by von
As much as I support Jim Jon Henke's attempt to convince the RNC to distance itself from the lunatics at WorldNetDaily – also supported by Megan McArdle — it isn't likely to work that way. Unless and until WND does something epically idiotic, the RNC will only keep its distance. It won't disown. That's because a good portion of WND readers are Republican voters and a party can't afford to insult its supporters — no matter how insane they may be. [UPDATE: AARRGHHHH. It's Jon Henke, not Jim Henke. If it's any consolation, Jon, I've also called Publius by the wrong (first) name …. and he's my coblogger.]
I realize that's a tough pill to swallow, but a party accepting a degree of insanity in its supporters is sometimes rational. Insanity is an issue-by-issue occurrence for most people.* A birther may have quite reasonable views about, say, tax issues or the environment, even if they can't see (or think) straight about President Obama's birthplace. It's not necessarily all crazy all the time.
We saw this during the Bush years, when Democrats were down on their luck. (Not quite a far down on their luck as Republicans are today, but pretty far down.) For example, McArdle relates an exchange that she had with a liberal correspondent who seemed pretty reasonable …. until he/she revealed his/her fear that President Bush might become "El Presidente" via some (undescribed) coup. Similarly, in one poll, nearly half of Democrats thought it very likely (22.6%) or somewhat likely (28.2%) that "[p]eople in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the [sic] United States to go to war in the Middle East." These are all crazy beliefs, and yet the folks who held them probably didn't have equally crazy views about everything. They were probably well within the Democratic mainstream on most issues — indeed, probably within the mainstream mainstream on most issue.
None of this is to excuse WND. It represents everything that I think is wrong with the modern Republican party. None of this is to excuse the birthers. They're wrong, and there is more than a whiff of racism emanating from too many of them.** But I do think that Henke's most recent challenge is unrealistic. Like the Democrats did with their crazies, the RNC will distance itself from its crazies — but it won't disown them. (Yet.)
Still, I applaud Henke for keeping the pressure on. The next time WND says or does something nutty — which probably won't be long — he'll have more ammunition to get it out of the tent. And that would be a good thing for both Republicans and the country.
*I don't excuse myself from this category; there are things that set me off too. Actually, not things: People. Michael Moore and Oliver North, for instance, drive me crazy. I can't have a rational thought about either one. Indeed, heaven for me would be having Mike and Ollie share a 10X10 cell for a couple eons in hell.
**For clarity, Tom Maguire — who's not a birther – isn't being criticized here even though he has occasionally defends birthers. But that's because, as mentioned, he's not a birther.
As much as I support Jim Henke’s…
I believe that’s what you get when you cross Jim Henley and John Henke 😉
Doh!
That would be Jon Henke.
Snark fail.
Man, remember the good old days, when those crazy liberals were claiming the Bush administration was lying about WMD, or torturing prisoners, or spying on Americans? And remember how the Democratic party was there following the whims of all of the shrill crazies? It’s EXACTLY like people claiming Obama wasn’t born in the US and is going to make socialist death panels with confiscated guns! [/irony]
Yeah, it doesn’t help that the GOP propagandists and loonys are actual Senators and Representatives.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_09/019761.php
The birther stuff is just garden variety crazy. Harmless fun for rednecks. No one really cares.
What bothers me is the willingness to accept torture and lawlessness in government. That one is harder to just pin on the proles out there in flyover country.
Given McArdle’s subtle employment of hypotheticals, I’m not really sure of the truth of that liberal believing in El Presidente Bush…
[p]eople in the federal government … took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the [sic] United States to go to war in the Middle East.
I don’t necessarily think that the idea that the Bush administration deliberately focused their intelligence efforts away from groups like AQ, despite warnings that an operation was underway, because they were more interested in dealing with state actors like Iran or Iraq is even plausibly deniable. Missile shield technology was order of the day, with an eye towards Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. And clearly several of the PNAC members strongly wanted a military confrontation with Saddam. Non-state actors were considered unable to launch large scale attacks. If all of that is presumed, then it is much more of a philosophical debate on if the desire for military focus on the Middle East caused the administration to ignore the threat of AQ.
There is a wide gulf between the idea that the Bush Administration was incompetent and fixated on Iran/Iraq, and the idea that the Bush Administration actively and knowingly participated in the attacks. One would seem to be fringe-y, while the other is more or less reality, yet the poll measures both.
On a more serious note, are you going to try and deny that the Bush administration’s first actions after 9/11 were all aimed toward starting a war in the Middle East? Cheney called on the day of the attacks to try and pin it on Iraq. It was mere months before they were using 9/11 as an excuse to go to war with Iraq. And they DID take many FBI guys off counter-terrorism, and ignore all the advice the outgoing administration gave them. So how do you parse “did nothing to prevent them”? Does it have to be deliberate, or a matter of incompetence, apathy, or ignorance?
As for illegal coups to get/keep power, I don’t think we need to rehash the 2000 election.
I’m not defending any specific theories as crazy or not crazy, I’m just saying that with the Bush administration, there was a lot of justified reason for paranoia. I’m trying to recall the quote, I think from Making Light, about how every time you thought they hit bottom, they kept digging.
I may be projecting my biases here, but it seems that Republicans are more receptive to the crazy because they already long accommodated nutty ideas. When you believe the Earth is 6,000 years old and humans are having no impact on global climate in spite of reams of evidence, it’s only a short leap to death panels and the the notion that the President was not born in America.
To build on the last comment, a great many of America’s religious conservatives have been taught for a long time that commitment and will trump evidence and reason in their theology – small wonder they so often prove incompetent in using either evidence or reason in politics.
Aargh. Fixed it, Eric.
This makes sense, he said, in a rare moment of sanity.
After all, I’m crazy and the Republican Party hasn’t rejected my registration as a Republican yet (I get to vote against people in the primaries whose wackijobiness puts me to shame) and the Democratic Party hasn’t rejected my straight Democratic voting tickets over the past 28 some years in the general elections.
However, didn’t the Republican Party decide to kind of sequester Pat Buchanan in the early 1990’s after his performance at a convention, thinking maybe the other crazies (racists, etc) would go with him to a compound somewhere to drink Irish whiskey and carve swastikas on their kid’s foreheads?
Things just keep getting worse, and Buchanan, in comparison to your average Republican pol whipped into a fever pitch today by the new leaders of the Republican Party, now seems kind of quaint crazy.
So, maybe I don’t agree.
Nah, I think the lunatic at WND and his fellow travelers in the Republican Party need to run into some genuinely crazy fu-k–rs on the other side that causes some involuntary incontinence and maybe a reappraisal of their need to participate in the polity at all.
Kind of like Pat Buchanan’s old boss, Richard Nixon’s strategy regarding the Soviet Union.
[p]eople in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the [sic] United States to go to war in the Middle East
FWIW, I absolutely find it believable that people in the federal government deliberately failed to take action to stop the 9/11 attacks because they wanted a reason to go to war in the middle east.
I don’t know if they actually did or didn’t, although I’d sure as hell like to know. But I would absolutely *not* call this, remotely, a crazy belief.
John, I’m surprised you didn’t work this recent news about Pat Buchanan. Now it’s really clear that Buchanan’s convention speech looks much more authentic in the original Fraktur script.
Yeah, it’s not quite crazy to suggest that when something happens that fits someones agenda so nicely (increase presidential authority, go to war in the Middle East), that they might have the motive to at least let it happen.
Means and opportunity, the other two legs, we may never know.
After Bush/Cheney, I will never again reject some theory on the grounds “they would never do a thing like that.”
“They would never do a thing like that” is not sufficient to reject the LIHOP’ers.
There may be other more factual and less faith-based reasons to reject LIHOP. If so, let’s hear them.
By the way, I will not accept “he would never do that” as a defense of Obama either!!
nearly half of Democrats thought it very likely (22.6%) or somewhat likely (28.2%) that “[p]eople in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the [sic] United States to go to war in the Middle East.”
i’d guess that a lot of those “somewhat likely” answers hinge on the last part of the sentence: “…because they wanted the [sic] United States to go to war in the Middle East.”
you can give a positive answer to that question without being a truther: you only have to know that many people in the Bush administration had been eager to “finish the job” in Iraq, years before Bush even took office (and their ridiculous urgency in the run-up to Iraq only confirms this). so, you ask someone who’s pissed about the war if “they [blahblahblblah] because they wanted to go to war in the ME”, and that last bit of the sentence is like a waving red flag in front of an angry bull. of course people are going to say yes.
people don’t always answer the question you ask. sometimes they answer a question that’s just slightly different because that’s the one they really want to give their opinion on.
that said, i have no idea how you could answer a birther question positively without being insane.
John, per LJ, Buchanan isn’t crazy. He’s evil.
also, what Benjamin said. such as. also. like.
Others have already beat me to it, but…
“[p]eople in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the [sic] United States to go to war in the Middle East.”
In an “or” statement, the whole thing is true if either part is. The first part is, yes, pure tinfoil-hate territory. The second part after the “or” is unprovable, absent either mind-reading or a tell-all book confessing to it by someone in the Bush administration.
However, there are two separate ideas there: “people in the federal government… took no action to stop the attacks” and “they wanted the [sic] United States to go to war in the Middle East.” The first part of that is simply true. The attacks weren’t stopped, and every explanation ever given for that was the claim that nobody could have seen it coming. “Nobody could have predicted.” And the second part of that is also true. For just two out of many examples, Cheney was a co-signer of PNAC’s statement of principles, and Rumsfeld was pushing for an invasion of Iraq on September 11.
The only even remotely controversial part of that statement is the causative link. Officially, they did nothing because they were incompetent, and officially they wanted to go to war for oil. (OK, that’s a fib.) Both of those are within the bounds of human error, policy differences, and what passes for reasonable political debate. Claim that they did nothing because they wanted to go to war, though, and that’s offensive to its targets. It’s a serious accusation of severely bad actions based on circumstantial evidence at best.
It is not, however, anywhere near as crazy as being a birther or believing in “death panels.” To find a left-wing equivalence to modern right-wing insanity you probably need to go back to the Weather Underground or something, but as convenient as it would be for right-wingers, both sides’ nuts really aren’t equally bad in recent years. You don’t get to make up your own facts.
Cleek and Russell, even if there is a way to parse the question to give a non-crazy answer of “somewhat likely”,* that still leaves 22.8% of democrats with a “very likely” answer.
*Which I’m not conceding: although, per my formulation, being crazy on an issue doesn’t necessarily make you, y’know, crazy.
Lack of evidence, for one thing.
that still leaves 22.8% of democrats with a “very likely” answer.
truthers exist. there’s no denying that. it’s embarassing.
the biggest difference with the birthers, IMO, is that the truthers were never represented by anyone in the Democratic Party. hell, even the sane anti-war faction has always been pretty short on representation. but there are more than a couple of birthers in among the GOP reps and senators. and even more death-panelers.
“‘i’d guess that a lot of those “somewhat likely” answers hinge on the last part of the sentence: “…because they wanted the [sic] United States to go to war in the Middle East.'”
But the question is “took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the [sic] United States to go to war in the Middle East.” which is frankly bat-SH!% crazy.
Which leaves 22.6% of Democrats surveyed very likely bat-SH!% crazy and 28.2% somewhat likely bat-SH!% crazy.
Your answer to that seems to be “people don’t always answer the question you ask. sometimes they answer a question that’s just slightly different because that’s the one they really want to give their opinion on.”
But if you are going to extend that to crazy Democrats, I would suggest that the birther question can essentially be “Do you trust Obama” for at least some of the birthers.
This WorldNetDaily thing hits a little too close to home. One of my crazy uncles (yes, one of) and my own mother, sadly, keep sending me WND stories about conspiracy theories, H1N1, etc. That website has indirectly been one of the biggest pains in my ass over the past 2-3 years. It’s a shame that the RNC has to court the Ron Paul/WND crowd to ~feel~ legitimate. – TL
But the question is “took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the [sic] United States to go to war in the Middle East.” which is frankly bat-SH!% crazy.
Why? We know for a fact that the Bush administration ignored warnings about AQ. We know for a fact that the Bush administration was busy focusing on security issues in the ME focused around Iran and Iraq. We know for a fact that many in the Bush administration wanted to go to war with Iraq before 9-11.
Look, the question doesn’t address specific knowledge of the 9-11 attacks. It just says took no action. We know the Bush administration specifically chose to take no action. The only debatable issue is the one about causality; that they chose to focus away from non-state actors because they wanted a war in the ME.* But certainly it isn’t wacko crazy to believe that. That strikes me as, at a minimum, a reasonable interpretation of the publicly known facts.
What is important here is that the issue here is a relatively unknown one; you must be able to mind read to get the right answer. Moreover, this is a large distance from the Truthers, who argue that the Bush administration either had specific knowledge of the 9-11 attacks or orchestrated them. But one does not have to believe either of those two things to believe that the Bush administration “took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the [sic] United States to go to war in the Middle East”, because the question of specific knowledge of the attacks is not addressed.
Contrast this with the Birthers. The facts are universally in favor of Obama being a citizen. Rather than having an odd spin on the facts, they are making up their own facts.
[*] Really, someone would argue that its crazy to believe that the Bush administration ignored terrorism because they wanted to launch an attack in the ME? How can you defend that?
But the question is “took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the [sic] United States to go to war in the Middle East.” which is frankly bat-SH!% crazy.
I honestly don’t see why the idea is “batsh*t crazy” when we know, when it is long-established fact, when it has been long-established fact for years now, that:
1. There was a lot of chatter during the summer of 2001 regarding a possible terrorist attack on the US;
2. Richard Clarke and others describe their attitude at the time as running around “with [their] hair on fire” and YET
3. Condoleeza Rice, whose job it was to keep on top of stuff like that, ignored them and shut them out of meetings; AND
4. The Bush Admin took no action, none at all, regarding the August 8 memo and indeed didn’t even read the flipping thing.
Now, sure, you can say that doesn’t go anywhere near proving they knew about the attack and did nothing about it.
But it seems to me the only alternative explanation is that they were all, every single one of them, from Bush-Cheney on down, thoroughly, unequivocably, incompetent and, in fact, criminally negligent.
Which is a matter of Okham’s Razor, I guess. What is more likely:
1. That a former Secretary of Defense (Cheney) and a former Chief of Staff (Rumsfeld) and a former Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (Rice, under Bush I) would be that completely incompetent at the very basics of their jobs; OR
2. That they knew something about a planned attack – not the specifics, perhaps just that it involved multiple hijackings – and decided it would be a good way to drum up support for a war they already wanted anyway?
Now, c’mon. Think about what we know now, about the Bush Administration: the way it politicized everything, the way it refused to ever do anything without a big political payoff; the way it also refused to accept any fact or reality that didn’t conform to what it already believed, what it already wanted to do.
Why is it so far fetched that they knew there was some kind of attack coming and, for political/partisan reasons, decided to let it happen?
Why is that so nuts?
I’ve seen a fair amount of this sort argument – “yes, there are crazy Republicans, but don’t forget, there are crazy Democrats too,” from sane Republicans.
The trouble is, it doesn’t hold up. The simplest way for me to state my reaction is that, while there may be some crazy Democrats (though not trusting a word Bush or Cheney say is pretty sane – and I don’t believe McArdle’s tale either) the Republican Party is institutionally insane. Consider Michael Steele, RNC chairman. Consider Sarah Palin, most recent VP nominee. Consider Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint and numerous other Members of Congress, some of whom are birthers. Consider the leading voices of the GOP – yes it’s true – Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Coulter. Consider its pundits Kristol, Krauthammer, Will, etc. Consider its important opinion media – NR, the WSJ editorial pages, The Weekly Standard.
These are all bats**t crazy. It’s not remotely comparable to anything in the Democratic Party.
Now, sure, you can say that doesn’t go anywhere near proving they knew about the attack and did nothing about it.
Re-read the question. It doesn’t address foreknowledge. If the reason why they didn’t know anything, and thus did nothing, is because they wanted a war in the ME, then the answer should still be true.
What if they were criminally incompetent, then chose to take advantage of the situation to start a war they’d wanted for years, no matter how many lies it took?
That’s because a good portion of WND readers are Republican voters and a party can’t afford to insult its supporters — no matter how insane they may be.
The Democratic Party frequently insults its supporters (often just for the sake of doing so, see Moment, Sister Souljah).
All signs indicate that the Obama Administration may test this proposition yet again as they attempt to toss the public option under the bus while telling the vast majority of their base that supports it to go home and STFU, all ostensibly to please Olympia Snowe, who isn’t even in their party.
Nor is this anything new. Look at the contempt with which House and Senate leadership treated calls for impeachment and withdrawal from Iraq in the spring of 2007, for example.
It seems to me all too possible for a party to insult its base, especially because in a two-party system the base often has nowhere else to go.
which is frankly bat-SH!% crazy.
Whatever.
I don’t really give a damn if you think it’s nuts or not.
I find it absolutely and completely in the realm of the believable that there were people in government who were aware that Al Qaeda were planning an attack on the US, and who failed to take actions they could have taken because they thought an attack would make it easier to justify a war in the Middle East.
In fact, I would find it extraordinarily difficult to overstate how completely and absolutely believable I find that to be.
Hands down, dude.
Seriously, think about the folks we’re talking about and the things we know, know for a certainty, that they’ve been involved in.
I don’t know if it’s true or not, but batsh*t insane it by god is not.
There’s also a particular history of the relationship of the GOP to its far-right fringe. After Goldwater’s crushing defeat in November ’64, many mainstream conservatives speculated that he had been hurt by not distancing himself from the John Birch Society. So in the mid-Sixties, many conservative Republicans ritualistically did so. And this was generally seen as an important step on conservatives’ road to respectability. It’s really only been in the last twenty years or so that the right fringe has reorganized itself and mainstream conservatives have decided that it makes more sense to coddle their right flank rather than Sister Souljah-ing it.
Again, von and/or Sebastian, can you explain what is crazy about believing “[p]eople in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the [sic] United States to go to war in the Middle East.”? So far all you’ve done is assert it, and when challenged on it, assert it again.
What is the point of the “[sic]” in the question?
I’m struck by the fact that Sebastian feels that the government cannot possibly intervene in healthcare because the government can (obviously?) never be trusted to take on such a widescale program, but thinks the notion that there were people in the government whose refusal to take action made 9/11 possible and their inaction may have been motivated by calculations on the possible advantage of the resulting situation is batsh*t insane.
More info on various polls is found at this wikipedia article
Bernard — I wondered that too. The [sic] appears — for no visible reason — at the Real Clear Politics site that von links to, but if you follow the link from there to the poll itself, you’ll see this:
Question: There are also accusations being made following the 9/11 terrorist attack. One of these is: People in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted to United States to go to war in the Middle East.
So it looks like someone at Real Clear Politics (or somewhere along the line) corrected “to” to “the” but inserted [sic] to flag the error that wasn’t there any more. And it got carried along here….
I think Nate probably has it right: “What if they were criminally incompetent, then chose to take advantage of the situation to start a war they’d wanted for years, no matter how many lies it took?”
We can never really know the motives of the Bush administration officials, though their declared intentions (PNAC) and subsequent actions are certainly suggestive. I would like to think even they weren’t evil enough to simply allow a terrorist attack for political reasons, but as has been said, they politicized everything they touched.
But.
