U.S. safety from terror 'up in the air'

The BBQ Pit
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Link .

Look, you dimwit, if safety from terror is presently up in the air, it’s your own fucking fault.

“Would hope”? “Would hope”!?!?!?!!

Why are you so uncertain? Don’t you know? What the fuck makes you think you’re qualified to lead if you can’t be certain about such important actions?

Ok, I apologize for yet another pitting of Bushco, but I really needed to blow some steam. After all, this is the asswipe who keeps bashing Kerry for supposedly vacillating and being undecisive.

“Up in the air.”

:rolleyes:

Are we making progress toward being safer under your leadership, or not?

:mad:

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Supporting Bush and attacking Kerry is not something you will usually see me do. But on this one, I’d have to say that Bush’s comments are some of the few sensible things I’ve ever heard him say, and Kerry’s comments are dumbass politicking.

Anyone who says you can win the war on terror is a dumbass. Anyone who says you can make the skies completely safe is a dumbass.

Insofar as you are just saying that Bush is being hypocritical by saying something indecisive when he and his supporters have been critical of any indecisiveness on the part of Kerry in the past, I understand. But you seem to go beyond that.

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The president is finally facing facts. You can send a whole lot of things up into the air with 380 tons of RDX.
Now the terrorists may have a large ready source of non-tagged plastic explosives.

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In the late 90’s, after the WTC garage bombing, the Murrah building bombing, and the Atlanta abortion clinic bombs, I took a course at the National Fire Academy. It had been developed jointly by DOJ, FEMA, and USFA and dealt with issues facing first responders at incidents involving acts of terrorism. One of the many things I learned is that it is damned near impossible to prevent everything, simply because the enemy will take as much time as necessary to analyze the barriers and deterrents you have in place, and find out a way around them.

The worst incidents we’d seen up til then were truck bombs, both in two of the incidents listed above, and in numerous incidents abroad. Perimeters were hardened in response, yet I remember a comment from the class discussion, that the enemy will go over the barrier if he can’t get through it.

Fast forward a few years, and that snippet of conversation became a sad and deadly accurate analysis.

The old adage about building better mousetraps produces smarter mice is still as true today as when it was first spoken.

For you to hang this on Dubya is a bunch of crap, as is the immediate apology for blowing off steam. If you type something foolish, that’s what the delete key is for.

I don’t give a damn who occupies the oval office, how good a leader they are, or how good their intelligence people are. Persons harboring a deep and abiding hate for this country have time on their side. They will watch and plan, and if a chink in our armor is visible, they will use it to their advantage.

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I’d give Bush a pass on this, except for the fact that he’s spent the last few weeks bashing Kerry for essentially saying the same thing – that the “War on terror” is not a literal war, with an easily-verifiable objective to mark its completion.

Nice job joining the rest of the sane world, George, but minus 50 points for being a clueless ass previously.

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My criticism is founded upon hypocrisy, and avoiding the taking of responsibility.

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Anybody seem Kerry’s response?

Shudder. I have argued before that Kerry is even more war-mongering than Bush. Still he manages to negatively surprise me time and again. I wish both of these right-wing war-mongering nutjobs (along with their respective, equally corrupt political parties) could be kicked out by the voters.

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“The war on terror” was Bush’s fucking idea. The whole point of it being a war was that it had to seem winnable. If he’s facing up to anything, it’s that his idea was stupid and his administration lacks the capability to do what he said it would do. The issue isn’t being sensible, since he still thinks it’s a war. It’s scaring people, because that’s about the only card he can play at this point.

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The last thing I want to do is get boxed into fighting Bush’s corner, Marley23. As you say the whole dumbass war on terror thing is his idea. But again, in the particular speech in question, Bush is not talking about the war on terror: he’s saying you can never make the skies completely safe and it is Kerry’s response that brings the WoT into it and says it’s winnable.

So I don’t mean to defend Bush’s position in general, but as far as the particular comments in the site linked in the OP are concerned I stand by what I said.

Bush is eminently pit-able but I just don’t think this particular OP flies too well.

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Among Bush’s offenses, my OP is surely minor at best. Would that it were the only problem the Bush administration has! However, egregious hypocrisy and avoidance of taking responsibility are hallmarks of the Bush admin, and the recent remark I quote is one more manifestation of both.

Making the world safer has been Bush’s most consistent argument as to why he should stay in office. Who knows what “fully safe” means in the quote above? But he has gone back and forth as to whether we’re safer, whether the “War on Terrorisim” is winninable or not, whether it’s a real war, etc. He recently excoriated Kerry, bashing the idea of the WoT as a metaphor for example (i.e. not a “real war.”) He has also beat the notion into the ground that Kerry is indecisive. Since security is a central part of his reelection campaign, I find it disturbing and annoying that he Bush been incredibly inconsistent about whether we’re safer or not, whether it is important to nab Osama bin Laden or not, etc…

Essentially, what we have is a transparent ploy to strike mortal fear in people on one hand, because we’re not truly safe, while on the other hand contradictorial claiming that he has made the world safer. If he has truly made the world safer, then why is the safety of the country “up in the air”? The insinuation is that a Kerry victory would suddenly make the world less safe, which is ludicrous if examined for five seconds. But truly, if he has made such terrific, laudable progress in the making the world safer, it should be reasonable to assume that things aren’t going to go to hell in a handbasket just because Kerry wins. Since Bush has such a thin record to run on, he works hard to create the misleading and manipulative equation in the minds of voters “Kerry = more terrorist attacks.”

Yes, I think this is a bad thing.

As for Kerry being a warhawk, give me a fucking break. He’s not claiming he needs to start invading more sovereign nations. Bush did that. However Kerry will make greater use of the State Department, which was been emasculated under Bush, and work much harder to ensure the cooperation of our allies. Winning the peace is a big deal for Kerry, something he has not proposed accomplishing with expanded use of military force. Bush’s policies require and expanded military, not Kerry’s.

What is clear, however, is that something besides conventional military power is required when fighting an unconventional enemy. Kerry has indicated that he understands this; Bush has not.

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You’re prevaricating on safe and safer. There is nothing at all contradictory in saying “we are not and may never be entirely safe, but I have made us safer”. There is nothing impossible about making something safer while not making it completely safe.

I don’t think Bush has made anyone safer, I think the WoT is a crock, I think that that Bush is taking us away from being truly safe not towards it. But I think this OP is a crock too.

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How can Bush be talking about terrorism and not talking about the War on Terror? To him they appear to be inseparable. You’re correct that he’s not saying whether it’s winnable or not, and he does say we’re safer but can’t be completely safe. (I don’t like Kerry’s rhetoric either, but I think he’s responding to the attempt to tell voters he’s a pussy and doesn’t have much choice here.) When you say something is “up in the air,” you’re saying ‘hey, who knows?’ It seems a little ridiculous for the decisive President to suddenly be considering things from this view given his standard style and rhetoric on terrorism. So I think it reads as either a case of cover your ass or a scare tactic.

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I know, but I’m not going to tell. I will say that there are eight of us in the world who know, and I will say that neither Bush nor Kerry is among the eight. We are from Krandar, in the galaxy you call Andromeda. Our civilization is older than yours by one million of your years. We have… What? Oh, dammit. I have to go. Nurse Ratchet says its time for my medication.