# Bush says attack would be bad
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-says-attack-would-be-bad/145989
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Created:** [January 1, 2003, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-says-attack-would-be-bad/145989 "2003-01-01T04:13:51Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2003, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-says-attack-would-be-bad/145989/41 "2003-01-02T00:02:10Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Binarydrone \*
> \*\*Point of order: the fact that this war is something that we can talk about being sold makes my skin crawl. Generally, when someone is trying to sell me something, I either don’t need it or can’t afford it.
>
> Why is this ok? \*\*
I think it’s universally agreed that a President ought to promote among the public those policies he favors. A few months ago, it was a Democratic talking point that, “Bush has not made the case for war with Iraq.” Note that this POV presupposes that Bush has the obligation to make the case.
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### Author:  [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2003, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-says-attack-would-be-bad/145989/42 "2003-01-02T00:13:44Z")
That’s all well and good, **december**. Indeed, if he regards such a horror as war to be something that we cannot and must not avoid, of course he must make his case. Such simplistic remarks as these make no case at all: save one. It underscores his insinuation that a war on Iraq is the War on Terror. To date, as you know, I know, and he sure as hell _ought_ to know, no evidence of such a connection exists.
“Surrogates”, my ass! Ya’ll got a cite for that, GeeDubya?
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### Author:  [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2003, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-says-attack-would-be-bad/145989/43 "2003-01-02T01:00:58Z")
Oh, man…Let’s get started.
> [@](#):
>
> ## Sam: What you said was: quote:
>
> ## United Airlines is bankrupt because of 9/11.
>
> And the point of my cite is that it showed that United Airlines was already in deep financial trouble way before 9/11, and that in fact you cannot prove that UA is bankrupt because of 9/11. If you have a cite that shows otherwise, by all means, trot it out.
Your cites showed that airlines were in trouble before. Whoo-de-freaking-do. Airlines are ALWAYS in trouble. I’ll bet you didn’t know that up until a decade or so, the airline industry as a whole was a net LOSER in the history of aviation. More money has been lost flying people around than had been made. Nonetheless, this has nothing to with whether or not the events of 9/11 pushed United over the edge into bankruptcy. Your own cite said that 9/11 was a serious blow to the airlines.
Now, if you had come back with something reasonable and said, “Well, 9/11 might have been a contributing factor, but it wasn’t the only factor”, then I would have met you half way and agreed with you. Instead, you tried to come up with some cites to prove an implied assertion that 9/11 really didn’t have much to do with anything. And that would be wrong. 9/11 was a SERIOUS blow to the airlines, and I have yet to find an analyst who thinks otherwise. Why do you think Bush had to cough up an immediate 5 billion dollars just to keep them all afloat after the attack?
The effect of 9/11 on the airlines is obvious to anyone who cares to look, which is why I got so annoyed at your quasi-related cites which you disingenuously trotted out to try and prove otherwise. Here are some cites for you:
**Airlines, travel industry still hurting from lack of business in attack’s wake.**
> [@](#):
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> Most major airlines cut their schedules and staff by about 20 percent in the wake of the attack, reducing their capacity to fly passengers by 16 percent. But the October traffic numbers from the Air Transport Association show the miles flown by paying customers are down 25 percent, despite deeply discounted fares.
[CITE.](http://money.cnn.com/2001/11/08/travel/aftermath_travel/)
**New York Area Airline Workers Face Severe Economic Hardships**
> [@](#):
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> More than half the New York area airline workers laid off in the wake of last year’s terrorist attack remain unemployed and face far greater difficulty finding new jobs than non-airline related employees, according to a survey released today by the City University of New York Graduate Center in conjunction with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM).
[CITE.](http://www.iamdl142.org/new_page_1.htm)
**Airlines Slow to Recover**
> [@](#):
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> Six months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack in which four commerical jetliners were hijacked, the U.S. airline industry remains deeply troubled with some carriers still near the brink of bankruptcy.
[CITE.](http://money.cnn.com/2002/03/13/news/companies/airlines/)
Okay, so we’ve seen that the airlines were hurt by 9/11. But was United’s bankruptcy directly related?
**Q&A: United Airlines bankruptcy**
> [@](#):
>
> \*\*Why is United in trouble? \*\*
>
> United Airlines is the biggest victim so far of the slump in airline travel that began with the terrorist acts of 11 September 2001.
>
> Many people stopped flying, afraid that airlines might again be used as weapons of terror.
>
> And flights by Americans abroad - the most profitable routes for United - were particularly hard-hit.