Hurricane Katrina showed more than anything else the colossal incompetence of the administration. Given that, I think it wiser to err on the side of Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
Of course, this sort of conspiracy theory is more plausible because it involves inaction as opposed to action (of the behind-the-scenes type the Truthers ascribe to the Bushies). It’s much more difficult to prove a negative than a positive.
Still, given their utter lack of foresight on everything else, I can’t buy into the idea that they consciously allowed 9/11 to happen to justify an Iraq attack. But it wouldn’t surprise me if they did.
End of hand-wringing.
Ooops, lost the tags on a copy and paste. The text between “Question” and “Middle East” is from here.
The 9/11 truthers may be nuts, but they are not as nuts as the Obama birthers.
Documentary evidence that the birthers are factually wrong exists. You can show it to them, and they STILL persist in their nutty belief.
What is the clear-cut documentary evidence which disproves the truthers’ belief? Incredulity, however sincere and however justified, is not documentation.
The birthers are not just conspiracy nuts. They are bullshitters in the precise definition of the term. They are politically on the same side as “principled conservatives”. The “principled conservatives” ought to ask themselves why that might be.
–TP
JanieM,
Sounds right.
You’re a more determined detective than I am.
But if you are going to extend that to crazy Democrats, I would suggest that the birther question can essentially be “Do you trust Obama” for at least some of the birthers.
maybe. it seems a bit more of a stretch to me.
but i freely admit to not understanding either the birther mentality nor the insane Obama hatred that defines the GOP these days.
the truthers… well, that’s just your basic “power-hungry evil doers will stop at nothing” conspiracy.
and, there are definitely overlaps between the two groups – the wacko in my town who paints the big “expose Obama’s crimes” signs and sticks them in his front lawn was a truther, back in the day.
Obviously enjoyed the post, but one quibble…
Isn’t Tom Maguire an extremely outspoken birther? I mean, I don’t whether he comes right out and denies it. But I remember at least half a dozen Kenyan birth certificate posts by him recently
Late to this: I know about Buchanan’s latest, LJ, and I’ll go with Von’s “evil” judgement, but ….
I think Buchanan has just found a new top ten hit late in his singing career, and I think the current crazies in the Republican Party will compete soon to steal the melody and top him, by which I mean debase the rhetoric to the scum-line …. the other side of which is outright violence.
Obama is Jesse Owens.
But then I’m crazy.
Just to muddle up the binning of the “crazies”, I know quite a few people who were totally into the 9-11 “truth” movement. Many of those same people are currently part of the “birther” and “tea-bagger” movement.
They also happen to mostly be Ron Paul supporters.
I’m with russell on this one. Consider the kind of truly evil things that we already have documented proof of them doing–for starters, Cheney stating on national TV that they approved waterboarding (a war crime under US and international law), and the extent to which it is documented as having been used.
Consider the degree to which government at every level, from top to bottom, was politicized.
Consider the way the terror alert system was politicized and used to manipulate the news cycle.
Consider their demonstrated willingness to sacrifice American lives on false premises for political gain.
Consider that none of these things are even remotely debatable in good faith. They are documented facts on public record, facts laid bare in their own words and by their own memos and documents.
Now, I have no trouble believing that the Bush administration was so thoroughly incompetent that they focused on missile defense and ignored warnings about terrorism because they didn’t think it was important. That’s negligent as hell, but given what we know now in retrospect it’s not really all that implausible.
But given what else we know now, I don’t see why it’s even implausible–let alone crazy–to think that one or more of them also could have known something was going to happen, decided to take advantage of it and let it play out in order to justify the war they wanted, but had not expected it to be as devastating and successful as it was.
I’m sorry that an otherwise interesting topic has been derailed because of yet another throwaway line, but your assertion is indefensible.
This piece is very Broderian.
I think others have made all but one of the useful points about how the Democratic crazies are not equivalent to the GOP crazies- eliminationist rhetoric. I challenge you to find one prominent left of center blogger or Democratic officeholder who has espoused such rhetoric.
I do not count but I have called for quartering Bush, boiling Chain-Eye in crude oil, cutting Gonzo’s tongue out, bathing Rummy in mustard* and some other unpleasant things (and putting their heads on spikes facing the Oval Office as a reminder to any wannabe successor).
—
Now we have people** openly praying for (at least) another 9/11 (nuke in NY preferred), so
a) Obama could be thrown out of office
b) The country would go back to Lord Chain-Eyes methods (at minimum)
c) The gloves could come off at last (i.e. going fully genocidal)
—
There are leftist loons equal to right-wing loons but they don’t sit in Congress or have a regular audience of millions in the MSM in the US (and most of them produce only hot air and don’t form lynch mobs).
*(1,5-dichloro-3-thiapentane) that is
**including (former) CIA and military guys
“Documentary evidence that the birthers are factually wrong exists. You can show it to them, and they STILL persist in their nutty belief.”
Strictly speaking, we have testimony to the effect that documentary evidence proving the birthers are factually wrong exists. It’s rather as though the previous administration had responded to the 9-11 truthers by bringing a structural engineer out to tell everybody that, “I’ve seen a lab report confirming that structural steel softens at those temperatures, and, no, we are not going to let you see the lab report.”
The birthers are over-reacting to the fact that Obama won’t release that last bit of information, just second-hand statements regarding it. But that behavior on Obama’s part IS rationally cause for suspicion. They’re just putting too much weight on it, given the amount of other evidence on the other side.
I think Nate probably has it right: “What if they were criminally incompetent, then chose to take advantage of the situation to start a war they’d wanted for years, no matter how many lies it took?”
My thoughts exactly.
a party can’t afford to insult its supporters
As a gay man, I can assure you that this is 100% false.
Strictly speaking, we have testimony to the effect that documentary evidence proving the birthers are factually wrong exists. It’s rather as though the [birthers refused to look at the contemporary documentation in Hawai’ian newspapers announcing the birth, instead making wild comparisons to] a structural engineer out to tell everybody that, “I’ve seen a lab report confirming that structural steel softens at those temperatures, and, no, we are not going to let you see the lab report.”
Fixed that for you.
But that behavior on Obama’s part IS rationally cause for suspicion.
Brett’s a birther! Now why doesn’t that surprise me one little bit?
The birthers are over-reacting to the fact that Obama won’t release that last bit of information, just second-hand statements regarding it.
Oh, nonsense. He’s reelased everything that can be released. You can’t “release” the original of a government document about you, becasue if you could, the government couldn’t have any records. Have you ever in your life seen your original birth certificate? Not just a certified copy, but the original?
We should call you, “Birther Brett,” from now on . . .
Strictly speaking, we have testimony to the effect that documentary evidence proving the birthers are factually wrong exists. It’s rather as though the previous administration had responded to the 9-11 truthers by bringing a structural engineer out to tell everybody that, “I’ve seen a lab report confirming that structural steel softens at those temperatures, and, no, we are not going to let you see the lab report.”
This is crap. Everything on Obama’s birth certificate has been released that is legally allowed to be released. His birth certificate as released is valid for any question of citizenship. AFAIK the “long form” data that isn’t included is the name of the attending physician and other things like that; seriously, what do the saner birthers think was on it? “Oh, BTW, Barack Obama actually WASN’T born in Hawaii in contradiction to the rest of this document”?
All this shows is that the rump sane part of the Republican party is down to the “tu quoque” defense: they all do it, all politicians are like that, both parties are up to their eyeballs in delusional nutcases, et cetera ad nauseam.
Personally, I think it is more consistent with the Bush, er, governance processes to think that the Bush administration ignored counterterrorism because it didn’t tie in nicely with their neocon focus on state actors, plus the fact that it was a Clinton priority and therefore Evil and Liberal. However, the idea that the US government would never, ever consider allowing or even committing acts of terrorism on US targets for political gain is demonstrably false.
Back to Sebastian: “Which leaves 22.6% of Democrats surveyed very likely bat-SH!% crazy and 28.2% somewhat likely bat-SH!% crazy. ”
Well, if we ignore the “somewhat”, for reasons mentioned multiple times, 22.6% is in the range of the crazification factor which is usually between 23% and 27%. So even if the question really does mean craziness, that’s not unexpected craziness. The fact that there’s a lot of evidence to cause paranoia and suspicion about the Bush admin and their motives and actions should be accounted for too, but. And there’s overlap between the crazies, as with the truthers who became birthers, and the Ron Paul and Lyndon LaRouche supporter overlaps.
That said, the false equivalence that underlies von’s whole post is not just that there are crazies on both sides, but that those crazies are just as crazy and influential on both sides. And that is blatantly, obviously, and totally false. The crazies on the Republican side control the party, have massively influential TV and radio shows, newspapers, etc. The Democrat’s crazies are well, the fringe, compltely cut out of power, and markedly unable to influence the party. Hell, the liberals are largely out of power and unable to influence the party with the Democrats.
The other problem, of course, is that the people the Republicans spent years dismissing as “crazie” or “shrill” or having “Bush Derangement Syndrome” turned out to be RIGHT about the Bush administration on a lot of things. The WMD, torture, corruption, Katrina, election fraud, exposing a CIA agent as political payback, etc, etc, etc.
It’s worth noting that DailyKos, the largest and arguably most influential “left” political blog, has an incredibly broad anti-Truther policy:
Which is to say that if you recommend someone else’s diary post that so much as mentions Truther claims, you are subject to outright banning from the site.
To recap, every single aspect of von’s tu quoque is false:
1) Truther claims (at least of the LIHOP variety) are simply not as crazy as birther claims (though personally I’m inclined to reject even weak Trutherism for Hanlon’s Razor reasons).
2) Truthers had nothing like the influence within the Democratic Party that birthers have within the GOP. Indeed, Truthers were–and continue to be–shunned and ridiculed even by highly partisan and progressive Democrats.
“There are leftist loons equal to right-wing loons but they don’t sit in Congress or have a regular audience of millions in the MSM in the US (and most of them produce only hot air and don’t form lynch mobs).”
This, of course, is not anywhere near accurate. The leftist loons hold most of the major Congressional posts now and they constantly get in the way of the President and the the moderates actually achieving a bipartisan governing coalition.
The point that gets forgotten in all of this is that President Obama did not win the election because the Pelosi’s of the world wanted him to win.
He won by a nice majority because almost all of the non-loons in this country believed he would bring civility to governance.
The disappointment of the loons on the left is that he does occasionally try to do that so far. In the middle, well, they are starting to believe it less and less.
His policies did not win him the election. Healthcare with a public option didn’t win it. Iraq was almost a non issue by election day. He won it on the faith people had in his desire to change politics as usual. That is the issue in this debate worth fighting for. A “win” on controversial legislation by leveraging or gaming the rules eats away at the support in the center for Obama and in turn the Democrats.
The Democrats should worry less about whether he can retain the loonie left and recognize he needs to retain the civil center. The Republicans have and are demonstrating why this is important.
And the structural argument about parties being unable to criticize their own supporters is also simply false, at least as a general rule.
As I, and others, have pointed out upthread, parties can and do Sister Souljah their fringes all the time. The Democratic Party even does this to its own mainstream. And Republicans used to do it to their right fringe.
I do think there’s a structural factor at work, but it has to do with the special case of a party adopting Karl Rove’s 50%+1 electoral strategy, which relies on agitating and turning out the base. Crazies have had a special role to play in the Republican Party since the mid-1990s or so. The leadership of the GOP has made a Faustian strategic bargain with its angriest and craziest supporters. They cannot win–and, just as importantly, believe they cannot win–elections without courting and cultivating these people. Until the Republican Party comes up with some other path to victory, they’ll have this tiger by the tail. And changing course will be more difficult because in the last decade or so the number of crazies who have actually made it into public office has increased as well. It’s no longer simply pandering to the fringe. The fringe is, more and more, actually in positions of power.
Shorter Marty: Advocating for the public option is the equivalent of claiming that Barack Obama is not an American citizen.
I’m sorry but this is not about simply declaring that everyone who disagrees with you on a public policy issue is a “loon.”
And in the case of a public option as part of a healthcare reform package, the Democratic House leadership–which has, since 2007, never distinguished itself as boldly progressive–is standing its ground on an issue on which between 55 and 75% of the American public agree with them.
We’re all loons now!
This, of course, is not anywhere near accurate. The leftist loons hold most of the major Congressional posts now and they constantly get in the way of the President and the the moderates actually achieving a bipartisan governing coalition.
You haven’t read this thread, have you. Hell, you haven’t even read the comment immediately above your own.
Join us in consensus reality please. I know it can be scary, but it’s not all that bad, I swear.
The Democrats should worry less about whether he can retain the loonie left and recognize he needs to retain the civil center.
If you cast your mind back to last November, you may remember that the “civil center” voted Democratic. Therefore, it may be sensible to conclude that they support Democratic initiatives. The fact that the Republicans oppose this is a problem for Republicans, not Democrats.
Let’s set aside the fact that this deep yearning for bipartisanship only seems to emerge when the Republicans are out of power and hibernates within the deepest darkest caves when the Republicans rule, and take it on its merits. This seems to be a very odd theory of governance. There are no political parties defined in our Constitution, and if you’re an originalist, there shouldn’t be since factionalization was a real concern of the founding fathers. Yet, bipartisanship puts the concerns of these parties above any concerns of the electorate. Apparently, if we had one party with 99 senate seats, and a Silly Party with 1 seat, we would need to have all legislation be acceptable to the Silly Party representative, in effect, making the Silly Party vote the only one which matters. So bipartisanship essentially reverses political power to the minority party. Quite useful if you’re the minority, I guess.
“Shorter Marty: Advocating for the public option is the equivalent of claiming that Barack Obama is not an American citizen.”
I really hate it when people put words in my mouth. The WAY people represent these issues to their constituents, but more importantly, the WAY they represent the real opposition is what is important.
To broad brush everyone on the opposing side as right wing loons, because those people have the airwaves, is counter productive and as loony, and politically expedient, as the loons themselves.
Marty: Um. Exactly which “leftist loons” hold “most Congressional leadership positions”? And how exactly are they “constantly” in the way of a “bipartisan governing coalition”? Seriously.
The major stumbling block in a “bipartisan governing coalition” is that the second party has no desire to be part of any governing coalition, or do anything other than obstruct and deny victories to the Obama administration.
I’m not sure what you mean about the way people represent the “real opposition” as being more important than the way people represent issues to their constituents. I’m not being snarky here, I’m really not sure what your sentence is trying to say. It’s more important what people tell their constituents about the opposition than what they do to represent their constituents? It’s more important how the opposition acts than the majority acts? It’s more important how people oppose things than how well they reflect what their constituents want?
Brett:
Please send me your original birth certificate. No copies or facsimilies or pdfs, thank you very much.
For good measure, please send me the original of your college transcript. If you can get the original of that elitist document, you won’t have to pay the $5.00 copying charge.
And don’t try to wave around a copy of the Second Amendment and call it your birth certificate.
My death panel will not be swayed.
So I’m in a liquor store a couple of months ago and the owner/clerk for no apparent reason (FOX was on the T.V.; there you go) says to no one in particular as I’m at the counter, “Well, if he’s not a Muslim, why is his middle name Hussein?” to which I said, to no one in particular ..
…. “Well, that would explain why so many Americans’ share the middle name ‘Stupid’ since they are so effing ignorant.”
Did I see his hand beneath the counter?
To broad brush everyone on the opposing side as right wing loons, because those people have the airwaves, is counter productive and as loony, and politically expedient, as the loons themselves.
Nobody on this thread is claiming that everyone who opposes the liberal wing of the Democratic Party is a loon or even that all Republicans or all conservatives are loons.
And while such a claim–which, again, nobody is making–would be hyperbolic and unproductive, as a matter of opinion it still would not be the equivalent of spreading manifestly factually false stories about Kenyan birth certificates and death panels.
Another tu quoque fail.
To be fair:
Von has taken the position that it’s just as crazy to suppose that Bush & Co lied to the US public about an issue of international importance as it is to suppose that Hawai’ian newspapers, decades earlier published false notices of Obama’s birth so that, in the 21st century, he could become President. This is typical partisan campaigning, and as Ben Alpers points out, it’s completely false.
Marty has taken the position that the majority of the country are loons and are voting loons into power, and this is a terrible change from the Bush years.
Brett has outed himself as a birther.
These are all distinctively right-wing, conservative, Republican positions, but they are not the same as each other, except that they’re all based on lies.
To be fair:…
Brett has outed himself as a birther.
These are all distinctively right-wing, conservative, Republican positions, but they are not the same as each other, except that they’re all based on lies.
Brett said that birtherism isn’t all that crazy, but that’s it. He disagrees with them (“the birthers are overreacting”, they’re “putting too much weight on” something).
And while lies seem like the ultimate cause of a lot of this, we can’t rule out insanity or being in denial in any individual case.
Just to be fair…er.
The point that gets forgotten in all of this is that President Obama did not win the election because the Pelosi’s of the world wanted him to win.
Wow. Just wow.
If Nancy Pelosi is part of the “loony left,” I am Catherine the Great.
Every day brings me a little closer to concluding that I don’t understand the first thing about American politics, and I never will, and it’s probably not worth my time to keep trying.
And don’t try to wave around a copy of the Second Amendment and call it your birth certificate.
John Thullen, you are magnificent.
The point that gets forgotten in all of this is that President Obama did not win the election because the Pelosi’s of the world wanted him to win.
another classic.
“Marty: Um. Exactly which “leftist loons” hold “most Congressional leadership positions”? And how exactly are they “constantly” in the way of a “bipartisan governing coalition”? Seriously.
The major stumbling block in a “bipartisan governing coalition” is that the second party has no desire to be part of any governing coalition, or do anything other than obstruct and deny victories to the Obama administration.”
I am sure this can all be very confusing. Pelosi and Frank are as far left and radical as you could be. (Frank fought regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for 10 years and is now represented as a financial reformer.) Lies come in different packages.
Pelosi keeps publicly declaring that the House won’t pass anything except what they have on the table. (As opposed to those nasty Republicans saying they won’t vote for that.) To build a strong governing coalition you have to maintain some level of public mutual support that “it is a difficult process and we need to have positive exchanges of ideas.”
However, Pelosi’s strident chatter is just as poisonous to the process as Rogers, et al. The president promised to work to fix that, his own party so far has ensured he can’t make any progress on it.
The “second party” will react amazingly differently if included in the process, not berated at any objection and broad brushed as loonies. Funny how that word wasn’t received well back.
One of the first things most successful people do is learn to share the credit.
And, oh yeah, all longwinded criticisms and explanations and rationalizations aside, von’s point is pretty accurate. All evidence and logic on the table, birthers and 9/11 conspiracists are both way out there.
I am sure this can all be very confusing. Pelosi and Frank are as far left and radical as you could be.
wow. they just keep coming.
Marty, with all due respect, you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about here.
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt, as you generally make a commendable effort to be civil even when advancing arguments I find repugnant.
But the paragraph I quoted from you is either a bad faith argument, or flat-out delusional. If you honestly, in all sincerity, believe that–get help. And turn off Fox News.
“Marty, with all due respect, you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about here.”
Of course I don’t, Frank has been my Rep for as many years as he has been in the House. I couldn’t possibly have a valid opinion on that.
“And turn off Fox News.”
Funny thing, I get the impression lots of people here watch Fox News. I haven’t ever watched it, nor have I listened to Rush on the radio. Maybe it’s not my view that is distorted here.
