Nov 12 2008
Liberal Petty Vindictiveness Can Be Very Dangerous To America
What do the Democrats want to do for those who kept America safe from another terrorist attack on this nation over the past 7 years? Something no one would dare to predict after 9-11, that we could go 7 years without another attack on US soil. What is the gratitude to be showed to these critically important people we Americans owe our life to, and the lives of our families? The boot of course:
A number of influential congressional Democrats oppose keeping Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and CIA Director Michael V. Hayden in their posts because both have publicly supported controversial Bush administration policies on interrogation and telephone surveillance. One Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee said there is a “consensus” view on the matter.
Other Democrats and many intelligence experts, however, give high marks to the current cadre of intelligence leaders, crediting them with restoring stability and professionalism to a community rocked by multiple scandals in recent years. A government official who has closely followed the evolution in the intelligence leadership in recent years argued that it is important to keep at least a few “seasoned” professionals in place during wartime.
Obama transition officials, who have steadfastly declined to discuss the personnel selection process, said yesterday that no decisions have been made regarding intelligence appointments. McConnell and Hayden, both career intelligence professionals, interpret the Obama team not reaching out to them as a sign that they will not be kept on, intelligence officials said.
Indulging in petty vindictiveness is not a smart move by liberal democrats (of course using the term ‘smart’ with ‘liberal democrats’ is oxymoronic to the nth degree). There was stupid cries of dropping the ball by hallucinating radical democrats after 9-11. Their answer – do what they claimed Bush did, bungle an all important transition.
There is no rush here, and Obama needs to remember he needs people with opposing views to test and validate his orders, or else there is no feedback from the bureaucracy if he tries to execute a really dumb and naive action or order. No President worth their salt has only pandering yes-people echoing back how ingenious the President’s decisions are. A good President sprinkles his team with a range of voices and views and then selects which path to take.Â
And he has time. He can work up new leaders if he wants. But if the dems rush to move these proven heroes out of their positions before next summer, while al-Qaeda is planning to test this President (his VP even admits this), that would be a certain recipe for disaster. My guess is, knowing the petty thought processes of liberal democrats, is they will take the risky path and give al-Qaeda an opening to test Obama like Bush was tested.
This country has gotten very use to the idea again it is safe from attack. Democrats would be wise to not allow that mythos to be shattered early and abruptly as they try to wave those magic wands and bring about Utopia.
Intelligence Policy to remain largly in tact (under Obama)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122636726473415991.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
That would be Bush’s intel policy, folks! Obama should just say, “thank you”.
The left has no inerest in the protection of a nation and a people for whom it has little more than contempt. And as long as adequate cover can be provided for its utter lack of competence, rest assured that the agenda of these America hating thugs will take complete precedence over the well being of the US. An attack on the US? Why such an event would be universally blamed on the hate inspiring policies of the evil Bush administration. And to the left, no blame means no problem, regardless of attendant death and destruction.
Look how long Winston Churchill lasted after the war. Two months. Democracy does not have a long memory.
We shall find out in the next few years how effective our new presidential administration is in protecting us.
AJ, the question is not whether Al Quaeda will attack, but when, where, and how.
Which worries me a lot. They have a nasty habit of reattacking targets they failed to destroy…and the Great Failure on 9/11 was the attack on Washington.
How long will it take for an Iranian nuke to be smuggled into DC?
Dems like to paint thing as a moral issue alone, hence you are with them or amoral. Hence over the side with Americans who they hate.
Well, maybe this time we’ll have a President that chooses not to simply ignore the intelligence report he receives on “Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.” Maybe this President will have react to a briefing about the dangers of Al Qaeda with a more thoughtful response than, “Okay, you’ve covered your ass now.”
Because, you know, that might go a long way towards making us safe, too.
And Mr. Verdi: exactly who was it that said, “You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists?”
Anyone have any details about the Obama team / Hamas meetings? Such as their plans and agreements, etc.?
Hamas meetings were secret.
Drudge
Democrats prepare to move forward with investigations of the Bush administration… Developing…
I hope they are not that stupid!
“Well, maybe this time we’ll have a President that chooses not to simply ignore the intelligence report he receives on “Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.â€
Certainly you must be aware that in the summer of 2001 it wasn’t news that bin Laden wanted to attack the United States.
Oh come on Sherman you knOW THAT IS CRAP. No one in the government thought that there would be an attack on American soil. You can stop repeating the lies now. And stop being a jerk.
Kathie, I think Sherman was responding to GuyFawkes.
