Bush is fear itself!

iaafan · Post by **iaafan** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 3:17 pm

Hey WYCAT: You're managing to put your foot in your mouth by putting words in mine.

I never made a comparison between Clinton and Bush when I said, "I believe Clinton is on the record as having told the Bush Administration that the biggest concern/threat to the US is terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda."

And I never said that Congress did whatever the Prez wanted. I said, "I 'think' Congress voted to go to war on Bush's urging, not the other way around." I sure don't remember Congress getting on Bush's ass about going to war. Or did I miss that?

You may feel inclined to imply that I said Bush is the only one who saw this as fake intel, but often when people say Bush, they mean the Bush Administration. A lot of congressmen (and women) made, and have made, decisions based on NO information.

And since you are lobbying for letting bygones be bygones, then why are you still bringing up that John Kerry voted for the war? If nothing else Bush bashing keeps Bush supporters on their toes, so I don't see it as totally destructive.

I think our intel agencies got where they are at because of a lack of over sight that goes back decades even centuries. Again, like you just did with Kerry, you try to drag Clinton into Bush's watch. It's Bush's problem now, if wants to be a tough guy lets see him clean it up, then he fly around in a fighter jet and proclaim "Mission Accomplished."

Since you're in the mood to drag former Dem mistakes back into play ( yet sing for forgeting it all in the same breath) into the discussion and pump your chest out, then why not be bi-partisan (or do you only do that when convenient?) and bring Dick Nixon into the fray. And as long as you're into trying to drag comparisons (and putting that on me) why not a comparison between Nixon and Bush. One broke into offices to win an election, the other put someone in office to win an election, or two. They seem to compare, but not contrast. Or Bush and Hitler---Reichstag vs. 9/11. Commies vs. Terrorists. Blame the commies, kill the Jews and steal their money/businesses vs. blame the terrorists kill the Iraqis and steal their oil.

Cat'sPawAlum · Post by **Cat'sPawAlum** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 3:25 pm

WOW!!! You are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out there, iiaa...........

iaafan · Post by **iaafan** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 3:27 pm

El Gato: That's a typical Conservative's response. Attack any and all that disagree with you. Sounds like Hannity and O'Reilly. They never answers questions, they're always asking and leading the liberal guests, while lobbing in easy Qs to the Conservatives. When they go in a different direction he attacks. That's how Hitler used to do it, too. If he couldn't scare them on his own he dreamt up reasons for them to be scared.

When Kennedy botched the Bay of Pigs, at least he owned up to it.

WYCAT · Post by **WYCAT** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 3:27 pm

El_Gato wrote:I'm now convinced that some people's hatred of Bush has surpassed the right's loathing of Clinton; something I would have never thought possible.

I agree. This post started out as nothing and is still about nothing. I would much rather be debating the effects of overtaxing middle income families or the effects of frivalous lawsuits on health insurance than arguing Bush is fear itself. I knew I should have listened to that voice in my head that said let someone else fight this one. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.

WYCAT · Post by **WYCAT** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 3:29 pm

Cat'sPawAlum wrote:WOW!!! You are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out there, iiaa...........

Even further than that.

iaafan · Post by **iaafan** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 3:32 pm

Cat'sPaw: What's way out there about defending myself against someone who wants to misrepresent what I say?

iaafan · Post by **iaafan** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 3:35 pm

If this post and thread are about nothing, then Bush won the election on nothing...ie...gay marriage, morals.

WYCAT · Post by **WYCAT** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 3:35 pm

iaafan wrote:Cat'sPaw: What's way out there about defending myself against someone who wants to misrepresent what I say?

I think he is referring more to the other comments like comparing Bush to Hilter (twice). That kind of thing.

iaafan · Post by **iaafan** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 3:44 pm

Comparing Bush to Hitler isn't quite waaaaay out there, but it may be a stretch. It's (the comparison) been occuring since 9/11. And there are quite a few people who haven't let that one go. There is definitely an association although the extent may be a long way off.

Prescot Bush, W's grandpa, was involved in illegal dealings with the Nazis. The peers of the Bush family have been the global power brokers (Saudis, especially) for decades, not the average American. This is where Nixon scores points. He came from humble beginnings and was self-made to some extent.

