quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Makes me wonder what would have happened if Dean had gotten the nomination. Kerry was a big pile of boring. At least Dean had fire.
Maybe a little too much, but I'd take too much over none.
Don't forget the scream! HAAAAUuuuuhhhh.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Makes me wonder what would have happened if Dean had gotten the nomination. Kerry was a big pile of boring. At least Dean had fire.
Maybe a little too much, but I'd take too much over none.
Don't forget the scream! HAAAAUuuuuhhhh.
A friend of mine has a fun habit that anytime Howard Dean, John Kerry, or the year 2004 is mentioned, he mutters "$#@% unidirectional mic" under his breath.
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Well that's odd. Would you be willing to share a synopsis of your reasoning?
And get dogpiled? Again? Sorry, but my "kick me" sign is at the cleaners.
Lol. I bet it's quasi-religous.
And I bet it's not. Okay, fine. I lived in a country under siege by Arab/Muslim terrorism for a dozen years. I know how they would have reacted had Bush been voted out after only one term, and the terms "jubilence" and "vindication" would fit. The past four years would have been full of one major terrorist attack on US soil after another. People like you would probably be saying, "Oh, it's all because of how Bush acted during his one term" and ignoring the fact that many of us were pointing out during the '04 campaign that this is what would happen if Bush was voted out at that point.
The mindset of the terrorist culture is one of predator. It sees weakness as an opportunity. It does not see openness and compromise as a signal to do the same; it sees it as a signal to pounce.
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quote:People like you would probably be saying, "Oh, it's all because of how Bush acted during his one term" and ignoring the fact that many of us were pointing out during the '04 campaign that this is what would happen if Bush was voted out at that point.
So you'll be voting for McCain, then?
Edit: In all seriousness, once we start selecting our president based on what we think terrorists would prefer, they really have won.
quote:Originally posted by Lisa: The past four years would have been full of one major terrorist attack on US soil after another.
Do you actually think that security has improved under Bush?
The argument never makes sense to me for the simple reason that 9/11 happened while the Republicans were in charge.
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Ah, Javert, that was before they got all serious on fighting terrorists.
Before 9/11 they feared it was a waste of $ that could better be spent insuring Sadaam Hussein stayed out of Saudi oil fields, and other prime defensive measures.
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Maybe I'm just nuts, but keeping folks like Saddam Hussein out of Saudi oil fields is a very important security concern for the United States.
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I think this is one of those "what if" debates that'll only be decided in 50 years when historians look back with both the benefit of hindsight and a mountain of documents that detail stuff we don't know right now, assuming the Bush Administration actually keeps such documents and doesn't destroy them (which I know Cheney's office has most recently been ordered by a Federal judge NOT to do).
Personally, I think Tom's argument is supreme. Electing a guy to office just to scare terrorists A. Allows them to dictate American policy in a way that far supercedes just our national security debate. B. Ignores the vast majority of issues that Presidents deal with that have nothing to do with foreign policy.
OSC got one thing right in his most recent essay: If terrorists really wanted to buy a gun and go on a rampage at the local mall, there's really nothing that will stop them. Stop a bombing ahead of time? Maybe. A massive conspiracy plot? Far more likely. But random guy with a beretta who opens fire at the mall or a movie theater? Good luck. I think there probably have been plots foiled in the last year, and I also think that the funding and volunteer rates for terrorist groups have seen a net increase in the last few years, rather than decrease, as a result of American action.
I don't think the fact that Euro nations have been attacked more than we have in the last couple years as a sign that they are afraid to attack Americans. They certainly aren't since they are killing us in decent numbers in Iraq. But is that really the best argument? Keep soldiers in Iraq to distract terrorists even as they fan the flames that keep the problem alive, in order to take the hit for Americans here at home? Seems like a pretty cruel way to view the American military.