[CITE.](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2559689.stm)
Do I need to continue about the airlines? Or are you yet willing to concede the point that 9/11 was a severe blow to them, your irrelevant cites in the face of common sense notwithstanding?
> [@](#):
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> Your comment about Christmas sales was clearly in relation to 9/11. The whole subject of the friggin’ thread, Sam, is “how terrorist attacks could threaten the economy”, and you were talking about how 9/11 tanked the economy, and then you went on to add, “Today the economy is barely struggling back to life, but consumer confidence is very low, and we just had the worst Christmas season in 30 years.”
Well, you got the quote right, but how do you get from that that I believe that the Christmas season’s performance was related to 9/11? My point was that confidence was high before 9/11, yet it still had devastating economic consequences. But NOW, with consumer confidence as low as it is, the consequences would be even worse. Do you see me trying to make a connection between today’s consumer confidence and an attack a year and a half ago? If you do, perhaps I need to explain it again, perhaps in crayon.
> [@](#):
>
> I “chose to get all literal and narrow of interpretation”, as opposed to making wide, sweeping, categorical, empty statements such as, “If Europe had shown some backbone to Hitler, WWII might have been avoided”, because unlike some people I could name, I dislike wide, sweeping, categorical, empty statements. And BTW, please be so kind as to explain to me why it is somehow unfair debating tactics to address the literal meaning of a wide, sweeping, categorical, empty statement, to deconstruct it, to break it down to its lowest common denominator. I know what the answer is–the answer is that it’s unfair tactics because when you break a wide, sweeping, categorical, empty statement down into its literal components, it suddenly sounds like complete horseshit.
So, making an analogy or showing an historical example is a “wide, sweeping, unsubstantiated argument”? Gee, I thought learning from history was a useful exercise. And you think trying to extract sentences in an overly-literal fashion is a fair debating technique? Here, let’s try an example:
Me: “Saddam can be trusted to light his oil fields on fire, because he used that tactic in 1991.”
You: “What, are you saying this is 1991? Are you ever stupid.”
You will no doubt think this analogy is unfair, but in fact it’s more charitable than your assinine statement deserved. Because this is how our exchange went:
Me: “Negotiating through strength is a good tactic. Perhaps if the free world had shown more backbone to Hitler before WWII, he wouldn’t have started goose-stepping all over Europe.”
You: “Oh boy. So Saddam Hussein = Adolf Hitler?”
Now, do you think that was a reasonable response on your part? Did I at any point try to say that Saddam == Hitler? Would any reasonable reader think that that was the POINT of my analogy? Or were you engaging in a little snide sophistry?
> [@](#):
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> ## quote:
>
> ## Duck Duck Goose and others who choose to parse anything Bush says in the strictest terms in order to make him look ‘stupid’
>
> I hereby challenge you, here and now, you useless whiner, to go and find three (3) cites of SDMB threads where I indulged in pointless and biased Bush-bashing. G’wan, I dare ya. Here, use [www.boardreader.com](http://www.boardreader.com) it’s faster, put in “straightdope” first and then your search string.
Gee, I think we can find that many examples right here in this thread. The above sophistry would be one. Your choosing to nitpick Bush’s choice of the word ‘Surrogate’ is another (and in any event, your nitpick was wrong). Everyone else but you understood what Bush was saying when he said “We can’t sustain an attack by Saddam or a surrogate”. You’re the one who chose to go to the dictionary in order to ‘prove’ that Bush was stupid.
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### Author:  [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2003, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-says-attack-would-be-bad/145989/44 "2003-01-02T01:13:07Z")
Let me add that you went on your cite-laden rampage to apparently refute the notion that the 9/11 attacks were a serious blow to the U.S. economy. Frankly, I thought this was common knowledge, which is why I didn’t go digging for cites in the first place. But, since we’re now backing everything up, here is an excellent cite from the [Center for Contemporary Conflict](http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/rsepResources/si/aug02/homeland.asp).
