frameone: al qaeda would be a two bit operation blowing up the accasional disco somwhere (else, not here), if it weren’t for Democrats — the war on terror began on their (Carter’s) watch (Iran), and it will end with the Republicans: Bush I, Bush II, Rice ’08 and ’12.

Frank, you gotta update your bumper sticker collection.

The only difference I can see is that Johnson’s Great Society allocated resources towards the poorest among us while Bush’s Ownership Society, with its deregulation, no-bid contracts, tax cuts for the rich and pork barrel subsidies, allocates them to the richest.

Other than that, they are exactly the same. My one hope for this situation is that, since Vietnam innoculated us against the war bug for a good 30 years, maybe Bush’s War will give us a 50 year innoculation.

He is as far from micro – managing the war, intraditional, LBJ liberal style, as Minnesota is from the Moon.

Notice where he says “Had Johnson possessed any imagination, he would have sealed Haiphong, as Nixon did later. Only so might the war have been won.”

Democrats start wars, and Republicans finish them

You don’t win a war by trying to get the enemy to like you.

I applaud your efforts (really) Inever expected you to read the essays…

Good for you…

But anyway I ran across this gem that I thought you might like, since you are so concerned with Our Leader’s War and all:

Consequences of Hubris. Every inch a Caesar LBJ looked; he might have sat for Michelangelo for the carving of a statue of a barracks emperor. Experience, nevertheless, had not taught this imperator how to fight a war. To fancy that hundreds of thousands of fanatic guerrillas and North Vietnamese regulars, supplied by Russia and China, might be defeated by military operations merely defensive-plus a great deal of bombing from the air, destroying civilians chiefly, that bombing pinpointed by Johnson himself in the White House! The American troops in Vietnam fought admirably well-how well, my old friend General S. L. A. Marshall described unforgettably in his books-but their situation was untenable. “Imagination rules mankind,” Bonaparte had said-Napoleon, master of the big battalions. Had Johnson possessed any imagination, he would have sealed Haiphong, as Nixon did later. Only so might the war have been won.

Afflicted by hubris, Johnson Caesar piled the tremendous cost of the war-a small item was the immense quantity of milk flown daily from San Francisco to Vietnam, American troops not campaigning on handfuls of rice-upon the staggering cost of his enlargement of the welfare state at home. One might have thought he could not do sums. He ruined the dollar and bequeathed to the nation an incomprehensible national debt. Both guns and butter! It had been swords and liturgies with earlier emperors.

Russell Kirk
The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma

First of all, the quote from the WaPo article clearly states that Bush sent Blanco the memorandum on the FRIDAY before the storm

The article makes no such thing clear. The article to which you link was posted on Sunday, September 4 and datelined on Saturday September 3.

When referring to “midnight Friday”, the article would mean Friday, September 2, not Friday September 26th. It is common in news articles to refer to days of the week when speaking of days that have occurred during the week in which the article was written. When referring to days prior to the week in question, they usually indicate this by specifying a date.

Further evidence of what they mean can be found in this sentence:

As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said.

Since the article was written on a Saturday, this can be interpreted as: “as late as today, Blanco still had not…”

The correction at the top of the page further buttresses the understanding that when referring to dates occurring in the previous week, they use dates, not days of the week:

A Sept. 4 article on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina incorrectly said that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) had not declared a state of emergency. She declared an emergency on Aug. 26.

August 26 was the Friday prior to the week in which the article was written.

Another example of this can be found in an article written today:

Other memorials planned Sunday included …

They didn’t mean Sunday, September 4.

if you ve seen any proof that Osama had anything to do with either nine eleven or Mo Atta, I d like to hear about it.

Hmmm. Aside from his declaration of war on the US and his “determination to attack the US on our own soil,” maybe it was the videotape of him gleefully explained some of the planning process: “OBL: (…Inaudible…) We calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower. We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all. (…Inaudible…) Due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we had hoped for.”

(transcript here)

Looks like I get to eat some crow. Nevertheless, calling someone a liar when they make an unintentional error is still in bad faith.

“Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced by the flooding — 250,000 have been absorbed by Texas alone, and local radio reported that Baton Rouge will have doubled in population by Monday. Federal officials said they have begun to collect corpses but could not guess the total toll.:

Does the article’s author mean the Monday before the storm? No. The events described tell us that but so to does the dateline which clearly establishes that he means Monday, Aug. 29th, the Monday immediately preceding the dateline. Or how about this from the third paragraph:

“As Louisiana officials expressed confidence that they had begun to get a handle on the crisis, a dozen National Guard troops broke into applause late Saturday as Isaac Kelly, 81, the last person to be evacuated from the Superdome, boarded a school bus.”

Here, once again, the events allow us to understand the chronology but the dateline does that as well. The author of the article does not have to write “late Saturday, Sept. 3″ because the dateline establishes this already. Sept. 3, the article’s dateline, was the most immediate Saturday after the storm.