But ultimately I don't think a terrorist threat is ever going to bring down the United States. We might get attacked, and we might lose some people, but as a nation it'll take far more to destroy us, and from what it looks like, we're doing a much better jobs of shooting ourselves in the foot than the terrorists are. What good is it if we defeat terrorism only to come home to a crumbling nation? Bush has only focused on a single pronged attack in this war. He's worried about suitcase bombs but it's Democrats like Obama who have championed efforts to combat nuclear proliferation from Russia and other former SSRs that pose one of our greatest threats.
Would Kerry have solved all these problems? Maybe not. With a Republican Congress actually, he almost certainly would not have, but I don't think for a second that it would have been any worse than Bush, and I think that the FBI and other agencies under him would have made all the same stops that they've made so far.
It'll be decades before we know for sure.
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: The past four years would have been full of one major terrorist attack on US soil after another.
Do you actually think that security has improved under Bush?
I know it hasn't spiraled the way it would have. Look, maybe you don't remember how freaked out people were on 9/11. I wasn't one of them. See, I already knew what it was like to have the Arab/Muslim terrorists blowing up civilians. Granted, I didn't think the denial would set in here in the US quite as fast as it did, but I guess I expected too much.
I was actually shocked when they weren't able to follow 9/11 up with another major strike within a week. If I'd been one of those evil monsters, I wouldn't have missed the opportunity.
It's funny, but some of the things I hate about Bush and his administration (and some of the things the rest of you hate about it as well) have actually been successful. For the record, I don't think that justifies the abuses of civil liberties at all, but I doubt highly that Kerry would have been ruthless enough to have successfully cowed the terrorists to the extent that Bush has. And I know that he wouldn't have so much as had a chance, because they probably wouldn't have waited until his inauguration to start the fun.
quote:Originally posted by Javert:
quote:Originally posted by Threads:
quote:Originally posted by Lisa: The past four years would have been full of one major terrorist attack on US soil after another.
Do you actually think that security has improved under Bush?
The argument never makes sense to me for the simple reason that 9/11 happened while the Republicans were in charge.
Non sequitur. It would have happened regardless of who was in charge. The US was utterly unprepared for that sort of thing. The question is whether the US would have stayed unprepared. And how the terrorists would have reacted to what they certainly would have perceived as America flinching by replacing Bush with Kerry.
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quote:I was actually shocked when they weren't able to follow 9/11 up with another major strike within a week.
That you were shocked by this is probably an indication that your assessment of what the terrorists can and will do may not be accurate.
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I'm very amused with the idea some people seem to have that the Bush administration's obsession with secrecy is a device for covering up all their spectacular successes.
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quote:Posted by Lisa: Non sequitur. It would have happened regardless of who was in charge. The US was utterly unprepared for that sort of thing. The question is whether the US would have stayed unprepared. And how the terrorists would have reacted to what they certainly would have perceived as America flinching by replacing Bush with Kerry.
I don't think that's guaranteed. I think it's LIKELY that that is the case, but there was a lot of evidence before 9/11 happened that pursued could have led to part or all of the scheme being thwarted had the evidence garnered sufficient attention. Under the Bush Administration this didn't happen, but it might have under Gore. Again, it's not likely, but 9/11 wasn't an unstoppable event.
Destineer -
I think there's two sides to that. On one hand, when you thwart a terrorist plot, you can go on the news and do a victory dance, but you risk giving away the methods used to do so. The media are very good at rooting out specifics, even if their reporting is often sketchy when it comes to putting it all together. If terrorists had a plot to blow up something specific and the FBI or CIA stopped them, personally I'd rather it remain a mystery to the terrorists as to how we stopped it. It gives us the upper hand hand and keeps us guessing, rather than letting them know how we did it so they can adapt and try something new.
I don't think this is attached to the Bush Administration's love of secrecy specifically, I think this one lends to common sense. We'll find out someday about their successes.
