No comment

[Case]

I present this without any comment on my part.

Y'all have fun with it!

http://www.expatica.com/germany.asp?pad=190,205,&item_id=34000

[Midnight Son]

I understand that the Grassy Knoll will be there too.

[XPav]

A former member of the US Congress, Cynthia McKinney, who is also due to address the conference, told reporters: "Who else knows ... why were the innocent people of New York not warned."
I am so glad that nutbag is gone.

[quatoria]

There's a lot of shit that needs to be made public to the American People, however. Like the fact that there was a plan to create a task force with a laser focus on Bin Laden fucking MONTHS and MONTHS before 9/11. Rice was briefed, Rummy was briefed, BUSH was briefed on what a fucking danger this guy was. Alerts were sent, in the months before 9/11, ABOUT THE FUCKING PEOPLE WHO FLEW THE PLANES INTO THE BUILDINGS, saying, specifically, when talking about their disinterest in learning to take off or land - "they seem like the sort of people who'd want to fly a plane into the WTC." No action taken. No monitoring performed. Not a fucking thing done. Rumsfeld's defense budget? His top ten items? NOt a single fucking terorrist or homeland security item on it. There was a specific, direct, clearly worded message sent at the highest level, days before the fucking attack, that "a terrorist attack was being planned that aimed to cause massive civilian casualties" - no action taken.

And it's not like this shit came out of left field. THEY TRIED THE SAME GODDAMN THING WHEN CLINTON WAS IN OFFICE. There was a clearly set plan to orchestrate a 747 hijacking, and crash it into the CIA's headquarters, while 11 other planes were simultaneously hijacked and crashed into the White House, major civic structures, the Israeli Embassy, etc, etc. It was stopped - and then the mechanism used to stop it was ignored, dismantled, and put in the fucking filing cabinet after Bush got into office.

I'm not denying that there are some paranoid motherfuckers, and the idea that anyone in power in the US administration wanted an atrocity like this to happen is fucking ridiculous - but they were so goddamned laxidasical about the threat that every last one of them should be locked away until the end of time - or, more poetically, till the end of three thousand motherfucking life sentences. Bush in particular, who was in the middle of extending his record for the highest amount of vacation days ever taken by a sitting president as he ignored memo after motherfucking memo about impending danger.

[Midnight Son]

I agree with most of what you said. We got to get out the vote in '04! (By the way, did you hear about the voting machines that were rigged to vote Retardican?)

[quatoria]

You mean the machines that produce results that cannot legally be analyzed with software that cannot legally be examined, because the corporation that produced the machines has a "right to privacy"? Yeah. I heard.

[Ben Sones]

but they were so goddamned laxidasical

I think you mean "lackadaisical" (lacking spirit, liveliness, or interest; languid), rather than "laxidasical" (constipated?).

Sorry. It's the editor in me.

[Midnight Son]

Time for a Beatles song... "You say you want a Revolution?" No, what I want is a NEW DEAL! A Great Society would work too....

[quatoria]

but they were so goddamned laxidasical

I think you mean "lackadaisical" (lacking spirit, liveliness, or interest; languid), rather than "laxidasical" (constipated?).

Sorry. It's the editor in me.

Hahaha, don't be sorry. I always appreciate good editing. As opposed to the editor who I *currently* have, the one who changes "whet your appetite" to fucking "wet your appetite." Sigh.

[XPav]

You mean the machines that produce results that cannot legally be analyzed with software that cannot legally be examined, because the corporation that produced the machines has a "right to privacy"? Yeah. I heard.

The ones by the corporation whose chairman holds Republican fundraisers in his own home and says that he'll do as much as he can to get Bush re-elected?

[Midnight Son]

If "we the people" are not careful, we'll be one election away from losing our freedoms forever. I really don't think I'm exaggerating.

[Lizard_King]

Truly, you folks are the very apex of self parody. I eagerly await your next performance... same Moonbat time, same Moonbat channel?

[Rywill]

Seriously. "The republic is falling! The republic is falling!"

[voltaic]

If the great and mighty governments of the past, some of whom controlled up to 50% of the euro-asian world, failed under the weight of their own idiocy and longevity, then so will the US. And just like those previous experiments, this one too will lead to a better "next attempt".

[Timemaster Tim]

I like eggs.

[triggercut]

Allow me to back up everything Quatoria has said. If you'll indulge a cut and paste, I was discussing this very topic over at Gonegold's forums today:
__________________________________________________ ______

I think at this point, a timeline would be helpful. All of this information comes from TIME magazine, Newsweek, and The Washington Post. I ain't makin' this stuff up.

The final act of terrorism against the US in the Clinton Administration occurred on October 12, 2000--the bombing of the USS Cole, masterminded by Osama and Al Qaeda. On December 20, 2000, Clinton's National Security Advisor on Counter-terrorism, Richard Clarke delivered his plan to take out Al Qaeda: break up remaining Al Qaeda cells and arrest all personnel, attack all financial backing for the group, freeze all foreign assets, stop funding through fake charities, increase aid to governments having Al Qaeda difficulties, and scale up covert action in Afghanistan to destroy AQ training camps and get Osama bin Laden.

Clinton and company did not implement their plan--they felt to do so would "drop a war into the laps of an incoming administration". They did give the Bush Administration the detailed plan, and Sandy Berger personally told Condi Rice that her biggest concern during the next four years was going to be Al Qaeda-based terrorism. This would be January, 2001.

Condi Rice was so impressed with Richard Clarke and his plan to fight Al Qaeda that Clarke was retained for the Bush Administration. But after presenting his plan to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, it was back-burnered. As Senior White House Officials told TIME--"There was a feeling that the Clintons were unduly obsessed by terrorism". My stomach hurts just to read that hubris. It didn't help that Clarke and his plan were Clinton holdovers, and anything Clinton was *bad*, in the new Administration.

On February 15, 2001, a bipartisan commission fronted by former Senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman delivered a devastating report. Their commission found that "mass-casualty terrorism" on US soil was an imminent threat, and one we were unprepared for. They recommended a new Homeland Security Office be set up within the cabinet to coordinate all intel, branches of service, local law-enforcement, and border patrols. Congress liked the idea, but the Administration--Ashcroft, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld in particular--killed it by refusing to support it.

The Administration did take the report to heart, though. On May 8, 2001, the President announced that VP Cheney would head an Anti-Terrorist task force to combat domestic terrorism, to meet monthly. The President himself promised to chair some of these meetings, periodically. Problem: This task force never got beyond the hypothetical stage, and never actually met.