But when events, like a meeting between the President and a governor, aren’t public or else vague, the dateline plays a crucial role in placing the events in their correct chronological order. It also saves the journalist time and makes for a more efficient writing style. That is, the dateline alows a journalist to write “Monday,” “Friday” or “Saturday” without having to say “Monday the 29th” or “Friday, Sept. 2.” If you re-read the article — and not just the snippet you probably got from some other idiot who didn’t know how to read a newspaper story — you will see that if the author meant Friday, Aug., 26 where you say he did, he would have had to write Aug, 26th to differentiate it from the week obviously referenced in the earlier paragraphs. Of course he didn’t write Aug 26th. He just wrote Friday. Why? Because he was counting on the dateline to make his meaning clear. Obviously you were confused anyway.

So now you’ve learned something I hope you find useful in the future. In closing, I would say it’s better to be an idiot than a liar so take comfort, you actually come out of ahead of the game.

Let this be lesson to read carefully, and cover your ass, before opening-up with the utter false libels.

oh please Phil, please. Did you not insert a fake date in a news article in a WaPo article to defend Bush? Here s a link to the thread right here:

If I m wrong and the date in question was Aug 26th tell me, point me to another article where the date doesn t appear in editorial brackets. If I m wrong I ll back off and apologize. Can you prove me wrong?

First of all, the quote from the WaPo article clearly states that Bush sent Blanco the memorandum on the FRIDAY before the storm – August 26th (check your calendar).

Here, once again, is the quote from the article (the calenderically challenged are on your own, this time):

Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday [do you hear that? that s the sound frameone s credibility evaporating], the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state s emergency operations center said Saturday.

And, the article itself, is right here:

http://tinyurl.com/97sb3

Oh, and as for an apology, I do not seek one. Your accusation was malicious, in bad faith, and deliberate. Not to mention, easy as shit to refute.

Let this be lesson to read carefully, and cover your ass, before opening-up with the utter false libels.

oh please Phil, please. Did you not insert a fake date in a news article in a WaPo article to defend Bush? Here s a link to the thread right here:
http://www.oliverwillis.com/2005/09/04/more-on-stop-protesting

If I m wrong and the date in question was Aug 26th tell me, point me to another article where the date doesn t appear in editorial brackets. If I m wrong I ll back off and apologize. Can you prove me wrong?

First of all, the quote from the WaPo article clearly states that Bush sent Blanco the memorandum on the FRIDAY before the storm – August 26th (check your calendar).

Here, once again, is the quote from the article (the calenderically challenged are on your own, this time):

Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday [do you hear that? that's the sound frameone's credibility evaporating], the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state’s emergency operations center said Saturday.

And, the article itself, is right here:

http://tinyurl.com/97sb3

Oh, and as for an apology, I do not seek one. Your accusation was malicious, in bad faith, and deliberate. Not to mention, easy as shit to refute.

Dugger

” Is it because we ve killed more terrorists or is it because we are more security conscious than we ve ever been before?”

I know you’ve departed, but to answer your question. Both. But I concede the latter is likely a bigger overall factor. I guess I would also say that some thought has be given to our perceived desire to fight an engage the enemy. A fact perhaps not lost on the enemy.

Dugger

Only in the sense of “There have been no attacks on US soil since 9/11/2001″. But there have been many attacks in other countries. Besides the attack in London, there have been three attacks against Western targets in Indonesia since 9/11 (Bali, Mariott, and Australian Embassy bombings). Many of my fellow Australians died in those, and the bombers cited US policies towards Islam as their motivation.

The Australian government admits that it is merely a matter of time before Sydney or some other Australian city gets blown up.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Thanks oh so much for exporting your problem to the rest of us. We certainly feel so much safer now.

So unless Phile decides to put up or shut up, that’s enough out of me.

My money is riding with your bet. When scientists attempt an experiment (say when an anthropologist studies a primitive culture) sometimes his very presence contaminates the results. We are seen as contaminants in Iraq by the general pop. But when we leave, whether next year or 5 years from now, civil war is not just probable, but likely.

Why is the left must overstate everything? Want to reconsider this :Our invasion of Iraq served absolutely NO useful purpose? Perhaps upon some reflection you would chose to argue that it was not a worthwhile thing to do or something more moderately sensible.

Semant. Actually, good post. I also do not feel we change things so easily in Iraq or the Mideast (I think of the reversion of the Shah’s modern Iranian state). My bet is that things revert when we leave – and I really hope I’m wrong. But keep in mind here the basis for this discussion is Oliver’s general claim that: “we are no safer.” It may be a coincidence, and it may not (or may) at all be remotely because of Iraq, but we are statistically clearly safer and O is wrong.

And Frame, Middle east terrorism, even that directed at us, significantly precedes this era. Was there anybody out there who believed in dialogue and the touchy/feely method of dealing with terrorists than Jimmy Carter. It got us Desert One. Ever see the pictures of our soldiers burned bodies being kicked about. You and many opponents of Bush claim we have created many more terrorists. Well I don’t take their word for it, nor do I support the logic. We are safer since 9/11. If there are more terrorists where are they? Either they don’t exist or Bushco is doing a helluva a job protecting us against threat even you would have to admit is greater. My bottom line: either Bush is doing a great job or there aren’t more terrorists.

Dugger (maybe both)