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Post by wdmundt on Feb 8, 2008 12:52:08 GMT -4
I demand a high standard from you because you have demanded equally high standards from me in the past. For example, you started a whole thread on the subject of what evidence there was for the existence of Jesus and then proceded to reject everything that anyone could reasonably expect for the existence of a religious leader in a relatively obscure corner of the world 2000 years ago. When I compared the evidence for the existence of Jesus to that for the existence of Alexander the Great you wouldn't acknowledge his (Alexander's) existence either. Well, again -- concerning evidence for the existence of Jesus -- you guys only ever offered the writings of authors who had not even been born by the time Jesus was supposed to have died. One of the writings is a clear forgery, the others don't even name a person called "Jesus" and all were written more than 60 years after he is supposed to have died. If you want to revisit that claimed evidence, I am all for it. As to comparing the evidence for Jesus and Alexander -- as I said about a half-dozen times -- if you want to claim that people believe Alexander existed based on the same amount of evidence as exists for Jesus, then the burden is on you to show that the evidence is the same. I'm not making that claim. You are. My claim was that there is no evidence for the existence of Jesus outside of the Bible and I showed you very convincingly that this is the case. If you choose to ignore or reject my argument, then by all means let's look at the evidence again.
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Jason
Pluto
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Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Feb 8, 2008 13:16:25 GMT -4
There's already a thread about that subject that we can raise from the dead again if we wish to. I was just pointing out the motive for my past requests for evidence, not pining for another debate on the historicity of Jesus.
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Post by wdmundt on Feb 8, 2008 13:23:10 GMT -4
You were claiming that I had unfairly excluded evidence and I was showing you that this was not the case.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Feb 8, 2008 13:35:20 GMT -4
This isn't the thread for that debate. And I do think you had an unreasonable standard of evidence.
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Post by wdmundt on Feb 8, 2008 13:39:13 GMT -4
Well, you say this isn't the place for discussing it -- and then you repeat your claim.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Feb 9, 2008 4:40:23 GMT -4
I answered this yesterday. Because I didn't get to it. I can only type with two hands on two threads at once. My answer -- given that I knew by this time that al Qaeda was responsible for, at the very least, one attack that killed 17 US sailors -- I would have called in my best experts on terrorism, the CIA and the FBI and asked "what can we do?" And I would have listened. I would not have brushed off the CIA agent with, "All right, your ass is covered." I'm not particularly enthusiastic about continuing this discussion. I'm still interested in what you would have done that Bush didn't, since Bush had already asked his top experts what to do and put those plans in motion over 3 months earlier. You seem to still be claiming that Bush knew that al Qaeda was behind the USS Cole, again, and for the fourth time, even Goerge Tenant has said that he didn't have proof, he only believed it to be so, that they didn't have that proof until after 9/11. Bush might have believed that AQ was behind it too, but it is impossible that he knew they were because even the CIA didn't know they definately were. So that's your second issue. In your answer you have serious issues that just don't mesh with reality. You can't say that you would have known that AQ was responsible for the Cole, you can say you would have been strongly suspecting it or believed that it was the case, but known, not unless you have some sort of phsyic power than neither the CIA or Bush has. Thus, given that at the time of the August 6th daily briefing that a) it wasn't known for sure and only strongly suspected that AQ was behind the USS Cole, that b) The FBI and CIA were already supposed to be doing everything they could to get OBL and AQ, and c), which I haven't mentioned before, the briefing was actually in response to Bush's own request for Domestic Terror possiblities... What exactly would you have done that is different to what Bush did, or was already doing? You claim he did something wrong, so what was it? What did he fail to do that you would have? You previous answer is pointless to this question because you assume facts not in evidence and respond that you'd do something Bush had already done 3 months eariler, so all you're saying you'd do is something he already did. Since he was doing it 3 months before you claim he should have, how can you then fault him unless you have something else that should have been done, or is it just that your politics and dislike of Bush won't allow you to possibly admit that he did actually do this right and that AQ simply out manouvered a US security system that wasn't setup to stop what happened.
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lenbrazil
Saturn
Now there's a man with an open mind - you can feel the breeze from here!
