Hm, even with the delay mentioned below, all reports I’d heard is that they haven’t registered the majority of the country, even in the parts that they actually control, and that women’s registration was especially poor. That makes me somewhat nervous that they would go through with elections in such a fragmented and unregistered state (for instance, most of Afghanistan’s economy is agricultural, but most of thier registration has been urban).
How certain are we that this (postponing elections) is an actual strategem in the works, or merely a “what-if” scenario that the Office of Deep Thoughts Within The White House is bouncing around? The first thing I thought of when this story hit the stands was the same thought I had when the memo about the legal extent of torture that’s allowed came out: someone was assigned to pick a position, and argue it for the sole purpose of having another side to the argument to come up with an option/opinion to present to POTUS. (Heck, it happens on “The West Wing.” Remeber when Leo’s daughter was super-pissed at Sam for a position paper he wrote on school vouchers, when he personally believed in the exact opposite? That memo was for internal discussion only, to help refine and define the argument the administration would eventually present to the electorate.)
If this is the case, then what’s the big deal? I want the administration to have a well thought out, well argued outcome to anything they’re going to use. Of course, I may not agree with their final position, but I can’t fault them for how they reached that position, considering all sides to the argument.
I don’t see why you people want to keep using facts to discredit a perfectly good point.
Sorry SimonX. The step-daughter-to-be says the same thing when she wants to argue, not debate. Still learning how to do this.
Well, this is something that can’t really be debated. You can’t argue a paranoid out of his paranoia.
The OP had to do with the government asking itself, “What will we do in an emergency?” Almost at once, it became a series of accusations that the government was plotting to bring about the emergency so as to cancel the elections.
Which is, quite seriously, paranoid ideation. Different in degree, but not in kind, to the guy who sat next to me at the bus stop and told me the CIA was sending subliminal messages to him thru the TV set to get him to kill himself.
I am not being figurative when I say that this is crazy talk. Just the same as the people saying that Clinton had his political opponents murdered. The Dopers laughed at the Clinton accusations, but they nod their heads sagely and agree with each other that it could really happen when people make equally loony accusations against Bush.
Many of you folks are pretty bright, and a lot of you take pride in being skeptical. Yet this thread has been pretty much a whole batch of Dopers chatting away about something that sounds pretty weird to an outsider. And hardly a voice to be heard apart from me that maybe a tinge of skepticism might be in order before we assume that talking about what we might have to do if (God forbid) 9/11 happens again means that there is a Bush administration conspiracy to stage terror attacks and cancel the elections.
There is no appropriate term for that besides “nutty”.
And to put it as baldly as I can, the notion that Bush relied on bad intelligence for most of the justification for the invasion of Iraq means that he might try to stage wide-spread murder to grab more power is either silly, or evidence of frightening gullibility by a lot of Dopers. Because Clinton (and Kerry and Edwards and Hilary and Gore and Albright and etc.) all relied on the same intelligence - and none of them plotted a coup. I think Clinton was pretty much a slimeball - and I have never accused him of that.
And yet none of you seem to show much insight into realizing how bizarre that sounds to an outsider.
I guess this is just another indication that partisanship at the fringes is hard to distinguish from insanity. Left, Right - doesn’t seem to matter. Maybe you all don’t sound odd to each other.
Regards,
Shodan
Not the same, Shodan, not the same. It is paranoid ideation, or intellectual dishonesty, at least very poor intellectual self-discipline, to assert Clinton actually has committed murders in the past when there is no solid evidence for that. The same with arguing that Bush somehow arranged the 9/11 attacks (or, as much of the Arab world apparently believes, that Mossad arranged them). But to speculate that Bush or his handlers, in the future, might do such a thing in order to hang on to power – that is not paranoid ideation, it is not even poor intellectual self-discipline, it is under these dismaying and terrifying circumstances a sadly reasonable and plausible speculation about the future and a just judgment on the Bush Admin’s moral character.
Or, for that matter, that Clinton was going to overthrow the government in an elaborate plot involve FEMA so he could hand it over to administrative control of the UN.
