Leveling Charges
ethan-p asked me to post the plain text (or pdf in this case) of Dennis Kucinich’s impeachment charges against George Bush. He adds, “he would have had me if he’d stopped after IV”, although I think I might be less generous.
142 Responses to “Leveling Charges”
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June 12th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
I’ll bite.
It’s good to get it into the record, even if it doesn’t go anywhere.
At the least it gives historians a nice little compendium for further research, and perhaps at the most it provides a warning to future wannabe despots that accountability will follow.
Kucinich is vowing to pursue this, it will be interesting to see if any additional interest develops in Congress after Scotty testifies and after the Judiciary hearings dig a little deeper into Kucinich’s charges.
Also, the mainstream media’s silence has, again, been deafening and speak volumes to their bootspittle licking of this administration.
The most interesting take on the impeachment charges is Ray McGovern’s, who is warning that this could mean “Jail time for Tenet?”
June 12th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
I’ll bite.
It’s good to get it into the record, even if it doesn’t go anywhere.
At the least it gives historians a nice little compendium for further research, and perhaps at the most it provides a warning to future wannabe despots that accountability will follow.
Kucinich is vowing to pursue this, it will be interesting to see if any additional interest develops in Congress after Scotty testifies and after the Judiciary hearings dig a little deeper into Kucinich’s charges.
Also, the mainstream media’s silence has, again, been deafening and speak volumes to their bootspittle licking of this administration.
The most interesting take on the impeachment charges is Ray McGovern’s, who is warning that this could mean “Jail time for Tenet?”
See: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/061108a.html
June 12th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
I’ll bite.
It’s good to get it into the record, even if it doesn’t go anywhere.
At the least it gives historians a nice little compendium for further research, and perhaps at the most it provides a warning to future wannabe despots that accountability will follow.
Kucinich is vowing to pursue this, it will be interesting to see if any additional interest develops in Congress after Scotty testifies and after the Judiciary hearings dig a little deeper into Kucinich’s charges.
Also, the mainstream media’s silence has, again, been deafening and speak volumes to their bootspittle licking of this administration.
June 12th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
The most interesting take on the impeachment charges is Ray McGovern’s, who is warning that this could mean “Jail time for Tenet?”
an excerpt:
See: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/061108a.html
June 12th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
The most interesting take on the impeachment charges is Ray McGovern’s, who is warning that this could mean “Jail time for Tenet?”
an excerpt:
June 12th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Full article here: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/061108a.html
June 12th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
Full article here: www .consortiumnews.com/2008/061108a.html
June 13th, 2008 at 5:54 am
Yeah – I was initially really excited when I ready about the articles of impeachment. I knew that the house leadership would never go for it, but given the recent Iraq war reports, this seemed pertinent at first. Then, I actually read the articles of impeachment. Kucinich quickly went from hero to zero in my eyes. It’s like he hired Michael Moore to write that document.
The first 4 articles were pretty good, and are (pretty much) in line with my criticisms of the president. Beyond that, most of his arguments look like conjecture to me. A few examples: misleading the American people/congress to destroy medicare and war-for-oil are a bunch of crap. I may not agree with the president’s politics but come on…
At the risk of starting a flame-war — this is the problem with wing-nuts (both left and right). The signal noise ratio is so bad that any meaningful points and/or credibility are lost.
June 13th, 2008 at 7:16 am
The signal noise ratio is so bad that any meaningful points and/or credibility are lost.
Amen to that!!!!
June 13th, 2008 at 7:38 am
Stop after 4? That’s crazy, since some of the best ones happen after 4.
Then again, the vast majority of these charges are lame.
The only ones I would have included are 1, 3, 17, 18, 24, 26, and 27. That’s 15% of the charges that pass any minimum threshold test.
June 13th, 2008 at 8:05 am
signal-to-noise
so Dennis makes some good accusations about the impeachment possibilities, but because some of his points are a stretch you discount them all… sigh, whatever you say e-p (you are saying that Alan Greenspan is a bunch of crap? because he admits now that the war was all about oil… is he a dfh as well now?)
The D’s lack the spine to take these criminals to the mat before the election. After the election we’ll have a better chance of having justice, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Look for a really fun Dick Cheney surprise come October.
June 13th, 2008 at 9:01 am
When 15% of the accusations are good, you can’t expect people to wade through 85% noise to get to them.
It’s just like the Bush administration and truth: even if they’re telling the truth 45% of the time, they’re still not trustworthy.
I firmly believe that the president should have been impeached and convicted years ago. My only hope is that this effort furthers talk of impeachment, even if this particular effort is discredited.
June 13th, 2008 at 9:08 am
I think the Democrats should start the proceedings using these articles post haste, immediately if not sooner, to great fan fair, making this the most important item on the agenda, stopping all other business of congress. That would probably be the only chance Republicans have of winning the House, Senate and White House this year. This is a “red meat” issue, you throw it out to the your fringe base to get them fired up but have no intention of following through for perfectly rational reasons. I bet when Kucinich left the meeting with party leaders where they gave him the ok to introduce this legislation, the party leaders all shook their heads and snickered a bit before getting back to business.
June 13th, 2008 at 9:08 am
Steve, with all due respect (sincerely), just because on initial reading you think that 85% of it is noise does not necessarily make it so.
Kucinich does expect people (Judiciary committe members in particular) to wade through the charges (including what you call noise based on your initial impressions) because he, and the people who put the list together, feel that a proper investigation of these items will show that, in fact, the charges have more than enough substance to warrant further investigation.
Kucinich held back a number of other charges (15 or so?) that he is trying to find further information about to build a stronger case, but which were not included in the initial 34 because that would have been noise.
June 13th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Enkidu – yeah, that’s pretty much what I’m saying – well, sort of. It’s not some of his points that are a stretch. Its a majority of the articles of impeachment.
Sure, he makes a few good points, but when he’s largely just ranting and making unsubstantiated claims, it’s like he has resigned to just complaining and doesn’t want to take any action. Do you honestly expect the House to take action on this? I think that it will be laughed out of the house.
I’m not sure where the threshold is for me to consider someone full-of-shit. I do know that when the bullshit crosses the 50% threshold, yeah, it’s easy to discount the rest. It’s not that the truth is discounted, it’s the person and the entire document. Similarly, some of what our president says is absolutely true and can be meaningful – but by now, I’ve discounted much of it.
The long and the short of it is that I still agree with parts of his message, but the document as a whole is bullshit and will get nothing done other than make DK some enemies. On the other hand, his wife is still hot – so st least he’s got that going for him.
Essentially: what Steve said…except that I have mixed feelings about impeachment. I just don’t think that it sets a good precedent, and I’m a little shy about it after the Clinton administration.
June 13th, 2008 at 9:52 am
…if 99% of the charges were BS and 1% contained an impeachable offence, wouldn’t the Judiciary Committe send it back to the house recommending action on only the 1%?
Seems like a very simple baby in the bathwater problem to me.
June 13th, 2008 at 10:42 am
the first 6 to 8 were good enough to get started on real investigations
IX starts to get silly and then it is just a grab bag of yes! and meh…
for example XXIV is impeachable – gitrdun dennis! (an I aint talkin about his wife)
XXX? come on denny…
but let’s set the precedent that it is OK to impeach the president for a consensual affair that was none of our damn business (so he obfuscated in front of the grand jury, lets have a grand jury and see if the dumbya regime obfuscates or finally fesses up… bets anyone?)
June 13th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Ethan-p, the precedent in regards to impeachment is the primary argument in favor of impeachment. Regardless of how long Bush has left in his presidency, you don’t want future presidents to think there will be no consequences for breaking the law and violating the constitution.
I would go even further and argue that the crimes in regards to illegal eavesdropping, indefinite detention, and torture should be pursued criminally even after the current administration is out of power. These are serious war crimes, and we should not let them stand.
June 13th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Steve,
Calm down. On an earlier thred shcb explained to us that all the Bush crimes you list are actually just a bunch of exaggerations by liberals. So there is no need for a criminal trial.
Move along now, there is nothing to see here…
June 13th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Steve – I see what you mean. But part of my position is that I’m afraid of getting into a cycle where each party plays a ‘gotcha’ game against every president of the opposing party. I’d rather not see impeachment proceedings as a regularity every 4-8 years. This shouldn’t preclude impeaching a criminal of a president, but there has to be evidence of a crime.
I do believe that Bush is a pretty poor president who has made some pretty poor decisions. I’m with you on that. I think that he’s been pretty crafty, and not blatantly broken the law. Perhaps his interpretation of the law is liberally in his favor, but most likely after very careful review by pretty sharp counsel. I’m just not sure that being an asshole of a president is impeachable.
I was talking to a friend about this the other day and his take was that the president should be held liable for the deaths that he caused — comparable to a situation where a drunk driver should be criminally liable for any damage that they cause. I saw where he was coming from, but I didn’t really think that the same standard applied – for a number of reasons. Anyway, long story short, where we came back into total agreement is that its really up to the house to decide what standard a president should be held to. If the House thinks that he committed a crime worthy of impeachment, then that’s the deal. In this case, I can’t see congress biting on these articles. I also think that Kucinich is playing the ‘gotcha’ game that I was referring to with many of his impeachment articles.
Anyway, I’ll stop now. Perhaps completely throwing the baby out with the bathwater isn’t the best idea – but I still think that the majority of it is bullshit and it makes Kucinich look like an ass.
June 13th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
ethan-
main clarification I’d make to your comment is that the “sharp” counsel Bush received was actually quite DULL in a non-sharp way: John Yoo’s remarkably incorrect memo that went unchallenged for a couple years and especially his advice that Bush has the legal right to torture children springs to mind, Gonzales showed his ineptitude before Congress, and then there’s Ashcroft (LOL).
So you’d have to agree that Bush’s legal advisors have been picked more for their loyalty and ideology, brain functioning came second and in some cases it was a very distant second.
If that’s the case, that would change your reasoning and assessment of how the legal case(s) against Bush would hold up against intelligent and balanced legal minds.
June 13th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
I think he is refering to legal counsel in the future
June 13th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
shcb,
why can’t i ever agree with you?!!!
Go re-read ethan’s second paragraph. He was speaking about Bush’s past actions being based on a favourable (to Bush) interpretation of the law by sharp counsel.
Or maybe you think Bush has a time machine?
But yes, when he is tried for crimes against humanity he will have the sharpest counsel money can buy, because it will be his skin on the line. In the past he could use syncophant counsel rather than the sharpest ones because it was America’s ass that was on the line not his, or so he thought.
June 13th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Knarly,
I stand corrected.
June 13th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
knarlynight – That’s a really good point. President Bush is notorious for hiring those who are loyal over better staff choices. I could see how his counsel would follow that tradition. However, they generally do have many others to back them up with research, memos, filings, etc.
Regardless of whether or not you or I agree with his policies and/or results, President Bush has been able to get quite a bit done. I’m sure that much of it was in the political arena, but a good chunk of it is also accomplished in the legal arena. Hell, under his policies, prisoners in Guantanamo Bay were denied habeus corpus rights for many years until just the other day.