I’m worried far less about how “far left” Pelosi is (or isn’t; didn’t I mention how little I care?) than I am about characters like Charlie Rangel staying in office well after they should have stepped down.
I have much more tolerance for a couple of dozen slightly wacky people than I do for one who’s either trying to slip one past the tax man, or…the alternative escapes me.
Wackos are in office, in general, because a majority of their constituents want them there.
I couldn’t possibly have a valid opinion on that.
whatever you think of Barney Frank, you obviously don’t know what an actual radical leftist is.
Unless and until WND does something epically idiotic, the RNC will only keep its distance
WND does something epically idiotic every single day. This is a “news” site which runs breathless “exclusive” stories about people recording the voices of angels, for Pete’s sake.
Pelosi keeps publicly declaring that the House won’t pass anything except what they have on the table.
That’s tactics, not ideology. She’s playing hardball. There is absolutely nothing “leftist” about that.
Frank fought regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for 10 years and is now represented as a financial reformer.
Being against regulation puts one on the radical left?
Stop, Marty, you’re killing me.
Yikes, this thread is depressing. I didn’t realize that people who comment here regularly were truthers.
“I find it absolutely and completely in the realm of the believable that there were people in government who were aware that Al Qaeda were planning an attack on the US, and who failed to take actions they could have taken because they thought an attack would make it easier to justify a war in the Middle East.
In fact, I would find it extraordinarily difficult to overstate how completely and absolutely believable I find that to be.”
Unless there is some caveat that I’m not understanding, this is kind of like talking to your grandmother and having her tell you about how evil black people are. I mean it happens, but it is still depressing and crazy.
Do we need to talk about floridation in the water too? The water engine for cars and how GM has had a working model of it under wraps since 1960? How the government created AIDS? How vaccines cause autism? High tension wires causing cancer?
Actually don’t. I probably don’t want to know.
“Frank fought regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for 10 years and is now represented as a financial reformer.
Being against regulation puts one on the radical left?”
Clarification: Frank fought regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for 10 years (because the regulation would have impeded the ability of low income families and the poor to buy houses) and is now represented as a financial reformer.
Your ‘clarification’ still doesn’t magically transform a staunchly capitalist liberal (liberal, not ‘leftist’) Democrat like Barney Frank into one of those damn communists, Marty.
I didn’t realize that people who comment here regularly were truthers.
Sebastian, the first part that you bolded–who were aware that Al Qaeda were planning an attack on the US–is incontrovertibly true. They were aware.
So why the bolding?
describes pretty much every administration since AQ started targeting us, I think.
“Your ‘clarification’ still doesn’t magically transform a staunchly capitalist liberal (liberal, not ‘leftist’) Democrat like Barney Frank into one of those damn communists, Marty.”
Naw, I knew it wouldn’t because that staunchly capitalist liberal is certainly a centrist leaning a little right.
And don’t put words in my mouth with your ommunist defense. I didn’t use or imply that word ever. But it is always good to trot out to define what left means, if your not a communist then your not on the left, correct?
I bolded both of the most important of the question to highlight that truth in one portion of the statement doesn’t validate the because part of the statement.
Women give birth, after spending nine months carrying the child in their womb, because a fairy waves a magic wand in heaven.
The truth or falsity of the first clause doesn’t save the truth of the whole statement.
Obama didn’t immediately release his birth certificate because he needed time to create a fake.
Obama isn’t releasing the actual paper certificate to inspection because the fake would be revealed.
All of these statements are false, even if they have clauses which standing alone are true.
There is also a craziness level of misunderstanding even on the “incontrovertibly true” part.
It is absolutely true that if I know the half life of radioactive isotopes, I ‘know’ that at time, half of the atoms will have released their radiation and reduced to another state.
But anyone who claimed that proves I ‘knew’ exactly which atoms were going to decay at the period of the half life, or that the half life allows me to know exactly when an individual atom is going to decay, doesn’t understand “half-life”.
I mean it happens, but it is still depressing and crazy.
Wait, what? Sebastian, you’re asserting that people who are not in denial about the incontrovertible and documented fact that Bush was aware that al-Qaeda was about to strike in the US, and the incontrovertible and documented fact that the Bush administration made use of the strike to justify going to war against Iraq, is as depressing and crazy as your white grandmother telling you seriously that black people are evil?
Sebastian, Sebastian, Sebastian. Just because the Bush administration is now out of power, is no reason to start white-washing it. They lied the US into war with Iraq. They made use of 9/11 to justify this. They told lies about Saddam Hussein being connected with al-Qaeda. They told lies about how they KNEW there were WMD in Iraq that Saddam Hussein would let al-Qaeda make use of. They wanted war in the Middle East because they figured it would make the US more powerful. This is all documented. This is all incontrovertible. Holding to the truth is depressing, but it is not crazy.
Being a birther like Brett: that’s crazy.
Pelosi and Frank are as far left and radical as you could be.
Eugene Debs, lefty.
Norman Thomas, lefty.
Noam Chomsky, lefty.
Barry Commoner, kinda lefty.
Bernie Sanders, kinda lefty.
None of them, mind you — not one — are remotely as far left as you can get. They’re just lefties.
Pelosi and Frank, middle of the road.
The issue here is the range of political opinion that is acceptable in the US. In pretty much any other nation comparable to the US, the positions espoused by the folks I’ve named here would be well represented in the government. People with their positions would serve in government all the time, and it would be utterly unremarkable.
In the US you can call for the end of the gold standard and the Federal Reserve bank and not be seen as a raving lunatic. Universal health care, however, is seen as radical leftism of the first order, people like Obama and Dean are seen as socialists, and folks like Pelosi and Frank are “as far left as you can get”.
It’s pretty weird.
All of these statements are false, even if they have clauses which standing alone are true.
See my 6:16 p.m. comment for an explanation of this. Yes, the second clause of that is true, the only even debatable part is the “because.” So, again, you can’t argue with the statement that they did nothing and you can’t argue with the statement that they wanted a war in the Middle East, but you call it beyond-the-pale crazy to connect the dots between those?
Louis Freeh had known since 1995 that bin Laden was planning on attacking the US using airplanes. George Tenet almost certainly knew since then, and certainly did when he took directorship in 1997.
Those guys could certainly report on to what extent that Bush ignored fresh, useful intelligence to that effect, and I don’t think either of them has cause to love George W. Bush.
I recommend asking those who know, rather than building a could-be-therefore-was kind of fairytale. Just a suggestion.
If you want to know badly enough, you could write to your representative, if you have one, urging them to investigate. That would be the thing to do, I think.
Marty, to see who actually counts as liberal or conservative in Congress, I recommend voteview.com (endorsed by Nate Silver, God of Political Statistics): in the 110th House, Frank is the 27th-most liberal, Pelosi is the 110th. If you want to see an *actual* leftist, Kuchinich is the nearest thing.
In the Senate, Feingold and Sanders are bona fide leftists.
“In the Senate, Feingold and Sanders are bona fide leftists.”
Thanks Doc, I actually understand how left each of them is, I just threw pelosi in there because she is “Playing hardball” as someone put it, and titularly in charge. The concept that there is only one end of the spectrum “standing their ground” in all of this is almost comical to me.
The Republicans get lots of press and blog time, the Blue Dogs get beat up, but the kind of middle to the left of the Dems are “being reasonable” and conceding crucial things. But nothing of any great import has been conceded yet, everyone is “playing hardball” and Pelosi is as guilty of making this difficult as Grassley.
And Kucinich is just odd.
this is kind of like talking to your grandmother and having her tell you about how evil black people are. I mean it happens, but it is still depressing and crazy.
Among the things that the folks in question have been involved in that I can name right off the top of my head:
Illegally selling weapons to Iran in order to finance an illegal war in South America.
Disclosing the identity of Valerie Plame, a covert CIA operative working in the area of nuclear non-proliferation, as revenge against her husband for publicly undermining the yellow-cake claim.
If you want to take it back to the Nixon days, which is where some of these guys cut their teeth, we get into stuff like proposals to bomb the Brookings Institution.
So yeah, I have no problem with the idea that there are people in government who would have deliberately allowed 9/11 to go forward in order to justify a war.
They might not have known how big, or traumatic, 9/11 would be. Maybe they thought only 50 people would be killed, or 100.
But allow me to say it again. I’ll even supply the bolding myself:
I find it absolutely and completely in the realm of the believable that there were people in government who were aware that Al Qaeda were planning an attack on the US, and who failed to take actions they could have taken because they thought an attack would make it easier to justify a war in the Middle East.
Hell yeah.
They’re cold m****rf****rs.
And dude, I ain’t your grandma.
Thanks Doc, I actually understand how left each of them is
Then why did you write the exact opposite just a short while ago?
I just threw pelosi in there because she is “Playing hardball” as someone put it, and titularly in charge.
So when you said she was “about as far left as you can go,” what you really meant was “She’s not really ‘left’ at all, I’m just using ‘left’ as an all-purpose epithet.”
This is Jonah Goldberg territory.
Wait, “nothing of great import has been conceded yet”?
Dude, seriously. We STARTED this process with almost everything of import conceded! Single payer wasn’t even an option mentioned at all, because they wanted to make something that would address Republican objections, assuming those objections were made in good faith. We started the process with half-assed regulation because, again, the Democratic leaders wanted to appease the Republican’s earlier attacks on health care reforms.
We started three quarters of the way down the field, with a half-assed “public option”, and a bill that’d be a giant windfall for insurance companies as concessions built in at the start to try and bring insurance companies and Republicans on board, even though they make the bill worse. And now because the liberals in the House are fighting to keep the bill from being ENTIRELY a giveaway to the insurance companies, and make it have some chance of working, you’re claiming “nothing of import has been conceded yet”?!?
Man, Obama and the leadership TOTALLY misplayed this, they should have let a REAL bill be proposed, they’d have gotten as many cries of “socialism!”, AND we might have had a halfway decent bill at the end of the negotiations.
“We can never really know the motives of the Bush administration officials”
May i suggest enhanced interrogation techniques?
“See my 6:16 p.m. comment for an explanation of this. Yes, the second clause of that is true, the only even debatable part is the ‘because.'”
See my half-life response.
And ‘because’ clauses are rather important to truth value of the whole statement.
“Women get pregnant because the full moon sends special rays into the womb which create a baby” is not a true statement. And if you think it is a true statement, I’d like to see your proof.
The birther outrage is stupid, but they are essentially the following statements.
Initially: “Obama won’t release information about his birth certificate BECAUSE he wants to hide the fact that he wasn’t born here”.
And now: “Obama won’t release the physical original of his birth certificate BECAUSE it would reveal that the document is a fake and BECAUSE he wants to hide the fact that he wasn’t born here”.
Both of those have teeny, tiny elements of truth in them, but as a whole are just false.
If you believe that the government had useful and actionable information which was recognizeable apart from hindsight as separating it from the millions of useless bits of information about other groups wanting to attack the US, you are probably wrong, but that isn’t crazy–and humans suck at avoiding hindsight bias.
If you believe that there was useful and actionalbe information recognizeable apart from hindsight, that was supressed you don’t have any evidence of that.
If you believe it was believed to be important and action was not taken, you are really stretching.
If you believe it was believed to be important, and no action was taken because the administration wanted to attack the Middle East, you are being crazy considering the evidence we have before us now. That really is birther territory. It is taking only the paranoid directions in the decision tree at multiple points of uncertainty. Doing that once without evidence is perhaps being overly suspicious. Doing it on at least 4 critical junctures is going way too far.
[The junctures I see are: that there was useful information, that the information could have usefully picked out of the random noise usefully, that it was in fact picked out of the noise, that having been picked out of the noise no action was taken because of a particular motive.]
The evidence I have seen indicates that we probably never got past the first step–it was part of the random noise and was pretty much treated as such by almost everyone.
To restate Sebastian’s assertion:
A woman gives birth, because she had unprotected heterosexual intercourse nine months earlier.
Both subordinate statements could be true (the “because” clause covers the “decided not to have an abortion” part) and yet the whole statement could be false (she did have unprotected heterosexual intercourse but actually got pregnant via a syringe at the local fertility clinic).
But Sebastian’s argument rests on the idea that when you know a new mother has a live-in male partner with whom she’s in a heterosexual relationship, that it is batpoop crazy to assume he is the biological father of her child.
Let Bush in 2003 be the new mom. The war in Iraq is his baby. Cheney and Rumsfeld and their ideas about making aggressive war in the Middle East are collectively Bush’s live-in partner. The whole world knows they’ve been making mad crazy monkey-love for years.
Now, with all that: maybe Bush had his baby with some other daddy. Bush claimed all along that 9/11 was the Iraq war baby’s daddy. Do we really trust Bush to say who he opened his legs to and got pregnant by? When he’s got a live-in lover who was screwing him up, down, and sideways, and the Iraq war baby looks just like that collective hive of Cheney-Rumsfield-PNAC.
So we do some DNA testing. Is there any genetic evidence that Iraq war baby is related to 9/11? But this has all been done by now, Sebastian… and no: the Iraq baby daddy was the Rumsfeld-Cheney-PNAC hive making love with Bush.
Posted by: Uncle Kvetch | September 04, 2009 at 12:26 PM
I do sometimes let my rhetoric get away from me to make a point.
Russell, I can’t actually tell if ‘believable’ is a hedge. I find it perfectly believable that there are people in the world who would have done so.
I don’t see any evidence that it actually happened, so the question is do you believe it actually happened?
“I do sometimes let my rhetoric get away from me to make a point.”
The problem, Marty, is when your rhetoric moves into the realm of fantasy, nobody will even see what point you are making.
And to equate Pelosi’s insistence on one aspect of the reform to Grassley’s obvious desire to sabotage every effort at reform is, in my mind, moving back into the realm of fantasy.
A member of the commentariat at Redstate some weeks ago referred to the guy (a Democratic activist) who runs Progressive Corp., the auto insurer, as several steps to the left of Joseph Stalin.
Which would make the guy who owns GEICO simultaneously the second richest capitalist in America and the head of the KGB, not to mention Pol Pot’s personal eyeglasses confiscator.
As to Allstate and State Farm, the Ukrainians in the bunch, if I were them, I’d be storing foodstuffs for the long Stalinist siege.
I’m having trouble seeing russell’s point, actually. In order for something like what he’s painted to have occurred, every single person involved would have had to have kept mum. There was no significant stopping point for information in the DoJ chain that was connected to the Nixon administration; ditto the CIA.
Hell, there was someone high up in DoJ that lost his wife in one of the plane crashes.
But: we can probably point to coldness as the cause for all this silence, among various folks who weren’t even Republican appointees, because Palpatine had turned them over the the Dark Side.
“And to equate Pelosi’s insistence on one aspect of the reform to Grassley’s obvious desire to sabotage every effort at reform is, in my mind, moving back into the realm of fantasy.”
Thanks, but I will stick with the point that both Grassleys objections and Pelosi’s line in the sand make it hard for Obama to convince anyone he has changed anything in the way Washington works, or that anyone besides him wants to change anything.
See it was his campaign slogan, the core tenet of what he ran on. Each new piece of legislation or problem that gets resolved with highly profile partisan bickering and a party line vote eats away at the support in the center that gave him his win.
I know all of the liberals/progressives would like to believe the whole country suddenly started supporting all of their positions and so he walked in on their ideas, but it just isn’t so.
A propos of nothing: would Marty, Seb, Brett or any other reasonable, articulate conservative here please tell me what Bush and Cheney did in response to the attack on USS Cole?
Don’t fall into any traps, boys: whatever they did after 9/11 doesn’t count. Any argument along the lines that it was just one of Clinton’s ships, after all, will be laughed out of court. Any suggestion that Dick and Dubya could not be sure who to go after will be treated with contempt.
So: why didn’t Dubya do anything, between 20 Jan 2001 and 11 Sep 2001, to avenge the Cole? Was he waiting for Dick to come up with “intelligence” that Saddam did it?
–TP
You have got to be kidding me. Simultaneous strawman and ad hom. Major bonus points!
Marty: The reason Obama can’t get “bipartisan” support is because the Republican party has decided to oppose EVERYTHING he proposes, to try and defeat the entire agenda he ran on and try and repeat what happened with Bill Clinton’s first term.
So, given the fact the Republicans have no desire or incentives to work with Obama, how exactly is the fact he can’t get Republican support Obama’s fault? Or Pelosi’s, or any other Democrat’s?
Russell, I can’t actually tell if ‘believable’ is a hedge. I find it perfectly believable that there are people in the world who would have done so.
I don’t see any evidence that it actually happened, so the question is do you believe it actually happened?
If you read my first comment in this thread, you’ll see that I have no idea if it happened or not. There is, as you note, no clear evidence that anything of the sort happened.
What I find absolutely believable is that, among the folks in the intelligence and foreign policy communities during the Bush era, there are some who would be perfectly willing to let an Al Qaeda attack on US soil go forward if they thought it would further their broader agenda.
If find it believable because that particular community is full of straight-up nihilistic Strangeloveian crazy SOBs. I doubt that is news to any of us.
So, I take exception to calling the folks who answered the survey question in the affirmative “crazy”.
And when I say “believable” I’m not trying to hedge, I’m just confining my statement to what I know to be true. Which seems like a reasonable thing to do.
I wasn’t answering the survey, I was responding to von’s claim that folks who answered in the affirmative were crazy.
There’s a lot of daylight between “demonstrable” and “insane”.
Since I forgot to include Slarti among the reasonable, articulate conservatives when I asked the question, I suppose I can’t blame him for not even ATTEMPTING to answer it.
–TP
No, Tony, you can’t un-turd the punchbowl.
“So, given the fact the Republicans have no desire or incentives to work with Obama, how exactly is the fact he can’t get Republican support Obama’s fault? Or Pelosi’s, or any other Democrat’s?”
So, first, I could spend some time talking about creating carrots instead of sticks. I won’t.
I will ask this question,
Since he ran a whole campaign for the Presidency of the US based on his being the one able to accomplish that, should we not hold him accountable for failing? I will, and would delight in, giving him credit if he succeeds.
It is taking only the paranoid directions in the decision tree at multiple points of uncertainty.
I’d point out that taking the paranoid directions in the decision tree has proven to be a pretty useful guideline when dealing with what actually happened in the Bush administration, but it would probably be lost on you.
I don’t see any evidence that it actually happened, so the question is do you believe it actually happened?
The application of this statement of Sebastian’s to his continuing obsession with late-term abortions — and its applicability to his response to this, which I can predict with 100% accuracy, and will consist of some variation of “We haven’t been allowed to see any evidence that would help us prove it” — is once again left as an exercise for the reader.
So here’s my question for all of the folks who find my position on the survey question so puzzling.
Sibel Edmonds claims that anti-terror investigations she was involved in were deliberately thwarted by folks in the FBI and elsewhere who were being paid by a foreign government, apparently Turkey.
Is she freaking insane? Or not?
If not, why is it believable that someone would interfere with an anti-terror investigation for money, but not to further a political agenda or, frex, to start a war?
Since he ran a whole campaign for the Presidency of the US based on his being the one able to accomplish that, should we not hold him accountable for failing?
we can fault him for failing to anticipate that the GOP would decide to take the approach of opposition for the sake of opposition, instead of working to better the country. (yeah, i know, the GOP is blameless, as always – they just can’t help themselves in the face of mean old Mr. Obama)
i’m not sure acting like a bunch of pouty 3-year-olds helps the GOP very much, though.