From the cite, we learn:
[ul]
[li]The destruction of physical assets was estimated in the national accounts to amount to $14 billion for private businesses, $1.5 billion for state and local government enterprises and $0.7 billion for federal enterprises. Rescue, cleanup and related costs have been estimated to amount to at least $11 billion for a total direct cost of $27.2 billion. [/li][li]Immediately after the attacks, leading forecast services sharply revised downward their projections of economic activity. The consensus forecast for U.S. real GDP growth was instantly downgraded by 0.5 percentage points for 2001 and 1.2 percentage points for 2002. The implied projected cumulative loss in national income through the end of 2003 amounted to 5 percentage points of annual GDP, or half a trillion dollars. [/li][li]The U.S. airline sector **has lost around 20 percent of its relative value since September 10**. (bolding mine)[/li][li]Relative equity values for hotels and leisure facilities are off by around 15 percent. [/li][/ul]
Note that the cite gives an overall figure for the short and medium term losses of 5% of GDP. I said the total cost was about 10% of GDP. So given that the long-term costs haven’t been assessed, it would look like I was pretty close after all.
I also said that another similar attack would put us back in a recession. The cite above says that the attack caused an immediate contraction of .5% of annual growth. Given that we’re at .3% growth now, it would appear that, all else being equal another attack would indeed put us back into a recession. But my assertion is that another, similar attack would be even worse, because confidence is now lower than it was, and less stable, and there is less resiliency on the economy.
So in the end, I think I was exactly correct on all points.
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### Author:  [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2003, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-says-attack-would-be-bad/145989/45 "2003-01-02T01:27:27Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Sam Stone \*\*\*
> You have to read pretty far down to see that they are talking about the weakest GROWTH. In absolute or relative dollars, this is probably still the BEST holiday season ever, not the WORST. It’s just not as good as was expected. \*\*
No doubt this is a subject best asked in a new thread, but isn’t it kind of silly that there has to be _growth_ for the economy to be considered “good”? And not just growth, but a lot of growth? I’ll never understand economics.
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### Author:  [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2003, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-says-attack-would-be-bad/145989/46 "2003-01-02T03:16:09Z")
I don’t either but…more people all the time means more money all the time. If theres more people all the time but the amount of money statys the same…anarchy, chaos, moral breakdown, dogs and cats living together…the usual.
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### Author:  [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2003, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-says-attack-would-be-bad/145989/47 "2003-01-02T05:35:10Z")
Manhattan: Thanks for the input, but I once worked for a company that actually went through Chapter 11, and reorganized, and went down the street and started over, so where United Airlines is concerned, it’s not over till it’s over.
And they’re still in there swinging.
> **[East Bay Times](https://www.eastbaytimes.com/)**
> [@](#):
>
> U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Eugene Wedoff said he would rule as early as Jan. 9 whether to accept temporary wage cut agreements reached with the unions. The world’s second-biggest airline, which said it has the highest employee costs in the industry, needs to reduce labor costs by Feb. 15 to meet requirements for its $1.5 billion bankruptcy financing.
>
> United is the dominant airline in the Bay Area and operates more than half the flights at San Francisco International. It will prune 7 percent of those 159 daily flights in early January.
Sam:
Geez, I’m beginning to wonder if there’s any point to this. Are you actually reading anything I’m posting?
> [@](#):
>
> **are you yet willing to concede the point that 9/11 was a severe blow to them**
“Concede” it? Geez, I’ve only repeated it twice now, as MY cite. :rolleyes:
[http://www.cnn.com/2002/TRAVEL/12/31/airlines.reform.ap/index.html](http://www.cnn.com/2002/TRAVEL/12/31/airlines.reform.ap/index.html)
> [@](#):
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> Then came September 11, 2001, and demand was further crimped by fears of terrorism and the perception that new security measures made air travel more of a hassle than it was worth. Almost immediately American, United and Delta cut back on capacity and jobs, while the industry secured $5 billion cash in emergency funding from the federal government.
I don’t have a problem with 9/11 being a “severe blow” to “the airlines” plural. I just have a problem with the flat statement that “9/11 caused United Airlines to go bankrupt”.
Question: if 9/11 was so damn devastating to the airlines, how come the other airlines mentioned in the story, American and Delta, aren’t also in Chapter 11? Answer: because United had long-established major pre-existing problems.
From August 2000.
> **[North County](https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/communities/north-county)**
> [@](#):
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> United Airlines’ problems affect mail delivery
>
> DENVER (AP) – The flight delays and cancellations that have plagued United Airlines this summer have taken their toll on mail service, the Postal Service said Friday.
>
> Last week, heavy flight cancellations on domestic routes caused one- to two-day delays in mail service, said Postal Service spokesman Al DeSarro.
>
> \< snip \>
>
> From Aug. 1 through Thursday, 13 percent of United flights were canceled, the company said. Hundreds of U.S. domestic flights are canceled daily due to weather, mechanical problems, air traffic control issues and other reasons, but United has been by far the worst performer in recent months.
