The War on Terror
 

The Security Services in America, Britain and across the

world have done an extremely effective Job since 9/11.



There have been very few attacks particuarly when you

consider the ease with which a bomb can be made from

household products and fertiliser. Over 1 Billion Muslims

who could easily make home made bombs!!!!!!!!!!!



A British Fertiliser Security Website for Farmers



http://www.secureyourfertiliser.gov.uk/



The Question is not why we have had terrorist attacks

but how and why have we been so successful in combating

terrorists.



As for winning the war on terror thats crap - terrorism is something

you constantly have to be vigilent against and to be honest I think

the World Wide Securitry Services have done remarkable well.

America has recently prevented attacks on buildings in Miami, Chicago, the New York Subway and numerous other attacks.



As for terrorism the whole spectre of terrorism will never go away the UK has always lived under the threat of terrorism - there were attacks on the Tube in the 18th Century.



The War on Terror is a media term, there is nothing anyone can do against terrorist apart from stay vigilient and have effective security services.



The fact that there have been so few attacks and that so many plots have been uncovered is more of a success than a failure especially given the ease with which bombs can be constructed using household products, gardening products and fertiliser.

Thank you for this talking point regurgitation.

The administration is pumping the line that because there have been no attacks since 9/11 (well, not counting a brief and localized anthrax campaign immediately after 9/11), the counter-terrorist efforts have been successful. I mean just look: nobody has gotten blown up. Hellova job! Re-elect our righty pals in November!

There are several gaping holes in this logic, the main one being the classic flaw of turning correlation into causation. The administration is taking credit for something that they may or may not be the cause of. Look: I have three cats. None of them have been strangled. Congratulations are due to me for defending my cats from all the cat-stranglers out there! Because it'd be so easy for somebody to strangle my cats! I've defended them brilliantly. Re-elect me!

There are still huge holes in our security system. The shipping industry brings in millions of shipping containers a year that go completely unsearched. Commercial freight goes on airliners without any security screening. It would be trivial for someone to get bombs into America through either of those methods. We've know about that for years and nothing is being done. So forgive me if I withhold my accolades on the "hellofa job" DHS is doing.

So why haven't we had more attacks? Maybe because there have been no more attempts.

We've "thwarted" two "plots"--a handful of homeless, possibly mentally ill people in Florida were alledgedly entrapped by the FBI in a Sears Tower bombing "plot". Another bunch were planning to blow up planes between the UK and the US, although UK authorities claim they weren't actually "on the verge" of doing anything like that. I'm not impressed by either of these two "thwarted" "plots".

Our security is ALL for show. Feel safe? Great. It's an illusion, but great, enjoy it.

Agreed ratbastid. I note that prior to 9/11 it had been 8 years since the last one. Before there, there were none.

Since the country was 225 years old on 9/11, and we've had 2 attacks in those 225 years, it follows that, so far anyway, the terrorists attack us about once every 112 years.

If you want to be generous they now attack us once every 8 years.

Claiming credit for not having been a victim of the law of averages yet is asinine, especially when the last, largest, and most significant attack happened on your watch while you kept reading to children.

Not that I am supporting their "patting themselves on their back," but unless you are a member of the security council or congress, or somehow in "the loop" of things, it would be rediculous to believe that they HAVEN'T prevented some attacks. We only know what is released or leaked out by those inside, or what comes out in public news. Your analogy of your cat, though colourful, is by no means even CLOSE to a fair comparison. By your statement I could just as easily say that since there has been no major crimes in my town in the past few years, that we should consider letting a majority of our police department go, since we don't REALLY need them, since crime is at an all time low.

Personally I say let them do their job, and if it even prevents a SINGLE death, then it is worth it!

personally, i would be a happy cowpoke if the only fallacies associated with the "war on terror" were logical....

Luckly, because it's all secret we're not burdened with the truth. They'll never tell us how they sent Will Smith and Jeff "Must Go Faster" Goldbloom on a secret mission to blow up the mothership.

If the Bush administration had actually stopped anything, they'd leak it on purpous to try and get the POTUS's numbers back up. My money is on "they haven't done jack s**t, because they're all idiots".

Also, if there were only 2 crimes in our nation's history, then yes, maybe a $500 billion police department is reaching a bit.

we are just talking about international terror, not domestic right? And we are just talking attacks inside the united states right?

(just making sure I understand what you're saying before I make further comment)

Poor George, by succeeding he fails, after all there were not going to be any attacks!

If there was an attack the same people would be again saying he failed, since there was another attack!

When a big terror plot is uncovered, it wasn't a real threat anyways!

Sure, there was one terror attack and it cost us thousands of lives and 10s of billions of dollars but it was just a fluke, it wouldn't happen again!

Why is it always Bush is to blame? Why dont I ever see people, besides me, put any of the blame on Clinton? Am I just missing those posts somewhere? How is it Bush's fault there were 5 seperate Al-Qaeda successfult bombings in Clintons administration? Why do I always read the people blaming Bush for something that happened by the SAME terrorist group 9 months into his term?

somebody please explain that to me(in simple terms without pages and pages of cut/paste articles...treat my like Im 6 and explain it)....I'd really like to understand

**I have no idea why that double posted

There are a variety of reasons, but in my worldview:

1. Yep, previous administrations are also to blame. There's been a thorough fuck up at every level for several decades. Happens when one government wants to plan the governments of several other countries for them. (See previous CIA missions putting dictators in power to get rid of current dictators... who then turn out to be al Quaeda.)

2. Bush is worse in my opinion because he's even stupider, and because he has taken these events as excuses to do what he wants to do. Do I think the previous Iraqi regime sucked? Yep. Do I think they had anything to do with 9-11? Nope. But that doesn't matter. He uses this, and uses all these scary things to TERRORIZE HIS OWN COUNTRY. People are much more sheep-like when they're constantly frightened. All of his "rhetoric" (quotes because he can't speak intelligently) uses classic brainwashing terminology, making it US and THEM and generalizing. And let's not forget how he's been stomping all over our rights as citizens.

3. Previous admins messed up. This admin messed up, lied about it, and then lied some more. Utterly disgusting.

4. Don't forget, most people say "Bush", meaning "Bush and all of his administration".

Just one person's view. There's more, but if I want you to read it... :)

I don't think the Clinton administration is blameless. Not at all. Now, they didn't manipulate post-attack senitiment to launch a massively ill-conceived campaign against a country that had nothing to do with the attack, in the name of national security. Clinton isn't giving speeches right now praising himself for keeping America safe. Al Gore isn't talking about the "hellofa job" he did on national security.

I'm not really talking about blame. I'm not particularly interested in blame. I'm VERY interested in exposing lies and political manipulation, especially when the effect of those manipulations is still out in the future and I can still do something about it. These guys are making a pre-election attempt to parlay their failure into success, and I'm looking to call them out on it.

I don't blame Bush and company for 9/11. That attack might very well have been inevitable--it probably would have happened no matter who the president was. Since that time, though, he's done almost nothing I can approve of, including all the current bluster about homeland security. (I know, you might have examples of things he's done right... that's why I said "almost nothing". Ousting the Taliban was the right move. Keeping them ousted has been an utter failure, but that's another thread.)

As far as I can tell, all that our efforts domestically and overseas have done is to engender a new generation of terrorists, kill thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of non-Americans, and cause two civil wars. We're in for decades of insecurity as a result of those things. And I'm unwilling to ignore the irony that it was all done in the name of security.

I am asking that question in isolation of the blame people put on him for 9/11 (not iraq, or Saddam....JUST Bin Laden). Im sorry, but you're going to have a very hard time convincing me that Bush wouldnt have had to deal with that if Clinton had been worried about more than the definition of certain words.

I hated Clinton then, I hate him even more now, I dont deny that....but what I want is a clinton supporter to tell me why he's not villanized for any of the 5 bombings (there were aimed at americans)

I have severe issues making "the War on Terror" and what our agencies are doing to protect us a partisan thing.

Bush is NOT protecting us any better or worse than any other president has or could. It is bullshit to say "elect GOP or die because the Dems. don't worry about your saftey."

To say or believe that is forgoing any other issue, and promotes a one party government...... and who is to blame if we get attacked under Bush?

