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I think that if we hadn't had this President in office at this time, there may not have been a successor or, at the very least, we'd of been in much, much worse shape than his successor will find things on January 21, 2009.
Well, let's get it right. So, go find it and then we'll talk about it.
I think that if we hadn't had this President in office at this time, there may not have been a successor or, at the very least, we'd of been in much, much worse shape than his successor will find things on January 21, 2009.
, I don't know where it is! You been avoiding it so long. Why don't you adjust your republican balls and man up to answer the question?
Way to go Chump!
See! I didn't twist your words!
! I have to leave. I'll come back soon
See, now that's quite a different statement.
What I was implying was that if George W. Bush weren't the President and if whoever was the President (Al Gore in 2000 or John Kerry in 2004) did not go into Iraq as did this President, al Qaeda would have successfully set up shop in cooperation with Saddam Hussein and there was a possibility they could have pulled off an even bigger terrorist attack that could have crippled the nation, caused a loss of confidence in the government or completely decapitated the government, and the United States would stand the chance of devolving into anarchy.
That's what I was implying.
I would have thought from all my other posts detailing all my other beliefs about the nature of Iraq's capabilities and intentions along with my beliefs about the nature of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, you'd have picked up on the fact that I think we stood a grave danger by not invading Iraq.
You can disagree with me and you can dismiss the evidence that has been presented and posted, in this forum, that support this theory until you're blue in the face; but, if I'm correct, this was a danger -- even if remote.
That's why I wanted you to go find the quote. I specifically said "I think," "there may," and "at the very least."
You and ChumpDumper both have a problem of extrapolating peoples opinions into absolutes and then argue the point as if the person against whom you're arguing had actually said what you're attacking.
I'm sure there's a word for this...strawman something or something fallacy.
Lileks
Some very good food for thought.After September 11th, 2001, no one would have thought five years would pass without additional attacks. Everyone believed a vast and sinister hidden army would roll out the horrors - sacks of anthrax dumped into mall ventilation shafts, smallpox vials snapped open in every major city. It felt as if we’d spend the next year punching at shadows until we blew the Axis of Evil into cinders and settled back to enjoy the newly crimsoned sunsets. Or until we curled into a ball and asked them to stop kicking us.
But thanks to diplomacy and restraint, it all ended happily. As we approach the solemn anniversary of the tragedy of 9/11, let us revisit how the war on terror was won in six weeks without a single combat casualty.
What truly turned the tide had nothing to do with America’s military power, but the overwhelming revulsion towards terrorism that swept the rich and diverse Muslim world. Clerics in every center of Islamic theological cogitation began to warn of “infideliphobia,” which they defined as an inexplicable dislike of non-Muslims, and encouraged an end to the crippling sense of victimhood and seething resentment that had come to characterize their relationship with the West. Just as an American newsmagazine asked “Why Do They Hate Us?” on their cover after 9/11, so did an Saudi magazine “Why Do They Regard Us With Indifference and Annoyed Exasperation, When They Think of Us At All?” And so the dialogue began.
Some violence was necessary, of course. Osama bin Laden was captured and put on trial, and that ended international terrorism. Leaderless, the rest of al Qaeda went back to their previous jobs as car salesmen, farmers, and theoretical physicists. The 357% increase in patent applications from Middle Eastern nations was directly attributed to bin Laden’s removal.
Even if bin Laden’s sentence is overturned on appeal, as some predict, his influence has waned.
The people of Afghanistan continued to live under a miserable regime, but the nation was diplomatically contained; to this day, the UN is prepared to deny credentials should the Taliban request them.
Iraq was the real surprise, of course. Proving the Clinton administration right, the Ba’athist regime owned up to al Qaeda ties and ongoing WMD programs, discontinued its support for Palestinian suicide bombers, and held free elections. The world was stunned when Saddam Hussein handed over power to a hitherto unknown politician named Muqtada Luther al-Sadr, a cleaning supply salesman and part-time amateur Gandhi biographer. Shamed, Iran held is own elections, and the mullahs were rejected. Less than a year after the attacks, the world had reordered itself, and the era of peace began.
Imagine if America had taken a bellicose path after the tragedy of 9/11. Imagine if the red mist of madness had descended, and the US had invaded two sovereign states to impose “democracy” on unready people best left to their own traditions. Imagine if the government had built military bases near Iran, forcing the popular secular reformers to embark on a crash program to build nukes. (They’d just replaced “Death to America” with “Health to America, and A Nice Fig Torte, Too” as the national slogan. Now this!) Imagine if we had given in to paranoia and su ion, and intercepted the conversations of suspected “terrorists” without asking the permission of the New York Times editorial board. How many attacks would we have suffered?
