shakran

Yes, I was referring only to domestic terrorism from foriegn operatives, since that is the scope used by the republicans in their argument.

Poor everyone else - things go normally, as they might have anyway, and George gets to take credit for it, even if he had nothing to do with the situation. Since George took office not one single person in Missouri has died in a volcano, but that doesn't mean George prevented it from happening.


That's right. He would have failed. and y'know what? He already failed, to the tune of

even though advisors tried desperately to get him interested in the terrorist threat before 9/11.


No one is saying it wouldn't or couldn't happen again. We are saying that just because it hasn't happened YET does not mean George's policy is what's preventing it.

If a mosquito bites me, and then I run inside and smear bacon fat and lemon juice on my face, and then I go back outside and I don't get bitten, that doesn't mean I can start a new bacon fat/lemon juice cream product line, claiming it repels the mosquitos while hiding the fact that the mosquitos actually went away while I was inside.

In other words correlation does not equal causation. That's a basic truth.

You do. Clinton should've captured bin Laden after the 93 WTC bombings. Certainly after the USS Cole. Instead he lobbed a few ineffectual cruise missiles over and declared the job done. That was idiotic, and inexcuseable.

The cold hard truth is that getting a COMPETENT president is VERY difficult and rarely happens, especially in the age of television. Everyone wants to elect the guy that has a good image. George would be fun to have a beer with. So would Clinton. Reagan is everybody's grandpa. Bush 1 only got in because of his relationship with Reagan and because his opponent was even more of a dud than he was. You see where I'm going here. Politicians are rarely elected because of their relevant abilities. With such a system, we only get competent people in office by getting very lucky.

So while clinton was a complete dumbass not to get the guy that attacked us, Bush is even worse and I'll tell you why. Not only is he not getting the guy that attacked us, he's busy pissing off a bunch of OTHER people, therefore making it more likely that THEY will want to hurt us. That's asinine.

If you really think Clinton's stupid word definition stunt is as bad as invading under false pretenses a sovereign nation that was not threatening us, and could not threaten us, and causing the deaths of thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, then quite frankly you need to wake up.

The war in Iraq and the subsequent danger it has placed the United States in happened under Bush's watch, on Bush's orders. The blame is and should be layed solely at his feet.

I don't think anyone who thinks about it for more than 3 seconds will seriously say that Bush is the ONLY one responsible for 9/11. You might wish to find a different argument now.

Now you're asking us to set a very dangerous and idiotic policy. If we can't prove for a FACT that someone isn't going to hurt us, we have to destroy them. Well, OK. I can't prove for a FACT that you or Ustwo or Halx or anyone else on here isn't going to try to hurt me at some point in the murky future. Perhaps I should kill you all? It does mesh with your logic, after all.

Of course he is, and he should be. He's the leader of the damn country. That's somewhat more important and prestigious than the garbage man.

And when the president says "we need to get Iraq because they have weapons of mass destruction" and then fails to produce ONE SHRED of credible evidence that they exist, then we do not have a case for war.

Bull. We had indications all the way back to the Clinton administration that Al Qaeda was plotting an attack. Clinton could have acted on it. Bush could have listened when Clinton's people tried to tell him about it. Bush could have listened when intel services tried to tell him about it.

On the day of the attack we could have reduced its impact significantly. I heard an interesting point on NPR today made by a caller. He pointed out that 15 minutes after Payne Stewart's plane was discovered to be flying off course, it was under fighter escort, ready to shoot it down if it threatened to hit a populated area.

But no fighter escorts were sent to planes that were known to be hijacked. What idiot thought that was a good idea?

What happened afterwards was, frankly, a complete clusterfuck. At first we did the right thing. We looked for bin Laden and when we discovered he was in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban, we told them to hand him over. When they refused, we went in and kicked their ass. I supported EVERY ONE of those actions. Bush absolutely did the right thing to go after bin Laden and the taliban. Where I stopped supporting Bush is when he lost interest in the hunt for bin Laden, and instead decided to go after Saddam, who frankly had absolutely nothing to do with it. He trumped up some BS charges on evidence so thin you could see right through it and on that basis invaded a country, and ignored bin Laden, the man who we KNEW, solidly and without a doubt was the one who attacked us, and who in fact had ADMITTED, that he had attacked us. That simply makes absolutely no sense.

Well, actually it does if you look at it this way: As long as bin Laden's on the loose, Bush has a scare tactic to convince us to let him do whatever he wants. And ya know what? It worked like a charm. Bush got his BS war. Bush got to play army. Unfortunately (and this is something that someone who's army experience was limited to a dental chair) Bush's little war game has killed tens of thousands of real people, and permanently maimed many, many more.

And we're STILL not safe.

After all, how can the republicans claim that we're safer now than we used to be, when the terror alert level is still not anywhere near "safe"