Fuck who was responsible for 9/11..... everyone from Truman down was. Every president who gave aid to Isreal, trained Arabs to fight and spy, allowed weapons to be sold to them, kept us addicted to their oil - instead of setting up alternative fuel technology grants and studies and so on. Must I remind you that WE trained Osama, WE trained Saddam, WE kept the tyrannical Shah of Iran in power so that when the people overthrew him, of course we were satan.

It is bullshit to say 9/11 happened because of one president.... they all were f'n responsible.

But we cannot change the past, so we must work on a better future, under this administration we aren't.

We are still addicted to oil, we still support sadistic, tyrants (the royal Saudi family, whom I feel should not be trusted), we still are lax on even trying to understand them, we still allow 10's of 1,000's of illegals to cross over everday.... (how many of them could be terrorists just waiting for the right moment) and we still demand OUR will be done.

Bush has not changed or done anything to shift the attitudes over there.

What has protected us? Luck, the people whose job it is and the fact our country is free. Freedom can change a lot of hate filled minds.

We know AL-Quida makes a fortune off heroin...... yet, the numbers in use among our young increase monthly....

It's just a matter of time before we get hit again. The scary part is we'll allow that hit to destroy us from within.

As partisan as we are making this, this is what will happen:

If attacked under W.

If the Dems. take congress...... it'll be their fault.
If the GOP holds onto power.... it'll be the Dems fault because the GOP had to weaken their stances.

If we are fortunate to not have an attack until after the '08 election and a Dem wins:

See what happens when you elect a Dem.? See how they let our country get attacked?

If in '08 a GOP is elected:

The Dems weakened us during the race, took our focus off terrorism. The War and fighting Terrorism, must come first, above any other issue out there.....

Of course the Dems. will blame Bush and the war in Iraq, the way he didn't even try to develop alternative fuels, the way he kept the Sauds in power, Isreal funded and blah blah blah.

It's time to end the fucking blah blah blah, work on a truly bi-partisan plan and stick to it.

But alas even our safety is political fodder and fear used to get people elected.

i'll give this a shot, shani....

i do not think that the americans were looking for the group that carried out the attacks--i think the entirety of the group that planned the attacks carried them out--the group was on the planes.

think about it: if you were going to carry out an action like that, how would you do it? you would want to create a new organization made up of people without particular significance (in terms of visible political pasts, say)--you would want it self-contained--and you would want to be very very careful about communications. the logistics would be easy to manage, it seems to me. funding could easily be generated internally, if the planning was long-term enough.

if that scenario is the case, then the attacks themselves could not have been prevented, and another, organized in a similar manner, could not be prevented. no amount of "security" is going to help prevent an action by a group you are not looking for. the state is not omniscient. it is not some all-knowing father-figure. it is a bureacratic apparatus.

if that is true--and i frankly havent seen anything to contradict it that i find in the least persuasive---then there are a series of problems that arise.

1. the bush people had to construct a coherent narrative in order to fashion a response. what i really fault them for are the choices they made in the making of this narrative, the narrative itself and how they have used it.

fundamental to this narrative is the spectre of al qeada.
i think the bin laden group unnecessary if you are looking to explain the attacks.
i think the bin laden group provided the bush squad a convenient signifier around which to fashion a story that is primarily therapeutic rather than factual.

once the bin laden group got introduced into the story, everything about the past that involved the bin laden group changed, became charged with meanings that are in fact the result of the story itself. these meanings have to do with the story itself--in light of this story, clinton made choices that resulted in x or y outcomes--but these outcomes are a function of what happened afterward and were irrelevant at the time they happened. and i think that what happened afterward, insofar as bin laden et al are concerned, is the story that the bush administration chose to elaborate in the period immediately following the attacks.

that is why i do not attribute much significance to the matters that you raise in your post above.

sorry Roachboy...remember I said Im stupid and talk to me like Im a child...I dont understand one single point of your post

I want someone to convince me that 9/11 would still have happened without Bin Laden's backing and money...the planning for that started before bush was elected president.

It's really simple. He didn't use them to further his own agenda.

He was wrong to ignore Al Qaeda, no question. But he didn't turn himself into The War President and go off on deeply foolish tangents. He's also not our current president, which tends to limit his visability as a target.

There is absolutely plenty of blame to go around....from Carter's response to the Iran embassy takeover and Reagan's response to the Beiurt marine barracks bombing through Clinton's response following the first WTC bombing.

Why do I hold Bush most accountable. IT HAPPENED ON HIS WATCH and he IGNORED all warnings and recommendations from Clinton's administration regarding the al Queda threat.

I know you dont want links, but look at the urgency in the de-classified memo from the Clinton admin.on Jan 25 2001, only days after Bush took office:

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB...B147/index.htm

And if you look bacK at Bush's foreign policy/national security priorities for the next 9 months leading up to 9/11, THE focus was missile defense, NOT terrorism.

Terrorism in general and al Queda in particular were back burner issue, even with the warnings from Clinton admin. In fact, Condi, as National Security Advisor, was scheduled to give a major foreign policy speech on national priorities on Sept. 12....the focus again was missle defense, with a nod to UN reform. No mention of terrorism. (all records of the speech have since disappeared from the net)

/foolish tangents about word definitions aside right?

I don't think we can know that. Why does it matter?

thank you dc_dux that was exactly the kind of response I was looking for (I didnt mean you couldnt post a link lol I meant tons of quoted info in the post itself)

It matters because what is the fault of many is being layed at the feet of one, and I dont think its fair

You are far from stupid.

Yes, 9/11 or a form there of would have happened without Bin Laden, his money I am sure still would have been there.

The problem I have blaming Clinton is the fact every time he shit, the GOP were after his ass.

WE FUCKING HANDCUFFED A PRESIDENT FROM HIS RESPONSIBILITIES FOR DAMN NEAR 6 YEARS.

And we see how well Bush holds up to simple questions...... imagine how he would react to the 6 years of partisan attacks on family, friends, his private life, every time he shat.......and then be tried for impeachment.

Bush hasn't faced a fraction of what Clinton did.... and I hope to God no other president ever has to.

So if you truly must blame Clinton.... then you also must blame the GOP congress that spent all their time trying to fry the man. They didn't seem to worried about national security at the time either.

I will make it easier, you dont have to read the full link :)

just the first paragraph makes a pretty compelling statement about how seriously Bush/Rice took the al Queda threat:

Well, but when you're the boss, you're responsible. You're even responsible for what former bosses did. That's the way it works in the business world. Politicians seem to think that politics is different that way, but it's not--just look at the polls.

Like I've said: I don't blame Bush for the 9/11. I do think 90% of what he's done since then has been a mistake. I definitely think the disaster that Iraq has turned into is the result of his "yee-haw diplomacy". A little foresight there could have saved almost 50,000 lives. And (to get back to what this thread is about) it's been all in the name of national security. AND it's made us less secure.

So: if you're talking about blaming Bush for 9/11, then you're the only one talking about that. I don't blame him for that, and so far nobody else in this thread does.

If you're talking about blaming him for everything since then... Well, nothing since then has really had anything to do with Al Qaeda or anything else that existed pre-Bush, so I don't know who else you'd blame.

Sometimes, someone shows how smart they are when they think they are ignorant. :icare:

ShaniFaye you know the answer to your question already.

What the left really hates about 9/11 is that it justified a line of thinking that they don't like. Ratbasid summed it up nicely...

It's really simple. He didn't use them to further his own agenda.

The US had gone from something of a passive to an active player. The left saw 9/11 for the turning point it was, but fails to understand that it wasn't an excuse to further a personal agenda but a reason to focus on it to prevent such incidents in the future. We had 8 years of dodging issues and difficult decisions with Clinton, who seemed to have based his pendency on being personally liked, not on what was best for the long range interests of the country. He still does get a lot of blame for 9/11, thats why he had Lawyers trying to pull some mini-series no one watched last night due to a football game, and no one will watch again tonight, for the same reasons. He might not get blamed by the irrational members of the left, but those types see the biggest tragedy of 9/11 not that we had people die, but that it proved that the world was still a dangerous place and there is still a reason for tanks and guns. This is why we see the wackjob conspiracy theories floating around. This is why some are so upset that this could have happened in such a manner that there just HAD to be an inside job, I mean after all how could something like this happen to help Bush, no way the simple, obvious, witnessed and scientific solutions could be true, I mean it HELPED BUSH!

