Let me be clear: when I insulted you, it wasn’t because of what you believe. That just illustrates the difference between an open and a gaping mind.
What disgusts me is your selfishness. Recently I’ve posted on these boards about a right-wing conspiracy involving refugees and my own government. My suspicions - that the crisis was manufactured and the government was lying - have all proven true. Was I happy? No, I fucking hate it that I was right. I would much rather have looked a complete fool than such a terrible thing be true.
But you? You’d be happy to find vindiction on this? You’re salivating at the prospect of finding out your government was complicit in mass murder? You don’t fervently hope to be wrong? No, you’d feel good about yourself and be able to say “I told you so” to everyone on these boards - as if that’s what matters. That is what’s sick about your post.
And by the way, if anyone forsees the next world crisis, please go short on the appropriate stocks. Yes, you’ll be profiting from other people’s misery. But consider the attention you will get for having unequivocally predicted such an event. Combine that with the money you will have made, and you’ll be in a good position to better the world with your gifts.
I’ve been reading this and reading this, and find it fascinating that so far no one has pointed a finger at the fact that every bit of information available to the President was also available to the members of Congress in the Select Committee of Intelligence, both House and Senate. Lets see, Gephardt You had access to those documents…so why aren’t you blaming yourself for the same faults? Maybe it is because you fell asleep in a meeting?
And I remember all sorts of warnings about terrorist threats back in the early 1990’s after Desert Storm. We paid attention to those right enough, I mean an attack never even got through…Oh, yeah, 1993, same place as 9/11. Our friend Mr. Clinton also had several reports warning him that an attack might occur, and did he hieghten security…nope. Did we see a lot of media attention trying to place the blame of the six people killed on his head for his lack of action even though he had warning…nope. Is this a left-wing witchhunt…yeap.
I’d like to point out that since 9/11 the administration has been doing the exact thing people are saying they should have done before, which is to make public all the hints of attacks and threats that they receive.
And the result has been condemnation from the very same people.
As far as I can tell, this is what people want: Warnings of every attack that is going to happen, but no warnings at all when the attack doesn’t materialize. That’s impossible.
Good point. (Assuming it’s true that they had this info.) If the government had mandated either secure, locked cockpit doors, or armed cockpit crews, or had taken both steps, the events of Sept. 11th would not have happened. Instead, the terrorists would have found some other weak point and done something different. Something worse? Less bad? Would their alternative strike have been sucessful? Unsucessful? Who knows?
But with hindsight, it does seem that the airlines were entirely too vulnerable; planes were too easy to hijack. The situation was a disaster waiting to happen. Come to think of it, in the mid-ninties, didn’t someone hijack a plane in Europe and try to crash it into the Eiffle Tower or something? That one incident should have been enough of a wake up call for us to have taken steps to make it harder to hijack a plane.
Hazel, that’s a defeatist argument known as moving the goal posts! The government should do the best job it’s able, and, like the fight against crime in NY, talent and dedication can win the day.
Aside to Billdo… moreover, it turns out Tom Clancy covered crashing planes into things in 1994. But hey, I’ll read that and I’m still wading through Who becomes a terrorist and why. I’ll figure I’ll be better informed when the government screws up again.
Hazel, et al. Following are my predictions for future terrorist disaster. Have rather good track record, so avoid if you’re easily disturbed:
[ul]
2004: Truck filled with easily obtainable cargo, such as industrial solvents exploded in chunnel, causing 2000 deaths, mostly in panic when exits are obscured by smoke. The rest by carbon monoxide poisining
2006:Supertanker’s night crew overpowered, rammed into navy boats at dock, causing environmental disaster and destruction of navy shipyard, when the oil is set on fire. Hijackers get away. FARC takes ironic credit for ‘many sins against South American Democracies.’
2010: Biotoxin terror eased, after lapsed Aum Shinrikyo agent divulges many successful attempts at poising water supplies, other, with “no noticable results.”
2015: Infiltrators train for years to penetrate a Nuclear Plant, only to find it par with breaking into a 7-11. Shaped semtex charges on the reactor core cause minor meltdown. Nuclear power sacrificed, along with 40 mile radius of sacrifice zone.[/ul]
Tom Clancy, if you use this in a book I want the mad royalties.
That’s pretty sad and scary, because it’s kind of true. We really would forget the threats quickly, even if they had caught the perpetrators beforehand.
I really, really, hope that no one ever has to go through this again. But they might. People are really good at hurting each other. :mad: Hopefully we will figure out how to at least reduce the casualties, and not just bicker and bitch at one another until the next attack.
Cracks me up, in a kind of cynical way, how–inevitably–this discussion has been reduced (not to say infantilized) to an I-[love/hate]-GWB-therefore-he-can-do-no-[right/wrong].
Please. I don’t give him enough credit to attack him personally, so all you bushie-sycophants can give it a rest. My criticism is of the GWB administration, which realistically (and again cynically) has little to do with the man himself.
And again (why do I bother?), I’m not saying their negligence directly caused 9/11, nor that anything they might have done differently would definitively have prevented it. So give THAT a rest too, please. What I–and others–am (are?) saying is that they clearly knew more than they later admitted, and that a better analysis of what they DID know might very well have at least provided one more hurdle for ObL and AQ.
Isn’t that all the “war against terrorism” can ever really do, after all? We can never learn enough or accomplish enough to free the world of terrorists and terrorism; all we can do is struggle to stay one step ahead of them. We–as embodied in the intelligence apparatus whose mission it is to accomplish this–failed to do so.
And now all they can do is whine and point and sidestep.
Look, hob, it’s not my job to analyze terrorist intelligence and formulate a plan of action. The people who’s job it is should be (one would hope) better at it than I am.
I feel like a sucker making such an obvious point; like I’m rising to the most obvious bait.
My job is to vote and debate; yours apparently is to obfuscate.
This thread makes me chuckle, in a cynical sense, of course. As you struggle to make sense of my obtuse meanderings and jerry-rigged trains of thought, I will put on airs of smug superiority until you finally realize I am completely full of shit.
Sorry to provide you with such an easy target, Priscylla. What must of course come off to some as smug superiority is simply my realization that I have spent too much energy on this board feinting at paper tigers.
Just because someone can type doesn’t mean their “argument” is worthy of engagement. If I responded with equal effort to every single post, rather than reserving my energy for those posts that actually contribute to moving the debate forward, I’d do nothing all day but type in spirals. As you can personally attest, I have wasted a great deal of time doing so in the past. My efforts not to repeat that mistake can be easily (and cheaply) spun by some as elitism, when it’s nothing more than an acknowledgment on my part of the finite amount of time I can devote to this board.
That’s just chickenshit backpeddling. You made an accusation, so wither back it up or retract it. It’s that simple. People like you and RTA only serve to remind me of the hypocrisy and elitism that makes the American left such a marginal element in modern politics.
That’s pretty sad and scary, because it’s kind of true. We really would forget the threats quickly, even if they had caught the perpetrators beforehand.