I only said it quickly. You said it well. To you go the honors.
Lucky you.
And again I point out: if Al is so full of shit, it should be easy to prove. He gives names, dates, places. Specifics! Good liars, like the equine Ms. Colter, avoid specifics because they are falsifiable. If those memos weren’t sent, if the meetings didn’t take place, etc. etc., what’s your problem? One would think you would be eager to tear into it.
Except that he has the facts, and you don’t. So you are left with falling back on the pretense that all lies are equal, that political slant is the same as lying us into war. It is difficult to imagine a more morally bankrupt position.
So, go get 'em, boys! We wait “with the calm confidence of a Methodist with four aces.”
Well, first I’d have to read the book. Nah. Then, I have no interest in tearing Clinton down to restore balance…give the guy his props, he took strong actions with respect to terrorism. I might deal with accusations of neglect on Bush’s part…but then he had eight months in office as opposed to Clinton’s eight years. What purpose is served by this.
Right elucidator, that “other” was not supposed to be there! My bad.
And Scylla: you are still only in Genetic Fallacy mode. And slouching towards the Argumentum ad Misercordiam too, that is just pitiful.
Tee: Like I said, defenders of Bush do think the motto in Bush’s desk is “The buck stopped with Clinton”
This is more God damn fun! Isn’t this the very model of a Pit thread. A few facts, a lot of opinion and one huge pissing match and name calling extravaganza with the discussion (if it can be called that) dashing off on tangents like stragglers from a heard of cats. Damn, this is fun! No body is persuading anybody of anything but every body is getting lots of exercise.
The liars, Scylla, other than the members of this board who are not buying your particular brand of snake oil, appear to be Congressmen and Senators who voted to give the President authority to go into Iraq who now criticize the invasion and occupation, and especially the justification for the invasion. That you should unload on these folks seems more than a little ironic since up until some date in the not too remote past you were buying and defending that justification: that their was a clear and present danger that Iraq would use WMDs against the United States and its vital national interests, directly or indirectly.
Since that time it has been made apparent even to you that (1) there were no WMDs in Iraq [I must admit that is not what I expected] and (2) the President knew or should have known (not could have known) that Iraq did not have WMDs. Where do you get off playing the liar card on people who were deceived by the same fraud that deceived you and which you defended so nobelly for so long. Now, had the President justified the war as a perogitive of the Big Dawg (the justification you ignominiously advance) or as primarily a grab for oil (our friend Brutus’s pet theory) then your outrage would be justified. The President and all his horses and all his men did not justify the invasion as either a Big Dawg move or as an oil grab move. He justified it as a measure necessary to the defense of the nation’s vital interests, with an emphases on necessary, a thing that had to be done and done now before the apocalypse was upon us. All that was a lie. You now acknowledge that it was a lie. Why do you vent your bile on what appears to be honorable men and women who, like you, were taken in by that well orchestrated lie?
Perhaps your rage at being deceived and at being so late in coming to the conclusion that you were deceived is misdirected. Maybe, just maybe, you have 5too much of an emotional investment in the present Administration to be objective about its motives and adgenda? You react to you recantation as if you had been shown your own mother’s unchastity. Let me add I know nothing of your mother.
On Preview: The value of Franken’s book, other than the cutting humor, lies in the footnotes. You can verify the footnotes if you wish.
Pardon? What’s “random” about any of it? It’s all pretty specific and closely related, nothing “random” about it.
Richard Clarke’s, as described. (It wasn’t’ “in place” for reasons already given.)
Don’t you wish. But unfortunately for you, simply you saying it doesn’t make it so.
If the Clark program is the essentially the program that was put in place * since * 9/11, (per bush officials) doesn’t that give you a hint that maybe it would have worked * before * in preventing it?
(The program included: break up AQ cells and arrest their personnel; systematically freeze its assets; stop its funding through fake charities; give aid to governments having trouble with AQ, and most significantly, scale up covert action in Afghanistan to eliminate the training camps and reach bin Laden himself. Clarke proposed bulking up support for the Northern Alliance and putting Special Forces troops on the ground in Afghanistan.)
Remember, the plan was a * direct response * to Cole, so it’s not as though it was just some afterthought that could easily have gotten overlooked. There were several meetings taken in which it was insisted upon by Clinton’s officials to Bush’s people that this had to be Job #1. Do you suppose if it had been, 9 or 7 or 5 or even 3 months before 9/11, there might have been a chance to stop it? Do you think if Team Bush * had stopped to take any of this seriously at all, *as opposed to fucking around with Faith Based Initiatives, it might have been prevented?
