Of course there was no silver bullet or fly swatter! That's our point.

[jobycom]

Rice said there was no silver bullet that would have prevented 9-11, and that Bush said he was tired of swatting flies. Bush wanted a single plan that would end the Al-Queda threat once and for all.

That's what we have been saying! Of course there was no silver bullet. There never is. The Millenium Plot wasn't stopped by a silver bullet, it ws stopped by hard work. Hard work and a fly swatter. That's how you battle such an enemy. You chase down every single rumor, every single lead, and you swat it. You put pressure on the leaders to rush, to make mistakes, and that makes it harder for them to pull off the big plots.

The idea that you can just end the threat of terrorism through some magic bullet is assinine, and points out exactly what we have all said about Bush since before he was elected. He is not capable of this job. He does not have it in him. He does not know how to work-- he has never had to learn. Everything he has or is was given to him because of a rich and famous father. The only reason he wasn't sent to Viet Nam, the only reason he wasn't put in prison for cocaine abuse, the only reason he was appointed president after losing the election is because someone else did the hard work that allowed him to take the shortcut. He thinks he's worked his way to where he is, that it's his fault he is out of jail and in the White House. But it just isn't.

And that was his theory on terrorism. Find one way to fire a silver bullet (notice it's a bullet and not a wand analogy?), end the crisis forever, and go to bed with someone else's wife by eight. Why didn't Clinton do that? Because it can't be done. Terrorism is a movement, and idea, a ghost, a virus. You don't defeat it with a single shot. You don't defeat it at all. You simply try to prevent it, through hard work, through intelligence, through containment, and through preventing the conditions which make it most virulent. Bush did none of this.

Rice said exactly what we have been saying all along. Bush did not know how to fix it, so he did nothing. She--an academic--defends that as appropriate. But it isn't. It is exactly the point of his failure. Clinton worked hard, even under intense fire (the kind that drove Nixon and LBJ to alcoholism, and Reagan and the first Bush to detachment from reality). He achieved, as he has always had to do to get anywhere in life. Bush just sat back and watched people give him things. And that isn't ever going to be enough.

[Jacobin]

1. Yeah. So let's just throw up our hands and go on vacation

for a fucking month, not warn the american people and just say "hey, nothing we can do, that's the breaks"

Oh, and make sure all the military fighters who usually pursue planes off course all stand down, so that we MAKE CERTAIN there is "nothing we can do."

[jobycom]

3. Hm. That is a good point, about the planes.

Does sound less like an oversight from that angle, doesn't it?

Did you hear about the flyover incident in DC the other day, when F-16s buzzed the Mall? It was a recruiting exercise, they said, and then they added "We always have planes in the air around here." Oh? Always?

[cheezus]

2. kick - good read

[Lisa]

4. good point about the analogy

ooh, a silver bullet to kill the monsters.

Nope -- at this level, George, the problems can't be "neatly" resolved that way. You have to work and work and stumble and talk to people you really don't like, and sit in boring meetings and read big long thick books, and not have ANY certainty that what you're doing is going to succeed. Reverse global warming! Bring Mideast peace! Eliminate inequity in the world! Make a sustainable economic system! None of these problems can be resolved by simple actions. It's possible that we'll never figure out the perfect solution. The REAL professionals are the ones who don't walk away.

p.s. in the Rolling Stone interview in fall 2000, Al Gore commented that the types of problems Presidents have to deal with are by their nature complicated -- the "easy" stuff has already been taken care of by other people.

[jobycom]

7. Exactly-- Bush always walks away, and leaves the mess for someone

else. Read his business history. Every company he's ever run has failed utterly, but every one was bought for a hefty profit by friends of his dad, or by people looking for White House access. His sale of Spectum 7 to Harken Enterprises is a perfect example. Spectrum continually lost money, but Harken bought it anyway. When the chairman was asked why, he said "we just pulled off a coup. We just got the name George Bush on our board." He had to reassure worried investors, though, that Bush would not be allowed any decision making powers over Harken. They had heard his reputation already.