I think that there have likely been many attempts at attacks on the US in the last seven years, but that they've either been thwarted by US agencies, or those resources have been redirected to Iraq and away from the homeland. I think at the very least, had Gore been in charge, and had Kerry taken over, the FBI and intelligence agencies' efforts to combat terrorism wouldn't have been diminished at all. I think it's likely that Gore would have committed to action against Afghanistan as well. It's hard to know what would have happened at that point, but I think the same people who relocated to Iraq to fight us would have done the same thing in Afghanistan. There's precedent for it from when the USSR invaded.
But even if that wasn't the case, invading a foreign country to lure terrorists away from the homefront is a pretty cruel and barbaric way to defend yourself. It's tantamount to using Iraq civilians as human shields.
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Kerry is very debatable, but the likelihood Gore would have flinched is low. He's got a long record of hawkishness.
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quote:I hope reports like this quell the smugness I see in many conservatives who tout how successful the troop surge was.
I don't see much evidence within the link you provided that would do this.
I'm not sure I buy Agnew's premise. While I'm able to accept that the surge wasn't the only factor in the decrease of violence, I don't think that the evidence provided in the link is decisive that the surge wasn't a big factor.
I'm glad somebody read my post I agree that the link isn't conclusive, but I think it's ridiculous that so many people (and news organizations) are simply spouting "the surge WORKED" with no evidence of causation. The surge very well might have done good, but at this point, we don't REALLY know, and it's ad hoc logic to continue saying "the surge was successful" at anything except putting more troops into Iraq and costing us more money. Both of those are quantitatively true.
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I think what you're looking for is post hoc ergo propter hoc rather than ad hoc, unless I've misunderstood your point.
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quote:And I bet it's not. Okay, fine. I lived in a country under siege by Arab/Muslim terrorism for a dozen years. I know how they would have reacted had Bush been voted out after only one term, and the terms "jubilence" and "vindication" would fit. The past four years would have been full of one major terrorist attack on US soil after another.
I love this logic. I am going to use it all the time now.
If McCain gets elected instead of Obama, the next four years will be full of one major terrorist attack on US soil after another.
Don't criticize my specious reasoning. Just know that I know. You better vote for Obama now.
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quote:And I bet it's not. Okay, fine. I lived in a country under siege by Arab/Muslim terrorism for a dozen years. I know how they would have reacted had Bush been voted out after only one term, and the terms "jubilence" and "vindication" would fit. The past four years would have been full of one major terrorist attack on US soil after another.
I love this logic. I am going to use it all the time now.
If McCain gets elected instead of Obama, the next four years will be full of one major terrorist attack on US soil after another.
Don't criticize my specious reasoning. Just know that I know. You better vote for Obama now.
This is hardly a gracious summation. Perhaps Lisa isn't persuading you, but it's hard to argue that had we put the breaks on Iraq 4 years ago that terrorists groups would not have been at least emboldened.
Whether all the factors would have been there to allow terrorists to start attacking us on our own shores is still up to speculation, but I know of no group that upon winning an armed conflict becomes timid in the aftermath.
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I haven't seen any evidence yet anywhere that terrorist attacks have been foiled on US soil using anything more than law enforcement procedures. Bush has claimed several attacks were stopped with information gained by whatever term for torture they're using this week, but that has not been documented.
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quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: I haven't seen any evidence yet anywhere that terrorist attacks have been foiled on US soil using anything more than law enforcement procedures. Bush has claimed several attacks were stopped with information gained by whatever term for torture they're using this week, but that has not been documented.
It probably won't be until decades later, or until our current SOP becomes ineffective and radical reforms permit government agents to explain the outdated methods.
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So it's "Bush said it, I believe it, that settles it"?
Did not a whopping number of authorities believe that torture rarely if ever provides useful information, I might give him the benefit of the doubt. But this administration has so rarely been truthful about any other aspect of the war on terror I see no reason to believe this claim without backup.