So to treat you like the child you want to be treated as.

1 - Many on the left doesn't blame Clinton because he was a democrat.
2 - Most of the left hate that 9/11 seemed to help Bush politically.

**I give up lol Im so bad at this politics thing

thank you for not making me feel so dumb Ustwo....it was your post originally that made me decide to post in here the way I did


Oh, and I watched the movie last nite, and will watch part two tonite, I quite enjoyed several portions of it and found it entertaining

To lay the fault for 9/11 solely at the feet of Bush is as ignorant as doing the same with Clinton. I can easily trace the various fuckups back into the Nixon years. Let's remember that there's been an American presence - covert or overt - in Afganistan since 1979. We, specifically the Democrats and more specifically Charlie Wilson (D-TX), funded the mujahideen and kept them in weapons for the better part of 10 years. Wilson basically created US foreign policy after the initial outrage over the Soviet invasion wore off and was the defacto leader of the hawks in Congress. He, more than any one single person, pushed the Reagan administration to arm and equip Muslim irregulars of all ilk.

Once the Soviets had beaten themselves bloody and pulled out, the US basically abandoned Afganistan in the wake of the Cold War. Thank you Messr. Reagan and Bush Sr. All foreign aid to Afganistan dried up and Afganis were left to battle out the successor state amongst themselves. Those non-Afgani mujahideen formed the framework that became Al Qaida and started agitating for regional and then world change. Clearly, Clinton allowed the situation to get worse, but it was a situation already festering by the time he took office.

If you want blame, focus on Congress c. 1982-1994. We had the opportunity to keep the friends and contacts we'd made in the region, but the funding cutbacks killed that opportunity. You can also thank the good people of Lufkin, TX who kicked out the best friend in Congress that the Afganis ever had in 1996. If you ever want a great read on the backstory of US/Afgani relations in the 80's, pick up Charlie Wilson's War by Crile. It's a fascinating read, and I know one guy who's dad shows up at one point. According to my friend (who I'll grant may or may not know), the stuff about his father is pretty accurate.

The mirror-image is equally true, of course.

Many on the right blame Clinton because he was a democrat.
Most of the right love 9/11 because it helped Bush politically.

I don't think you can blame Clinton for the passivity of foreign relations in the 90's. In Clinton's defense, George HW Bush was already heading in that direction after Gulf War I. After the victory, the State Department let the anti-Iraq alliance, which included some very key players in the region, evaporate. To his credit, it certainly opened a lot of doors that never would have been opened otherwise (Saudi Arabia, Jordan), but the opportunities open at the end were either never recognized or never seized.

Let's also remember that Congress, specifically the Republican controlled Congress of 1994, was hellbent on cutting government spending with the primary target being military spending. You could even make the arguement that the Republican cries for a balanced budget from the 1970's to the 1990's led to 9/11 because of the funding cuts to reach that balance under Clinton. It's not something that I particularly believe, but I'm sure that the arguement could be successfully made. I'll leave to someone like host to do the research, though.

geez...i was actually saying that i dont particularly hold the bush administration to account for not preventing 9/11/2001.
just goes to show you--folk like ustwo do not read, they only see what they want to see.

i dont think there is any scenario in which they could have done anything.
i dont think there is anything but wishful thinking in imagining there was. people want to imagine the state is like an all-knowing father--the reverse of that is thinking that the world is in fact transparent to the state and that events like 9/11/2001 can therefore be explained by someone fucking up.

within that you have the problem of illusions created by using an event from 2001 to rewrite the history of the previous 15 years.

it seems to me that nothing could have been done to prevent 9/11/2001 and another attack, organized on parallel grounds, could be carried out now.
not only that, but such an attack is always possible.
no amount of hysteria changes that.
no amount of rewriting of the past changes that.
both are more about therapeutic requirements than addressing anything substantial.

Blame is the name of the game.... why change when we can simply keep blaming others in the past for where we are now?

We know we need change, we know we need to get a better, cheaper fuel than Middle East oil, we know that as long as we prop up tyrants (the Royal Saudi family), self righteous governments (Isreal) and we refuse to move forward in positive ways.... that 9/11's will continue to happen.

The problem with all the knowing.... we can blame other parties, other leaders past and present and we can rest easily because we don't have to change anything.

Change is scary, change is hard work and brings about things that may make us look at ourselves and see we may not be as great as we think.

Yet, to work for change and to not blame but to find out what went wrong and make sure it doesn't happen again..... change requires all parties working together for the same goals. But that doesn't seem very likely....

So we'll keep the status quo and keep blaming everyone else that does not share our party's political view.

While I blame Clinton for ignoring the issue in order to prevent any boat rocking, I blame Carter for not dealing with Iran when we had both the moral and stratigic reasons to do so, and Reagan for cutting and running in Lebanon. Carter's mistake was the worst of the lot, but as much as it pains me, Reagan's retreat showed them the way. I do give both Carter and Reagan some benifit though, they both had to deal with the cold war, and a few nutjobs in the mideast must have seemed like a small worry.

As for 'loving' 9/11 you may wish to use a different choise of words. I'm damn glad that Bush was president and not Gore at 9/11, we didn't need harsh words and vassilation, but don't lump me or most conservatives with the 'agenda above country' mentality which has infected so much of the left as of late. I would have far rather have had 9/11 not happen (or any later event), as while it justified a world view, I'd have rather not have had reason for the world view. I'd far rather be arguing taxes, welfare, education, and rationed health care...er I mean socialized medicine, than terrorists, nuclear weapons in the hands of extremist terrorist supporting governments, and US military conduct and casualities.

/nods in agreement with nothing much more to say

What I find particularly interesting is the "armchair presidents" we have. ANYBODY can sit there AFTER the fact and say "Bush shouldn't have done this...." "Clinton shouldn't have done that...." But in all reality, I think they do the best that they can do, with the INFORMATION THEY ARE PROVIDED. Who here KNEW for a FACT that there we no WMD? NOBODY in here can say they knew it for sure.... Who in here can say that a President is not held to a higher standard than anyone else? (I am refering to Clinton and his impeachment/Monica Lewinski scandal) and that when they are President, that EVERYTHING they do will be scrutinized under a microscope?
As far as I am concerned, if you are the President, I expect you to be able to provide answers to your actions, regardless of what your actions are. As President, you are held responsable for everything that happens during your term...even IF it is a direct result of improper information.

I don't support EVERYTHING that Bush is doing, but I believe he did the best he could, and nobody can say anyone else would have done any better in his place...we don't know, and we never will know. Life is cause and circumstance....

I get humour out of this though..

Is "stupider" even a word?...lol..Don't take this as an insult Justjess, It is only meant in humour, but to say someone is stupider, makes the poster look like they failed grammer class ...lol. (PLEASE take this in jest, I am not being mean, or insulting anyone..just always thought that word was funny...not to mention the times I have mispelled or misused a word!)

Always gotta get your counterpunch in, hunh, Ustwo? You should train a monkey to type "No, YOU!" so you can go outside and get some fresh air.

I chose my words quite deliberately. And I did chose them in part to provoke. Nothing has provided the right with more traction than 9/11. I don't believe they orchestrated it or had anything to do with it, but they have leveraged it HARD for political ends. If it hadn't been for 9/11, there's little question Bush would have been a one-termer. Bush wasn't headed anywhere good--perhaps it was inevitable that his approval would end up where it is--until 9/11 turned everything around for him. Hell, I liked him right after the attacks.

So: do I think that for large segments of the right, the political usefulness of the attack has eclipsed the tragedy of it? I absolutely do.

I'm not talking about you, Ustwo, or any other conservative here at TFP. I actually think that non-politicians of any political leaning largely have their heads on straight about this. I'm talking about the actual people in power, the ones whose jobs are on the line in November, and their political advisors and handlers.

Poopy doopy
 

I like the fact that you are not a blame-shifting a**hole who simply hates Bush becaue he is a republican. You give credit where credit is due and back it up by, what seems to be, fact. Awesome for you. Now we have to really look at the situation.

1. Instead of simply complaining, offer up idea that can work. I mean they may not listen to us ( IE Bush got re-elected), but you will not then just simply be complaining. Your Ideas mean very little to the government, but you may get the respect within the TFP area.

