obsession with Iraq? I really don't know. But 9/11 happens, and instead of changing our policies to fit the new events, they shoehorn the prior obsessions into the war on terrorism, and we end up invading Iraq. As the failure to try to take out Zarqawi illustrates, you end up with a foreign policy where fighting terrorism isn't the end, but the pretext for another agenda. The saga of the birth of the Dept. of Homeland Security shows the same thing happening domestically.

Four more years of this? No thanks.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
I'll dumb it down, so I can understnad:

Clarke says: AQ is an urgent threat- implied or explicit- We should do something about the threat.

Rice says: What should we do, Czar?

Clarke says: We should have a meeting.

Not quite. I'll quote from Time magazine, so you can understand:

• Other senior officials from both the Clinton and Bush administrations, however, say that Clarke had a set of proposals to "roll back" al-Qaeda. In fact, the heading on Slide 14 of the Powerpoint presentation reads, "Response to al Qaeda: Roll back." Clarke's proposals called for the "breakup" of al-Qaeda cells and the arrest of their personnel. The financial support for its terrorist activities would be systematically attacked, its assets frozen, its funding from fake charities stopped. Nations where al-Qaeda was causing trouble-Uzbekistan, the Philippines, Yemen-would be given aid to fight the terrorists. Most important, Clarke wanted to see a dramatic increase in covert action in Afghanistan to "eliminate the sanctuary" where al-Qaeda had its terrorist training camps and bin Laden was being protected by the radical Islamic Taliban regime. The Taliban had come to power in 1996, bringing a sort of order to a nation that had been riven by bloody feuds between ethnic warlords since the Soviets had pulled out. Clarke supported a substantial increase in American support for the Northern Alliance, the last remaining resistance to the Taliban. That way, terrorists graduating from the training camps would have been forced to stay in Afghanistan, fighting (and dying) for the Taliban on the front lines. At the same time, the U.S. military would start planning for air strikes on the camps and for the introduction of special-operations forces into Afghanistan. The plan was estimated to cost "several hundreds of millions of dollars." In the words of a senior Bush Administration official, the proposals amounted to "everything we've done since 9/11."

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Not Me
So Paula Jones is responsible for 9/11?

No, but as I have said before, in my view the GOP leadership did untold harm to the national security of our nation in the late 1990s, by crippling the Clinton administration.

S_A_M

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
The suggestion is that you have a bunch of ex-cold warriors who came into office with an eight-year-old agenda (of which terrorism is not a part) and who have been conducting a foreign policy that's not helping us against terrorism. Why the obsession with Iraq? I really don't know. But 9/11 happens, and instead of changing our policies to fit the new events, they shoehorn the prior obsessions into the war on terrorism, and we end up invading Iraq. As the failure to try to take out Zarqawi illustrates, you end up with a foreign policy where fighting terrorism isn't the end, but the pretext for another agenda. The saga of the birth of the Dept. of Homeland Security shows the same thing happening domestically.

Four more years of this? No thanks.

I admire the way you phrase things so as to make 9/11 implicitly a part of "the four-year failure".

I LIKE the fact that we've started to clean out Iraq.

And, yes, we'll rue the day the failed Bush protect-us-against-terrorism fiasco allowed all of the subsequent-to-9/11 attacks here. So many lives lost . . .

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
No, but as I have said before, in my view the GOP leadership did untold harm to the national security of our nation in the late 1990s, by crippling the Clinton administration.

S_A_M

Mumia could have been a brilliant writer had the state just left him alone.