<p>GLA posted: “I don’t blame Bush for 9/11. I just don’t like his response.”</p>
<p>You know, that’s a totally fair and reasonable point of view. I completely respect it.</p>
<p>“DRJ, I happen to agree that we don’t always know how things are going to turn out before we do them.”</p>
<p>CGM obviously does.</p>
<p>Stanford history professor Victor David Hanson gets it about right. I still don’t understand what all the fuss was about.
<a href=“http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/09/the_path_to_911a_postmortem.html[/url]”>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/09/the_path_to_911a_postmortem.html</a></p>
<p>
Nothing good can come from a remark that, within its mischievous magniloquence, requires this back-steppin premise.</p>
<p>…now, having read the rest of the post, I find that I’ve gone 5-for-5 in this method of syntactic diagnosis–my god, its almost infallible!</p>
<p>I think it may be helpful to look at the current global conflict from a historical perspective.</p>
<p>WWII began in 1939 and ended in 1945. It’s origins can be seen throughout the decade of the 1930’s. It has been estimated that 62.5 million people (2.5% of the world’s population at the time) died during the conflict. Our parents’ generation, rightly called The Greatest Generation, understood the stakes in that conflict and showed the courage and fortitude to see it through.</p>
<p>My father lived in London during the Blitz. People, though under the strain of that bombing, just went about their daily business. There certainly wasn’t the hand-wringing, the second guessing and the passivity that is shown in our media on a daily basis.</p>
<p>A big difference between the left and the right in this country, as pointed out by DRJ4 in post #106.
Without offering offense to anyone, I sometimes feel that people to the left of center are blind to the global nature of this threat. If we follow the isolationism of the 1930’s we’re at great risk of seeing another horrible war. </p>
<p>My perception is that the left would like the U.S. to abandon Iraq, abandon Israel, appease the terrorists, and leave everything up to the U.N. Is this not true?</p>
<p>sjmom2329, in the run up to the Iraq invasion the UN had an effective WMD inspection team in Iraq which had much better access to sites than the prior inspections team had. They found no evidence of wmd and as long as they were able to remain there was no reason to invade.</p>
<p>Also, there were lying attempts to link Saddam to 9-11 and OBL. Do you know that OBL referrred to Saddam as an infidel because Iraq was a secular society under his rule? I fail to see how anyone could claim the 9-11/OBL link and keep a strait face.</p>
<p>And what risk did Saddam pose to US national security? He had no air force, no navy, no missle capability and a miniscule army following the first Iraq war. And the embargo effectively made it impossible for him to pose any sort of real threat to the national security of the USA, which is the mission of OUR armed forces.</p>
<p>OBL was/is a threat and the Iraq war forced us to take the eye off that ball. We still haven’t captured him, al Queda is still operating and Afghanistan is now spinning out of control as we speak.</p>
<p>And the statement which this administration makes(we are fighting them there so we do not have to fight them here) is so assinine. al Queda is a network not a nation! Attacking Iraq, Iran, Syria will not lessen the threat of terrorism one whit. In fact it will make them stronger because of the justified perception that the west and the US in particular is at war with Islam.</p>
<p>Conventional war will help not hurt the al Queda network. Surveillance will which is why I am not opposed to data mining telephone traffic, surveilling banking transactions, infiltrating suspect organizations, and any other legal means to gather information on possible terrorist activity. That is the way to minimize the future risks from terrorism. And the same tools should be used to spy on ultra right wing Americans. Does anyone still remember Tim McVey? And I know that few Americans have any knowledge of William Krarr a radical white supramacist, even though he is the only case post 9-11 arrested for actually having built a WMD in the form of a sodium cyanide bomb and with a cache of 500,000 rounds of ammo.</p>
<p>originaloog, if you can point to a post where I linked 9/11 to Saddam Hussein, I’d appreciate it. I don’t think I’ve said that, but if I’ve phrased something in a confusing way, I’d like to fix it.</p>
<p>
And ultra left wing Americans, I hope.</p>
<p>
You fail to note that the only reason that they were allowed in at all was the fact that there was 200,000 coalition troops sitting in tents on his border ready to invade. Are you suggesting that we should have just set up permanent barracks for them to be deployed there forever?</p>
<p>