2. Now you said something about reelecting. Think about this. What would a democrat, in your opinion, Done differantly. I mean what would you have done?

3. Now for my opinion:
There was nothing we could have done to prevent 9/11 from happeneing. Just could not be done. What happened afterwards also could not have been prevented. think about it;
How upset would you have been has Bush not done a single thing. He went to the UN and SAID something needs to be done. Then the UN does what it does best... NOTHING. Then Bush makes a plea to the Terrorist to come and make an attemt to deal with their anger twords America. Of course they would say NO! and then attempt to blow some more shit up. ITs how they work. Thats why they call it terrorism and not happy-funism. Now I am glad that somebody did something. Now he may have gone too far and created an Iraqi civil war, but there has always been a civil war there just below the surface. We are just caught in the middle of it now.
I am all for just letting them kill themselves, but there has to come a point when everything settles down and they realize that they can live in relative peace. That time may never come for Iraq. At least I highly doubt it.
Should we STILL be in Iraq I don't think so. I say let them all kill themselves and then when they ask why we didn't help we look them in the face and then kick them square in the balls and say becuase you didn't want us too. This still won't make them happy. Iraq is a catch 22. We suck if we leave and we suck if we stay.

Now as far as changes go for a post 9/11 world. Yes, there have been more then our fair share of changes. I mean Holy Shit it now takes forever in Line at airports, forget about clipping your nose hairs on the planes and my need to carry a gallon of gas on board no longer matter, because of national security. That seems to be the universal answer for anything that the government can't answer. umm..... The answer to your question is National Security. WOrks everytime.
The fact that there have been no attecks since then can be interpreted a few ways. Who knows why we really have not been attacked. maybe they take a lot of planning. maybe we have prevented a few maybe they just don't wanna attack at the moment. who knows. I know our Government has no idea, but it is a good selling point to average Joe Voter.
Tighter security is generally a good thing until it inconvienances you. As American we need to realize that things have changed since 9/11 and they have changed a few times, in a few differant ways. We as Americans are not particularly proud of our country and even less are willing to stand up for it. you may support the politics, but you are still an American, and I think a lot of people have forgotten about that. Americans are the least loyal of all citizens. I mean look at people who come from other countries to live here and how proud they are of where the came from, even though they sure as hell wouldn't go back. i think I may be babbling now so I will leave it at that.

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"

Shani....I am located no more than a couple of miles from you, and I wonder if your posting of your "hate" for Clinton, comes from the influence of your environment, how much of it is because of the influence on your incoming "information stream", which probably is filtered by the apparatus built by, and during, L. Brent Bozell's 19 year crusade against the "liberal media", a "creature", labelled and designated, outlet by outlet by Bozell, himself, who I posted about, quite frequently, in this forum, over the weekend, and to what degree the politization of "christiandom" in our locale, effects your political POV?

Shani, consider that Mr. Bozell has been funded appreciably, and consistently by Mr. Richard Mellon Scaife and the Sarah Scaife foundation....the same Scaife who funded Paula Jone's legal appeal that could not have unmasked Clinton, without the court decisions that Scaife's money made possible, as an adulterer, as was JFK and Eisenhower (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kay_Summersby">Kay Summersby</a>).

Consider that Mr. Scaife was reported in <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/scaifemain050299.htm">Scaife:Funding Father of the Right</a>, to have changed:
Shani, I have lived in your community for less than five years. It is a "world" where the only talk show hosts on the radio.....every station, are "conservative", or "right wing".....in this "world", <a href="http://www.boortz.com">Neil Boortz</a> seems to be a moderate in comparison to the competition, (of course, he isn't...). Maybe I am more shocked at the political "climate" here, because I came from living in Manhattan for a few years before I moved. Here, it is normal from people to call "the Kimmer" during his afternoon talk radio show on 640 AM, and open with, "Hey Kimmer, I read in the Aljazeera Constituition ( ajc.com )today, that....blah, blah, blah.....", from my POV, Shani, the onesided view down here is "off the wall". In NY, The governor, and the NY City mayor were republicans....there was some balance.

In October, 2004, in our church...a minister subbing for our pastor, opened a sunday sermon with requested that we all pray....on the spot.....out loud, to God....for the re-election of president Bush.

I've posted all this, Shani, because I want you to examine why you post that you "hate Clinton"? How much of your opinion is based on accounts of what he actually did, what was done to interfere with his presidency, and how did his behavior differ from other presidents? Reagan opened his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, MS, with a speech that centered on his "commitment to state's rights". Reagan was from California. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia,_Mississippi">Philadelphia, MS</a> was a place best known for the murder there, in 1964, or three civil rights workers. Do you think Reagan's decision to open his first presidential campaign in that place, and to make the speech there, that he made, was an act of "unity". Was it even a good thing to do, for a man who's memory is held now in such high regard, by so many?

I am posting to plead with you, Shani, to examine how you came to hate Clinton, and to hold the political views that you hold? How much of what you believe is true, was influenced by Scaife's money, Bozell's "reasearch" and intimidation of the media, and the political action of christian leaders who you hold in high regard, and how much comes from you doing your own fact checking? If you end up believing exactly what you believe today, after you have taken the kind of "inventory" that I'm suggesting, so be it.

I'm biased...everyone is. But the reason my posts are so effing long, is because I qualify nearly every "effing" statement that I post. It's a politics thread. How can you be credibly political...in the eyes of others, if you can't or won't explain how you come to believe what you are saying/posting?

Forgive the "richness" of the following presentation. I look forward to just a couple of reasons to justify your "hatred", that are rooted in excerpts from non-Bozell sources, since....say....1993

Here is why I don't "hate" Clinton or Bush, democrats or republicans. This is a "game", and all we can do is look at where the "playas" end up....just as one could look at the preacher with his own TV network, mercedes, mansion, "gettin" rich" by extolling his faith in Jesus! Ken Starr is living his dream, on Malibu Beach, at a law school endowed by Richard Scaife.......
Please read about Mr. Bush's solicitor general of the United States, in my thread here:
<a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?p=1847163&mode=linear#post1847163"> Are Ted Olson and Al Zarqawi both "Supermen"?</a>

The Democrats are sore losers and big meanies and try to blame everything on our President because he beat them.

host, with all due respect, as I have said many times...one reason I stay out of the politics forum is that some people will not just let a person have a belief without backing it up with pages of quotes from somebody else.....I personally dont find it necessary....if you told me you still believed in the easter bunny I would, as my personality is, accept that without scads of what you call "proof for why you feel that way"

I WILL revise what I said....when I said I "hate clinton" I meant his presidency, his policies, his practices, his politics. When you mention Neal Boortz (god I cant stand Kimmer lol) I will admit, that when he first came on the air here on WSB WAY back in the early 90's I didnt agree with one thing that man said...but I was around 22 and knew nothing of politics (I still dont know much), I am now 38 and agree with a LOT of what he says.

No president is perfect....no ONE man is going to be the end all be all to everyone...if that person shows up I will quite firmly believe he's the anti-christ (oops I mentioned something religious in a politics thread...will I be flogged now?).

I have never said Bush or his administration was perfect....but I see the reason for being in Iraq, and more importantly as was stated in his address to the nation last nite....so do Americans as 1.4 (I think he said 1.4 maybe it was 1.3) million americans have voluntarily joined since 9/11/01.

Call me naive, call me stupid, call me whatever you like....but thats how I FEEL and THINK about things.

now Im going to crawl away from the politics forum because once again you've scared the hell out of me hehehehe

But if you still believe in the Easter bunny and you're a legal adult, then there are issues here.

Politics, like other grown up subjects, is not something where you can just decide that whatever you would like to believe is, in fact, what really is. If you don't have at least some sort of fact to back up your opinion then, yes, politics is not the forum for you, because no one's going to be impressed with groundless supposition.


See, here it's better because you're taking an actual fact (this is what Bush said) and interpreting it.

But you're wrong ;)

1.4 million Americans have joined up voluntarilly. The population of the USA is around 273 million. So a statistically insignificant half-a-percent of the country has decided the war is a good thing. Now here's my counter-fact. The latest poll shows that 56% of Americans think the war in iraq was a mistake.
http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm

Shani, I appreciate your reaction to my post....I'm glad that you reacted to it in the spirit that was intended, when I wrote it.

