Yeah. Thought so.

Does “Continue to treat it as a law enforcement issue like every previous American administration.” count as an answer?

Sean D. Martin: “Except that it wasn’t translated from teh Raabic until 9/12. Hard to make use of clues that you don’t have yet.”

CSS: And why is that? Why wasn’t it translated? Oh right, because the Bush administration didn’t give enough resources to counter-terrorism.

The transmission was intercepted on 9/10. It wasn’t translated until two days later. I’m not sure what the number of intercepts are and how long it normally takes them to get translated. Two days seems not unreasonable to me given the level of traffic I expect is intercepted. But I don’t know for sure. And unless you can prove two days is unnecessarily slow, unless you can prove that more translators would have brought that particular message to folks’ attention the day it was sent then you can’t make the argument you are making.

In any event, even knowing something is going to happen tomorrow, absent a lot of other analyzed information knowing it goes down tomorrow doesn’t help much in knowing what “it” is.

CSS, since the civilian government can’t fire someone because they’re gay, it’s against EO/EEO, you’re probably referring to the military discharging linguists who were found to be gay. Unfortunatly, you’re wrong about the number.

As of 2007 the grand total of Arab/Persian linguists who were discharged under DADT since 1995 is: 58. And that number is high because they include people who were discharged prior to completing their language training. Every so often you’ll see a claim about 300 linguists being discharged, and that is likely the source of your confusion CSS. However, that is going back over a decade and it rolls up every person discharged with a language identifier. Unless I misunderstood something about 9-11 I don’t see how a Polish or Russian or Korean linguist would have been much help in translating Arabic.

It was a damned good exploitation on your part, but my error was the opposite of yours: you were overly precise, while I was vague enough that you could exploit an alternative definition.

Good grief, I can’t believe I’m putting this much analysis into such a silly quip…

J.

You’re absolutely right on Reagan and the Lebanon bombing, and I’ve said so on numerous occasions. I put it almost as significant in setting a precedent that the US would accept Islamist terrorism as Carter’s utter capitulation on the Iranian hostage crisis.

But you’re dead wrong on the first WTC bombing. SOME of them were locked up, but several of the leaders got clean away — one of them even found sanctuary in Iraq, of all places. And those that we did lock up? One of them got his lawyer ot cover for him while he continued to run terrorists in Egypt.

Al Qaeda also pulled off the African embassy bombings and the Khobar Towers bomb as well as the Cole attack, and Clinton didn’t see it as enough of a priority to do much.

J.

Sean D. Martin: “Except that it wasn’t translated from teh Raabic until 9/12. Hard to make use of clues that you don’t have yet.”

And why is that? Why wasn’t it translated? Oh right, because the Bush administration didn’t give enough resources to counter-terrorism. Hell, after that happened they fired numerous translators because they were gay. Yet they want to torture people to get intelligence.

“If you were president you’d have 27 other important things you had to deal with and any particular day.”

Bullshit. Fucking bullshit. Al Qaeda successfully attack the United States a number of times. Yet Bush did NOTHING to prevent another attack. We know he was warned by outgoing members of the Clinton administration, but he ignored these warnings.

The rethugs love terrorists.

I believe his actual words were, “OK, you’ve covered your ass now.”

Then he played golf.

What is your solution to the next major attack? I’d like to get it in writing now so we can compare notes after the fact.

If you want broad, non-knee-jerk solutions, I would focus on catching the people and disrupting the organizations that would do us harm. Unfortunately, that requires, you know, watching and listening, so we’re out of luck there since apparently the only acceptable watching and listening is the kind that involves already knowing what will be seen and heard.

You said the Army didn’t scramble “fighter planes.”

I gently mocked you, pointing out that the Army doesn’t have any “fighter planes” (shortening it to “fighters,” the standard term) — and, for that matter, hasn’t had any since the Army Air Force went independent and became the Air Force.

You took “fighters” and changed the interpretation from “aircraft” to “individuals who fight.”

We’ve both had our pedantic little jollies. (I think mine was better, but I’m sure you disagree.) What say we drop it?

J.

Actually, what he said was “the army”. Lower case “a”. Which I took as a generic for “military” and not a reference to a particular branch of the service.

(Nitpicking, I know, but I couldn’t resist.)

Except that it wasn’t translated from teh Raabic until 9/12. Hard to make use of clues that you don’t have yet.

CSS: If I was president and I was presented with a memo about anyone determined to attack the United States, I would want to be involved. I would set up a meeting with experts who could brief me on the man, what he wants, how dangerous is he, is he a credible threat, etc. George W. Bush did none of this.

If you were president you’d have 27 other important things you had to deal with and any particular day. You’d have staff who are supposed to help you determine the relative import of those things and make sure something can’t-be-ignored critical is presented as such.

Lord knows I have no respect for Bush and believe the man to be utterly incompetent at his job. But I find it very hard to believe it was as simple as he was presented with a memo full of dire warnings and said “Let’s just ignore that.”

The “if I were president I would have done exactly all the things that it is now obvious should have been done in hindsight” argument isn’t up to your usual standards, C.

Any fool knows you invade Iraq.