The “Bin Laden determined to strike in the US” report was a specific requested report by Bush–not intelligence ignored.
Please tell me Obama won’t put Jamie Gorelick in his Administration. Are we doomed to repeat the same past mistakes?
Kathie,
I suggest that you do some more research on this issue before you make those statements. I mean this stuff is common knowledge. To bring you up to speed, I found a helpful article that has links to the actual declassified portion of the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB). http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB116/index.htm It also includes a link to the White House Fact Sheet that was released at the same time it released the PDB. So what did Bush himself say about this PDB in the White House Fact Sheet:
“The August 6, 2001 Pdb Item Entitled ‘bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US’ was prepared in response to questions asked by the President about the possibility of attacks by al-Qaida inside the United States.”
“The only recent information concerning possible current activities in the PDB related to two incidents. * * * The second incident involved a call made on May 15, 2001 by an unidentified individual to the U.S. Embassy in the UAE ‘saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives’.”
“The CIA author of the PDB item judged, after consulting an FBI colleague, that there were suspicious patterns of activity that were worrisome, even though nothing pointed to a specific operation in a specific location.”
“From June through September, the FAA and FBI issued a number of warnings about the possibility of terrorist attacks. FAA warnings included specific warnings about the possibility of a hijacking to free imprisoned al-Qaida members inside the United States and the possibility of attacks in response to law enforcement actions against al-Qaida members.”
So yes, people did think there could be an attack on American soil. Bush himself has publically admitted in the White House Fact Sheet that he asked for the briefing on this specific issue, was advised of intelligence of a possible attempt to hijack a plane in the U.S. and was advised that our intelligence community saw “suspicious patterns of activity that were worrisome.” And we know from the 9-11 Commission work that Bush did NOTHING in response to this PDB.
Sorry Sherman, I didn’t realize you were taking off on Guy Fawkes. My words are for him.
So yes, people did think there could be an attack on American soil. Bush himself has publically admitted in the White House Fact Sheet that he asked for the briefing on this specific issue, was advised of intelligence of a possible attempt to hijack a plane in the U.S. and was advised that our intelligence community saw “suspicious patterns of activity that were worrisome.†And we know from the 9-11 Commission work that Bush did NOTHING in response to this PDB.
What, exactly, should Bush have done that he did not do? Please be specific. Please remain within the limits of Presidential authority under the Constitution, then-extant laws, and then-extant regulations (such as Gorelick’s Wall of Separation) that were in place at that time.
(Cue Final Jeopardy theme music.)
conguy, don’t you EVER get tired of displaying your ignorance?
you act as if the PDB said there was going to be a attack by two planes on the WTC, one on the pentagon and one on the capital on 9/11 at x time. The info was very general and included only information that was generally assumed.
I’ll put it this way. If you gave Obama exactly the same info that Bush got that day would you be willing to guarantee that any one of the attacks would be prevented? and don’t make an ass of yourself in your answer. Let’s put it another way: and I don”t have any inside info but I’m gonna predict there will be an attack by terrorists on US soil within the first year of Obama’s reign and that it will be successful. Will you predict that any such attack will be twarted?
Well Conman, if Bush had really been on the ball he would have shut down every airport, shucks they might still be shut down today waiting for the attack. Or If he were really smart he would have told the FBI to tell the CIA what they knew. Oh ya, they couldn’t communicate. Well if he were as smart as Bill Clinton I’m sure he would have found the answer, cause Bill was good, he was hunting down those bad guys who had bombed in Africa and the Cole and the guy who went to Iraq who bombed the World Trade Center the first time and split the scene. Bill told us he would bring these bad guys to justice, words just words cause Bush got them. Oh well, not bad for a lying stupid guy. Anyway, your guy won and now he has a chance to keep us safe. Let’s see how you spin his holiness!
“What do the Democrats want to do for those who kept America safe from another terrorist attack on this nation over the past 7 years?”
One thing I’ve always been curious about – why do the anthrax attacks, which happened on American soil, and after 9/11, not count as a “terrorist attack”?
Doesn’t that seem like an attack that was meant to cause terror?
Redteam:
Okay, let’s take your equivalence one step further:
If Obama ever ends an intelligence briefing, even one as general as “There will be an attack by terrorists on U.S. soil in the first year of your presidency” (without even having the advantage of knowing which group of terrorists, which Bush did know), and Obama ends the briefing by stating: “Okay, you’ve covered your ass now”…
then I will agree, President Obama will have really screwed up there.
Guy Fawkes are you the Australian who was on this site awhile back?