Slarti, I have no desire to “unturd the punchbowl”. You, on the other hand, seem to suggest that the “it was just one of Clinton’s ships” defense MIGHT have come up if I had not warned against it. Just how low is YOUR opinion of the reasonable, articulate conservatives around here, anyway?
–TP
But the question wasn’t: “Do you believe there are evil people in the world”. Just like the birther poll doesn’t ask “Do you believe Obama is generally trustworthy.”
You can’t defend people who say that they believe that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is good history by saying “I believe that some people who are Jewish have done bad things”.
Saying that you believe ruthless people exist is not the same as saying that actual ruthless people actually knew about the 9/11 attacks and actually decided not to do anything about it because they wanted to attack the Middle East.
I guess I should pretend that Tony hasn’t pretty much decided in advance that any reasonable, articulate conservative would be making some kind of trite, deliberately dishonest argument, for the sake of argument.
Then, I’d ask if Tony has read Sections 6.3-6.5 of the 9-11 Commission Report, and whether he thinks that constitutes any kind of evidence that something was in the works.
Not saying the report is absolute truth, but it does lay a certain groundwork.
I don’t know what I might have said that could possibly have given you that notion, but whatever it was, that was not the intended communication.
But the question wasn’t: “Do you believe there are evil people in the world”. Just like the birther poll doesn’t ask “Do you believe Obama is generally trustworthy.”
are you asserting that people always answer the question the questioner intended ?
cause ya don’t have to look too hard to find examples of people using simple questions as springboards to launch into things they’d rather talk about – actual question be damned.
Slarti: Louis Freeh had known since 1995 that bin Laden was planning on attacking the US using airplanes. George Tenet almost certainly knew since then, and certainly did when he took directorship in 1997.
Those guys could certainly report on to what extent that Bush ignored fresh, useful intelligence to that effect, and I don’t think either of them has cause to love George W. Bush.
Except that Freeh was FBI director up through June 2001, and thus has as much to answer for as anyone, and AFAICT has pretty much disappeared since leaving the post.
Tenet was awarded the frakking Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bush, after being CIA director during the worst terrorist attacks on American soil, and, by all accounts, was if anything way too close to Bush and being way too eager to please him, his close friend and Executive Director saying so publicly.
Saying that you believe ruthless people exist is not the same as saying that actual ruthless people actually knew about the 9/11 attacks and actually decided not to do anything about it because they wanted to attack the Middle East.
Something like 25% of the folks who were asked said they thought it was somewhere in the neighborhood of likely that someone actually knew something, and deliberately did nothing, in order to further a political agenda.
von says those folks are crazy.
I say they’re not. Not that they’re right, just that they’re not crazy.
During the period we’re talking about, there weren’t just ruthless people in government, they were driving the bus.
And now: “Obama won’t release the physical original of his birth certificate BECAUSE it would reveal that the document is a fake and BECAUSE he wants to hide the fact that he wasn’t born here”.
Before this gets too far, this argument falls apart because there is no physical original. The premise is false. All of Hawaii’s vital records were digitized and the originals shredded years ago.
It’s not “where there’s smoke, there’s fire”. It’s “well, some random guy said there was smoke over in the other side of town, but the fire chief said publicly that there wasn’t, and in fact no buildings exist there, but still it raises the question about whether there might have been smoke over there and therefore there must be fire. QED.”
Thanks, but I will stick with the point that both Grassleys objections and Pelosi’s line in the sand make it hard for Obama to convince anyone he has changed anything in the way Washington works, or that anyone besides him wants to change anything.
Tough negotiating is still negotiating, which is what’s supposed to happen. It’s not name-calling; it’s not demonization; it’s not throwing around accusations of treason over legitimate policy differences. Pelosi is not doing any of that, and the Republicans are. It’s that kind of vile nonsense that Obama was campaigning against, not things like “We won’t pass a bill without a strong public option.” Surely you can see the difference.
“are you asserting that people always answer the question the questioner intended ?
cause ya don’t have to look too hard to find examples of people using simple questions as springboards to launch into things they’d rather talk about – actual question be damned.”
Fine, but why doesn’t that apply to birther questions too then?
Also: not a former Nixon lackey. Other than that, sure.
People’s actions are by choice. If there was a conspiracy to suppress information, and he was part of it, he bears part of that burden, regardless of his political affiliation.
One of Bush’s first acts of incompetence was keeping on George Tenet; I’ve said that for a long, long time. But: Tenet was also not a former Nixon lackey, and certainly had no prior allegiance to Bush.
Statement above about personal responsibility applies here, too.
So: still unexplained is how a motley collection of former Nixonians, Clinton appointees and Bush appointees conspired to do nothing in response to purportedly actionable intelligence of an attack on America.
Fine, but why doesn’t that apply to birther questions too then?
I’d suggest that birther questions are generally more restricted in scope. The emotional question of what 9-11 means seems to be to be a lot bigger than do you think Obama is a US citizen, unless you have a lot of underlying issues with Obama in general.
Fine, but why doesn’t that apply to birther questions too then?
Because actual documentary evidence to counter the birther claim has been produced.
The evidence I have seen indicates that we probably never got past the first step–it was part of the random noise and was pretty much treated as such by almost everyone.
But even that is enough to answer that poll question in the affirmative. That alone gets you to what has been labeled as batshit insane. The question only addresses if the Bush administration did nothing (which is a pretty clear fact) because they wanted to go to war in the ME. But we know, because the Bush admin admitted it, that they believed that non-state actors could not pull off major attacks without state support. If the Bush administration focused intelligence gather away from AQ and towards Iran, then there is no way you can argue that “[p]eople in the federal government took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the [sic] United States to go to war in the Middle East.”
On page 202 of my copy of the 9/11 Commission Report there appears the following:
So, just what was their “aggressive” response, Slarti?
Incidentally, “stale” is an interesting word, don’t you think? Not quite a turd in the punchbowl, but as interesting a word as a genteel neocon like Wolfowitz could be expected to utter.
–TP
Saying that you believe ruthless people exist is not the same as saying that actual ruthless people actually knew about the 9/11 attacks and actually decided not to do anything about it because they wanted to attack the Middle East.
The poll question does not address foreknowledge.
Slarti: Um, because the guys at the top said “We don’t care about Al Queda or any of that crap, we’re after Iraq and Iran. Missile defense, baby!” and still the intel guys gave Bush a memo titled “Bin Laden determined to strike in US” on August 8th, which may not even have been read?
They didn’t even try. They didn’t even care. But considering their OTHER actions, extrapolating from “didn’t care” to “didn’t care because they thought it wouldn’t be as big as it was and they could use it for partisan political purposes or as justification to start a war with the targets they wanted to fight” is NOT a very big jump.
So: still unexplained is how a motley collection of former Nixonians, Clinton appointees and Bush appointees conspired to do nothing in response to purportedly actionable intelligence of an attack on America.
Well that’s likely true, I was just trying to point out that it’s not like Freeh and Tenet didn’t have good cause to shut up about everything.
Also, if Tenet knew in 97 and Freeh in 95 that al Qaeda wanted to attack the US with airplanes do we have Condi Rice saying things like:
“I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile,” adding that “even in retrospect” there was “nothing” to suggest that” and “I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees,” respectively.
before Congress? I mean, other than she was just making sh1t up to cover her ass?
whoops, don’t know how I got the levees thing got in there.
Fine, but why doesn’t that apply to birther questions too then?
Because the question that the birthers are really answering is easily ascertainable by the fact that they carry around signs, get bumperstickers and take out billboards reading, “Where’s the birth certificate?” That’s an awful lot of effort to go to if that’s not the question they’re really answering.
Man, I wish Harley from the old Tacitus site posted here. He was a lot better at calling people out on this “Everbody does it!” baloney.
“People in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted to United States to go to war in the Middle East.”
That was the question.
Malraux: “The evidence I have seen indicates that we probably never got past the first step–it was part of the random noise and was pretty much treated as such by almost everyone.
But even that is enough to answer that poll question in the affirmative. That alone gets you to what has been labeled as batshit insane.”
No it doesn’t. If you think it is random noise you CAN’T also assist in the 9/11 attacks nor can you choose to take no action to stop them because you want a war in the Middle East.
“The poll question does not address foreknowledge.”
Again, you can’t answer the question in the affirmative without foreknowledge. You can’t assist in the 9/11 attacks without foreknowledge of them nor can you take no action to stop them because you want a war in the Middle East unless you know about them.
liberal_japonicus: “I’d suggest that birther questions are generally more restricted in scope. The emotional question of what 9-11 means seems to be to be a lot bigger than do you think Obama is a US citizen, unless you have a lot of underlying issues with Obama in general.”
The 9/11 question is very restricted in scope. It isn’t asking about what 9-11 means, it was asking if US government officials were involved in it or let it happen on purpose so they could start a war in the Middle East. That is a very narrow question about 9/11. And of course I think that birthers have lots of stupid underlying issues with Obama in general. They are being crazy. I’m not defending the birthers even one little bit.
There is not one shred of evidence that any US official assisted in the 9/11 attacks.
There is not one shred of evidence that any US official “took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted to United States to go to war in the Middle East.”
There isn’t even one shred of evidence that any US official took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the attacks to succeed for ANY reason.
General appeals to say Cheney’s demonstrated willingness to torture foreigners who he suspected of being terrorists, don’t cross over into being willing to just let terrorists take over a bunch of planes and kill Ted Olson’s wife.
Assuming they’d already done something wrong, that is. All of them.
Now, pretty much all of what had been planned, as far as the FBI knew, had to do with packing a smallish aircraft with HE and flying it into, for instance, Langley. Also, bombing passenger aircraft. This is probably the point that Rice was attempting to make, but I can’t speak for her.
Maybe I’m missing something, though
Again, you can’t answer the question in the affirmative without foreknowledge. You can’t assist in the 9/11 attacks without foreknowledge of them nor can you take no action to stop them because you want a war in the Middle East unless you know about them.
I agree that you cannot assist without foreknowledge. But as for taking no actions, that clearly does not require foreknowledge, if the reason why you do not have foreknowledge (and thus the reason why you end up taking no actions) is because you are choosing to focus your intelligence gathers elsewhere, for example hoping to find a reason for war in the ME. This is really basic stuff. Moreover, it is basic stuff that is not even contentious.
Put another way, what is at all debatable about the statement “People in the federal government took no action to stop the attacks”? Sebastian, you seem to think that statement is false if one did not know about the attacks in advance, but clearly that is torturous of english.
Tony: Since I forgot to include Slarti among the reasonable, articulate conservatives when I asked the question, I suppose I can’t blame him for not even ATTEMPTING to answer it.
But Slartibartfast is neither reasonable nor articulate.
Judging from the whitewashing going on in this thread even from the conservatives regarded as reasonable and articulate, it’s now a right-wing meme to defend Bush and Cheney from any idea articulated that might lead to the notion that perhaps, given they lied the US into war with Iraq – beginning with Bush’s documented foreknowledge of a terrorist attack in the US about which he did nothing but go on vacation and read My Pet Goat – the US people ought to consider the possibility of, you know, some legal penalty for crimes committed in office that killed over a million people.
It’s unlikely – after all, Bush has by now established the principle that the President is above the law and whatever he does is right – but it would be an interesting concept, wouldn’t it: if the US were to regard their President not as a God-King with divine right, above prosecution or penalty, but simply as a man elected to office who is still bound by the laws of the country, and who may be prosecuted and convicted if he breaks them.
Given that every single conservative on this thread has apparently gone back to the baseline blank denial we got used to in 2002, “There’s no evidence Bush is lying so I’m not going to listen to you when you point out that there is!” la-la-la-fingers-in-ears-type-with-my-nose, that concept of a country governed by laws not men has long since vanished up their arses.
But it is passing strange that people, who appeared sane and reasonable up until now, can still maintain that it is exactly as crazy to suppose that Obama was born outside the US as it is to suppose that Bush lied.
Assuming they’d already done something wrong, that is. All of them.
I’m not saying that they did anything wrong, just that this sh1t happened and/or was planned while they were in charge, giving them ample incentive to not want to be subject to too much scrutiny.
Fine, but why doesn’t that apply to birther questions too then?
well, i for one, said it probably did, way back on the Previous page. but i personally don’t see how you get from “i don’t like Obama” to answering affirmatively to the birther claims if you really don’t believe the birther claims. maybe spite ?
it just seems much easier, to me, to get from “BushCo wanted to go to war with Iraq even before 9/11, that’s documented and obvious” to “BushCo wanted to go to war and may have greased the skids to make that war possible“. seems like these two concepts are much more closely related than the other two.
Naw, I knew it wouldn’t because that staunchly capitalist liberal is certainly a centrist leaning a little right.
And don’t put words in my mouth with your ommunist defense. I didn’t use or imply that word ever. But it is always good to trot out to define what left means, if your not a communist then your not on the left, correct?
Marty, you called Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi–two centre-left establishment Dems who, as far as I know, have yet to publicly repudiate liberal democracy and the market-based economy–“as far left and radical as you could be.”
Now, maybe in your Humpty Dumpty world there’s no problem called ground beef blue cheese. But, here in the real world, where words actually *gasp* have specific meaning, “far left radical” typically signifies a, well, radical leftist ideology, such as revolutionary communism or anarcho-syndicalism. Ground beef is not blue cheese, and liberal democrats != “far-left radicals.”
Perhaps I and others have been too charitable in assuming that you are both arguing in good faith and know what you are talking about. Because, at this point, both assumptions have left me feeling like an ass. Am sure you recognize the sensation intimately.
Look, not to beat this into the ground, but the question on the table is not whether there was a coordinated conspiracy among the principals in the Bush administration to either abet, or do nothing about, 9/11.
The question is this:
[p]eople in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the [sic] United States to go to war in the Middle East
Since “people” is plural, the bar is two.
Since “took no action” is one of the options, we can be talking about something as simple as not passing on some piece of intelligence.
It’s not a high bar, and doesn’t require the coordinated actions of the entire executive.
Further, the history of the US intelligence community at least since the advent of the Cold War is a more or less uninterrupted parade of crazy-ass, nihilistic nutjobbery, all in the name of democracy and freedom of course.
Further, the policy shops in the executive during the Bush years were full to the brim with folks who had been advocating war with Iraq, with Iran, with Syria, with anyone they could find on a map in the middle east for at least a generation.
I’m not looking to make too much of this, and I’m not promoting any conspiracy theories.
All I’m saying is that finding the concept presented in the survey question not only possible, but somewhat likely, is not, remotely, evidence that you’ve lost your mind.
You’re saying that if they did know something, they did something wrong by keeping quiet about it. If they didn’t know anything, then I’m at a loss for who else might.
I do sometimes let my rhetoric get away from me to make a point.
I see. So, you really can’t be trusted to argue in good faith. Shall keep that in mind the next time I get the crazy idea to actually engage one of your comments.
Now, pretty much all of what had been planned, as far as the FBI knew, had to do with packing a smallish aircraft with HE and flying it into, for instance, Langley. Also, bombing passenger aircraft.
Quite likely so. Which oddly enough supports the point I’m trying to make.
Would someone in government permit a 9/11 in order to further their goal? Hard to imagine.
Would someone allow a repeat of Lockerbie, or the flying of a small plane into Langley? Less hard to imagine.
Considering that the person supposedly responsible for the anthrax attacks was someone who worked for the federal gov’t, I’m not sure why it’s so crazy to think that perhaps someone who worked for the federal gov’t wasn’t all that gung ho about stopping terrorist attacks in the United States.
Russel: All I’m saying is that finding the concept presented in the survey question not only possible, but somewhat likely, is not, remotely, evidence that you’ve lost your mind.
But calling the people who think that possible or likely “crazy” is an excellent way of denying and obfuscating and blocking and…
I mean, look: Slarti has spent a lot of time claiming that the 2000 election in Florida was fair and lawful and no Republican actually did anything wrong. First I got tired of citing evidence to have him ignore it, then I got tired of him claiming I never cited evidence.
Do you really suppose that people who would never admit that Bush lost the 2000 election will ever admit that it’s quite, quite likely that after Bush* was told that al-Qaeda was planning an attack, he did nothing because he wanted a justification for war in the Middle East?
*As far as I know, we only have documentary evidence that Bush was told al-Qaeda were planning an attack: I would think it likely that anything Bush was told, Cheney was also told. Bush refused to give evidence to the 9/11 Commission unless he could talk to them in private, not under oath, and accompanied by Dick Cheney at all times.
“People in the federal government took no action to stop the attacks”? Sebastian, you seem to think that statement is false if one did not know about the attacks in advance, but clearly that is torturous of english.”
You’re talking about a different statement.
The statement is “People in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted to United States to go to war in the Middle East.”
We’ll take as a given that no one here is going for ‘assisted’ so “People in the federal government…took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the United States to go to war in the the Middle East.”
You say that “took no action” doesn’t require foreknowledge. This is of course true in statements like “took no action because they didn’t know about it”.
But that isn’t what we are talking about. We are talking about “took no action because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East”.
That kind of “took no action” absolutely requires that you know about the attacks before they happen.
You say that “took no action” doesn’t require foreknowledge. This is of course true in statements like “took no action because they didn’t know about it”.
Add to that “They did not know about the attacks because they focused intelligence on state actors in the ME. They focused intelligence on state actors in the ME because they wanted to go to war in the ME”
That right there is pretty much the Bush line about why 9-11 caught them by surprise. “No one could have predicted”. But the reason they could not concieve of such an attack is precicely because they wanted a ME war.
Sebastian: That kind of “took no action” absolutely requires that you know about the attacks before they happen.
And since we know that Bush was handed a memo warning him in the strongest, most explicit terms that al-Qaeda were planning a terrorist attack in the US in September, about which he did nothing, your point is…?
But again, that wasn’t the question, nor is that even close to the question as actually framed. It is actually framed with “assisted” which brings the question well away from “didn’t know”.
But again, that wasn’t the question, nor is that even close to the question as actually framed. It is actually framed with “assisted” which brings the question well away from “didn’t know”.
Now you are torturing English again. Either/or statements are true if only one element is true. The two pieces are independent of one another. You either blow goats or love your mom. That statement can be true yet say nothing about your predilection for bestiality.
But that isn’t what we are talking about
ahem
If the pollster wanted to specifically indicate advanced knowledge, they should have clarified the intro statement and asked about foreknowledge.
Really, the real truther beliefs are more along the lines of
“Question:
The collapse if the twin towers in New York was aided by explosives secretly planted in the two buildings.
Answers:
Very likely 6%
Somewhat likely 10%
Unlikely 77%
Don’t know 6%
Other response 1%”
or
“Question:
The Pentagon was not struck by an airliner captured by terrorists but, instead was hit by a cruise missle fired by the U.S. military.
Answers:
Very likely 6%
Somewhat likely 6%
Not likely 80%
Don’t kniow 7%
Other response 1%”
http://newspolls.org/surveys/SHOH33/18909
http://newspolls.org/surveys/SHOH33/18910
If you want a measure of actual batshit insane beliefs, those are much more equivalent to the birthers. Those relatively knowable factual questions, rather than mind-reading questions about why in specific the Bush administration took no action to stop 9-11. Those questions put the percentage of truthers at 12-15% of the population.