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Post by lenbrazil on Feb 9, 2008 11:09:33 GMT -4
PW
Despite my position being closer to wdmundt’s that yours* I must admit you’ve made the stronger case. Your position seems to be a bit contradictory though you seem to be saying that since the evidence about the Cole wasn’t conclusive Bush was right not to make AQ and OBL top priorities but then you criticize Clinton for passing up chances to kill the Saudi.
I’m less than convinced by your argument that Bush had less experience with AQ and OBL than Bush. Though they didn’t happen during his watch he and his teem were aware of the Clinton era incidents and should have taken them in to consideration.
It might not be true but Tenant claims he tried to convince Rice to pay closer attention to the terrorist threat but she brushed him off. This how ever fits what Clarke has said and Bush’s “Now you’ve covered you ass” comment. Since much of the information is classified it’s not really fair to ask specifically what should have been done that wasn’t Bush and his teem expresed disinterest in the issue several times. I don't think its at all clear the FBI and CIA were doing everything possible. I agree however that with 20/20 hindsight Clinton deserves much of the blame as well.
As for your spat you were essentially taunting him thus though he might have over reacted a response such as his should not have been expected.
wdmundt:
I'm contadicting myself a bit because I'm undecided on this issue, you reply about what Bush should have done is "begging the question" what specificlly do you think he should have done?
* I haven’t looked that closely though
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Post by wdmundt on Feb 9, 2008 22:10:52 GMT -4
As to overreacting -- I've been through this with PW before and enough was enough.
As to what, specifically, I would have done in reaction to the memo. -- I can't give you an answer such as "launch cruise missiles" or "drop bombs" or any such answers like that. In fact, giving an answer like that would be deceitful. But I would have gotten my best and brightest together and gotten everyone talking. A president should always be surrounded by smart, creative people. He doesn't have to be the smartest guy in the room. So as to what, exactly, I would have done -- I would have done the above and then gone from there.
That's the only answer I can give you.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Feb 10, 2008 2:12:29 GMT -4
PW Despite my position being closer to wdmundt’s that yours* I doubt that actually, I'm nowhere near a supporter of Bush, I think the man is an idiot and that a chimp would have been a better President. I also think that one of the reasons the Dems lost the 2004 election was because of the candidate they put up rather than Bush's abilities. Thanks. I think that Clinton could have been more aggressive. I think that he was too worried about the Impeachment hearings, International opinion and domestic reactions to act effectively. I think that the US itself has been very poor in its decision making towards Afghanistan since G. H. W. and that Clinton couldn't be bothered dealing with that situation at the start of his term, and even towards the end of it wasn't willing to get outside of the box the US had put themselves into. I also think that he was more worried about nuclear proliferation and the US's International relations and reputation than he was about terrorism. I think that he also surrounded himself with people who where very anti-military and weren't willing to use military solutions regardless of the result of that inaction. I also think that he and the rest of his administration should have gotten Bush's involved far earlier rather than waiting until after Bush had set his agenda before trying to brief them on where things stood. I don't think that his administration was at fault for 9/11, but they do deserve some of the blame, as do G. H. W and even Reagan's administrations. 9/11 was 20 years in the making and there were numerous mistakes and poor choices throughout those 20 years that allowed it to happen. I think you mean less experienced than Clinton, and in a way I agree they certainly should have been aware, though I'm not so sure based on the testimony and documents released by the 9/11 commission, that they were. Remember that before being elected Bush didn't even know who the President of Mexico was. The major issue was that Bush did not have one person in his cabinet that knew anything about Afghanistan. The closest where people that had some knowledge about Pakistan and the war against the Soviets. wdmundt points out that Clarke should have been there, and while he does have a case for that, from a political point of view that was never going to be a starter. Had Bush kept the position as a cabinet position, I suspect that Clarke would have been replaced, the fact he wanted to keep Clarke on meant that politically he had to remove the position. Rice, who had the most influence of foreign policies, was a Europe specialist and, like most of the US politicians from Reagan on, was still trapped in a US/Soviet mindset. To the Bush administration and to the ones before Bush, the main issues were rogue states and state sponsored terrorism. OBL was still considered a small fish in a big pond. As of Jan 2001 there had only been 2 successful strikes by OBL, the Embassy Bombings and the Cole, and there was still doubt about the Cole, while the money was on AQ, there was still speculation