Anti-terrorism czar Richard Clarke finally got his plan moving though, albeit slowly. Four separate meetings were held to discuss his proposal presented on April 30, 2001. The final meeting took place July 10, 2001. That's some priority, huh? While all this was going on, the FBI had an agent in Arizona reporting his concerns that foreign terrorists were taking flight school lessons, and set to infiltrate civilian aviation. The Clinton Administration had thwarted a terrorist action to fly an airliner into the CIA Headquarters in Langley in 1996, and if there had been, you know, a Homeland Security Office at this point, perhaps that report by the FBI agent wouldn't have been buried. Maybe someone would've connected the dots.

As for Clarke and his plan to take the fight to Al-Qaeda--his proposal was still moving in the corridors of power, with two steps to go. First, a meeting with senior cabinet officials: Rice, Ashcroft,Cheney, and Rumsfeld to get their approval on his plan...and then the President himself. Problem: Bush loves him some Texas Time. Due to the President taking the longest vacation of any sitting president in 32 years, Clarke's meeting gets pushed to Sept. 4th, 2001.

On August 6, CIA Director George Tenet delivered a report to the vacationing president: "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US". The report even specifically mentioned that the hijacking of airplanes was an AQ plan. On August 16, Zacharias Moussaoui was arrested as a suspected terrorist. He'd been in a flight school and had no interest in actually taking off or landing planes. The arresting INS agent wrote in his report that Moussaoui "seemed like the kind of person who would fly a plane into the World Trade Center." A Minneapolis FBI agent, alarmed at the Moussaoui arrest and after talking to the detainee, delivered a report to DC saying that a 747 fully-loaded with jet fuel could be used as a weapon.

We're almost done here. Acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard was reading the mounting terrorism briefs and warnings, and realized that he needed more funding. He asked for a bump in July, 2001. On Monday, September 10th, he got a memo from John Ashcroft turning him down, flat. It is to Pickard's credit that he didn't make an "I told you so" call to the Attorney General the next day. In fact, that same day Ashcroft forwarded his budgeting request to the President, requesting funding increases for 68 different programs. None of these programs concerned terrorism. Ashcroft also passed around a memo to the Cabinet listing his top 7 priorities for the upcoming year. Not one mention of terrorism.

On September 4th, the Cabinet looked at Richard Clarke's anti-Al Qaeda plan, and liked it--except for Rumsfeld. To fund Clarke's plan would require $600 million be diverted from his pet missile defense shield plan (funded at $158 billion). He threatened presidential veto of the anti-terrorism plan.

The President didn't look at Clarke's anti-Al Qaeda initiative, now nearly 10 months old, until September 13, 2001.

[hermyhermit]

FUCKING ,fucking ,fucking terorrist, fucking attack, fucking filing cabinet, paranoid motherfuckers, fucking ridiculous, motherfucking life sentences, motherfucking memo.

God I really love it when you get all articulate on me quatoria!

[quatoria]

FUCKING ,fucking ,fucking terorrist, fucking attack, fucking filing cabinet, paranoid motherfuckers, fucking ridiculous, motherfucking life sentences, motherfucking memo.

God I really love it when you get all articulate on me quatoria!

I love it when the truth blindsides you, and you have to result to insults. It's kind of you to cede defeat in a discussion so swiftly - spares us all so much time and effort. None of this is conjecture - it is public record, and as such, is verifiable. If you want to attack it, do the same investigation that was done to obtain these facts, and disprove them. I would dearly love for them somehow, miraculously, to become false. For the sitting administration not to care so little about terrorism that they ignored blatant warnings that resulted in a tragedy of historic proportions.

In short, Hermy, do some fucking work in an argument, for once. Or are you only capable of insults?

[Midnight Son]

Some of ya'll sure are complacent.

[Rywill]

It's so funny to see everyone hyperventilating like this. Look, I'll be the first to agree that the Bush administration is way too conservative and willing to trample our civil rights in the name of fighting crime. But does that mean we're "one election away from losing our freedoms forever, and I'm not exaggerating?" Give me a fucking break. Hopefully Bush loses in 04. If not, hopefully people are sick of his style of crap in 08 and we get a more moderate president then. But it's not like we are suddenly living in Stalinist Russia. Please.

I'll also be the first to agree that the Bush administration was too slow to pick up on the threat of terrorism, and that's a good reason to vote the man out of office (as if we needed another good reason). In his defense, nobody really took the threat of foreign-sponsored terrorism inside our borders that seriously (including the Clinton administration). And also in his defense, he's taken strong action after the fact to try and rectify the problems--particularly the lack of information-sharing--that led to this in the first place. You may agree or disagree with the extent of his actions (I happen to disagree with many of the policies), but to say that Bush should be executed or tried for crimes against humanity or charged with 3000 murders is just insane. I can't stand the man, but even I have to admit that it looks like he just had the same blind spot that lots of other people had, got caught with his pants down, and is trying to patch the hole. Yeah, he sucks for taking all those vacations, he seems like he's pretty much an idiot, and a lot of his reactions to terrorism were the revocation of civil rights for terrorists, and all the rest of us as well. That all sucks. I'll vote for anyone the Dems run in 04 because of it. But the man is hardly a criminal.

And of course, the actual topic of this thread--those crazy Germans who think that Bush ordered the 9/11 terrorist attacks--has been completely lost. I guess any mention of Bush, terrorism, 9/11, or America is sufficient hook for quatoria to come into the thread and talk about what an ass Bush was for not stopping 9/11. We've heard it. We all know. Go have a stiff drink and console yourself with the fact that next year is an election year.

[Lizard_King]

In short, Hermy, do some fucking work in an argument, for once. Or are you only capable of insults?

Well, it would help a lot if your assertions were sourced. Somehow, I don't think entering 9/11 AND Bush AND Newsweek in Gooogle is going to turn them up.

[triggercut]

In short, Hermy, do some fucking work in an argument, for once. Or are you only capable of insults?

Well, it would help a lot if your assertions were sourced. Somehow, I don't think entering 9/11 AND Bush AND Newsweek in Gooogle is going to turn them up.

Actually, LK, read my post in which I back up everything quatoria alludes to, *and* is sourced to TIME Magazine, The Washington Post, and Newsweek.

So...were you going to refute any of that, or were you just makin' chitchat?

[Lizard_King]

Actually, LK, read my post in which I back up everything quatoria alludes to, *and* is sourced to TIME Magazine, The Washington Post, and Newsweek.

So...were you going to refute any of that, or were you just makin' chitchat?

I'm sorry, I thought it was quatoria that had made that post, and that is what I was referring to. By "sourced" I mean "with links to source articles", not "I read all this in an honest-to-god magazine once". Because without them, we are relying a whole lot on your interpretation of events to set the nature of the debate, and I don't find that acceptable.

