:Big Al Gore sigh:
It was not just you Scylla, but keep talking like you are not paying attention, and then see who can take you seriously.
Just wanted to give thanks, pantom, for digging up those links again. I can’t fucking believe how this information is floating around in the public ether, and the Limbaugh-listening Dittohead Bushistas keep crowing “Clinton didn’t do anything against terrorism!” even though the contradictory evidence is right there. :rolleyes:
I swear, it’s stuff like this that remind me why I could never vote Republican – you’d have to get a fucking lobotomy first before you can be dumb enough to swallow the GOP’s garbage. The Democrats might be ineffectual, but they don’t assume I’m an idiot.
Stoid, you said yourself we’ve used Clarke’s plan since 9/11 and noted how it pertained to Afghanistan. The cite raises a reasonable doubt that it would have been implemented without international cooperation, with sending troops in there and everything. I’m really curious to know whether you would have supported actions by either administration in Afghanistan before September 2001.
**
They didn’t know that either, then. If they did, they shouldn’t have given him the athority. If they didn’t they shouldn’t have criticized the war.
Since we didn’t know for a fact until after the war, the pre-war criticisms by those who voted in favor are perfidious.
Because they did both from the same pool of knowledge.
Yeah it is ugly, but I’m still waiting for an alternative plan that doesn’t involve sitting on our ass until somebody turns Cincinatti into a cinder, and then doing something.
No. That’s the big dawg. And I beleive that. The lie if you’ll recall is that Iraq had WMDs and they were ready to go.
Your confusing the WMDs and the Dawg.
because if they were taken in by the lie they wouldn’t have attacked the President for Warmongering before the war started.
Rage? Nope. What I said was I saw no shortage of perfidy on those that oppose the war. The incessant cries of “where’s the perfidy” have given this comment a stature it did not have when I uttered it.
Well then how do you know she’s not chaste? Huh?
Actually, my emotionality occured in the first half of the thread in the form of frustration at bad faith and pricks who don’t return good faith. That’s pretty much my entire emotionality here.
I had hoped there would be an exchange of ideas but once I realized that we were just going to snipe at each other and trade insults in the usual worthless fashion my frustration dissipitated and I’ve been having fun since.
Originally posted by Scylla. Further comment is superfluous, except to note that Arabic isn’t one of the languages spoken in Afghanistan, thereby rendering the clause above about the alleged removal of agents able to speak that tongue nonsensical.
It should also be noted, if anyone decides to bother to read the link Scylla referenced (originally posted by rjung, that it actually says only that no agents were posted to Afghanistan who could speak Arabic, not that they were actively removed. Not that reading comprehension means anything in the Pit, but I just thought I’d point that out.
So umm, who’s saying it? Nobody in this thread, I think. I looked. I haven’t seen Coulter doing it. I don’t recall Limbaugh doing it either. Nor do I recall anything from the GOP
So where are these Limbaugh-listening Dittohead Bushistas who are saying “Clinton didn’t do anything about terrorism?”
There must be an awful lot of them if that’s why you never vote Republican.
I give up. I can’t read English. I can barely write it too, obviously. I’m going away now.
I really don’t now, but I know it would depend a great deal on what “actions” means, and according to what I’ve read, the sort of actions Clark was proposing weren’t exactly war, more covert than that. In which case, I wouldn’t have had an opinion because I would have lacked the information to begin with.
Well, first, there’s the people who started this chain letter. I doubt they’re Democrats.
Then there’s cedric45, who said
on page 8 of this thread.
Then Al Franken (I know you don’t trust him, but bear with me) quotes (or claims to quote, if you wish to put it that way) a Washington Post article from October 7 2001, entitled “Conservatives Sound Refrain: It’s Clinton’s Fault,” which apparently includes quotes like:
“We had Bill Clinton backing off, letting the Taliban go, over and over again.” - Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, (R - CA)
and
“[Clinton is as fault because of his] pathetically weak, ineffective ability to focus and stay focused.” - Newt Gingrich
This section also says that Rush Limbaugh did blame Clinton, but the exact quote is not included, so I couldn’t say for sure.
It also repeats Sean Hannity’s assertion from his book that the Clinton Administration was offered bin Laden by Sudan, but ws turned down. That certainly sounds like it fits the bill. (However, Franken goes on to assert that a man named Mansoor Ijaz was the sole source for this claim, offering himself as a middleman, someone Franken says had ulterior motives for claiming that such a deal was available, and that when government sources tried to follow up directly with Sudan and through other channels, they found that there was no such offer. Again, I dunno if this is true or not, but this has been claimed a couple of times in this thread, and I at least wanted to toss it in.)
Now, you might technically say that few of these quotes actually claim that Clinton did NOTHING, only that he did what he did poorly. But I decided to take your query in the spirit in which I believe it was intended.
As Pantom falls victim to the dreaded Scylla rope-a-dope. Throwing facts and cites at him is like lobbing popcorn balls at a Sherman tank. They simply bounce off.