O_o
You’re right though. Shodan, paranoia is hard to argue out of people. It is usually best cured by putting someone trusted in office, then there is a reversal of paranoia as they scurry to defend their partisan pig.
No. That is indeed paranoid ideation. Just thought you’d might need a second opinion.
Your first post to this thread was the 58th post. I can not find a single post in the first 57 that states that someone believes that the government would actually stage a terror attack in order to pull this off. What was argued, and quite intelligently on both sides, was whether there were valid arguments for or against trusting this administration to not abuse the power that they would have if such laws were in place. There are many ways to abuse this, most of them not requiring a single terrorist incident, staged or otherwise. These points were made. If you are saying that you don’t believe the administration would so much as raise the warning level for political purposes, I’d argue you haven’t been paying attention. Shit, Clinton was accused of waging war to cover up a BJ, and that was hardly an extreme position on the right.
Yes, eventually it was posted that someone distrusted them enough that they might actually either stage such an event, or allow an event to happen even if they had foreknowledge. This idea has hardly gotten the widespread backing of the majority of folks in this thread that you seem to think it has.
There are valid concerns in this thread about potential abuses of power, most which I wouldn’t put past any poilitician, of any party. I even used redistricting as an example. Both parties do this, but both parties know that it is certainly goes against the ideals of our political system. They don’t seem to mind, as it allows them to retain their positions.
If you truly believe that this administration is not capable of abusing their power to remain in office, if given the tools to do so, you are being very naive. Other than perhaps Jimmy Carter, I wouldn’t put that past any of the leaders that we’ve had in the last 40 years.
Really? Consider the possibilities. DHS has announced, repeatedly, that it has intelligence that al-Qaeda is planning a terrorist attack, on American soil, prior to the election. Which leaves open three possibilities:
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DHS has no such intelligence and is just making this up to keep us nervous.
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DHS has such intelligence but it is unreliable or corrupted, and there is no actual plot.
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DHS has such intelligence but is misinterpreting it, and there is no actual plot.
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DHS has intelligence of an actual plot.
If 4. is the case – then the Admin either:
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Might still lack enough detailed information about the plot to stop it. Or:
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Might be in a position to know something about when and where the attack is coming.
If 2, is the case, that means the Admin could, if it chose, either:
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Take action to stop the attack. Or:
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Give orders that would have the effect of diverting the attention of the Air Force, the Coast Guard, or whatever, elsewhere at the crucial moment, and allow the plot to succeed.
So it’s not paranoid ideation to consider the possibility that the Bush Administration could deliberately allow a terrorist attack on American soil to succeed. If all of the conditions specified above were satisfied, it certainly would be possible for them to do it (much harder to keep it secret afterwards, but that’s a different question). The more difficult question is whether they would do such a thing, just for the sake of boosting Bush’s chances at the polls. And I have come down on the side of, or at least left myself open to, answering that question in the affirmative, for reasons explained above. That is not “paranoid ideation,” that is a conclusion based on my judgment of the moral character of Bush, Cheney, et al.
Gahh. That should read: “DHS has announced, repeatedly, that it has intelligence that al-Qaeda is planning a terrorist attack, on American soil, prior to the election. Which leaves open four possibilities:”
But you knew that.
I think it is on the paranoid side. You bring up the fact that keeping it a secret after the fact would be hard (I say it would be impossible. The press, somewhere, always finds out anymore.) And as much as I disagree with what this administration has done, I refuse to believe they are so corrupt and downright evil to allow this to happen just for four more years in power.
Unless, of course, this is the beginning of the Civil War John Titor warned us about. :eek:
That didn’t stop them on the Iraq/WMD or the Iraq/al Qaeda things. Why should the possibility of being exposed stop them now?
Who?
An interesting scenario where the terrorist threat level is raised on election day and those on the west coast are scared away from the polls in enough numbers to throw the election to Bush.
You may wish to adjust your tinfoil hat before reading.
But is any administration under the same circumstances and the same apparent dogmatic mentality capable of resorting to this?