>
> The airline has blamed labor problems, including some pilots’ refusal to work overtime during protracted contract talks. The pilots’ union has said that there is no organized effort to discourage pilots from working overtime and that the airline needs to hire more pilots.
> **[The latest from the StarTribune](https://www.startribune.com/)**
>
> Follow the StarTribune for the news, photos and videos from the Twin Cities and beyond.
> [@](#):
>
> United’s service at core of its problems
> Scott McCartney
> Wall Street Journal
>
> Published Dec. 16, 2002 TRAV16
>
> \< snip \>
>
> United has more hubs than any other carrier, located in large, well-traveled cities such as Chicago, San Francisco, Denver, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. United has highly desirable landing rights at London’s Heathrow Airport, and even more-coveted rights in Tokyo. It is an anchor of the biggest international alliance, and it has Pan American’s legendary South American network.
>
> Why then, has the airline filed for bankruptcy? The answer is simple: Because size isn’t everything. Service is.
>
> One often-overlooked reason for the carrier’s downfall may be that, for years, United hasn’t been a particularly good airline.
>
> Since the U.S. Department of Transportation began publishing on-time statistics in 1987, United has cumulatively ranked ninth among the nine major airlines. For the past five years, United has been either last or next-to-last in baggage handling. For 2000 and 2001, United led the industry in customer complaints.
Your cites on the airlines’ and travel industry’s financial woes are irrelevant. None of them says, “9/11 caused United to go bankrupt”. Your BBC cite doesn’t say, “9/11 caused United to go bankrupt”. All your BBC cite says is, “United was hit hard by the post 9/11 slump in air travel.” Being “hit hard” isn’t the same thing as “going bankrupt”. American and Delta were also “hit hard” by the slump in air travel–why aren’t they in bankruptcy court, too?
> [@](#):
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> \*\*My point was that confidence was high before 9/11, yet it still had devastating economic consequences.
\*\*Confidence was NOT high before 9/11–are you paying attention at all? From the CNN story–“For the third straight year, the growth in holiday sales has slowed.” That’s Christmas 2000, Christmas 2001, Christmas 2002. Christmas 2000 was _before_ 9/11. Confidence was not high, Christmas 2000.
> [@](#):
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> \*\*But NOW, with consumer confidence as low as it is, the consequences would be even worse.
\*\*Okay, I’ll repeat it again–it wouldn’t matter whether consumer confidence was low or high–after 9/11, the economy IMPROVED. You CANNOT find any kind of proof at all, anywhere, to show that that 9/11, **by itself** , caused the entire economy to sour. The proof, which I have posted and which you are consistently completely IGNORING, is just the OPPOSITE–after 9/11, the economy did not sour, it GOT BETTER, therefore, 9/11 didn’t cause the economy to sour.
It doesn’t matter what kind of Christmas retail season we just had, it doesn’t matter whether consumer confidence is low–if we had another terrorist attack, if they blew up the Golden Gate Bridge or put LSD into the Schoharie Reservoir, IT WOULDN’T FREAKIN’ MATTER. It wouldn’t tank the entire economy, the same way that 9/11 DIDN’T TANK THE ENTIRE ECONOMY. Look at the friggin’ NUMBERS.
Maybe I’m the one who should get out the box of crayons. :rolleyes: Or go take a pill or something…
I’m not going to discuss Hitler and Saddam any more with you–you dropped a load of horse apples in the middle of the thread and now you’re pissed off that nobody seems to appreciate their fine fragrance.
I’m beginning to suspect that evidently you have a reading comprehension problem. Evidently you don’t understand what “pointless and biased Bush-bashing” entails. Evidently you think it means “any criticism of Bush that you consider unfair”.
I’ll try to explain it, without crayons.
“Pointless” means “without a point”. “Biased” means “unfairly prejudiced in one direction or another”. “Bashing” carries the connotation of illogically insulting. Taken all together, “pointless and biased bashing” means “unfair and illogically insulting”.
Pointless and biased bashing is where someone comes into a thread and spouts off a lot of partisan invective full of baseless prejudice and everybody else in the thread goes, “Huh? Where did THAT come from?” Or where several partisans get together in a thread and loudly trumpet “their side” in fierce and sometimes unreasoning opposition to “the other side”.