But I think I begin to understand. Its not about facts. Its about truth. Scylla knows the truth, he need not make reference to facts unless those facts are friendly. Facts that are not friendly are perfidious lies. People who rely on such facts are, well, us.
It is the faith that surpasseth all understanding. And reason, of course. Not to mention argument.
Al Franken is a perfidious liar. Unlike other liars, Franken offers specifics. Names, dates, places, documents. Kind of thing us PL’s (perfidious liars) regard, mistakenly, as the very core of debate.
Now comes the esteemed Stoid, her delicate little fingers worn to nubbins, laying out the case Mr. Franken makes. Dates, places, names, documents. Perfect, fat targets for blistering refutation. Unless, of course, they are facts.
A dishonest debater, confronted with facts he cannot refute, will attack the messenger, as noted.
Sound familiar?
Dishonest debater, elucidator? Pot, kettle, black, and all. You admit that you haven’t read AF’s um, book, but you think it’s true because Stoid said so. Strong arguement, that.
Yet another pitiful “I will attack the messenger” proponent, now that is dishonest.
So milroyj’s point is… well I suppose there was a point there but it is lost in a fallacy, so much for a counterpoint.
Not so. I don’t know if its true. I’m not worried about it. I entirely respect the intellligence and probity of Ms. Stoid more than any other pornographer I have known.
I merely point out that Mr. Franken, if he is lying, has made himself entirely vulnerable by publishing the specifics. If he is full of shit, it won’t take you or friend Scylla more than a few minutes to tear him to shreds. Stoid did half the work for you, laying it out, making it available.
If, given all that, you cannot refute his facts, well, you’re buggered, aren’t you, buckaroo?
elucidator: I disagree, amigo. A popcorn ball would likely stick to a tank, thereby providing a tasty and/or fortifying snack. Cites from the opposition give Scylla power.
Scylla, I like you. It’s difficult to not like you.
But for me, at least, this thread has established your likeness to a rhetorical Jack Dawkins: you dodge around, snatching suitable ideas from various places. You have fawning minions. Only, your Fagin is Clarence Darrow.
It’s clear, though, that your purpose on this Board is largely onanistic; I read your recent post in Esprix’s Pitting – “neener neener, mine’s longer than yours” – and it became immediately evident what a creepy little attention-whore you are.
I suspect, however, many others are also growing bored with your lodestar lust. I reckon before too long, you may just find yourself handily banished from political discourse, altogether.
Heaven forfend! I merely state my case. Scylla embodies my case, he is my case made manifest! I admit it would be refreshing to engage in honest discourse with a conservative with integrity who respects my opinions enough to engage them. But such as Barry Goldwater are in short supply these days. And we are the poorer for it.
I was just thinking the same about you.
Anyway, my post got eaten, so in lieu of retyping everything all over again, I’ll just ask which approach is the most “blindly partisan”: the guy who says 9-11 was a unique event that could not have been anticipated by any president and concludes that neither Clinton nor Bush should be considered “at fault,” or the guy who seeks to exploit 9-11 by suggesting his guy could have prevented it.
Meanwhile, read the Time article that is at the root of much of this discussion. It’s a fascinating story of opportunities missed, mostly due to bureacratic nibbling. Richard Clarke may well be a priescent genius, but self-serving statements to the side, somehow I doubt they would have had much better luck in swiftly working past the entrenched fiefdoms that populate the federal government. Indeed, the article indicates that the principal holdout after Bush’s early-spring order to eliminate al-Quaeda was CIA chief George Tenet, a Clinton holdover. And of course, all of that ignores the fact that Bush officials dispute the characterization that they were presented a comprehensive, neatly packaged plan by Clarke, and instead were dealing with unrelated, unimplemented ideas, some of which they simply implemented earlier than others.
Unless you’re predisposed to only believe good things about the Clinton administration and bad things about the Bushies, the issue simply isn’t clear-cut. Both administrations, and predecessor administrations, are at fault. It is equally stupid to blame Clinton or Bush.
Yes, about that, I’m honestly curious about what Franken is saying in his book, and found an excerpt. Now look at this:
You can’t be serious. We’d be here until Valentine’s Day, and that’s just the intro.
The blindly partisan one is the one that ignores the facts, especially when they don’t fit his worldview. (“exploit” 9/11? Why yes, that’s precisely what Team Bush has been doing since that very day. Sickening, isn’t it?)
Sad thing is, they are serious. Franken wrote it, Stoid believes it, and that’s good enough for old elucidator. :rolleyes:
The first position is ridiculous. There’s oodles and oodles of evidence showing that 9/11 could and possibly should have been discovered in time to prevent it.
The second statement is remarkable in that it demonstrates your partisanship on this issue. Where the heck were you to condemn the guy who started this Clinton/Bush hijack by making the claim that “this came about because Clinton’s ineffectiveness at doing anything emboldened the terror mongers. ‘Hey, nothing happened after we killed those sailors in Yemen, let’s go for a bunch of civilians on their own soil!’”
It’s that blind spot there that makes me take the charge of partisanship somewhat less than entirely seriously.