questions for stelliform

[zimv20]

i hope you don't mind my breaking this out into its own thread; seemed less messy this way.

i want to understand your unwaivering support for bush. what do you think of his administrations actions regarding the following?


bush's attitude towards the 9/11 commission -- initially opposing its formation, then giving only selected members of it limited access to documents (which could be read only in a specific room), then agreeing to testifying for only an hour and not under oath
the use of secret service and local law enforcement to keep protesters out of his sight and arresting those who refuse to stay in the designated "protest zone"
appearing before the media far fewer times than any modern-day president
saying that god told him to run for president
allowing cheney to keep the energy meeting notes private, even though it's been challenged all the way to the supreme court
lack of holding anyone accountable for the intelligence failures of 9/11 and iraq's WMD
putting the bulk of the military into iraq even though bin laden is still free and afghanistan has fallen back into chaos
unwillingess to take a stand against musharreff/pakistan for allowing its scientists/military to sell so much nuclear technology
desire to build tactical nukes
desire to build a missile shield
apparent lack of interest regarding the valerie plame affair
willingness to prefer "intelligence" from chalabi (sp?) and iraq national congress over CIA intelligence
immediate inflation of medicare estimate
history of always revising job numbers downwards and cost estimates upwards


these are a few of the things that bother me about the bush administration and i'm wondering how a supporter can consider these things and be okay w/ how the administration deals w/ all of it. thanks

[zimv20]

thanks for taking the time to provide some answers. i'm not going to comment on everything, but there're a few places where i'll point out why i feel differently and also make some clarifications.


2. Are you referring to the world trade meetings? If I remember correctly the protests regularly turn violent and destructive.

i'm referring to anywhere where bush goes to make a speech. london is one big example of it, but there are examples from the past two years, including making a commencement speech in Ohio where the students were warned they'd be arrested and not allowed to graduate if they were to hold up anti-bush signs or make any kind of disparaging remark. it goes to a big issue in my mind that bush will not listen to dissent, and if he doesn't see it, i don't think he knows it even exists.


5. I agree with that. He is allowed to seek the opinions in private.

in the interest of open government, the default should be open meetings and available documents (exceptions for national security, of course). cheney won't even release who was at the meetings, much less what was said. i disagree w/ such a style of government and believe that democracy dies behind closed doors.


6. [...] I also do not feel the need to have someone's head every time a mistake is made.

not every time, but for the big ones, yes. that's how government is run, imo. a leader needs to either accept personal responsibility or get rid of those who are responsible. in what i think is a grave character flaw in bush, he never accepts responsibility. his administration has zero accountability. a few firings for mistakes (instead of for people like o'neill, who criticized the adminstration, see my comment above) would indicate some level of accountability.


8. In usual U.S. policy, Pakistan has something we want.

imo, to take down iraq but leave give pakistan a freebie reveals the absolute hypocrisy of the so-called War on Terror.


11. Is this the leaked CIA agent thing?

yep


12. Seems to give the fledgling Iraqi governing body more legitimacy. Helps when you are trying to build a country...

the iraqi national congress (not to be confused w/ the iraqi governing coalition) is the outfit that has been trying to get saddam ousted from iraq. they've been around for years, taking their appeals and lies to different gov'ts. they finally found a friend in wolfowitz.

this is the source of all the things that turned out to be wrong, like the mobile weapons labs. recently, chalabi (he's the head) basically admitted they made up all this stuff, but felt the ends justified the means because saddam is now out of power. the way i see it, chalabi leveraged an unquestioning administration to fulfill his political needs. bush got played but has too much on the line to admit it.


14. Economies are tricky things.

imo, this is the bait and switch administration. no forecast has ever turned out to be remotely accurate. instead of a nearly balanced budget, as was promised, we got a record deficit. i think congress, and a lot of GOPers, are finally getting sick of this particular tactic.

thanks again for the forthright answers

[pseudobrit]

we need to protect ourselves... I still feel that the time to do something substancial should have been after the first WTC bombing and the Cole bombing. Making it a priority then could have headed off 9/11 (imo).

You do realise that Iraq was not involved in any attack on Americans, right?

Do you seriously think invading Iraq in 1999 would have prevented 9/11?

[pseudobrit]

I never said that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11. IMO IRAQ is the perfect tool at the time to attract terrorists to attack our troops and not our civilians.

