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Junkie
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Originally Posted by host
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I did not include the entire article, I did include the link, but there is a paragraph were the author qualifies his data. I focused on the broader point of the article. Here is the full article.
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BY JOHN HINDERAKER
Posted 5/28/2008
The debate over Iraq and the war on terror rages, even amid signs we're winning. John Hinderaker of powerlineblog.com recently posted a blog entry answering the perennial question, "Are We Safer?" We rerun it here with his permission.
On the stump, Barack Obama usually concludes his comments on Iraq by saying, "and it hasn't made us safer."
It is an article of faith on the left that nothing the Bush administration has done has enhanced our security, and, on the contrary, its various alleged blunders have only contributed to the number of jihadists who want to attack us.
Empirically, however, it seems beyond dispute that something has made us safer since 2001. Over the course of the Bush administration, successful attacks on the U.S. and its interests overseas have dwindled to virtually nothing.
Some perspective here is required. While most Americans may not have been paying attention, a considerable number of terrorist attacks on America and American interests abroad were launched from the 1980s forward, too many of which were successful.
What follows is a partial history:
1988
February: Marine Corps Lt. Colonel Higgens, chief of the United Nations Truce Force, was kidnapped and murdered by Hezbollah.
December: Pan Am flight 103 from London to New York was blown up over Scotland, killing 270 people, including 35 from Syracuse University and a number of American military personnel.
1991
November: American University in Beirut bombed.
1993
January: A Pakistani terrorist opened fire outside CIA headquarters, killing two agents and wounding three.
February: World Trade Center bombed, killing six and injuring more than 1,000.
1995
January: Operation Bojinka, Osama bin Laden's plan to blow up 12 airliners over the Pacific Ocean, discovered.
November: Five Americans killed in attack on a U.S. Army office in Saudi Arabia.
1996
June: Truck bomb at Khobar Towers kills 19 American servicemen and injures 240.
June: Terrorist opens fire at top of Empire State Building, killing one.
1997
February: Palestinian opens fire at top of Empire State Building, killing one and wounding more than a dozen.
November: Terrorists murder four American oil company employees in Pakistan.
1998
January: U.S. Embassy in Peru bombed.
August: Simultaneous bomb attacks on U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed more than 300 people and injured over 5,000.
1999
October: Egypt Air flight 990 crashed off the coast of Massachusetts, killing 100 Americans among the more than 200 on board; the pilot yelled "Allahu Akbar!" as he steered the airplane into the ocean.
2000
October: A suicide boat exploded next to the U.S.S. Cole, killing 17 American sailors and injuring 39.
2001
September: Terrorists with four hijacked airplanes kill about 3,000 Americans in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
December: Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber," tries to blow up a transatlantic flight, but is stopped by passengers.
The Sept. 11 attack was a propaganda triumph for al-Qaida, celebrated by a dismaying number of Muslims around the world. Everyone expected that it would draw more Muslims to bin Laden's cause and that more such attacks would follow.
In fact, though, what happened was quite different: The pace of successful jihadist attacks against the U.S. slowed, decelerated further after the onset of the Iraq War, and has now dwindled to essentially zero.
Here is the record:
2002
October: Diplomat Laurence Foley murdered in Jordan, in an operation planned, directed and financed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, perhaps with the complicity of Saddam's government.
2003
May: Suicide bombers killed 10 Americans, and killed and wounded many others, at housing compounds for Westerners in Saudi Arabia.
October: More bombings of U.S. housing compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killed 26 and injured 160.
2004
There were no successful attacks inside the U.S. or against American interests abroad.
2005
There were no successful attacks inside the U.S. or against American interests abroad.
2006
There were no successful attacks inside the U.S. or against American interests abroad.
2007
There were no successful attacks inside the U.S. or against American interests abroad.
2008
So far, there have been no successful attacks inside the U.S. or against American interests abroad.
I have omitted from the above accounting a few "lone wolf" Islamic terrorist incidents, such as the Washington, D.C., snipers, the Egyptian who attacked the El Al counter in Los Angeles, and an incident or two when a Muslim driver steered his vehicle into a crowd.
These are, in a sense, exceptions that prove the rule, since the lone wolves were not, as far as we know, in contact with international Islamic terrorist groups and therefore couldn't have been detected by surveillance of terrorist conversations or interrogations of al-Qaida leaders.
It should also be noted that the decline in attacks on the U.S. was not the result of jihadists abandoning the field.
Our government stopped a number of incipient attacks and broke up several terrorist cells, while Islamic terrorists continued to carry out successful attacks around the world, in England, Spain, Russia, Pakistan, Israel, Indonesia and elsewhere.
There are a number of possible reasons why our government's actions after Sept. 11 may have made us safer.
Overthrowing the Taliban and depriving al-Qaida of its training grounds in Afghanistan certainly impaired the effectiveness of that organization.
Waterboarding three top al-Qaida leaders for a minute or so apiece may have given us the vital information we needed to head off plots in progress and to kill or apprehend three-quarters of al-Qaida's leadership.
The National Security Agency's eavesdropping on international terrorist communications may have allowed us to identify and penetrate cells here in the U.S., as well as to identify and kill terrorists overseas.
