Fables
I know I'm late to the party, but I just want to be sure I have this straight. Let's assume for the moment that Mr. Bush's charmingly detailed and conveniently timed anecdote about the thwarted "Liberty" Tower caper really is true. What we seem to know is:
And the fact that those arrests occurred randomly over at least a year's time illustrates... er, wait, it's coming to me... oh right, that the fast paced world of "post-9/11 thinking" renders current legal procedure for the securing of warrants too slow to be practical?
I mean, I applaud the fact (if it is a fact) that a handful of international criminals with a plot to destroy another American skyscraper were captured by foreign governments before their deplorable scheme went into motion. Bravo, unspecified Asian nations! But give us all a break, here. What the Hell does that prove about the alleged competence of the Bush Administration?
Am I just being obtuse - or is this pathetic performance an indication that the White House has finally run out of fables to recite as some sort of rationale for willfully violating the laws of the land?
- Our guys guessed that an al Qaeda mention of "the tallest building on the West Coast" actually meant (drum roll please) the tallest building on the West Coast. I suppose that's why we call it the Intelligence Community.So, Mr. President, this proves... what, exactly? That a total of 6 arrests were made by several Asian nations - while we managed to Google "tallest buildings" and get this in 0.06 seconds? And that demonstrates... unh, the effectiveness of bypassing FISA laws and restrictions because they're too "cumbersome"?
- This intercepted information was either obtained legally by U.S. investigative agencies, or given to us by foreign intelligence sources. Yeah, yeah. I know the President didn't say that - but just think about it. If this nugget had been found during any of that warrantless eavesdropping, we all know that would've been trumpeted to the heavens.
- The plotters traveled only between Afghanistan and South Asia, and were apprehended individually by law enforcement agencies in several unnamed Asian countries. Interesting, isn't it, that again there was no real mention of how random data mining or American analytical skill figured into the arrests - which you'd expect if George were actually trying to make a point, instead of just pretending to.
- And the threat was so verifiable, and Mr. Bush's intuitive approach so brilliant, that the Mayor of Los Angeles is really only finding out the details now, four years later. Gee, sorry about that. Guess we should've said something once we figured out that whole "tallest building on the West Coast" thing...
And the fact that those arrests occurred randomly over at least a year's time illustrates... er, wait, it's coming to me... oh right, that the fast paced world of "post-9/11 thinking" renders current legal procedure for the securing of warrants too slow to be practical?
I mean, I applaud the fact (if it is a fact) that a handful of international criminals with a plot to destroy another American skyscraper were captured by foreign governments before their deplorable scheme went into motion. Bravo, unspecified Asian nations! But give us all a break, here. What the Hell does that prove about the alleged competence of the Bush Administration?
Am I just being obtuse - or is this pathetic performance an indication that the White House has finally run out of fables to recite as some sort of rationale for willfully violating the laws of the land?
posted by Bob P @ 5:00 AM
4 Comments:
It only took 0.05 seconds to know it was malarky - sort of like the plot to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blow torch.
That's the remarkable thing about the presidency - it forces us to take the man in the office seriously, even when we know and know and know better.
Ultimately, I suspect the real question is - with due respect to Peter, Paul and Mary - when will we ever learn? But I admire your patience. If deconstructionism ever returns to vogue, you'll certainly have earned your stripes.
There has not been one attack on American soil since 9/11.
I don't care what political party you are in, that has got to count for something.
What sort of crack is monika smoking anyway? There have been thousands of attacks on American soil since 9/11. Hello! 3 people in their twenties just got attacked in my neighborhood yesterday. All three shot dead. Perpetrator unknown. That could have been Islamo-fascist terrorists, for all we know!
Let me get this straight. We have the richest country, the most productive workforce, the biggest guns and the smartest leaders the world could ask for, and not having a full-on terrorist strike by affiliates of Osama bin Laden in America is the absolute best we can do?
Come on, don't be a rube. We didn't have any terrorist attacks during the Cold War, but that didn't stop us from arming the world and filling up silos with nuclear weapons, draining our treasury to feed the Military-Industrial Complex at the expense of important social programs that fed the poor and helped working class kids get a good education.
It doesn't matter which party holds the White House when any violent act affects America or Americans. What matters is how our President and Congress deal with that action, and take steps to prevent it from happening again. But this President, instead of catching Osama bin Laden, instead of ensuring a stable democracy takes hold in Afghanistan and working with Pakistan to ensure that we capture most of the al-Qaeda leadership, this President diverted significant personnel and materiel to the Iraq theater, even before we had declared open hostilities, all while he was claiming that "war is a last resort." This President lied us into war, he lied us into a collapsing economy which is facing seriously dark times ahead, he rolled back decades of labor and habitat protections, doing tremendous damage to our world reputation, he lied to us to sell us Social Security reform and when that didn't work he just slipped poison pills into the budget and Medicare bills in the form of dastardly cuts to the poor and elderly, even while he was living in the lap of luxury and playing the guitar while New Orleans drowned, which as we see in the news today, was known by the White House by midnight of the Tuesday of the hurricane's landfall, and the full extent of the devastation became clear far before anyone in his administration even woke up to the fact that something terrible was happening.