[triggercut]

Sure, here's some sourcing for you then. Have some.

Berger attended only one of the briefings-the session that dealt with the threat posed to the U.S. by international terrorism, and especially by al-Qaeda. "I'm coming to this briefing," he says he told Rice, "to underscore how important I think this subject is." Later, alone in his office with Rice, Berger says he told her, "I believe that the Bush Administration will spend more time on terrorism generally, and on al-Qaeda specifically, than any other subject." The terrorism briefing was delivered by Richard Clarke, a career bureaucrat who had served in the first Bush Administration and risen during the Clinton years to become the White House's point man on terrorism. As chair of the interagency Counter-Terrorism Security Group (CSG), Clarke was known as a bit of an obsessive-just the sort of person you want in a job of that kind. Since the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen on Oct. 12, 2000-an attack that left 17 Americans dead-he had been working on an aggressive plan to take the fight to al-Qaeda. The result was a strategy paper that he had presented to Berger and the other national security "principals" on Dec. 20. But Berger and the principals decided to shelve the plan and let the next Administration take it up. With less than a month left in office, they did not think it appropriate to launch a major initiative against Osama bin Laden. "We would be handing (the Bush Administration) a war when they took office on Jan. 20," says a former senior Clinton aide. "That wasn't going to happen." Now it was up to Rice's team to consider what Clarke had put together.


August 12, 2002 Time Magazine.

Here's more:

Berger had left the room by the time Clarke, using a Powerpoint presentation, outlined his thinking to Rice. A senior Bush Administration official denies being handed a formal plan to take the offensive against al-Qaeda, and says Clarke's materials merely dealt with whether the new Administration should take "a more active approach" to the terrorist group. (Rice declined to comment, but through a spokeswoman said she recalled no briefing at which Berger was present.) Other senior officials from both the Clinton and Bush administrations, however, say that Clarke had a set of proposals to "roll back" al-Qaeda. In fact, the heading on Slide 14 of the Powerpoint presentation reads, "Response to al Qaeda: Roll back." Clarke's proposals called for the "breakup" of al-Qaeda cells and the arrest of their personnel. The financial support for its terrorist activities would be systematically attacked, its assets frozen, its funding from fake charities stopped. Nations where al-Qaeda was causing trouble-Uzbekistan, the Philippines, Yemen-would be given aid to fight the terrorists. Most important, Clarke wanted to see a dramatic increase in covert action in Afghanistan to "eliminate the sanctuary" where al-Qaeda had its terrorist training camps and bin Laden was being protected by the radical Islamic Taliban regime. The Taliban had come to power in 1996, bringing a sort of order to a nation that had been riven by bloody feuds between ethnic warlords since the Soviets had pulled out. Clarke supported a substantial increase in American support for the Northern Alliance, the last remaining resistance to the Taliban. That way, terrorists graduating from the training camps would have been forced to stay in Afghanistan, fighting (and dying) for the Taliban on the front lines. At the same time, the U.S. military would start planning for air strikes on the camps and for the introduction of special-operations forces into Afghanistan. The plan was estimated to cost "several hundreds of millions of dollars." In the words of a senior Bush Administration official, the proposals amounted to "everything we've done since 9/11."

Interestingly, in that article, Rice denies Berger's presence at any briefings. However, a New York Times Article from December 30, 2001, has her acknowledgement that he was. When confronted with this, Rice has since gone back on record (to Al Franken, of all people, and appearing in his new book on page 116.

Some more?

On April 30, nearly six weeks after the Administration started holding deputies' meetings, Clarke presented a new plan to them. In addition to Hadley, who chaired the hour-long meeting, the gathering included Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby; Richard Armitage, the barrel-chested Deputy Secretary of State; Paul Wolfowitz, the scholarly hawk from the Pentagon; and John McLaughlin from the cia. Armitage was enthusiastic about Clarke's plan, according to a senior official. But the CIA was gun-shy. Tenet was a Clinton holdover and thus vulnerable if anything went wrong. His agency was unwilling to take risks; it wanted "top cover" from the White House. The deputies, says a senior official, decided to have "three parallel reviews-one on al-Qaeda, one on the Pakistani political situation and the third on Indo-Pakistani relations." The issues, the deputies thought, were interrelated. "They wanted to view them holistically," says the senior official, "and not until they'd had three separate meetings on each of these were they able to hold a fourth integrating them all."

The first warning came from Phoenix, Ariz. On July 10, agent Kenneth Williams wrote a paper detailing his suspicions about some suspected Islamic radicals who had been taking flying lessons in Arizona. Williams proposed an investigation to see if al-Qaeda was using flight schools nationwide. He spoke with the voice of experience; he had been working on international terrorism cases for years. The Phoenix office, according to former FBI agent James Hauswirth, had been investigating men with possible Islamic terrorist links since 1994, though without much support from the FBI's local bosses. Williams had started work on his probe of flight schools in early 2001 but had spent much of the next months on nonterrorist cases. Once he was back on terrorism, it took only a few weeks for alarm bells to ring. He submitted his memo to headquarters and to two FBI field offices, including New York City. In all three places it died.

Whatever Moussaoui's true tale may be, the Minnesota field office was convinced he was worth checking out. Agents spent much of the next two weeks in an increasingly frantic-and ultimately fruitless- effort to persuade FBI headquarters to authorize a national-security warrant to search Moussaoui's computer. From Washington, requests were sent to authorities in Paris for background details on the suspect. Like most things having to do with Moussaoui, the contents of the dossier sent over from Paris are in dispute. One senior French law-enforcement source told Time the Americans were given "everything they needed" to understand that Moussaoui was associated with Islamic terrorist groups. "Even a neophyte," says this source, "working in some remote corner of Florida, would have understood the threat based on what was sent." But several officials in FBI headquarters say that before Sept. 11 the French sent only a three-page document, which portrayed Moussaoui as a radical but was too sketchy to justify a search warrant for his computer.

The precise wording of the French letter isn't the issue. The extraordinary thing about Moussaoui's case-like the Phoenix memo-is that it was never brought to the attention of top officials in Washington who were, almost literally, sleepless with worry about an imminent terrorist attack. Nobody in the FBI or CIA ever informed anybody in the White House of Moussaoui's detention. That was unforgivable. "Do you think," says a White House antiterrorism official, "that if Dick Clarke had known the FBI had in custody a foreigner who was learning to fly a plane in midair, he wouldn't have done something?"