We have no time to ask such questions, of course; we’ve other pressing matters. There is still the war in Sudan, where US troops have been engaged in a peacekeeping mission for the last three years at the cost of several thousand lives. President Kerry vows to stay until the nation is stable, and he is correct. As a wise man once said: we will pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
Unless the price is too high, the burden too great, the hardship too hard, the friend acts disproportionately, and the foe fights back. In which case, we need a timetable.
Exactly.
My favorite line:
Literary masterpiece.
A Democratic President would have captured or killed bin Laden at Tora-bora, but Al-Queda was a GOP and M$M creation. There have always been radical Islamic groups before 911, and there will always be radical Islamic groups. It's the war plan stupid - don't torture, quit killing civilians, control the dirty war, and minimize the losses from 'strategic bombings'.Some violence was necessary, of course. Osama bin Laden was captured and put on trial, and that ended international terrorism. Leaderless, the rest of al Qaeda went back to their previous jobs as car salesmen, farmers, and theoretical physicists. The 357% increase in patent applications from Middle Eastern nations was directly attributed to bin Laden’s removal.
It would be interesting to see what would've happened had Rummy not tried to pull of these invasions/occupations on the cheap.
I'm sick of all this talk! Let's go ing bomb North Korea and get this started already!!
That's the worst explanation and exactly what I expected. In no way did you imply all of that horse and in no way would any of that garbage happen, and you know it. That's what is wrong with right wingers. They make outlandish statements to scare the ignorant and then recruit them with fear. That's why the ranks of republicans are filled with so much stupidy. Because they prey on the weak and ignorant and then pretend that this tactic is noble. Thanks for progressing my country and making lies the art of our future.
So why hasn't OBL popped his head up in so many years? The guy was all over TV before 9/11. Now, all we get are the supposed tapes of him speaking. Perhaps because the last few times he aired home videos we were able to identify the rock strata in the cave wall behind him and put thermobaric weapons into those holes 3 hours after he'd left. If he is still alive, he sure as isn't roaming around free like he was before 9/11.
"five years would pass without additional attacks"
The Cole attack didn't draw the US into foreign killing fields, so OBL did 9/11. OBL has admitted that it's extremely difficult to hit the USA in the USA, and it's much more difficult now, but OBL brilliantly made his first and probably only hit a awe-inspiring hit.
As result, OBL drew the USA into Afghanistan where the US is exposed and next door to Iran and Pakistan. But dubya obliged OBL, went much further and unnecessarily went into Iraq, while not finishing the job in Afghanistan.
Now the entire US military is tied down and its limits exposed in 2 killing fields, with no results to show in regional stabiliry or increased US security, and both killing fields going to .
OBL killed about 2700 civilians in the WTC, and now he is set to get 2700+ US military dead, a number absolutely unthinkable if OBL was restricted to attacking the US militry in the USA.
You're doing a heckuva job, dubya.
The M$M has made Bin Laden and Al-Zarqawi into these factious Rambo-like characters, except with the mental skills more keen to Dr. X, kinda a cross between Rambo-Dr. X with a little bit of Terminator built in. Anyone remember when Al-Zarqawi, which we still don't know if he had one-leg or two, out shot and out-ran a military blockade? Yet in the video showing Al-Zarqawi firing a weapon that was released he can't keep the AK straight and is holding it wrong.
Things that should make you go hummm....
Makes me wonder why he hasn't released a video after do so many, many times. We see tapes from others but never OBL. Why is that?
I DID NOT HAVE SEX WITH THAT NOMAD, OSAMA BIN LADEN
September 27, 2006
It's just like old times. Bill Clinton delivers an impassioned speech, and within 24 hours the Web is bristling with do entation, establishing that nearly every sentence was a lie.
The glassy-eyed Clinton cultists are insisting their idol's on-air breakdown during a "Fox News Sunday" interview with Chris Wallace was a calculated performance, which is a bit like describing Hurricane Katrina as a "planned demolition." Like an Osama tape, they claim he was sending a signal to Democrats to show them how to treat Republicans. Listen up, Democrats: Let's energize the undecideds by throwing a hissy fit on national television!
The Clintonian plan for action apparently entails inventing lunatic conspiracy theories, telling lots of lies, shouting, sneering, interrupting, and telling your interlocutor, "(Y)ou've got that little smirk on your face and you think you're so clever" — all for asking a simple question. To wit: "Why didn't you do more to put bin Laden and al-Qaida out of business when you were president?" The only thing Clinton forgot to say to Wallace was, "You'd better put some ice on that."