From one of the poll participants
“”I certainly didn’t think of conspiracies when 9/11 first happened,” said Elaine Tripp, 62, of Tabernacle, N.J. “I don’t know if President Bush was aware of the exact time it was going to happen. But he certainly didn’t do enough to stop it. Bush was so intent on having his own little war.””
http://newspolls.org/articles/19604
It sounds to me like she found the took no action question somewhat likely at least, yet believes that it did not require foreknowledge.
Malraux: “Now you are torturing English again. Either/or statements are true if only one element is true.”
The either/or in the question is either
A) Assisted
OR
B) took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East
Which one of those statements do you believe to be true?
Clearly that they took no action because they wanted to go to war in the ME.
It is public record that they wanted to go to war in the ME. I think that because they wanted to go to war, they did not take the threat of non-state actors seriously. Because they did not take the threat of non-state actors seriously, they ignored the threat of terrorism by groups such as AQ. Because they ignored the threat of terrorism by AQ, the did not receive enough intel or ignored the good intel that they received. Because of that lapse in intel, they took no actions to stop 9-11 from happening.
As backing evidence:
“Cheney’s admission that 9/11 caused him to reassess the threats to the nation only underscores how, for months, top officials had ignored warnings from the CIA and the NSC staff that urgent action was needed to preempt a major al-Qaeda attack.”
That sure sounds like Cheney is taking no action because he didn’t take AQ seriously.
“Somehow the administration’s leaders could not believe that al-Qaeda could have mounted such a devastating operation, so Iraqi involvement became the convenient explanation. Despite being told repeatedly that Iraq was not involved in 9/11, some, like Cheney, could not abandon the idea. Charles Duelfer of the CIA’s Iraq Survey Group recently revealed in his book, “Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq,” that high-level U.S. officials urged him to consider waterboarding specific Iraqi prisoners of war so that they could provide evidence of an Iraqi role in the terrorist attacks — a request Duelfer refused. (A recent report indicates that the suggestion came from the vice president’s office.) Nevertheless, the lack of evidence did not deter the administration from eventually invading Iraq — a move many senior Bush officials had wanted to make before 9/11.”
And here is the money shot.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/29/AR2009052901560.html
What the heck, I’ll answer Sebastian’s question:
took no action to stop the attacks *because* they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East
You have revealed another ambiguity! I would have answered “yes”, because I agree that people in the Bush Admin took no action to stop any attacks of this general sort, *because* they were so focussed on their desire for war in the ME.
It’s like, someone got into the house and trashed the place. I say, that’s because the Bush Admin. left the door unlocked. You say, you really think they left *that* door unlocked *that* night, on purpose? I say, no, they left that door unlocked *every* night, “because” they didn’t think anyone would get in that way, they were busy trying to catch Santa coming down the chimney. How do I know that? They were up on the damn roof with a net and Project for a New American Reindeer, that’s why!
So, does this make me batsh*t crazy, or not?
But Slartibartfast is neither reasonable nor articulate.
This, here, is BS, and requires an apology.
There are crazy people. Who cares? Crazy people made America great.
Before you work yourself up into a fit of depression, I suggest you learn to differentiate between people who think 9/11 was an inside job and expend effort and bile towards raising the visibility of their allegations, and people who don’t think 9/11 was an inside job but don’t find it at all implausible that the Bush administration might have stooped low enough to get out of the way and use it to start the war they wanted, given everything else we know.
It’s the difference between someone who doesn’t find it hard to believe that extraterrestrial sentient life exists, and a UFO conspiracy theorist who owns stock in tinfoil.
The first half of this paragraph is idiotic. If I get hired for a job because I have a proven track record as a manager who is good at achieving consensus and win-win situations, and I end up being put in charge of a project where one of the two stakeholder teams is completely opposed to the project in the first place and only involve themselves to the extent that they can hinder or weaken the project, no one with full command of the facts would hold me accountable for their bad faith and obstructionism.
Sebastian, I was glad to see you finally say this after repeatedly bringing up the irrelevant “assisted” phrase throughout the thread. Unfortunately with your very next comment you were back to harping on it.
I was also frustrated to see you write about people’s supposed belief in Cheney’s “being willing to just let terrorists take over a bunch of planes and kill Ted Olson’s wife”, as if anyone here were suggesting that Cheney knew more details than the terrorists themselves, including that Barbara Olson would be a victim.
Answering the question yes does not require any beliefs about assistance or about Olson’s death, and bringing them up only derails the conversation.
“It’s the difference between someone who doesn’t find it hard to believe that extraterrestrial sentient life exists, and a UFO conspiracy theorist who owns stock in tinfoil.”
No it is the difference between believing that Jews drink the blood of Gentiles and believing that they are merely shadowy controllers of world finance.
There isn’t one shred of evidence that anyone in the Bush administration had knowledge of a particular plot.
Which is what makes the belief that anyone was using the plot to try to invade the Middle East so silly.
I won’t deny that after the fact 9/11 was used as a justification to invade. You can easily argue that they did so inappropriately.
That isn’t the same thing at all as suggesting that they knew about it in advance and thought something like “I’ll just let them kill a bunch of people so that then I can invade” which is what the question says.
suggesting that they knew about it in advance and thought something like “I’ll just let them kill a bunch of people so that then I can invade” which is what the question says.
Sebastian, I’m telling you:
If I had been taking this poll, I would have thought that “people in the federal government … took no action to stop the attacks” meant, “Did Bush et al ignore and/or dismiss the ‘Bid Laden determined to strike in the US’ memo?” And the answer to that is “yes”. Not a supposition, a *fact*. That would be enough for me for the purposes of a poll. (not, mind you, a court of law)
Then I would have thought the answer to “did they want to go to war in the ME?” was also “Yes”, per PNAC. Again, not a supposition, a *fact*, a matter of record.
Then the question becomes, did the mindset that led to PNAC cause Bush et al. to dismiss the “determined to attack” memo? This, to me, is the *only* part of the question that is a matter of supposition, not fact.
And I would have said Yes, the two are connected. Give that it is a matter of record that many Bushites backed PNAC, and given that they ignored the memo, I do personally believe that these are connected, part of the same mindset.
Now, what part of this do you think is nuts? Do you disagree with me that — for the purposes of opinion polls, not the law — the memo and PNAC count as facts? Or do you disagree that they may be part of the same mindset?
Because I can’t stop:
If I had been taking this poll, I might have thought that the first half of the question was trying to elicit whether I had heard of the “Bin Laden determined to attack” memo. Similarly, I would have at least wondered if the second half was trying to find out whether I’d heard of PNAC.
“I’ll just let them kill a bunch of people so that then I can invade” which is what the question says.
Seb’s right, that’s what the question says. No point in mincing words.
And I do, in fact, find it believable that there are folks who would roll that way.
Seb’s right, that’s what the question says. No point in mincing words.
No, he isn’t. Continual assertion of that does not make it so. Where does the question address having specific knowledge?
At the beginning of the question and the end.
It is impossible to have a reason to choose to take no action to stop attacks that you don’t know about.
The question isn’t about choosing to take no actions. It is just about taking no actions. Tonight, for example, I am taking no actions to prevent a lion from eating me tomorrow. I am taking no actions because tomorrow I plan on going to the farmer’s market. Now, even though I am making this choice in ignorance about the escaped lion from the zoo, I am nonetheless not preparing for a lion attack.
Sebastian, are the people whose interpretation of the question differs from yours “bat-SH!% crazy” for interpreting it that way, or would someone be “bat-SH!% crazy” for answering yes even if they were interpreting the question that way?
Is the question about whether Obama was born in the United States really susceptible to similar confusion about what it means?
If I say that a driver took no action to avoid an oncoming car because he was asleep at the wheel, am I implying that he was aware of the oncoming car (because otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to “choose to take no action” to avoid it)?
In polling, if nowhere else, there IS such a thing as a stupid question. The one we’re parsing here is a prime example.
The depressing thing is that we’re parsing a stupid poll question for just one reason: Seb is trying hard to equate people who answered “yes” to a STUPID question about 9/11 with people who give the wrong answer to a SIMPLE question like, “Was Obama born in the US?”
Seb is refusing to distinguish between “crazy” and “resolutely ignorant”. Crazy is debatable. Resolutely ignorant is not. Crazy depends on how you parse a stupid question. Resolutely ignorant depends on how you answer a simple one.
Incidentally, here’s another poll question that I would categorize as stupid: “Is Obama doing a poor, fair, or good job as President?” Both Joe the Plumber and I might answer “poor”. What exactly would that imply? Assuming Obama wants to shift the stats toward “good”, should he abandon health care reform, or should he push for single payer?
–TP
Another factor that c/would raise at least suspicion in even reasonable people that a ‘let it happen’ (not necessarily on purpose) could be true, is that infamous sentence in the PNAC manifesto that it would take a new Pearl Harbor to achieve the goals (including multiple wars in the ME) in the forseeable future. Given that there exists a similar discussion about Pearl Harbor (and FDR’s ‘It’s important that they fire the first shot’) the bar is even lower for nagging doubts in the innocence of certain people.
Personally I (am inclined to) believe that Chain-Eye/Bush wanted an incident giving them the justification to go to war but were caught by surprise when an incident came from a totally different direction. Lower in the government there was (and still is afaict) that eternal feud between different agencies that led to (notorious and deliberate) non-sharing of info and the consequent non-connecting of dots. And there were and are people in the agencies that openly declare (now!) that they wish for a new 9/11 (preferably on an even larger scale). To make Lord Chain-Eye president in 2012, no less!!!
Disclaimer: I think Pearl Harbor was the result of primarily incompetence on the US side. I nonetheless believe that it was FDR’s goal to go to war with Japan at some later point in time and that deliberate provocation was the intended means to do it.
Btw, I love Doctor Science’s catching Santa on the roof scenario!!!
Sebastian: There isn’t one shred of evidence that anyone in the Bush administration had knowledge of a particular plot.
And nobody here is arguing that they did, Sebastian. Nor does answering “yes” to the poll question imply a belief that they did.
You can, if you’re that batpoop crazy, infer from that “yes” a tortured interpretation that they did: but as no one here aside from you is arguing that position, I’m wondering why you’re arguing at all.
The trial of September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui provided definitive proof that the U.S. government missed some clear opportunities to stop the 9/11 attacks. Those missed opportunities had nothing to do with the legal restrictions later loosened by the PATRIOT Act. It was bureaucratic hierarchies and power trips that let the Federal Bureau of Investigation ignore the carefully gathered evidence of an attack.
[…]
How the FBI Let 9/11 Happen: The smoldering gun was right there all the time.
It Usually Starts with John Ashcroft: The pre-9/11 timeline has never made less sense
The Banality of Truth: The government finally admits pre-9/11 bumbling
Rant: Unconnected Dots: Why the FBI failed to stop 9/11
The frequent Making Light comment referenced earlier was likely: “I resent the way this [Bush] administration makes me feel like a nutbar conspiracy theorist.”
Which seems apropos.
No, I am not a birther. The scale of the conspiracy one must necessarily believe in to find their complaints plausible is not feasible. Too much evidence would have to have been manufactured before anybody knew he’d be running for President, too many people would know and have to keep silent.
But insanity exists on a continuum, I’m simply asserting that the birthers are at the “makes untenable assumptions” end of the scale, not the “chews on furniture” end of it. Conspiracies DO happen, it’s just they’re generally small scale, for obvious reasons.
The reason I think they’re at that end of the scale, is that there actually have been things which could rationally be interpreted as evidence something wasn’t on the up and up. They’re weighing the balance of the evidence wrong, but they do have evidence.
Oh, and while I can’t provide my original birth certificate, I do have a certified copy, which unlike the one people keep touting as proof in Obama’s case,
1. Is of a sort Michigan doesn’t issue for people born in, say, Canada.
and,
2. Actually lists the hospital I was born in.
The bottom line is, I think the whole birther thing could have been nipped in the bud, if Obama hadn’t dragged his heels in producing the relevant proof, or if the courts had shown any interest in actually ENFORCING THE NATURAL BORN CITIZEN CLAUSE.
But neither of of these things happened, and so the birther thing developed a life of it’s own, and we’re stuck with it.
According to federal law, isn’t anyone born of American citizen parents legally a Natural Born Citizen at birth, which makes the whole birther conspiracy not just willfully ignorant and possibly insane, but irrelevant?
“dragged his heels in producing the relevant proof,”
Brett, and what do you believe is the relevant proof?
CharlesWT | September 05, 2009 at 08:12 AM,
Thank you for the links to the four articles on 9/11. Depressing reading
Nate — I don’t have the patience to delve into it myself, but if you google “natural born citizen” you will find that there’s some argument (not just recent) about what “natural born citizen” means as distinct from just “citizen” or “citizen by birth” or maybe a lot of other variations for all I know or care. (This is why, as I dimly understand just from reading ObWi, there was also some small ruckus in this regard about McCain, since he was born in the Panama Canal Zone.)
Based on past history, I’m guessing that when Brett says the courts haven’t “shown any interest in actually ENFORCING THE NATURAL BORN CITIZEN CLAUSE,” the unstated corollary would be that if they did, they would enforce his definition of the phrase. But as with lots of other things, the definition is precisely what’s at issue; before they could enforce it, they’d have to agree on what it means.
According to federal law, isn’t anyone born of American citizen parents legally a Natural Born Citizen at birth
there are also some restrictions on residency of the parents (have to have lived in the US for so many years before the birth), and the age of the parents.
so of course the birthers have all kinds of timelines and theories putting Obama’s mother out of the country just long enough to miss the deadline, etc..
for every law and clause you can find, they’ll have some (improbable) way around it.
They also claim that any possible citizenship was renounced by the filling out of a primary school application document in Indonesia by his (step)father.
Johnny Canuck: Brett, and what do you believe is the relevant proof?
Why are you asking Birther Brett? For a birther – and however far Brett runs from the label, it’s clear with everything he says that it sticks to him! – there can be no such thing as enough proof that Obama was born in the US: to them, a man like Barack Hussein Obama simply isn’t American enough to be President, and that has nothing to do with the clear documentary evidence that has been consistently provided from the first time this query arose: it’s his name and skin color that render Obama unAmerican, and thus – as Brett’s comments make clear – there’s no way that there could ever be “proof” to a birther.
I’m still waiting to find out if Sebastian — or anyone else — thinks I’m batty. Really. For science!
But *aren’t* you batty for science?
I see Jes is back to having reading comprehension problems.
What I mean by the courts enforcing the natural born citizen clause, is that when somebody who is running for President has their status as a natural born citizen challenged, the courts shouldn’t just use “standing” as an excuse to avoid the case. Have a hearing, require evidence to be provided. Settle the matter, legally, instead of looking for excuses to leave a constitutional requirement empty of force.
Honestly, I think if that had happened, McCain would have been in more trouble than Obama…
Brett’s first paragraph is presumably an attempt to claim that no, he’s not a birther – while his second paragraph then goes on to make clear that he is a birther.
is that when somebody who is running for President has their status as a natural born citizen challenged, the courts shouldn’t just use “standing” as an excuse to avoid the case.
Hahahahaha! HAAAAAhahahaha! Yeah, who cares about legal standing? Just let everybody sue everyone for everything!
Although I guess I should keep in mind that Brett is friends with the kinds of people who file nuisance liens on the homes of state and federal judges just to be dicks. That explains his aversion to the concept of legal standing.
I think we have a disagreement about the definition of “birther”. As I understand it, it’s a derisive term for people who think Obama was born outside the country, and isn’t a natural born citizen. Since I don’t believe that, I can’t possibly be a “birther”.
What do you think it means, Jes? Somebody who thinks the US Constitution should actually be enforced, even parts like the natural born citizen clause, that the political class find annoying?
Have a hearing, require evidence to be provided. Settle the matter, legally,..
you think birthers would be persuaded by something a court says ?
Brett: What do you think it means, Jes?
A birther is anyone who takes the claim that Obama was born outside the country seriously, despite the fact that it has long since ben disproved by incontrovertible documentary evidence.
Plainly, by your own testimony in this thead, you are a birther.
But I have taken it seriously, and rejected it. Apparently you’re requiring that I have rejected it before taking it seriously?
If that’s what you mean by a “birther”, I’ll wear the label, and be proud of it.
“you think birthers would be persuaded by something a court says ? “
I think that some fraction of them would, particularly since such a hearing would have involved the production of evidence, and testimony under oath, which would lend a lot more credibility to the conclusion. It would also have somewhat laid to rest the (justified!) suspicion on the part of birthers that it’s not so much that Obama was clearly born in the US, as that the political class think it’s irrelevant whether he was, never mind what the Constitution might have to say about it.
Brett isn’t a birfer. Brett just thinks Obama should produce the birf certificate. That’s all.
Right?
Yeah, essentially: I think he should have asked the Hawaiian authorities to release a certified copy of the birth certificate, maybe place it on public view, rather than the “certificate of live birth” which Hawaii will issue for people born abroad, when the issue first arose. I think conspiracy theories are best killed right at the beginning, with an overwhelming display of evidence.
Unfortunately, the usual response to conspiracy theories is to contemptuously dismiss them, rather than conclusively refute them. That this is what you’d do if the theory were true is not lost on the theorizers.
Brett: But I have taken it seriously, and [am still arguing that the birthers have a case which Obama has yet to answer]
Fixed that for you.
I mean, come on, Brett: your entire comment at September 05, 2009 at 05:04 PM is totally birther. You couldn’t have made that argument if you weren’t taking the “birther case” seriously, ergo: you are a birther.
Why isn’t the certification of birth, the one that says that it is legally prima facia evidence, the one that lists his place of birth as Honolulu, the one that is certified, the one that has been given to several sources for verification, doing exactly what you want? As near as I can tell, Obama did exactly what you want.
malraux: Why isn’t the certification of birth, the one that says that it is legally prima facia evidence, the one that lists his place of birth as Honolulu, the one that is certified, the one that has been given to several sources for verification, doing exactly what you want?
Because Brett’s a birther, Malraux. Obama’s birth certificate isn’t enough for birthers (and nor is the additional documentary evidence which has also been produced, contemporary birth announcements in Hawai’ian newspapers) because no documentary evidence can do away with Obama’s skin color or his name.
Obama’s birth certificate isn’t enough for birthers (and nor is the additional documentary evidence which has also been produced, contemporary birth announcements in Hawai’ian newspapers) because no documentary evidence can do away with Obama’s skin color or his name.
That’s what I don’t get. Its very clear what distinguishes those like me on the left who feel that prior to (and afterwards really) 9-11, the Bush administration ignored small terrorist groups from the truthers who believe that the administration not only knew about 9-11 and actively aided and abetted the attacks. But with the birthers, the hard and soft versions seem rather similar. The only difference seems to be what they think the results of the necessary court cases would be.
People keep spelling birfer wrong.
Unfortunately, the usual response to conspiracy theories is to contemptuously dismiss them, rather than conclusively refute them. That this is what you’d do if the theory were true is not lost on the theorizers.
Brett, in most conspiracy theories, the lack of proof is part of the proof there really IS a very good conspiracy hiding things. So for the birthers, if conclusively refuting proof was presented, it would just mean that obviously, the conspiracy that put Obama’s mom on the Concorde on the way to Ugana when he was born and dozens, if not hundreds of people involved in fabricating evidence to prove that a kid being raised by a single mother was really born in the US so some day later
he could become president.
