Friday, September 16, 2005

Wag the Dog

     In order to make it up to you for having such a long post Wednesday, this one will be short and bitter. I was watching a special on the History Channel last night about the September 11th attacks on New York and on the rise of Al Qaeda. It showed how Al-Qaeda was born out of the anti-Soviet Afghani movement of the 1980's, and really picked up steam in the early 90's.
     The US was aware of Al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden, throughout the last decade, especially since it began perpetrating terrorist acts against Americans. Republicans and the Right-wing media, who of course would never play the "Blame Game", were playing something very similar after the 9/11 attacks when they said, This isn't the time to point fingers, but you know, this was all Clinton's fault. Why wasn't he tougher with terrorists?
     I'd like everyone to skim through this webpage, created in 1998 to show why Clinton was a war criminal who was unfit to be President and should be impeached. It becomes very obvious that the reason he could not strike at Al-Qaeda with more than just cruise missiles was because the Republican Congress would not allow him, and the increasingly Republican American public did not support him.
     Some especially juicy quotes:
"They know the attack on Iraq was planned long before Butler's report and consider it politically motivated." -Robert Novak (The Washington Post, 12/21/98, p. A29)

"As the Constitution makes clear, the President of the United States does have the authority to take defensive action against an aggressor nation, but he has no authority whatsoever to make war against a country which has neither attacked the United States or posed to do so." -Robert Novak (The Washington Post, 12/21/98, p. A29)

"As president, Bill Clinton has...squandered $5.5 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars on containing the Iraqi threat..." -Joe Farah (Between the Lines, 12/18/98)

"Saddam Hussein is not threatening our national security. This is a concocted scheme to pursue bombing for oil interests and other reasons, but it has nothing to do with national security." -Representative Ron Paul (R-Tex) (Congressional Record, 12/17/98, pp. H11722, H11729)

And my favorite:
"A President who uses his duties as Commander in Chief to bomb foreign countries every time he wants to change the subject ought to be removed with alacrity," -Ann Coulter (Human Events, 12/25/98, p. 6)

8 comments:

Ben said...

You mean politicians acted like policitians? The horror!!!

This dovetails nicely in to the theory I mentioned yesterday about voters and how they vote for the wrong kind of people. Of course you yourself said yesterday that comparisons to Clinton are irrelevent, so you change your tune on a daily basis as well. Those who live in glass houses....

Sylvana said...

Oh, hell yeah, Scott! Great post!
Blame Game, indeed!

ORF said...

Man, I freaking HATE Anne Coulter. On behalf of all women everywhere, we hereby relinquish her from her duties as a platform-having representative of our half of the species. Boo, Ms. Coulter. Boo!!

Also, Scott, don't forget to mention that we were in bed with bin-Laden once long ago when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and we needed an inside man on the ground to help overcome the Soviet threat over there. The U.S. sold loads of weaponry to bin-Laden to do just that...

Isaac Carmichael said...

Here's another quote from Coulter: "Well...that's different!"

And kudos to her editor for replacing "his pants around his ankles and a spike through his schlong" with "alacrity"...makes her sound much more like an intelligent person and much less like a hateful hag. Seriously, what has she ever done, other than accusing people who question her willingness to play fast and loose with the facts of treason?

And yes, Scott...why do you hate America? Is it the freedom? I bet that's it, isn't it? You hate us for our freedom!

Sylvana said...

You guys are so confused. Ann Coulter is NOT a woman!

Otto Man said...

I'm with Sylvana -- there's no way Coulter's a woman. She;s got an Adam's apple the size of my fist.

ORF said...

I hate Anne Coulter so much that I almost punched my uncle in the face when I discovered that he was reading her book, "Treason" and said to me, "Oh, I LOVE LOVE LOVE Anne Coulter!" I had to leave the house in order to prevent myself from doing so.

Ben said...

Just so you know, I'm not a fan of Anne Coulter, nor of Hannity or O'Reilly. Haven't listened to Rush enough to have an opinion, and yes, I love Neal Boortz.

I'm curious what ya'll think of the article that was just in the LA Times in which we find out that several state of Louisiana officials are awaiting trial for some $60 million in FEMA money that went missing. Perhaps the Federal Government gave them more than enough funds to do what they needed to, and they squandered it any way. Is that Bush's fault? Or the voters who keep reelecting corrupt politicians?