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ReeseDog
Joined: 05 Apr 2008
Location: Classified
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 Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 12:09 pm Post subject: |
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| spliff wrote: |
| contrarian wrote: |
| I think Bush should have stuck to his guns and gone on a genuine crusade after 9/11. |
Aye. |
Yes, indeed. |
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Don Gately
Joined: 20 Mar 2006
Location: In a basement taking a severe beating
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| Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 1:47 pm Post subject: |
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| ReeseDog wrote: |
| spliff wrote: |
| contrarian wrote: |
| I think Bush should have stuck to his guns and gone on a genuine crusade after 9/11. |
Aye. |
Yes, indeed. |
I think he should have stuck to his guns of running the Texas Rangers franchise into the ground. That way, the Mariners would have one fewer good team to compete against in the division, and I could admit to being American when traveling abroad.
Barring that, he should have stuck to his guns as a coke fiending drunk. |
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agentX
Joined: 12 Oct 2007
Location: Jeolla province
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| Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2008 7:34 am Post subject: |
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| bucheon bum wrote: |
| BreakfastInBed wrote: |
| agentX wrote: |
If Gore were president, Sept 11th probably wouldn't have happened |
What leads you to believe this? |
yes, I'm also intrigued to hear the logic behind this statement. |
I say probably because it's not a 100% certainty the events would not have unfolded in the manner that they did. More likely a 60% chance the events would not have unfolded in the same way.
Why not, you ask? Because Gore knows how to read a memo.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0409041pdb1.html
"Bin Ladin determined to strike in US." |
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BreakfastInBed
Joined: 16 Oct 2007
Location: Gyeonggi do
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| Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2008 9:49 am Post subject: |
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| agentX wrote: |
| bucheon bum wrote: |
| BreakfastInBed wrote: |
| agentX wrote: |
If Gore were president, Sept 11th probably wouldn't have happened |
What leads you to believe this? |
yes, I'm also intrigued to hear the logic behind this statement. |
I say probably because it's not a 100% certainty the events would not have unfolded in the manner that they did. More likely a 60% chance the events would not have unfolded in the same way.
Why not, you ask? Because Gore knows how to read a memo.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0409041pdb1.html
"Bin Ladin determined to strike in US." |
We'll have to agree to disagee on this point. I can't believe there's even a 10% likelihood that a Gore administration would have prevented those particular people from boarding those particular planes on that particular day 5 months after receiving a vaguely worded, if provocatively titled, memo.
It pains me to defend Bush, but what could he, or Gore (or anyone), have realistically done? 9/11 was unprecedented. The US was a different place. How could either, at the time, have justified taking the steps necessary to prevent such an act and maintained them for so long? How many eventualities would they have had to consider? How many flights and buildings and subways and passenger boats and stadiums and on and on could be possible targets? How much would it cost and what kind of manpower would it require?
Post 9/11 a large portion of the population is resistant to things like the Department of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act, how would they have gone down pre-9/11? Despite our technological sophistication we've always been a somewhat naive country, not unlike the American in Melville's Benito Cereno. Planes taking down those buildings was outside the scope of our imagination. Even had the higher-ups taken a certain non-corroborated threat with deadly seriousness, it would have been a tough sell to the rest of us and there wouldn't have been a whole lot they could do.
For fun let's assume some of the 9/11 conspiracy theorists are correct, that 9/11 was planned and perpetrated by the US government in order to foist things like the Patriot Act and Homeland Security on the American people. Why on earth would they have gone through so much trouble if simply citing this smoking gun memo would have sufficed? If we expect an administration to take it so much to heart shouldn't we expect as much from the citizenry? There's just not enough there to go on. |
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agentX
Joined: 12 Oct 2007
Location: Jeolla province
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| Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 6:40 am Post subject: |
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Gore would have gone after Al-Qaeda after the Cole Bombing whereas Bush did very little to stop Al Qaeda prior to 9/11. Gore would have beefed up airport security slightly. There were preliminary reports, investigations and foreign intelligence briefings coming in at that time that Bush/Cheney ignored which Gore or anyone else probably wouldn't have.
Of course, even with DHS around now, knives and weapons are still getting thru. That US Sky Marshal program isn't even fully staffed. That TSA terrorist watch list is a partisan attack list, or are there really 1 million terrorists in the US? Is Sen. Edward Kennedy really a terrorist?