WYCAT · Post by **WYCAT** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 3:48 pm

iaafan wrote:Comparing Bush to Hitler isn't quite waaaaay out there, but it may be a stretch. It's (the comparison) been occuring since 9/11. And there are quite a few people who haven't let that one go. There is definitely an association although the extent may be a long way off.

Prescot Bush, W's grandpa, was involved in illegal dealings with the Nazis. The peers of the Bush family have been the global power brokers (Saudis, especially) for decades, not the average American. This is where Nixon scores points. He came from humble beginnings and was self-made to some extent.

It seems your beef is with the Bush family not just W. Most of your thoughts and comments seem to carry way to much hatred for my comfort zone. I would suggest you either obtain therapy as W will be president for another 4 years or begin planning your assassination attempt. I don't think you will be able to make it to the next election the way you are looking at thing now.

iaafan · Post by **iaafan** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 3:48 pm

Oh. Is this what you mean?

http://www.exile.ru/151/1510204113.html

You mean I shouldn't be making Hitler look bad by comparing him to Bush. Ah, now I get it.

BozoneCat · Post by **BozoneCat** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 3:54 pm

iaafan wrote:Sounds like Hannity and O'Reilly. They never answers questions, they're always asking and leading the liberal guests, while lobbing in easy Qs to the Conservatives. When they go in a different direction he attacks.

Yeah, and Colmes and Franken are models of non-partisan debate.

iaafan wrote:One broke into offices to win an election, the other put someone in office to win an election, or two.

What???

Post by **SonomaCat** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 3:55 pm

El_Gato wrote:Tell you what velo, bay, and iaa,

The 3 of you go to DC, go over ALL the evidence that the President & the Congress had before voting to go to war, THEN AND ONLY THEN sit on your holier-than-thou thrones and tell us that "we should have known better".

I don't care how many newspapers, periodicals, or "e-zines" you have actually read; I'm pretty sure it would not amount to ONE PERCENT of the information our leaders based their decision on.

Would the 3 of you PLEASE stop acting as if you knew more than they did?

And Congress voted overwhelmingly to go to war "at Bush's urging"? Are you serious? If there was even a SHRED of evidence or even the slightest crack in Bush's logic to start the war, the Dem's would have been ALL OVER IT! You know as well as all of us that if there was even a HINT of "foul play" leading us into war, there is no way in hell the Dem's (and I'm sure even some Republicans) would have staked their own political futures on something that might turn out to be just a lie by the Bush administration.

El Gato: (Before I start, this is not double talk, flip-flopping, or any kind of alleged evasive debate manuevering) I've never said that I was against the war at the beginning. I trusted the President to make the right choice, and I hoped that they were acting upon good information. It just troubles me that, once it became obvious that we were wrong, we never acknowledged that fact. Instead, we just changed the justification after the fact and continued to act quite arrogant in the face of the rest of the world (who happened to be right where we were wrong, in retrospect).

I was wrong as well, and it's embarassing. I was pissed at Germany and France at the time, too. But it turns out that they were right and we were wrong. I'm just willing to now admit that. As a result of that, I obviously have a lot less faith in the administration's decision making as they betrayed my trust.

You know, considering how quick many people are to criticize football coaches for their decisions, or any other people in society for their decisions, while knowing next to nothing about the what information went into those choices, I find it amazing how few people are willing to concede that we made a mistake in our handling of Iraq. We hold a coach responsible if they misread the information given to them and call a run instead of a pass, but we hold the President without fault when he starts a war because he relied upon bad information (especially when he had every opportunity in the world to wait for better information)? We want the coach fired for losing some games, but we re-elect the guy who got us into a war under false (undeniably) pretenses?

I'm not saying that Bush is 100% at fault for relying on the bad intelligence and taking us to war, but he did make the final decision (I hope). Yes, Congress could have voted against giving him the authority to make that decision (and in retrospect, they should have), but they were certainly fearing the predictable political backlash that Rove would have sent their way with accusations of "soft on terror" (despite the fact that Iraq was no more tied to Al Queada than virtually any other country in the world) and "unpatriotic" and "not standing behind our President in a time of war" and other fear-based accusations that play so well to our fear and loathing loving electorate. It was a brilliant political power play, and now it gives them the perfect CYOA stategy (but Congress told us to do it!).

