So what do we do now?

[Mary]

I had the exact same reaction as Kenny's to reading your post, rocdoc. It all but admitted that the administration went into Iraq in a completely incompetent manner, and then bizarrely tried to defend the administration for this very reason, by arguing that they knew they were acting sooooooo flagrantly incompetently that they knew their approval ratings would soon collapse, so they must have really thought they needed to invade Iraq. Bizarre - I've never seen incompetence turned into a defense before.

As for needing a more apocalyptic vision before 9/11 - the answer to one missed threat is not to treat every possible threat in an apocalyptic manner. The problem with that approach is that overreacting to relatively minor or even nonexistent "threats" can have results every bit as awful as 9/11. The war in Iraq has already caused a great deal more death and suffering than 9/11 did, there is no end in sight, and it threatens an entire region of the world with truly frightening upheavals (with consequences for the entire world - to say nothing of for Israel...) Given that overreacting can have consequences just as bad as underreacting, it's not even a remote justification of an overreaction to say that the administration was simply trying to avoid another 9/11.

Besides, all this is academic when the point is that there was plenty of intelligence demonstrating that Saddam Hussein simply didn't have the capacity to be the "threat" that the administration insisted he was, and the administration systematically ignored this intelligence - in favor of trumped-up and distorted charges from people like Chalabi. The question regarding Saddam Hussein was never "is he really that evil?" - it was "after years and years of sanctions and after the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s completely and utterly destroying the entire infrastructure of Iraq and the Gulf War doing it all over again - could he really remotely have had the resources to make himself a viable threat?" A lot of people said NO, but the administration refused to take them seriously.

Are you suggesting that, now that 9/11 has happened, and now that other frightening terrorist plots have emerged (and been foiled, thankfully, in the case of the Brits just now) that every single time there's a possible threat, it should be interpreted in the most apocalyptic manner possible? If that is what you're suggesting, then that's a recipe for unending war and disaster. If that's not what you're suggesting, then I don't see how 9/11 in any way vindicates, justifies, or excuses the Bush Administration's rush to war in Iraq.

M

[RocDoc]

<sub>What are you saying here, Rocdoc? Are you saying that the President and Co. went into Iraq knowingly without an exit strategy? Are you saying that they went in knowing full well that an insurgency was expected, but that the danger was so dire that any more planning would have hindered more than helped? What are you saying?

I had the exact same reaction as Kenny's to reading your post, rocdoc.</sub>

'The exact' to his...right Mary.

'...any more planning would have hindered...'?
You could have planned for every eventuality, eh?
Troops. Yes they needed troops and France, Russia and the UN sold the U.S. out when there STILL was a case for them to back their years of resolutions.

The answer to the question re a set exit strategy and this certainty of a forecast of a foreigner-dominated Al Q'aeda influx into Iraq is that it should be obvious to any person wishing to understand that this was a bit more of an undertaking than changing a car's tire and that the multitudes of variations meant that many things (EXCEPT for adequate troop strength) remained to be seen.

~

<sub>So tell me, Rocdoc: you've been posting on the CE board, in it's various forms, for at least 4 years now. Are you honestly trying to tell me that you had NO FUCKING IDEA THAT THERE FUCKING WAS SOMEONE SCREAMING 'DANGER DANGER WILL ROBINSON' BEFORE 9/11? AND THAT SUCH SCREAMS REACHED THE FUCKING DESK OF THE FUCKING PRESIDENT ON AT LEAST ONE OCCASION?

If you honestly think there's a single person, a single solitary person who views the CE board on a consistent basis that doesn't think you're the biggest Bush brownnoser that's ever lived, then I've got some lovely riverside property in Brooklyn you might want to purchase for a cheap price.</sub>

Read, comprehend meanings of words instead of indulging yourself these screaming fits, and especially try the paragraph you nicely omitted in this effort of yours. The second paragraph here, see?:

<sub>Same as there SHOULD have been a far more apocalyptic vison of 10-20 Arabs who were enrolled at various flight schools, uninterested in landing their 747 models...someone needed to be fucking shouting 'Danger danger Dr Smith!' before 9 / 11, and when we MOST needed it, it did NOT happen.