The entire chain of events and motivations for the number of people involved is already so convoluted and ridiculous, do you really think any proof provided by “authorities” would prove otherwise, rather than just prove those authorities were in on the conspiracy?
I actually think that this discussion has illustrated a difference in perspective in conservative and liberal/left viewpoints, or at least argumentation. Sebastian and now Brett argue, as far as I can tell, that their opinions represent what they feel is the concerns of the center of the opinion spectrum. Sebastian identifies opinions he thinks are insane, making himself the sensible middle and now Brett twists himself into knots explaining why birther concerns are simply reasonable and rational, as well as his oft displayed assertions that his reading of a law or amendment the only possible one. On the other hand, I get the impression that most of the left/liberals here would gladly acknowledge that they are on the left side, away from the center. This leads to an asymmetry in argumentation that I don’t really see any way around.
On the other hand, I get the impression that most of the left/liberals here would gladly acknowledge that they are on the left side, away from the center.
Reality has a liberal bias.
It’s a very badly, or rather maliciously, constructed question. Of course, no one could assist in the attacks unless they specificcally knew about them in advance. And it is pretty loony to suppose, without any evidence at all, that anyone in the government did so. But someone could “do nothing to prevent the attacks” simply by neglecting the warning signs that something was brewing, even if they knew nothing specific. So the presuppositions of the two alternatives clash. Throw in the stuff about the motive — desire for war — and you have a nice little stew calculated to make the respondents look more kooky than they are.
“Reality has a liberal bias.”
Good one.
This whole birther thing reminds me of how the right got its panties in a knot when Chief Justice Roberts flubbed up the words to Obama taking the Oath of Office, which required a do-over, because, hell, the man would never have been considered the legitimate President.
Then came the birth certificate charade.
And, more recently, the protests of Obama giving school children a speech about the merits of hard work and education, kind of like coming out for moms, hot dogs and apple pie.
I wonder what a birther’s definition of patriotism is.
Very good thread, btw.
Assisting without knowledge is perfectly possible according to the anti-terrorist laws ushered in by the Bush administration. Otherwise it would be ridiculous to prosecute citizens as actively aiding terrorists for e.g. donating money to a (perfectly legal) organisation in the past that has only recently and afterwards be declared terrorist or in support of terrorists. I remember similar attempts to hold sellers of legal products (like tools*) responsible for crimes involving those products (and not requiring knowledge on part of the sellers).
Googling “unwittingly assisted” yields about 3000 hits, adding “crime” still leaves 950.
A more (legally) sane term that definitely applies to the Chain-Eye/Bush administration in connection with 9/11 is “criminal negligence”.
*but under NO circumstances firearms!!!
“The only difference seems to be what they think the results of the necessary court cases would be.”
You write that as though the difference between, “Obama is constitutionally unqualified for his office!” and “Obama should be required to prove that he’s constitutionally qualified for his office! (And I think he can do so.)” was trivial.
Brett: You write that as though the difference between, “Obama is constitutionally unqualified for his office!” and “Obama should be required to prove that he’s constitutionally qualified for his office! (And I think he can do so.)” was trivial.
But Obama has already proved he’s constitutionally qualified for this office – he was born in Hawai, and he was over 30 in January 2009. His birth certificate proves that, and it has been produced.
There is no significant difference between people who claim they’re sure Obama was born outside the US, and the people who claim Obama has not yet proved he was not born outside the US: both are arguing against the plain and documented facts.
You write that as though the difference between, “Obama is constitutionally unqualified for his office!” and “Obama should be required to prove that he’s constitutionally qualified for his office! (And I think he can do so.)” was trivial.
You really mean “Obama should be required to prove to my arbitrary criteria that he’s constitutionally qualified for his office!” He released his birth certificate. He has a passport. Those prove the case and have been public info for a long time.
Sheesh. The court rejected the lawsuit demanding that Obama produce evidence to the court on this score, not on the basis that such evidence was already public, but on the basis that even if Obama wasn’t a natural born citizen the people filing the suit would suffer no ‘injury’ that the court had to take notice off.
They didn’t rule the requirements had been satisfied, they ruled the requirements unenforceable in court.
Brett tries to explain, in his incoherent birther way, why the Supreme Court of the US should take any time out of their schedule to examine the birth certificate of someone known to have been born inside the US for the purpose of confirming it to be an American birth certificate.
The court rejected the lawsuit because the people bringing it were complete loons with no case whatsoever to answer, Brett: it’s just that birthers like you have a hard time understanding how someone named Barack Hussein Obama, with his skin color, really can be just naturally an American citizen.
Brett, I’d like to respond to your post of September 05, 2009 at 09:15 AM
and in particular:
“But insanity exists on a continuum, I’m simply asserting that the birthers are at the “makes untenable assumptions” end of the scale, not the “chews on furniture” end of it. Conspiracies DO happen, it’s just they’re generally small scale, for obvious reasons.
“The reason I think they’re at that end of the scale, is that there actually have been things which could rationally be interpreted as evidence something wasn’t on the up and up. They’re weighing the balance of the evidence wrong, but they do have evidence.”
As I understand your position, you believe that a weighing of the evidence would establish that Obama was born in Hawaii and is therefore constitutionally eligible to be President but you are troubled: You perceive that the political class thinks the constitutional requirement is irrelevant and hasn’t treated the matter with sufficient seriousness, including the courts;.
The degree to which an assumption is tenable is dependent on the information you have available and your ability to understand the implications of the evidence.
I have not gone back to verify my memory, but I have paid attention to the issue over the last year.
If someone handed me their birth certificate, (or if the issue were other common situations claimed they were the executor of an estate, or that they owned a corporation), I would think it better evidence if the relevant jurisdiction provided a current certification of the birth, (of the jurisdiction’s recognition of the executor, or that the corporation existed and was in good standing). The Obama camp did this in the case of his birth. If these were good faith inquiries it should have ended there. The government of Hawaii responded. Any information over and beyond what the Hawaii certification disclosed is irrelevant to answering the constitutional question unless someone (which you say you don’t ) suspects some massive fraud perpetrated on or by the government of Hawaii.
The fact that Hawaii had a different process than some other states: called the birth certificate by a different name, doesn’t append a photocopy of the original document to their certification, doesn’t change the fact that Hawaii issued such a document to Obama. Their system was probably adopted to save money in storage, retrieval and production costs, all of which you would think anyone concerned about government being too costly and wasteful should applaud..
As I understand it, Hawaii provides certain benefits to “natives”. They have to trace their ancestry back for several generations to qualify. The birth certificate of the individual is not sufficient proof to qualify.
Someone reading this, either out of ignorance, or wilful misinterpretation said even Hawaii doesn’t recognize the document Obama submitted. This statement was true to qualify for the native program; but not true for what one usually uses a birth certificate for (proving identity and citizenship to get a passport).
I suspect that Hawaii doesn’t issue certificates for people born in Ontario or Michigan, but has provided documentation for people born on islands which lacked the bureaucracy to issue birth certificates. I also understand that such documents would not list the place of birth as Hawaii.
You feel a Court should have considered this seriously. Courts do not like being made fools of or doing what they consider to be a waste of time; hence the standing rules. I feel very confident that if there were the slightest real possibility that Obama’s birth certificate was a forgery or otherwise improper that someone with standing – whether it might have been Hilary Clinton, or John McCain or the respective parties would have raised the issue.
Moreover, the officials from the Hawaii government – which I understand has a Republican governor- went the extra mile to say that they had checked their records and indeed the relevant original record (unclear whether on paper , microfilm or other media) had been checked.
You are annoyed that the refusal of Obama’s legal advisors to take some kind of extraordinary step to request Hawaii to produce the long form original, and to resist the court challenges, has made right wing conservatives look crazy. But the way legal processes work, once you grant the other side standing, you may be opening yourself up to cross examination, production of documents- wasting time and money.
The people filing the law suits were either going on a fishing expedition: they hoped the long form birth certificate would reveal something that would be embarrassing , or would reveal an incredible conspiracy involving Hawaii bureaucrats.
From my perspective, if you understand these things, to continue to justify the birthers moves puts you on an insanity scale and moves you along your insanity scale away from just untenable assumptions, or makes it impossible to see the arguments as made in good faith.
Doctor Science, if given the evidence we have before us at this time, you believe that Bush administration operatives intentionally allowed Al Qaeda to attack the US, yes, on this issue, you are being paranoid in a fashion that is crazy.
Now humans aren’t nearly as rational as we like to think, so that isn’t as horrible a thing to say as many people think (and I’m quite sure there are areas where I’m not rational). But you aren’t being rational if you believe that with the current evidence.
Doctor Science, if given the evidence we have before us at this time, you believe that Bush administration operatives intentionally allowed Al Qaeda to attack the US, yes, on this issue, you are being paranoid in a fashion that is crazy.
What “current evidence” are you arguing from?
Prior knowledge that attacks were being planned?
Actionable intelligence as to specific people and places?
Deliberate obstruction of investigations by senior staff in the FBI?
A clear pattern of executive operatives f**king with the intelligence community to make their case?
I’m with you when you say there is no clear and conclusive proof, but I don’t buy “paranoid in a fashion that is crazy”.
Feel free to write me off as a nutjob if you like but I’m with Dr Science.
I’m actually pretty far beyond Dr Science, I find it believable that folks in government allowed the attacks to go forward not through neglect, or tunnel vision, or due to their “mindset”, but because they thought it would provide a provocation that would further their political ends.
I put the odds somewhere between “possible” and “likely”.
I hold this opinion because of everything that I know, from the public domain, of the people and institutions involved.
It is especially ironic that Sebastian should assert Now humans aren’t nearly as rational as we like to think, so that isn’t as horrible a thing to say as many people think (and I’m quite sure there are areas where I’m not rational). But you aren’t being rational if you believe that with the current evidence when for years he asserted that just because there was absolutely no evidence for mass numbers of late-term abortions being carried out across the US, this didn’t mean they weren’t happening.
(Is this a belated acknowledgement, Sebastian, that with regard to abortion you are not rational?)
I’m with Russell.
Yeah, I’ve pointed that out to Sebastian, including in this very thread, and his response will be that the evidence that would prove him right is being suppressed or is not allowed to be examined. Which is both a) a typical symptom of exactly the kind of conspiracy-theory craziness he’s accusing others of here, and b) especially ironic in contrast to the topic of 9/11.
Johny, I find it offensive that the courts don’t think a US citizen suffers an “injury” if the Constitution is violated, unless the violation hurts them in particular, more than everybody else. Violate one person’s right, you’ve got a court case. Violate EVERYONE’S right that the Constitution be followed, and you’re out of luck? It’s just an excuse to avoid enforcing parts of the Constitution the political class find inconvenient.
We don’t enforce rules in the sort of casual way you suggest, we do it by procedure, and there isn’t any procedure in place for enforcing the natural born citizen clause. It’s simply ignored. Ignored like many other inconvenient parts of the highest law of the land.
That’s a problem, if we’re going to pretend to be a nation with the rule of law.
Yes, Brett, the greatest threat to the rule of law is the fact the courts refused to help a fishing expedition incited by people who concocted an elaborate theory to explain how Obama couldn’t possibly be a natural born citizen.
That’s a problem, if we’re going to pretend to be a nation with the rule of law.
Brett, do you think that Obama’s not a citizen?
He was challenged on it, he produced the birth certificate. End of freaking story.
I hold this opinion because of everything that I know, from the public domain, of the people and institutions involved.
I’ll put a point on this.
Spent some time over the last few days listening to Sibel Edmonds’ testimony under oath. I wandered there via the link to TAC in the blogroll. If you haven’t heard Edmonds’ testimony here, or elsewhere, you should invest the time and check it out. She’s a pretty freaking credible witness.
Add her thoughts to the Church commission stuff, Iran-Contra, and every scrap of information the ACLU and anyone else with an interest in transparency has been able to drag, kicking and screaming, out of the Bush years. Add the fact that Bush would not appear before the 9/11 Commission on the record, let alone under oath, and would not appear without Uncle Dick by his side.
Add in whatever you like, there’s plenty to pick from.
I’m looking at 30 or more years of deliberate, organized, premeditated lies and criminality, with fresh stuff added to pile every damned day.
Let’s take the possibilities in descending order of likelihood.
Did the intelligence community drop the ball through incompetence and turf wars that would make the Keystone Cops look good?
F**k yeah.
Did the executive drop the ball because they had “other priorities”?
F**k yeah.
Were active investigations into the presence and actions of Islamist terrorists in the US leading up to 9/11 suppressed at high levels within the FBI?
F**k yeah.
Were high-ranking people within the executive highly invested in pursuing war in the middle east, specifically against Iraq?
With bells on.
Were high-ranking people within the executive involved in generally f**king with the intelligence community to further their various political agendas?
Only every day.
Were high-ranking people within the executive joined at the hip with people who were, at most, one or two degrees of separation from principals in the 9/11 attacks?
Why yes, they were.
What’s the likelihood that someone in government deliberately interfered with, or deliberately failed to act on, investigations into the 9/11 attacks for money, where “money” can mean anything from a direct bribe to horsesh*t like “protecting vital business interests”?
Or to avoid embarrassing or compromising friends, or diplomatic contacts or relations, or business friends or relations, or perhaps just other intelligence resources?
I put it at likely.
How about to further their own domestic or geo-political agendas?
Somewhere between possible and likely.
Call me crazy, dude.
I hammer on this because as far as I’m concerned an equivalence between folks like me and folks like the birthers is crap.
Obama was challenged. He produced the documents. End of story.
We haven’t even begun to plumb the depths of the corrupt sh*tpile of the executive and intelligence communities of the Bush years.
That’s how I see it.
Thanks –
Brett, if Obama hadn’t produced the document proving his birth in Hawaii, he wouldn’t have even got the nomination. You are being offended over an imaginary non-enforcement of the Constitution.
Jesurgilsac says: “I’m with russell”.
I’m with russell too, and at 10:48 too. I’ve actually been a lot with russell and Jesurgilsac lately. But russell nails it time after time.
“Yeah, I’ve pointed that out to Sebastian, including in this very thread, and his response will be that the evidence that would prove him right is being suppressed or is not allowed to be examined. Which is both a) a typical symptom of exactly the kind of conspiracy-theory craziness he’s accusing others of here, and b) especially ironic in contrast to the topic of 9/11.”
The funny thing is that you almost certainly can’t decide if this should be an argument:
FOR the proposition that abortion statistics that aren’t kept mean something by the fact that they aren’t kept or;
AGAINST the proposition that it is crazy to believe that one of the most investigated incidents in recent American history really involved Bush administration officials intentionally allowing NYC to be attacked and/or planes to be hijacked.
You’re so focused on attacking me personally, that you almost forget which side of the argument you’re on.
I could have sworn I left those goal posts right here, but they seem to be way the hell over there now.
Mindreading foul, 10 yard penalty and replay of down. I know precisely which side of the argument I’m on, Sebastian: The side on which, by calling other people “crazy” for believing things for which there isn’t necessarily evidence, you’re so deeply into pot-kettle territory that you’re probably hearing an echo.
Having a passport is not a qualifier, as far as I can tell. Neither of my daughters is legally able to gain the office of President, but each of them has a US passport, and they both are US citizens.
Actually, I’m gonna go the other direction than Sebastian.
To think, given all that we know about the Bush administration and 9/11, that people in the administration took any action to prevent 9/11 is crazy. They manifestly didn’t, out of ignorance, laziness, criminal negligence, “other priorities” (like say, invading the middle east), or for sheer political exploitation, is crazy.
“Mindreading foul, 10 yard penalty and replay of down.”
I learned all my mindreading from you Phil.
But hey, prove me wrong. Explictly show you aren’t one of the crazy ones on 9/11…
Thanks in advance. 🙂
I have no intention of proving you right or wrong on any topic whatsoever regarding me, Sebastian. If you think I’m concerned whether or not you think I’m “one of the crazy ones,” don’t lose any sleep over it.
I merely intend to keep calling baloney where I see it, and for you to be calling others “crazy” for believing something without evidence is 100% pure beef baloney.
Nate, I would say that an argument that the government missed out on stopping 9/11 out of general incompetence is at least colorable. Though suggesting that the Bush administration was specifically more incompentent than the FBI/CIA are in general is probably wrong.
In my opinion that is a bit naive about how competent governments are/should be (unless they are entrapping or engaging in a direct sting operation the police really aren’t that good at stopping specific crimes before they happen) and relies on hindsight bias (nearly every major operation has places where if only the right person had been thinking about exactly the right thing at exactly the right time, it could have been stopped. The problem is that sorting out those things from the useless things is much easier in hindsight than it is in foresight). The thing is, I’m not even sure that is real incompetence. Compare to the security theater we go through on flights now. In order to really stop things from getting on to the plane, it would be much more stringent. But that would also be ridiculously invasive (especially considering that the most important change is mindset–passengers don’t just sit by and figure it will all be over in a few hours). We could eviscerate civil liberties and maybe be more effective, but the thousands of false positives would create many of the same problems.
Believing that signs were missed is run-of-the-mill. Furthermore, there is lots of evidence of that. We know about pilot training where someone the guy is much more interested in navigating and not that interested in landing. That looks like an obvious sign in light of what we know now. At the time it might have looked much more like someone who just wants to dodge the most difficult part. Hindsight reveals it as telling. At-the-time-sight suggests the guy in the class being an idiot.
“Having a passport is not a qualifier, as far as I can tell. Neither of my daughters is legally able to gain the office of President, but each of them has a US passport, and they both are US citizens.”
Having a passport is proof that the government considers Obama’s proof of citizenship adequate. Since his age isn’t under question, and there is no record of Obama being naturalized, he could only be a citizen by birth. It is evidence that his birth certificate meets the requirements that the government would have proving your citizenship by birth.
“Though suggesting that the Bush administration was specifically more incompentent than the FBI/CIA are in general is probably wrong.”
Except it’s freaking DOCUMENTED, that the Bush administration transferred people in the FBI/CIA from ACTIVE investigations of Al Queda and terrorists in general, in favor of trying to dig up stuff on Iraq/Iran.
It’s DOCUMENTED that the day of, high-level Bushies were trying to find evidence of Iraq being involved in 9/11.
Saying that “Oh, well, their obsession with a war in the middle east didn’t keep them from doing anything about 9/11” is crazy. Flat out nuts denial.
Yeah, if only the CIA had thought to brief Bush about the threat, and he brushed off the warnings, then maybe you could argue he was more incompetent.
Adequate for issuing a US passport, certainly. I’m not sure what the passport adds that the BC doesn’t already have, though.
“Adequate for issuing a US passport, certainly. I’m not sure what the passport adds that the BC doesn’t already have, though.”
Which should be adequate for any reasonable standard. The passport doesn’t add much, but does show that the BC does offer prima facie evidence that Obama was born in Hawaii.
“Yeah, if only the CIA had thought to brief Bush about the threat, and he brushed off the warnings, then maybe you could argue he was more incompetent.”
So let me get caught up here…
the CIA is incompetent
the administration was incompetent
despite both of these groups being incompetent they were able to also be actively ahead of the AQ attack so they could purposely allow it..