June 13th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
sigh….
June 13th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Hey shcb – no problem, I even thought you had a point there, but then I checked ethan’s post and realized you were all wet. (As usual, heh.)
ethan, granted there are others that keep Bush’s “loyal” staff choices informed/functioning or whatever and they may be excellent; although that is also tempered by the heavy handed culture in this white house. The truth is in the middle somewhere and I’d say it leans closer to your thinking than to my bias. Also, you’re right Bush has accomplished a lot and maybe it is not all bad. I recognize I mostly know most about the really bad stuff, and there is a LOT of that. (E.g. this is explosive stuff:
http://www.truthout.org:80/article/logjam-war-contractor-fraud-suits
shcb – was that a “habeus corpus” sigh? I’d think you’d be celebrating America’s entrance into the 15th century’s advancements in human rights.
June 14th, 2008 at 5:00 am
Yes that was a habeas corpus sigh, this was a terrible decision, foreigners in our country share some of our rights, pow’s have some rights, many actually, but they shouldn’t have access to our court system in this manner. The terrorist that is named in this suit used the first step in the current process, lost and never filed an appeal, which he could have. This is a military matter and should remain as such. A few years back one of the bombers in the first WTC bombing, I believe, was on trial, through disclosure it was disclosed that we had figured out how the terrorists were using cell phones to communicate, broke their code if you will. Since it was a public trial they knew we knew and stopped using the cell phones that way. The courts gave up a valuable tool. If you recall we broke the code of both the Germans and the Japanese, helping us win the war. Can you imagine how unconscionable it would have been for a court to have disclosed that we knew the Japanese were heading for Midway and with what force? Treason charges probably would have been brought by FDR himself.
June 14th, 2008 at 10:34 am
knarlyknight – I wasn’t trying to sound like an apologist for the president. I was just trying to look at it from a neutral perspective. I’m sure that you have a pretty good idea of what has gone on and obviously, everyone has their own perspective of whether or not these are good things. There are leaders throughout history who have accomplished many things – both great and terrible. Only history will judge Bush’s presidency.
shcb – I didn’t think that you would like the recent court decision. I realize that its a double-edged sword. On one hand, our government needs to be able to maintain secrecy in conducting our military affairs. On the other hand, there are many who believe that due process is an imperative principle. Americans have a tendency to made decisions on principle and in many cases, idealism – even if it hurts us.
June 14th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Ethan,
This not only goes too far in limiting our ability to protect ourselves, it sets a very dangerous precedent. What else are we going to give POW’s, do they have first amendment rights, how about second amendment? They haven’t broken any laws that I can see, they are simply the enemy, and they want to kill us. We have never given POW’s these kind of rights. The Supreme Court can’t be overruled so we are stuck with this for now. Perhaps at some point Congress will pass a law taking this privilege away from POW’s and this process will start all over again, and maybe a future court will decide they don’t have this right, unfortunately innocent people will undoubtedly die before that will happen.
June 14th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
SHCB – Not to beat this dead horse too much, but this is a new kind of war. A war without a formal declaration from congress (making it not really a war), and without any victory conditions (making it nearly impossible to win). If we’re really fighting a war, and it really is a different kind of war; rules will need to be developed. The fact is that people on different parts of the political spectrum will have differing opinions regarding acceptable conduct. It will take a while for this to shake out, and you’re probably right. This isn’t the end.
The problem is that there is quite a bit of gray area here. With this much gray area, I am concerned about the ability to abuse this power. It seems like locking people up (or simply disappearing them) for having dangerous ideas is pretty far away, but its happened before. Somewhere along the line, part of that deal is a liberal interpretation of the rules. I’m glad that the supreme court and congress are striking a balance against the executive. That’s what they’re here for. This will end with some kind of compromise legislation. I just hope that it comes with a sundown clause – I really hope that we’re not going to be fighting this war on terrorism forever.
Anyway, I digress – the original post was about the articles of impeachment against the president…and the crap within them (as well as the stuff that’s probably right).
June 14th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
I’m a little confused, maybe haven’t been keeping up with the status of the inmates at Guantanamo. I heard some were captured in combat, but most of them were there because someone said they were Taliban or a terrorist or whatever and accused them of an attack or aiding the enemy and the accusor got a bounty of like $10000 for their skin. Pretty good money to settle a grudge…
What confuses me is that I thought they were not being held as prisoners of war, because if they were pow’s then it would be clear that Geneva conventions applied, and they could not be tortured. So they are more like criminals, i.e. “enemy combatants” and not prisoners of war. Can you torture criminals? I don’t think so. So you created a sub-criminal class of sub-human that can be tortured, because you have defined them as something new and therefore claim that laws meant to uphold basic levels of human decency no longer apply to their captors?
How many have been held there for how long, how many were released after how long with charges dropped, and how many have been sentenced? What’s the story of the dual citizen Canadian/Pakistan(i?) kid who was sent there when he was 12 or 14 or something for allegedly being the only person alive in an area where a grenade was thrown killing an American marine, and now 5 years later (the kid has grown up in shakles in Guantanamo) we find out at his trial that there was someone else in the area more likely to have been the one to throw the grenade?
I just don’t see how holding hundreds of people wihout charges for years on end without trial or without even knowing some of the basic things about the charges against them is a good thing. If you are going to abuse their human rights so egregiously, you might as well let them go home, keep them under surveilance for a while and if they seem like they are up to no good then take them out. Probably a lot cheaper in the long run too, or is someone making a lot of money out of this whole escapade: does Halliburton have a catering contract for the Cuban base too?
June 15th, 2008 at 6:13 am
Ethan,
I’ll go along with you on that, this is a new war, fourth generation war actually. We (the US) are fighting it using third generation rules, the Geneva conventions, the enemy doesn’t wear uniforms, they target civilians, they behead prisoners. Maybe the Geneva conventions are outdated for this style war. But that would be a task for the President and the Senate since the rules of war are generally a treaty among nations, not the court. Of course that would be a moot point since these fighters aren’t fighting for a country and a treaty would by definition be between countries. Until different rules are adopted I’ve always been partial to following the conventions and just execute them unless they are wearing their country’s uniform, oops they don’t have a country.
June 15th, 2008 at 10:33 am
knarlyknight – I think that shcb was saying that the enemy combatants have more rights than POW’s now; not that they are POW’s.
shcb – I hear you. Rules generally are a treaty between nations, and I don’t think that we want to work with the UN to develop these rules. You’ve correctly identified the problem that the fighters are not fighting for a country, they don’t wear a uniform, and they (intentionally) kill civilians. Rather than turning to an international body to dictate the rules, I think that the rules come down to what the American people can stomach. Whether or not we agree on the current state of things, its undeniable that many Americans aren’t down with how we’re conducting our affairs.
Personally I tend to be a freedom-loving, government-fearing quasi-libertarian who would rather sacrifice giving our military, police, and executive extra powers than forfeit certain freedoms which took tremendous time, effort, and blood to earn. 9/11/2001 didn’t happen because our government didn’t have enough power over the people. It didn’t help, but the real answer is a whole lot more complicated (IMO).
Damnit — I was going to stop talking about Git’mo. Come on, shcb…I figured that you’d be the first to tear Kucinich a new orfice. :)
June 15th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Ethan,
I don’t think there is an easy answer to this Gitmo problem and the prisoners. If we treat them like POW’s and hold them until the end of the war we are essentially giving them a life sentence, using my idea of executing them, which I think the Geneva conventions gives us the right would be met with opposition from the American public (how’s that for the understatement of the century) as you correctly point out. If we let them loose they have a history of continuing where they left off. I think this ruling is silly because what are they going to be charged with when they are put into our civilian court system? Is congress going to pass a law that we can haul people from foreign lands and charge them with breaking our laws over there, or would that be here? At this point I think Congress has to pass some legislation or we will just let them free. There is a problem but this isn’t the solution.
Let me clear up your first paragraph, I think these “enemy combatants” have fewer rights than POW’s, close to zero rights in fact. Since they aren’t following the rules we shouldn’t give them the benefits of the conventions, but we can’t kill them either. So this EC designation is a benefit for them in my opinion.
I’m being totally honest now, I hate it when people just dismiss this kind of thing out of hand, and that is what I was going to do so I stopped. I also tend to kind of ruin the fun for these guys so I decided to let them have this thread and pile on Bush like they did in the old days. But I don’t get a chance to debate with you so I’m game, you set the agenda and I’ll follow your lead.
June 15th, 2008 at 11:34 am
ethan, oh. pow rights. i see. Thx.
On that ther thing, I agree with you that forfeiting certain freedoms (gained at great cost) by giving the military, police and executive extra powers (to SPY, detain, forbid the reporting of the detainment, and torture oops i mean interrogate harshly) is a little like giving a burglar your house keys so he won’t break in.
There’s a funny video in Britain where they ask people on the street if they think that, with all the terrorists, the public should be willing to give up a little of their liberty to protect their freedoms, (or was it give up some freedom to protect their liberties?) Everyone said yes to that totally non-sensical question. Just show that most people are morons.
I think proceeding with Kucinich’s impeachment proceedings will help you gain back some of your freedoms at a relatively loww costs compared to continuing on your present course of infringing on your liberties. You thought King George was a tyrant? He was a baby compared to the ethics of Enron, Halliburton and the rest who have been ruling over you lately.
June 15th, 2008 at 11:35 am
last paragraph was about the impeachment issue, I knew what I was talking about, I forgot you can’t read my mind.
June 15th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
You don’t know that these prisoners are terrorists. That’s the whole problem. The way you find out if they’re an enemy is by one of three processes:
1) They wear an enemy uniform and make them a POW – doesn’t work because they’re not wearing a uniform
2) Trust the executive – this is where tyranny lives, letting one man decide the fate of others.
3) Habeas corpus – this just means that the government has to -prove- something against a person in order to punish them. There are far too many innocents in Gitmo to ignore the most important barrier to tyranny.
Bottom line: I don’t trust the government with the power to imprison people without proof. If someone isn’t wearing a uniform, my government had better prove their case in court.
June 15th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
We’re trusting the grunt that brings the un-uniformed terrorist into base, and we’re trusting the military tribunal, not the President, same as we would if the terrorist were a unformed Iranian. The US civilian court would not be involved were they uniformed fighting for a sovereign nation.
June 15th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
How many Gitmo detainees did the grunts who killed the puppy bring in?
June 16th, 2008 at 5:26 am
Until the tribunal hears the case, we’re trusting the President.
The thing that frustrates me is that our courts are pretty damn good, there’s no reason to create these military tribunals from scratch. All the problems we’ve seen so far is from these tribunals learning lessons that have already been learned in previously established courts.
June 16th, 2008 at 6:15 am
Until a civilian court were to hear the case we’re trusting the President (or someone) why would that change?