And YES, I know that there WERE a scant few who said 'Hey!' and shouted it....but no-one else bought the correct degree of the term 'apocalyptic' to prevent it.
It sounded like an absurd possibility then....</sub>

Perform your fucking illustrative obedience school newspaper-smacking-the-nose atttacks where they're actually called for.
So you're saying that after that Man-Of-The Year's observations passed through like 30 rungs of the national security ladder and no-one else connected the needed dots, George Bush was then supposed to leap upon his desk and say 'EGAD Man! Can't you see what's happening there at those south Fla flight schools??'

_{Bizarre - I've never seen incompetence turned into a defense before.}

That's wonderful Mary for your partisan little side, but it actually WAS a true defense which THEN devolved into absolutely futile incompetence (which I am continually granting here with no-one seeing I have) for MY partisan little side.

_{...the answer to one missed threat is not to treat every possible threat in an apocalyptic manner.}

No shit, Mary?
And who was it that DID say this?

My comment 'but no-one else bought the correct degree of the term 'apocalyptic' to prevent it' sure as hell brings in the matter of 'degree' to the urgency of what uncovered intel may mean.
Maybe you were holding hard and fast to the notion that

_{'Shit, apocalyptic HAS no degree. It's fucking superlative! Apocalypse is just that... no dumb sense of degree can be applied!'}

...full justification in some sort of a formal debate sense.

I'm honestly trying to understand WHY you would need to ask such a question as:

_{'Are you suggesting that, now that 9/11 has happened, and now that other frightening terrorist plots have emerged (and been foiled, thankfully, in the case of the Brits just now) that every single time there's a possible threat, it should be interpreted in the most apocalyptic manner possible?'}

...it's absurd as anything other than ma-a-aybe some sort of formal debate device which is meant as a supposed trashing and 'humiliation' of an 'opponent'.

Ah, such a lovely odor of virtually complete disrespect here.




<sub>Yeah, fuck you Doc, you don't deserve no goddamned respect.

Yes thanks.

This 'forum' is truly for shit.</sub>

[Kensterberg]

Um, RocDoc, I've got absolutely no idea what that last post was supposed to be about.

Could you maybe restate it a little more concisely for me? I'm trying to follow this conversation, but you've completely lost me here.

[RocDoc]

If it was ONLY one idea with one person, yeah I probably could....

Glean what you can...and I'm sure there won't be a hell of a lot.

Mary will be sure to help ya. Maybe.

And if not that's just fine too.

I
Really
Don't
Care

Sorry for the time wasted.


My own especially.

[kmc]

Wow.

[kmc]

Mary was just RocDocked.

[shin]

I could literally spend hours pointing out how completely illiterate and incoherent RocDoc's post just there was, the CE equivalent of a monkey flinging shit at his handler's for daring to take away his Binky, but I'll just focus on this one instead:

rocdoc said:

So you're saying that after that Man-Of-The Year's observations passed through like 30 rungs of the national security ladder and no-one else connected the needed dots, George Bush was then supposed to leap upon his desk and say 'EGAD Man! Can't you see what's happening there at those south Fla flight schools??'

Yes, Bush was supposed to take the dot-connected headline "Bin Laden Determined to Strike US" seriously, become perturbed about the implications, stand up from his desk, tell his aide to cancel his golf appointments, and do something about it, which would probably have been limited to increased airport security and more terror suspect surveillance for a few months. That's exactly what I am saying. Put me on the record for having said it. Please.

And if you can tell me why he shouldn't have done that, after the information saw fit to go from ManWoman-of-the-Year's middling desk all the way up the ladder to the President's ultra-important Presidential Daily Briefing, then you can have your Binky back. But not until then.

[shin]

I should also point out that this "apocalyptic" requirement is really irrelevant and frankly quite silly. The correct response to the available intelligence wasn't to shit your pants in fear, it was to get up out of your seat and do the bare minimum of prevention. That was not done.

