Here's an example of convoluted Dem logic. Thanks for the example btw.
Meadros wrote:
How can anyone blame Bush for 9/11? Or Clinton ar anyone else besides the men behind it? I have yet to hear anyone from either side blaming anyone but bin Laden, with the exception of the Bush team who somehow keeps trying to blame it on Hussein. Now that is very sound logic considering that there were 0 Iraqi Dinars put towards the venture and 0 Iraqis helping out.
Yet... Oddly. Many Dem rhetoric pushers did exactly that. How many folks came out of the woodwork after 9/11 talking about how Bush walked away from Clinton's middle east peace plan (let's ignore that a PM change in Israel kinda made that decision for us), and how many more started spouting off about Bush reducing intelligence assets and how those were to blame for 9/11? Heck. I seem to recall a certain very vocal Dem on this board, with alleged ties to US intelligence, speaking those very ideas and only semi obliquely implying that 9/11 was Bush's fault (or at least his administration's fault). But hey! That's just some crazy talk on a BB site. Are you saying you don't remember all the news articles and pundits coming out talking about how the WTC bombing 10 years earlier, and the embassy bombings, and the Cole bombing were all clear signs that we should have spoted, but missed? Maybe my memory is different then your's, but I could have sworn that there was a hell of a lot of finger pointing going on right after 9/11.
I'm going to repeat this next bit again, just in case you're not aware which part of the paragraph I'm refering to.
Quote:
I have yet to hear anyone from either side blaming anyone but bin Laden, with the exception of the Bush team who somehow keeps trying to blame it on Hussein. Now that is very sound logic considering that there were 0 Iraqi Dinars put towards the venture and 0 Iraqis helping out.
Really? Source? Find me one quote of a Bush administration official stating that Saddam was linked to 9/11. Please. I'll wait. You can't? Yup. That's because this is the biggest Dem strawman of all.
Here's the chain of logic used by the Bush administration:
1. 9/11 happens. Bush and co come under heavy fire for not "protecing the people".
2. Bush states that we'll find the people responsible for the act.
3. It's determined that Bin Laden and co are responsible for the act. Unfortunately, they are located in Afghanistan, which is held by the Taliban, with whom we have no diplomatic relations and who are at least somewhat bankrolled by bin Laden in the first place. Not surprisingly, the Taliban refuses to hand anyone over.
4. This is where things get interesting, so pay attention. Bush and co have to set a precident here. They make a decision that changes the rules of war slightly. They state that a regime that actively supports or endorses, or even just refuses to police, agents of terrorism are ultimately responsible for the acts of terror commited and therefore *can* have military action taken against them. Note. This is not just "we can invade Afghanistan" movement. We are setting a precident. We are making a political statement to the world in regards to a set of behavior that we find unacceptable, not just a single instance of it.
5. We invade Afghanistan. Taliban is routed. bin Laden gets away, but most of his core organization is squished and his funds are mostly seized around the world. Not a complete success, but not too shabby all things considered.
6. Ok. Stop your train of thought right here. Next action is completely unrelated to the prior one except with regards to the precident and authorization process we established in Afghanistan.
7. The UN starts to move towards removing sanctions from Iraq. Oops. We've been trying to get rid of Saddam for over a decade, but he's stickier then a tick on a ********. We have very strong reason to believe that if the sanctions are lifted, he'll go right back to producing bio/chem weapons and attempting to build nuclear weapons. We know also that he'll go back to mass killing both Shiites and Kurds. We have documented evidence that Saddam's regime (his sons specifically, which is about as close as you get) has direct ties to several terrorist organizations (not Al-queda though. No one in the administration ever claims this, yet many idiots assume "terrorist group" == Al-queda, so the misinformation gets spread).
8. This gives us several (not one. Several) reasons to invade Iraq. First, we can go with the lack of following the UN sanctions. While many members of the UN may be happy to just bury their heads in the sand, the Bush administration, especially after 9/11 and the push to be "proactive", is not. Saddam has very clearly never followed up on the conditions of the cease fire in 1990. He has never lived up to many of the UN sanctions. The UN may ignore that, but that sure as heck gives us a legitimate reason (read: Legal) to go to war.
9. Second, he's got ties to terrorist organizations (like Hamas for example). Sure, not huge ones (the ties, not the organizations), but put the two problems together and it's not hard to connect the dots. If we allowed a regime with a past history of mass producing bio/chem weapons, and with known ties to terrorist groups to do whatever they wanted with no sanctions in place and no restrictions, and even *one* terrorist attack occured on US soils that could be linked back to Iraq happened, who the hell do you think the US public would crucify? Would they blame the peaceniks who refused to allow any action? Would they blame the UN for insisting that sanctions should be lifted? Nope. The'll blame the administration that didn't act proactively to prevent it. It would just be added to another in a string of things that were "missed".
10. Um... Then there's the whole human rights thing. Sure, it's minor, but it's there. Oh. You can throw in oil interests here too if you want. Basically, there's a lot of pretty good reasons for wanting to get rid of Saddam, and not many for wanting him to stay in power (none actually).
11. So we invade Iraq and remove Saddam from power.
Can you see how the two actions are only related in terms of policy? No one in the bush administration is claiming we attacked Saddam in retaliation for 9/11. The actions of 9/11 certainly added up to a policy decision that allowed that action. However, that's like saying that we blamed Germany for the attack on Pearl Harbor in WW2. Not one bit. However, the attack on Pearl certainly gave us the motivation to get involved, and once involved, war with Germany came as part of the decision. This is a similar situation. The decision to take a military action against the Taliban put us on a path that made the decision to use military action against Iraq possible.
But hey! Let's ignore what actually happened, and twist it around into some bizaare strawman: "Bush is claiming that Saddam was responsible for 9/11!!! run for the hillls!". Yeah... Right...
Again though. You give a great example of exactly what Totem was talking about. While I'm not going to make a global statement about Dem logic, I've certainly seen a pretty large amount of convoluted logic come from the Dem party. On this issue, it's really apparent as well...