Democrats: Defend Your House Reps?

JeffR · February 29, 2008, 8:32pm

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
JeffR wrote:
…

I think it’s fair to say that Tora Bora was a screw up. The difference, of course, is that the Bush Administration was actively trying to get him. That’s in stark contrast to being GIVEN the opportunity and then pissing it away.

…

Of course Tora Bora can be characterized as a screw up. Any failure can be. There were excellent reasons we did what we did. If we had more reliable Afghan allies in certain positions Bin Laden probably would have been caught.

Tora Bora came too early in the war to have enough men and material in place in order to have done it alone.

We were so successful so quickly with limited ground forces and air power that we found ourselves in that position too early.

Of course the guys on the ground wanted more American soldiers but they were not quickly available and frankly at that point in the war they were not as competent at getting up and down the mountains as the Afghans were.

We were still gearing up! [/quote]

Zap,

I agree with you. It’s like blaming FDR for not sinking more carriers at the Battle of the Coral Sea. The lumpy’s of that era would have said, “Well, the pilots asked for more planes!”

But, guys like lumpy aren’t going to understand the logistics. It’s like him blaming Bush for 9/11. “Hey, it was on his watch.” Or, “Hey, bin laden got away while Bush was President.”

The screw up was relying too much on our allies.

What lumpy can and does understand are clinton’s own words.

JeffR

100meters · March 1, 2008, 12:28am

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
100meters wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
100meters wrote:
…
I said they were “stronger”, and yes they could be stronger still, but the point is your party is definitely weaker with regards to terror. And you no doubt remember that according to the 9/11 commission “virtually nothing” isn’t true (you made this up), but factually your admin did lower the priority of counter-terrorism. So again, even if dems did “virtually nothing” which they didn’t, your party made a deliberate decision to do less, which you no doubt supported at the time.

Wait a minute. I thought evil Bush was violating all sorts of civil rights with his counter terrorism and now you are saying he is doing less.

Make up your mind.

Obviously one can “violate” civil rights domestically and still be weaker on terror. The rights violated weren’t what made us weak on terror in the first place, so certainly violating those rights wouldn’t make us any stronger.

Yes, breaking a law that was written for old technology and listening to AQ phone calls violated their civil rights and also was somehow weak on terror.

We would have been better off sending them flower baskets and not listening in on their phone calls.

[/quote]

Oblivious to the obvious reality of terrorist phone calls can be listened to and domestic civil rights can be protected at the same time? And again violating domestic rights clearly wouldn’t make one stronger on terror, just stupider.

100meters · March 1, 2008, 12:38am

[quote]JeffR wrote:
100meters wrote:
Varqanir wrote:
100meters wrote:

Also, I didn’t blame republicans for 9/11, my contention is factually dems are stronger on terror than republicans, and that it’s silly to say that your party is stronger than another party because two 9/11’s didn’t happen on your watch. One was enough.

I have no qualms with conceding that Democrats are stronger on Terror.

Hell, Terror is the Democratic Party’s middle name. Half of Democratic policy is based on some deep-seated terror felt by Democratic legislators and their constituents.

However, I think recent history has shown that Republicans are harder on terrorists.

And the accomplices of terrorists.

And the governments which support the accomplices of terrorists.

Democrats bomb aspirin factories. Republicans remove sovereign regimes. That’s the difference.

Uhmmm, it took 9/11 for republicans to realize that lowering the priority of counter-terrorism might have been a mistake, and that stopping those predator drone flights over afghanistan may have been a tad naive. Their response initially was admirable, however it ended with al qaeda leadership being allowed to flee into Pakistan, where they remain to this day (presumably because they are a sovereign nation?) . And after nearly eliminating one training ground for terrorist, they went and created another one, in addition to new terrorists. Better to eliminate a fire than to pour gasoline on it which appears to be the only terrorist strategy this admin has.

So no the difference is republicans have created more terrorism, which to me makes them softer on terror.

again the goal as always is less terrorism/ists.

lumpy/100 meters:

Since you seem incapable (or unwilling, politically) to understand the concept of dealing with the root cause, perhaps a simple analogy might breakthrough your mental morass.

Are you familiar with bees?

As you should know, bees live in a hive. The queen bee sends out drones. These drones can sting you.

Now, imagine you’ve been repeatedly stung in the same area. Do you kill the bee that stings you and declare victory? Of course not. You go after the hive. You go after the infrastructure that produced, nourished, and directed the stinging bee.