We may have penetrated al-Qaida's communications network, perhaps through the mysterious Naeem Noor Khan, whose laptop may have been the 21st century equivalent of the Enigma machine.
Al-Qaida's announcement that Iraq is the central front in its war against the West, and its call for jihadis to find their way to Iraq to fight American troops, may have distracted the terrorists from attacks on the U.S.
The fact that al-Qaida loyalists gathered in Iraq, where they have been neutralized by American and Iraqi troops, may have crippled their ability to attack elsewhere.
The conduct of al-Qaida in Iraq, which revealed that it is an organization of sociopaths, not freedom fighters, may have destroyed its credibility in the Islamic world.
The Bush administration's skillful diplomacy may have persuaded other nations to take stronger actions against their own domestic terrorists. (This certainly happened in Saudi Arabia, for whatever reason.)
Our intelligence agencies may have gotten their act together after decades of failure. The Department of Homeland Security, despite its moments of obvious lameness, may not be as useless as many of us had thought.
No doubt there are officials inside the Bush administration who could better allocate credit among these, and probably other, explanations of our success in preventing terrorist attacks.
But based on the clear historical record, it is obvious that the Bush administration has done something since 2001 that has dramatically improved our security against such attacks.
To fail to recognize this, and to rail against the Bush administration's security policies as failures or worse, is to sow the seeds of greatly increased susceptibility to terrorist attack in the next administration.
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http://www.investors.com/editorial/e...96864997227353
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ace, over on the "Obama Must Go to Iraq" thread, directly above this post:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...ta#post2459604
....I posted this:
....So ace, I replied with what you said you wanted...I specifically challenged one of your data points....and you ignored my challenge. Now, I'm back ace, and the deal is....We Agree to Play, "Stop Me When You Think You Can Establish That I Am Wrong...."
If I had read the IBD editorial you posted ace, and I saw the attempt in it to link al Zarqawi to Saddam and his government, an alarm would have gone off. The following is what we know ace. We know enough to firmly state that only an extremist would write that "data point" in that IBD editorial, because only an extremist, Cheney, has even recently tried to make that connection. Bush himself was stopped cold...he's never attempted it again....watch the video in the bottom quoite box. I've detailed all of their lies that I can locate and link on this one subject ace, but you might call them "misleading statements". I've detailed findings on how they came into being....the WaPo provides a nice explanation in the lower part of the following quote box.
I am expecting ace, that you will stop me, too when you can establish that my posted facts are not in order. Also, ace, notice that, in the first few sentences in the following quote box, the SSCI establishes that congress did not have access to "the same intelligence" that the white house was privy to, before the October, 2002 congressional vote to authorize presidential authority to use military force:
2004 Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq:
Cheney, on the very next day:
History of Bush's lies and distortions about al Zarqawi and his relationship with Saddam's government:
Lastly, ace....if the rationale for invading and occupying Iraq is as strong and straightforward as you maintain, why do you think they spewed all the disingenuous bullshit of the example of Zarqawi....it seemed be the "go to" example, offered by both Bush and Cheney, for invading and occupying Iraq.
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Iraq was not involved in the 9/11 attack. I agree with that. Bush Stated that.
Congress did not have all of the intel the WH had. I agree with that. The Intel over Clinton's and Bush's administrations pointed to Saddam having WMD and a desire to obtain nuclear weapons. Intel from England further supported this. Saddam lead his own military that they had WMD.
Members of the Bush administration had a desire to remove Saddam from power prior to 9/11.
Iraq became a key military front in the war against terror. We don't know the full extent of Zarqawi's travels. We don't know the full extent of who he talked to or who gave him aid and assistance. All we can rely on is intel, the same kind of Intel that proved wrong regarding WMD in Iraq. You can not prove any points regarding Zarqawi, all we can do is speculate based on published Intel that may be right or wrong.
It seems you want me to say that Bush lied. I can not do it, nothing you have posted shows that he lied.
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Originally Posted by ratbastid
I can tell you haven't actually read Obama's position on Iraq and the Middle East. Whole lot more to it than just pulling troops out. I know the sound bytes you've heard, but that's NOT all he's said.
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Why not show me how I am wrong. Isn't that the point of an exchange like this? I hope I am wrong. I don't spend a lot of time listening to Obama speeches, I did watch the debates, and he clearly said he would withdraw the troops unconditionally.
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"Let the occupation run its course", hunh? The term "run its course" comes from the world of medicine--we say that about fevers. When a fever runs its course, it's because the immune system has risen up and driven the invading virus out of the body. Seems an apt analogy...
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What about the issue of a premature withdrawal and the ramifications, wasn't that the main point of my post? Do we have an obligation to the Iraqi people to help them re-build their nation? What is your view on that question? Isn't that an important question worthy of political discussion? The "apt analogy" - shouldn't we in fact leave once the Iraqi people can stand on their own and defend their country from threats internal and at least to some degree external. Isn't "running it course" a good thing for Iraq?
__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."
Last edited by aceventura3; 06-03-2008 at 07:18 AM..
Reason: Automerged Doublepost
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