In blissless ignorance, Clarke and Tenet waited for the meeting of the Principals. But the odd little ways of Washington had one more trick to play. Heeding the pleas from the FBI's New York City office, where Mawn and O'Neill were desperate for new linguists and analysts, acting FBI director Pickard asked the Justice Department for some $50 million for the bureau's counterterrorism program. He was turned down. In August, a bureau source says, he appealed to Attorney General Ashcroft. The reply was a flat no.

Pickard got Ashcroft's letter on Sept. 10.

All that is from the TIME Magazine article. Now here's some CNN.

Another newly revealed FBI memo concerns Zacarias Moussaoui, the suspected "20th hijacker." In early September 2001, an FBI agent in Minneapolis speculated that Moussaoui might be the type of person who could fly an airplane into the World Trade Center. The FBI had notified the CIA about Moussaoui but neither agency informed the Counterterrorism Security Group at the White House. Moussaoui was arrested on August 16 after a Minnesota flight school notified the FBI about him, saying Moussaoui wanted to learn how to fly, but not land, a 747 airliner. He has since been charged with conspiracy in plotting the September 11 attacks

Wanna hear about a lack of coordination within the FBI (that might've been coordinated if the Hart/Rudman plan was adopted by congress, or if Richard Clarke had been listened to? The Washington Post weighs in, May 16, 2002...

The Phoenix office's concerns were never relayed to a separate group of FBI agents in Minnesota, who were scrambling to determine the intentions of French national Zacarias Moussaoui. Moussaoui had been arrested at a flight school in August after he had aroused school officials' suspicions. It was only later that the FBI concluded that Moussaoui, now under indictment, was part of the hijacking conspiracy.

FBI officials have repeatedly declined to release the entire memorandum, citing its classified status and providing only a one-paragraph portion that describes the agent's suggestion that flight schools nationwide be canvassed for Middle Easterners. It remained unclear yesterday exactly what led the agent to make a link between al Qaeda and the students he was investigating from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz. But one source said the memo was "thorough" in outlining his concerns.

Here's a few more for you.

How about the sourcing on the information that Dick Cheney's Office Of National Preparedness, the one founded on May 8, 2001, existed on paper only, and never me? That's Newsweek, April 30, 2003.

[Midnight Son]

Well, some of you don't like me being dramatic. That's fine. However, saying "hopefully" things will change is not good enough. People need to get out there and WORK for a better world, system, what have you.

Keep in mind some of the underhanded and illegal things that were done to skew the election to the right. Purging 40000 blacks from the voting rolls in Florida, for example. With the usual demographic vote there would have been no need for a recount, etc. Now we find out about voting machines rigged to change Democratic votes to Republican! Where's the outcry, huh? One election has been stolen from the will of the people and they are working on the next.

"Hopefully" ain't gonna cut it. Get out and DO something.

[quatoria]

I'll also be the first to agree that the Bush administration was too slow to pick up on the threat of terrorism, and that's a good reason to vote the man out of office (as if we needed another good reason). In his defense, nobody really took the threat of foreign-sponsored terrorism inside our borders that seriously (including the Clinton administration).

Jesus, Rywill - did you even read the TIME article that Triggercut pasted here? You can verify every single one of those statements via google. Not only did they do a whole hell of a lot more than "not take it seriously", in the Bush administration, but they inherited a plan from Clinton that DID take it incredibly seriously, and stopped at least one 9/11-scale Al Qaeda attack.

[Lizard_King]

Thanks. I was looking more for "Here's the Time article that says this, LINK FROM TIME.COM or whatever". But at least this stuff is googleable. Sort of.

My main issue, at any rate, is not that these things didn't happen. It's not even that a different version of those events, while factually consistent in its basis, could easily give a wholly different focus to the blame.

It is the conclusions drawn from them that bother me. I suppose it is because for a lie to take hold, it must be a big lie. It is one thing, as Rywill notes, to say Bush didn't do all he could to prevent September 11. It is another entirely to make him responsible, and then turn around and say Clinton had the whole thing in hand.

Do you really expect me to believe that Clinton and staff were planning to start an invasion of Afghanistan pre-9/11, and not only never felt the need to make a public case for it, but WAS ONLY PREVENTED FROM MAKING A WAR HE FELT WAS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY AND IMMINENT BECAUSE OF POLITENESS TOWARDS HIS SUCCESSOR?

I fail to see how FBI and CIA failures to recognize viable leads are Bush's responsibility. Are you implying that his lack of enthusiasm for Al Qaeda prior to 9/11 was so infectious that it caused FBI agents everywhere to simply stop doing their jobs? Yeah, mistakes were made in information coordination. But there is only so far up the chain of command you can take that without implicating Clinton far more. Clinton had 8 years prior to Bush's term in which to perform all of this vaunted intel coordination, not to mention ample public motivation from the FIRST time they bombed the WTC to Oklahoma City.


Keep in mind some of the underhanded and illegal things that were done to skew the election to the right. Purging 40000 blacks from the voting rolls in Florida, for example. With the usual demographic vote there would have been no need for a recount, etc. Now we find out about voting machines rigged to change Democratic votes to Republican! Where's the outcry, huh? One election has been stolen from the will of the people and they are working on the next.

Oh my goodness! NOW I AM CONVINCED. Universal health care IS a viable solution, IF ONLY IT WILL KEEP LEFTISTS FAITHFUL TO THEIR MEDICATION(S).

I was actually going to give the "my candidate was robbed thing" a shot, but I imagine that has been amply dealt with around here. If you have any evidence for those assertions, please give it. Or continue treating it as an article of faith, if it makes you happy to pretend Democrats are the solution.



"Hopefully" ain't gonna cut it. Get out and DO something.

I'm curious. What are you DOING?

[triggercut]

That's some give-and-take we just had here.

Quatoria posts some information.

Totally unfounded! None of this happened!

Sure it did. Here's the timeline.

Some timeline! None of that sourced or attributed!

Sure it is. First thing I did was mention the source.

Right, some sources...buncha wackos. I bet you can't google this stuff

First off, I'd hardly call TIME, NEWSWEEK, CNN, and The Washington Post out there, and you can absolutely google all this stuff. In fact, here are some of the pertinent passages.

In that case, I don't believe them!

...and now I know why Aristotle was so eager to swallow hemlock.

[triggercut]

...anyway, let's take a look at why Clinton's advisors felt like handing this to the Bush administration.

First off, right after the USS Cole, Richard Clarke wanted to hit Al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan with cruise missiles and covert ops troops helicoptered in. His approach was strongly considered, but there were some problems with it.