Would beefed up airport security on 9/11 caught the terrorists? Maybe it would have, maybe it wouldn't.
| Quote: |
| Planes taking down those buildings was outside the scope of our imagination. |
I read a men's magazine (maxim or Stuff) and saw a Nightline episode where terrorism experts discussed those exact possibilities a few months prior to 9/11. So people knew it was a possibility. Certainly Rice had to have known about it. |
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contrarian
Joined: 20 Jan 2007
Location: Nearly in NK
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| Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 6:45 am Post subject: |
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| Why didn't Clinton do anything after the Cole bombing? To distracted by Monica under hes desk, I guess! |
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chellovek
Joined: 29 Feb 2008
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| Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 8:12 pm Post subject: |
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When you say "genuine crusade", what specifically are you wanting to happen? I mean specific actions, not vague stuff like "we need to properly punish the terrorists."  |
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contrarian
Joined: 20 Jan 2007
Location: Nearly in NK
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| Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 9:11 pm Post subject: |
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Call it a Crusade, the antithesis of a Jihad. A no holds barred war on the Islamic world. No santuaries, lots of racial profiling and use their own methods against them.
Back Israel to the hilt. |
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BreakfastInBed
Joined: 16 Oct 2007
Location: Gyeonggi do
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| Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 11:21 pm Post subject: |
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| agentX wrote: |
| Quote: |
| Planes taking down those buildings was outside the scope of our imagination. |
I read a men's magazine (maxim or Stuff) and saw a Nightline episode where terrorism experts discussed those exact possibilities a few months prior to 9/11. So people knew it was a possibility. Certainly Rice had to have known about it. |
I guess I mean something a bit subtler by "outside the scope of our imagination" than No one having Ever thought of it.
I'll give you an example. Before moving to Korea I was aware, abstractly, that there would be Cultural Differences. I was quite confident in my ability to adapt to and handle them. I had read about Confucianism (though in nothing as prestigious as Maxim or Stuff). I was ready to bow and pour other people's drinks. Let people save face. Defer to superiors. Piece of cake. And while none of this is wrong, it is all quite shallow; the reality, the depth and intensity of difference experienced living here, was well outside the scope of my imagination even though I considered myself prepared and aware.
Something like that. |
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SirFink
Joined: 05 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 7:13 am Post subject: |
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| I love the recent push to polish the soiled legacy of Bush Jr. by the mustachioed, anal-retentive, reactionary right wing. In ten years they'll be trying to get his head carved into Mt. Rushmore. |
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contrarian
Joined: 20 Jan 2007
Location: Nearly in NK
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| Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 8:21 am Post subject: |
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"mustachioed"? You are joking of course. I am 68 and had a mustache once for three weeks. My wife told me shave it off or I was cut off . . .
Bush on Mt. Rushmore? Wonderful idea, he would fit real well with Teddy Roosevelt. They both has kick butt attitudes. |
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Privateer
Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Location: Easy Street.
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| Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 5:28 pm Post subject: |
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| It often seems to me that 'liberal' is a convenient catch-all term for anyone who disagrees with a reactionary conservative; and one that has very successfully been changed into a term of abuse by relentless propaganda such as the article in the OP. |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 10:52 pm Post subject: |
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| Privateer wrote: |
| It often seems to me that 'liberal' is a convenient catch-all term for anyone who disagrees with a reactionary conservative; and one that has very successfully been changed into a term of abuse by relentless propaganda such as the article in the OP. |
It was succesfully changed into a term of abuse by most liberals' behaviour.
That had more to do with it then anything else. |
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moosehead
Joined: 05 May 2007
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| Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 1:29 am Post subject: |
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| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
| Privateer wrote: |
| It often seems to me that 'liberal' is a convenient catch-all term for anyone who disagrees with a reactionary conservative; and one that has very successfully been changed into a term of abuse by relentless propaganda such as the article in the OP. |
It was succesfully changed into a term of abuse by most liberals' behaviour.
That had more to do with it then anything else. |
yes, shame on liberal's for standing up and actually marching in the streets for the CONSTITUTION and the BILL OF RIGHTS
how dare we !!  |
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contrarian
Joined: 20 Jan 2007
Location: Nearly in NK
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| Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 6:20 am Post subject: |
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| The term loony left fits very well. |
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