I understand your concerns Steve, and I am not opposed to some oversight. But I think we need to keep a clear line between civilian and military courts, laws etc. We already have a reputation of being imperialistic around the world, whether it is justified or not, to have congress pass a law (by virtue of the Supreme Court passing a law) making it illegal for someone in a foreign land to do something, then be brought to the US to be tried in a US court and imprisoned here will just exasperate those feelings. We have always had civilians dictate policy and the military carry out that policy so having a panel of judges or congressmen to oversee the tribunals would not be a departure from that norm. The size of the panel could be kept small so security could be maintained. I think there are ways we could both reach our objectives, but this judicial legislation passed last week is one of the worst.
June 16th, 2008 at 6:20 am
Steve,
What happened if say in late WWII a POW were to say “I am not a soldier, they made me put on the uniform at gunpoint” was there a way, tribunal etc. for his side of the story to be heard? No trick question here, I just don’t know.
June 16th, 2008 at 8:37 am
shcb – re: WWII doubt there was any mechanism at all, besides the discretion of the prosecutors. Once put before the court the expectation was that either the person refused the illegal order (at risk of being shot) or he was guilty.
Sounds like you are starting to give Gitmo some thought, that’s good but come on man it has been five years and there are a lot of innocent (or not guilty of anyhting substantial) people in there who were swept up with the bounties. Five years without due process? That’s barbaric no matter how you slice it. Chopping off heads is probably a lot more merciful than 5 years in Gitmo shakled in hot metal cages or set in the isolation chambers with 24 hr. 95 decibel Rap & flashing lights. America- land of the free and home of the brave or land run by thugs?
June 16th, 2008 at 8:39 am
shcb: Debate? I was discussing, not debating :)
June 16th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Ethan,
tomaaato tomahahahto :)
Knarly,
I think Gitmo has outlived it’s usefulness, it certainly is more of a liability than an asset, the question is what do we do next? You didn’t hear me say this but this may be getting into an area where the UN is actually useful. What to do with 4th generation war POW’s is going to be an ongoing issue for all the civilized world for a long time. At some point do we start fighting without uniforms? We are using civilian contractors to serve meals and fix wiring, are they soldiers? What if they are captured? What rights do they have if we were fighting a civilized nation? There are a lot of tangents for this debate, er, discussion :)
June 16th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
What’s a “4th generation war POW?” i.e. 4th generation of what?
June 16th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
This is considered fourth generation warfare, guerrilla/terrorist/asymmetrical warfare. This is a pretty concise overview of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_generation_warfare
June 16th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
My whole take on this (if anyone cares) is that how can you claim to be morally superior to dictators and terrorists, but act just like them?Throwing people in jails for years without a fair trial is something dictators and terrorists do.
If you want people to abide by the rule of law and have doubters see that it actually works, developing kangaroo courts and new laws on the fly probably isn’t an effective way to demonrate a good judical system.
June 16th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
NL – exactly.
shcb – I’ll look at your wiki link later. Gary Brecher writes a lot about that and I’d note it has been used in past centuries against Empires, notably in Turkey and Afghanistan, and the Vietnam conflict had many shared elements…
June 16th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
NL,
That is certainly one of the considerations you have to take into account when deciding how far you go between rights of the enemy and security. Read later in the Wiki article above, it says that is one of the objectives of 4th generation war is to use the state’s morality against itself. But of course the good people of the state value their morality so the state has to find a way to combat the enemy without loosing it’s morality. The French used mercenaries in it’s French Foreign Legion, we used rendition and private contractors. You can dress it up any way you want but in the end you usually have to stoop close to the level of your opponent. That is why we have the Geneva conventions, so neither side has to stoop too low, but there is a moral dilemma when one side crosses the line. In this case the other side doesn’t even recognize there is a line.
I think sometimes the best you can do is stoop to their level and hit them hard and fast and then try and bounce back to the moral high ground as quickly as possible. That’s not a perfect solution, but I’m not sure there is a perfect solution.
Knarly,
It’s an interesting subject, especially if you can distance yourself a little, look at it almost like a game.
June 16th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
4GW… interesting
clipped from the wiki article
I almost bolded the entire indian example. Think about how many things they did right that we are doing wrong. Not that Kashmir is the apex of normalcy, but it does make some interesting points.
One could view the neocons as a 4GW ideology that has hijacked America for the last 8 to 30 years. Far right thinking has brought us disaster after disaster (and impending environmental disaster). Time for a new direction.
June 16th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
shcb,
That argument is reasonable, realist logic if the fight is important enough that it’s worth your nation’s morality becoming conditional. You can make a compelling case for that trade if the nation’s survival is in the balance. You have said that you believe this is a fight for western civilization, so these arguments make sense to you; those of us with a sense of scale know better.
June 16th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
ymatt,
Compelling? Yes, to some who seek to protect their way of life; no, not for those who strive for a better world. For the latter the loss of a battle, or even a war, in defence of their way of life is less important than being an example of holding true to principles of decency, and to ones owwn faith in the eventual triumph of humanity in achieving an understanding or unity with God (or Allah, or the great spirit or whatever god happens to be.) Idealism? Yes. Irrelevant? No, much of humanity thinks like that.
Okay enough of that crap. Bottom line is that America’s plunge into barbarism under Bush is a defacto battle lost in the eternal struggle of good over evil.
People talk of Gitmo or Abu Ghraib as if they were isolated instances in a grand war of ideologies, which is to be understood if all you do is read your misLeader’s Press releases and listen to the Right Wing media parrots.
But what about the treatment of suspects taken from Afghan houses in midnight sweeps, or off the streets based on tips from one side or another of an ancient tribal fued? A little investigative journalism can go a long way to show that America’s treatment of foreign detainees is not about the need for harsh interrogations (sic) to level a playing field as Bush, Condi, Rice and Cheney want people to believe. No, it is a brutal bullying sanctioned through intentionally cavalier instructions given to grunts (trained soldiers and puppy killers) and ignorant soldiers like those who believe, like shcb, that all Arabs are somehow related to al Qaida. Like this finding about Bagram:
Actually, the whole artice should be required reading for idiots like shcb who are trying to rationalize and excuse America’s abuse of human rights under the Bush “presidency”:
Guantánamo Beyond the Law
Brutality wasn’t far behind 9/11
http://www.kentucky.com/779/story/435147.html
Any claim by any American that they continue to hold the high moral ground in their fight against terrorism is simply garbage. American soldiers have become, through their own actions (beating detainees is just one of thousands of examples) and projection of their and their leaders’ warped and frustrated psyches on to Arabs, de facto terrorists to many or most non-Americans.
June 16th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Maybe I was being too obtuse, but I think there’s a serious point — and I think you may be missing it as well a bit, knarly. Calling this a “battle lost in the eternal struggle of good over evil” is to fall into the same idealistic trap that got us here. I really think that the essential problem here is a sense of scale.
It’s become clear to me that Bush lost all sense of scale after 9/11, and he began feeling that any response on his part was justified — collateral damage be damned, morals to be considered a luxury, negative consequences to be considered unavoidable. This is the trap shcb has fallen into as well. But let’s call that for what it is: dangerously poor judgment, not evil.
I desperately want the national response to this period in our history to be measured and determined, not passionate. I’m worried that we’ll get carried away by throwing out the bastards, but forget the errors in their judgment that we must avoid. I think this is why some of us both support impeachment, but are frustrated by Kucinich’s overreaching charges which give in to passion and vilification.
June 16th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Extremely well put, ymatt.
For some reason while I was reading your post, a quote from The Untouchables comes to mind: “He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way”. Mostly applicable, and it made me snicker a little.
June 16th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
…and I think you are underestimating this enemy as much as you think I am overestimating it. 911 happened, all the attacks before it happened, the threats of the Arabs are real, the beheadings and dragging through the streets with the dead bodies are real. Now I’m not advocating an eye for an eye, if they behead one of ours, I don’t think we should behead 20 of them, but we may have to do some things we’re not real proud of. I know people who do want to kill them all, I have a colleague who wants to line up the Ohio class subs and turn the whole area into glass, her office is a shrine to the American flag, she grew up in Baghdad until she was 18, she moved to America 30 years ago and hasn’t looked back. I asked her why she wanted to leave so badly and she said, “because Rick, I could never be more than a house wife and mother feared they would kill me” her crime? She was Christian. She insisted on wearing a cross around her neck. Her mother compromised with her, she wore it under her shirt. I’m sure you heard Bridget Bardot was fined $25,000 last week for “thought crimes” because she criticized Muslims for not humanly stunning animals before they kill them in religious ceremonies. The French government is so scared of the Arabs they would rather make her a criminal than take the chance of offending the real creeps. This is how terrorism wins, this is how 4th generation warfare is won. They, the Arabs, don’t have the power to overthrow even the French government so they scare the French government into overthrowing itself, and a 75 year old ex sex kitten looses 25 grand and almost goes to jail. They are evil.
June 17th, 2008 at 7:19 am
If you remove the overbroad “Arabs” from that, I actually couldn’t agree more. In fact it surprises me that you can see this, but you still come to the conclusions you do.
The entire strategy of terrorism is to play on a poor sense of scale. They attack in targeted ways that grab attention, and rely on people to lose sight of the fact that the terrorists are not a true significant threat. That is exactly what happened to our leaders, who were blinded by passion into pursuing and authorizing actions that were vastly out of scale (and many would say entirely counterproductive) to that which they were reacting to. The curtailing of civil liberties, encroachment of habeas corpus, rendition and torture are reactions the terrorist planners were hoping for in waging their “4th generation war”. Americans lumping all “arabs” together into a dark looming horde to be feared is what they were hoping for. America waging an expensive war on the terrorists’ home turf is what they were hoping for.
Aren’t we stronger and smarter than that? Does the stupidity of French anti-defamation laws (which have sadly been around for a long time, not just recently) really scare you that much?
June 17th, 2008 at 8:16 am
Matt,
There is an old saying that you fight this war with the last war’s tactics. This has been true with almost every war in history, at least in the beginning of the war, of course by the end of the war tactics and equipment have evolved to the next level which seems vastly superior to what they were doing just a few years earlier. When the next war starts up…
This usually applies less to the aggressor.
More later tonight, I actually agree with you to a reasonable degree, this may be an interesting “discussion” (that’s for you Ethan:)
June 17th, 2008 at 8:42 am
ymatt –
I agree, and I dislike it when others talk about the grand fight against evil so it’s understandable you have similar misgivings. By way of explanation, I think I was trying (and failed) to put it into terms more understandable to shcb and what I hoped to imply was that the end result of dangerously poor judgement and a total loss of scale/scope sense makes the world a more evil place, more evil deeds.
Your comments about sense of scale are 100% accurate, that’s the goal of terrorism: with the minimal resources at your disposal try to make your empirial adversary over-react in such a heinous manner that more of the populace is turned against the rulers. If 911 is orchestrated by bin Laden, which I doubt, then Bush played right into his hands.
June 17th, 2008 at 8:45 am
“They are evil”
I assume you are talking about a corrupt misleader’s launching an unjust aggression that used bombs and bullets, ruined water supplies and demolished hospitals to inflict hundreds of thousands of deaths upon a civilian population? Is it more evil to drop a precision guided bomb on a wedding party or blow yourself up at a checkpoint? Shoot an innocent in the head or chop it off with a sword? If a righteous ahole who talks to God too much blows up your child/relative/friend/city because of his extremist beliefs, ‘you’ are going to be righteously pissed and seek to blow up yet more people and stuff. ienj and wwnj are basically interchangeable in this example.
