Perhaps I am a moonbat, I can’t say. But I am in agreement with you.
The whole concept that the actions of lower level functionaries can’t be blamed on the leaders is bullshit. The buck absolutely stops there.
I have worked in a number of corporations, and have observed that ethics absolutely flow from the top down.
If the leaders say things like “will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” and reward those who enrich the bottom line regardless the moral price, then they bear responsibility for every reprehensible action of their subordinates.
I am finally working for management that would say “anyone touching that priest will be fired…and fired yesterday.”
Bush’s rewarding of Alberto Gonzales with business and eventually the AG cabinet position in return for getting him out of jury duty in order to conceal his DWI arrest is typical of his administration’s ethical culture.
When you look at the aggregate ethical record of the Bush II administration such lapses as the topic of this thread do not stand out as unusual. The logical conclusion is that Bush was an idiot slightly predisposed toward evil, and Cheney was a serpent.
What 'luc said. Sure, I’m partisan. I see nothing wrong with partisanship, as long as partisans argue fairly and honestly.
Partisanship because you believe your ideas are right, and are willing to put them to the test, is a good thing. Partisanship for its own sake, where you’re willing to come up with lies and bullshit and stuff that’s batshit insane in order to keep people on your side and scare them from supporting the other side and its proposals, is, OTOH, an unmitigated evil.
Bush was president. He appointed Rummy and Ridge and all the others. He is responsible for everything they did.
I do not know if raising the alert levels was his idea, but he did not stop it. No matter ,he put people with poor ethics in important public positions . He is responsible for what his people did. More than that, the arrogant attitude of his administration denying they owed explanations to the citizens at all set the table for these type abuses.
And no, I am not calling administration officials killers. I’m just saying that Rumsfeld and Ashcroft were probably “buffers”.
I’m late to the game here, but I’m just not seeing what we were supposedly told that supposedly came true. My understanding is that we were told the threat level would be raised before the election. Now we’re seeing that Ridge, who has previously said:
Now, while he is selling his new book, he says he “wondered” if politics came into it:
When he was urged to raise the threat level after bin Laden released a tape a few days before the election.
So, let me ask again… what were we told by the OP (and others) that came true? I’m not seeing it.
That the Roveoids were manipulating such things for political gain. That they would again, as they had neither scruple nor compunction. Mr. Ridge testifies that in fact they tried, but he wouldn’t let them get away with it. I believe him, your mileage may vary.
No, he did not testify as fact that they tried. Here’s the quote again, in more context:
So, was her lying then or is he lying now? Or, did he make a vague insinuation in this book that the press picked up on, blew out of proportion and you ran with?
I really think this is much ado about nothing. Of all the people who might have input the decision to raise the alert color, I’m sure there were times people disagreed. It would be odd if they didn’t. Keep in mind, this was the election after the one in Spain that produced bombings, obstensibly to steer the election. So, I can see how some people might have thought that there might be a threat. Frankly, it would be odd if there was no variance in opinion. Evidently, Ashcroft and Rumsfeld were of the mind that the terror threat should be raised. I’m sure they weren’t the only people who thought so. Others, Ridge (and another guy mentioned on the show), Bush, and others, were of the mind that it shouldn’t be. In the end, it was NOT raised. So the process seems to have worked as it should. A handful of high-ups weigh in and that information is considered. Here we have a situation where it was, in fact, overruled. The only reason this is even a discussion is Ridge’s musing over it in this one instance. Well, that and the degree to which Bush is detested by the OP and others.
At least it has been brought up that Ridge is trying to sell a book.
Well, we will see what Ridge has to say when he starts actively pimping his book on the talk show circuit. Seems to me he put out a bit of weasel wording, and it would not surprise me if he backpedaled.
Who, me? I never said that. I only said that I wondered what their motivation was, not that I knew for certain that the were trying to influence the election. I think the pundits just got ahead of things and read too much into that one sentence. There is so much other interesting stuff in the book. Really, you should buy it and read it!
We of Moonbats United to Defeat Evil told the rest of you time and again they were up to no good. Time and again, we were on the receiving end of smug condescension. We were very largely right, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.
I think Ridge is telling the truth, and I believe it at least in part because it is so unsurprising.
Let me ask the counter question: are you shocked? Is this outside of the bounds you are willing to believe? Why wouldn’t they? The political advantages are obvious to the meanest intelligence, they always got a bump when ever they pressed that lever. So why wouldn’t they? Certainly not scruples? Maybe too blatant, lacking subtlety?
But, hey, if you want to make a plea for an impartial presumption of innocence, go right ahead. I could just give it two snaps and a feh! since the Bushivik record of crimes and skullbuggery dwarfs it, it would be like bringing up Jeffrey Dahmer on Health Department charges of improper food storage.
Exactly who had input to make that decision? In the post-mortem analysis of the September 11th attacks, there was a lot of criticism that the various intelligence agencies of the U.S. did not work well together. Data needed to foresee the attacks existed, but was not shared and analyzed enough to reveal the pattern. And so the Department of Homeland Security was created; a single department whose sole purpose was to organize and oversee all the information that might predict our vulnerabilities and future terrorist actions. And at the head of that department was Tom Ridge.
So why should the Attorney General and Defense Secretary have any input on the decision to raise the threat level? What could they have known that Ridge didn’t? Either they were acting for political purposes, or they had no faith in the DHS. So again it’s either malfeasance or incompetence.
The existence of the terrorist threat advisory system itself is galling enough, even without these accusations. Its only purpose was in telling us how scared we’re supposed to be (which is a form of terrorism itself) without providing any useful information to go along with it. The fact that it still exists, especially after all this, is outrageous.
Everyone knows its stupid, but they are waiting for someone else to unbell the cat. Nobody, but nobody, in D.C.wants to be remembered as the guy who signed it off the day before AlQ attacked the Lincoln Memorial.
That’s a very amorphous assertion, so I can’t really comment on it. I’m specifically dealing with the topic of the OP, which I’m not buying. You don’t get to say I told you so when what you told us didn’t happen.
But keep in mind that Ridge isn’t really saying anything. He is musing that perhaps Rummy and Ashcroft were motivated by politics when they suggested raising the threat level after ObL relased a tape saying they would try to disrupt the election-- something they did earlier in that year in Spain. So, maybe they were politically motivated, at least in part. Maybe they were just waiting for some excuse like the ObL tape to recommend the threat level be raised. It’s well within the realm of possibilities that politics came into play. Which makes it like pretty much everything that happens in Washington.
I agree that, if true, this is small potatoes compared to the horrendous things Bush and his underlings did during their 8 years in office.
False terrorists alerts to scare the people is small potatoes? The definition has certainly slipped. Scaring the people dishonestly and politicizing the dept. of Homeland Security is a big thing. It ranks with the politicizing of the CIA and the Justice dept. as horrible acts of an administration with Machiavellian overtones. Excuse me while I go duct tape my windows.