that Iran or Iraq could have been behind it. That was the world they inherited, one where the possibility of Pakistan going Taliban, or North Korea, Iraq, or Iran getting nuclear weapons could have resulted in tens of millions of US deaths. As such, just like Clinton before him, Bush started out with his sights on nuclear issues, not terrorism I think that Tenant is quiet correct, early on Bush's administration seems to have been totally oblivious to the threat that terrorism posed, but in a way I suspect so was Clinton's though most of his two terms, they'd started to wake up though. It did take Bush and the others 4 months to start taking things seriously. Could they have done something if they'd reacted faster? I honestly don't know, and I suspect no one else does either. Just because the Whitehouse wasn't taking as much notice doesn't mean the CIA and FBI weren't and I really am not sure how further Whitehouse support would have helped. I do believe that there were ways to have stopped 9/11 that weren't taken. The CIA didn't start looking for Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi until mid-July of 2001. The two had been in the US since early 2000, were photographed at a AQ meeting in KL in Jan of 2000 but neither was ever added to a watch list or reported to the FBI or Customs. Even when the CIA started looking they never alerted the FBI to the men and failed to find them, though both were living openly in Maryland, had bank accounts, and al-Hazmi had even had his name in the phonebook while in San Diego. The US as a whole could have possibly prevented 9/11 if they had been willing to change their stance on Afghanistan earlier. Had they been willing to support the forming of a government back in 1990 after the Soviets withdrew they would likely have prevented it. Instead they left it to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to deal with the situation, not even being willing to give a million dollars towards rebuilding schools in the war torn nation. Had they been willing to oppose the Taliban and to tell Pakistan to stop meddling they likely would have prevented it. Had they been willing to support Massoud they would likely have prevented it. If they had done in 1991 what they ended up doing in 2001, 9/11 would likely not have happened. (btw I have to note here than history is repeating itself and much of the promised aid to Afghanistan has never materialised. If they are left once more as an impoverished and ruined country, there will be another 9/11 not so far down the track. The same for Iraq. We have to learn from the lessons out there folks or we'll be regretting it in 10 years time when NY and Washington are nuclear wastelands.) I'm not sure taunting is the right word, but yeah I do have a habit of going for the throat when I see a serious weakness in the opponent's argument. I also get a little frustrated when they don't actually take any notice of what I'm telling them. If wdnumdt had been willing to leave behind his dislike of Bush and his politics and take onboard what I was telling him, altering his perceptions and argument to deal with that information, I'd have gone a lot easier on him. His refusing to do so however made me treat him a little like I would a CT who was set in their belief and unwilling to face reality.
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Jason
Pluto
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Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Feb 10, 2008 2:25:23 GMT -4
I'm not sure taunting is the right word, but yeah I do have a habit of going for the throat when I see a serious weakness in the opponent's argument. I also get a little frustrated when they don't actually take any notice of what I'm telling them. If wdnumdt had been willing to leave behind his dislike of Bush and his politics and take onboard what I was telling him, altering his perceptions and argument to deal with that information, I'd have gone a lot easier on him. His refusing to do so however made me treat him a little like I would a CT who was set in their belief and unwilling to face reality. He does the same thing with discussions on religion.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Feb 10, 2008 2:58:10 GMT -4
As to overreacting -- I've been through this with PW before and enough was enough. The reason I keep on with this is because you made a claim and I'm waiting for you to either back it up or to retract it. You claimed Bush didn't do enough, yet you admit you don't know what he else he could have done. If you can't think of what he could have done, how do you know he didn't do enough? As well as pointless, Clinton did that and it had no effect. Bush specifically stated that he wasn't going to do one off responses, but instead wanted a plan to deal with them once and for all. That was in May, three months before the 6th August daily briefing. Which Bush had already done in May, three months earlier. And his administration is full of smart, creative people. Unfortunately they, like the adminstration before them, were concentrating on nuclear issues not terrorism for four months before they started onto that issue. I think we can safely agree that if Bush was all alone in a room he still wouldn't be the smartest one in there. Which would seem to me that you are indirectly saying that you can't think of anything that Bush should have done that he hadn't already done. If that's the case, why aren't you willing to accept that perhaps you were wrong in saying that he didn't do enough?