The ridiculousness of wwnj’s R=good, everyone else=evil is pathetic.
But please shout your views from the rooftops (leave your boomstick at home, k?) as it just makes the goal of Obama’s election that much easier.
The Iraq War has increased the chances of losing a US city to nookular trrrrsm.
Heck of a job bushie…
June 17th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
“They are evil” is true as long as you understand that all humans are “They”.
Everyone does evil.
Ordering torture is definitely evil, so even if ymatt declares it to be “bad judgment”, I’m perfectly willing to say it’s profoundly evil.
Furthermore, the very root of all evil is this: “let us do wrong so that good might result”.
June 17th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Hi Steve,
Yes, the root of all evil is as you say (some people say it is money, but let’s not quibble.)
Everyone does evil. Yea, like the marines killing puppies or throwing grenades into flocks of sheep being herded along a road by a shepherd. These are all old videos, but perhaps some of you whose media does not report on what your troops are actually up to in Iraq might not have seen this before. “News you don’t get on CNN” http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20077.htm
June 17th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Hi Steve,
Yes, the root of all evil is as you say (some people say it is money, but let’s not quibble.)
Everyone does evil. Yea, like the marines killing puppies or throwing grenades into flocks of sheep being herded along a road by a shepherd. These are all old videos, but perhaps some of you whose media does not report on what your troops are actually up to in Iraq might not have seen this before. “News you don’t get on CNN”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20077
June 17th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Hi Steve,
Yes, the root of all evil is as you say (some people say it is money, but let’s not quibble.)
Everyone does evil. Yea, like the marines killing puppies or throwing grenades into flocks of sheep being herded along a road by a shepherd. These are all old videos, but perhaps some of you whose media does not report on how your troops like to behave when they are not killing people and blowing things up might not have seen this before. “News you don’t get on CNN” http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20077.htm
June 17th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Hi Steve,
Yes, the root of all evil is as you say (some people say it is money, but let’s not quibble.)
Everyone does evil. Yea, like the marines killing puppies or throwing grenades into flocks of sheep being herded along a road by a shepherd. These are all old videos, but perhaps some of you whose media does not report on how your troops like to behave when they are not killing people and blowing things up might not have seen this before. “News you don’t get on CNN” :
June 18th, 2008 at 5:22 am
So you’re lecturing to me about scale and perspective but you don’t seem able to distinguish between killing a puppy or the “evil” that resides in all of us and a large group of people, probably in the millions who want to end the existence of a country and her people (Israel). I want to answer Matt’s comments at some point but we have a wedding in a few days so my time is valuable now, so excuse me if I bounce back to that subject in a while.
June 18th, 2008 at 7:58 am
Without getting caught up in the endless back-and-forth, I have to comment on the whole US military kills hundreds of thousands of civilians thing. It’s quite simply a misstatement at best, and a deliberate lie at worst. Please no quoting (if you are) from the highly dubious (at best) Lancet study, unless you’re prepared to acknowledge the bevy of serious critics across the field of statistics and research.
Sectarian violence has killed tens of thousands more civilians than any aggregate number of US military-related ones that a reasonable person can present for evidence. War is ugly enough in its resulting tragedies to need to inflate US inflicted-civilians deaths to make a political point.
I also have to note the apparently intended compared examples of military=bad (dropping bombs on a wedding party) versus blowing up oneself at a checkpoint (the suggested inference being that these people are just targeting their oppressors). Since this is framed as a “what is more evil” question, one would have to assume that it is being suggested that the military would have INTENTIONALLY bombed a gathering that was KNOWN by the military to be benign. Secondly, it would seem to make more sense, in judging the evilness of two similar acts, to compare this wedding party incident involving the military, with a sectarian bombing of a wedding party.
Apparently a “killing civilians” versus “killing your oppressor” analogy better suits the narrative.
Carry on.
June 18th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Thanks Craig. One slight but very important correction bombing a wedding party only sometimes being evil, that is you say only if the Millitary intentionally bombed the gathering and KNEW it to be benign:
That is a ridiculously low standard: it would still be very evil if they did not know it to be benign yet did not care enough about the lives of the people in the wedding party to get a closer look (spy satellites can often read licence plates for christ sake) or confirm with sources on the ground.
June 18th, 2008 at 10:04 am
I used the approximation “hundreds of thousands” intentionally. The Lancet and other studies have put the number as high as 1 to 2 million iirc. 10 to 20% seemed a very conservative estimate of Iraq War related deaths.
Aside from just bullets and bombs (intentional or not) there are lots of ways to die. If you ruin a city water supply such that a significant number of its inhabitants die of water bourn illnesses (either from drinking tainted tap water or, if you don’t have anything coming out of the tap, you go to the nearest water source, usually a polluted river) then the people who bombed are responsible for those deaths. We are responsible for those deaths, each and every one, just as if we intentionally executed each one with a bullet to the head. Sure Saddam was a Very Bad Guy, and caused the death of many of his countrymen, but we didn’t have a problem with that in the past and we helped him slaughter many many Iranians. There were other ways to deal with Iraq (hint – they involved not invading and occupying)
The wedding party analogy is perfect in that shcb is getting a wedding on (congrats!) After the wedding the inhabitants of dumbfukistan start shooting their colts and S&Ws, glocks, AKs and so forth into the air to celebrate (just like they do ‘over there’). So we sure thought the wedding party was full of Bad Guys™, they were shootin at us! So we drop a bomb, quite intentionally, knowing this conclave had women and children in the same area… (we got a tip that Bad Guys were having a wedding party). But that just doesn’t register on the Evil meter for ol shcb, cuz the dead are now quickly labeled Bad Guys, no one on ‘our side’ counts the Iraqi dead and no one from our side died.
End of story.
But it isn’t.
You didn’t magically kill every living thing in the vicinity and vaporize the results. These are real people, innocent people, that we killed and wounded. Their relatives come to sort the dead from the living, they bury their loved ones, drink the bitter cup of grief to its dregs and then the anger remains. We are making jihadis every day ‘over there’. Unless shcb gets his way and we nuke 10 million Bad Guys (men, women, children, puppies etc) to make ‘them’ ‘surrender’.
Craig, you make some sense with the “killing civilians” versus “killing your oppressor” analogy better suits the narrative.”
shcb – the Camp David peace accords are bearing fruit even today: the Egyptians are brokering a cease fire between Hamas and Israel. Sounds like your whole Brown People is Evil thing seems a bit simplistic, maybe if we force the Israelis to – o I don’t know, stick to the ’67 borders – there might be a real hope of a brokered long term peace for the whole region. Unfortunately your plans are for bombing Iran, nuking 10 million people and occupying lots of countries that haven’t attacked us.
June 18th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Craig,
Here is the information you were looking for:
You are welcome, but really there is no need to thank me, sarcasm is just an added service that I provide.
June 19th, 2008 at 9:31 am
and that’s the way the money goes
http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/
knarly, 100,000 dead Bad Guys (Bad Women, Bad Children, Bad Puppies) here, a 100,000 dead Bad Guys (etc) there, who is counting?
No one.
But thank goodness our oil companies are on the cusp of breaking into the Iraq oil drilling biz with these no-bid contracts. At least we’ll get lots of nice cheap $20 a barrel oil, huzzah!
June 19th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Great poster Enk!
Glad to see the big oil companies re-establish themselves in all their former glory, within another 5 years they’ll be in control again. Hope it doesn’t take them so long 5 yrs + 5 yrs to get back to work in Iran.
Enough about that. Back to some basic information and comment about the SUBJECT MATTER of this thread, “Leveling Charges” in video form: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1SYfqH8J30
June 19th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
That fold the $20 bill thing was the wrong link, here is the correct link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xFROg3YbAM
June 20th, 2008 at 5:31 am
This is how terrorism wins, this is how 4th generation warfare is won. They, the Arabs, don’t have the power to overthrow even the French government so they scare the French government into overthrowing itself.
If you remove the overbroad “Arabs” from that, I actually couldn’t agree more. In fact it surprises me that you can see this, but you still come to the conclusions you do.
The entire strategy of terrorism is to play on a poor sense of scale. They attack in targeted ways that grab attention, and rely on people to lose sight of the fact that the terrorists are not a true significant threat. That is exactly what happened to our leaders, who were blinded by passion into pursuing and authorizing actions that were vastly out of scale (and many would say entirely counterproductive) to that which they were reacting to. The curtailing of civil liberties, encroachment of habeas corpus, rendition and torture are reactions the terrorist planners were hoping for in waging their “4th generation war”. Americans lumping all “arabs” together into a dark looming horde to be feared is what they were hoping for. America waging an expensive war on the terrorists’ home turf is what they were hoping for.
Aren’t we stronger and smarter than that? Does the stupidity of French anti-defamation laws (which have sadly been around for a long time, not just recently) really scare you that much?
We have a slight break in the action so let me address some of Matt’s points from June 19.
This statement is true as far as it goes. But not in the direction Matt intended. The purpose of terrorism is a force multiplier, it is designed to use considerably less force to convince usually the civilian population to force the leaders and military to stop actions of the more powerful forces (usually the government forces). This is usually because the group using the terrorist tactics are too weak to win toe to toe. I have a lot of usuallys in those statements because sometimes the force using the terrorism does it even though they have the required force. When the Jihadists took the school in Beslan they lined men and boys in front of the 1100 or so people they had captured and executed them, this was a terrorist activity designed to control the people through fear even though they had enough firepower to easily kill everyone. But the terrorists aren’t hoping for an overreaction unless the overreaction kills a lot of indigenous people unnecessarily, they are hoping for an under reaction, a “paper tiger”. They weren’t hoping for a long expensive war, remember they are expending valuable resources as well. They were and are hoping the American public will force the military to stop killing them. And Obama’s their man. They weren’t hoping for all the talking points you mentioned, they were hoping for, depending on in fact, the “useful idiots” on the left to take up their cause and force the military to stop.
June 20th, 2008 at 5:33 am
oops, control “a” got me again, disregard everything above the blockquote unless you want to read Matt’s comments in their entirety.
June 20th, 2008 at 6:26 am
You might recall that we were not at war in the middle east on 9/11. Asserting that terrorist tactics are intended to convince civilians to halt large-scale military action is pretty hard to justify.
Saying that small-scale action necessitates a large-scale response, as you seem to suggest, is the very definition of a loss of sense of scale.
“Obama’s their man”? I think you need to reevaluate your patriotism if you’re starting to feel the need to disrespect our democratic process by trying to muddy a candidate who has spent his life in public service by asserting that the terrorists somehow support him. You should be ashamed. It’s amusing how Obama was an okay guy in your opinion when he was the underdog against Hillary. But then I keep forgetting that your reason here is to bait, not to add anything constructive.
