Cheney says Bin Laden Innocent on 9/11
POSTED BY: piratenews
UPDATED: Monday, March 17, 2008 16:03
VIEWED: 7326
PAGE 10 of 10
From the top, 1st link
Tony Snow asks the question of Vice President Cheney...
Q - " the White House has never argued that Saddam was directly involved in September 11th, correct? "
Quote:
A - "So we've never made the case, or argued the case that somehow Osama bin Laden [sic] was directly involved in 9/11. That evidence has never been forthcoming. But there -- that's a separate proposition from the question of whether or not there was some kind of a relationship between the Iraqi government, Iraqi intelligence services and the al Qaeda organization" - V.P. Cheney
This directly contradicts the theme of this thread, and Cheney's remarks fall in line w/ exactly what I've stated all along. Thanks for citing evidence which backs up my point of view.
It is not those who use the term "Islamo-Fascism" who are sullying the name of Islam; it is the Islamo-Fascists. - Dennis Prager
" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "
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Bush, reacting to why he doesn't obsess over UBL every waking moment of every day
" The idea of focusing on one person is uh..it really indicates the people don't understand the scope of the mission. Terror is bigger than 1 person, and he's a person who has been marginalized... "
It's clear to me that Bush thinks UBL has been knocked down a few pegs, is on the run and while we'll get to him eventually, Bush isn't going to build up the myth of Usama by stressing over him at each and every turn. It's a smart tactical play on Bush's part, to minimalize UBL's importance to the public, while still hunting for him behind the scenes.
Again, another one of your links clearly defines and supports my point of view. Bravo.
It is not those who use the term "Islamo-Fascism" who are sullying the name of Islam; it is the Islamo-Fascists. - Dennis Prager
" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "
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Okay, I get that my post was a little off topic, and that explains why it is being ignored.
But I'd just like to ask RAP two questions.
How did this administration convince you that terrorists are such a big scary threat to you?
You do realize your chances of being killed in a car crash or a household accident are much greater than the possibility that terrorists can threaten you (and I'm talking about the time before the war on terror supposedly started making us all safer), don't you?
Blane
=======================
"Sure as I know anything I know this, they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten, they’ll swing back to the belief that they can make people… better. And I do not hold to that. So no more running. I aim to misbehave." - Malcolm Reynolds
"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts." - Edmund Burke
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Quote:
Originally posted by blanetalk:
Okay, I get that my post was a little off topic, and that explains why it is being ignored.
But I'd just like to ask RAP two questions.
How did this administration convince you that terrorists are such a big scary threat to you?
It didn't need to be convince me. I saw what happened on 9/11. I saw what happened in NYC, etc... Living near Atlanta, it's very noticable when there are no planes in the sky. None at all. Also, I realize the importance of helping those who I'll never meet, be they in NYC after a terrorist attack, or in S.E.Asia, after a tsunami.
Quote:
You do realize your chances of being killed in a car crash or a household accident are much greater than the possibility that terrorists can threaten you (and I'm talking about the time before the war on terror supposedly started making us all safer), don't you?
Blane
That's more of a statement than a question, so I don't know how to answer, other than this.... it's not about my PERSONAL safety. It's about stoping evil when/ where we can. Something so premeditated as terrorism affects all humanity, all of civilization, not just those who died or were injured. Accidents are one thing, but it's ridiculous to compare any accident to an overt , intentional act of terrorism, murder, etc. If people stood by and did nothing in the face of terrorism, we'd still have blacks being lynched here in the South. But folks stood up to the violence and threats, and if we did more of the same today, we could do even more good.
It is not those who use the term "Islamo-Fascism" who are sullying the name of Islam; it is the Islamo-Fascists. - Dennis Prager
" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "
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Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
That's more of a statement than a question, so I don't know how to answer, other than this.... it's not about my PERSONAL safety. It's about stoping evil when/ where we can. Something so premeditated as terrorism affects all humanity....
but dont you see, the great flaw in this line of thinking is that you CAN stop this by conventional means.. its akin to pre-empting a car accident or lighting strike. the risk is disproportionate in relation to the hype that your side is issuing. however, because of our intervention, we are setting ourselves up for something that never had to be..
the solution is not "regime change", intervention, and increased (world)policement. that is what causes the resentment towards us, that later results in an individual criminal attack
for example, let me give you a hypothetical:
i am a young college student, mentally unstable, suicidal with a lot of resentment, and dangerous. for whatever reason, i am motivated to commit a suicide/homicide event among my classmates. i could hop on the internet and find 100k ways to do this, including homemade bombs and chemical weapons. i choose my method, get to campus, and murder untold amounts of people
in your opinion, is there any circumstance under which ANY authority might have prevented this criminal attack?