Let me be the first to welcome Chris Wallace to the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy! If the son of Mike Wallace is a member, can Chelsea be far behind?
According to Wallace, Clinton's aide, Jay Carson, demanded that the interview be stopped a few minutes into Clinton's tantrum — just before the part where he threw the lamp at Wallace. The last time Clinton got that red in the face, the encounter ended with a stained dress. Even Muslims thought Clinton overreacted. But the Clinton Kool-Aid drinkers tell us this was a masterfully planned set-piece by their leader.
I also think Jessica Savitch's slurred, incoherent broadcast on "NBC Nightly News" in October 1983 was intentional. Others say it was drug-addled breakdown that ended her career, but obviously Savitch intended to speak in garbled gibberish on air as a brilliantly executed prelude to her death in a ditch weeks later.
And when Stephen Colbert did a routine at the White House Correspondents Dinner that bombed, I think he planned it that way.
Then there was Capt. Joseph Hazelwood's meticulously planned off-loading of 11 million gallons of crude oil off the Exxon Valdez.
Clinton shouted so many lies during his televised meltdown, only the World Wide Web can capture them all. These are just a few.
Clinton yelled at Wallace: "What did I do? What did I do? I worked hard to try to kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since."
This is so crazy it's worthy of an Air America caller. Clinton has consistently misrepresented the presidential directive about political assassinations. Clinton did not order bin Laden assassinated. He did not even lift the ban on intelligence agencies attempting to assassinate bin Laden.
What he did was lift the ban on political assassinations — provided that assassinating bin Laden was not the purpose of the mission. So if U.S. forces were engaged in an operation to capture bin Laden, but accidentally killed him, they would not be court-martialed.
Clinton said, "All the right-wingers who now say I didn't do enough said I did too much — same people." As proof, he cites his humiliating withdrawal from Somalia, claiming, "They were all trying to get me to withdraw from Somalia in 1993 the next day after we were involved in 'Black Hawk down,' and I refused to do it."
He added, as if it mattered, "There is not a living soul in the world who thought that Osama bin Laden had anything to do with 'Black Hawk down.'"
In fact, what Republicans objected to was Clinton's transforming a U.N. mission in Somalia to prevent mass starvation into a much grander "nation-building" exercise — something the Democrats now hysterically support in Darfur and oppose in Iraq.
Democrats long to see American mothers weeping for their sons lost in a foreign war, but only if the mission serves absolutely no national security objectives of the United States. If we are building a democracy in a country while also making America safer — such as in Iraq — Democrats oppose it with every fiber of their being.
When Clinton's "nation-building" in Somalia led to the brutal killing of 18 Americans, some of whose corpses were then dragged through the streets, Clinton did what the Democrats are currently demanding we do in Iraq: He cut and ran.
Republicans didn't like that either, and it had nothing to do with whether it was al-Qaida we were running from. It could have been Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, al-Dawa or the Viet Cong. We ran, and the terrorists noticed.
Osama bin Laden told "ABC News" in 1998 that America's humiliating retreat from Somalia emboldened his jihadists: "The youth were surprised at the low morale of the American soldiers and realized more than before that the American soldier was a paper tiger and after a few blows ran in defeat."
If this is the message that Clinton is hoping to telegraph to the American people, I hope the voters are listening.
link
Talk about a kool-aid drinker.And when Stephen Colbert did a routine at the White House Correspondents Dinner that bombed, I think he planned it that way
Ann Coulter!!
Legacy.
I can tell all of you this much. A little something I picked up from Yoni.
If Gore had been President, our own planes would not have been used against us. We wouldn't have lost 3000+ American lives from being attacked on American soil because he would not have sat on his hands and ignored the information that THIS president didn't care about. He wouldn't have cost us the lives of 3000+ sons and daughters for a war that didn't need to be fought and bankrupted our country. In other words, he wouldn't have spent any time to lie and fabricate his way to becoming the least trusted President in the history of the United States. OBL would have remained insignifigant and no threat to our shores. We would have signifigant and meaningful ties to other countries around the globe. But, alas, we now must all suffer from republican ignorance.
Puff..Puff..Pass.
rebutt this you klinton lovers:
The Real Clinton Emerges
From the man who worked with him for 20 years and was there when it happened: bin Laden, Somalia, the Cole and the first World Trade Center bombing.