“This country has gotten very use to the idea again it is safe from attack. Democrats would be wise to not allow that mythos to be shattered early and abruptly as they try to wave those magic wands and bring about Utopia.”
I beg to differ here.
This is not the Democrats’ mythos about the war. Their mythos is that there is NO WAR ON TERROR. That’s the mythos.
The war according to them is a fraud, an atrocity, and a blight on the American people. How can we possibly argue that our military is defending us when they’re fighting overseas? Democrats have not gotten used to the idea of it being safe. They’ve never seen the threat. According to them, it was all concocted to win oil contracts for Halliburton.
Bush invented 9/11. There were no planes. WT7 was a controlled demolition. They all were. WTC, the Pentagon, Flight 93 all never happened. All the people who reportedly died on 9/11 were all in on it, faked their deaths, and are all living under new identities on some mysterious island. It was all a hoax. And if anyone knows hoaxes, it’s the libby-leftists.
If you start from that premise, then the idea of keeping America safe from attack becomes irrelevant. Hence:
Obama’s Military Strategy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRGru2CPC4E
All they’re doing right now is humoring the “paranoia” of the other half and the military that most of America still supports. All that’s needed on their part is the “manufacturing of consent”, which has already begun.
Hoax NY Times newspaper declares end of Iraq war
http://www.reuters.com/article/industryNews/idUSTRE4AC0GV20081113
This 14 page edition didn’t just materialize out of thin air after barely a week after His victory. Anyone want to put odds on Axelrod having a guiding hand in this?
The candy-floss-heads on the Eastern seaboard have been ga-ga over this for years already. This “hoax” is their first taste of catharsis. And despite being fake, it’s an all-powerful “first injection” of the “messages” yet to come. This was tantamount to dropping leaflets in Vietnam.
That said, I fail to see the point of this debate. All this “liberal petty vindictiveness” isn’t about partisanship. It’s abject passive-obsessive bitterness that despite their majority holdings they still have to be politic about their intentions and their motivations, that maybe, just maybe, they need to be careful because not all of America ate their candy-floss and drank their Kool-Aid.
All this wait-and-see will still lead inexorably to exactly where the suspicions all point. Every sound bite every nuance that’s come from the transition team has done nothing but confirm them.
Zero transparency (campaign donors, sealed college records). Zero accountability (campaign funding, sealed birth certificate, sealed college records, ignores illegal alien issue about His auntie).
Zero reliability (leaks details of private talk with Bush). Snubs all foreign trade in one fell swoop at what is likely to be a turning point in planning the future of world economic structures, on the pretense of “only one president”, despite having already negotiated with Iraq in July, and now possibly even Hamas, and parading around like He already IS the president, even though He technically isn’t even the President-Elect yet.
Spout “ain’t no lobbyists in my transition team” rhetoric while the most powerful labor groups have their fangs firmly clenched on both His ankles.
HOPE?
Are these the headlines of hope?
MAG: WASHINGTON’S $5 TRILLION TAB…
STOCKS IN FREEFALL; DOW SHEDS ANOTHER 400…
NEAR FIVE-YEAR LOWS…
RUSSIAN TRADING HALTED AFTER 12% DROP…
ECONOMIC WOES INCREASE, CRISIS DEALS IN TROUBLE…
AS MORE COMPANIES SEEK AID, ‘WHERE DO YOU STOP?’…
EMBATTLED BANKS STILL PLANNING BIG BONUSES…
FLU: GOOGLE SHARES BELOW $300 FOR FIRST TIME SINCE ’05…
GE SAYS FEDS WILL GUARANTEE UP TO $139 BILLION IN DEBT…
Bank of England: We’ll slash interest rates to ZERO…
CHANGE?
Rahm Emanuel? John Podesta? Re-hashing the Clinton era? Is this CHANGE?
Briefings will be irrelevant if their single-minded goal is to disarm, disband, and throw down our military and defense for the sake of mandating universal health-care when America is facing the worst economic crisis and the highest national debt in its entire history.
Even if He wanted to act on them, briefings won’t matter. What exactly would he call upon to defend America?
Even Clinton knew better and wound up compromising on his military cuts, and look what STILL happened to America under his watch because of what he did cut. Is that CHANGE?
But America needn’t worry. This is indeed a time of CHANGE and a time of HOPE.
Dear and Fearless Leader knows better how to handle such trifling “little” nations. He can “just go and talk to them, without preconditions”.
Feeling safe now? How about now? Now?
Wanna talk?