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Lisa tires of arguing. Perhaps this expression of disinterest will surely put others in their place. Yes. Act bored at one's own logic.
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quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: So it's "Bush said it, I believe it, that settles it"?
Did not a whopping number of authorities believe that torture rarely if ever provides useful information, I might give him the benefit of the doubt. But this administration has so rarely been truthful about any other aspect of the war on terror I see no reason to believe this claim without backup.
Are you saying this to me? Of course I won't simply take Bush's "say so," but Bob Woodward seems convinced that the administration is doing something radical, and yet most of us don't know what that is.
quote:And I bet it's not. Okay, fine. I lived in a country under siege by Arab/Muslim terrorism for a dozen years. I know how they would have reacted had Bush been voted out after only one term, and the terms "jubilence" and "vindication" would fit. The past four years would have been full of one major terrorist attack on US soil after another.
I love this logic. I am going to use it all the time now.
If McCain gets elected instead of Obama, the next four years will be full of one major terrorist attack on US soil after another.
Don't criticize my specious reasoning. Just know that I know. You better vote for Obama now.
This is hardly a gracious summation. Perhaps Lisa isn't persuading you, but it's hard to argue that had we put the breaks on Iraq 4 years ago that terrorists groups would not have been at least emboldened.
Whether all the factors would have been there to allow terrorists to start attacking us on our own shores is still up to speculation, but I know of no group that upon winning an armed conflict becomes timid in the aftermath.
The probably of terrorists being able to infiltrate a nuclear weapon undetected into the United States i've heard some official quote is upwards of 95%.
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quote: I know how they would have reacted had Bush been voted out after only one term, and the terms "jubilence" and "vindication" would fit. The past four years would have been full of one major terrorist attack on US soil after another.
Maybe so. However, I will tell you this, Al Qaeda is not Hezbollah or Islamic Jihad, each have different goals and means to pull them off.
More than that though, I wonder what you mean by terrorist culture? It seems to me that you think of all Arab/Muslim terrorists as part of a terrorist culture, and then you call them all predators for a specific reason, which then justifies the manner in which you believe terrorism should be fought. I could be wrong though, so I await an answer.
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quote:but it's hard to argue that had we put the breaks on Iraq 4 years ago that terrorists groups would not have been at least emboldened.
Of course it's hard to argue, because you're stopping before the argument is over.
If we had "put the breaks" on Iraq 4 years ago, how would we have done so? What would have replaced our military effort? Kerry wouldn't have just yanked them all out, brushed his hands off and went about his business, that much I believe. I don't think anyone but maybe Ron Paul would have done that. Something would have replaced that effort, and we still would have been fighting a war in Afghanistan, and frankly, it might look 100% different than it does today if we'd have four years worth of more money and more troops to fight it.
If we had put the brakes on that war in order to massively increase the effectiveness of the war in Afghanistan, then we would have left the terrorists fighting amongst themselves for power in Iraq, and also fighting a newly empowered NATO force in Afghanistan. I think they would have had more than enough to chew on there.
btw Lisa, I'm curious, seriously, as to how you've come to grips with Paul's extreme isolationist policy in regards to your feelings on being aggressive against terrorists overseas? I'd figure it's that you value the things he would do to the federal government more than foreign policy, which is an argument I'd have no problem with (well, Ron Paul's policies yes, but the idea of focusing on domestic issues vs. international issues I totally get). But I'm still curious.
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quote:Of course it's hard to argue, because you're stopping before the argument is over.
If we had "put the breaks" on Iraq 4 years ago, how would we have done so? What would have replaced our military effort? Kerry wouldn't have just yanked them all out, brushed his hands off and went about his business, that much I believe. I don't think anyone but maybe Ron Paul would have done that. Something would have replaced that effort, and we still would have been fighting a war in Afghanistan, and frankly, it might look 100% different than it does today if we'd have four years worth of more money and more troops to fight it.
