Not on George's watch, eh?
Aargh! Bush continues to campaign that only HE can protect us from terrorist attacks. He keeps saying over and over in his speeches: "not on my watch."
Uh, George, who was on watch when September 11 happened?
That's right. YOU.
YOU were on watch when America suffered it's worst attack ever. YOU were on watch while the terrorists trained for the mission right here under your nose. YOU were the policy-maker who chose to willfully IGNORE terrorism for the first nine months of office. YOU were the president who did NOTHING about the U.S.S. Cole bombing (a response which might, I say might, have disrupted Al Qaida long enough to be caught). YOU were the president who ignored the Hart-Rudman commission and August 6th PDB that warned you of just this kind of attack.
And YOU are the president who bailed out of Afghanistan early, leaving Osama bin Laden and Al Qaida free to attack us again. YOU are the president who diverted the military away from the war on terror, to topple an unrelated country. And YOU are the president who created a cauldron for terrorist training and aggression in Iraq.
YOU, George. YOU did all this. All on YOUR watch.
And you think YOU deserve another term? What kind of FOOL do you take us for?
posted by Daniel Preece @ 11:31 AM
6 Comments
6 Comments:
Do you really think it only took nine months to train a crew of pilots to fly big planes into the world trade center? This plot hatched under the nose of the same guy who arrested a blind cleric for the first attack on the world trade center. The day after that bomb didn't do its job planning for attack number 2 began...
North Korea happened under the watch of the same guy who was paying the North Koreans not to make bombs in a 1994 deal. And all he could say when the plot unfolded was "who knew"
And who slashed the covert intelligence budget to the bone and who was President when the Cole was bombed as well as other embassys?
The answer is Bill Clinton.... Who was too worried about his Monica to pay any attention to anything going on in his presidency.
Thanks for your comment!
First off, Clinton isn’t running for president this year, so it’s a waste of time to compare Clinton’s rhetoric to Clinton’s record. If Al Gore had campaigned in 2000 that he was the best choice to defend against terrorism, that it wouldn’t happen “on his watch,” I’d be the first to point out that terrorism DID happen on his watch.
I personally gave Bush a pass on blame early on. The gov’t can’t know everything every moment. But when I learned that Bush willfully ignored terrorism, that bothered me. And now that Bush is campaigning that we should trust him because he’s the best watchdog, that bothers me even more.
The USS Cole and African embassy bombings are different from the 9/11 attacks. Clinton did not receive a PDB telling him what they were intending to do. When Clinton did have a warning, as he did with the Millennium Plot, he stopped it. He definitely didn’t ignore it.
(Why isn’t Bush raked over the coals for not responding to the USS Cole bombing? The CIA determined Al Qaida guilt in late January, 2001. But Bush did nothing. Nada.)
If you believe Clinton was unable to do his job because of the Lewinski scandal, then point your finger at the GOP. They created the National Distraction by making mountains out of mole hills and began a witch hunt--even dragging the country through an impeachment mess. The fact is, when Clinton tried to bomb Osama in Afghanistan the GOP screamed “wag the dog” (referring to a movie about a president who started a war to distract from his sex scandal). Did the GOP say “gee, we gotta get those terrorists and make America safe”? No, they were more worried about scandalizing Clinton.
After the USSR fell, there was plenty of bi-partisan support for spending cuts in Cold War programs. The dishonesty here is that the GOP wants us to believe only the Dems supported it. Plus, the areas being cut back were of little or no use against terrorism. More spies in Russia wouldn’t have prevented 9/11.
The plotting for 9/11 definitely started during Clinton. But the training--the physical activities which U.S. intelligence could have detected and responded to--was all done during 2001. They even had to postpone the attack a few months so they could finish their flight training. And when did the first WTC bombers plot? Yep, during the first Bush administration.
The issue isn’t the chain of blame. It’s whether Bush is the watchdog he pretends to be. His record says he’s not.
An addendum to the "slashing" intelligence issue. Those budget cuts were spread over many years and totaled only FOUR PERCENT or so of the total intelligence budget.
So "slashing" is an extreme overstatement.
So lieing under oath a federal offense is just makeing a mountain out of a mole hill?
It is most likely that replanning occured after the first attempt to blow up the trade center failed. they didn't have enough explosive power.... they decided airplanes would be the perfect method of transportation... Planning and flight training started the next day...
A president lying to the public is an impeachable offense. (Plus, violating treaties is breaking federal law. Bush did both with abandon.) Presidents are "under oath" anytime they speak at a podium.
No one can deny the sheer hypocricy of Republicans. They extremely overreacted to Clinton and extremely underreacted to Bush. Gee, I wonder why.
Lying about sex in a private matter does not compare with lying about war with thousands dead. The worse you paint Clinton, the worse you paint Bush. You can't win this argument.
Republicans never gave folks like me a chance to be outraged at the immorality of Clinton's affair. They started their witch hunt immediately and with irrational ferocity. It's the set-up and the persecution that had people defending Clinton.
Clinton's lie made no difference to anybody but his own family. Bush's lies have dragged millions worldwide into a war with no end in sight. If that's of no difference to you (or anyone else), then I say Rupert Murdoch has done his job well. He has fully manipulated his viewers into losing all sense of proportionality.
There's no point in quibbling over what idea was conjured at what time. But there's plenty to consider when you ask what Bush COULD have done IF he had not willfully ignored terrorism for 9 months.
What damage did Bush do to this country by dismissing (in a very petty manner) all the anti-terrorism work done under Clinton simply because it was Clinton?
Bush's simple-minded notions directly contributed to his administration's inability to detect and intervene with the 9/11 plot. It's not a guarantee that Bush could have stopped 9/11 even if he vigorously attended to anti-terrorism. But it IS a guarantee that he couldn't stop 9/11 so long as he was ignoring the whole issue.
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