THAT is what I’m challenging you to go find that I have ever done to Bush, and which I betcha can’t. If my “nitpicky” comments in this thread (at the express invitation of the OP, I might add) could be taken to constitute “pointless and biased Bush-bashing”, then I notice I’m in good company, with many other people here indulging in what you evidently consider similar “pointless and biased Bush-bashing”, up to and including the OP. :rolleyes:
> [@](#):
>
> \*\*Let me add that you went on your cite-laden rampage to apparently refute the notion that the 9/11 attacks were a serious blow to the U.S. economy.
\*\*Are you retarded? Seriously–are you mentally challenged in some way?
I went on my “cite-laden rampage” not to refute the notion that 9/11 was a “serious blow”, but to refute your bullshit statement that 9/11 “damaged the economy heavily” and that “Today the economy is barely struggling back to life.”
I’m not questioning the fact that 9/11 was fucking EXPENSIVE. I’m not questioning the fact that 9/11 was a “serious blow” to the economy. It was an expensive, serious blow–but it didn’t HEAVILY DAMAGE the ENTIRE American economy. If it had heavily damaged the entire American economy, the numbers would be completely different. And they’re not. The numbers say that 9/11, although expensive, did not heavily damage the economy, that in the quarters after 9/11, the economy actually IMPROVED.
A “serious blow” to an economy doesn’t necessarily heavily damage the entire economy. Hurricane Andrew was a serious blow to the Florida economy, but it didn’t put it in the toilet.
All your CCC cite proves is that “9/11 was fucking expensive”. Well, whoop-de-do. Whether 9/11 was EXPENSIVE or not is not under discussion–the topic at hand is your statement that it tanked the economy. Which it DIDN’T. And that the economy is only now “barely struggling back to life”. Which it ISN’T.
Plus–I can’t believe I have to point this out to you–your cite consists, at least partly, of an OLD ECONOMIC FORECAST. I mean, geez, why don’t you cite Sylvia Brown or something useful like that? :rolleyes:
> [@](#):
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> \*Immediately after the attacks, leading forecast services sharply revised downward their projections of economic activity. The consensus forecast for U.S. real GDP growth was instantly downgraded by 0.5 percentage points for 2001 and 1.2 percentage points for 2002. The implied projected cumulative loss in national income through the end of 2003 amounted to 5 percentage points of annual GDP, or half a trillion dollars. \*
That’s it? That’s your cite? An old prediction? Geez. :rolleyes:
And as if that’s not bad enough, in the VERY NEXT FUCKING PARAGRAPH, your own cite says:
> [@](#):
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> \*With production disrupted in some areas (airlines) and consumers increasingly cautious, real GDP shrank in the third quarter of 2001. But in the fourth quarter, demand held up better than initially feared, and GDP increased. \*
And in the VERY NEXT FUCKING PARAGRAPH after that, it says:
> [@](#):
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> _Some sectors or firms actually witnessed an increase in demand, notably in the area of security and information technology._
And in the VERY NEXT FUCKING PARAGRAPH after THAT, it says:
> [@](#):
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> \*\*Overall however the short-term adverse economic impact of the attacks was far less than feared initially, thanks in large part to good economic crisis management. The Federal Reserve, the Administration and Congress acted quickly to restore confidence, inject liquidity and provide resources to deal with the consequences of the attacks. The Federal Reserve by lowering the price of credit and temporarily providing vast amounts of liquidity helped safeguard the integrity of the financial system and saved many firms from bankruptcy.
\*\*
Helllooooo?
For the last time: I’m questioning your statement that 9/11 put the economy in the toilet and it’s just now starting to crawl out of it. This is
NOT
TRUE.
And since it is NOT TRUE that one terrorist attack put the American economy in the toilet, it is DEEPLY STUPID to say that another one would, **TOO**. You can’t have a “ **too** ” if you haven’t had a “ **first time** ”.
> [@](#):
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> \*\*So in the end, I think I was exactly correct on all points.
\*\*Only in your dreams. :rolleyes: You are, however, correct on the following points:
[ul][li]9/11 was expensive.[/li][li]9/11 dealt a severe economic blow to United Airlines.[/li][li]The Christmas 2002 retail season was bad, for the third year in a row.[/li][/ul]But I do thank you for actually looking up some cites. That’s good practice for you in using Google. Hopefully you’ll be able to put it to use there in kindergarten, although I confess I am surprised that kindergartners have Internet access at your school.
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### Author:  [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2003, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-says-attack-would-be-bad/145989/48 "2003-01-02T05:50:28Z")
hehehe
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### Author:  [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2003, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-says-attack-would-be-bad/145989/49 "2003-01-02T16:34:47Z")
Friends, there are many uses for the word _cause_. [Aristotle found at least four.](http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/GREECE/4CAUSES.HTM) In the spirit of the New Year, let us acknowledge that all posters here have made useful, honorable contributions to this debate.
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### Author:  [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2003, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-says-attack-would-be-bad/145989/50 "2003-01-02T18:13:51Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Manhattan: Thanks for the input, but I once worked for a company that actually went through Chapter 11, and reorganized, and went down the street and started over, so where United Airlines is concerned, it’s not over till it’s over.
Be that as it may, UAL is still bankrupt. Whether it is “over” or not is not relevant to its current Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in the Northern District of IL.
> [@](#):
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> I don’t have a problem with 9/11 being a “severe blow” to “the airlines” plural. I just have a problem with the flat statement that “9/11 caused United Airlines to go bankrupt”.
9/11 was the single most important _proximate_ cause for the UAL bankruptcy. Of course it had a problematic business model and had spent years operating at a loss, but its business was hurt so catastrophically that even 20,000 layoffs were not enough to stay in business without Chapter 11 protection. [url="[http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/4696646.htm](http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/4696646.htm)"In fact:
> [@](#):
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> United cut service and laid off nearly 20,000 workers after last year’s terrorist attacks, but it hasn’t come close to making up for revenue lost from the drop-off in business travel.
Was 9/11 a long-term cause of bankruptcy? No, by definition, it wasn’t. Was 9/11 the most immediate cause? You betcha. Why else did UAL attempt to borrow $1.8 billion from the federal government to stay in business?
Of course, that loan was rejected. Unsurprisingly, UAL filed for bankruptcy protection days later. DIP financing time, to the tune of $2 billion.
> [@](#):
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> Question: if 9/11 was so damn devastating to the airlines, how come the other airlines mentioned in the story, American and Delta, aren’t also in Chapter 11? Answer: because United had long-established major pre-existing problems.
US Airways _did_ file for Chapter 11 protection shortly before UAL. Just because every major airline caught the plague does not mean that they all died of it.
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### Author:  [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2003, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-says-attack-would-be-bad/145989/51 "2003-01-02T18:38:47Z")
Actually, I’ll give DDG that ‘gotcha’. My bad for not reading the entire cite. I got down to the part that verified what I had been saying, and left it at that. I should know better. However, the rest of the cite doesn’t refute what I’m saying as thoroughly as DDG claims it did. Yes, the initial reports of economic shrinkage were probably more severe than were later seen, and I was basing my comments on those early estimates. But the rest of that cite does not claim that there was NO effect, or even a SMALL effect. Just that it wasn’t quite as severe as originally estimated (and those original estimates were pretty bad - a reduction in GDP of 1.2% in 2002 would have put us in a serious recession instead of essentially flat growth).
That does not change the substance of my criticism one iota. DDG went after Bush on extremely specious grounds, bizarrely criticising his use of the word ‘surrogate’, and trying to argue that he was wrong to say that another attack could seriously hurt the economy. When I tried to defend him, she tried to nitpick to death things like my comment about appeasement, which is still dead on point. And, she went way too far in trying to show that the 9/11 attacks had almost no effect on the economy, and were not the cause of the bankruptcy of United. This is an unreasonable position to take.
The use of cites showing that the economy was already weak before the attacks was particularly annoying, because they are irrelevant. Even showing that the economy started to pick up in the third quarter after the attack proves nothing, because we have no way of knowing how much it might have grown otherwise. This is a standard way in which partisans use economic data to twist the facts.
> [@](#):
>
> You CANNOT find any kind of proof at all, anywhere, to show that that 9/11, by itself, caused the entire economy to sour. The proof, which I have posted and which you are consistently completely IGNORING, is just the OPPOSITE–after 9/11, the economy did not sour, it GOT BETTER, therefore, 9/11 didn’t cause the economy to sour.
Which is irrelevant, because i never said that 9/11 by itself caused the economy to sour. Please show me where I did. And anyway, by that logic, Enron’s collapse actually helped the economy. After all, it got better, didn’t it? The issue is not whether or not the economy improved - the issue is whether it would have done BETTER without the attack. Are you seriously claiming that it wouldn’t have done better had there been no attack?
The only way to determine the cost of 9/11 is to analyze the effects and follow the chain of causation. The cite I provided attempted to do just that, and showed that there was, in fact, significant damage. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth.
And the other thing DDG consistently ignores, which I pointed out, is the stimulative effect of temporary government spending. I pointed out that the damage to the economy is going to be longer-term because of the government bailout. Let me spell it out - if the government spends a lot of money repairing damage, it can reduce or eliminate the short-term effect on growth. But there are no free lunches. That additional government spending just moves the pain from the short term to the longer term, either through higher taxes and subsequently lower growth if you fund the spending directly, or through higher long-term interest rates and lower investment if you finance it through deficit spending.
I haven’t found any numbers indicating what the overall long-term cost of the attack will be, but it’s certainly a factor. DDG has completely ignored this.
Does anyone dispute that United would still be in business if it were not for 9/11? I’ve shown several times that United was EXTREMELY hard hit by the attacks. Now granted, if United was as healthy as, say, GE, it would have survived. But the airline industry has never been particularly healthy, and it’s extremely competitive and most of the companies are barely hanging on. 9/11 pushed United over the edge into bankruptcy. If DDG wants to continue to insist that it didn’t, that’s her business.
> [@](#):
>
> Question: if 9/11 was so damn devastating to the airlines, how come the other airlines mentioned in the story, American and Delta, aren’t also in Chapter 11? Answer: because United had long-established major pre-existing problems.
Well, as per MY cite, United was hit harder than the other airlines, because it is the primary overseas carrier of people to Europe and elsewhere, and there was a tremendous shrinkage in trips to Europe by Americans.
As for the damage to the economy of a second major attack - I think it’s reasonable for Bush to assume that the psychological effects could be even worse than the initial attack, and thus damage to an already-weak economy could be severe. But you know, it’s really going to depend on the form of the attack. If there is a large loss of life but little infrastructure damage (say, a Sarin gas attack in a subway in Milwaukee or something), then perhaps the economic damage wouldn’t be severe. But on the other hand, if it were something that could require, say, the evacuation and cleanup of Manhattan (a dirty nuke), then the economic damage would make 9/11 look like a picnic.
And that was really the substance of what Bush was saying. The risk of inaction against Saddam could be an attack on U.S. soil that costs the economy more than the entire war would. That point is still valid.
And this is what really bothers me about DDG’s posts. They just didn’t address the substance of Bush’s comments, which I think most viewers saw as fairly obvious common sense - that there are economic risks in attacking Saddam, and economic risks in not attacking Saddam. This whole thread has been a debate over nitpicks.
I’m pretty much done with this thread - the annoyance factor has gone way too high, and quite frankly, I’m not enjoying trading insults with DDG, who I still consider to be one of the best posters on the SDMB even though we rarely agree.
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### Author:  [@Henry\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Henry_B)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2003, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-says-attack-would-be-bad/145989/52 "2003-01-02T19:00:47Z")
Okay, boys and girls, leave Your planes, back to business.
I asked on page 1 (last post), if Mr Bush
- is a sly guy?
or
- is he as crazy as me and Saddam?
or
- is there a third solution to the original OP?
Henry
---
### Author:  [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2003, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-says-attack-would-be-bad/145989/53 "2003-01-02T19:04:27Z")
Oh, and the other point I was going to make in showing how a second attack could hurt the economy more: The government is not in nearly as good a situation this time around when it comes to bailing out whichever state or city is hit. Before the first attack, the federal government was either heading for a slight deficit or a modest surplus, depending on how much effect you think 9/11 had. The government could therefore cough up 80 billion dollars without it affecting the money markets too badly.
But today the government is heading for a deficit of 300 billion dollars. If there is an attack that caused direct damage of 100 billion or more, then a federal bailout coupled by a further economic contraction could push the deficit up to the point where there will either be a significant effect on interest rates, or the government will be forced to raise taxes. That is something we avoided the first time around.
And the discussion so far has been only the nationwide effects of the attack. How about the cost to New York City itself?
Here’s what the [Federal Reserve Bank of New York](http://www.newyorkfed.org/rmaghome/econ_pol/2002/1102rapa.html) has to say:
> [@](#):
>
> The attack on the World Trade Center had an enormous financial, as well as emotional, impact on New York City. This article measures the short-term economic effects on the city’s labor force and capital stock through June 2002, the end of the recovery process at the World Trade Center site. Using a lifetime-earnings loss concept, the authors estimate that the nearly 3,000 workers killed in the attack lost $7.8 billion in prospective income. Moreover, the employment impact in the key affected sectors—such as finance, air transportation, hotels, and restaurants—translated into an estimated earnings shortfall of $3.6 billion to $6.4 billion, while the cost of repairing and replacing the damaged physical capital stock and infrastructure totaled an estimated $21.6 billion. Accordingly, the authors determine that the total attack-related cost to New York City through June 2002 was between $33 billion and $36 billion.