June 20th, 2008 at 7:52 am
I read the beginning part of wwnj’s post and thought “wow, he is actually making some sense here! this must be a first!” How humorous to find it is just a mistake: he copy n pasted someone else’s post inadvertently.
Sadly, I think ymatt is wrong on this just being baiting. The fact is that every wwnj practically shouts this from every available corner, despite the fact that our foreign policy is nothing but a physical extension of this ridiculous and counterproductive wwnj mindset. You have elevated a tiny fringe element in one fraction of humanity into a true movement. Exactly the opposite of how we should have responded. By making a huge Gen 2 or Gen 3 War, you wwnjs made the classic blunder (unless the Iraq part of this struggle is a grab for land – for the bases, oil – for the money, and power – for the erections) of overreacting to a stimulus. We were doing pretty well in Afghanistan before gwb illegally started shifting money and resources to start his counterproductive Iraq War (google $700 million iraq war [impeachable btw]). Occupying Iraq has made things far far worse. If we had finished the job in Afghanistan Osama would be dead. But dumbya didn’t. The wwnjs need a boogey-man.
So, we were somehow justified in killing anywhere from zero to 2 million Iraqis because 3000 human beings (2000+ US, about 1000 other nationals) were criminally killed on 9/11? The guys that planned this are either hiding in a cave in NW Pakistan (wow now there is a real powerhouse of industry to make the Evil Nazis look like pikers, eh?) or they are lurking in the Naval Observatory with the rest of the Iran/Contra criminal scum.
wwnj idiots have forced us into a pretty damn bad corner, our choices are lousy in every direction, but if Obama is smart, he would lead by making oil obsolete. So, if Obama declares ‘War’ on oil, can he spend $3 trillion drafting a plan that gets us off this crap before we choke the planet to death? I bet $3T would buy a gigaton of innovation and new tech we could sell worldwide. Parallel to this, force Israel to the table: no more aid or trade unless the Palestinians get their land back and the religious njs share Jerusalem. Good start. Certainly would take the wind out of the sails of the ienjs (and their counterparts the wwnjs) UHealthcare can come late in the second term or when Hillary takes up the reigns in 2016.
June 20th, 2008 at 7:56 am
reins (tho reigns is kinda funny too)
June 20th, 2008 at 8:35 am
Hey knarly, what’s that stench up here in our country today? It kind of smells like dirty adult diapers and ben gay.
Do you smell it?
June 20th, 2008 at 9:29 am
NL,
Yea, seems to be drifting in from the direction of Ottawa. The House has risen for the summer, so it’s not any of our Conservative MP’s, it sorta smells like rotten eggs and sulphur.
To investigate, I did a google search on stinky things and got this article:
“The Sulfur Smell of John McCain” at http://www.lefttoonlane.com/2007/09/sulpher-smell-of-john-mccain.html so mystery is solved: McCain must be hoisting is overweight butt on to Canadian soil to scavenge for political points and other carrion (everyone know that no-one invited him.)
It’s an old article but it still fits and I like the ending:
No wonder they stink so much.
June 20th, 2008 at 10:30 am
Matt,
We were at war with Muslims prior to 911, Kobar towers, Uss Cole, etc. we have been at war with them since the Carter administration.
Huh? Where did you learn your military tactics? That is the primary purpose of terrorism, you attack the civilian population so they think like you guys “it’s ok to lose a few thousand people every decade or so, all they want is to not be criticized for brutally killing animals in religious ceremonies, maybe if we fine or jail the people doing the criticizing they will kill the next few thousand somewhere else, we have lots of people and lots of buildings, we needed a park there anyway”.
Once the decision to go to war has been made, you attack with everything at your disposal, that is why when a SWAT team makes a raid on a house with one or two people in it they do it with 12 or 15 guys, chances of success increase dramatically when you use overwhelming force. That concept goes back to “The Art of War” this isn’t a game where both sides need to start out with equal forces, the Jihadists don’t have helicopters, should we ground our medivak Blackhawks? Of course not.
This is really elementary stuff.
I don’t need to reevaluate anything, I am not disrespecting the democratic process, I’m not disrespecting Obama, I think he is fine man just as I always have, I’m not like you guys , I don’t have to have a visceral hatred for someone just because I disagree with his policy choices. I think Obama will pull us out of Iraq before the job is complete, unless he “changes his mind” after he is elected, and that is what the Jihadists want, ergo, they support him more than the other candidate(s)nothing more, nothing less.
June 20th, 2008 at 10:39 am
I meant “war” as in large-scale engagement with a significant American force. You had said that terrorism is…
My response was that there was no engagement with more powerful military forces (what I would call “war”) at the time of 9/11.
And I’m not talking about tactics — I understand the concept of overwhelming force. The scale argument I’m making is about the scale of appropriateness of response. You believe we have been at “war” with “muslims” since Carter, and you equate this war with the threat posed by a war between armed world powers. If that were true the true level of threat, the response we have taken would be appropriate. It is not, and it isn’t.
And with “I’m not like you guys”, I will step out of this argument.
June 20th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
So now we invaded because they were “brutally killing animals in religious ceremonies”. Isn’t that what happens when the kosher rabbi blesses the cow and then they kill it (hence kosher or halal)? And is it more or less brutal to thank the cow for its life, its meat, its milk before you kill it? Just asking because my little boys ask us time and again if it is OK to eat meat, because it is eating animals, and animals deserve respect and preservation, right? Is a slaughterhouse more brutal than a quaint aboriginal animal sacrifice and feast? wwnj has made up his mind about these things. R=good, everything else=bad!
The dangerous thing is, wwnj and the neocons are using Gen2 and Gen3 thinking when dealing with a Gen4 enemy. We should think in terms of doing damage to their infrastructure not with bombs, but with economic and cultural tools (drop iPods and sat dishes, not bombs, broadcast all western channels for free into Iran for a few decades and watch the mullahs crumble). Think black-ops that would make Mossad envious. Use the law, not a bullet to defang and neuter these morans. But no, dear wwnj just insists on more bombs, more death, death DEATH! More people around the globe think the US is the main threat to peace then any other nation or group of njs.
There are times when force must be used. Iraq was not one of them. Face it, admit you wwnjs were, well, wrong. And start thinking about how we win instead of dooming us to an eye for an eye for an eye for an eye for (loop)…
June 20th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
After YMATT and Enkidu eviscerate shcb’s naive warmongering smoke and mirror assertions, there is nothing to dispute. Thanks a lot guys.
One thing I’ve noticed is that no-one seems to have the same understanding of “terrorism”. To me “terrorism” is a criminal act against a civilian target intended to create a political response from the civilians (e.g. fear) or a knee-jerk reaction from authorities which brings greater attention and even sympathy for the terrorists’ cause.
Attacking the USS Cole or the Beirut bombing does not fit my definition, it was more of an overt military action by a nefarious adversary. As are the insurgents in Iraq attacking marines and fledgling Iraqi Army forces, or the public bombings which are less acts of terrorism than act of violence in a growing civil (ethnic / tribal) war.
In the overall scheme of things (i.e. getting back to matters of scale,) even a grossly exaggerated terrorism definition (i.e. as shcb likes to promote) does not warrant the resources that have been expended in Iraq to subdue it, even if we ignoring obvious and utter lack of any legitimate link between Saddam and terrorism.
Had similar resources ($100’s of Billions per year) been allocated over normal underfunding of projects such as, Oh I don’t know, let’s say building levees and fixing highway infrastructure, you would save far more lives (and raise employment levels and incomes thus, statistically speaking, also decrease the incidence of violent crimes and resulting mortality.)
Oh well, maybe your next president will have a rational sense of scale.
June 20th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Arrest Cheney??? (About time!)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/20/politics/politico/thecrypt/main4198871.shtml
June 21st, 2008 at 5:59 am
Matt,
I’m not sure if I’m going to say this right, this is getting a little convoluted, but here goes.
We were at war with the Muslims since the Carter administration, most people didn’t realize it since the attacks were on a small scale to us, but a significant scale to them. There were some in this country and around the world that understood the threat, but not many. So we engaged in a minimal response.
The Jihadists saw this limited response as a pattern they thought they could exploit, an attack on civilian and governmental buildings with a massive loss of life would surely cause the American public to demand that we meet the Jihadist’s demands, not support Israel and such. Several of “you guys” have hinted or flat out stated that would have been an appropriate response. Not in those words but the sentiment was there. They see Israel’s mere existence as an occupying force, and by extension our support makes us an occupier. This is the larger force the terror tactics was being employed against.
Granted the scale of threat in manpower and firepower is not comparable between the Jihadists and the United States military, except for nuclear weapons, that changes the game. So as they had been constantly ramping up the severity of their attacks, we had held constant our response. When 911 happened they escalated the conflict exponentially, so did we, an appropriate response.
June 21st, 2008 at 6:24 pm
shcb:
“We were at war with the Muslims since the Carter adminstration” sounds like a brazen lie to me. Care to elaborate?
“The Jihadists saw this limited response as a pattern they thought they could exploit…” sound like some fantastical mindreading ability to me. Care to explain how you came to this conclusion about what they (which ones?) were thinking?
“They see Israel’s existence as an occupying force, …” Are you talking about Israel’s expansion beyond the 1967 borders (against various and numerous UN resolutions that they cease and desist?)
“When 911 happened they escalated the conflict exponentially, …” Who did? Exactly who did? If you are talking about Osama bin Laden, he was pretty much taken completely out of action when he got chased away into Afghanistan. However that has no relation to your invasion, occupation, and transfer of Iraqi oil production into American control, nor to the 50+ (100+?) military bases in Iraq (including the largest “consulate” the world has ever seen, in Baghdad.)
shcb, you sound seriously deluded. You say you were at war since the Carter administration (but most people did not know about it.) That is crazy talk.
Have you ever watched “the Power of Nightmares?” It is an excellent BBC documentary produced in 2005 and it has never aired on American television (all the free countries have allowed it to be played on their television stations!)
Here’s a bit of it, it might be the intro or a trailer, you should be able to find the whole thing for download: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjY_E7bYDVw
June 21st, 2008 at 6:29 pm
By the way, if you think the reasons for attacking Iraq were determined after 911 as spelled out in the request sent to Congress by the Bush administration (WMD’s, support for terrorism, etc., then you have not been paying attention. Here’s what was going on before 911
http://www.belowgroundsurface.org/belowgroundsurface/framespage.htm?loc=http://belowgroundsurface.org/belowgroundsurface/Comments.aspx?StoryURL=616
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:54 am
In order:
It started with the Iranian Hostage crisis, continues with a long list of attacks, hijackings etc.
We didn’t go at them with everything we had, limited response, they saw that as a weakness, how much clearer can I make it?
I am talking about Israel’s existence just like I said. They hate Jews, period. Call it racism, blind hatred, evil, take your pick. They hate them because they are Jews, the same way bigots hate blacks and Rev Wright hates whites except by a factor of ten.
The Jihadists
I watched the “nightmare” piece, nice local flare, Greeley is right up the road a piece. I now have a new found respect for American television for having the good taste to not air such crap.