And you are to suggest that since there wasn't a sea of panic in the intelligence community that would make Chicken Little look like Edward R. Murrow, that it's quite reasonable for them to have done next to nothing? That sheer conniptions was the only appropriate response to what was known on September 10th, 2001? Puh-leez. That sort of emotional overtone being a requirement to doing your job is the sort of hyperventilating unprofessionalism that you've come to embody in your postings here, using your secondary emotions instead of your brain.

[Mary]

There used to be a response to rocdoc here. I'm taking it down because it would inevitably have degenerated into some kind of pointless insult-fest. I'm sorry rocdoc, I'll chat about music or chicago or nyc or baseball or absolutely whatever with you any day, but I find it completely impossible to have a conversation with you about politics - you just take everything hyper-personally, and I have to reread my posts about six dozen times and add like fifty-two caveats to everything to pre-empt hurt feelings or paranoid defensiveness......it's just not worth it.

M

[kmc]

But what do we do now? Where are we going in Iraq?

[phil]

Time to get out of Iraq ...

And cross the border right into Iran !!

Junior & the Hawks World Tour is just getting started ...

[RocDoc]

<sub>Yes, Bush was supposed to take the dot-connected headline "Bin Laden Determined to Strike US" seriously, become perturbed about the implications, stand up from his desk, tell his aide to cancel his golf appointments, and do something about it, which would probably have been limited to increased airport security and more terror suspect surveillance for a few months. That's exactly what I am saying. Put me on the record for having said it. Please.

And if you can tell me why he shouldn't have done that, after the information saw fit to go from ManWoman-of-the-Year's middling desk all the way up the ladder to the President's ultra-important Presidential Daily Briefing, then you can have your Binky back. But not until then.</sub>

Shin, darling.
Why can you not see that there were security experts among his advisors down those rungs of the ladder that were supposed to make THAT decision then and there, when the shit came to THEM.

It is an unexpected fiasco that something like that would have ended up on the President's desk without ALREADY having been acted upon.

The Man-Of-The-Year thing exposed that it was an FBI-CIA disconnect that botched it.

These Time Mag exposes regarding this Man Of The Year while she was howling 'FIRE!' in the wilderness....did they have film of what precisely was on Bush's desk that day...and in subsequent days? And how was it presented personally to Mr Bush?

They know of course that he wiped his golf cleats with it right?

Aaah, no proof but the Kerry campaign said so....


Absolute horseshit.

~

I took it personally because your insufferable condescension MADE it personal, Mary.

Tell me WHAT then should I have said?

Ah.
Nonono...I should have considered myself silenced then, that was it.

And DED tells me that I'm an asshole because I give the impression that I'm always right?
Erm...
Where's Mary on this scale of yours DED?

[Galactus]

Yeah doc, I'm sorry you're clearly not an asshole at all.

[kmc]

RocDoc, you're right.

[shin]

rocdoc said:

Shin, darling.
Why can you not see that there were security experts among his advisors down those rungs of the ladder that were supposed to make THAT decision then and there, when the shit came to THEM.

It is an unexpected fiasco that something like that would have ended up on the President's desk without ALREADY having been acted upon.

The buck stops where? According to RocDoc, ALWAYS with someone else. ALWAYS.

The Man-Of-The-Year thing exposed that it was an FBI-CIA disconnect that botched it.

These Time Mag exposes regarding this Man Of The Year while she was howling 'FIRE!' in the wilderness....did they have film of what precisely was on Bush's desk that day...and in subsequent days? And how was it presented personally to Mr Bush?

They know of course that he wiped his golf cleats with it right?

Aaah, no proof but the Kerry campaign said so....

It was Harriet Myers that presented the PDB to him (literally), so there was probably a lot of "Sir, you are so wonderful"s and perhaps even a back massage. I can totally understand why Bush wouldn't pay much attention to that stupid piece of paper when you've got someone treating you like a king. In fact, since he'd treated like a king even now, he doesn't seem to pay much attention to anything.