28th March 2004, 3:22 PM
Quote:You refer to the testimony by Dick Clarke? The testimony that has been largely discredited by his own past statements? He's bitter because he lost his job. His past statements are in complete contradiction to what he says now (just like Wes Clark, must be something about the name). Clarke is a liar, and his credibility was called into question numerous times during the hearings. After all, if Bush's supposed weakness on terrorism bothered him so much, why wait all this time to say something about it? Why, because he needed the controversy to wait until his book was published!
After all, Bush never had Bin Laden presented to him on a silver platter and REFUSED to take him. Bush didn't allow half a dozen Al Qaeda attacks against America, one in the World Trade Center, go completely unanswered and unpunished... well, okay, we did bomb an innocent aspirin factory in Sudan, and a few camels and uninhabited desert terrain in Afghanistan once... Bush wasn't the president who gutted military and intelligence funding. Plus, there were eight years of Clintonocracy before 9/11, as opposed to eight months of Bush.
Slick Willy definitely bears the burden of blame for this. By my reckoning of time, he's twelve times more blameworthy purely on the basis of how long he allowed it to go on, to say nothing of the direct steps he took to weaken our defenses. To suggest otherwise is fallacy and in direct defiance of mountains of evidence.
Which is why Clarke said he would fully support opening the testimony he gave in 2002 to public record?
Anyway it's not just him that presents a picture of Bush essentially continuing Clinton-ish terrorism policies for those 8 months, it's everything else too! There is nothing that denies it. And why not? America was complacent... it was hardly just the Democrats who didn't see it coming (despite some warnings)! Your continual attempts to blame every ill this country has (and many it doesn't) on Clinton is so idiotic that it's just about pointless to try to say how stupid you are...
Yes, Clinton didn't make a maximum effort to catch Bin Laden. But Republicans are equally to blame! How about Clarke? Put in office by Bush I. And from 1994 they controlled the House. And people like the Defence Seceratary (Cohen for the second term at least) were Republicans... and Bush before 9-11 didn't try any harder than Clinton! Acting like he was something special and worse is completely false and it's just like you to try it.
We should have seen something coming, but America is insular and doesn't really feel like it can be hurt... they're so far away... and we had inservice rivalries (FBI-CIA not sharing info was crucial for the intelligence failures here...), etc... there are many factors...
Oh, as for why Clinton didn't get Bin Laden, well, there was that one missile strike and they said that they were very close several other times but other factors -- unsure intelligence, the possibility for innocent casualties -- made them not do it...
Quote:Al Qaeda is specifically attacking interests that are not ours, because they know that these nations will never retaliate against them. They did the same to us when we wouldn't retaliate. But they know now that the US (unless Kerry is elected) will open the gates of hell for anyone who attacks us. They are cowards. 9/11 was a huge error on their part because they had no idea we'd go all out on them... why would they? We always let them get away with this sort of thing before. While they'd never admit it, they fear us now. They are not nearly so willing to stage a real attack against us unless it's a huge one, something truly crippling, because they know if they go bigger and don't wipe us out, we will wipe them out. If they nuked a city or something like that, I doubt any but the worst liberal apologists would object to America scouring every last greasy Al Qaeda fuck off the face of the earth. They know this, and that is why they do not attack us.
Also, other enemy nations see this exact same thing. They know that none of them has a snowball's chance of surviving an American invasion. Few of them are led by fools stupid enough to attack us.
No, we are without doubt safer and more secure now than we have been in over ten years. But if we allow them the time, they will do their damnedest to attain such hold that they can threaten us again. Since liberals have had a historically soft stance on terrorism, this is a major reason why Kerry cannot win this race.
Check: We will make ourselves safer by getting everyone in the world to hate us more than they ever have before. Makes a lot of sense to me, uh huh!
And I doubt that they're holding back that much. For one thing it's just easier to strike those places. Much closer to home. They also have more terrorists there and have much larger local groups that might support them...
Oh, there were terror attacks in Turkey too...
Anyway, if anyone's holding back from going after Al Quaida it's Bush. Why? Iraq! Iraq and Bush's insane hatred of peacekeeping. We should be in Afghanistan in force. We are not. Why not? Iraq. Iraq is also draining our money so Afghanistan is abandoned. Hmm, kind of defeating your own position of "destroying the terrorists", you think? I sure do!
See, Sadaam was evil and supported the Palestinians, but wasn't big behind anti-US (directly) terrorism. Al Quaida obviously was, as things like the USS Cole show... there isn't a good 'terrorism' excuse for attacking Iraq. As I said, there's a better terrorism excuse for NOT attacking Iraq!
Oh, and liberals aren't any easier on terrorists. They just use methods like "international law" to go after them that you detest... maybe because they'd actually make the US more "popular" in the world and you'd rather be detested? I don't know...