And all of this was caused by high level officials actively working with AQ operatives
So really they conspired all along to have America attacked, in an incompetent yet highly effective way, so they could go to war with Iraq, invade Afghanistan and in general cause mayhem in the world at the expense of thousands of US civilian caualties. Yet despite their incompetence we just haven’t pinned it on them yet.
Did I get that right?
At-the-time-sight suggests the guy in the class being an idiot.
Sebastian, this characterization does no justice to what we actually know about the cases you’re discussing.
We can get into the gory details if you like, but suffice it to say that folks *at the time* found the behavior of the guys in the pilot classes not just odd, but extremely suspicious. By “folks at the time” I don’t just mean people in intelligence and law enforcement, I mean (frex) the folks teaching the damned classes.
It wasn’t just a regrettable oversight that’s sadly oh-so-clear in hindsight. It was ignoring a big, bright red flag, and that was quite clear to a lot of people at the time.
Marty,
No. My quote should not be attached to the others/conclusion. I do not believe those things, and my comment was strictly about incompetence/myopia, not intentionality.
Marty: Let’s say we have a large organization, like a government.
One group, perhaps the guys up top, decides war with the middle east is more important than investigating terrorism suspects, so tells the CIA/FBI to look into non-existent WMD, rather than chasing possible terrorist plots.
So then the spread-thin “intelligence” guys aren’t able to follow up on the guys they’d been watching, and leads that are given to them. But there’s enough going on they still give the honchos in charge a briefing about how terrorists are “determined to strike” in their country. The honchos brush it off. Why? Maybe they figured it wasn’t a big deal. Maybe they were thinking it was just things like the first attempted WTC bomb, or hijackings/blowing up airliners, or something like that. And certainly there’s NO way that these guys could have considered “Well, that’d be tragic and all, but we want to invade Iraq, and if something like that happened, maybe we could blame it on Iraq.” Their actions afterward make it obvious they could never have considered something so crass, and show how important American lives are to them!
“Marty,
No. My quote should not be attached to the others/conclusion. I do not believe those things, and my comment was strictly about incompetence/myopia, not intentionality.”
Sorry Eric, I was just reading through.
I think though I could find a similar quote from one of the others.
Did I get that right?
Yeah Marty, that’s right. Your analysis is spot on.
I think though I could find a similar quote from one of the others.
Feel free to use any of mine.
“Did I get that right?
Yeah Marty, that’s right. Your analysis is spot on.
I think though I could find a similar quote from one of the others.
Feel free to use any of mine.”
Thanks, I just wanted to see how really self contradictory this logic was. They were amazingly successful for being so incompetent as far as I can tell.
My suggestion would be to say they were incompetent or brilliantly evil, but I think you should pick one.
“Yeah, if only the CIA had thought to brief Bush about the threat, and he brushed off the warnings, then maybe you could argue he was more incompetent.”
Pure hindsight bias. There were hundreds of things that the CIA briefed Bush on as threats. And in fact the worry that Iraq was getting nuclear weapons was one of them and was much more prominent (because of Saddam’s response to Clinton, which is rather difficult to pin on the Bush administration). I know it is convenient to act as if the run up to war in Iraq was all Bush, but the bombing started under Clinton. Al Qaeda was seen by both administrations as one threat among many threats, and never the most important one until after 9/11.
For all of you who are so suspicious, do you also suspect the British government of allowing the July 7 subway bombings? There are some of the same hindsight missteps there too (see Luton cell breakup for instance).
Marty: What’s to say that some of “they” were incompetent, and others were evil? And some were both?
Seriously, the point isn’t that the Bush administration planned 9/11, but they CERTAINLY did nothing, and it’s plausible that some of the people involved may have deliberately done “nothing” to the point of ignoring important evidence. And the largest reason they did nothing? Because they were obsessed with a war in the middle east. And if they figured the attacks were going to be much less dramatic, and “only” hundreds would have died, that could have been used to get the war they wanted. Which is exactly what they DID do with 9/11, they kept trying to link Iraq and 9/11, Iraq and terrorists, Iraq and BSoDs, Iraq and burnt cookies, Iraq and everything evil that was going to come and blow US cities up.
So you’re shocked, SHOCKED, that people suspect that the same crew that did that, and has shown such concern over the lives of American soldiers and Afghan/Iraqi civilians might have figured that a couple hundred people dead in a car bomb or an airliner attack was worth the price?
No, I don’t know if anyone did or didn’t deliberately ignore evidence specifically to start a war, but I could certainly see it being possible, considering what they DID blatantly do in public. And considering many of the US’s previous wars and intelligence “plans”. (“Remember the Maine!” Gulf of Tonkin, Operation Northwoods)
My suggestion would be to say they were incompetent or brilliantly evil, but I think you should pick one.
I don’t subscribe to the idea that the Bush admin purposely allowed 9/11, but it doesn’t require a great deal of competence to allow something to happen. You need only not try so hard to stop it. It’s actually easier than stopping it. You don’t have to actively collaborate in some highly coordinated fashion with those who are sufficiently motivated to get the job done on their own. It doesn’t take a mastermind to look the other way.
My suggestion would be to say they were incompetent or brilliantly evil, but I think you should pick one.
Thanks for the suggestion.
Who is the “they” you refer to?
The question on the table refers to “people in government”.
How many does it have to be to be “people”?
What job description and title do they have to have to be “in government”?
What behavior is required of them to qualify as “took no action”?
What intent is required to qualify as “because they wanted the United States to go to war in the middle east”?
That’s the bar.
Marty: So really they conspired all along to have America attacked, in an incompetent yet highly effective way, so they could go to war with Iraq, invade Afghanistan and in general cause mayhem in the world at the expense of thousands of US civilian caualties. Yet despite their incompetence we just haven’t pinned it on them yet.
Consider what happened when senior figures in the Bush administration outed Valerie Plame, a covert CIA agent, apparently to punish her husband for openly saying that when Bush claimed in SOTU 2003 that the US had evidence linking Iraq to yellowcake sales in Niger, Bush was lying.
Plame was outed in 2003. The evidence pointed right up to the White House. Nearly four years later, a man was convicted: Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff, on one count of obstruction of justice, one count of making false statements to federal investigators, and two counts of perjury. I. Lewis Libby Jr spent not one hour in jail for any of those crimes: George W. Bush, in his sole, solitary example of executive clemency in all his years as Governor and President, commuted his sentence without pardoning him. (Had he been pardoned, he could not have taken the Fifth had he been summoned to give evidence in any other trial.)
A crime was committed on the public stage – a horribly damaging crime. Legally treason, if it were committed by any of a handful of people who knew Valerie Plame’s covert status – and among that handful of people, Dick Cheney.
Say what you like about the Bush administration, the one area in which they were proven to be extremely competent was in avoiding being charged, tried, convicted, or jailed for any of their crimes – even those they pretty much committed in public and the whole world knows they’d done it. (I mean, that dodge of Cheney’s when he
drunkenlyshot his friend in the face and nearly killed him, of making sure no one got near him to administer a breathalyzer test until after this would no longer be admissable as evidence: then getting his friend to apologize for being shot? Genius.)It’s a documented fact that Bush & Co ignored all the evidence that they were literally handed that there was going to be a terrorist attack in the US in September.
It’s a documented fact that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney refused to give evidence to the 911 Commission unless they could do so in private, not under oath, and together.
It’s a documented fact that the Bush administration literally fell on 9/11 like a sweet dessert and pasted it across the world as a justification for making war on Iraq.
It’s a crazy world, Marty, where these things can happen and Americans can say “Hey, you’re crazy for remembering what really happened, not what ought to have happened!” but so it is: reality has a documented liberal bias.
“It doesn’t take a mastermind to look the other way.”
The problem is you aren’t distinguishing between looking the other way because they were looking at something else (priorities that seem misplaced in retrospect) and seeing the problem and choosing to look the other way so that the attack would happen and they could use it as an excuse to start a war in the Middle East.
Clearly Al Qaeda wasn’t as high a priority as we wish it had been.
That isn’t the question. The question was whether they let the attacks happen so that the successful attacks could then be used as an excuse to start a war in the Middle East.
There is no evidence for that proposition.
There also isn’t evidence of some sort of coverup to hide the evidence for such a proposition.
You can believe it if you want, but it isn’t a rational belief.
And again, did the British Government ‘allow’ the July 7 attacks? Why don’t you suspect them? They even had the warnings of seeing the 9/11 attacks AND the Madrid train bombing. They had tens of thousands of warnings about possible terrorist attacks between 2002 and 2005. They also had a tiny country to deal with compared to the US and a MUCH more permissive government surveillance regime. What the heck was wrong with them?
I repeat, believing the Bush administration didn’t not do anything about 9/11, because they wanted a war in the middle east, is crazy.
(Sorry for the double negative)
The question was whether they let the attacks happen so that the successful attacks could then be used as an excuse to start a war in the Middle East.
No, I don’t believe that was the question. The question was if they did nothing because they wanted a ME war. ie the cause was that they wanted a ME war (ie attacks on saddam’s nuclear plans) and the effect was that they did nothing to stop 9-11.
Or we can keep moving the goalposts.
Sebastian, the example of the Brits on 7/7 has no bearing on the question we’re discussing.
The question is what people in the American government might, or might not, have done.
Successful attacks could have occurred, in either country, with or without people in the respective governments intentionally allowing them to go forward.
In other words, there’s no need to demonstrate that folks in the UK government intentionally allowed attacks to happen in order to argue that folks in the American government did, or may have.
It’s also not necessary to provide concrete documentary proof that specific individuals in the US government intentionally allowed attacks to go forward before you can find that claim believable.
You are correct, there is not to my knowledge a smoking gun demonstrating that people in the US government deliberately allowed the attacks to go forward.
Given the history of the people involved, the history of our intelligence and foreign policy agencies, and the fanatic secrecy of the Bush executive in particular, I simply find it credible that there are people who would have done so, and who may well have done so.
In fact, I don’t find it a stretch.
Perhaps you can explain why you find it beyond the pale?
Sebastian: The problem is you aren’t distinguishing between looking the other way because they were looking at something else (priorities that seem misplaced in retrospect) and seeing the problem and choosing to look the other way so that the attack would happen and they could use it as an excuse to start a war in the Middle East.
No, I think you’re the one that is carefully trying not to make distinctions.
And again, did the British Government ‘allow’ the July 7 attacks?
Wow, there’s a jump. I suppose you could fairly say that in the UK’s regrettable system of discretion in government, the fact that there is no evidence that Tony Blair was warned of a major terrorist strike in London in July, does not mean that he wasn’t warned, and we’ll find out that he was only in fifty to a hundred years time. We do know, thanks to the US’s praiseworthy openness, that Bush was warned – and did nothing.
But there is documentary evidence that London’s emergency services were, in fact, all set and prepared to respond if there was a terrorist attack in the London Underground – which directly accounted for the minimal casualties. Hope for the best, plan and prepare for the worst, is an attitude that saves lives.
Preparation and readiness saves lives: imagine how many lives would have been saved, for example, if the emergency services in New York had known that the Towers would fall within a couple of hours of the planes striking them, because the engineering math for that specific disaster had already been calculated and was available.
And after the WTC fell. Imagine if there were a government body in the US especially tasked with figuring out where in the US a terrorist strike would cause maximum damage, and how best to plan, prepare, and react if such an attack happened. For example, such a government body could have looked at the earth levees in New Orleans, figured that bombs placed there would destroy a major American city, and had a plan in place for what to do if the levees broke. The advantage of such planning would be obvious if a natural disaster hit, especially a hurricane which would give several days warning, rather than hours, allowing everyone in the city to be saved.
It’s pretty obvious – it’s documented – that the Bush administration did none of these things.
The July 7 attacks hit a London whose city government had planned, prepared, and practiced what they would do if such an attack happened – with the full support of the national government.
Russel,
You set the bar much broader than that. I picked the quotes I did with purpose as they circle around “the Administration” and “the FBI/CIA” being both incompetent and purposefully complicit. One or the other may make sense or not. Both don’t. If you believe they were purposefully complicit then quit calling them inept. It would have taken an incredible strategy, with great foresight and superb execution to pull that off without there being a dozen smpoking guns. IMVHO
Correction: Bush pardoned 189 people and commuted the sentences of 11 others.
Imagine if there were a government body in the US especially tasked with figuring out where in the US a terrorist strike would cause maximum damage, and how best to plan, prepare, and react if such an attack happened.
Read’em and weep, sister.
Marty: It would have taken an incredible strategy, with great foresight and superb execution to pull that off without there being a dozen smpoking guns. IMVHO
And yet, I see you, Sebastian, and Von standing in the smoke from the dozen smoking guns that show us that Bush and Cheney had been warned that there was going to be a big terrorist strike in the US in September and did nothing – and you’re telling us you cannot see any smoke or any smoking guns, even though, to our reality-based vision, you appear to be choking and spluttering on the smoke-filled air?
Marty, the Bush administration didn’t need “incredible strategy, with great foresight and superb execution” – they just needed enough loyal partisans to say they couldn’t see any of the evidence and the people pointing it out must be crazy.
The problem is you aren’t distinguishing between looking the other way because they were looking at something else (priorities that seem misplaced in retrospect) and seeing the problem and choosing to look the other way so that the attack would happen and they could use it as an excuse to start a war in the Middle East.
I think you need to re-read my comment, Sebastian. I don’t think they purposely let it happen, as I stated in my comment. I was responding specifically to Marty’s argument regarding the dichotomy of incompetence versus evil brilliance. I’m simply saying exactly what you quoted me saying and nothing more, irrespective of what I do or do not believe they did. I thought I was clear about that.
This same sort of thing happened on another thread where I stated why I thought someone’s argument wasn’t a good one and was responded to as though I took the opposite position.
My lead-in: I don’t subscribe to the idea that the Bush admin purposely allowed 9/11…
I know it is convenient to act as if the run up to war in Iraq was all Bush, but the bombing started under Clinton. Al Qaeda was seen by both administrations as one threat among many threats, and never the most important one until after 9/11.
But the threat was taken more seriously in the Clinton administration. That’s not perfect hindsight, that’s from trustworthy insider accounts from people like Dick Clarke and Paul O’Neill.
And I’m not sure about your point re: convenience of the run up to war. Bush’s first order of foreign policy biz when he got in was war with Iraq. It was the central topic during the first principals meeting. It was also the first topic discussed on 9/11.
Clinton was considerably less interested in war with Iraq. Notably, he didn’t actually launch an invasion.
“And yet, I see you, Sebastian, and Von standing in the smoke from the dozen smoking guns that show us that Bush and Cheney had been warned that there was going to be a big terrorist strike in the US in September and did nothing – and you’re telling us you cannot see any smoke or any smoking guns, even though, to our reality-based vision, you appear to be choking and spluttering on the smoke-filled air?”
I don’t agree with this but it is a great line.
I feel like I am standing in the aftermath of the OK Corral or in a scene from a Clint Eastwood western coming out of the smoke with the bad guy staring in disbelief.
I assert that your smoking gun does not support Russell’s belief, or I guess yours, that they weree actively complicit in 9/11, or even consciously passively complicit. Only that they didn’t think it was a credible immediate threat, which they have admitted all along.
I have to say that’s the first time I’ve heard that there was a specific warning about September. Do you have a cite for this?
“Clinton was considerably less interested in war with Iraq.”
We’ve defined acts of war down rather considerably when repeatedly bombing the capital city doesn’t count.
You set the bar much broader than that.
Actually, I did not. In fact, it’s not my bar at all, it’s von’s.
Allow me to quote von:
in one poll, nearly half of Democrats thought it very likely (22.6%) or somewhat likely (28.2%) that “[p]eople in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the [sic] United States to go to war in the Middle East.” These are all crazy beliefs
To which I reply: well, no, they aren’t crazy beliefs. There is, as I noted upthread, a lot of daylight between “conclusively proven” and “insane”.
The particular points you’ve chosen to cite are among the reasons why I hold that opinion.
Am I presenting them as conclusive proof that George W Bush, Dick Cheney, and Osama Bin Laden laid it all out in a conference call in August of 2001?
No, I am not. I’m not presenting them as conclusive proof of anything.
I’m presenting them as the reasons why I, personally, do not find the idea that “persons” “in government” “took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the [sic] United States to go to war in the Middle East” to be either incredible or, for that matter, highly unlikely.
Period.
We know that individuals in the executive and the intelligence services have tried on some pretty weird sh*t over the years. And I’m not picking on Bush when I say this, you can basically take your pick of almost any President since, at a minimum, the advent of the Cold War.
What we’re talking about here doesn’t seem particularly out of character.
Of course, YMMV.
Perhaps we’ve beaten this horse to death.
If you want to go another round, feel free, we’ll just say the same stuff yet once again.
But una mas is OK with me if you want to go that way.
But Seb: Notably, he didn’t actually launch an invasion.
Wouldn’t that make him less interested?
We’ve defined acts of war down rather considerably when repeatedly bombing the capital city doesn’t count.
Well, compare what Clinton did and what Bush did, and then we can talk about the vast gulf that lies in between.
If it makes it any better, I’ll change my phrase to read:
“Clinton was considerably less interested in invading and occupying Iraq.”
Which is, again, a huge difference. You could ask the half million Iraqis that would not be dead but for the invasion if they appreciate the difference between air strikes and invasions except for the fact that they’re, well, dead as a result of the invasion.
“But una mas is OK with me if you want to go that way.”
No mas, I was just catching up after the long weekend. I think people will think what they think about this, based on a common set of facts we won’t agree.
Marty: …or even consciously passively complicit.
That’s the money quote. What level of competence would that require? (Not that I think they were complicit, Sebastian.)
“Or we can keep moving the goalposts.”
You’re the one who insists on the unnatural reading of the question.
“[p]eople in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the [sic] United States to go to war in the Middle East”
It is barely possible that you can read the question as you choose to read it. It is the kind of reading you get when you really don’t want the natural reading. The natural reading of “he took no action to stop the ice cream from falling on the floor because he wanted a waffle” is NOT that he is unaware of the falling ice cream.
The natural reading of “he either threw the ice cream on the ground or took no action to stop it from falling on the floor because he wanted a waffle” is NOT that he was unaware of the falling ice cream.
It isn’t moving the goalposts to interpret it with normal English. Is it remotely possible that one or two of the people questioned interpreted it that way? Sure. Is it likely that many or most of them did? Absolutely not.
Russell: “In other words, there’s no need to demonstrate that folks in the UK government intentionally allowed attacks to happen in order to argue that folks in the American government did, or may have.”
The problem is that you have the same level of proof of intentionally allowed attacks in both cases, which is to say almost none. In the July 7 case they even had one of the guys under surveillance just a year before, in a much more surveillance friendly police regime. There were non-specific warnings every single month for years before the July 7 attack. There were non-specific warnings for months before the September 11 attacks. In the British case there had even been two demonstrated home-soil attacks. In the US case there had been none.
The problem is that there are thousands of non-specific warnings all the time. Hell there are even hundreds of specific but false warnings. Noting that isn’t enough to make “took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East” likely.
Do I wish in retrospect that Al Qaeda had been a much higher priority? Of course. But you’re being fooled by hindsight bias if you believe, that given the evidence that was actually available at the time, it should have been a much higher priority.