if i commit myself to death, there is no way i can fail. the government is useless in this instance, absent complete tyranny and authoritarianism. this kind of "terror" attack can ONLY be prevented by friends, family, the co-workers.. people who can appeal to this person emotionally or reasonably. you could argue that this is the only defense against criminal activity, is obedience to morality. we need to recognize that this is a spiritual battle going on
the only type of "terror" attack that can be prevented are those organized by intelligence or xyz conspirator groups, who may be working on behalf of larger interests, in the business of international espionage etc. 9/11 qualifies, because the "coincidences" are untold and increasingly profound; and it never would have happened, had the CIA, the whitehouse, the Pentagon, the FAA, NORAD not been too complicit, negligent, or too incompetent to do their jobs right. and, some would argue it conveniently benefited a certain neo-agenda to prevent Saddam from switching over to the EURO..
Quote:
Something so premeditated as terrorism affects all humanity...., all of civilization, not just those who died or were injured. Accidents are one thing, but it's ridiculous to compare any accident to an overt , intentional act of terrorism, murder, etc. If people stood by and did nothing in the face of terrorism, we'd still have blacks being lynched here in the South. But folks stood up to the violence and threats, and if we did more of the same today, we could do even more good.
its a moral issue Rap.. not something we're going to solve by ramming our tanks and destroyers in their faces and overthrowing elected governments
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Rap, well, I was making the statistical analysis on accidents to make it personal to you. But in point of fact, in my previous post I proved statistically that any human being living in this country is much more in danger from the "premeditated terrorism" perpetrated on a daily basis in this country from local criminals than from foreign criminal organizations who, except for one notable exception, have not been able to do jack to us. People in NYC, Atlanta, Houston or anywhere else in this country face real danger every day.
YOU SAID, "Accidents are one thing, but it's ridiculous to compare any accident to an overt , intentional act of terrorism, murder, etc. If people stood by and did nothing in the face of terrorism, we'd still have blacks being lynched here in the South. But folks stood up to the violence and threats, and if we did more of the same today, we could do even more good."
I agree. So to me that means that we stop spending nine billion dollars a month fighting "terrorists" who managed to kill 3000 people one time in this country and pour it into our law enforcement system to help prevent the more than 15,000 murders that happen in this country each year. That is a greater danger. I'm not worried about al-Qaeda when my girlfriend can't feel safe walking down the street at night.
The fearmongering this administration had promulgated is misplaced. In the big picture, the terrorists are not as big a danger to people as many other more mundane evils.
But the administration just needed a new Boogie Man since the Communists are no longer a credible threat, eh?
Blane
=======================
"Sure as I know anything I know this, they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten, they’ll swing back to the belief that they can make people… better. And I do not hold to that. So no more running. I aim to misbehave." - Malcolm Reynolds
"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts." - Edmund Burke
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Quote:
Originally posted by blanetalk:
1) The airborne assault of 9/11 was the first successful coordinated attack on our country by a foreign based criminal organization in 225 years of existence, and resulted in just over 3000 deaths. (I'm not denying the embassy bombings by al-Qaeda in 1998 or the U.S.S. Cole bombing in 2000 ... I'm just talking about coordinated attacks on U.S. soil.)
I think you have pretty well spelled out why we have something to fear from Al-qaeda. It has nothing to do with the Bush administration, it has to do with the Al-qaeda's own threats and actions. The fact that they did pull off the attacks you mentioned and have promised more is enough reason to react offensively to stop future attacks.
You also make a typical false connection between the war in Iraq and 911. The war in Iraq has been going on since Desert Storm in 1991 and the second invasion was more because of Saddam's firing on our airplanes in the no fly zone and breaking the agreement he made to end the 1991 conflict. The only 911 connection to the Iraq war is the need to show both the terrorists and the dictator thugs that support them that they won't be allowed to attack the US with impunity in the future. Recent statements by Bin Laden and the fact the Libya gave up WMDs are evidence that they got the message.Quote:
Afghanistan -
Afghan security forces:
~5,820 killed
Northern Alliance:
~200 killed
Coalition:
~760 killed
Contractors
~83 Killed In Action
Civilian dead (estimated):
~ 7,300-14,000
Iraq -
Iraqi combatant dead (invasion period)(estimated): ~7,600-10,800
Insurgents dead (post-Saddam):
~19,429 per U.S. military (22 September 2007)
Iraqi Security Forces (post-Saddam, Coalition allies) Police/military killed:
~10,020
Coalition dead:
~(3,987 US, 175 UK, 133 other)~ Total 4,293
Contractors dead:
~(US 236) ~Total 1,019
==============================
2) One foreign based coordinated criminal attack on our shores in 225 years resulting in roughly 3000 deaths means an average of 13.3 deaths per year. Over the time span of 1997 to 2006, the number of instances of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter in the United States was 164,903.
