Hey gbajiFollow

Im NOT a kackin Liberal!

I wasnt (in the last post anyway) trying to provide any proof.I was trying in all honesty to find out why you believe that Bush and Co. are the epitomisation of all that is true and good.

I am honestly flummoxed as to why you (and an apparently dwindling group of believers) are so utterly convinced in the benevolence of your present administration contrary to pretty much all the evidence. Just for a moment I was trying to get away from the partisan politics to find out why you as a human being trust these fellows so much.

As far as connecting 9/11 to Iraq. Its obvious that you are gonna believe what you believe. I think your wrong. You think Im wrong.

But...

Of course the bushies were very careful to not unequivicolly state "Hussein attacked the towers" Why? Cos they knew it to be untrue!! FFS!! The debate here is about wether there was a concerted rhetorical campaign to connect the two thereby garnering support for a war that would otherwise have been unsupported by the unwashed masses. And no matter how far you stuff your head up your butt, it cannot be denied that not only was it attempted, it was achieved so succesfully that even the damned soldiers in Iraq who are fighting and dying, are doing so in the belief that sadaam was behind the attacks.

What is it about that that you disagree with? do you think that all those soldiers are regular readers of Antiwardotcom? Or were they led to believe it by their CoC?



WTF is that about?? I didn't call you any names. You are fecking paranoid! FYI, iwas trying to take a step away from endlessly linking stuff that was obviously having no impact on your conciousness, and trying to find out what your personal opinion was. (as opposed to tring to figure out what you were saying past all the **** that was dribblin' outta you mouth). Oh dammit there I go callin you names and being all base and uneducated....
Anyway as far as name calling goes, i reckon the Coulters Hannities Malkins have a huge head start on anything I may come up with.

While I was in OSW (Operation Southern Watch) on the U.S.S. Constellation (CV-64) in 2003, I remember all the events leading up to OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom) we were originally sent out to weed out AQ in Afghanistan. Seemingly out of nowhere, the mission changed from Osama and AQ in Afghanistan, to WMD'S in Iraq.

During that deployment, I don't know how many times I hear out of Bush and his administration:



They even made sensationalistic claims of "mobile chemical weapon plants."


Several years later, I read that the Bush Administration saying "There are not WMD's in Iraq." So what the hell? Sure blame poor intelligence, but it's still Bush and his Administration that made the call. So either they lied, or were too stupid to fully think this out, plain and simple.

Nevermind that though, to this day I still don't know why the focus shifted from AQ, OBL, and Afghanistan to WMD in Iraq; many of the people I work with don't understand how either.

I don't know what is worse, the fact that the Bush Administration can't get their story straight, or the fact that regardless of the military pay increases, the distrust for Bush and his ilk has increase amongst the very same military he gets extra pay for.


Just goes to show, you can't buy opinions.

I never said that. I'm simply saying that they aren't the epitomization of all that is false and evil.

See the difference?



Or was there a concerted rhetorical campaign by the Left to convince people that Bush was making that connection purely so that they'd have an easy counterargument to make and a better chance of retaking power in the government?

Each is equally likely. One actually matches the facts (again. I invite you to contrast the number of actual quotes you can find of Bush & Co claiming Iraq was involved in 9/11 and the number of site you can find claiming that Bush and Co made that claim. It's staggering).

It also matches the goals of the left. They're in "gain power back by any means necessary" mode. It started the moment they lost the 2000 election. It had nothing to do with the Iraq war or 9/11. Those were just one of a set of things manipulated in the public eye to try to regain that power, not by showing themselves to be "better" then the Right, but simply by casting as much fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the Bush administration as possible.

9/11. Iraq. Katrina. All have one thing in common. A process by the Left to immediately find a way to "blame Bush" for whatever has happened. Get the first word out. Get it out loudly. And make sure that it's done in a way to make as many people as possible believe that Bush and the Republicans are pulling a fast one...

So yeah. Of course the Left would not hesitate to spin any statement made by Bush in a manner designed to make it useful political fodder later. And the somewhat complex relationships of foreign policy are *perfect* for doing that. Bush has to tie the past event of 9/11 to the future threat represented by Iraq. There's no way to do that without mentioning *both* in the same speech. And if the Left immediately responds with a spun "OMG! He's trying to say that Iraq was behind 9/11!!!", they can create both sides of the debate in the public's eye and win it.