[Bridget Burke]

5. Good. Another analogy:

Let's say there's a gang of burglars in your town. Your house could be robbed at any time.

Certainly, start an investigation. Try to track down the bad guys. Find their hideout. It would be great to eliminate the problem at its source.

But that doesn't mean you should leave your house unlocked in the meantime. All windows & doors wide open, no burglar alarm, no loud dog.

Offensive & defensive tactics are required--simultaneously.

[nostamj]

6. if I can't kill ALL the cockroaches in the world...

why should I let the exterminator in my apartment?

BushCo's fatal error is:

They CAN'T put TROOPS in the 50+ countries harboring terrorists and in one coordinate SWAT wipe them out.

In fact, unless he's willing to EXTERMINATE every muslim on the planet, every military action will increase the enemy.

[chookie]

8. Why did she laugh off the foiling of the Millennium Plot?

I know that Mr Rove instructed her that she had to not embarass her boss, and find a way to blame Clinton for everything, but her attitude about the successful foiling of the Millennium Plot to attack the west coast in the US was maybe playing that angle a bit too much to come across as sincere.

Intelligence that a plan to attack was underway -- not too brilliant a deduction given that it was such a high profile event and hell! -- most Americans were aware at the time that terrorist assholes might try an attack at any one of the many crowded targets on New Years Eve -- was received by our agents, passed up to the top, which sent out alerts, which resulted in one of the creeps involved getting nabbed, which foiled the attacks. Condi made it sound like they just got lucky, and that absolutely no skill was involved. I say, the Americans were lucky that our counter-terror people were on the alert at that time.

Now compare and contrast:
1) in Dec 1999, an INS person at the border notices a nervous Middle Eastern man at the border trying to gain entry around New Years Eve, and her suspicions are aroused, and turn out to be on target.
2) In Portland, Maine on Sept 11, 2001, early AM, a nervous Middle Eastern man is having troubles getting his entry to his flight processed. He is facilitated by an extremely helpful and professional ticket agent, who does her utmost to get him on his plane on time. Too bad this nervous guy who was having the hard time was Mohammed Atta. Ooops. Maybe if the FAA had informed even Ticket Agents and baggage inspectors that something very big was being planned inside the US, or hell -- even alerted the flying public that Summer of Threat, Mohammed Atta wouldn't have gotten on that plane.

Sorry Condi -- I don't buy your bullshit one bit. It just doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

They say that it's always the lies and coverup AFTER the fact which makes things worse. Yeah. Wait till the lies and cover-up about Sept 11 2001, the most horrific event of our American lifetimes, goes mainstream!!

And then she went on to say that the August 6 2001 brief entitled "Bin Laden Intends to Attack the USA" didn't raise any red flags with her, or him? She laughed it off as some boring history or summary of events in the past.

Yeah yeah, I know I am not as smart as Condi :eyes: , but if I had been told what she had been told, I would have been banging heads together in the CIA/FBI/INS to stop this plot. I would definitely have alerted the public to be vigilant.

Why can't they admit they made a mistake?

Now we're hearing about how Bush didn't want to "swat flies." Condi and CHeney laugh at how small Richard Clarke was thinking back in 2001!

"Swatting flies." I think this is code for "We're planning to eradicate terrorism forever by waging a long-term regional war in the Middle East in which we take out dictators by military force and replace them with democracies friendly to the US and Israel" -- otherwise known as the PNAC program, now known as the War on Terror, or "Rebuilding Iraq" or more popularly, "The New Quagmire" or "Good Morning Again, Viet Nam!"

[jobycom]

9. That's exactly it

They weren;t going to let reality interfere with their dreams. In fact, by allowing the attacks to occur, they were helping PNAC. It's very hard to excape concluding that they let down their gaurd on purpose, maybe not expecting what happened, but hoping for something like Pearl Harbor, or more accurately, the USS Maine.