If you only read one more thing, ever....in this politics forum, I hope that it is my latest:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...24#post2120124

Note how many diverse sources, from all over the world....have reported the same facts, for four years. Read what Cheney said on TV on sunday, about al-Zarqawi and the camp at "Kermal", as his justification fof a Saddam al-Qaeda "connection"....a justification for invading and occupying another country.

The "reasons" have all been exposed, Shani. How do you trust these guys to lead us....to command our military. Can you see how I can think that Bush and Cheney should be tried, convicted, and jailed? I showed you why I think that....why do you believe anything that they say, anymore? I don't "feel" a certain way. I checked out what "they" said....what they claimed, and a myriad of reporting from a wide number or sources, over four years, indicate strongly, that it was all BS, that they told us, and that they do. Our kids are dead and maimed, fighting in Iraq, because of lies. They die for no reason.

Who said I dont have facts? I just said I dont need to quote bible chapter and verse in bibliography form every single time I want to discuss why I dont like Clinton and why I might be a Bush supporter.

I know its just *me* but even that post host made to me right up above gave me a friggin headache trying to follow it.

dc_dux posted in a way that MADE me want to read what he was trying to tell me.

Maybe its cause I grew up with reader's digest in the bathroom and liked cliff notes....who knows.

my point is...I am not intellectual enough to talk *politcs* the way ya'll do, and even if I was...quite frankly, ya'lls way is boring thats why I asked for someone, anyone to give me their belief in a way that was not migraine inducing to read. Maybe we could have a politcs forum for *dummies*

yeah and monkies might fly out of my but into the pet forum :lol:

Definition
stu·pid (stpd, sty-)
adj. stu·pid·er, stu·pid·est

1. Slow to learn or understand; obtuse.
2. Tending to make poor decisions or careless mistakes.
3. Marked by a lack of intelligence or care; foolish or careless: a stupid mistake.
4. Dazed, stunned, or stupefied.
5. Pointless; worthless: a stupid job.

Actually, I find all 5 points rather salient to any discussion of Bush's abilities. ;)

Shani - I'm disappointed. You responded to host's post, but skipped any discussion brought up by everyone here. You wanted to know why people only blame Bush, and we all explained how we don't think it's just his fault that 9/11 happened. We all explained why he's getting so much flak about all of his actions since then. Did any of those arguments make sense? Make things clearer? Change your view on anything?

Your analogy, while colourful, is still not a good comparison. While I am not saying his policies ARE preventing attacks, 100%, YOU in turn cannot say that they are NOT preventing attacks, because you are not a member of congress or the Deputy director of the FBI or the President himself. NONE OF US KNOW is my point.





I think you completely misunderstood what I was saying. There we no WMD that were found, but Bush was responding to intel that he was given by other people in other contries, informants if you will.

True, you can sit there and say that you donot know that me or Ustwo or Halx are not out to get you...but if you were told my say 3 or 4 of your friends that you trusted, that I was stockpiling a couple of handgrenades and were planning of attacking you, wouldn't you want to come check me out? OK, so you found I didn't have any, should we now crucify you and call you a bad person because of it?

Im sorry Jess....Im still recovering from reading everything.

yes, what people have said makes sense....and it was honestly refreshing to read most of it, I cant honestly say that it changed my view on anything, I still think the same things I did (but since I didnt really define just exactly HOW I viewed it you wouldnt know that)

I agree with several things ya'll have said....and I was not saying that there was no fault in the Bush Admin, I just said it seemed like anytime I read anything here, that the Dems put ALL the blame on them. My getting ya'll to explain to me what you thought the way I did was an exercise in a way. I wanted to see if it was possible to get a clear cut understandable opinion.

See....when somebody tells me what they think, I do my own research my own way and try to see ALL sides of the opinion before I make up my own mind. Reading what I call *your proof* of why I should think that doesnt work with me.

Only if you promise to enjoy it. :D

You may not be saying that, but my comment was a response to a statement that Ustwo made.

This is true to an extent. However, if someone lies to me repeatedly, I tend to call into question anything he says. Bush told me that he was going to get bin Laden. That was a lie, because later he said he wasn't all that interested in bin Laden.

Bush told me Iraq definitely had WMD's. That was a lie.

Bush's henchman Rumsfeld told me that he knew exactly where the WMD's were - between Baghdad and Tikrit. That was obviously a lie since there were no WMD's.

Bush told me he cares about jobs, but then supported policies that encourage companies to export jobs overseas.

In other words, Bush has lied through his teeth enough times that when Bush tells me his actions are preventing terrorist attacks, I cannot take that statement at face value.


Yes, he was responding to very convenient intel that went against what the CIA was telling him - that Saddam didn't have WMD.

He also in his state of the union address said Iraq was buying yellowcake uranium even though he had already been told that was not true.


Hold on - we didn't go check Iraq out. We annihilated them. If I were to copy the actions of the USA in your grenade analogy, I wouldn't just check you out to find out whether or not you had the grenades. I'd walk up, blow your head off, and THEN look for the grenades.


If I killed you for it, hell yes. That's called murder.

The iraq war is nothing but murder writ large.

With an element of suicide thrown in. As of today, 9/13/06, more Americans have died in Iraq than died in teh 9/11 attacks. Think about that.

Nope. That's not suicide. Bush murdered our soldiers as well as the Iraqis.

Thanks! That's all I was looking for. :icare:

:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0001454.html

If Bush murdered Iraqis, by definition, our military members are the hitmen he hired.

Nice that you think so highly of them.

Marvelous Marv - do you realize, based on the chart you posted, that we desperately need to bring president Woodrow Wilson back from the dead!!!??

I'll do you one better: President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Sec. Def. Donald Rumsfeld are responsible for the deaths of tens of tousands to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, the same people that each of those three people said they were trying to protect. They are murderes in the same way that Saddam Husain is a murderer, in that they didn't actually pull the trigger, but they gave the orders that directly resulted in the deaths of innocent people that they should be protecting.

How do you like them liberal apples?

As for the military members: any military member that obeys an illegal order is a criminal.

I like them quite a bit.

And may I add.....

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!!

Let that be part of the DNC platform.

Oh dear lordy lordy please.

It'd be interesting, but I don't see it happening. The DNC doesn't have the balls to go full anti-Bush they way their constituants want. They are their own worst enemy. They suffer from Alan Colmes syndrome.

Let me underscore: the way their constituants want.

Justified or not, Ustwo, America wants blood, and the blood it wants is Bush's.

Sounds like 2004. If I recall correctly I remember quite a few people stating that a monkey could beat Bush, that it was a sure fire Kerry win. Don't count your eggs quite yet.

You're going to vote for Bush in 2008, aren't you. Be honest.

willravel, you can tell now, that one party "rule" and the corruption that is called the "war on terror", is imploding of it's own volution, before the midterm election has even taken place. The "tell" is that the "news" is looking remarkably similar to what you and I have written, discussed, and documented on these threads, for some time now.

Bush's and Rove's "special assistant", Susan Ralston, who worked for Jack Abaramoff as his "key" assistant, at the last two lobbying firms that he worked at, before he "copped a plea" and sang like a canary to federal prosecutors, against the thugs in "the one party" who sold the influence of their elected offices, to him....was in charge of Abramoff's "sky box" seats that he doled out to these politicians and their staffs. She determined policy and priority in the distribution of these small bribes....choice seats to sporting events. It is fitting that Ralston went directly from working for Abramoff for several years at Greenberg Traurig, to working on the white house staff since 2001. She is still there....employed these many years by a succession of corrupt, partisan thugs, who were all once "young republicans":
Ralston is still at the white house, even as more Abramoff tainted republicans plead guilty to corruption....the list is getting longer; remember Abramoffs cohort and former Tom Delay staffer, Michael Scanlon and his jilted fiancee, who blew the whistle on his corrupt lobbying/bribery, to the "Feds"? Emily was Colin Powell's assistant, and below, we see Powell "acting up"...writing uncannily similarly to the pronouncements of TFP's willravel, or "host":
<img src="http://www.apfn.org/apfn/emily-miller.jpg">
<b>Emily Miller</b>
Given this pathetic, incestuous, arrangement, it's increasingly hard to fathom that this bunch of misfit, incompetent, war criminals, bribesters, and political whores, could be the core of the "deterent" that Cheney takes credit for preventing us from getting "hit", again !