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:08 am
You’re right. That is convoluted.
June 22nd, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Convoluted is right.
Iranian hostage crisis might have been a crisis for you shcb. For the Persians, it was about getting their country back from the US puppet Shah. Nationalizing their oil industry meant that the country received more like 50% of the proceeds from their oil sales rather than the 5% or so they received under the Shah’s brutal dictatorship. I’m not saying that the religious nationalistic idealists who gained control in Iran were nicer than the Shah, just that they had the support of the people and the Shah did not.
So if you want to say that something started with the Iranian Hostage Crisis, you are naively choosing an arbitrary starting point which conveniently leads you to misunderstand and demonize the people of Iran.
From that false premise you continue to make gross errors in judgement.
Your long list of attacks, hijackings, etc. are all, in your mind, the evil doings of a bogeyman who is out to get America and Americans, as if America is the only country in the world that has had to deal with criminal elements and political ambitions of a broad assortment of desperate or misguided violent people.
To you this is a Muslim enemy at war with America because they are racists (or perhaps as Bush says cuz they hate your freedom.)
Only the ignorant, a simpleton or an ignorant simpleton would be capable of grouping the long list of terrorist acts since the Shah’s overthrow in 1979(?) into one big scary monster regardless of whether the violence was committed by Libyan hijackers, Algerians (fighting for independence from France), Sudanese, any of the Lebanese factions (including Christians), Muslims in former Yugoslavia, Iraqi insurgents targetting US convoys, Taliban, Indonesian kidnappings, etc.
You say America didn’t go at them with everything you had, and that was thought by them to be a sign of weakness. Bullshit. I saw your battleships blast the hell out of Beirut. The Bosnian bombings from your fighter jets (and other UN nations) was unprecedented in its intensity and effectiveness. You might claim that Somalia was an exception, but not really because that was more like walking away from a fight because the opponent had become such a deranged mess that it was no longer a threat to anyone but himself. Khadhaffi had to hide in his own country out of fear for his life from the cruise missile and fighter jet attacks, and eventually even that “maddman” came to realize that he had to back off and control his radical ambitions or “his” country would be bombed back to the stone age. No one in the world thought these were the responses of a weakling. (USS Cole? Well here you had several chances to get your man Osama but never followed through.) I could go on but I’ve mostly made my point: USA had strong and relatively balanced and intelligent (i.e. targetted) violent responses to violent acts – be it a cruise missile (wow can those ever destroy a miitant training camp, or aspirin factory !) to a month’s long day and night bombing campaign.
“Limited response ” you say. Yea, it was in that it did not destroy the lives of MILLIONS OF INNOCENT PEOPLE, as has been “accomplished” in Iraq by your hero Bush.
And pre-Bush the response was relatively intelligent and it kept the levels of extremism and hatred(s) in check. Think about it. If there are a few bad customers who frequent a KFC the intelligent thing to do is to deal with those customers according to the threat or level of problem they present.
The guy who takes too many napkins you might ignore, the lady who yells at your staff might get banned, the guy who uses a stolen credit card might get a visit from the cops and the wannabe gang-bangers who threaten or coerce your other customers might get “moved along” with extreme force by the KFC owner and some of his pals. Now, that parallels what you would condescendingly call a “Limited response” in your thirst for absolute control.
The parallel for what you think is a better approach is to declare war on KFC Customer Extremists and submit every KFC customer to the prospect of illegal (well I guess it is retro-actively “legal” now) wiretapping and detentions and worse (far worse if word about the 1000’s of photos are to be believed). All you get from throwing everything that you’ve got at KFC Customer Extremists is that about 95% of the regular KFC customers who used to like KFC, a lot, now hate it enough to become far more of a problem to KFC’s interests than the original few problem customers ever were before. Heckuva job Bushie.
So, moving along. You say “they saw that as a weakness, how much clearer can I make it?” Well for starters you can explain who you think “they” might be. Insurgents in Iraq? Foreign fighters coming into Iraq? The likes of Timothy McVeigh? Second, you might explain what exactly is weak about cruise missile strikes, burning the Waco compound to the ground, invasions and attempts to restore order to chaos like Beirut and Somalia, and 24 hour bombing raids for weeks on end, etc.? Bottom line is that you have not made anything clear at all, except your own biases and lapses in reasoning.
Israel. I’ll ignore for a moment that you do not really know who “they” are that hate Israel so much, except to say “Muslims”, or when confronted you say “Muslim extremists” as if that is much clarification at all. In the interest of brevity it may suffice to say that everything you slandered Muslims with (about their attitude towards Jews) could be said by another bigot to apply equally in the reverse.
Your point here also needs clarification as it is less likely that a learned Muslim would hate Jews, just like a learned Christian would be less likely to hate Muslims. A learned Muslim, however, would be more likely to hate Zionist Israelis, meaning those who promote the enlargement and dominance of the State of Israel; and that same Muslim would quite likely desire a peaceful co-existance with Jewish people. Extremists – I can’t speak for them as they just seem kinda randomly crazy in their ideas to support thier own crazy agendas and theonly extremist I have 1st hand experience with is you.
“The Jihadists” committed 911, you say. Been there done that, you are wrong. At least we both know where we stand there. You believe in spooky government stories that conveniently (for them) provoke “nightmares” and foster an acceptance of increased Government intrusion into their lives, I see far too many holes in their story to drink that kool-aid.
The Power of Nightmares>/b> It is dissappointing that you seem not to be able, or refused to see how that BBC documentary might, even in some ways, apply to you; but not surprising as most all right wing nut jobs hate it on sight and give lame criticism (e.g. “crap”) without offering anything but criticisms based on deep misunderstandings (i.e. straw men) or differences of opinion for non-substantial matters. The documentary has held up well to scrutiny and has had great acclaim. Here’s a good summary of the criticism and its merits: http://www.everything2.com/e2node/The%2520Power%2520of%2520Nightmares
June 22nd, 2008 at 11:26 pm
test test 2
June 23rd, 2008 at 4:30 am
The pre Bush responses diddn’t keep the attacks in check as you assert, the attacks escalated in severity. 911 was more severe than throwing a single Jew over the side of a ship or beating a Navy Seal to death and throwing his body on the tarmac during a hijacking.
By the way, someone else is taking you to task a couple threads down (McCain fuzzy on details)
June 24th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
formatting is odd
end blockquote
June 24th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
maybe this will fix it
June 24th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Apologies for my erratic comments floating in cyberspace and then getting posted after a delay and badly repetitive. I’ve been assured by the webmaster all is back to normal now.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
shcb, you claim that “The pre Bush responses diddn’t keep the attacks in check…, the attacks escalated in severity. 911 was more severe than… ”
Get your facts and timelines straight shcb: 911 occured on Bush’s watch, after his National Security advisor was told “bin Laden determined to strike within the USA”, after multiple security agencies around the world were screaming warnings to the Bush adminstration, and during the same time as NORAD was practicing responses to airline attacks including flying planes into buildings such as WTC.
So the BUSH response to those warnings failed to keep the 911 attacks in check. (He was on holiday, the most “vacationing” President ever, some might say AWOL except that he can grant his own leave now.)
Bush and Condi’s failures are so greivous that many analysts are convinced that at best it was a “let it happen on purpose” type of situation so that the people who stood to gain the most from 911 would gain. (There is now no doubt about who gained the most from 911 attacks.) http://www.patriotsquestion911.com
As for your claim about increasing severity, the 1983 bombing of the Beriut embassy killed 63 people and demolished a major US Embassy, the year 2000 USS Cole bombing killed 17 sailors and put a hole in the ship.
So not only are you wrong about the timing, it seems you are also wrong about the severity.
June 25th, 2008 at 9:42 am
Bush was only in power for a few months before 911…
But, I have no doubt without 911 he would have continued down the path of his predecessors of appeasement. BTW, seems the ceasefire in Israel lasted less than 5 days.
Two your last two paragraphs, you can’t make a trend out of two points, I swear sometimes your logic is so pathetic it’s hard to refute. It is so illogical you almost can’t inject enough logic to bring it to a level that is debatable.
June 25th, 2008 at 11:12 am
shcb,
Well fill in the blanks between the two points and do the analysis yourself then. You made the bogus assertion, I called you on it and demonstrated a fatal flaw in your assertion so now it is up to you to show that you are not lying. No-one in their right mind has the time to provide the full facts to dispute all your bogus assertions (which you rarely if ever support).
“…I have no doubt that without 911 he would have continued down the path of his predecessors of appeasement.” That sounds like you have been reading some of the ex military officers and CIA officials statements on the patriots link above. – It is stupid (or more likely just your pathetic attempt to mislead) to call targeted cruise missile strikes etc. and prior counter-terrorism efforts “appeasement”. You are the embarassment to logical thought.
Had Bush continued on the previous path: OSAMA bin LADEN WOULD HAVE BEEN struck with a missile (well maybe not, there is a strange patter of letting him get away that even Bush repeated), but other than that, tens of millions of people would have been far better off, tens or hundreds of thousands of people would not have died as a result of his war of aggression, and 5000 soldiers would be alive.
But on the other hand Canada would not have been able to get away with selling Americans our oil at $130/ bbl, and the Canadian dollar would probably still be languishing around 60 cents US instead of it’s current par value, so actually Bush’s terms in office has been great for me and my countrymen (assuming we do not factor in, and have no conscience about, the horrific suffering inflicted by his killing and torturing machine upon Muslims and other arabs.)
June 25th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
For almost nine months the shrubco neocon regime ignored the red lights and PDBs that stated Osama was determined to strike in the US, using airplanes…
I forgot, it’s all Clinton’s (or Carter’s) fault.
Talk about pathetic. You have no idea what the word appeasement means.
My point about the ceasefire (which seems to be holding despite the bad actors like ienj and wwnj) is that Egypt and Jordan were the one’s sending huge armies to destroy Israel in decades past (yes with some ineffectual help from the Syrians). Due to the diplomatic efforts of the Carter administration, Egypt is now brokering peace deals, restraining Islamic Jihad (mostly for their own survival) and gradually opening up to the west. Your pathetic jingoistic view of the world is ugly, racist and stupid (that is as nice as I could possibly put it).
Hey how is shrubbie’s ‘roadmap to peace doing? Pathetic.
June 25th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Testing … I submitted a response to shcb about the meaning of appeasement and pathetic, but it hasn’t shown up yet although I see Enkidu has it covered…
June 25th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
I absolutely agree with you Enky, the Bush administration did nothing to reign in this problem with the Arabs prior to 911, as I said in the post above, just like every administration before it. I think Regan was the finest president of our time and he didn’t allow the marines to have loaded weapons at the gates to the barracks that were bombed because he was worried it would offend the Lebanese. Every president since Nixon and Carter has played pussy foot with the Arabs regardless of party.
Egypt and Jordan are brokering peace deals as you correctly state because, as you correctly state, Israel kicked their asses, and kept kicking until they were running for shade behind the pyramids. The length of time at peace with the Arabs is in direct proportion to how badly you beat them the last time.
