RW pundit Cal Thomas asks Rummy, "Will it take another 9/11 to make people wake up?"

[sabra]

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/column.aspx?UrlTitle=donald_rumfeld_w_cal_thomas_transcript&ns=CalThomas&dt=12/11/2006&page=2

<snip>

CT: Will it take another 9/11 to make people wake up?

DR: There are people who have written that this administration is a victimof its success, due to the fact that there hasn't been another attack insidethe United States. I remember shortly after Sept. 11, I met with the Sultanof Oman in a tent. It must have been 150 degrees. We were perspiring throughevery piece of clothing we had on. He said this terrible thing that'shappened might be a blessing in disguise. It may be the thing that will wakeup the world to the danger these extremists pose, before those people gettheir hands on chemical, or biological or nuclear weapons where they couldkill many multiples of what they were able to kill on Sept. 11.

This was a man sitting in a tent in the desert with that perspective andunderstanding of the dangers of extremists. It did for a short while, butthen that threat diminished in their minds, whereas it not only has notdiminished in reality, it has grown because of the advances in technologies.Look at the Johns Hopkins exercise with small pox called Dark Winter. It wasput in three airports in America. Something between 800,000 and 1 million people 'died' in some number of months, or a year, from a disease people areno longer vaccinated against. So there are things that can be done. There'sa tendency for a lot of people to be dismissive of this and to ridicule it.

Churchill's phrase about the gathering storm - there was a storm gathering,but there were people in Europe who didn't believe it and who didn't takethe periodic storm clouds and the squalls as a real threat. They thoughtthey were transitory and, of course, paid an enormous penalty in treasureand life for their failure to understand the nature of that threat. I worrywe are in a gathering storm and we do not, as a society, accept it. Many ofthe elites of our society, the key opinion leaders, are unwilling or unableto accept what an awful lot of people believe to be the case. The penaltyfor being wrong can be enormous.

[WI_DEM]

1. They tend to overlook that 9/11 itself happened on their watch

and that they had been warned a month earlier that something like that could happen.

[mod mom]

2. Frightening the masses is the only idea this cabal can come up with-DESPICABLE!

[maxsolomon]

3. dear cal-

why are you so scared?

[elperromagico]

4. Wake up to what?

What this administration likes to do is calmly repeat "You're not going to die" over and over again, interrupting this dialogue only to shout "YOU'RE GOING TO DIE!!!"

People do not act rationally when they act through fear. Terrorism can only be beaten if its enemies are acting rationally. As long as one is afraid, terrorism is working.

[judaspriestess]

5. wake up to what?

this admins corruption and incompetence?

[SeattleGirl]

6. Good God!

They just love to push fear, don't they? There was an LTTE in my paper yesterday, written by some guy who said basically that Democrats were living in a false reality if they weren't scared to death of "the terrorists". The author seemed to think that the best way to live was to run around like Chicken Little, screaming, "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"

When we live in fear, we cannot think straight. When we live in fear, we are all to happy to give up our rights and our freedoms for a false sense of safety.

Cal Thomas doesn't seem to realize that a lot of people HAVE woken up. Have put fear in the drawer where it belongs, and are demanding that our country be returned to us. Fear puts people in a less-than-aware state, which is exactly where the Bush Cabal wants us. But many of us don't want to be there anymore.

[elperromagico]

7. That is what this adminstration chooses to ignore.

Terrorism is not just the attack; it is the fear of attack.

When this administration encourages fear - as a means to build support or win elections - it only helps keep terrorism alive. It's common sense. You can't fight fear by creating more fear any more than you can clean a toilet by taking a dump.

Terrorism is not something to ignore. However, it can be dealt with without encouraging irrationality.

[SeattleGirl]

9. I love your comparison between fighting fear and cleaning the toilet

It fits perfectly. :thumbsup:

[wildbilln864]

8. The new Pearl Harbor event...

needed and written about by the PNAC in their document "Rebuilding America's defenses"
911 was an inside job!
Watch "Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime"!

[Bucky]

10. it's like he's begging for another slaughter of innocent Americans...

Sadly, he'll have to settle for cheerleading the slaughter of innocent Iraqis. If terrorists were going to hit us, they would have hit us by now. Why has there been nothing of a threat to the US since 9/11? Because there's not much of a threat to us. The terrorists are really letting the conservatives, and Cal Thomas in particular, down.

[marmar]

11. Cal Thomas is yet another worthless right-wing gasbag....

that fewer and fewer seem to be listening to with each passing day. :nopity:

[Sapere aude]

12. We haven't had a stampede of rabid skunks or an attack of rancid popcorn since 9/11 either.

I guess Bush and the gang should be real proud of that record too.

[Mojambo]

13. What must we do to get the people on board with perpetual war! n/t

[muntrv]

14. We DID wake up on November 7. AND WE VOTED!!