How do these affiliations, exposures, investigations, condemnations, and convictions, reflect on the folks who still su7pport the "leaders" and the ruling party?

Remember Bill Clinton in 1994.
Now remember him in 1996.

Bush's rating right now is at the same level as Clinton in 1994. This bodes well for the democrats in the upcomming elections (you recall the republican revolution of 1994) but means very little long term. If the democrats don't get DRAMATIC gains in November then they might as well throw in the towel. Bush has already beaten the usual preditions in 2002 and 2004, if it happens in 2006 despite the constant wave of negative press such as the leak lies, then something is seriously wrong with the democrats.

ShaniFaye quite selling youself short. There is NOTHING intellectual about using google and posting only the articles that you think support your cause, or worse, getting your propaganda spoon fed to you by the various partisan sites and rehashing it here. If anything the problem with politics is there is very little in the way of intellectual discussion where ideas are discussed.

Part of 'surviving' the politics board is learning how to use your scroll button liberally.

While I generally agree with your analysis, this simply isn't true.

In a poll released earlier this week, 30% of Americans favor impeachment. At the height of the Clinton impeachment circus, 25% favored, and when impeachment actually happened, it was 12% in favor of it. Clinton's impeachment--a transparently partisan manouver performed largely by men who hadn't admitted the illicit blowjobs they'd gotten--never had widespread public support. Impeachment proceedings against Bush would be supported by nearly a third of Americans. Considering he was elected by about that same percentage of all Americans, I think that says a lot.

This is a different statistic than the vaunted "approval rating", but as a higher bar, I think it's even more telling. "Do you disapprove" versus "do you want the guy out of there".

Incidentally, in a Zogby poll at the beginning of the year, 52% agreed with the statement, "If President Bush wiretapped American citizens without the approval of a judge, do you agree or disagree that Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment."

I don't think Bush can bluster his way out at this point. The tide is fixing to turn in congress and--at the VERY least--he'll have to seriously watch his step for the rest of his term.

If you think any large number of people who wats to impeach Bush were supporters in 2000 or 2004 you need to start to hang out with more conservatives. Who votes against you doesn't matter as long as more vote for you. Obviously the demonization of Bush is working with the left, but who cares?

Really the more frothy and screaming they become, they more they turn off moderate voters who don't see Bush as evil.

I hope they nominate someone all frothy for 2008 too, because any semi-sane democrat will win by default. Liberman getting ousted was a very good sign, though I think when it comes to the president the DNC will be more practical.

In all this thread so far, I continue to read about how horrible of a job Bush has done, and he should be impeached, etc. But there are two things that I still have trouble with here. Again, as I have said before, anyone can be an armchair quarterback, looking BACK at things that have been done, and then complaining about the way it was done is easy. Who here is a member of the CIA? The FBI? Attorney General's office? So how do you know for a fact that the information Bush received was incorrect? You know this by what you have been TOLD by other people, whether by news, other offices, other cabinet members who are trying to cover THEIR asses. So who do we believe? I just can't blindly accept everything that is being said here. I don't agree with everything Bush has done, of course not. But in turn, I also do not sit here and blindly call him a murderer. War sucks, people die, history shows this. As far as I am concerned, they have no problem killing our civilians, so SCREW theirs!

I think you are taking this a little out of context. You have to define an illegal order. You are an officer in command of a unit. You are ordered by YOUR superiors to attack a building that is housing "terrorists". You go attack it, because that is what you are ordered to do. Then later you find that the information was incorrect. Were you a criminal? OF COURSE NOT! You didn't know what intel was given, and as a unit leader, you follow orders, you don't do your own research. You don't ask your superiors to send YOU the intel to review it. You do what you are told. THAT is how it works. If every unit commander did their own checking, then nothing would EVER get done in time. When you are at war, sometimes you do not have the LUXURY of time to do a large amount of research on the intel.
Another example: Lets assume for this equasion that Ustwo (hehe...random pick...lol) is a knows terrorist. Now lets put him in a house in Miami on say the corner of First and Grand. Now Operative 1 sees him enter the house. He calls his boss, who notifies the CIA, and the CIA says "blow up the buiding". Recon 1 jumps into their jet, takes off, and bombs the house....Ustwo is inside, and is eliminated. Now what if we were to question the order? Recon 1 gets into their jet, and then says, MAYBE the information is wrong, so he calls back...Cia calls Operative 1's boss, who contacts Operative 1, who says, "You were too slow, he left, and I lost him"

This happens. It's not just a story. Sometimes we can't take the time to verify EVERYTHING. We decide to trust the intel, and act as fast as we can. SOMETIMES it turns out bad, other times it doesn't. It's the way war is.
I'm not saying that the current Administration is perfect, hell, show me one that is!


My other point is this, and it is more a question for everyone. If it were up to you, and you were in his place(Bush) what WOULD you do. Instead of rip him for his bad decisions, what would you do to FIX things? I am curious to hear everyone's ideas.

The problem is that we were saying the war on Iraq is wrong before we went in. That isn't hindsight, it's foresight. We can go back through TFP and find a lot of people who were against the Iraq War in 2002 and 2003.
I had no context. My statement is correct, and it is up to the reader to decide whether an order is illegal or not. The context lies with the reader.

For example, someone could read what I said and think, well, there are a lot of innocent (innocent meaning they have committed no crime) people being taken from their homes in Iraq to an American prison in Cuba and turtured and not given a trial. That would be a good context for my statement.

And we can ALSO look back and see many SUPPORTERS of the war.

My question to you is this then, what do YOU expect a leader to do as far as deciding if an order is illegal? Please give an example.

I fail to see the corelation between your claim of content above, and your earlier statement that
what illegal orders are you refering to? If I am ordered to capture someone suspected of war-crimes or whatever, It is NOT up to ME to decide if they are innocent civilians, or criminals. It is my job to capture them, and deliver them to my superiors. It is My SUPERIORS job to decide what is done at that point, not mine. How does THAT make me a criminal??? I am doing my job, as ordered. I Guarantee that if I were to tell them that I wasn't going to go into that town and capture that person, that I would be quickly replaced by someone who would, and THEN I would be summarily courts-martialed.

deltona: i'm sorry but i really do not see anything like a coherent defense of the war debacle in your posts--i see a number of pretty meaningless swipes--the "monday morning quarterback" one is particularly delightful in that it would effectively rule out any criticism whatsoever of this or any other administration--and that fits into the tenor of your posts in general, which seems little more than an extended justification for the following of orders.

the last bit in your post 66 even goes so far as to mount a nuremburg defense for the commission of war crimes--the argument is that you (hypothetically speaking, one would hope) would exempt yourself from asking rudimentary questions about right and wrong of a particulr action because you were simply following orders.

this is what is called compartmentalization--the separation of actions from consequences justified via a conception of one's professional duty--which leads to the erasure of any and all ethical questions, when taken to the limit, and is the kind of thinking that enabled perfectly nice people in everyday life who happened to find themselves administering a genocide in germany to see no particular problem with what they were doing. ethical questions were for higher-ups. we were just following orders. the problem is that everyone said the same thing: ethical questions were always for higher-ups, even when there wern't any. and everyone was just following orders.

it is alarming to see this kind of separation working in your posts, particularly given your affection for talking army-like in your posts. i assume that you have or have had some intimate contact with the military then. i would hope that this kind of compartmentalized thinking is not general in that context--if it is, that would explain many of the lovely actions carried out by folk who were simply following orders--you know, those nice folk in the basement of an old iraqi prison, the guys who saw that nice sign "no blood no foul" before they would torture some iraqi---who was obviously, following the degenerate legal logic of the bush administration, be guilty because he was arrested.

While the obvious thing to look at here is that in the past the 'I was ordered to' doesn't wash at a war crimes trial, war crimes trials are only for the losing side.

I'm sure in a reality where Japan came back and won WWII, Truman would have been on trial for war crimes for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But Deltona thats not really the issue here. You are dealing with people from the political spectrum which think, by default, the US is no better than the Nazi's. The Bushitler people therefore are very quick to call anything a war crime. Civilians die in war, accidental or not, but thats a war crime. Unsubstantiated claims of brutality? Thats a war crime. 9/11 happened? Its a war crime (by the US).