Going forward, imagine that you are proactive and identify the hive. When you spray the hive, initially, more bees come out. Do you say, “I’ve created more bees?” No, you’ve only brought the magnitude of the problem out into the open. Is it possible that the queen bee would call in reinforcements that weren’t part of the original hive? Yes. However, it’s always better to have all their friends out in the open. They are easier to kill. If they were friendly with the original bees, chances are you are going to have had to spray them in the future.

I hope that helps.

JeffR

P.S. Please, in the name of God, don’t vomit out the “If we wouldn’t have attacked Iraq, we would have gotten bin laden.” It’s utter nonsense. If you do puke this bilious crap out, then please remember to tell me how having more troops on the border of Pakistan makes a bit of difference if the Pakistians refuse to allow us to enter.

P.P.S: I noticed that your party is trying a new line of surrender. Instead of: “The surge is failing” and “Iraq isn’t meeting political goals” I noticed chucky schumer and your boy, russ feingold, screaming about the cost.

P.P.P.S: Remember when you were crying about Bush not putting more troops on the ground to begin with? Remember when I told you that you and your pals would cry about the financial cost? russ and chuckie made my point.

P.P.P.P.S: I laughed my ass off when the Republicans called their bluff and brought that stupid “it’s too expensive” bill to the floor. The dems were shamed and they withdrew it.

[/quote]
Your analogy could use just a little work. What we did was find a beehive, cut in half, leave the queen intact then move to another location and create a new beehive, fill it with bees, pour royal jelly all over it so more future queens could be created that can then go and start their own hives.

More effective would have been to just eliminate the initial hive.

100meters · March 1, 2008, 12:59am

[quote]JeffR wrote:
100meters wrote:

You are aware of course that the Bush admin has had similar opportunities to take out top leaders and not taken them due to the EXACT same reasons. And of course I believe it was your admin who had OBL surrounded at tora bora, and when men on the ground ask for additional support, refused it(in a war where presumably one of the main goals would have been to capture/kill OBL?).

I think it’s fair to say that Tora Bora was a screw up. The difference, of course, is that the Bush Administration was actively trying to get him. That’s in stark contrast to being GIVEN the opportunity and then pissing it away.

And again I’ll point out again, as weak as you think Clinton was on terror, your admin came in and decided to go weaker than that. That’s not really disputable.

The question becomes, if the Administration had maintained the clinton status quo, would it have made any difference with the advanced stage of planning in January 2001?

I doubt it.

Also, I didn’t blame republicans for 9/11, my contention is factually dems are stronger on terror than republicans, and that it’s silly to say that your party is stronger than another party because two 9/11’s didn’t happen on your watch. One was enough.

Not very clever. You don’t blame them. But, you look to insert that a Republican happened to be President at the time.

The problem for you: Bush’s response to 9/11 was vastly more effective and proactive than clinton’s WEAK and TEPID response to the first WTC bombing, embassy bombings, and the U.S.S. Cole.

JeffR

[/quote]

Tora bora and the afghanistan invasion would be the ultimate example of opportunity pissed away.

My point about 9/11 isn’t one of blame…to answer your question, no it wouldn’t have made a difference had they not lowered the priority of counter-terrorism, the point is presented with everything the Clinton admin knew and had done or not done, your admin made the active decision that OBL in the year 2000, 7 years after the first WTC, the Cole, etc. was not that important. So Bush was more tepid and weaker (or stupid–it’s possible he had already forgotten the Cole).

Also so you know, OBL appears to be just as alive now as he was in 2000, despite the fact that like then we essentially know exactly where he is (in addition to all the newly created and extremely well trained (thanks to Iraq and unfinished afghanistan) terrorists)

Zap_Branigan · March 1, 2008, 1:24am

[quote]100meters wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
100meters wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
100meters wrote:
…
I said they were “stronger”, and yes they could be stronger still, but the point is your party is definitely weaker with regards to terror. And you no doubt remember that according to the 9/11 commission “virtually nothing” isn’t true (you made this up), but factually your admin did lower the priority of counter-terrorism. So again, even if dems did “virtually nothing” which they didn’t, your party made a deliberate decision to do less, which you no doubt supported at the time.

Wait a minute. I thought evil Bush was violating all sorts of civil rights with his counter terrorism and now you are saying he is doing less.

