Raising the alert was very important… especially since the Haliburton charging “extra” was getting to be inconvenient. Suddenly Saddam is captured and alert is raised. hhhhmmmm… curious. One would imagine that keeping Saddam’s prison secret for a week would help arresting insurgents…
Never mind that its christmas time... scared people shop more. :)Actually, I heard on the radio this morning that an al-Queda member arrested in Brooklyn said that his group had planned some terrorist action, but the last declaration of orange alert made it impractical, so they cancelled it.
“Never constantly”? 
And how exactly is this connecting Saddam with 9/11?
Regards,
Shodan
Shows shows how much you know. The alert was in response to the discovery of a plan to liberate Haliburton’s slave labor camps where Iraqi babies are ground up to make tread lubricants and helicopter blade polish for our tanks and helicopters.
Fortuantely, the Bechtel plant where they turn Iraqi womens uteruses (uteri?) into insulation for PS2 game consoles was not mentioned.
They twiddle the alert level (either up or down) whenever they want to capture a news cycle and divert attention from whatever else is in the news. A change to the alert level (especially a change up) is a great way to push a story off the front page, since the alert level change is sure to get front page space.
So, what are they hiding this time?
The threat level alteration only damages the administration’s case by further disassociating Saddam with Al-Qaeda: he’s caught, but the threat continues because as it turns out there’s no relation between the two. (Who knew?)
Fear on Earth and Suspicion towards Man this holiday season - just as long as you get out there and bump up the retail numbers. Obey, peasants! It’s an election year!
Apparently, a tin foil shortage.
Regards,
Shodan
(from an unnoticed Pentagon briefing)
“…an aerial incursion, presumed hostile with terrorist intent, was intercepted by a Grinch 2 surface to air interceptor missile. One fat, beared Al Queda senior commander and 8 tiny terrorist vehicle propulsion units, of a kind typically found in Lapland…”
Oh, come on, RT. Anyone with half a mind knows that the terrorist problem isn’t going to be gone right away. Hell, even if we’d captured bin Laden himself- which so many people in this thread think needs to be priority 1-A- that doesn’t stop al-Queda, that doesn’t stop other Muslim terrorist groups.
We’ve won a battle, and you’re disingeniously implying that because that battle didn’t win the war, it wasn’t a battle worth fighting. You know as well as I do that that is a fallacy.
Well, after I heard that Neil Bush was going to testify the next day in the Silverado case and that morning the air war in Iraq I began, thus robbing me of the pleasure of hearing Neil squirm and sleaze his way through the proceedings (I yelled at my radio I was so disappointed that he was suddenly no longer front-page news) I haven’t been able to put ANYTHING past this family.
Not a fallacy. A troll.
DNFTT.
Can’t let you get away with that one, Manny.
The fallacy lies not with the relationship between a battle and a war, but between Saddam and al Queda, or terrorism in general for that matter. GeeDubya continues to insist with a straight face, based on no evidence whatsoever beyond his, ah, “integrity”, that the war on Iraq was a central function of his War on Terror.
He bolsters this droll bit of mendacity by claiming that the battle being fought in Iraq somehow prevents a battle being fought in New York or Podunk. Its is such obvious horseshit I am surprised to see you pretending to lend it any credence, since I have not reason to believe you are stupid.
Uncomfortable and embarassing truths are not the medium of the troll.
He and his administration also claim, often and loudly, that there continues to be considerable danger here in the United States. In fact, that’s exactly what the terrorist warning system is. They do it so often and so loudly that people in this very thread claim they do it simply to distract people from some nefarious something or other.
There are exactly two choices here.
One: RT and you think that the American soldiers Bush addressed are morons and have no idea of context whatsoever.
Two: RT and you think the administration of this message board are morons and don’t recognize a troll when they see one.
Or, three: you are entirely wrong.
While I sincerely doubt that the terror level was raised merely to cover something up, or that the invasion of Iraq was entirely motivated by a desire to put Iraq’s oil in the hands of Haliburton, I also recognize that after being fed an avalanche of pure-D horeshit, the cognitive functions can be impaired.
Not as severely, it would seem, as the cognitive functions of someone who actually swallows an avalanche of horseshit.
That’s all the context you need. It explains why he went to war in Iraq while actually drawing resources away from Afghanistan and the hunt for Bin Laden. The more war, the better.
Not the first President to whom this thought occurred, and he won’t be the last, as long as the warmongers can get enough votes for re-election.
manny, are you calling me a troll?
You used to be a mod. You know the rules.
I’m calling your post a troll. You know the rules, too.
“…this years SDMB Self-serving Hair-splitting Award. This years nominees are…”
DNFTT doesn’t have a P in it, that I know of.
Oh come on, yourself, John.
First of all, I’m making no argument here about whether the war was worth fighting; that’s for a whole 'nother thread.
But Bush has been making certain claims about the connection between what has happened and is happening in Iraq, and our safety. I don’t see a connection there, quite honestly, and this is what this thread is about - the Bushie bullshit about that, with the continual invoking of 9/11 and the War on Terror in his remarks about Iraq.
There is no evidence that these aren’t separate and distinct battles - even Bush has said that, even though he continues to link them, usually by simply throwing the two together in speeches, and assuming the psychological connection will be made.
The fact that we’ve captured Saddam doesn’t make us one whit safer, as Howard Dean correctly said last week, even though we also found documents with him that apparently have given us the keys to the Sunni resistance network. With any luck at all, it will make Iraq much safer, and that’s a very good thing - but still a different one.
The threat from Al-Qaeda is real, and the evidence strongly supports the notion that that threat is independent of our war in Iraq. The threat level could have gone up this week, it could have gone down - and it wouldn’t have had squat to do with what’s going on over there.
But the fact that it went up just a week after our capture of Saddam and the vital intelligence that he kindly provided us, very much highlights the independence of one from the other, despite Bush’s suggestions.
If that’s trolling, manny, then this whole forum might as well be named Great Trollery, because it’s just as sound an argument as 95% of the stuff you see here.
And there was nothing wrong with my OP, other than not being quite so complete as this post. And again, if you think I’m trolling, take it up with a mod. That’s what they’re there for.
I’m not getting into this debate.
Manhattan, however much you may disapprove of Rt’s post and politics**, calling him a troll is COMPLETELY unwarranted, not to mention against the rules. There is a wide, yawning gulf between the medacious provocations of a December or a Reeder, purposely trying to bait people into responding, and arguing a passionate political position.
You owe RT an apology.