Ah, yes, the old 9/11 could have been prevented if only we'd had a Republican president line. And yet I seem to recall that George W. Bush was president, putting al-Qaeda on the back-burner and telling people who tried to sound the alarm that they were just trying to cover their asses.
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If Only
17 Jul 2008 09:44 am
Comments (22)
The fact that the media would waste their time on a clown like this is a much more intriguing story than "dumb guy can afford billboard space to secure attention in an attempt to fill needs created by personal insecurities"
You have too little time left at the Atlantic to waste it on this bozo.
Yeah - remember the PDBs and Condi's line how Bush didn't bother doing about Al Qaeda, because he didn't want to waste time "swatting flies."
This is just another block in the monumental wall of delusion built by the right-wingnutosphere.
The GOP were anti-terrorism obstructionists for half a decade. For example, the 1996 omnibus terrorism bill was blocked, loudly decried by Jesse Helms and Trent Lott as wasteful. At the behest of Enron and his Texas banking buddies, Phil Gramm single-handedly blocked legislation that would have made it easier to track terrorism funds. He called it "totalitarian." The GOP rebuked Clinton over a request for roving wiretaps. (Almost all of the items requested were put into place AFTER 9/11, and a LOT more.)
There was quite a bit done under Clinton towards anti-terrorism. Most was accomplished by executive order, with no help from the GOP.
Then pre-9/11, the Bush administration gutted much of the progress that was made, and the GOP Congress was only too happy to go along. There was one intentional act after another, all because they felt that strong anti-terrorism measures weren't necessary. Did you know that Clinton had set up an agreement with about 20 nations to deny AQ safe havens for their money, but Bush scuttled it the instant he got into office?
And let's not even get started on the unfathomable list of f***-ups since 9/11.
Over the last decade plus, the GOP really has done a heckuva' job.
Just imagine if Gore had been president and 9/11 happened anyway. The Republicans would be blaming Dems for 9/11 every single day. Fox News would run a 24/7 graphic "Obama bin Laden - Day 1825 - Still Uncaptured".
But the Dems treat Bush and 9/11 with kid gloves.
Gosh, if only a Republican had been in office, we wouldn't have been attacked.
This is about the 2000th day of my challenge to see if anyone can prove that we're not all in Hell.
The assertion is that if a Republican had been in office during Clinton's second term, then 9/11 wouldn't have happened. That would be the time period during which the 9/11 terrorists trained for the attacks and the time during which they arrived in the US.
Of course, we've now been assured that the Clinton administration's approach--which didn't stop the terrorists from training and didn't stop them from entering the country--was the right one, and Barry can't wait to implement that approach again. I wonder: does Barry want to send ninjas after bin Laden too? That's what a serious anti-terror policy looks like, right Matt?
Thomas has a good point -- attacking countries that posed no threat to the United States and had no substantial connection to anti-American terrorism and installing Islamist quasi states would have been a much more effective counter-terrorism strategy! Just like calling Obama "Barry" is the height of wit!
To me, the most shocking thing about that clip was that the CNN talking-head said nothing about Billboard Dude's claim that Clinton was president on 9/11. Now, I only watched the clip, so maybe CNN came back to the point afterwards or something. But even if they did, it didn't occur to the CNN anchor to correct the record immediately. And if they never came back it, well, then it didn't occur to anyone in the studio, either.
Why would anyone watch a news network that casually lets such whopping falsehoods just sail on by?
To me, the most shocking thing about that clip was that the CNN talking-head said nothing about Billboard Dude's claim that Clinton was president on 9/11. Now, I only watched the clip, so maybe CNN came back to the point afterwards or something. But even if they did, it didn't occur to the CNN anchor to correct the record immediately. And if they never came back it, well, then it didn't occur to anyone in the studio, either.
Why would anyone watch a news network that casually lets such whopping falsehoods just sail on by?
To me, the most shocking thing about that clip was that the CNN talking-head said nothing about Billboard Dude's claim that Clinton was president on 9/11. Now, I only watched the clip, so maybe CNN came back to the point afterwards or something. But even if they did, it didn't occur to the CNN anchor to correct the record immediately. And if they never came back it, well, then it didn't occur to anyone in the studio, either.
Why would anyone watch a news network that casually lets such whopping falsehoods just sail on by?
The assertion is that if a Republican had been in office during Clinton's second term, then 9/11 wouldn't have happened.
Any Republican? I mean, really?
I just don't get how you can be impressed with with Bush did pre-9/11 on the terrorism front. Like with any policy, there can be disagreements with the specifics of Clinton's. But Bush just didn't have one! I don't see how you can agree with that.
Oy. Sorry about the many, many, many comments.