Make up your mind.

Obviously one can “violate” civil rights domestically and still be weaker on terror. The rights violated weren’t what made us weak on terror in the first place, so certainly violating those rights wouldn’t make us any stronger.

Yes, breaking a law that was written for old technology and listening to AQ phone calls violated their civil rights and also was somehow weak on terror.

We would have been better off sending them flower baskets and not listening in on their phone calls.

Oblivious to the obvious reality of terrorist phone calls can be listened to and domestic civil rights can be protected at the same time? And again violating domestic rights clearly wouldn’t make one stronger on terror, just stupider.[/quote]

You don’t have a clue do you?

100meters · March 1, 2008, 7:16pm

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
100meters wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
100meters wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
100meters wrote:
…
I said they were “stronger”, and yes they could be stronger still, but the point is your party is definitely weaker with regards to terror. And you no doubt remember that according to the 9/11 commission “virtually nothing” isn’t true (you made this up), but factually your admin did lower the priority of counter-terrorism. So again, even if dems did “virtually nothing” which they didn’t, your party made a deliberate decision to do less, which you no doubt supported at the time.

Wait a minute. I thought evil Bush was violating all sorts of civil rights with his counter terrorism and now you are saying he is doing less.

Make up your mind.

Obviously one can “violate” civil rights domestically and still be weaker on terror. The rights violated weren’t what made us weak on terror in the first place, so certainly violating those rights wouldn’t make us any stronger.

Yes, breaking a law that was written for old technology and listening to AQ phone calls violated their civil rights and also was somehow weak on terror.

We would have been better off sending them flower baskets and not listening in on their phone calls.

Oblivious to the obvious reality of terrorist phone calls can be listened to and domestic civil rights can be protected at the same time? And again violating domestic rights clearly wouldn’t make one stronger on terror, just stupider.

You don’t have a clue do you?

[/quote]
You seem to always have an aversion to factual information.

You foolishly said:

We would have been better off sending them flower baskets and not listening in on their phone calls.

which implies that they’re phone calls weren’t listened to before, when of course they always have been.

one can only conclude you will willing regurgitate any lie the weekly standard tells you, I seem to remember your stupid, stupid post about Obama and the army captain…

Zap_Branigan · March 1, 2008, 8:53pm

[quote]100meters wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
100meters wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
100meters wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
100meters wrote:
…
I said they were “stronger”, and yes they could be stronger still, but the point is your party is definitely weaker with regards to terror. And you no doubt remember that according to the 9/11 commission “virtually nothing” isn’t true (you made this up), but factually your admin did lower the priority of counter-terrorism. So again, even if dems did “virtually nothing” which they didn’t, your party made a deliberate decision to do less, which you no doubt supported at the time.

Wait a minute. I thought evil Bush was violating all sorts of civil rights with his counter terrorism and now you are saying he is doing less.

Make up your mind.

Obviously one can “violate” civil rights domestically and still be weaker on terror. The rights violated weren’t what made us weak on terror in the first place, so certainly violating those rights wouldn’t make us any stronger.

Yes, breaking a law that was written for old technology and listening to AQ phone calls violated their civil rights and also was somehow weak on terror.

We would have been better off sending them flower baskets and not listening in on their phone calls.

Oblivious to the obvious reality of terrorist phone calls can be listened to and domestic civil rights can be protected at the same time? And again violating domestic rights clearly wouldn’t make one stronger on terror, just stupider.

You don’t have a clue do you?

You seem to always have an aversion to factual information.

You foolishly said:

We would have been better off sending them flower baskets and not listening in on their phone calls.

which implies that they’re phone calls weren’t listened to before, when of course they always have been.

one can only conclude you will willing regurgitate any lie the weekly standard tells you, I seem to remember your stupid, stupid post about Obama and the army captain…

[/quote]

Dumbass. You have complained about our listening in on their calls many, many, many times on this forum. We obviously have not always listened to their phone calls. I don’t even fathom how you can make such a claim. You are such a disgusting partisan hack you are willing to tell any lie.

100meters · March 1, 2008, 9:38pm

[quote]

Dumbass. You have complained about our listening in on their calls many, many, many times on this forum. We obviously have not always listened to their phone calls. I don’t even fathom how you can make such a claim. You are such a disgusting partisan hack you are willing to tell any lie.[/quote]

So your saying prior to domestic surveillance program signed by bush in 2002 no terrorist phone calls were being listened to?