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Post by wdmundt on Feb 10, 2008 12:47:46 GMT -4
No, that is not what I am saying. Who knows what ideas might have come up. We'll never know, because the meeting never happened. Perhaps the issue of Air Marshalls might have been visited. Who knows? Calling in the experts would have been the first action in response to a memo that contained disturbing information. That I can't tell you what would have come out of such a meeting is not me falling down and playing dead -- it would have been the first step. Again, if you want someone to say they'd have launched cruise missiles, ask someone else.
And what you are saying is that "you've covered your ass" was the best and only response the president could have given. I find that hard to believe.
According to Clarke, when he did finally have the meeting with Wolfowitz in May 2001, Wolfowitz wanted him to concentrate on Iraqi terrorism. If that is true, then that is a blunder.
As to the administration actively working to go after al Qaeda before 9/11 -- Clarke certainly says that was not the case. What specific actions were taken? I've read claims that the CIA was launching operations to disrupt terrorism, but I've not seen anything that shows those operations were about al Qaeda. It seems implausible that they were, given that the Administration's immediate response after 9/11 was to find out whether Iraq was responsible.
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Post by wdmundt on Feb 10, 2008 13:38:30 GMT -4
As to overreacting -- I've been through this with PW before and enough was enough. The reason I keep on with this is because you made a claim and I'm waiting for you to either back it up or to retract it. Revisit the thread where you repeatedly called me ignorant for saying p52 was the oldest fragment of the New Testament. You called me ignorant for what you saw as my belief that the New Testament was all the same thing written at the same time. In your mind, I should have said "the earliest fragment of what would later come to be known as the New Testament" instead of "earliest fragment of the New Testament." Reading the earlier parts of that thread where we were talking about which of the Gospels came first, one would have had a pretty good clue that I didn't think it was all written at the same time. But you continued to call me ignorant for that and for other things we disagreed about. So just talk about the subject. Don't call me ignorant. Don't repeat things so I can get them into my head.
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Post by gillianren on Feb 10, 2008 16:51:22 GMT -4
I doubt that actually, I'm nowhere near a supporter of Bush, I think the man is an idiot and that a chimp would have been a better President. I also think that one of the reasons the Dems lost the 2004 election was because of the candidate they put up rather than Bush's abilities. A, there's at least one person on this board who would dispute you about that, and who would not agree that Bush in an empty room still wouldn't be the smartest person in the room. (Not that I disagree with you, Gods know.) B . . . really, am I the only person who genuinely liked both Gore and Kerry? (I'd've voted for Edwards yesterday, had he not dropped out of the race. And he still got a delegate in my precinct. Nice guy, too.) I think the reason the Democrats lost four years ago had a lot more to do with how they handled those liars, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. That there can still be anyone who thinks those guys were in the same state as the truth proves that the Democrats failed. I love my party, but Gods, it can be stupid sometimes. (Ditto my country, of course. And I think that's adult love, as opposed to the childlike "everything my country does is right, and if you say otherwise, you don't really love it" bull that Fox News is trying to espouse.)
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Post by PhantomWolf on Feb 10, 2008 17:59:22 GMT -4
No, that is not what I am saying. Who knows what ideas might have come up. We'll never know, because the meeting never happened. Perhaps the issue of Air Marshalls might have been visited. Who knows? Why would they have done anything more then was done in May when Bush told the CIA and FBI to do everything in their power to stop AQ and get OBL and activated the CIA's plan to work closer with Massoud to get into Afghanistan and start hunting OBL. They had exactly the same information then as they did in August. Again, the FBI and CIA were issuing threat warnings to various groups, including Airlines, why didn't they respond that they thought they needed better security or more Air Marshals? Why do you apparently think that Bush should have been responsible for making all of the security decisions based on one vague briefing when everyone else was being told the same thing and didn't seem to take it seriously either? Heck the CIA who wrote the briefing didn't even consider it important enough to tell the FBI that there was a strong possibility that two AQ agents who had connections to those responsible for the USS Cole were in likely in the US. Given the CIA's seeming lack of concern about an attack in US soil even when the "system was blinking red," why do you think Bush should have been? And you wonder why I get frustrated with you. You are still calling this a "memo" it wasn't, it was a "Daily Briefing" you could have confirmed that yourself by looking it up. Continuing to call it a "memo" indicated to me that you still seem to think that this briefing was something unusual which was more important that usual, that the CIA delivered by hand to get special notice taken. Nothing could be further from the truth. Bush requested information on possible Domestic Terror scenarios, the CIA responded by creating a daily briefing on that topic, one that was extremely vague and didn't have anymore information in it than they'd been giving the Whitehouse for the past 6 months. This makes me wonder more about how much you are willing to see reality since I have stated numerous times that Bush himself said doing that would be pointless. Why would I want you to say something I've already pointed out that Bush wouldn't have done and had said he wasn't going to do three months prior to the briefing? No, what I'm saying is that the briefing was vague at best and since there was nothing in it that gave any specifics about the situation, or contained anything new, there wasn't a lot of point in doing anything more than was already activated in May. Had the CIA had firm information that there was going to be an attack in the US then you might have a point, but that's not what happened. Bush asked the CIA what possible domestic terrorism events could happen, they responded by saying, "Well there's OBL, he looks like he wants to attack us and might go after airlines or hijack aircraft." Bush's response was essentially a "Tell me something I didn't know" statement. He wanted specifics, the CIA just gave him what he already knew. Again you are looking at the world through post-9/11 eyes. Pre-9/11 State sponsored terrorism was considered the biggest threat. Compare what AQ had done with what state-sponsored terrorists had done pre-9/11. The assumption right up until 9/11 was that most Terrorist attacks would be via state sponsored groups such as Hamas or Hezbollah. AQ was still considered to be a small fish in a big pond, mostly responsible for financing small groups in the Middle East and Northern Africa. Looking back, yes that was a blunder, but one that EVERYBODY, including Clinton, the CIA, the FBI and Richard Clarke himself had all made. They were to restore the Predators (now armed) to flight status in Afghanistan and also start working on relationships with Massoud. The idea was to eventually have a CIA team working out of Massoud's HQ so they had a permanent liaison on the ground in the region and could operate quickly and effectively if they got the chance. In the time it took to get the details sorted and the operations moving, Massoud had been killed (9/10) and 9/11 happened. With all respect to Clarke, and the job he did, the people in the CIA who were involved in the situation say he's wrong. Michael Scheuer, who was the head of the Bin Laden Group, has pointed out that he knew way more about what the intellifgence agencies were doing about OBL and that Clarke doesn't have a clue. It's also rather strange that he'd later say that the administration wasn't activity working on going after AQ since he stated in a briefing in August 2002 that "President Bush decided to add to the existing Clinton strategy and to increase CIA resources, for example, for covert action, fivefold, to go after Al Qaeda." If increasing the CIA's resources by five so they could go after AQ isn't actively working on going after them, what is? Funny that the unit that was running a lot of those efforts at disruption was called "The Bin Laden Unit." I wonder if they were all concentrating on Iraq…. Why? Again, Pre-9/11 State sponsored terrorism was far more likely. Even today, if Iraq and Afghanistan are discounted, most terrorist attacks are state-sponsored (even in Iraq it appears a lot of it is sponsored by Syria and Iran.) Independent terrorist groups have become a lot more common since 9/11 and now days the first conclusion we jump to is that it was AQ that did it (unless it was in Israel/Palestine.) Things have changed an awful lot in the 6.5 years since 9/11 and it's easy to forget what the mindset was back then. It wasn't just the Bush Administration looking at Iraq; the media did it as well. The main three suspects from the word go were AQ, Iraq and Iran. Bush and co would have been extremely remiss if they hadn't considered the possibility of Iraq of another nation being involved. They also quickly agreed with the conclusion that it was AQ that did it as well once the evidence was presented which shows that they weren't so focused on Iraq that they couldn't see anything else.
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