I was not really attempting to say whether a pull out could have been good or bad, merely that leaving in any manner I can conceive of would have emboldened terrorists.
quote:If we had put the brakes on that war in order to massively increase the effectiveness of the war in Afghanistan, then we would have left the terrorists fighting amongst themselves for power in Iraq, and also fighting a newly empowered NATO force in Afghanistan. I think they would have had more than enough to chew on there.
Perhaps, this is a good supposition of what might happen. But it's also possible that perceived victory would unify certain terrorists groups, as well as upping their recruitment around the world. But again, I can't say you're wrong.
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Thanks. I generally think of isolationist policy in terms of foreign policy rather than economics, so I wasn't aware of the terminology differences there. The question to Lisa still stands.
.............
In other news, Democrats have decided that instead of seeking a compromise, they'll totally give in on offshore drilling. Given Republican refusal to compromise, the fact that the ban expires next week, and Bush's promised veto, they've dropped the issue entirely and the Republicans are claiming victory. So as of next week, we're open for business. Want to take bets on how long it'll take Bush to get contracts as quickly as possible out to people via the Interior Department before he has to leave office? Given the price of oil, if the US government charged the kind of rates that say Palin charges in Alaska, it could be a boon to taxpayers, but somehow I think they'll end up getting fleeced.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: btw Lisa, I'm curious, seriously, as to how you've come to grips with Paul's extreme isolationist policy in regards to your feelings on being aggressive against terrorists overseas?
Letters of marque and reprisal are permitted by the Constitution. Wars not declared by Congress are not.
Anyway, you don't want to know how I would have handled the post-9/11 situation.
And Ron Paul is the furthest thing from an isolationist. He'd open relations with Cuba tomorrow, for example. Isolationism is refusing to talk to them, or to the Iranians. I'd talk to the Iranians. I'm not sure they'd enjoy it, but sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling, "ya, ya, ya, I can't hear you!" and pretending that a country doesn't exist is just stupid.
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: You is a plum cynic Lyr. A plum cynic.
I'm making that guess basead on Bush's record. It could very well be that that land won't be drilled on for years and years (actually that's highly likely) but I'm betting the most lucrative territory goes out via no-bid contract before January.
The only people that can stop him work at the Capitol. And they aren't going to do a damn thing about it. I'm wondering if they are allowed to break the contracts as soon as the next Congress gets into session. I suppose being Congress they could make it legal just because, and I wouldn't be surprised if that happens either.
But maybe I'll be totally surprised and Bush won't do anything, leaving it up to Obama (or McCain) to settle the issue.
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I think what you're looking for is post hoc ergo propter hoc rather than ad hoc, unless I've misunderstood your point.
Post hoc seems much more accurate for the point I was trying to make. Thanks At the time of posting, Ad hoc looked right, and I still don't quite see the difference in the two, but I tried.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: But maybe I'll be totally surprised and Bush won't do anything, leaving it up to Obama (or McCain) to settle the issue.
Now how likely is that? Although... what a political hot potato that is! He could wait to give the responsibility to Barack, so that when he sells the contracts, he'll be "betraying his own message." Gotta hate it.
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quote:Want to take bets on how long it'll take Bush to get contracts as quickly as possible out to people via the Interior Department before he has to leave office?
Ten bucks says they've been written and waiting for signatures for the last two years. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Want to take bets on how long it'll take Bush to get contracts as quickly as possible out to people via the Interior Department before he has to leave office?
Ten bucks says they've been written and waiting for signatures for the last two years.
Now now Tom, your giving President Bush FAR too much foresight. It's bordering on prescience.
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I agree that the link isn't conclusive, but I think it's ridiculous that so many people (and news organizations) are simply spouting "the surge WORKED" with no evidence of causation. The surge very well might have done good, but at this point, we don't REALLY know, and it's ad hoc logic to continue saying "the surge was successful" at anything except putting more troops into Iraq and costing us more money. Both of those are quantitatively true.
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