1. Intel lag time. Every reasonable solid ID on an Osama Bin Laden location was impossible to hit quickly. The lag time was 6 hours for a Tomahawk attack, and 5 hours for a covert ops team strike. There was no guarantee that they'd get anywhere closer to Osama then than we were able to do, you know, when Pakistan was actually allowing us airspace flyover, and we had squads on the ground scouting him in the winter of 2001-2002.

2. We didn't know. Everyone had suspicions that the Cole attack was Al Qaeda. They had equally strong suspicions it might be Hezbollah. Launching an attack on the foreign soil of a sovereign nation without confirmation of responsibility was a non-starter for William Cohen and George Tenet. We didn't make the conclusive link of Al-Qaeda to the Cole until after the new year.

3. October Surprise criticism. Picture this: it's late October in a neck-and-neck presidential race. Suddenly the US launches Cruise Missiles at targets in Afghanistan, and their are leaks that decent-sized US Covert Ops forces are on the ground in that country seeking retribution for the USS Cole bombing. Can you say "shrill criticism in Congress accusing the Administration of using the armed forces to Wag the Dog and get a sort-of incumbent elected?" Clinton's cabinet knew they'd never get congressional support for a military action during the campaign.

4. Lame Duck criticism. President Bush 41 was savaged for getting the US entangled in Somalia when he was in the final days of his presidency. Clinton was already getting kicked around for his pardons in December. When Richard Clarke delivered his report on how to rollback Al Qaeda on December 20, Clinton knew he didn't have the political capital left to attempt enaction of the program. Instead he gift-wrapped it, and handed it to the incoming administration on a silver platter saying "This is important. This will work."

[Lizard_King]

That's some give-and-take we just had here.

Quatoria posts some information.

Totally unfounded! None of this happened!

Sure it did. Here's the timeline.

All I did was ask for a reference. All. I didn't say it was bullshit, I didn't say anything like that. I don't think that's unreasonable.


Some timeline! None of that sourced or attributed!

Sure it is. First thing I did was mention the source.
Because that's not what I was asking for. I was asking for some links. That's all. Instead, you give me something where I have to look up each article by date myself. Since you are cutting and pasting, I figured it would be no big deal to ask you to expedite matters.


Right, some sources...buncha wackos. I bet you can't google this stuff

First off, I'd hardly call TIME, NEWSWEEK, CNN, and The Washington Post out there, and you can absolutely google all this stuff. In fact, here are some of the pertinent passages.

I didn't say that. All I said was that there is a great deal of interpretation going on there, and it is obvious that it comes from the sources with a vested interest in passing the buck to the Bush administration.


In that case, I don't believe them!

...and now I know why Aristotle was so eager to swallow hemlock.

I said I disagreed with the conclusions drawn from them. But don't let me stop you.


First off, right after the USS Cole, Richard Clarke wanted to hit Al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan with cruise missiles and covert ops troops helicoptered in. His approach was strongly considered, but there were some problems with it.

Yes. That would have done a great deal. Since stopping bin laden was such a piece of cake with a far more substantive effort.


2. We didn't know. Everyone had suspicions that the Cole attack was Al Qaeda. They had equally strong suspicions it might be Hezbollah. Launching an attack on the foreign soil of a sovereign nation without confirmation of responsibility was a non-starter for William Cohen and George Tenet. We didn't make the conclusive link of Al-Qaeda to the Cole until after the new year.

It still would have been a non-starter. Afghanistan could never have come to pass even in the half assed form it is now without 9/11.


3. October Surprise criticism. Picture this: it's late October in a neck-and-neck presidential race. Suddenly the US launches Cruise Missiles at targets in Afghanistan, and their are leaks that decent-sized US Covert Ops forces are on the ground in that country seeking retribution for the USS Cole bombing. Can you say "shrill criticism in Congress accusing the Administration of using the armed forces to Wag the Dog and get a sort-of incumbent elected?" Clinton's cabinet knew they'd never get congressional support for a military action during the campaign.

Either Al Qaeda was an imminent threat or not to Clinton or not. Either you act on what you believe, or you pretend you believed it in retrospect to cover your ass. Take your pick, but you can't have Bush taking the rap for 9/11 without Clinton taking at least as much.

4. Lame Duck criticism. President Bush 41 was savaged for getting the US entangled in Somalia when he was in the final days of his presidency. Clinton was already getting kicked around for his pardons in December. When Richard Clarke delivered his report on how to rollback Al Qaeda on December 20, Clinton knew he didn't have the political capital left to attempt enaction of the program. Instead he gift-wrapped it, and handed it to the incoming administration on a silver platter saying "This is important. This will work."
Yes. Somalia, a war where there was no discernible US interest at stake. Not the matter of national security you claim Clinton KNEW Al Qaeda represented.

And since we are having so much fun second guessing, you tell me which would have done more to halt Bin laden. Lobbing cruise missiles and Green Berets haphazardly in early 2001 Afghanistan or capturing and extraditing the bulk of Bin Laden's crew in 1995 (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/Distribution/Redirect_Artifact/0,4678,0-560624,00.html) (and if you say the Guardian is just covering for Bush I'll have some of that hemlock you're offering).

[Jessica]

...and now I know why Aristotle was so eager to swallow hemlock.

That would be Socrates. Sorry, just the anal historian in me peeking out.

[triggercut]

[quote="Lizard_King
And since we are having so much fun second guessing, you tell me which would have done more to halt Bin laden. Lobbing cruise missiles and Green Berets haphazardly in early 2001 Afghanistan or capturing and extraditing the bulk of Bin Laden's crew in 1995 (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/Distribution/Redirect_Artifact/0,4678,0-560624,00.html) (and if you say the Guardian is just covering for Bush I'll have some of that hemlock you're offering).[/quote]

Sure, I'll take this one.

The source of this largely discredited report wasn't a "CIA operative"--it was an independent agent and investment banker named Mansoor Ijaz. Ijaz, though not a diplomatic attache of the Sudanese Government, nevertheless approached CIA contacts and the State Department offering to "give up bin Laden" in exchange for the US lifting sanctions on an "Axis of Evil" nation that harbors Hamas, Hezbollah, and al Qaeda terrorists, sponsors slavery, and engages in systematic tribal genocide as a matter of policy. Mansoor had heavily invested in Sudanese oil futures and hoped to make a killing should the US lift trade sanctions with that nation.

The US predictably responded that they didn't do business with independent agents and front-channeled, back-channeled, and every-other-way-channeled a behind-the-scenes relationship with the Sudanese leaders. They eventually discovered that the Sudanese had no better intel on the location of Osama than did the CIA. So, rather than link up with a country that sponsors terrorism and slavery for useless information, Sandy Berger told Ijaz to take a hike.