They also claim to the laughable concept of legality in war. Iraq was an 'illegal war' to them, and if their are intellectually honest, so was Bosnia. This odd concept of legality shows just how out of touch with reality this line of thinking is. Law is only as strong as the body enforcing it. If the law is set by a clan headman or the supreme court its only an issue as far as they have reach. Illegal orders even more silly. Illegal to who? The winner decides what orders were illegal and what was legal.

Your problem in this is you are viewing this, which to me, is a more rational view point. You don't see war crimes in our actions, therefore this talk seems like crazy talk.

Well we are talking about specific people in this thread, and I know I can go back and find that host, roach, and I were against. I *think* rat was against. I'm not sure about everyone else (we are talking about 3 years ago).
A car drivin by a child is headed towards a checkpoint outside of Bagdad (real americans spell feneticly). A guard at the checkpoint goes on his bullhorn and yells, "STOP OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE". The boy, who obviosuly doesn't speak english, keeps going. The commanding officer orders you to open fire.

That's illegal. You have the same intelligence as the CO on this situation, and based on that intelligence there is no reason to think this kid is an enemy combatent.
If you were ordered to rape a priosoner, would you? I mean it's your superior's job to decide if something is illegal or not, you're just a yes man.

Godwin in 3....2....1....

The Nazi soldiers at the prison camps and gas chambers were following orders.

And Ustwo, of course Bosnia was an illegal war.

just to clear up yet another misunderstanding of what i wrote from comrade ustwo--my favorite trotskyite theme poster---i mentioned the nuremberg defense to characterize the position outlined in deltona's post 66--i made it clear that the reason i did it was to set up comments about compartmentalization as a problem--and not to make the analogy that ustwo managed, somehow, to see in it.

it is always strange to see you mangle fairly straightforward posts in order to jam them into your ideological universe, ustwo...
geez....

can I ask a question? just to clarify in my mind what I may be under a misconception about.

Can't you be court marshalled (sp?) for going against a superiors orders if you are in the military?

The "war on terrorism" is so different from any war or enemy we have faced before, we absolutely have to reassess how we fight and win.

But our leaders should never lose the moral high ground, ignore the Constitution or violate our international treaty obligations, or we become what we have spent two centuries fighting against.

Since 9/11, this administration has used the pretext of terrorism for dozens of actions it has taken domestically and internationally and many people across the political spectrum have questioned the morality and/or legality of those actions. That doesnt make them terrorist appeasers or less committed to winning.

The greatest danger we face in a free society is when cititzens feel threatened, or even worse, are threatened, for questioning our leaders.

I, for one, believe we have headed down that road since 9/11 and the buck stops in the Oval Office.
ShaniFaye...absolutely, you can and should be court martialed for not following orders, even if you are morally opposed to the order. Otherwise, we would have chaos in the military. The one exception, I believe (but Im no expert on military law) is if you know with a high degree of certainty that the order is illegal.

The latest issue goes beyond that. Bush, in effect, wants to exempt the CIA from the same standards of treatment of prisoners as the military must follow. There is strong opposition to this, led by John McCain, who knows firsthand about torture, and has an alternative bill with bi-partisan support:

Responding to Bush, McCain rejected the president's assertion that an alternative bill approved by the Senate Armed Services Committee dealing with the trial and interrogation of terror suspects would require the closure of the CIA's detainee program.

McCain said his alternative bill would protect agents from criminal and civil liability and, by not reinterpreting the meaning of the Geneva Conventions, uphold the nation's obligations.

"To do any less risks our reputation, our moral standing and the lives of those Americans who risk everything to defend our country," the senator said.

And as Host noted, Colin Powell has a similar assessment:

Powell said Bush's plan to redefine the Geneva Conventions would cause the world "to doubt the moral basis" of the fight against terror and "put our own troops at risk.

Skirting the law and treaty obligations, no matter how well intended, is another step down that slippery slope that Bush seems intent on taking.

Actually, if it is an illegal order you are supposed to refuse or at the very least you do not have to follow it.

Now proving you were given an illegal order is nearly impossible.

Say for instance, if you know that torture is illegal, yet your superiors tell you to degrade and basically mind fuck a prisoner (among other things) and a picture is leaked out...... have fun trying to tell people it was an order.

Yet, had you not done as told how do you prove that you were told to do that, and since you didn't you were put on forward patrol in a vehicle whose armor hadn't been updated?

Really? So it's only crazy liberals who disapprove of Bush? Interesting... So you're saying that 67% of the US is made up members of the radical left. Where's the "moderate base", in that political cosmology? In the 32% that supports Bush?

(Note that I'm using "approval rating" here because it's less volatile language than "see Bush as evil." Last I looked, there are no polls asking about people's perception of Bush as "evil". To get a complete picture of public opinion, you have to look at both the approval rating and the polls about impeachment.)

Consider a more statistically supportable explanation: only those who are locked into their rightist views still support Bush, and the rest of the country at least disapproves, and at most is extremely pissed off.

That's right, Ustwo: YOU'RE part of the fringe.

Incidentally, I don't think Bush is evil. I don't believe in the concept of evil--I'm sure in his mind he had good intentions. But if Clinton was guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, the for DAMN sure Bush is too.

Maybe you missed the cats that look like Hitler thread.

I thought of this post, when I read this, tonight:
If it is true that American troops' lives are being sacrificed "to give the GOP a chance to retain control of Congress", in November, these disgusting, traitorous f**cks that pretend to be "our leaders", must be approaching the midterm elections, and the holidays that follow, secure in the knowledge, that, unlike in our family, where we have a son serving in the military, who is about to be deployed to a GWOT "combat zone" by this criminal "CIC", while the "leaders' " families will fill all of the chairs at their own holiday dinner tables. The males in their families, all have "other priorities".

It isn't even disclosed if Bush's two daughters, both college graduates now, for more than a year, even have jobs, let alone whether they serve the country in the GWOT.

I may miss a few things, because I haven't been back to this thread for a bit. Yes I HAVE spent time in the military. 8 years in the Marine Corps, including Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Maybe because of the atrocities that I have seen it leaves me jaded....maybe. However I have a deep love for all things military, in concept, theory, AND aplication. Yes, If you are given an order, and you can PROVE that it is an illegal order, you CAN disobey it. But my analogy was different that yours. At the checkpoint locations and I do mean EVERY checkpoint, the phrase "STOP, all persons must stop at this location" is written in Arabic on a sign that must be visible from 200 feet. ALSO the commander of said check point is taught to SPEAK that same phrase is Arabic, so that he may warn those approaching.
If the driver, who was 16 years old did not stop, would I shoot? simple answer... HELL YES! I am not there to pick and chose who MIGHT be wanting to kill us, and who won't. My job is simple, stop all vehicles, and search them for weapons or contraband. If they don't stop, shoot. Now this might upset some of you, and I am sorry, but considering some of the things that I have seen over there, it is a necessary evil. Unless you have spent time in combat, and dealt with some of the bastards over there who have killed our soldiers, then I am sorry, but you have no basis in condoning my actions. There is a video floating around on the internet, posted by terrorists that shows our soldiers being shot by a sniper. The entire video is sidelined with phrases saying that all persons who are not Muslim, or are in support of America, and the UN, NEED to be killed. Not accepted in their own contries, and left in peace, but killed. These people want to come to America and KILL you, me, your family...SIMPLY because we are not Muslims. Sorry, but I have no sympathy for ANYONE that has that mindset.

Should we end the war on terror? yea. that WOULD be nice, but do you HONESTLY think that if we just pulled out, and brought all our troops home, that they would stop, and leave us be? No. Why do I think this? because THEY have said it. THEY have said that even if we leave, they will contine to attack us. Not because we attacked them, or that we interfered, but because we are not MUSLIM. THAT is their words, not mine!

I will post the link to the video if the Moderators say that it is ok, but I will warn you...it is VERY graphic. These are the soldiers that lived down the street from you....went to church with you.... spent your kids birthdays with your kids as well.

interesting. thanks deltona.

let's pull this apart, though.

1. it is pretty obvious that no narrative about the "war on terror" is complete.