You’re not even able to fathom how it was possible?

seriously?

Zap_Branigan · March 2, 2008, 7:29am

[quote]100meters wrote:

Dumbass. You have complained about our listening in on their calls many, many, many times on this forum. We obviously have not always listened to their phone calls. I don’t even fathom how you can make such a claim. You are such a disgusting partisan hack you are willing to tell any lie.

So your saying prior to domestic surveillance program signed by bush in 2002 no terrorist phone calls were being listened to?

You’re not even able to fathom how it was possible?

seriously?[/quote]

Fewer calls were being listened to. There is no question. Bush greatly expanded that as well as other programs against domestic terrorism. The FBI has greatly dropped investigations in most other areas so they can concentrate on terrorism and you claim this makes us weaker on terrorism. You will tell any lie to promote the Dems. Pathetic.

100meters · March 2, 2008, 3:54pm

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
100meters wrote:

Dumbass. You have complained about our listening in on their calls many, many, many times on this forum. We obviously have not always listened to their phone calls. I don’t even fathom how you can make such a claim. You are such a disgusting partisan hack you are willing to tell any lie.

So your saying prior to domestic surveillance program signed by bush in 2002 no terrorist phone calls were being listened to?

You’re not even able to fathom how it was possible?

seriously?

Fewer calls were being listened to. There is no question. Bush greatly expanded that as well as other programs against domestic terrorism. The FBI has greatly dropped investigations in most other areas so they can concentrate on terrorism and you claim this makes us weaker on terrorism. You will tell any lie to promote the Dems. Pathetic.[/quote]

Uh, no, again you mispoke.
What I said was factually true. Minus PAA, those calls can, have, and will be listened to. That you weren’t even able to fathom this is pathetic.

Also:

The FBI has greatly dropped investigations in most other areas so they can concentrate on terrorism and you claim this makes us weaker on terrorism…

is something you made up out of thin air, and speaks to your total lack of credibility on this and most other issues.

The reality is you said, you couldn’t even fathom how terrorists phone calls were being listened to…its called FISA, which president bush said when it was overhauled after 9/11:

“recognizes the realities and dangers posed by the modern terrorist.”

Zap_Branigan · March 3, 2008, 2:04pm

[quote]100meters wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:

The FBI has greatly dropped investigations in most other areas so they can concentrate on terrorism and you claim this makes us weaker on terrorism…

is something you made up out of thin air, and speaks to your total lack of credibility on this and most other issues.

[/quote]

As usual you are wrong. The FBI and others are focusing so strongly on terrorism that they are shirking their duty in other areas. Most other people understand while this makes us a bit stronger against terrorism perhaps there are other drawbacks. You claim this focus against terrorism makes us weaker against terrorism. The only reason you make this claim is because you are incredibly partisan.

[i]
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/311046_fbiterror11.html

Thousands of white-collar criminals across the country are no longer being prosecuted in federal court – and, in many cases, not at all – leaving a trail of frustrated victims and potentially billions of dollars in fraud and theft losses.

It is the untold story of the Bush administration’s massive restructuring of the FBI after the terrorism attacks of 9/11.

Five-and-a-half years later, the White House and the Justice Department have failed to replace at least 2,400 agents transferred to counterterrorism squads, leaving far fewer agents on the trail of identity thieves, con artists, hatemongers and other criminals…

Among the findings of a six-month Seattle P-I investigation, analyzing more than a quarter-million cases touched by FBI agents and federal prosecutors before and after 9/11:

Overall, the number of criminal cases investigated by the FBI nationally has steadily declined. In 2005, the bureau brought slightly more than 20,000 cases to federal prosecutors, compared with about 31,000 in 2000 – a 34 percent drop.

White-collar crime investigations by the bureau have plummeted in recent years. In 2005, the FBI sent prosecutors 3,500 cases – a fraction of the more than 10,000 cases assigned to agents in 2000.

In Western Washington, the drop has been even more dramatic. Records show that the FBI sent 28 white-collar cases to prosecutors in 2005, down 90 percent from five years earlier.

Civil rights investigations, which include hate crimes and police abuse, have continued a steady decline since the late 1990s. FBI agents pursued 65 percent fewer cases in 2005 than they did in 2000.

…
[/i]

100meters · March 4, 2008, 12:09am

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
100meters wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote: