Paul Johnson: Quite simply, Kerry must be stopped

Sadly, no. He did not, not even in his first week in office and certainly not after September 11, 2001. And what planet were you on in the fall of 2001? There was complete unity in this country in backing Bush's plans/policies regarding anti-terrorism. There was 90% plus approval from the public on the November invasion of Afghanistan, and Congress passed the Patriot Act with nary a dissenting voice heard.

You are making it up that Bush had to fight against an active Democratic opposition. You are, in fact, lying thru your teeth about this. In fact, the Republicans attacked the Democrats in 2002 election campaigns for being weak on terrorism when virtually all the Democrats sided with what the Bush administration asked for from Congress throughout late 2001 and 2002. It was not until the fall of 2002 that several of the most liberal Democrats in Congress broke ranks with moderate and conservative Democrats and began to question the Bush administration's actions on the war on terror precisely because Bush was ignoring Afghanistan and al Quida, and had let Bin laden escape and instead was saber rattling about Iraq. You are purposely obfusticating and blurring these two issues in an attempt to claim that the Democrats did not support the war on terror, when instead it has been Bush's insane invasion of Iraq of which they were most opposed to without Bush fully pursuing alternatives to warfare and the concomitant $billions spent and destruction of lives in Iraq.

You right wingers are still living in a faith based reality unimpinged by the facts when they run counter to your fraudulent ideologies.

Where shall we start, vis-à-vis Bush's incoherent policies to make the US safer?

The first thing Bush did in office about counter-terrorism was order US naval ships in the Indian Ocean to stand down from its Clinton era policy of attacking al Quida camps with cruise missiles, forced the US Air Force stationed in the Gulf to stand down from its Clinton era policy of 24-hour alert for sorties to bomb the same camps if bin Laden was identified, and ordered the US military Special Forces to stand down from Clinton era policy to infiltrate Afghanistan to capture or kill bin Laden.

He also ordered a stop to FBI investigations of the Saudi Arabian government's funding of suspected arab terrorist organizations in the West.

All of these things happened in the late winter of 2000.


After receiving a memo from the CIA in August 2001 titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack America," President Bush continued his month-long vacation…..and did not call a single meeting of the National Security Council to deal with the report, nor order any follow-up reports from NSA or CIA before 911.

He did nothing.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/10/august6.memo/


Before 9/11, John Ashcroft proposed slashing counterterrorism funding by 23 percent ($30,000,000)… to counter balance the tax cuts for the rich.

Btw: that budget from the Justice Dept was submitted to Congress on, guess what date? September 10, 2001.

http://www.americanprogress.org/atf/cf/{E9245FE4-9A2B-43C7-A521-5D6FF2E06E03}/CUTTINGCOUNTERTERROR.PDF


The Bush Administration reduced Clinton era funding for Nunn-Lugar--the program intended to keep the former Soviet Union's nuclear legacy out of the hands of terrorists and rogue states--by $45.5 million.

The reduction in this funding was to help offset the 2001 tax cuts for the rich.

I can only assume it was more important for Bush to cut taxes on the rich instead of making sure that ex-Soviet nuclear materials and technologies did not fall into the hands of terrorists.

A fine "attaboy" to the C-Plus Augustus for that idiocy.

http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_03/NunnLugarFunding.asp
The Bush Administration secured less nuclear material from sites around the world vulnerable to terrorists in the two years after 9/11 than were secured in the two years before 9/11.
http://www.nti.org/e_research/analysis_cnwmupdate_052404.pdf


The Bush Administration has assigned five times as many agents to investigate Cuban embargo violations as it has to track Osama bin Laden's and Saddam Hussein's money.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi-Ff=/news/archive/2004/04/29/national1842EDT0787.DTL


According to Congressional Research Service data, the Bush Administration has underfunded security at the nation's ports by more than $1 billion for fiscal year 2005.


http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=106593


The Bush Administration did not devote the resources necessary to prevent a resurgence in the production of poppies, the raw material used to create heroin, in Afghanistan--creating a potent new source of financing for terrorists.

http://paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=68404


Even though an Al Qaeda training manual suggests terrorists come to the United States and buy assault weapons, the Bush Administration did nothing to prevent the expiration of the ban.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/09/11/MNGO68N6P91.DTL


Despite repeated calls for reinforcements, there are fewer experienced CIA agents assigned to the unit dealing with Osama bin Laden now than there were before 9/11.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB081FFE35540C768DDDA00894DC404482


Between January 20, 2001, and September 10, 2001, the Bush Administration publicly mentioned Al Qaeda one time.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0903-04.htm


as to that freshly minted junior yahoo on this thread you right wingers have brought on board to A2K who never heard that the US was supplying the wherewithal to Iraq to make chemical and biological weapons, here's a tutorial:

