You guys are brutal yet fun.
Probably my next door neighbor. She called me a few nights ago, very upset because “all our troops are over there and there’s no one over here to protect us.”
And the article reminds me of the stuff the Liberal Arts majors paint in the “free expression tunnel” on my college’s campus–gross exaggerations with the sole intent of scaring the hell out of underinformed people.
What a ridiculous crock. I’m an inveterate New York City liberal pinko but I can’t abide crap like “America will never be the same, everyone said just after 9/11, and meaning it with all their heavy hearts, signifying that America might now have to reevaluate its international standing and its aggressive foreign policy, might have to reexamine its core values, seriously scrutinize capitalism’s more dire effects on the world community.”
Really? That’s the lesson of 9/11? That America sucks and we had better change our system lest other crazy-ass religious zealots fly airplanes into our buildings?
That’s not what I meant when I said everything changed after 9/11…
Then, by your definition, I’m a “Hawk”. I’ve seen enough that makes me genuinely curious as to just what the hell he’s got. I’ll go in if I have to. . .
But back to the OP:
I instantly lost all credibility for the author when I read this. “Guided missiles” have always been used. Plus, they don’t make places into wastelands. My opinion went right downhill from there. . .
Last I checked, there were NCOs and officers too. . .
No offense to our British Dopers, but haven’t the British been patroling Northern Ireland in an antiterrorist capability for awhile? And when the hell was the last time we attacked Syria or Iran (IIRC the 70s for Iran).
Oh, I sure as hell do. As do a few other Dopers I know.
Yeah, but I consider The Whole Nine Yards one of my favorite movies of all time.
Aaah, the true voice of a paranoid hippie.
- Conversely -
Um, what? All I saw on the news was recovery and rebuilding. Neutralize any offensive powers that be directly against us, but we were mainly licking our wounds. I must not have watched that specific news channel that day . . .
We weren’t the same after 9/11, which sort of kicked off all of these events. Of course we won’t be the same. We “weren’t the same” after the last Presidential election. We won’t be the same after Columbia broke up over the skies of the southwest CONUS. Unfortunately, we were the same after the first bombing of the World Trade Center, and didn’t see the writing on the wall. I damn pray that we’re not the same, and take prudent action to nip this shit in the bud.
Tripler
Wait, am I in GD or MPSIMS? Sorry . . . 
So You’re the new Number Two? AAAH!
I didn’t offer a definition of hawk. That you’re wondering if Iraq was involved in 9/11 doesn’t make you a hawk. I wonder that too. But 18 months after the fact I have seen no evidence that Iraq was directly involved in 9/11. The terrorists and Bin Laden were/are Saudi. I admit I have lost track of who all is in custody and their nationalities but I don’t remember hearing that any of the “masterminds” or whatever they’re being called these days were Iraqi. I don’t understand how 9/11 can possibly be a justification for a war against a country that to date has not been shown to have any involvement in the precipitating event. We might as well say that 9/11 is an excuse to make war on China or Belize or Tasmania.
here here
Hear, hear.
Otto, I was pointing out that we didn’t consider Osama a serious threat to the US until after 9/11, and yet he turned out to be. Saddam could turn out to be a serious threat to the US at some point in time. Just because someone’s military is crap, doesn’t mean that they can’t inflict a lot of damage on us.
Man are you uniformed.
Bush sent $43 Million to the Taliban. His administration supported negotiations with terrorists on behalf of his campaign contributors. These included corporations seeking to build a pipeline through Afghanistan. These multinational special interests employed his father and former Bush administration officials including James A. Baker III, who led Bush’s efforts to wrest the White House from Al Gore.
Greg Palast reports Bush ordered national security agents to “back off” the bin Laden terrorists. A former CIA agent appeared on BBC TV saying: “We were just told, ‘You get caught spying on the Saudis or looking into their affairs, and you will lose your head!’”
Here is the rest of the story about george and his knowlege of Osama.
http://www.bushoccupation.com/welcolumn.html
Yeah, and people say the same thing about Clinton and the Chinese and the North Koreans, what’s your point? 9/11 caught everyone in America with their pants down. Everyone. (Unless you believe those half-witted theories that Bush knew about the whole thing in advance and used it to boost his re-election chances in '04. In which case, I gotta ask why he didn’t pull the thing off in '03 instead of '01, not to mention that it’d make Bush and his cronies a whole lot smarter than they’ve appeared to be.) Do a search on the Taliban and look at the pre-9/11 threads here about them. Everyone agreed that the Taliban were pretty horrific, but nobody ever said, “Well, one day the Taliban will attack us, and we’ll have to go to war with them.” Yeah, the US intelligence agencies had hints as to what was going on, but nobody put the pieces together. We were too busy patting ourselves on the back for beating the Commies.
Mark Morford distributes three internet offerings per week, none of which (by his own admission) would ever be published in the parent newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle. I am on his mailing list and usually chuckle my way through all of his articles.
He intentionally skews the news but generally is in sympathy with the article’s premise; for example, he is anti-war and will exaggerate pro-war statements and sentiments - he freely admits this. Using his article in the manner in which it was presented (no reference to his manner of spoofing and exaggerating) would be akin to passing off an Onion article as fact.
He also has lots of references to sundry items such as butt plugs and Astroglide. He saves his best rants for Lynn Cheney though…
I look at Morford as a very wired, clever, sharp-tongued guy who has a good heart (read his “Hell has a room reserved for…” articles) and who doesn’t take himself or our politicans seriously.
Lighten up!
Wow, I can’t believe people are taking this columnist so seriously. I have been reading him for years and he loves his hyperbole. You have to read some of his other articles to put him into context.
Some of his stuff is entertaining. Kind of in the same vein as Scylla. I never took this guy seriously. He’s funny sometimes and he is attempting to address an issues that, IMO, he has no capacity to address.
Please, do not take Morford seriously.
Ah, I see straykat23 beat me to it.
Believe me, judged on the basis of the linked article, I don’t.