Do you know what the US said about Russia in 1941? For anyone to hang the security of the country on such a thin thread of hope that two people who distrust each other would never allign to fight a common enemy is beyond belief.</p>
<p>
Another example of assuming that the status quo can be maintained forever. It was well known at the time that the embargo was crumbling rapidly and was all but gone.</p>
<p>Fountainsiren… wow… what a genius. So profound…</p>
<p>Of course you don’t always know how things are going to turn out, BUT, you have plans for as many results as you can think might be possible, that is why we pay these people to lead us</p>
<p>i would expect people like Rumsfield, and Cheney to have a clue, though, gurss your standards of planning are lower than mine</p>
<p>I think we should depose all evil rulers. That will keep us busy into the next millenium.</p>
<p>“i would expect people like Rumsfield, and Cheney to have a clue”</p>
<p>They can’t even be trusted to count dead bodies honestly, so it is hard to expect much more than that out of them. (Oops - not dead, just killed. Sorry! ;))</p>
<p>And I guess my problem is I am not an army general who tried to tell the Preisdent and his puppet masters that they it was gong to be tougher, and longer, and that we needed more troops, that the strategy wasn’t the best</p>
<p>guess all those generals saying they knew it was going to be long and hard when we were told, that it was over and we would be welcomed with flowers and democracy would reign, guess those guys weren’t as smart as Rumsfeld and Cheney…</p>
<p>I have more trust in those generals opinions then I do in this administration, because they were right</p>
<p>from what I hear, James Baker is back to help, and Rumsfeld is )($#) off…so is Condi</p>
<p>fundingfather, certainly Saddam was under pressure to cooperate with the UN weapons inspectors but as long as the pressure was effective the wise choice was to continue. Instead, Bush ordered them out so that he could commence this folly of a war.</p>
<p>Regarding the relartionship between OBL and Saddam, I am not the one who used it as a pretense for war. Bush did and by your statement about this, you acknowledge that this was another Bush lie to the American people.</p>
<p>Regarding your last comment you seem to acknowledge that Saddam was no significant threat to the US at the time of the invasion by citing the status quo.</p>
<p>And as a good conservative I am sure you know all about PNAC, that shadow group who was advocating an attack on Iraq as early as 1998, a shadow group who had the likes of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Libby, Wolfowitz and Abrams as charter memmbers.</p>
<p>No, 9-11 was merely a convenient excuse to dupe the American people into an invasion of Iraq on false pretenses. Nothing more and nothing less.</p>
<p>“No, 9-11 was merely a convenient excuse to dupe the American people into an invasion of Iraq on false pretenses. Nothing more and nothing less.”</p>
<p>But if the American people were duped, the Democrats were the “lead dupees”. If that is true, how could you ever trust them to govern?</p>
<p>I paid good money for those lies. I just wish they were better at it.</p>
<p>
ah, you mean that group of “Fundamentalist Christians” that want to impose “Christianity” on the world. Wait a minute…</p>
<p>perhaps, given the facts stated, it is not the fundy-christians but those profiteering and murky oil companies? Or, how about the “military industrial complex.” Confusing isn’t it?</p>
<p>I’ve never really been clear on the conspiracy theories behind the war…they tend to appear–like soap bubbles–shiny and clear in the eyes of those easily transfixed, only to float away and pop in the wind leaving the rest of us to wonder if their adherents have ADD.</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>“ah, you mean that group of “Fundamentalist Christians” that want to impose “Christianity” on the world. Wait a minute ”</p>
<p>It’s not the Christians, FS, LOL!!</p>
<p>FS, the fundies had nothing to do with the decision to go to war, and you know it. They are a big part of the Bush base, easily swayed by fear, and kept at bay by attention to a few of their pet wedge issues. Fundies are not neocons, although neocons need fundies as part of the voting block, so must attend to their key issues, or just enough to keep them happy.</p>
<p>The military industrial/oil block is more one and the same. Big oil, big corporation, big defense…they all profit nicely from war. And yes, they have all profited <em>really</em> nicely from this war adventure.</p>
<p>“The military industrial/oil block is more one and the same. Big oil, big corporation, big defense…they all profit nicely from war. And yes, they have all profited <em>really</em> nicely from this war adventure.”</p>
<p>No, no, no, it’s the NEOCONS. Everything is their fault. They’re conspiring with the Isreali lobby (they ARE the Israeli lobby) to run the world.</p>
<p>Zoosermom…soap bubbles…</p>