Ijaz has since carved out a nice cottage industry for himself by writing op-eds for NewsMax, National Review, and serving as an analyst on Roger Ailes' payroll at Fox News. He either is trying to recoup the money he lost on those Sudanese Oil Futures, or is enjoying the fact that the current administration has softened it's stance towards Sudan, who have not changed their government or policies one bit...but we have, apparently.

[triggercut]

...and now I know why Aristotle was so eager to swallow hemlock.

That would be Socrates. Sorry, just the anal historian in me peeking out.

Nuts. Of course it was. I knew that...really!

Nuts... :oops:

[Lizard_King]

Sure, I'll take this one.


I see this is going to be an ongoing theme. Please, a link. Not, note, YOU FAG COMMIE WRONG WRONG WRONG. Just a link.

I can see that as a credible reason not to do that, if it did indeed go down like that. But I am surprised (sort of) that you do not extend the same benefit of the doubt to the Bush administration. It seems to me that starting a war vs dropping sanctions conditionally (it is not like they had to stay down if the Sudan produced nothing), for example, is still a much harder thing to demand as an obvious solution if there is no 9/11 to prod it.

And if you really think Bin Laden could best be dealt with via cruise missiles and commandos, without a catalyst like the WTC attack II, would have been a remotely feasible act as an incoming president that had pledged less international entanglement and had no real popular mandate of which to speak, then I don't think there is much more to discuss.

[Jessica]

Seriously. "The republic is falling! The republic is falling!"

They have some justification for fear, I think.

I don't consider myself particularly paranoid, but I don't see how any reasonable person could not be scared over what is happening to civil liberties in this country. Stuff the government used to harangue the Soviet Union about is now law here. For example, the FBI no longer needs a warrant to search your home or wiretap you; they simply have to state you are suspected of aiding or abetting terrorists.

CAPPS II, the airline security database to be tested by Delta and Homeland Security in November of this year, is currently scheduled to be tied to tax records, credit card records, the NCIC, you name it. Travelers will be required to give their name, address, phone number and Social Security number on making a plane reservation. It is supposedly designed to stop people from using fake IDs for air travel. With over 1 million identities being stolen in this country every year, this seems fairly useless and, in fact, seems likely to increase that number, as terrorists will pay good money for validated safe IDs. The government apparently agrees; they've added "violent criminals" to the proposal, just to make the whole thing worthwhile. Maybe I'm being extreme, but how long before misdemeanor warrants are tied in? If you're going to justify all that expense and it will be useless against all but the most stupid terrorists, you might as well catch someone.

Patriot Act II, now before Congress, allows the government to strip any person of US citizenship and be deported if they contributed to a charity proven to have aided terrorist causes, whether they knew so or not when they donated. The bill does not explain where people born and raised in this country wil be deported to. I'm not making this up.

Make of it what you will. Nearly as I can tell, within the next 10 to 15 years we'll no longer be a republic or even a democracy. The terrorists will have won, as they will have pushed us into becoming the kind of totalitarian, police state regime they fully recognize.

I was born a free American; I wonder if I'll still be one when I die?

[Midnight Son]

"Hopefully" ain't gonna cut it. Get out and DO something.

I'm curious. What are you DOING?

Why, I am supporting competing candidates with my time and money. Last I heard that was still legal, Liz.

[Midnight Son]

I don't consider myself particularly paranoid, but I don't see how any reasonable person could not be scared over what is happening to civil liberties in this country. Stuff the government used to harangue the Soviet Union about is now law here. For example, the FBI no longer needs a warrant to search your home or wiretap you; they simply have to state you are suspected of aiding or abetting terrorists.


I was born a free American; I wonder if I'll still be one when I die?

Jessica, a major problem is all the people out there who are snowed and cowed by the right. The more I think about it, us arguing with the zealots here is not going to change anything. Their mind is made up.

[Lizard_King]

Why, I am supporting competing candidates with my time and money. Last I heard that was still legal, Liz.

I wasn't questioning the legality of it, rather the relative effectivity of whatever you are up to. Thanks for clearing that up.


Jessica, a major problem is all the people out there who are snowed and cowed by the right. The more I think about it, us arguing with the zealots here is not going to change anything. Their mind is made up.

No question the issues Jessica raises are important ones. But I'd argue that an even bigger problem than the vast right wing conspiracy is the refusal of the left to hold its party to account as the supposed opposition. It's all about the evil Republicans, even when Democrats were part of the bipartisan Patriot Act.
It's not your hatred of Republicans that I find ridiculous; just your refusal to hold Democrats to the same standard.
And if you are tired of people disagreeing with you, there's always DU. I bet they're holding at least 5 vast rightwing conspiracy circlejerks at the moment.

[Midnight Son]

Democrats have a lot to answer for, no doubt. Voting YES on the Patriot Act without even reading it is one of many. I'm supporting them this time because I feel strongly that this great land of ours (cue music) is heading in the wrong direction. I feel it's not too late to change things for the better.

[bmulligan]

Jessica, a major problem is all the people out there who are snowed and cowed by the right. The more I think about it, us arguing with the zealots here is not going to change anything. Their mind is made up.


The Lefts' minds are already made up too: "It's all Bush's fault!"

I'm supprised they haven't yet blamed him for ordering the attacks on the WTC, oh, wait, they already have !!

[Midnight Son]

Yada yada yada.

[Jason McCullough]

[quote="Lizard King"]But I'd argue that an even bigger problem than the vast right wing conspiracy is the refusal of the left to hold its party to account as the supposed opposition.[/url]

Next up: the flat tax can't get passed because its politically unpopular, and this is really the *GOP's* fault. How dare they not commit electoral suicide!

[Lizard_King]

Next up: the flat tax can't get passed because its politically unpopular, and this is really the *GOP's* fault. How dare they not commit electoral suicide!

What?

[Jason McCullough]

The Democrats rolled over on the Patriot Act because a) it's bad, but not *that* bad and b) it had expiration provisions. If they had opposed it, the GOP would have used it like a chainsaw on them in the 2002 elections.

People tend to angrily shake their fist and demand something from the government in the short-run wake of disasters; getting yourself throw out of office through ideological inflexibility doesn't help.

As an analogy, would you blame the GOP for rolling over to the Democrats on ownership restrictions of C4/related explosives if someone blew up the Capitol? I'm sure the NRA would be up in arms about it the same way the ACLU is about the Patriot Act, but it's just politics.

[triggercut]

Look, there's plenty of blame to go around on the WTC attacks--those I lay the blame solely on would be the persons who planned, trained, and perpetrated the attacks, or funded those who did.