The roadmap to peace? That was as doomed to failure as any other policy that doesn’t include an M-4.
June 25th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
I see you are back to your fantasies of nuking 8 to 9 million “A-rabs” so’s they surrender, n such. You are so totally and completely a tool.
Seriously, have you ever met a muslim? Communicated with more than swear words? You want to paint whole regions as trrrrsts because some fringe elements don’t like the 21st century. You wwnjs and ienjs should just be forcefully shipped to someplace remote and let you whackjobs fight it out with rocks and sticks. The winners get Utah.
Hey here is an idea: change the world economy over to something that doesn’t choke the planet with toxic crap (ie conservatism as the plague of our time).
Funny how I don’t hear you screaming about our relationship with the most repressive regime in the region. You know, the place that the vast majority of the 9/11 hijackers came from? shrubbie skippin thru th texas bluebells hand in hand with a ‘royal’ asshole? Any of that ring any bells? Hello? Reality on line one for Mr wwnj. Reality, line one… hello?
June 26th, 2008 at 5:00 am
Knarly,
My assertion was that the attacks by Arabs over the last 30 or 40 years on western targets has gotten more frequent and severe. Now of course that is something of an opinion depending on what you are using as your indicator(s), loss of life, monetary cost, brazenness etc. The facts in the case are the events themselves, and there are many, it is also quite simple to find lists of these events if you are interested. You took two events as your rebuttal for my multi decade timeline with dozens of attacks. Now I know you took statistics in college since you have an economic degree, two points simply doesn’t make a trend. If it rained yesterday and not today that doesn’t mean we are in a drought. I didn’t make a bogus assertion, but you made a bogus rebuttal.
June 26th, 2008 at 5:14 am
Enky
Yes I know Arabs, you might remember the woman from Iraq who wants to nuke the whole area? We also have a girl from Egypt on the production floor, nice gal. When I use terms like Arabs I obviously don’t mean the entire Arab population, just as when we referred to the Japanese as “Japs” in WWII we knew there were many people that just wanted to live a peaceful life and be left alone.
June 26th, 2008 at 8:12 am
sigh
You don’t read so good do you. (note, not a question)
You have never met a muslim except in movies and you think A-rabs is jes ‘ nuther way of sayin japs! Gee, prejudiced much? The christian from Iraq wants to nuke em all, eh? I am sure that jibed with your nuke em all rhetoric. You openly advocate a 2x holocaust using nuclear weapons to get the Bad Guys to ‘surrender’. okaaaaaay
But who is counting the dead trrrrrsts, right? A million r three dead trrrrst children will surely force the rest of the world to see how right you really are!
Right wing nutjob. We’ve had almost 8 years of your sort of insanity and the psycho train is coming to a stop in January.
June 26th, 2008 at 10:05 am
SHCB,
That is truly pathetic. You make a nebulous claim about the severity of Arab terrorist attacks with nothing to back it up. Then, when you are challenged about it, do you examine the facts? Not at all. In typical Rethuglican fashion you attack your questioner and then move the goal posts: basically you just said that the severity doesn’t just mean the damage inflicted, it might also mean the severity or brazenness of the attacks or anything else that will make it look like you are not an idiot. Sorry, but it’s too late for that shcb.
Here are some basics to counter the brainwashing you get from your Wrong wing nut job media sourcess:
State Department figures showing downward trend in number of terrorist attacks from 1980 to 1999:
http://www.state.gov/www/global/terrorism/1999report/373317.jpg
(Publication ceased under George W. Bush, gee that’s funny (sic).)
CANADIAN SECURITY INTELLIGENCE SERVICE study on “Trends in Terrorism” December 1999:
“4. A multifaceted phenomenon, terrorism demands extraordinary domestic and international collaboration to combat the hazards it presents. Over the past 10 years, improved intergovernmental cooperation has contributed to a notable drop in the number of international terrorist incidents.1 Despite the reduction in incidents, terrorist violence in many parts of the world will continue to promote an uncertain security environment, and will remain an ongoing threat to international and domestic stability and to the lives and livelihood of hundreds of innocents.” http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/200001e.htm
You’ve made your assertion, here is mine. Terrorist attacks over the past 30 or 40 years against western targets were a bothersome, but manageable, criminal phenomena that had been kept under control until George W. Bush’s administration came to power. After initially ignoring numerous severe warnings of an impending attack, the Bush administration then, over the following eight years, embarked on global initiatives including coercion of other countries to follow suit. These initiatives included intruding into individual privacy, curtailing liberties, and the overall result has been utter failure, because paradoxically, citizens are more fearful of terrorism than before and the actual incidence of terrorist attacks on western targets have risen dramatically over the term of Bush’s administration.
Jane’s Intelligence Review 2003
Describes dramatic increases in attacks against the world’s petroleum supply chain over past year (i.e. Heckuva job Bushie!!!)
http://www.ciaonet.org/wps/mat04/mat04.pdf
June 27th, 2008 at 4:25 am
Knarly,
I analyzed a list of significant attacks from 1961 to 2003 from the State Department, I haven’t included a link since it is 17 pages long and you don’t seem to be interested in native documents of any length. There were over 250 attacks worldwide in that time. I tried to only pick out the attacks caused by Arabs or Muslims, I don’t know all the names of the groups but if it started with al-something I figured it was a pretty safe bet it was a Muslim group.
http://shcb.blogspot.com/2008/06/terrorist-attacks.html
As you can see the number of deaths and attacks has been clearly trending up in the timeframe I was referring to. In fact if all attacks ended in2003 it would take until 2022 before the trend line turned neutral. Since the Beslam massacre happened in 2004 it is not included and there were 334 people killed in that attack alone, many of them children, young girls raped to death, one small girl shot in the back by a terrorist as she ran to a water fountain because all she had had to drink for five days was her own piss, lovely nonviolent religious folks these terrorists. But I digress, now I’m sure your sources are accurate so if attacks are trending down it must be since 2003 or 2004, which means the Bush doctrine has been a huge success to turn a 40 year trend around in less than a decade.
June 27th, 2008 at 8:52 am
Nice. Thanks. Yea, I agree – M-5’s blasts and nuclear bombs are so much cleaner than what some of these trrrsts will do. And American puppy killers have never done anything mean to (or killed) innocent Iraqi’s that are unfortunate enough to get rounded up in a sweep.
I’ll look at your blog analysis tonight, and please provide the 17 page link you referenced, if I can find the time I’d like to confirm (compare) my results to yours.
On surface scan, the only objection I would have is that I’d cut -off the pre-Bush data in 2001, as it is clear that the failure to Act on the LOUD terrorist threats in the months prior to 911 rest soundly with Bush and his administration. Bush actions and doctrine were counterproductive (if the goal is to reduce terrorism) and that might show up in a terrorism spike (number & severity) in the 2001-2004 period.
Reduction in terrorist incidents in the 2005 – 2008 period (if true), would need to be evaluated against the levels prior to the Bush related terrorist spike (if it exists) 2001- 2004 .
Hopefully you and I can get past the rhetoric if the data is available, my initial search was frustrated by a lack of clear data.
June 27th, 2008 at 9:58 am
I could site just as many inhuman atrocities committed by christians or other religious whackjobs (serbian massacres of muslims, israelis bombing civilian areas, our bombing a wedding party in Iraq [not to mention the 100s of thousands murdered since we invaded], the nazis). Was every German a nazi? Is every A-rab a trrrrrst? Taking these idiots out of the genepool using force is fine with me, just use the right kind and amount (ie invading a country to seize their oil on a pretext of WMDz! is counterproductive and it allowed the ostensible perps of 9/11 to go free). wwnjs are making the problem much worse, not better.
I can’t wait to hear wwnjs everywhere suddenly start defending president Obama and his decisions because, well, he’s the CinC! We’re at War! Obama knows best!
June 27th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Knarly,
You probably heard the Mark Twain line, “there are lies, damned lies, and statistics”. Including 911 almost guaranteed my statement terrorism was getting worse would be true. Conversely if we made a graph using 2001 to present deaths would almost certainly be going down. To be fair I’ll make a graph tonight excluding 2001, it’s easy now that I have the spread sheet. Here is that link to the state department site.
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/pubs/fs/5902.htm
June 27th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
I updated those charts a bit
June 27th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
thanks shcb. on your site you suggest I want to ignore 911, which is a gross mistatement. I just want to make it clear that there were warnigs ignored by your president and his adminstration, (at best). So it is hardly a valid data point as it is not valid to claim that the behaviour of prior presidents led to 911 since Bush was the only president responsible for the events leading up to 911.
I am amused by your fixation with Beslan; I thought you we were limiting the discussion to attacks on Western or USA targets, are you suggesting that fighters (ok trrrsts) for Chechan independance from Russia are somehow the same as arab terrorist attacking Britian, France Germany the USA , Israeli or other targets? Or are you saying that Russia is pat of the West? It was a horrible event, just not sure how it fits into the discussion.
June 27th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
I was limiting my count to acts by Muslims, there are or were very active groups in Indonesia and the Philippines as well, sorry if I didn’t make that clear enough.
I’m not so sure Bush ignored warnings as much as they just didn’t have enough information, having intel that says someone is going to attack by plane isn’t enough to stop the attack, there are hundreds of airports in this country. But I have and still do agree with you that not enough was done to stop terrorism in this country before 911 even under Bush, and as I said, I can see no evidence Bush would have done more than his predecessors had the attacks not been as successful as they were. Had say one plane crashed in Pennsylvania and another in the Potomac, he probably would have bombed an aspirin factory. I’m not sticking up for Bush here.
June 27th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
The reason I am fixated on Beslam is the absolute brutality of the whole affair. Makes me sick.
June 27th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
ok. please do not tell me any more about it. (Beslan)
I don’t want to get into another discussion with you shcb about this subject, but just consider this:
If Bush and his administration had so many strong warnings about a massive attack pending in the continental USA, of which there is no denying, then it is unbelievably negligent to adjust NORAD and other war games so that they all (what 5 or so?) were occuring simultaneously and most of the interceptor fighters were far from obvious high value terrorist targets. I said”unbelievably” because as stupid as the military can be, there are some things they and especially NORAD just do not FU without orders that make them FU. Cheney was responsible for those orders. That is just one of many items that shows there was the “means” to not only let it happen but to help make it happen. I’ll stop there without going into motive and opportunity, both of which seem mostly to point back to Cheney, but if you’d like to read more I will provide some references. ;-)
June 28th, 2008 at 8:47 am
Without getting into one of our usual pissing matches, I think your theories of Cheney masterminding an intentional stand down are ridiculous. You know how this works, the VP is “in charge” of these operations that day, that is only because he is present, he is ushered in 5 minutes before the exercise begins, he watches with feigned amusement and leaves 3 minutes after the tests end. In the end he has only a vague notion of what just happened. Same as every VP before him. I seriously doubt there was any intel that said these attacks were going to happen on 9-11-2001, if the exercises were scheduled for October 22 we would be referring to the attacks and the 1022 attacks if the terrorists thought the exercises provided enough cover to warrant postponing the attacks.