2. it is pretty obvious that the war in iraq has nothing to do with the "war on terror"--but it is also obvious that the actions of this administration have not only put lives needlessly in danger, subjected many many people to appalling situations for no bloody reason etc.---but further that the action in iraq has generated its own internal dynamic which is really not a good thing.
this internal dynamic apparently involves an appropriation of nationalist-style terminology in order to mobilize against a colonial invasion.
from a distance, this is not surprising and further is just another variant of the self-defeating logic of the bushwar.

however: i am not in the least suprised to see that if your viewpoint is shaped by your life having been in danger within the conflict itself, your view of what is happening is going to be shaped by what you encountered and not by the logic of debates about policy happening amongst people who have not been in the same position.

problem:

(a) it will appear, then, that arguments concerning policy logic invalidate the narrative of someone who was on the ground in iraq, and vice versa.

and

(b) the affect that one brings to bear on this matter will be affected by this.

so.

groundrule question before this goes any further:

i am entirely opposed to the war in iraq. period.
BUT
i am interested nonetheless in information about how this is playing out on the ground.

it has been quite difficult to get anything approaching reliable information about the situation being endured by the folk who simply by doing their jobs have found themselves in very considerable danger. this as a function of marketing the war, of the "lessons" the right apparently drew from their fucked-up version of the history of the vietnam war--which links the widespread opposition to that debacle to 2 factors above all: "excess information" particularly on television concerning the reality of war and the draft.

notice the centrality of these two issues in shaping the policies around iraq: pooled press, constant marketing on the one hand, and a refusal to institute the draft no matter what on the other.

anyway, the groundrule question is basically one of arriving at some kind of understanding about how the different types of narratives can co-exist within a debate about the "war on terror" and all its ramifications.

for whatever it's worth, i accept the incompleteness of information as given and would welcome more about what is endured in iraq: but i wonder how you, deltona, will deal with political dissent concerning the policies themselves.

any conversation involving your experience and political opposition to the policies that shaped your experience is going to involve problems of talking past each other.

the groundrule would then be some kind of agreement or understanding that such talking-past does not involve an invalidation of your perceptions of what happened to you.

if you can accept the inevitable talking-past-each-other matter, i for one would be interested in hearing more about your experiences---but i am not sure that anything positive can come of your sharing that information if there is not some kind of prior understanding about this.

keep in mind that a significant aspect of the marketing of this war in iraq has hinged on this talking-past issue--conservatives routinely tried to argue that any opposition to the war in iraq invalidated the experience of those who were there--this as a mean of trying to stifle dissent. while i might think this argument idiotic--and i do--it is nonetheless part of the sad political climate within which we operate, like it or not, and this motivates the gorundrule question that i am trying to pose to you.

so there we are for the moment.

I hope that it was not your intention to come across as you did, but your statement above makes me feel like you are assuming that my opinions are based on emotions, and not logic; which is untrue. I just have a different basis of where my information for my own logical opinions come from. And lets agree, that a large percentage of people opinions are basically that, opinions.

That being said, you are more than welcome to ask anything that you would like to know about some of what has happened overthere. Bear in mind that MY experiences are somewhat different than those currently serving, due to the fact that my time served was durring Desert Shield/Desert Storm, and not the current War in Iraq. However my supervisor here at my job just recently returned from Iraq, with a few stories of his own!...lol.

Some of what bothers me in where some people form their opinions and decisions from, is where they get it. Of course I cannot say for certain where you get your information from, but a large percentage of the poeple in my community who oppose the war say they read about it in the papers, and watch it on the evening news.
The problem with this is simple, the news is no longer what it used to be: A service to let people know the facts. It now is more based on what gets them ratings, and what is new and exciting at the time....Read this SENSATIONALISM JOURNAISM. Its a fact. I read about how a group of Marines went into a home of a suspected terrorist in Afganistan, and "brutally murdered" the entire family, "a mother, a father, and a young child" as it was published in the New York Times back in 1994. It was a horrific event as they said, and the public was outraged. What the news DIDN'T tell you, was that the "young child" was a 17 year old who was sitting at a table building a small explosive device with his dad helping, while the mother was sitting at the door with a Russian AK-47 keeping watch. So by the news given out in America, the Marines that killed them were shunned and talked badly about. But in reality, they most likely saved some lives. Do we Marines go out there and yell at the press and tell them they are wrong? No, sorry, we don't. We let the press do what they will, why? because we are out there fighting for their right to freedom of the press, freedom of their religion, freedom to make their own decisions. It is not our job to tell THEM right from wrong. We simply do a job. We do it, and continue on to the next one. We don't ask for anyones thank you's, we don't ask for you to tell us we have done a good job. We only ask that you appreciate what we are fighting for. Is it backed sometimes by personal political gain? Yea, I think for some of it, yes. But remember; WE are the ones in the field. WE are the ones who protect ourselves, and those that we are ordered to protect. WE are the ones who must answer to God for our actions, so that America might be able to enjoy one more day of freedom of LIFE.

Yes I do watch the political aspects. I do believe that it is not just our right, but our DUTY to question our government. But by putting on that uniform, we also give up the right to question our orders. We do what we are told, or other people may die. It is a sad, sad truth.

Do I agree with the Bush political situation? I might supprise you by saying no, I do not agree. Do I think the current campaign is only involved in politics though? No I do not. Politics is a big factor, but not the only factor. Should we end the war? No. But we should have a better sight on the objective, and the means. I would continue, but I am out of time for now. Any other questions PLEASE feel free to ask. Thank you for your insights ladies and gentlemen....Until next time.....

deltona:

i didnt mean based on emotion--quite the opposite--i meant based on context, on situation----i am just waking up-- it is too early in the coffee rounds for anything more....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5329350.stm

So: the Senate Intelligence Committee has now determined that we had no damn business going into Iraq in the first place, that every justification given for war was false, and that, in fact, by removing Saddam from power, we took out an ally against Al Qaeda.

Whups.

The only remaining question is whether the Democrats can use this without stepping into the "weak on terror" beartraps that the administration has set out for them.

the full senate report is quite interesting and it goes fast too. (150 pages of big print with the occasional big black lines through text)

it is available as a .pdf here:

http://intelligence.senate.gov/phaseiiaccuracy.pdf

the full text has a certain strange ritual force to it, particularly in the repetition of sentences on the order of:
"this has been found not to be true"
or
"there was no evidence of this"
or
"al-qa'ida was operating in the kurdish-controlled areas of northern iraq and was perceived by saddam hussein as a threat to the iraqi regime"
or
well pick your bushargument and look up the assessment of the "evidence" it was based on and you'll find your very own "this was not true" statements....


not a single argument advanced by the administration was true.
not one.
none of it was true.
none of it.

it is pretty amazing to read, even though folk have known this, at one level or another, all along....

We've kicked this "Senate Select Intel Committee, Releases "one part" of it's "Phase II report, which was divided into two parts in 2004, and then the second part was divided into five parts by committee chairman, Pat Roberts, (R-KS), in 2006, so that most of it's release could be delayed until after yet another elections cycle" .... "news reporting"........around, here:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=108336

....and now, they have successfully delayed most of the "Phase II" release, past yet another election.....and it's exactly 27 months later than when this exchange took place:
Presumably, only the least damning portions of the Phase II senate intel. report were released, last month. It is long past the time that Rockefeller, rather than make excuses for Pat Roberts' blatant, politically motivated obstruction, should have resigned in protest....from the Senate Select Committee on Intel. Rockefeller has destroyed his own credibility and helped Roberts keep the rest of this information....the deliberate, fixing of "facts", to match the policy, that the "Downing Street Memos" described, in July, 2002, from the voters through both the 2004 and now, the 2006 elections.

While the information given is interesting, and shows a lot of information, some of which I am still trying to decypher from "legal-speak" in some cases, I still pose this question: How do we know that this "Senate Select Intel Committee" is getting all the right information? lol...How do we know that THEY arent lying to us to better support hteir OWN political agendas? Does anyone see where I am going with this at all? It's a poke in jest here, but a real evaluation. The common citizen can only rely on what they are told, and who they trust. Personally I don't trust anyone that is involved in the political world....I know it is a necessary evil in our society, but personally I find faults and mistrust in all those involved at some point.....