You are determined to simply dismiss anything you don’t like. Do you really mean for us to believe that you do not see how these facts demonstrate completely differing attitudes about the seriousness of the problem? You try to brush away the budget issues by saying that they couldn’t have been implemented before 9/11, while completely ignoring the fact that they couldn’t ** ever ** have made a difference * because the requests were turned down! * Do you mean to sit there with a straight face and a supposedly clear mind free of blinding partisanthink and tell me that there is nothing wrong with Ashcroft flatly turning down CT money requests, and not asking for a PENNY of of money towards CT efforts himself? You think it’s a GOOD thing? I’d bet everything I have that among the ** sixty-eight ** budget increases, Ashcroft was asking for big money to go after pornographers… and still nothing to help prosecute terror. (I use the example not out of self-interest, simply because that’s the least important thing I can think of that I’m certain Asscroft wantes to devote large resources to.) This is something you are proud of in a leader?
There was an irrefutable pattern of disregard for the seriousness of terrorist threats toward us by Bush and the Republicans in office. Documented, real, proven. If you are going to pooh-pooh it away, and blame Clinton, you need something more to do it with than “Yeah, so?”
By the way, you really have to stop * ** this ** * bullshit, because it makes you look like an asshole:
Here’s what I said, in its entirety:
And you come back to argue with the “praise” I’m giving. You have to stop telling people what they * meant, * and then insisting that your * interpretation * of their words is the * actual text. * Or maybe you don’t have to stop doing it, if other people are willing to play that game with you. But if you want to debate * me, * you’ll have to stop, because it’s a coward’s tactic that wastes my time. I’m not going to sit here and argue about things I never said because you’ve concluded you know what was in my heart and mind. (Do they let you get away with that transparent crap in court?)
You never seem to consider how ridiculous you sound. You are scrambling all over the place to discredit the facts presented, but nowhere do you do it by * presenting alternative facts. * You are just flailing around. First, the Clark recommendations would never have made a difference. Next, Clinton’s a jerk for not implementing them in the last weeks before he left office.
And people call me a blind partisan. Good lord. At least I’ve never sacrificed my ability to reason in the service of my politics. (People thought I did, when I said that Bush was the scariest motherfucker I could imagine being President. I took a lot of flak for that. My prescience is cold comfort, let me tell ya…)
I listed them right at the top, I believe, he doubled and tripled certain budgets.
Actually, it’s shamefully partisan to say what you just said, since the ** facts ** prove otherwise . Maybe ** you ** didn’t have any idea, maybe the ** Republicans ** didn’t have any idea, maybe ** Bush ** didn’t have any idea, but that would be because * they weren’t listening. * Clinton’s administration had a clear understanding that they tried to convey to the incoming administration, which chose to * ignore it. *
If our positions were reversed, and a guy I liked fucked up that badly, I’d be choking on it, too. You have my sympathy.
I can italicize, bold and underline too!
Your mother must be so proud.
Of course, the demure grace falters a bit when she’s tearing someone a new Nixon…
Still, gotta love it!
Damn right she is!
luc, you’ll have to show me an example of Stoid being demure anywhere on these boards. Not saying it never happened, just that I’ve never witnessed it.
Not that that’s a bad thing, you know.
You know you’ve got 'em by the short hairs when the best they can do is bitch about style choices.
"alternative energy " and this (Cheney/Bush) administration. Please!
But yep, you could have done a lot with the money being spent. Could have had universal healthcare, free education on demand, end poverty. But you ain’t. You’ve got Iraq’s oil.
QED.
No, we have no such hints of that. Clinton himself said we lacked support of the international community enough to pull it off, it’s significant enough that Clark’s plan was forwarded immediately after 9/11 when we did have that support. Otherwise we’d have had these same debates over Afghanistan, not Iraq, no? :dubious:
Or you’ve missed the whole point.
Btw, I missed the e:mail in which we were notified that ‘perfidy’ had become the new ‘quagmire’. Could the relevant admin please check the mailing list.
Will this also be a two-week change and what have we to look forward to next?
I thang yew.
How does your cite prove that? All it referred to was the specific capturing/killing of bin Laden himself, and going into Afghanistan. There was a great deal more than that in Clark’s recommendations.
No one here has claimed certainty about possible outcomes here, I don’t believe. But no one has yet come up with any meaningful argument opposing the evidence that Clinton was correctly focused on the problem, whatever obstacles he faced, and Team Bush was not.
Taking terrorist threats seriously = good idea.
Taking the longest presidential vacation in 3 decades = not such a good idea.
YMMV.
Mr. B says “Our American approach to the world – in its current system – is to blame for the attacks.”
Stoid, 'Luc et al are apparently trying to blame Bush without actually saying so with Clinton singlehandedly holding back the barbarians and warning Bush not to take his finger from the Dike, which he does as soon as he gets into office.
I think we can safely refer to this as the “I am a moronic liberal nutcase” thesis.
Nobody as of yet, is owning up to the Conservative corrollary, which would be that it was all Clinton’s fault.
I on the other hand blame the terrorists.
But that’s just me.