That's funny because all the terrorists (and their money and sponsors) are in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. And they're not leaving the protection of their states. They may send money and logistical support to an insurrection force, but I highly doubt these people are stupid enough to cross the border themselves to face the might of American military.

They're a little too professional for that. Any group who can get 20 people together and coordinate such an attack as 9/11 is not made of stupid knuckledragging mouthbreathers who can be so easily baited.

I think invading the Sudan in 1993 and getting Bin Laden then would have stopped 9/11.

I think that we should never have given him billions of dollars and expert terrorist training and organisational skills. Short of that, I agree with you in theory on this one insofar as getting bin Laden is concerned.

[Backtothemac]

That's funny because all the terrorists (and their money and sponsors) are in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. And they're not leaving the protection of their states. They may send money and logistical support to an insurrection force, but I highly doubt these people are stupid enough to cross the border themselves to face the might of American military.

They're a little too professional for that. Any group who can get 20 people together and coordinate such an attack as 9/11 is not made of stupid knuckledragging mouthbreathers who can be so easily baited.



I think that we should never have given him billions of dollars and expert terrorist training and organisational skills. Short of that, I agree with you in theory on this one insofar as getting bin Laden is concerned.


Psuedo, we never gave Bin Laden Billions of dollars and training and equipment. We aided the mujahadeen during the Russian Afgan war in the 80's. At the time that was the only option we had short of going to war with Russia. So please don't believe the hype of we gave Osama billions, not true, not true at all.

As for what he is saying. Who do you think is carrying out the attacks in Iraq? It is foreign terrorists. That was his point.

[Sayhey]

Psuedo, we never gave Bin Laden Billions of dollars and training and equipment. We aided the mujahadeen during the Russian Afgan war in the 80's. At the time that was the only option we had short of going to war with Russia. So please don't believe the hype of we gave Osama billions, not true, not true at all.

As for what he is saying. Who do you think is carrying out the attacks in Iraq? It is foreign terrorists. That was his point.

Not trying to hijack the thread, but what we (the US government) did do was train and supply thousands of Afghan fighters who had no commitment to any type of democratic Afghanistan. Where do you think the fighters that formed the backbone of the Taleban got their training? While we did not help bin Ladin set up al Qaeda or directly finance it, we did help lay the basis for its existence with our short sighted policy. It's called blowback.

[zimv20]

Who do you think is carrying out the attacks in Iraq? It is foreign terrorists.

i'm not so sure. everytime the adminstration has made an estimate on the number of foreign fighters, it's always "a couple hundred." i'm not certain that so few people can make that much trouble and i have to believe that there's a good number of iraqis involved.

[IJ Reilly]

i'm not so sure. everytime the adminstration has made an estimate on the number of foreign fighters, it's always "a couple hundred." i'm not certain that so few people can make that much trouble and i have to believe that there's a good number of iraqis involved.

I believe the general consensus is that the suicide attacks are conducted by imported terrorists and the roadside bombings and the like are by home-grown insurgents.

[mactastic]

The indigenous resistance seems more interested in trying to kill American troops and police etc. that are cooperating with us. The foreign fighters seem to be trying to foment a war between Shi'a and Sunni. Both problems need to be dealt with.

[zimv20]

I believe the general consensus is that the suicide attacks are conducted by imported terrorists and the roadside bombings and the like are by home-grown insurgents.
The indigenous resistance seems more interested in trying to kill American troops and police etc. that are cooperating with us. The foreign fighters seem to be trying to foment a war between Shi'a and Sunni. Both problems need to be dealt with.

lemme play devil's advocate here... i've heard the situation characterized that way by several media outlets, i assume on information they've gathered from the pentagon and john-pike-type analysts.

how are we truly to know? sometimes i think 2% of iraqi population doesn't want us there, sometimes i think it's 80%. i need better sources. are you two comfortable w/ the assessments you've reiterated or do you also have some doubt?

[mactastic]

It's mostly a guess on my part, but suicide attacks are the choice of religious fanatics, which Saddam's people are not. Roadside bombs are much more their style. Suicide attacks are a hallmark of True Believers however. That leads me to believe they are not the work of Saddam loyalists. In addition, most of the attacks on civilians have taken place, if I'm not mistaken, on Shi'a targets in an attempt to foment war with the Sunnis. Saddam's party was Shi'a so I don't see them attacking themselves. Al Qaeda however, is Sunni-allied, so it makes sense that they would want to attack the Shi'a.