[QUOTE=Sunrazor]
Not the way you seem to mean it. Had the Republicans not stolen the last two elections, more than 3,000 American sons and daughters and untold Iraquis would still be alive, so in that case, yes it does matter. But no matter who was elected U.S. president, the Shah of Iran still would have been deposed, the Berlin Wall still would have fallen, the USSR still would have imploded, we’d still have global warming, Iraq and Iran still would have fought a bloody war, the WTC still would have collapsed in flames … and on and on. Except where he inserts combat troops, the U.S. president has almost no control over world events and not much over domestic affairs.
[/QUOTE]
I think a slightly more diligent administration (e.g., Al Gore’s) might well have prevented the 9/11 attacks.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
I think a slightly more diligent administration (e.g., Al Gore’s) might well have prevented the 9/11 attacks.
[/QUOTE]
As a charter member of the Al Gore Fan Club, I’d love to believe that. But those attacks were the result of decades of bad choices by Americans (especially the national leadership.) If Gore had somehow been prescient enough to eliminate all conflict among the intelligence agencies and cause the FBI administration to eagerly jump on intelligence coming in from the field, maybe, maybe. But it wasn’t George Bush’s policies that caused the attacks. It was U.S. policy since about 1946.
In the UK they are trying to lambast MI5 for the 7/7 tube bombings.
It seems that two of those involved had come to the attention of MI5 and the police as a side effect of spotting five other young lunatics who stored 1300 lbs of Ammonium Nitrate (?) in a storage facility.
The thing is, that until 7/7 we had not had any Moslem extremist bombs, so while given hindsight one could forsee something like 7/7 - until it actually happened it was not clear whether one was dealing with a real threat or a bunch of fantasists.