We know NOW that Saddam picking repeated fights with Clinton wasn’t really an attempt to get nuclear weapons. We know now that the Chinese provacations regarding our planes weren’t the prelude to something worse. We didn’t know that then. We know NOW that Al Qaeda was planning to use planes to crash them into buildings as opposed to using truck bombs, poison gas, poisoned water, poisoned food, infrastructure attacks or any of the hundreds of other things that there were reports of various terrorist groups planning.
I know the world sucks, but it is a virtual certainty that if Gore were in the White House, the 9/11 attacks would have been exactly as successful as they actually were. Why? Because the reality is, that there wasn’t a specific warning that was actionable, and whoever was in the White House for 9 months didn’t change that.
I assert that your smoking gun does not support Russell’s belief, or I guess yours, that they were actively complicit in 9/11, or even consciously passively complicit.
I guess if you can just dismiss everything Russell’s said by compressing it in to
“consciously passively complicit” and thus avoiding having to say you believe in the essential goodness and decency of the Bush administration because they are Republicans and you cannot think ill of them, well: here’s a smoke mask.
Up to this day the question who was behind the Reichstag fire of 1933 has not been answered definitely. About the only undisputed facts are:
1. A lone communist was arrested on location
2. Said commie admitted to have committed the arson
3. The Nazis immediately used the event to ram down their emergency laws down the throats of parliamnent
4. It was immediately suspected by many that the Nazis were actually behind the arson (degree disputed)
Reputable historians still debate about it but we will likley never know for sure whether
1. The Nazis just made use of the opportunity of the fire they were innocent in creating
2. They allowed it to happen to get that opportunity (i.e. looking away when the commie came with the matches despite being warned)
3. Actually handed the commie the matches and maybe helped him directly (there are disputes whether a single person could have doen it that fast)
4. The commie had nothing to do with it and simply served as scapegoat
Few would consider any of these scenarios as obviously ‘crazy’.
The analogies to 9/11 (on both the undisputed facts and the possible scenarios) are significant, although in the case of Chain-Eye/Bush #3+4 can imo be given a very low probability. My gut tells me it is the #2 analogon, although I lack the proof (as do historians about 1933) and #1 has likely a higher probability*. But from what probability downward does it become ‘crazy’? Chain-Eye/Bush are the equivalent of guys being conspiciously inconspicious and whistling close to a crime scene with smoking guns, emptied jerry cans and bloody knives under their coats and a manifesto titled “Death to [insert name of crime victim]” in their pockets. It’s possible that they were just caught in the act of poaching (not murder) and that they found the manifesto on the street where the murderer left it but…
*all statisticians getting apoplectic about that word combination, I presume 😉
We know NOW that Saddam picking repeated fights with Clinton wasn’t really an attempt to get nuclear weapons.
Yeah, and we knew THEN that Saddam didn’t have nuclear weapons or even an active nuclear program. The NIE came to that conclusion, and all the contrary “evidence” (like aluminum tubes and yellow cake) was thoroughly debunked.
One of the crimes of the run up to the war with Iraq was the dilution of the term “WMD.” Whereas there was some consensus on the erroneous belief that Saddam had some old chem and bio weapons lying around (nasty stuff, but hard to weaponize and use in a terrorist attack), the consensus on nukes was the opposite: didn’t have them, and didn’t even have an active program.
But Bush admin propagandists were free to use WMD loosely, heightening the implications, and go on about mushroom clouds.
The natural reading of “he either threw the ice cream on the ground or took no action to stop it from falling on the floor because he wanted a waffle” is NOT that he was unaware of the falling ice cream.
Why? If he was looking at the waffle station and was thus distracted from the ice cream bar, then it is perfectly natural to say that his wanting a waffle was the cause of him taking no action to stop the falling ice cream. How else would you phrase such a thing?
Well, I was gonna leave this alone, but, just so I am clear, not much went on in the Bush administration that someone hasn’t made a bunch of money writing a book about it. All your “maybe’s” and “those guys are bad so we can believe this” add up to a conspiracy theory as irrational as any I have ever heard.
I just want a smoke mask so I don’t happen to get any of what you are smoking.
I know the world sucks, but it is a virtual certainty that if Gore were in the White House, the 9/11 attacks would have been exactly as successful as they actually were.
It’s one of those things that no one can know: Republicans can cling desperately to the idea that the shenanigans that put Bush/Cheney at the head of the government, that ensured the interagency Counter-Terrorism Security Group had their plans shelved, really trulio could not possibly have stopped al-Qaeda’s attack.
Al Gore wouldn’t have gone on vacation and spent time clearing brush and reading My Pet Goat to kids, having been handed an explicit warning of a terrorist attack; but hey, in this Republican concept of the President, it doesn’t matter what the President does or doesn’t do. He can go on vacation, he can stare vacantly into space, he can take his dog for walkies, he can set all of the security agencies to be on the alert for any sign of any terrorist action involving hijacking aeroplanes, he can order a security analysis of potential attacks and responses and offer help from federal agencies to cities in planning their emergency response. (Though Rudi Guiliani might just have ignored that, coming from a Democrat.)
But to a Republican notion of the President, none of that would make the slightest difference one way or another – no planning, preparation, thought, warning – nothing. Gore or Bush: a smart guy with experience or a no-hoper with a track record of incompetence: no difference.
It made a vast difference to London that Ken Livingstone took the idea of a terrorist attack seriously and made the emergency services plan for it – a smart guy with experience saved lives on July 7.
Marty: All your “maybe’s” and “those guys are bad so we can believe this” add up to a conspiracy theory as irrational as any I have ever heard.
Setting aside the truly irrational conspiracy theory that inspires the birthers who believe Obama was born outside the US – which I believe is where we started!
So, again, you’re of the opinion that it’s irrational to believe in anything but the essential goodness and decency of the Bush administration?
Or would you actually care to go through Russell’s comments, list his statements about the Bush administration, and explain why you think he’s wrong, each time, justifying your belief with examples of actions by the Bush administration that consistently and clearly contradict Russell’s statements about them?
Because if you can’t do that – and yet you stare at the conclusion of those true statements and continue to shriek “That’s crazy!” then I am forced to consider that breathing in smoke and calling it pure air has rotted your lungs, deprived your brain of oxygen, and made you into a Republican.
“Yeah, and we knew THEN that Saddam didn’t have nuclear weapons or even an active nuclear program. The NIE came to that conclusion, and all the contrary “evidence” (like aluminum tubes and yellow cake) was thoroughly debunked.”
Well that isn’t what Clinton’s administration thought or they wouldn’t have been bombing, right? Or is it your contention that Clinton was bombing Iraq for other reasons? Are you one of the people who thinks that he bombed Iraq purely to distract attention from the Lewinsky matter? You profess to like him, so I presumed not.
“Why? If he was looking at the waffle station and was thus distracted from the ice cream bar, then it is perfectly natural to say that his wanting a waffle was the cause of him taking no action to stop the falling ice cream. How else would you phrase such a thing?”
No it isn’t unless you already no the answer.
First, you wouldn’t pair it with “either threw it to the ground or took no action because…”
Second you would say something like “His distraction by the waffle caused him to drop the ice cream,”. Much more direct. I don’t believe that if you gave the waffle example to a hundred people you would get more than 5 that would interpret it the way you claim is the most natural reading.
“having been handed an explicit warning of a terrorist attack”
Which terrorist attack do you believe there was an explict warning for?
So far as I know, the closest we have is this.
“Clandestine, foreIgn government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin
since 1997′ has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US”
Ummm ok.
“After US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Ladin
tao ld followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to — — service.” Well that isn’t very specific.
I suppose the closest thing in retrospect is the idea that he might hijack a plane to win the release of “Blind Shaykh”.
There are also reports that his followers are going to bomb federal buildings in New York city with explosives. I guess they were just kidding about that.
Why then are there such huge variances within the same poll regarding actual complicity by the Bush administration? When asked directly about the bush admin having foreknowledge and acting on it, the number of truther responses drops significantly. Clearly a lot of people do read the question as I do.
I actually pointed that out quite a while back in this thread, Sebastian, but we nonetheless hear allusions or outright claims of specific warnings; even one claim that we were warned about September.
Probably there’s something in there that we just can’t see, because our blind devotion to Bush actually keeps our brains from processing it.
“Why then are there such huge variances within the same poll regarding actual complicity by the Bush administration?”
What are you talking about? The poll asks precisely 3 9/11-related questions. The other two are:
“The Pentagon was not struck by an airliner captured by terrorists but, instead was hit by a cruise missle fired by the U.S. military.”
and
“The collapse of the twin towers in New York was aided by explosives secretly planted in the two buildings.”
Neither of those questions bear closely enough on what you are talking about to get you to “Clearly a lot of people do read the question as I do”.
Now if you want to discriminate between “completely off their rocker so much that we might want to consider institutionalization” and merely “disturbingly paranoid” those two questions might be important.
Even on this thread your reading is vastly the minority reading. The rest of us are just split between obviously plausible and lunatic paranoid.
Wait, I though we were distinguishing batshit insane from normal. If saying likely to that question just makes one disturbingly paranoid, then whatever. The one lesson I’ve learned about the bush years is that its much worse than you imagine, even after taking into account that you know its worse than you can imagine.
And again, what’s lunatic paranoid about believing the bush administration focused on ME war while ignoring threats from AQ?
Well that isn’t what Clinton’s administration thought or they wouldn’t have been bombing, right? Or is it your contention that Clinton was bombing Iraq for other reasons? Are you one of the people who thinks that he bombed Iraq purely to distract attention from the Lewinsky matter? You profess to like him, so I presumed not.
They were targeting chem and bio facilities. The nukes were, again, thrown in for scare value/salesmanship. Refer to the Clinton era NIE and even the Bush era NIE that was highly pressured. The nuke outlook is all skeptical.
And, for the record, I think these air strikes were a mistake, and that various presidents do use military action as a means to bolster popularity/other motives.
malraux, are you going to point out the additional questions that bolster your case?
You keep trying to illustrate a contradiction between incompetence and maliciousness that does not exist. It is possible–even common–to be some combination of both.
I work in IT. Once I discovered that some of our production monitoring was offline for several days because the Windows service that runs on the monitoring server was not running. It was not running because after performing some maintenance on Friday, the logon credentials for the service had been cleared and it could not start. We should have known this immediately, as we have monitors that keep an eye on the other monitors–and the monitor that does this was disabled.
We discovered that what happened was this:
– Someone ran a patch that had the side effect of clearing the logon credentials
– That someone couldn’t figure out how to fix what they’d done and didn’t want to ruin their weekend fixing it
– To cover up what had happened, they disabled the monitor that keeps an eye on the service
They knew there was a problem, but incompetence kept them from correctly identifying and solving it. For their own selfish reasons, they attempted to cover it by doing something they had every reason to know would be catastrophic for the site.
I don’t think anyone at the Bush admin sat around saying, “how can we help terrorists attack the country so that we can have our war”.
I don’t think any of them knew the date of 9/11, or exact details about what the attack entailed.
I think it’s just as likely that they were entirely ignorant of the attacks and that 9/11 was 100% incompetence.
I certainly don’t think they shot down any of the planes, brought down the towers, or took any other kind of offensive action.
But given everything that we know now, I don’t find it at all hard to believe that they had enough information to know that Al Qaeda was planning something–but believed it was probably of a similar nature to the Cole bombing. In other words, something that would piss off the American people but not do any real lasting damage to the country. I don’t find it hard to believe that Cheney, in particular, would weigh the expected loss of a few lives against getting the casus belli he wanted, and decide to get out of the way.
You don’t have to turn this into The X-Files. This doesn’t require a grand conspiracy of silence. All it requries is that those in charge of setting priorities focus on other things–it’s not as if there’s a shortage of threats to the nation or intelligence issues to cover.
It is already beyond dispute that Cheney and Bush have very little regard for human life as an intrinsic value, do not feel obliged to respect human rights if not doing so will advance their policy goals, and that Cheney (again, in particular) considers American lives (let alone foreign ones) to be expendable towards that end. None of this is ought to be controversial to anyone viewing the documented crimes of the previous administration with an objective eye.
If these were trusted public servants with no history of crimes or atrocities, if they hadn’t unquestionably ordered and persistently defended the use of torture, if they hadn’t lied in order to start a war–in other words, if they had a shred of credibility–I would probably regard the notion that they got out of the way of 9/11 as crazy talk. I would be able to say, in sincerity, “How could you think they would ever do anything like that?”
But these are not good people. Some of them are war criminals, and a few are outright monsters. They don’t have any credibility on this subject, and they certainly don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt when it comes to weighing what acts you believe them capable of. Most of the “that’s crazy” arguments seem to revolve around the assumption that it is prima facie unreasonable to entertain the thought that our leaders would put the country or American lives at risk in order to further their own political goals. The facts of the last eight years, and the degree to which the Republican party has put the elephant before the Stars and Stripes, would argue otherwise.
malraux, are you going to point out the additional questions that bolster your case?
The ones that I quoted earlier. That you again quoted above. It clearly shows that truther beliefs* are around 15% of the population, not the much 40% some are claiming.
*: I have no problem with the idea that the truthers are insane. I merely contend that the question under consideration is not the best proxy for truther beliefs when actual questions about truther beliefs are available. For me to be right, I only need about a quarter of people to read the question as I do.
I also contend that my reading of the question, correctly or not, is not insane, but rather factual.
I’ll agree with Catsy.
I also think Karl Rove sat alone in his office in the White House late at night studying spreadsheets under a single desk lamp, marveling at the poll numbers for George W. Bush and sending brain waves to a tall dude in a cave in Afghanistan communicating the following:
“We will of course have to kill you at some point, but as a political strategist, may I say that you put me to shame. Thank you, posthumous as it may be.
Dick Cheney sent brainwaves to the same guy:
“For the Homeland Security alert upgrades at election time alone, let me confide that I hope you die quietly and peacefully of kidney disease rather than of a tactical nuclear device up the wazoo.
George W. Bush, to the tune of Bob Hope’s “Thanks for the Memories”, hummed a little “Thanks for the Enemies” in the shower.
Tom Delay mused: Gotta say the name “Osama” has a certain music to it, considering the swarthy Democrat who might be running for President in 2008.
nd again, what’s lunatic paranoid about believing the bush administration focused on ME war while ignoring threats from AQ?
Clearly, reality has a lunatic paranoid bias.
You realize, there was a time where one of the front pagers would have written a comment that would discuss the concepts of intentionality and insanity that would establish some middle ground in this battle of extreme readings that would have stopped this thread two pages ago.
God, I miss Hilzoy…
Kindly ignore everything I’ve written on this thread and just read Catsy’s 5:50.
The irony, russell, is that you have no idea how many comments I don’t expend the effort to write because I come across one of yours or cleek’s and decide I can’t put it any better than that.
well, dude, one good turn and all that. you nailed what I was trying to get across.
Thanks-
What catsy said.
what is scary is that Sebastian cannot (or will not) understand.
Catsy,
I accept that almost all of what you say is perfectly reasonable. I think the debate here revolves around how crazy it is to believe they knew, had specific knowledge, of the actual events to occur on 9/11.
“I would probably regard the notion that they got out of the way of 9/11 as crazy talk”
I think the circular argument here has been about the belief that the Administration ignored or positively contributed to the “specific acts” of 9/11. 9/11 is a specific set of acts and is not generically a “Cole type attack”.
As I have been asked several times, I will state, I don’t believe that the Bush administration would have helped or turned a blind eye to those specific actions.
Is it crazy to believe they would have made a calculation that it would have been better for America, or them based on your assessment of them, to concentrate efforts elsewhere and which would increase the risk of some kind of attack? Sure. Not crazy.
Marty: That’s not what the debate here revolves around. That’s what Sebastian keeps trying to say it is, while the rest of us have been saying exactly what catsy said. Which is presumably how most people answered the poll question Sebastian and others have cited, because of the numbers for that question.
Marty: I think the debate here revolves around how crazy it is to believe they knew, had specific knowledge, of the actual events to occur on 9/11.
Yes, because loyal Republicans such as yourself and Sebastian, etc, keep bringing this idea up as a straw man to be able to knock it down, rather than just admitting that Catsy, and Russell, and indeed Van Jones and most of the rest who signed the petition calling for investigation, were not in the least crazy.
” Van Jones and most of the rest who signed the petition calling for investigation, were not in the least crazy.”
Crazy or not, I am not sure what there would be to investigate in the explanation that Catsy made. So I am going to give up, because investigating the rearranging of priorities etc., for whatever reason, seems crazy to me.
Point of order: I didn’t sign any petition demanding an investigation into gov’t involvement in 9/11. I didn’t do that because pace Sebastian’s offensive and inapt analogy of anti-Semitism, there actually is a material difference between having enough meaningful evidence of wrongdoing to justify pressing for an investigation, and simply having a low enough opinion of the Bush admin to think it’s possible.
It is, in my opinion, what separates a truther from someone who merely lived through 8 years of one revelation after another of blatant Bush admin criminality and human rights abuses, each worse than the last and each further lowering the bar for what it would surprise me to hear they’ve done.
A truther thinks the “truth” about what really happened on 9/11 is being hidden and wants to uncover it and convince everyone else. While I have no problem with investigating and prosecuting it if significant evidence to that effect does emerge during the investigations into torture, I’d much prefer we focus on prosecuting crimes for which there is actual meaningful evidence–and for torture, that evidence exists in documented, government-watermarked abundance.
For what its worth Catsy, I didn’t think you were suggesting the investigation. I was just responding to Jes.
“I have no intention of proving you right or wrong on any topic whatsoever regarding me, Sebastian.”
Thanks Phil, I thought I was right about you. 🙂
Catsy: I’d much prefer we focus on prosecuting crimes for which there is actual meaningful evidence–and for torture, that evidence exists in documented, government-watermarked abundance.
Absolutely. In the scale of deaths for which Bush and Cheney can be held responsible, the three thousand people who were killed in the 911 attack are (comparatively) a very small group of people: in the scale of evil done, malicious and incompetent, simply ignoring all warnings that al-Qaeda had plans to strike – it’s really not one of Bush and Cheney’s major crimes. Their handholding shiftiness almost certainly covers nothing worse than indifference and incompetence.
It’s possible that it also covers the first root of evidence that Bush and Cheney lied the US into war with Iraq: but there is already sufficient and complete evidence for that for them to be impeached for it, should any American in authority care enough about that crime to have moved for it: there was well before the 2004 election, but that by itself would justify signing a petition when the 911 Commission’s report was released in summer 2004.
Signing a petition for further investigation into 9/11 is like reminding Republicans that Bush stole the 2000 election: the Bush administration was poison from the start, an eight-year disaster that their partisan loyalty supported and enabled.
Still, yes, given the evidence available, were anyone brave enough to bring charges, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, are all certainly guilty of torture and of breaking two at least of the Geneva Conventions.
But since the US is a country ruled by men, not laws, it seems vanishingly improbable that your former head of state and his gang will ever stand trial for any of their crimes: so why not ask for the full Monty?
Crazy or not, I am not sure what there would be to investigate in the explanation that Catsy made.
This:
I don’t find it hard to believe that Cheney, in particular, would weigh the expected loss of a few lives against getting the casus belli he wanted, and decide to get out of the way.
Whatever helps you sleep at night, Sebastian. The difference between what you probably think you know about me and what’s true is vast enough that I don’t recommend too many smug smilies unless you’re in the habit of enjoying embarrassment.
He was making a funny, Phil.