June 28th, 2008 at 8:49 am
correction
…the attacks as the 1022 attacks…
June 28th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
shcb,
I think you missed the point. Scheduling at least four different war games simultaneously, including inserting false radar blips on FAA screens, ensured confusion. That was unbelievably negligent.
You aren’t considering, you are blocking. Try again, and add these to your items to consider:
“For 40 years prior to 9/11/01, a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rule had allowed commercial airlines pilots to carry firearms in the cockpit. The rule was adopted in in the wake of the 1961 Cuban missile crisis as a measure to prevent hijackings.
Just two months before 9/11/01, the FAA rescinded the rule.”
And this: http://www.georgewashington.blogspot.com/2008/03/norad-stand-down-in-2-minutes.html
June 28th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
That is a perfect example of turning an ounce of truth into a pound of lies. Do you know how many guns were removed from cockpits with the removal of that regulation? The exact same as the number of applications to put guns into the cockpit, zero. In the forty years that regulation was in place not a single airline took advantage of it.
June 28th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Okay, so don’t add that to items to consider. (Seems silly if no guns were removed, althouhg some-one could still argue that the changed ruling helped ensure, for certain, there would be no armed pilots. That someone would not be me because your observation has led me to believe that the guns in cockpit point is probably moot – so I agree with you on that.)
Which still leave us with the unbelievably negligent decision(s) to schedule at least four different war games simultaneously, including inserting false radar blips on FAA screens, which ensured confusion despite profoundly serious warnings about impending attacks.
June 29th, 2008 at 5:02 am
Thanks for conceding that point. But that is a good example of most of the elements of conspiracy theories in general. They start with a preconceived notion and work their way backwards to the factoid so you have a “I really want to believe this and I know this so all I have to do is fill in the middle” situation. I’ve spent my life trouble shooting manufacturing problems so I have trained myself to not think that way because it leads down too many dead ends and that costs money, when you own your own company it turns out to be your money.
In this case the people perpetrating this ruse (the GW.blogspot folks and those likeminded) saw a regulation changed on one end and an administration to blame on the other and simply made up the middle part. Someone actually wanting to get to the truth would have seen this change in regulations before 911 and correctly been suspicious, but instead of jumping to a conclusion ask; did it do any harm? Who had the most to gain? Who had anything to gain? All those factors, now this doesn’t mean that is going to lead you to the correct solution, you’re just playing the odds. As those threads of the web play out to dead ends you work your way down to less likely scenarios. In some cases you disprove unlikely scenarios if you can do so without using a lot of resources just to get them out of the way, but in the end you are eliminating suspects, not trying to find the one who did it. When the last man is standing then you see if all the pieces fit.
Working from that direction they quickly would have seen there was no motive, this was just a coincidence. Had the regulation been rescinded 5 years earlier it would have had the same effect on 911.
I’ve seen this in manufacturing where a company has a problem and someone determines the cause (and solution) based not on any data but simply because that is the easiest/cheapest/least impact on marketing/sales, of course that doesn’t fix the problem and a few months later the problem pops back up and now everyone has egg on their faces because they told the customer the problem was fixed. There is a specific way to find the solution to a problem whether that be a scientific formula, a murder case, or a political who done it. It may seem convoluted to people who don’t do it on a daily basis but it is the most efficient way to solve, or disprove a mystery.
June 29th, 2008 at 6:52 am
As to the attacks being on the same day as the military exercises, I recall, and I have too much to do today to revisit the issue, I have a tractor with a crankcase full of fuel and a truck in desperate need of brakes. But the last time this came up I recall the exercises were being held that day for pretty legitimate reasons, scheduling conflicts postponements, that type of thing. I also recall it’s not uncommon for groups of these exercises to be held at the same time, redundancies in various departments, maximizing resources, minimizing disruptions, that sort of thing.
Think about what would have to happen for your scenario to work. At one time or another you have implicated Condi and Cheney, so they would have to have information that the attacks were imminent and specific to aircraft, they also would need to know at least in general terms where the attacks were going to be. Can’t send the aircraft from Washington to Omaha if the target is Des Moines. Now this information comes up the line from agents to analysts to administrators to Dick and Condi. They don’t have private James Bond types, that’s Hollywood (fantasy). Then these two diabolical minds would have had to have steered a bevy of Generals, Admirals, and heads of departments over a period of months to initiate these exercises within a window of opportunity of the terrorists, without communicating this to the terrorists and without alerting the people in the government they were deceiving, many of whom are experts in detecting this very thing.
Wow! Staring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, opens September 11 at a theater near you.
June 30th, 2008 at 1:09 am
That’s dumb, Hollywood wouldn’t go for that.
More likely the targets were chosen, willing jihadists or other arabs recruited to serve as unknowing patsies, war game schedules moved around in unbelievably negligent decisions including to proceed with them despite the fact that they would seriously impair (virtually eliminate) any effective NORAD response to air threats to high value targets in New York and Washington DC and even though the decisions to proceed with them involved ignoring profound multiple warnings about impending attacks.
Unbelievably negligent.
June 30th, 2008 at 4:37 am
Yup, that is a lot more plausible. So that would mean there is a direct link to the Arab forces from someone high in the government, possibly Cheney himself. Well at least that is provable, meetings, phone calls that sort of thing, let me know how that works out for you. Better get georgewahington blogger and those pilots for truth right on that. I’m sure they can turn a call to Cheney’s daughter into something sinister using their usual methods of deduction and reasoning.
June 30th, 2008 at 8:50 am
The most likely scenario: that they knew something was coming and simply let it happen, when they heard a hard date, they coordinated to get the aircraft that usually patrol the skies over our largest cities ‘distracted’ or neutralized (it is hard to be in a position to defend NYC when you are grounded or out over the ocean for war games). The idea that AQ knew all these details about the ‘exercises’ planned for 9/11 is beyond ridiculous. Unless wwnj is suddenly on board with knarls on the whole back channel btwn ienj and wwnj (plenty of examples of this: Iran/contra, Raygun’s swapping arms for hostages, etc etc etc)
You don’t have to have meetings between Cheney and Osama. You just need a decent idea of when and where and have your plans laid accordingly. A small team of Ollie Norths could easily do it (and heaven knows there are plenty of wwnjs frothing at the mouth to kill for god n country). The biggest argument against the grand conspiracy theory is just how miserably incompetent the shrubco machine has been at everything else (except demonizing libs and dems, decent job at that fellers, practice makes perfect)
June 30th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Enk,
I don’t think they are all that incompetent : a bunch of oil boys from Texas have managed to get the world price to $140 / bbl, profits are fantastic for their buds in the military hardware and service industry and there is no end to the “good times” in sight. Plus, no one got impeached or put on trial for high crimes (Libby got a liddle spanking – but Bush will give him a full pardon right?)
That’s not incompetence, that’s spectacular.
SHCB,
Could you tell me which of your allies wired Mohamud Atta $100,000 shortly before the attacks, what was the official position of the person who wired that money to the lead hijacker and why that payment was made, and which current or former US Government representatives (including former CIA) that this person was meeting with and what was the subject of their meeting on the morning of September 11th?
July 1st, 2008 at 4:01 am
probably Ahmed Omar Sayeed Sheikh, he sent the rest of the money.
July 1st, 2008 at 8:40 pm
From Wiki:
So how’d the investigation into this $ tsf go? oooh, never mind…
July 2nd, 2008 at 6:04 am
Sounds like it went pretty well, the head if ISI isn’t anymore, and hopefully Ahmed Omar Sayeed Sheikh will be put to death, not all investigations have to end up at the White House to be successful.
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:29 am
“Sounds like”? Sounds like you are resorting to bullshit again.
It sounds like the head of ISI was replaced for political reasons (not supporting the Afghanistan invasion), his resignation had nothing to do with any alleged $100,000 wire transfer to a lead 911 hijacker.
More bullshit to toss aside: Ahmed Sheikh was tried and sentenced to death on charges related to the Richard Pearl killing, nothing to do with the 911 money trail.
There was no investigation into General Mahmud Ahmed’s role in the $100,000 transfer to Atta – for example, General Ahmend is not mentioned even once in the 911 Commission Report – yet another gaping hole in that far from thorough official whitewash of the events leading to 911.
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:55 am
There must have been some investigation, you mentioned it here.
July 2nd, 2008 at 9:08 am
Just questions. Unanswered questions about strange circumstances that have not been investigated.
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:38 pm
How much more investigation do you want? General Mahmud Ahmed gave $100,000 to Ahmedomar Sayeed Sheihk, who gave the money to Khalid Sheihk Mohammad who gave it (and another $400k) to Atta and the other terrorist in installments of between $1,000 to $70,000 using Ali Abdul Aziz Ali as a middle man (page 224 911 commission report). The report didn’t really go further up the chain than KSH as far as I can see, out of the scope of the investigation. It also mentioned that as we all know money is fungible. So most of the $400,000 to $500,000 came out of al Qaeda’s general fund.
That is of course if the story of the $100,000 is true. It is a blog story with no sources cited and no evidence. Imagine that.
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:45 pm
So we know the CIA created Al Qaeda, and managed Al Qaeda through Pakistan’s ISI.
Then we hear that $100,000 of the funds used to finance 911 is tracked back to the head of ISI, General Mahmud Ahmed. Source questionable, it came from an Indian Newspaper with apparent connections to these things. Is it pure Indian propoganda? I don’t know, all I know is that the investigation and the story stops here.
Heckuva convenient place to stop tracking the 911 funding, going further upstream would get uncomfortable if the investigation got any closer to home.
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:39 pm
So you have an unbelievably negligent set of decisions about the # & timing of simultaneous war games on 911, top CIA meetings with the ISI counterpart who has communications with Al Qaeda, and an alleged money trail leading to this ISI leader. If I were in charge of investigating 911, I would want to know more.
July 3rd, 2008 at 5:48 am
The CIA create al Qaeda, I think that is a stretch. We supported groups that were fighting the Communist Russians that evolved into the Taliban and groups that evolved into al Qaeda. Just as we are no doubt supporting groups that will turn against us in this current war. Al Sadr being a good example.
You can follow the money trail, and I’m guessing they have, but just because the CIA gives someone money and he gives that same amount to our enemy doesn’t mean the CIA gave it to him for that purpose. I believe it was Moussaoui who couldn’t find a flight school he liked so he started using his money to buy fertilizer because He thought they should use cargo planes filled with explosives instead of passenger planes. He was called on the carpet in Europe and told to take the damn lessons and stop buying fertilizer. When he returned to the US he made a halfhearted effort to learn to fly. So even in a small group of handpicked religious fanatics you can have people not do what they are told to do and use money for purposes other than what was planned.
July 4th, 2008 at 9:01 am
Strange how these groups turn against you for helping them out so much. It would take a lot to counteract the huge debt of gratitude they owe for your support.
July 15th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
…and yet the question remains unanswered…
July 15th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
…at what temperature will hardened steel become hot enough to melt the Pentagram on a Starbucks cup?
July 16th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
note to self – don’t drink and blog
;-)