Could Clinton have been more aggressive in his administration? Hindsight sure looks damning. Same for President Bush. At the time there were precious few, though, saying they wanted or expected more to be done. (At the time, Newt Gingrich praised our cruise missile attacks on Al Qaeda camps, calling them "Exactly the right response," as a "for instance") Monday Morning Quarterbacking isn't necessarily bad...if you learn from the AAR.

Anyhoo, I don't think the Democrats have all the answers, nor do I think the Republicans can claim that. What I *do* think is that maybe, just maybe, with a healthy give-and-take, a restoration of real *dialogue* between parties holding differing viewpoints, and a willingness to compromise...maybe we can find all the answers, or enough to help the most people at least.

Here's what I'm looking for, from Bill Maher's HBO show Friday night...

But more fundamental than that, it's about what kind of country we want to live in. I think this nation wants an open, transparent government. I think it likes the two-party system. I think it likes to hear reasoned dialogue, not labeling, name-calling, hateful politics. I think 2004 is the election the voters have to put that back in.
--Gen. Wesley K. Clark

Anyway, LK, the Mansoor Ijaz story is from Sandy Berger, Clinton's national security advisor, and Daniel Benjamin, the NSC Counter-terrorism czar at the time of this, as quoted in Franken's new book.

[Midnight Son]

Here's what I'm looking for, from Bill Maher's HBO show Friday night...

But more fundamental than that, it's about what kind of country we want to live in. I think this nation wants an open, transparent government. I think it likes the two-party system. I think it likes to hear reasoned dialogue, not labeling, name-calling, hateful politics. I think 2004 is the election the voters have to put that back in.
--Gen. Wesley K. Clark



I agree with you on this. He seems like a standup guy as opposed to a career politician.

[Lizard_King]

The Democrats rolled over on the Patriot Act because a) it's bad, but not *that* bad and b) it had expiration provisions. If they had opposed it, the GOP would have used it like a chainsaw on them in the 2002 elections.

Ah yes, so the Democrat's actions are an example of tactical cunning while maintaining principle, whereas Republican were shamelessly seeking to oppress us.


People tend to angrily shake their fist and demand something from the government in the short-run wake of disasters; getting yourself throw out of office through ideological inflexibility doesn't help.
So part of this Democratic party you admire is running in the face of the mob at the slightest hint of (gasp) unpopularity? I wonder if you have the Iraq war in the same rosy light.


As an analogy, would you blame the GOP for rolling over to the Democrats on ownership restrictions of C4/related explosives if someone blew up the Capitol? I'm sure the NRA would be up in arms about it the same way the ACLU is about the Patriot Act, but it's just politics.
Again, I'm confused by your choice of analogy. The NRA is sko of concealed explosives permit advocacy group now? Is there any way we can work them into a Middle Eastern discussion as Palestinian baby eaters as well?

Now, if we were talking about a subject that I regard as one of my litmus tests for why I choose one party over the other, rather than some farcical scenario designed to make me look either unprincipled or insane, I'd say I do precisely what you suggest is politically insane. For instance, if in a post-Columbine situation a VPCesque gun control bill was advocated and left unopposed by any of my representative, their would have to be absolutely no other choices in the next election (ie, a protest vote going to someone even worse on guns would be somewhat pointless) to force me to vote for them again. And they'd hear from me either way, for whatever that's worth (one of those handy aspects of being an NRA member is all the convenient mailing labels for your representatives they give you).

[Lizard_King]

But more fundamental than that, it's about what kind of country we want to live in. I think this nation wants an open, transparent government. I think it likes the two-party system. I think it likes to hear reasoned dialogue, not labeling, name-calling, hateful politics. I think 2004 is the election the voters have to put that back in.
--Gen. Wesley K. Clark

Anyway, LK, the Mansoor Ijaz story is from Sandy Berger, Clinton's national security advisor, and Daniel Benjamin, the NSC Counter-terrorism czar at the time of this, as quoted in Franken's new book.
Fair enough. Although that citation requires a mandatory expression of revulsion on my part at the possibility that any individual is reading Al Franken.

Anyway, Clark would certainly be preferable to most of the others in the Dem herd. But I haven't seen him articulate much of a position beyond "not Bush" and pleasing rhetoric like the above...the jury's still out.

[Rywill]

Jesus, Rywill - did you even read the TIME article that Triggercut pasted here? You can verify every single one of those statements via google. Not only did they do a whole hell of a lot more than "not take it seriously", in the Bush administration, but they inherited a plan from Clinton that DID take it incredibly seriously, and stopped at least one 9/11-scale Al Qaeda attack.
I didn't read it because he didn't link to it, but I read the stuff he posted. I also know that Clinton scuttled more than one plan to put troops in Afghanistan to take out bin Laden, as well as failing to take any serious action against terrorists after we had embassies and warships bombed. I'm not trying to bash the man; everybody thought that this terrorist stuff was probably going to remain overseas, or that our current counterintel folks could break up anything that people tried to pull in the United States (like the 2000 LAX bombing, for example). But it's not really fair to say that Bush was a lot worse than Clinton on this score. Clinton made a plan that never went anywhere; Bush took the same plan and never went anywhere.

[Rywill]

On the issue of America becoming a dictatorship in 10 years, I guess I'll just agree to disagree. The country is moving in the wrong direction and Bush/Ashcroft have gone way too far in sacrificing civil liberties to help stop crime. Totally agree. It's one reason I won't vote for him in '04. But it's just silly to think that that means 10 years from now we "won't be a democracy." If Jessica and Midnight Son can't see that, I agree that there's no point in us talking. I'll let it drop.

[bmulligan]

well, it was printed in Time magazine so it must be true. It couldn't be more complicated than a few paragraphs. After all, Republicans want to destroy this country, any other explanation must be a conspiracy!

[triggercut]

well, it was printed in Time magazine so it must be true. It couldn't be more complicated than a few paragraphs. After all, Republicans want to destroy this country, any other explanation must be a conspiracy!

So, you're saying that TIME has had numerous breaches of journalistic integrity, and you've got contrary information that refutes the charges that they level (many of which, by the way, ended up appearing a year later in the congressional report delivered to the President on intelligence failures leading up to the terrorist attacks)?

Well, do you?

Do you understand how ethical journalism works? In order to print something, you need either one source to go "on record", or two anonymous sources to independently verify one another, and those two sources must be connected intimately to the allegation you're going to print, and if any allegation sourced by these anonymous sources is ever categorically proved to be false, they may never be used as a source again.

So one more time, are you going to refute them, or just waste bandwidth?