While the legitimate statistics(second set of stats are bogus) you gave are regrettable, in your own words you demonstrate that they're not as impressive as violent deaths in the US. I'd also throw in automobile deaths and deaths due to medical mistakes. People who claim to look at the statistics should by your reasoning be much more concerned about preventable accidental deaths than the deaths due to war. I don't remember anyone posting a thread lamenting the auto related deaths in the US. Quote:
5) Has Bush stubbornly refused to acknowledge making bad judgements when the majority of public opinion is calling him on it?
Bush's stubbornness is the only reason we are currently on track to win the war in Iraq. Though I do give the surge some credit for speeding up our inevitable victory, the Iraqis turning against a Al-qaeda and high casualties among Sadr's militia are the primary reason things have turned in our favor. Bush listened to the Generals, who told him that it takes a long time and persistent effort to defeat an insurgency.
Your boogie man argument does have some merit, but the while you see an attempt to scare the American people, I see an attempt to keep the easily distracted American people from losing focus and allowing another more catastrophic event to occur due to lack of vigilance.
Also, nice to see a new name in the RWED. You make some excellent points and your tone is refreshing to hear in RWED.
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KIRKULES, thank you for the courteous acknowledgment. I may argue a point vehemently, as I rarely bother posting about a subject unless I feel passionately about it, but I always mean to do so respectfully and intelligently.
I actually did not spell out what we have to fear from al-Qaeda ... I was asking why our reaction was so disproportionate in the grand scale of things compared to the small (significant yes, but small) amount of damage they have done to us. The amount of danger they pose to us compared to many other internal and external threats is minimal. So when you make the statement that al-Qaeda should be feared greatly for the one attack they successfully pulled off and the other ones they have threatened, I would ask you to put it in perpective. They got lucky once.
Our normal national security up until 9/11 was sufficient to prevent all previously threatened actions by them. The 9/11 attacks were preventable simply if the airlines had done their job better. For fear of that one event happening again I for one am not willing to give away my democratic rights, have my country become an international bully and embrace tactics that this administration and the CIA find perfectly acceptable but international experts and John McCain declare to be torture (yes, I'm talking about water boarding to mention just one tactic that has been acknowledged by both sides of the argument.) This administration has spread the message of "terror" quite effectively, and you can convince people to give up many things they shouldn't give up when they are afraid. I'm not saying the bombings of 9/11 weren't scary, tragic and abhorrent. I'm just saying the government and it's apologists have driven the drumbeat of fear mongering far beyond what is appropriate to the threat of this particular "villain", particularly in perspective to other threats in this world (domestic crime, North Korea and Pakistan's nuclear ambitions, China's growing global economic impact ... etc.)
You make a good point about the frequently discussed relationship or lack thereof between the 9/11 attacks by al-Qaeda and the second invasion of Iraq. This ignores the fact that I did also talk about Afghanistan, but I'll go with your argument. Why did we not attack Iraq in the year and a half prior to 9/11? The conditions were the same, we could have justified the "war" at that time for the same rationale that was eventually used. No, the administration saw the timing was right, and after swelling our nation's populace with fear over the drama of "terror" they were able to get politicians and the public to agree to something they wouldn't have agreed to beforehand; a new invasion of Iraq without the support of the majority of our allies worldwide.
By the way, the rest of the world was right on that one. It is arrogance of a nature I do not comprehend or condone that says since we're the United States - home of the free and land of the brave - we should be the world's policemen even when the world doesn't want us involved, just because we have the economic might and military prowess to do so.
Finally, your assertion that we are on track to win had me laughing sardonically all night. You have the President's brand of myopia to think that anything near a victory in Iraq is within our grasp any year soon. You remember when our president posed in front of the banner reading "Mission Accomplished" on board the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln on 5-1-03, right? That's the kind of myopia I'm talking about. I'll quote two things from the President's speech on that day that bother me, and I understand this is taken out of context, but perspective is really what this is all about and I'll illuminate that point in just a moment. Quote # 1: "In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." Quote # 2: "Our mission continues...The War on Terror continues, yet it is not endless. We do not know the day of final victory, but we have seen the turning of the tide."
Both of these statement present a "rose-colored glasses" point of view regarding th
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