It's a pretty basic debating tactic. And it works really really well when you have a national media that will scoop up and repeat any "juicy" story that comes their way. Ridiculously simple to make people believe something that isn't true in that environment. The question you need to ask is "who's lying?". What possible gain does Bush get by convincing people that Iraq was involved in 9/11? If we conclude that the "this attack leads to that attack" argument is equally valid for gaining support for action in Iraq, why on earth make up something that isn't true? Meanwhile, it's abundantly apparent what the Left gains by convincing people that Bush made that connection. They get people like you to make arguments exactly like the one you're making now...

Think about it.




Um. I said calling "people names". Go back and read. You strung off a diatribe that basically consisted of calling anyone involved in the Bush administration "a bunch of lying, no good, dishonest brutal, power crazed scumbags". And that's just one line of one paragraph.

My point is that you couldn't come up with any actual quotes of Bush saying or doing anything wrong (or that matched what you claimed he'd said or done), so you resorted to just tossing language at the problem. As though by calling Bush brutal and dishonest, it magically makes it so...

Look. If you can't find a quote by someone in the Bush administration actually claiming that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks, just say so. I already know that you can't find one. It doesn't exist. I'm not trying to convince myself. I'm trying to convince *you*. And that wont happen unless you're willing to actually look at the facts of the issue without your assumptions getting in the way.

Bush never made the claim. Cheney never made the claim. Other's did. Repeatedly. Do you want me to pull out articles from the NY Times or the Washington Post where they directly talk about "evidence of a connection" between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks? I can. You can to if you spend 2 minutes on google. It's not hard at all to find news stories making the connection. It's impossible to find anyone in the Bush administration doing the same. Even when responding to the "evidence" after a news outlet made the claim, they're incredibly careful to state that they can't confirm it and don't believe it's true.


How long will you hide your head in the sand on this issue. It's abundantly obvious to anyone who actually spends a tiny bit of research time with an open mind that the publics perception about a connection between Iraq and 9/11 was created by the same media sources that today lead the charge to bash Bush over that very connection.

Hypocrisy? Yup. But you bought it. And they're counting on as many people as possible buying it. At least 51% I suppose...

Someone who uses such exhaustingly long-winded verbiage such as gbaji should in no way, shape or form be invoking Occam's Razor.

I think the whole issue is very clear. Bush, Cheney et al. always mention both Iraq and either al-Quaeda or 9/11 in the same speeches, not because they're making or inferring a connection, but because they know their constituents are dumb and short-sighted enough to asume the connection on their own. It doesn't take any large steps of genious to lead the weak and sheep-like masses by the nose. Now, though, they're waking up to it and are none too pleased...too late, though.

Obviously, the hurricane itself was not Bush's fault. However, by its own admission, the department created under Bush -- Homeland Security which absorbed FEMA into its umbrella -- is primarily responsible for response after a large-scale natural disaster or national emergency.This "coordinated" response is based upon the National Response Plan

No matter how much valid blame you can heap upon the local and state agencies, ultimately it was the duty of the Department of Homeland Security to ensure that there was a swift, coordinated response for both rescue and recovery in the region. They failed. They failed miserably. They failed miserably to launch an effective rescue and recovery after a disaster with three days warning to get their acts together and use that "coorindated response" which links "state, local and tribal governments and the private sector" during a large scale emergency. The Department that Bush pressed for and had formed under him proved itself utterly ineffective to the point of embarassment in one of its core missions: Responding to a major disaster. Needless to say, if it had been explosives on the levees instead of a hurricane, God only knows how many people would have died while the Department fumbled its way through an immediate disaster instead of one with three days warning. Add to this the patronage appointment of FEMA chief Michael Brown, a man horribly unsuited for the responsibilites of his office and appointed directly by the President himself.

And that's why people blame Bush for the federal Katrina response.

The Dept of Homeland Security has been tweaking its website since Katrina. I copy and pasted its original statements here a few days after Katrina hit.

Edited, Sep 16th 2006 at 3:15pm EDT by Jophiel

My favorite was when he broke out the "false dilemma" link.

That's not why I laughed at Gbaji talking about false dilemmas. He has a habit of using them on a fairly regular basis about any number of things.

For that matter, the false dilemma presented in the example was not "for or against terrorism/crime" but rather being for or against America (per Bush) and excluding the concept of neutrality. Bush put the campaign against the terrorists into the terms of a war. In a war, neutrality is certainly a valid position; one America herself has partaken in as often as not.

Edited, Sep 18th 2006 at 10:36am EDT by Jophiel

As I sit in my chair, I start to smile.

Then I just weep.