[bmulligan]

no, I'm saying that Time magazine is not above describing a complicated issue in laymans terms and spinning it to prepetuate the bandwagon of the Bush hating agenda. Lets take a look at your "facts" as pasted by youself:


They recommended a new Homeland Security Office be set up within the cabinet to coordinate all intel, branches of service, local law-enforcement, and border patrols. Congress liked the idea, but the Administration--Ashcroft, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld in particular--killed it by refusing to support it.

mmmm....I'm wondering why there is no mention of the fact that congressional Democrats were so interested in a new cabinet office, then spoke against it after being publicly proposed by Bush over a year later.....


The Administration did take the report to heart, though. On May 8, 2001, the President announced that VP Cheney would head an Anti-Terrorist task force to combat domestic terrorism, to meet monthly. The President himself promised to chair some of these meetings, periodically. Problem: This task force never got beyond the hypothetical stage, and never actually met.



I fail to see the difference between Bush's inaction of laid plans and Clinton's inaction of the revered terrorist eradication plan. Except that Clinton didn't act because he didn't want the safety of every US citizen to be 'thrown in the lap' of the new administration. Clinton didn't act because he couldn't garner public support and wanted to preserve his 'legacy', not to mention everyone being able to blame the Democratic administration for the coming recession had he started another major military action before leaving office (and yes, they knew the recession was coming)


Due to the President taking the longest vacation of any sitting president in 32 years, Clarke's meeting gets pushed to Sept. 4th, 2001.


Yes, I'm sure the president of the United States sits back and does some fishing and huntn', and whittling and nothing else during his 'vacation'. An obvious spin in your words which were probably copied nearly verbatim from your sited articles. Any moron knows that The POTUS is never 'on vacation', he simply doesn't sit at his oval office desk 24/7.


On September 4th, the Cabinet looked at Richard Clarke's anti-Al Qaeda plan, and liked it--except for Rumsfeld. To fund Clarke's plan would require $600 million be diverted from his pet missile defense shield plan (funded at $158 billion). He threatened presidential veto of the anti-terrorism plan.

That's funny, I thought the Armed Services Committee had jurisdiction over $$ allocation in the branches of the armed services. Easy to blame Rumsfeld for something he has no control over since he is the 'figurehead' of the millitary, you can also kill 2 birds with the same stone by taking a swipe at the administration as a whole with this oversimplified statement. I don't see how 600 million (4% of 150 billion)would be detrimental to continuing a missle plan which congress appropriates.

It also seems to me that there are many hands in the pot when it comes to dropping the ball on defending us from enemies foreigh and domestic, namely the 435 members of congress who can conveniently play politicts and hold public hearings and never seem to take the blame for anything from the economy, to spending, to the budget, to defense. Only the president can claim culpability to current crises, fostered by the obvious bias in reporting by main stream, conglomerate media sources like the Time-Warner-AOL-CNN empire. Simply put, news stories that appear in print are not necessarily objective truth no matter who your 2 independently verified unnamed sources are or what they tell you on or off the record. I understand how 'ethical' journalism works, and obviously inserted bias and opinion presented as fact are neither.[/quote]

[Jessica]

The Democrats rolled over on the Patriot Act because a) it's bad, but not *that* bad and b) it had expiration provisions. If they had opposed it, the GOP would have used it like a chainsaw on them in the 2002 elections.

Patriot II gets rid of the expiration provisions, by the way.

[hermyhermit]

I love it when the truth blindsides you, and you have to result to insults. In short, Hermy, do some fucking work in an argument, for once. Or are you only capable of insults?

Now see, there you go get getting all presumptive again.

I actually found your diatribe very *funny* sorry if your humor detection needle is stuck at the "stick up ass" position. So I pulled all the best parts of your argument into one coherent phrase, that is all.

There was no need for me to pick apart your argument because I agreed with large chunks of it (though not all). Do not always assume the worst, when I want to beat you up publically you will know, don't worry. And I certainly can quote articles and do homework if I feel the need but I just don't often feel the need. Occasionally something here grips me or rubs me the wrong way so I put my 2 cents in, but mostly I just listen to the lunatics rave.

With love,

hh

[quatoria]

It's awfully difficult not to assume the worst whenever you talk, Hermy, although I will agree with you - it IS always amusing when the lunatics rave. You always leave me with a chuckle, for example.

[Midnight Son]

Imagine for a moment that the lunatics are right. That would suck. Now, I'm not predicting the future but I am seeing certain trends that can and should be addressed. Of course the esteemed opposition would rather be namecalling than discussing issues. It's so much easier.

[Rywill]

Imagine for a moment that the lunatics are right. That would suck. Now, I'm not predicting the future but I am seeing certain trends that can and should be addressed. Of course the esteemed opposition would rather be namecalling than discussing issues. It's so much easier.
Sure. And there's a guy on the street below my office window yelling about how the world is going to end any second now. It would suck if he were right, too. That doesn't mean I'm going to go out and start acting on that presumption.

In other words, I don't see any reason to believe that you and Jessica are right. The country has weathered much worse (*cough* Joe McCarthy *cough*) and come through with an operating democratic government. As nearly as I can tell, this stuff is pretty cyclical--elected officials (and, by extension, courts) tend to swing back and forth on civil liberties vs. crime prevention, essentially overcorrecting each way before getting dragged back by popular unrest (either people being pissed off at losing their liberties, or people being pissed off about rising crime and/or guilty people getting off on "technicalities"). It's lame that it's happening now and I agree that we should vote appropriately. But all this Chicken Little-style clucking about how we're going to be living in a dictatorship in 10 years is silly and counterproductive to your cause.

[Midnight Son]

By the way, Rywill, "dictatorship in 10 years" is your phrase. Or should I say "Plan?" Muwahahahah!!!

[Rywill]

No it isn't, although it wasn't your phrase either--I've been replying to you and Jessica together.

Nearly as I can tell, within the next 10 to 15 years we'll no longer be a republic or even a democracy. The terrorists will have won, as they will have pushed us into becoming the kind of totalitarian, police state regime they fully recognize.

I was born a free American; I wonder if I'll still be one when I die?
Which I guess technically isn't "dictatorship," so my bad on that--what she actually predicted was a non-democratic non-republic totalitarian police state, which I guess isn't technically the same thing, although it's pretty close.

[Ben Sones]

Good lord, you don't know the first thing about Rywill's political beliefs if you think he's an authoritarian.

[Rywill]

I think (I hope!!) he was joking on that last part. Although it would be pretty nice to be able to have you put to death by fiat.

[Midnight Son]

Getting personal, eh?

(Oh, and I haven't seen a FIAT yet that I couldn't jump over!)

[Rywill]

I meant Ben, not you.

[Midnight Son]

Aight.