Iraqi use of chemical weapons against Iran

OFFICERS SAY U.S. AIDED IRAQ IN WAR DESPITE USE OF GAS

http://query.nytimes.com/search/abstract?res=F20911FA38590C7B8DDDA10894DA404482

A covert American program during the Reagan administration provided Iraq with critical battle planning assistance at a time when American intelligence agencies knew that Iraqi commanders would employ chemical weapons in waging the decisive battles of the Iran-Iraq war, according to senior military officers with direct knowledge of the program


U.S., Britain Helped Iraq Develop Chemical And Biological Weapons"
http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/psn/mar98/0002.html

Source: Reuters, February 12, 1998.

A British television news program reported last week that the United States
helped Iraq develop its chemical and biological weapons programs in the 1980s,
and Britain sold Baghdad the antidote to nerve gas as late as March 1992.
<snip>
Britain's Channel Four television news said it found intelligence documents
which showed 14 shipments of biological materials -- including 19 batches of
anthrax bacteria and 15 batches of botulinum, the organism that causes
botulism -- were exported from the U.S. to Iraq between 1985 and 1989.
<snip>
Twenty-nine batches of material were sent after Iraq killed 5,000 people in a
gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988, the program reported.
<snip>
A senior Pentagon official said he stopped a 1988 order from Iraq for 1.5
million doses of atropine, which is used to protect troops from nerve gas. A
classified U.S. Defense Department document showed Iraq had bought pralidoxine an antidote to nerve gas -- from Britain in March 1992, after the Gulf War.
<snip>
Channel Four also said it had uncovered U.S. intelligence documents which
showed that both the British and U.S. government knew as early as August 1990
of the existence of Agent 15, a deadly nerve gas.


U.S. companies sold Iraq the ingredients for a witch's brew

http://www.progressive.org/0901/anth0498.html

Most Americans listening to the President did not know that the United States supplied Iraq with much of the raw material for creating a chemical and biological warfare program. Nor did the media report that U.S. companies sold Iraq more than $1 billion worth of the components needed to build nuclear weapons and diverse types of missiles, including the infamous Scud.
<snip>
According to a 1994 Senate report, private American suppliers, licensed by the U.S. Department of Commerce, exported a witch's brew of biological and chemical materials to Iraq from 1985 through 1989. Among the biological materials, which often produce slow, agonizing death, were:
* Bacillus Anthracis, cause of anthrax.
* Clostridium Botulinum, a source of botulinum toxin.
* Histoplasma Capsulatam, cause of a disease attacking lungs, brain, spinal cord, and heart.
* Brucella Melitensis, a bacteria that can damage major organs.
* Clostridium Perfringens, a highly toxic bacteria causing systemic illness.
* Clostridium tetani, a highly toxigenic substance.
<snip>
Also on the list: Escherichia coli (E. coli), genetic materials, human and bacterial DNA, and dozens of other pathogenic biological agents. "These biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction," the Senate report stated. "It was later learned that these microorganisms exported by the United States were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and removed from the Iraqi biological warfare program."
The report noted further that U.S. exports to Iraq included the precursors to chemical-warfare agents, plans for chemical and biological warfare production facilities, and chemical-warhead filling equipment.

The exports continued to at least November 28, 1989, despite evidence that Iraq was engaging in chemical and biological warfare against Iranians and Kurds since as early as 1984.
<snip>
The American company that provided the most biological materials to Iraq in the 1980s was American Type Culture Collection of Maryland and Virginia, which made seventy shipments of the anthrax-causing germ and other pathogenic agents, according to a 1996 Newsday story.
Other American companies also provided Iraq with the chemical or biological compounds, or the facilities and equipment used to create the compounds for chemical and biological warfare. Among these suppliers were the following:
* Alcolac International, a Baltimore chemical manufacturer already linked to the illegal shipment of chemicals to Iran, shipped large quantities of thiodiglycol (used to make mustard gas) as well as other chemical and biological ingredients, according to a 1989 story in The New York Times.
* Nu Kraft Mercantile Corp. of Brooklyn (affiliated with the United Steel and Strip Corporation) also supplied Iraq with huge amounts of thiodiglycol, the Times reported.
* Celery Corp., Charlotte, NC
* Matrix-Churchill Corp., Cleveland, OH (regarded as a front for the Iraqi government, according to Representative Henry Gonzalez, Democrat of Texas, who quoted U.S. intelligence documents to this effect in a 1992 speech on the House floor).
The following companies were also named as chemical and biological materials suppliers in the 1992 Senate hearings on "United States export policy toward Iraq prior to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait":
* Mouse Master, Lilburn, GA
* Sullaire Corp., Charlotte, NC
* Pure Aire, Charlotte, NC
* Posi Seal, Inc., N. Stonington, CT
* Union Carbide, Danbury, CT
* Evapco, Taneytown, MD
* Gorman-Rupp, Mansfield, OH
Additionally, several other companies were sued in connection with their activities providing Iraq with chemical or biological supplies: subsidiaries or branches of Fisher Controls International, Inc., St. Louis; Rhone-Poulenc, Inc., Princeton, NJ; Bechtel Group, Inc., San Francisco; and Lummus Crest, Inc., Bloomfield, NJ, which built one chemical plant in Iraq and, before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, was building an ethylene facility. Ethylene is a necessary ingredient for thiodiglycol
<snip>
In 1982, the Reagan Administration took Iraq off its list of countries alleged to sponsor terrorism, making it eligible to receive high-tech items generally denied to those on the list. Conventional military sales began in December of that year. Representative Samuel Gejdenson, Democrat of Connecticut, chairman of a House subcommittee investigating "United States Exports of Sensitive Technology to Iraq," stated in 1991:

"From 1985 to 1990, the United States Government approved 771 licenses for the export to Iraq of $1.5 billion worth of biological agents and high-tech equipment with military application. [Only thirty-nine applications were rejected.] The United States spent virtually an entire decade making sure that Saddam Hussein had almost whatever he wanted. . . . The Administration has never acknowledged that it took this course of action, nor has it explained why it did so. In reviewing documents and press accounts, and interviewing knowledgeable sources, it becomes clear that United States export-control policy was directed by U.S. foreign policy as formulated by the State Department, and it was U.S. foreign policy to assist the regime of Saddam Hussein."


While Iraq was gassing both its external enemies and internal rebels, the US was supplying military aid to Saddam in the form of intelligence data from CIA spy satellites and recommendations on how to defeat the Iranians on the battlefield.

Did Saddam gas the Kurds? Yes, most certainly he did.

Did Saddam use chemical warfare against the Iranians? Yes, most certainly he did.

Did the US complain about it in the press at the time? No, most certainly it did not.

Was the US supporting Iraq against Iran at the time? Yes, most certainly the US was.

Well sais, kuvasz. Elegant post.

I am tired of all this "white hat, black hat" posturing.

The first step in remedying the situation is to see clearly what it is.

McT

This must have taken Kuvaz a long time. Here is a compact summary;


Here's a part I particularly liked.\


Good thing too. Clinton had just about exhausted our supply of 1.5 million-dollar Tomahawk missiles making pits in the sands of remote sites in Afghanistan. These attacks wasted huge resources and accomplished nothing. Same goes for the wasteful prolonged alerts for long-range Air Force strikes. We were attacking gnats with sledgehammers. Instead Bush launched a brilliant military campaign which in conjunction with the Northern Alliance destroyed the Taliban regime and did so with great economy of force.

The rest is a collection of drivel from various lists of Democrat talking points. Out of context apparent contradictions; repeated references to "tax cuts for the rich" (when in fact they were for all taxpayers), and regurgitated stuff from the Iran Iraq war. A disjoint listing of mostly insignificant facts, torturously juxtaposed to create the illusion of pattern or conspiracy, and able to persuade only those wholly ignorant of the history of the last 22 years.

McTag,

Apart from our evidently different opinions regarding the subject matter, I believe your choice of the word 'elegant' was inappropriate here.

Could it be that the author was 'adrift in a sea of disjoint partisan talking points'? Or perhaps 'stranded on the remote shores of conspiratorial fantasy'?

Kuvasz

I agree with McTag.

Great posting.

I suspect George is miffed because apparently because he feels using facts is underhanded!

You seem to be seriously mixed up.

The whole world knows that the Sudanese offered to hand BinLaden straight over to us and Clinton refused the offer.

The whole world also knows that the only thing which Clinton ever accomplished with cruise missiles was to waste cruise missiles and destroy aspirin factories.

And in the late winter of 2000, Clinton was still president.

What exactly are you trying to say??

One other impression I get listening to Kerry...

He makes it sound like we had 200,000 troops on the ground in Afghanistan and that we needed to send, oh, say, 30,000 of them on an errand to capture binLaden like Chengis Khan sent Subudai and Jebe off to chase the Khwarism padishah in 1220 or whenever that was.

In real life, near as I can tell, we had a few handsfull of special forces on the ground.

Aside from the difficulty of simply getting to Afghanistan if you weren't born there, there was the question of whether we had 200,000 guys to send ANYWHERE after eight years of Clinton mismanagement.

From a Conservative Manifesto


If you are having problems in a discussion with someone smart enough not to be a conservative...write the words "...after eight years of Clinton..." ...

...and you will feel better.