Condi was buying shoes, remember?
This President sucks. His policies suck. His blindly devoted, preening, pro-life bimbo worshippers suck. Everything about this administration sucks, from the Secretary of Labor to the Undersecretary for the Underutilization of Resources in the Treasury Department, this administration blows deep donkey doodle, and I don't care who knows it. This President is so friggin' out of the loop, his frigging Vice President, the guy who's supposed to sit in at the Senate and pretend to look interested in the conversation, the guy whose job it is to go around and take pictures all day, this creepy, crooked mouthed Vice President is the one running operations, delegating important tasks like counter-terrorism and the US federal energy policy, and meanwhile ordering his subordinates to expose covert agents' identities to prominent figures in the media.
This President is an idiot and he should be in prison. You are an idiot if you think keeping our country safe from "terrorism" is more important than keeping our water clean, or our soldiers properly armored, or our workplaces safe (remember the Sago mine disaster?) Benjamin Franklin knew what he was talking about when he said "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." Yet this is exactly what this President (or more likely his Vice President) does in the service, so he says, of the "American people". He clearly is going against the interests of ordinary working-class Americans, who have seen their real wages stagnating or in some cases dropping relative to inflation in the last thirty years. It can be seen in the VA hospitals, where men and women have to travel for miles to get care and sometimes wait months to get vital procedures. This President botched the war in Iraq. This President lost 8.8 billion dollars of reconstruction money in Iraq. This President has overseen the most disgusting despoiling of the earth in history, and has even gone so far as to call his land-raping initiatives names like "The Clear Skies Act" or "The Healthy Forests Initiative". This guy is nuts. His whole program is nuts. Everything they do is the opposite of intuitive. That's why all their decisions take three hundreds words to explain. Because they can't be justified in any way other than by blathering until the listener finally concedes defeat.
It's like the President is looking at us on our TV screens and saying "Look America. I've got this big weapon called The Button and I'm crazy enough to poke it. Don't doublecross me now or I'll send the rest of you to war, you got it?
Now some of you are gonna get poorer under my gov'nment, and that's alright. That's what we call the "Free Market". That means I'm free to be rich and comfortable and you're free to do whatever it is poor people do when they're cold and homeless. I don't really care about you. And I'm not really a Christian either. Heh heh. I'm really a Satan worshipping child rapist who doesn't have any respect for laws or your stupid Constitution.
Care to suck my ____, America? I won't even make you pay for it. Okay, well actually I will. Cause in the free market, I'm free to make lots of free money off of you hopeless miserable losers with no rich daddies to bail you out of jail after getting busted for smuggling coke in the 70's. Heh heh heh. Kiss my butt, America! Yee-haw! I'm a cowboy! I can do whatever I want! I'm the Pres-ee-dent! Yee-haw! Pow, pow, pow!"
No Islamofascist attacked the US in 1994, 1996, 1997, or 1998. We were attacked in 1995 by crazy terrorists, but they were white supremacists. And Bill Clinton's Justice Department caught them and put them on trial. And one of them is dead now, because you idiots think that capital punishment solves anything, but that's a different story. My point is that every community has problems. And one of the problems that the international community has is that certain out-groups will use violent acts to achieve attention for their cause. This is what we think of when we say "terrorism". And it will never go away unless all the people of the Earth suddenly become peaceful and live in harmony.
Democrats and true Lefties like me know the only way to fight terrorism is by catching terrorists and putting them on trial for their crimes. Republicans, particularly crazy right-wing ones like Bush and more importantly Vice President Cheney think that we can claim we are wiping out terror by unleashing our awesome weapons of terror on an entire country and ignoring the fact that that alone could spark new terrorists to be created.
You need to wake up. 9/11 was an inside job and this President has thousands of heinous crimes to answer for. You should be asking those tough questions, and considering voting for Democrats to give them the power to ask tough questions, under oath, of the perpetrators of these crimes.
Not much that can be added to that, TA. I appreciate your passion.
And even looking beyond the passion and outrage, the thing that struck me while reading your response - on a purely statistical level - was the length of the list required to even partially detail the horrors of this Administration.
And I would say to monika that the 4.5 years without a major terrorist attack on American soil does count for something - but it's not the "something" that Bush and Co. have apparently convinced you to accept.
What it does show is the relative danger posed to Americans by random fanatical acts perpetrated by young Arab males. It shows quite clearly that we need to put our fear of "terrorists" in proper perspective.
We have a greater chance on any given day of being killed by a drunk driver than by an Islamic fundamentalist. And yet, we've allowed our government to convince us that all our resources, all our trust, all our civil liberties must be sacrificed to the "War On Terror".
So yes, the absence of al Qaeda attacks since 9/11 counts for something. It counts as evidence that the ginned-up "war" this Administration has shoveled down our throats is a scam. Its the backstory for the long con Mr. Bush and his friends have been running on us for five interminable years.
And (full-on Southern drawl) Ms. Star, you honor me with your presence at my humble site. :-)
You're far too kind to ascribe the scholarly qualities of deconstructionism to my pedestrian efforts here. I just think every word out of the man's mouth is an exaggeration - or a lie...
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