[quote]Cory089 wrote:
JustTheFacts wrote:
If a government is willing to lie and fabricate intelligence to start a war to remove one guy from power but at the same time destroy entire cities and kill tens of thousands of people you would see 9/11 nothing more than a tool to garner public support.
What “entire cities” have been destroyed? Name one.
Second, implicit in your reasoning is that Bush equates American lives with Iraqi lives. I strongly question that assumption. 3,000 innocent American lives, to most people, are worth multiples of that of aggressive citizens from 3rd world countries.
Finally, your equation is too simplistic. It is not just about an equating of lives. Anyone who would have thought that out would have factored in the effect on the economy (which was already staggering). As a first term president, that would have been Bush’s biggest threat (and indeed was his biggest threat) to his place in history that a second term can bring.
Going into the economics further, large corporations (related to Bush or not) risked an overall net loss from a 9/11 attack, even with military weaponary being used. Since much of their holdings are going to be in stocks and other securities, a severely downsized market would have resulted in losses in the millions. Sure, weapons contractors may eventually make that money back. Even if we conceded that Bush acted in the interests of his friends (which I do not), those friends could have gained by simply pushing for passage of a large defense bill, which carries much less risk, yet retains an equally sizeable award.
Most people have no idea of what happened or didn’t happen on that day other than what they’ve always been told.
Most people do not know why the sky is blue, but that does not mean that the reason it occurs is any less factual. Most people have no idea of what happens with a lot of things other than by what they’ve been told. Have you ever done experiments on why your microwave works?
You’re also setting up the question/implication so it can’t be defended. You’re asking the government to prove a negative, something which can’t be done. The government can never prove that it didn’t do something. Even if it gave you ever document it ever created, you could always come back by saying that it didn’t give you the mythical document or that it was done without creating them.
You seem to know a lot about this. Prove to me you didn’t have a connection. You simply can’t do it. That’s why conspiracy theories continue to exist.
I bet most people plan their vacations much better than that!
I’m not parading this thing around like it was perfectly contemplated or executed, but your analogy completly fails. Vacation are short term plans with little margin for variance (since there are relatively few variables). Fighting a battle is nowhere near as simple.
A better comparison would be to a defense on a football field. It has an idea about tendencies, what the offense has done in the past, which weapons are the biggest threat, etc. Yet no matter how well one plans, the offense has the upper hand because they are on the active side, not the reactive side. Sure, the defense does take some proactive measures (maybe they throw a blitz), but there is no guarantee that these will work - there is only a higher percentage of success if the offense remains consistent with its prior actions. At the same time, blitzing can leave you exposed somewhere else, which the offense can then expose.
My point is, this is not like planning a course of action, but more about planning a method of thinking, reacting, readjusting, adapting, and re-reacting.
And another thing, it’s not like the Bush administration is the only one who didn’t get the estimates right. I bet the people who are first in line to scream about incorrect assumptions, yourself included, were at the front of the line screaming about the tens of thousands of Americans we would lose before we reached Saddam’s doorstep. People predicted months of battling before we reached Bagdahd.
You’re using today as a baseline for determining whether the plan was correct, when, in fact, you should be using the knowledge that was available at the time plans were made to determine success.
Going back to the defense analogy - let’s say you’ve got a team that runs the ball 75% of the time. You plan on the run. Suddenly next game, they come out and PASS 90% of the time on you. They passed 6x’s more than you prepared for. Now, if you give up more passing yards than normal it does not mean you made a mistake because your team probably did wonderfully against the run.
The campaign into Bagdahd could be seen as the running game. Everyone thought that all of the action would be there, and, judging from '91 and subsequent actions, that was the most logical assumption. Sure, we planned for the pass (post-war), but not as much as we should have. Is that a failure of planning if you never had any indication it was going to occur? No. How could you plan for something that you had no reason to assume would occur? Sure, we practiced the pass, but we didn’t expect them to come out thowing as much as they did.
Long post longer, your assumptions and analogies simply do not hold up. You can over-simplify anything and throw out all sorts of accusations, but that’s all they are.
Your case is not stronger on simply because the other side has not made theirs. It only appears to be stronger.[/quote]
Interesting analogy comparing the invasion of Iraq to a football defense. But as the US was the aggressor, shouldn’t they be the offense? They are invading. They call the plays. Actually, their offense has been about as successful as the Colts` was the other night. I guess that makes George Bush Peyton Manning- up until 'Mission Accomplished he had 48 touchdown passes, but after that the insurgents (led by Mohamed Al-Zarqhawi and the NE linebackers ) and Rumsfeld the much-vaunted recieving corps dropping all those passes.
PS Go Eagles.
PSS I’m taking the piss.