George W Bush Was Only Thinking Of The Children On The Morning Of 9/11.

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@The_Hamster_King

Not particularly. User_hostile had the same reaction. For someone who happened to be paying attention to global terrorism at the time, the 9-11 attacks were not amazing mysteries, no matter how hard the “no one could have anticipated” excuse was spun by those who didn’t do their jobs properly.

You have to have had your head buried in the sand or have bought the “no one could have anticipated” business hook line and sinker to even remotely consider that it shouldn’t have been the obvious conclusion that there was a major terrorist event underway at the moment that second plane hit.

I was in my car heading somewhere when I heard about the first plane, and the second one was reported as I was pulling into the driveway. I went to the right conclusion instantly, and by the time I walked into the building so had EVERYONE that I spoke to there.

In the larger context I don’t give a shit what Bush did on that day. But I do agree with virtually everything that Der Trihs says about him, minus the “he must have been jumping for joy to see Muslims/New Yorkers dead” sort of pointless mind reading. It is a massive failure of our media and our society that things like the Project for the New American Century are so unknown. This was a group who called openly for greater American military domination in the world, and one of their biggest bugbears was Saddam Hussein. In 1998 they sent a letter to then-President Clinton, in which they argued that the threat of weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was so great that military intervention must be begun in the near term, with the goal of removing Hussein from power. Here is a representative paragraph:

Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.

You may recognize many of the signatories from Bush’s administration: Elliott Abrams, Richard L. Armitage, William J. Bennett, Jeffrey Bergner, John Bolton, Paula Dobriansky, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Peter W. Rodman, Donald Rumsfeld, William Schneider, Jr., Vin Weber, Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey, Robert B. Zoellick. Dick Cheney was a founding member of PNAC.

The desire to take down Saddam Hussein’s regime, as well as the surface rationale (weapons of mass destruction) were already well in place among this group of people before George Bush ever gained the Presidency or 9/11 ever happened.

That nobody seems to know this save the lunatic fringe of the left wing (bitter snark right there), or is able to hand-wave it away as some crazy conspiracy theory if they do, is a crying shame.

9/11 provided no additional rationale to attack Iraq. Ties to al Quada were tenuous at best, where they weren’t fabricated. Even the supposed reason why these people wanted Saddam Hussein taken down so very badly (WMD) had ultimately to be fabricated. And as a result of that fabrication, those lies to fit a pre-existing desire for greater American military hegemony in the world, hundreds of thousands of people died.

And that’s not supposed to be evil? Not supposed to be deserving of the greatest level of condemnation anyone can muster? Fuck that noise.