When Clinton tried going after bin Laden, the GOP accused him of wagging the dog. They didn't care about al-Qaida. They were busy impeaching a sitting president over a blowjob. When Bush came into office, the Ashcroft's Department of Justice rated cracking down on porn as a higher priority than counter-terrorism. Thomas is living in a dream world.
No, Thomas is absolutely right--9/11 wouldn't have happened if we'd had a Republican as president 1997-2001.
Of course, that's because the 2000 millenium attacks thwarted by the Clinton Adminstrtion would have occurred . . .
Thomas said... Of course, we've now been assured that the Clinton administration's approach--which didn't stop the terrorists from training and didn't stop them from entering the country--was the right one, and Barry can't wait to implement that approach again.
Actually, what Clinton accomplished didn't stop the training. Who knows what might have happened if the GOP Congress hadn't gutted his 1996 request for anti-terrorism funds.
C'mon, Thomas. Aren't you the least bit ashamed that after the attack on the U.S.S. Cole and an attack on the WTC, that the GOP Congress and Bush placed the priority of anti-terrorism down to next to nothing? Oh, that's right. Republicans don't feel shame. They trust create new "truths".
When Clinton tried going after bin Laden, the GOP accused him of wagging the dog. They didn't care about al-Qaida. They were busy impeaching a sitting president over a blowjob. When Bush came into office, the Ashcroft's Department of Justice rated cracking down on porn as a higher priority than counter-terrorism. Thomas is living in a dream world.
What if Clinon's shooting missiles at bin Laden pissed him off? It's possible. Why stir the hornets nest? As the Kennedys know, assassination plots can boomerang.
I think both the Clinton and Bush administrations are to blame. What I see is Democratic partisan hacks trying to shield Clinton from blame and put it all on Bush and vice versa, Republican hacks trying to put all the blame on Clinton while absolving Bush.
I wonder: does Barry want to send ninjas after bin Laden too?
Wow. Really? Really? 7 years after the attacks, Osama's still running free, Al-Queda's stronger than ever, even the Taliban are making a resurgence in Afghanistan, and you think you have any standing, at all, to mock Obama's plans against terrorism? If you valued catching terrorists or our nation's security in any way, you'd be too appalled at Bush's performance to snark on what Obama might do. The level of willful ignorance and obliviousness to any Republican responsibilities for our current state is truly staggering.
LFC, that's a remarkable re-writing of history. Look, I don't think the Bush administration's pre-9/11 policies were significantly better than the Clinton administration's policies. The only significant difference in responsibility, as I see it, is that the best opportunities for preventing the 9/11 attacks all occurred in 2000 or before, and all of them were missed. Believing that not all of them would have been missed if a Republican had been in office isn't hard. I remember seeing some suggestions here that Republicans are trigger-happy, blood-thirsty, hate-filled, militaristic amoral assholes, so the idea that a Republican president would have blanched at potential collateral damage in an attack to kill bin Laden, or would have been unclear about whether the goal was to capture or kill bin Laden is hard to buy.
rea, you're confusing luck and policy, aren't you? You do realize that the customs agent who stopped the terrorist in 1999 had never received any alert and acted on her own, don't you? So why think that a difference in presidential administration would have made any difference in the facts in that case?
We haven't lost an American city since Katrina...thank God W. was president....
Bryce, what are you talking about? Are you saying that New Orleans wouldn't have flooded if Bush hadn't been reelected? Did Bush lose the "mandate of heaven"? I see this comment a lot, and I confess I don't know what it means.
This reminds me of Condi Rice's statement that no one could have imagined terrorists crashing an airliner into the World Trade Center.
"I don't think anybody could have predicted that...they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," said National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice." -CBS (05/17/02)
"You hate to admit it, but we hadn't thought about this," Air Force Gen. Richard Myers said. -DoD (10/23/01)
Six months before the event, on March 2, 2001, the pilot for the TV series "Lone Gunmen" had precisely that scenario outlined.
Except in their scenario it was a "government faction" responsible in an attempt to "increase arms sales."
Hmmmm...
"In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba." -ABC (5/01/01)
"What's disturbing about it to me is, you think as a fiction writer that if you can imagine this scenario, then the people in power in the government who are there to imagine disaster scenarios can imagine it, too." - Frank Spotnitz, Co-Producer of The Lone Gunmen
See scenes from the show here:
http://www.plaguepuppy.net/public_html/Lone%20Gunmen/The_Lone_Gunmen_Episode_1.htm
Comments closed July 31, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Well, the billboard says "don't vote for a Democrat." America DID vote for a Democrat in 2000, and look what happened!
Posted by Jake H. | July 17, 2008 10:09 AM