And, as was the point of my post above, hopefully we have now learned our lesson from our mistakes and won't put as much trust in questionable intel ever again. At the same time, those in charge of making decisions as to go to war or not have learned a lot about how hard it is to win a war of this kind. It is undeniable that we underestimated seriously on that front (how many troops would be needed, how long it would take, how much it would cost, etc., etc.). I would hope that this would be a point that we could all agree on.

WYCAT · Post by **WYCAT** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 3:59 pm

Good points Bay whether I agree with all of them or not. This is the type of thing I like to debate. Having opposing views is what our country is all about.

jagur1 · Post by **jagur1** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 4:03 pm

Oh I hate commenting on this part of the board....but

A Question only..Do you think the effort to overhaul the Intel Dept. good or Bad news?

BozoneCat · Post by **BozoneCat** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 4:04 pm

We have the best intelligence outfits in the entire world - what would have been a legitimate reason to question what they brought to the table, without the benefit of hindsight? As a disclaimer, I would bet pretty confidently that many, many people did a hell of a lot of homework before bringing this information to the President.

Some of you people make it sound like Bush got a phone call late at night and just went, "YEE-HAW, my uncle's brother's sister's second-cousin just told my secretary that Iraq is going to invade us! Let's go bomb the sh*t out of them so I can get all my buddies richer. YEE-HAW!"

I'll say it again. Many, many people have underestimated Bush's intelligence, and I am sure many will continue to do so. Ask John Kerry, Al Gore, et al. how that worked out for them.

Post by **SonomaCat** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 4:11 pm

BozoneCat wrote:We have the best intelligence outfits in the entire world - what would have been a legitimate reason to question what they brought to the table, without the benefit of hindsight? As a disclaimer, I would bet pretty confidently that many, many people did a hell of a lot of homework before bringing this information to the President.

Some of you people make it sound like Bush got a phone call late at night and just went, "YEE-HAW, my uncle's brother's sister's second-cousin just told my secretary that Iraq is going to invade us! Let's go bomb the sh*t out of them so I can get all my buddies richer. YEE-HAW!"

I'll say it again. Many, many people have underestimated Bush's intelligence, and I am sure many will continue to do so. Ask John Kerry, Al Gore, et al. how that worked out for them.

Apparently, there were a lot of people in the intel community who were strongly speaking out against the idea of the existence of WMD -- the faulty information wasn't a universal conclusion -- it just happened to be the information that was cherry picked to come to that conclusion. As a result of dissenting opinions, a lot of people (mostly the ones who were right) were left out of the process or fired.

In retrospect, which is always 20/20, they shouldn't have excluded the opinions and insights of those people who didn't agree with what was probably a pre-determined conclusion on the part of the administration.

I'm also not completely talking out of my arse on this one -- I have actually met several people who actually work in intelligence organizations. I'm not saying this to sound important (especially since they aren't exactly rock stars), but just to show that I'm not relying upon "Crazy Fred's Blog" or something similar for my information.

Post by **SonomaCat** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 4:14 pm

jagur1 wrote:Oh I hate commenting on this part of the board....but

A Question only..Do you think the effort to overhaul the Intel Dept. good or Bad news?

I'm kind of on the fence on this one. I like the idea of consolidation of the intelligence agencies to facilitate better communications and use or resources. At the same time, I tend to agree with the philosophy that keeping a degree of independence between the intel agencies and the exec branch (to avoid top-down results and opposed to results based on the best possible information) is a very good thing. In a centralized model, it would be much more difficult to maintain that independence.

iaafan · Post by **iaafan** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 4:29 pm

BozoneCat:

"Broke into to offices" -- Nixon/Watergate.

"Put someone in office" -- brother Jed/Florida 2004.

iaafan · Post by **iaafan** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 4:35 pm

WYCAT: That's hilarious. You actually keep doing what I'm accusing you of doing. It's like you thinking to yourself, "What would 'W' do if he were here?"

OH! I know. Let's accuse iaafan of 'hatred' and of needing 'therapy' and of being an 'assassin.'

We really need to start hanging out together more often.