The link is so hot their servers keep crashing, and the article is brief, so here it is:
http://thehill.com/thehill/export/Th...is/092606.html
The real Clinton emerges
by Morris
From behind the benign façade and the tranquilizing smile, the real Bill Clinton emerged Sunday during Chris Wallace’s interview on Fox News Channel. There he was on live television, the man those who have worked for him have come to know – the angry, sarcastic, snarling, self-righteous, bombastic bully, roused to a fever pitch. The truer the accusation, the greater the feigned indignation. Clinton jabbed his finger in Wallace’s face, poking his knee, and invading the commentator’s space.
But beyond noting the ex-president’s non-presidential style, it is important to answer his distortions and misrepresentations. His self-justifications cons ute a mangling of the truth which only someone who once quibbled about what the “definition of ‘is’ is” could perform.
Clinton told Wallace, “There is not a living soul in the world who thought that Osama bin Laden had anything to do with Black Hawk Down.” Nobody said there was. The point of citing Somalia in the run up to 9-11 is that bin Laden told Fortune Magazine in a 1999 interview that the precipitous American pullout after Black Hawk Down convinced him that Americans would not stand up to armed resistance.
Clinton said conservatives “were all trying to get me to withdraw from Somalia in 1993 the next day” after the attack which killed American soldiers. But the real question was whether Clinton would honor the military’s request to be allowed to stay and avenge the attack, a request he denied. The debate was not between immediate withdrawal and a six-month delay. (Then-first lady, now-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) favored the first option, by the way). The fight was over whether to attack or pull out eventually without any major offensive operations.
The president told Wallace, “I authorized the CIA to get groups together to try to kill bin Laden.” But actually, the 9-11 Commission was clear that the plan to kidnap Osama was derailed by Sandy Berger and George Tenet because Clinton had not yet made a finding authorizing his assassination. They were fearful that Osama would die in the kidnapping and the U.S. would be blamed for using assassination as an instrument of policy.
Clinton claims “the CIA and the FBI refused to certify that bin Laden was responsible [for the Cole bombing] while I was there.” But he could replace or direct his employees as he felt. His helplessness was, as usual, self-imposed.
Why didn’t the CIA and FBI realize the extent of bin Laden’s involvement in terrorism? Because Clinton never took the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center sufficiently seriously. He never visited the site and his only public comment was to caution against “over-reaction.”
In his pre-9/11 memoirs, George Stephanopoulos confirms that he and others on the staff saw it as a “failed bombing” and noted that it was far from topic A at the White House. Rather than the full-court press that the first terror attack on American soil deserved, Clinton let the investigation be handled by the FBI on location in New York without making it the national emergency it actually was.
In my frequent phone and personal conversations with both Clintons in 1993, there was never a mention, not one, of the World Trade Center attack. It was never a subject of presidential focus.
Failure to grasp the import of the 1993 attack led to a delay in fingering bin Laden and understanding his danger. This, in turn, led to our failure to seize him when Sudan evicted him and also to our failure to carry through with the plot to kidnap him. And, it was responsible for the failure to “certify” him as the culprit until very late in the Clinton administration.
The former president says, “I worked hard to try to kill him.” If so, why did he notify Pakistan of our cruise-missile strike in time for them to warn Osama and allow him to escape?
Why did he refuse to allow us to fire cruise missiles to kill bin Laden when we had the best chance, by far, in 1999? The answer to the first question — incompetence; to the second — he was paralyzed by fear of civilian casualties and by accusations that he was wagging the dog.
The 9/11 Commission report also attributes the 1999 failure to the fear that we would be labeled trigger-happy having just bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade by mistake.
President Clinton assumes that criticism of his failure to kill bin Laden is a “nice little conservative hit job on me.” But he has it backwards. It is not because people are right-wingers that they criticize him over the failure to prevent 9/11. It was his failure to catch bin Laden that drove them to the right wing.
The ex-president is fully justified in laying eight months of the blame for the failure to kill or catch bin Laden at the doorstep of George W. Bush. But he should candidly acknowledge that eight years of blame fall on him.
One also has to wonder when the volcanic rage beneath the surface of this would-be statesman will cool. When will the chip on his shoulder finally disappear? When will he feel sufficiently secure in his own legacy and his own skin not to boil over repeatedly in private and occasionally even in public
Allow me to change the subject:
OBL took down the WTC while dubya and head were guarding America.
It was forseeable, it was stoppable, but dubya and head refused to take terrorism and al Quaida seriously.
dubya and head stood around with their heads up their asses as OBL took down the WTC.
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