Let’s repeat the orginal criticism that started this: Bush said: “An attack from Saddam Hussein or a surrogate of Saddam Hussein would cripple our economy.”
Is this a ridiculous statement? DDG attacked him on two counts: The first was that she thinks Bush is ‘stupid’ for believing that another attack could cripple the economy. My position is that it depends on the type of attack, but it’s certainly possible. Clearly, a bomb in a mall won’t cripple the economy. On the other hand, bringing down the Golden Gate Bridge, or detonating a dirty bomb in a major city, or bringing down a major hydro dam or something else of that scale could.
DDG’s other complaint was Bush’s use of the word ‘surrogate’, which she tried to spin as having the only possible meaning of ‘a body double of Saddam’. This was simply a silly and pointless criticism.
In the end, there was nothing about Bush’s statement that was particularly egregious. The worst you could say about it was that he was engaging in a little hyperbole in order to make his point.
And now I’m done with this.
---
### Author:  [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2003, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-says-attack-would-be-bad/145989/54 "2003-01-02T19:15:31Z")
me too
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### Author:  [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2003, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-says-attack-would-be-bad/145989/55 "2003-01-02T19:15:51Z")
I think that W.'s use of the phrase “surrogate for Hussein” betrays the politically driven nature of his conversations with advisors. Clearly, Al Qaeda cannot be “surrogates” for saddam, because the term surrogate implies a _substitute_ target, not a primary one. Al Qaeda would, of course, be primary targets. They are more than just stand-ins for Hussein, they are targets _independent_ of Hussein. Furthermore, that any Al qaeda operatives, or anything about the 9/11 attacks, had anything to do with Hussein.
I think that we’re looking at this thing backwards, and that W. (as usual) showed a garbled understanding of the language of his advisors. I would be willing to bet that Hussein, _himself_, was chosen as a surrogate target for Osama bin Laden, and that this term “surrogate” was the term they used in strategic discussions discussions.
Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. clearly believe that they have a political need to kill _somebody_, and if they can’t get OBL, then Hussein would be an acceptable substitute. He’s an evil guy that nobody likes, and they can also shuffle some facts around to make it look like Hussein has something to do with the US campaign against OBL/ Al Qaeda. It’s got to be extremely frustrating and embarrasing to these guys that, after more than a year of expending massive resources and manpower, they still can’t find one, sick, little Arab in the mountains. Hussein is the surrogate. Hussein detracts attention from their failure in Afghanistan, and W. still gets to look like a tough guy (and maybe everybody will forget all about that draft dodging, National Guard, Awol for a year stuff).
It wouldn’t surprise me if the Bushistas had some back up plan of tertiary targets in case they can’t get Saddam, surrogates for the surrogate, if you will. maybe Castro? He’s old, won’t put up much of a fight. How about a blast from the past named Qaddafi. We can connect some dots with terrorism and _voila_!
---
### Author:  [@Lightnin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightnin)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2003, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-says-attack-would-be-bad/145989/56 "2003-01-02T19:18:26Z")
…And, in another view…
I read Shrub’s press release as a way for him to cover his ass. “If” we go to war, the economy “may” start to suck. In other words, if the economy goes south, it’s not **his** fault; no, it’s Saddam or his “surrogates” who _forced_ us to go to war!
:rolleyes:
What a self-serving twit.
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### Author:  [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2003, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-says-attack-would-be-bad/145989/57 "2003-01-02T19:48:33Z")
> [@](#):
>
> me too
There’s a surprise.
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### Author:  [@wring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wring)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2003, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-says-attack-would-be-bad/145989/58 "2003-01-02T19:56:54Z")
😕
or, IOW,
WTF **Magelin**?
---
### Author:  [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2003, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-says-attack-would-be-bad/145989/59 "2003-01-02T20:00:32Z")
Maeglin is referring to the fact that I just spent entirely too much time beating Sam around the head and neck with a rubber chicken, and as he well knows, I do have other things to do. Hence his lack of surprise.
---
### Author:  [@wring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wring)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2003, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-says-attack-would-be-bad/145989/60 "2003-01-02T20:04:19Z")
ok. it sounded like a slam to me.
glad to have it clarified. (also sorry for misspelling the name - I should know better than to rely on my memory for names round here)
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