Don't worry about whether or not it fits...or even if it is fleshed out.

Try it! You'll see!

This from the guy that now has 105 posts with "Bush is a moron" in it.

Yeah...but Bush is a moron...so what is your point? (#106 and counting!)

From a Liberal Manifesto ...

How to Argue:

1. Make an untrue statement, preferably on the subject of something about which you know nothing.

2. Express astonishment that your source could possibly be inaccurate.

3. Demand what motivation your source would have to lie.

4. Assert that the other party's inability to articulate this motivation is tantamount to proof that your source is not lying.

5. Question the motivation of the contrary source.

6. Argue that all sources are equal and that therefore the contrary source is irrelevant.

7. Change the subject.

Alternatively ...

1. Make an untrue statement.

2. Deny that you said what you said.

3. Deny that the other party understood what you said.

4. Deny that the words you used mean what the other party claims they mean.

5. Redefine your definition and hope the other person forgets the previous one. Repeat as needed.

6. Assert that since definitions are irrelevant and subjective, the other person is mean-spirited, racist, sexist, intolerant and obsessive.

7. Change the subject.

Remember: As long as you haven't admitted you're wrong, you are right. Any attempt to demonstrate otherwise is evidence of criminal hate and probably mental imbalance, too. Never forget that an answer to a question you have asked should always be regarded as a personal attack if the answer is something you don't like, and that the answer to all evils personal, spiritual, moral and societal is more government money.

Hey, McG, by the way...I've changed that to "incompetent moron."

Do you have figures on that?

I'll have to check the big board on that one Frank :wink:

I probably needed to qualify that a bit better. After eight years of Clinton having starved our military, if all we'd needed to do was send 200,000 guys somewhere with, as Santino Corleone would have phrased it (Godfather I), just their dicks in their hands so they could stand around looking stupid and get shot and blown up a lot, we probably could have still done that. What we were clearly not able to do for a couple of years after W. took office was send 200,000 guys anywhere with enough functional equipment to actually accomplish any sort of a meaningful military mission.

Kuvasz

You are really on your game, my friend.

Please keep it up.

I think the real point is that bin Laden isn't particularly important anymore. We have the terrorist organizations on the defensive and are fighting it out with them in their own neighborhood - not in the USA. We have destroyed their training infrastructure and have lured them into a war of attrition in Iraq which we will win.

The Clinto administration obsessed about killing OBL and expended most of our inventory of Tomahawk missiles in a fruitless attempt to kill him. They not only didn't get him, they allowed us to suffer an escalating series of terror attacks starting with the 1993 attempt to take down the World Trade Center, and continuing through the bombing of our barracks in Saudi Arabia, two of our embassies in East Africa and the USS Cole, culminating in a second, successful attampt to take down the World Trade Center.

After 9/11 Bush appropriately and decisively changed the game to one in which we have the advantage, and one that takes the fight to them. Now Democrats attack the Administration for not emphasizing their own demonstrably failed policies. Doesn't make sense. No right thinking leader would resume policies that have prove3n themselves to be failures. The Democrats are really seeking self-justification in a situation in which the facts are not with them.

You coulda stopped right there, George. At that point, since you were speaking about the Bush administration, you were already indulging in a flight of considerable fancy!

Now there's a well-composed factual argument. I believe your vocabulary, such as it is, exceeds your powers of reasoning or understanding.



As I said Clinton wasted hundreds of them to no effect whatever. Our inventories were seriously depleted and special contracts were let to Raytheon and other companies to replenish our stocks. I have direct personal experience in this area and know whereof I speak, but I don't intend to play the link game with you.


No, Bush was developing a much more serious and effective plan. The Clinton actions accomplished NOTHING.


Think, if you can, about this statement, and recognize that this suggests he had an aggressive plan in mind before 9/11. Clarke was a second echelon functionary in the NSC, hardly the "czar" of anything, and not nearly so important as he imagined himself.


The facts of Kerry's subsequent votes do not support this assertion.



Another well-reasoned trenchant argument. I doubt you would recognize "intellectual consistency" if it was forced on you.


Hard to know what you are talking about here - if anything at all.



About the only thing more convoluted that your logic here is your sentence structure. Your "facts" are wrong in almost every particular.



You know virtually nothing about me, notwithstanding your several gratuitous claims to the contrary. You are of course entitled to "stand by" your hyperbole, name calling, distortions of fact and illogic if you wish. I believe the continuation of this discussion with you would not require any balls. On the contrary, just foolishness and an inclination to waste time. There is a good old saying that applies -- "Don't get in a fight with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig likes it".

Budget restraints had nothing to do with it. The issue was that we were merely digging expensive holes in the sand to no purpose whatever, and looking hapless and foolish in the process.