How’d that go?

Under Bush the Lesser? ‘Ok, you’ve covered your ass’.”

Why is this so hard to understand for these people?

Bush literally did nothing despite being told there was a direct threat.

If Bush has just asked questions and tried find out what we knew, perhaps he could have done something.

BUT HE DIDN’T CARE!

I seem to remember that during the Bush I and Clinton administrations that when warnings like this came up, new security procedures were implemented at the airports. You couldn’t park at the curb at the terminal, bag checking and ID checking was more stringent, and there were more inspections of cars. Then when the imminent threat passed, things went back to normal.

Under Bush the Lesser? “Ok, you’ve covered your ass”.

But no….

For that you can thank Jamie Gorelick and the Clinton DOJ, who “developed the policy that prevented communication between various government law enforcement and intelligence agencies, specifically the FBI and CIA”.

One would think that, at the same time that PDB came out, flight instructors were getting pupils who didn’t want to learn how to take off or land, one or two red flags would have gone up.

But no….

I’m really surprised you guys haven’t twisted up your panties with “OMG!! OBAMA JUST INVADED PAKISTAN!!!!!” yet.

Lazy, man, just lazy.

You guys aren’t capable of reading this sentence, are you? Unfortunately, neither was George W. Bush.

That statement is hardly what normal thinking people would consider actionable intelligence. Strike Where? When? How? So tell us, genius, Did Bush or the CIA or FBI have the answers to any of those?

That would be like the LA police chief getting intelligence that simply read “Bank Robbers determined to strike in LA”.

Yes, you’re an idiot. It had to be said.

Look, I’ll use small words for you Jay: the best policy against terror is one that uses both “police-like” work like our intelligence agencies and military force once we have credible evidence. Republicans love to throw out the false dilemma of we either use one form or another, forever and always, when any adult knows that you can use both forms effectively.

But please, feel free to explain why, after a group of mainly Saudi hijackers managed to pull off the worst act of domestic terrorism ever under Bush’s watch, invading Iraq while maintaining our diplomatic relationships (not to mention personal friendships with the Bush family) makes any fucking sense at all.

“Bin Laden Determined To Strike Within US”

You guys aren’t capable of reading this sentence, are you? Unfortunately, neither was George W. Bush.

Precisely because law enforcement is designed to turn “hunches, or inferences, or tips from non-credible sources, or suspicions” into evidence whenever and wherever it can.

Which is often labeled as “profiling” and gets the cops smeared and the accused freed.

Mark Fuhrman was, by most accounts, a good LA cop. But because he was working on a screenplay (much like Gene Roddenberry, another former LAPD cop) where a character spoke in racial epithets, he and the entire case against OJ Simpson was discredited.

Prior to 9/11, authorities acting on “several Arab-looking men acting suspiciously on an airplane” was not grounds for arrest, but lawsuits. Hell, even after 9/11, there were several incidents of just that happening.

Already Obama has shown how he intends to fight terrorism — he sent an armed drone into Pakistan to kill some. Why didn’t he send in the cops to arrest them?

J.

Wow. The hypocrisy you spew is amazing.

And the stupidity you spew is… well, expected.

Obama is trying to pull resources out of Iraq and into Afghanistan, so he won’t need to do these type of attacks. But it will take a while.

Yeah, thank God that whole surge thing was successful so that President Hopenchange can take drawn-down troops from Iraq (which was already in the works BEFORE he took office) and shift them over to Afghanistan where things aren’t going quite as well. I hate to think where we’d be today if Obama and the rest of the Democrats had been successful with their “Iraq is a hopeless quagmire and we need to bail out of it immediately” campaign.

Duros nails it. Why? Precisely because law enforcement is designed to turn “hunches, or inferences, or tips from non-credible sources, or suspicions” into evidence whenever and wherever it can.

The military is not really set up to do police work. Of course, that’s a feature, not a bug, in Jay Tea’s mind. Apparently “hunches, or inferences, or tips from non-credible sources, or suspicions” is all the reason you need to destroy an entire country.

Jay Tea. What the hell are you talking about? I have a word of advice for you, my friend, the movie minority report wasn’t real. There are no such things as pre-cogs.

We didn’t invade Afghanistan until after 9-11.

We didn’t invade Iraq until after, well, gosh, it sure would have been nice to have some “solid evidence” there.

Of course, every time we launch a missile at some target, we have evidence that the location or the individuals there are terrorists, which is, you know, a crime.

What you seem to be advocating is that we use the military to invade countries and kill lots of people based on “hunches, or inferences, or tips from non-credible sources, or suspicions”.

That sounds like an awesomely effective policy.

What I see is a lot of spinning going on for Obama.

When Bush launched strikes, it was the evil and stupid Chimperor fulfilling his cowboy and/or revenge fantasies.

However, when Obama does it, why he’s an awesome guy in the serious and necessary business of “killing terrorists”.

I see that Obama with in the driver seat, the “OMG War on Terrah!” has been changed into the “Good and Just War”.

As for transparency, he’s talking about how the government does business, not talking about ongoing military operations.

Thank you for another installment of “What Obama Really Meant”.

And I’m sure had Bush’s spokeshole responded with “No comment” to a drone strike, you would have simply shrugged and said to yourself “Well, it is an ongoing military operation, so I guess they don’t need to respond to any questions about it”. Somehow I doubt it.

So how are you planning to explain away his “No Lobbyists” policy being broken by his recent picks for deputy secretary of defense and deputy secretary of health & human services?

Oh wait, I forgot… they have a “Waiver Program” for when the policy is just too darned confining to The One.

You guys better pace yourself… you’re going to be doing a lot of spinning, justifying and explaining away over the next 4 years.

Bullshit. Military force is a reactive force. Law enforcement, when don properly, can be proactive.

Here’s a helpful rule to remember for you folks trying to make sense of the conservative mind:

Good things = Thank you George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and/or Ronald Reagan

Bad things = Damn you Bill Clinton, Barney Frank and/or Barack Obama

How does that compare to the claim that George W. Bush kept us safe after 9/11? Didn’t the Secret Service prevent any more Lincoln assassinations after the first one? Dos that excuse the failure?

Honestly, how is it that Bush gets a “do-over” on National Security after the biggest failure in that regard in our history? How many Americans were killed on American soil by terrorists during the Clinton admin. v. during the Bush admin?

Kind of like how there were no terror attacks during the Bush administration after the worst one in history, except for the anthrax attacks and the dozens of terror attacks daily on the troops in Iraq?

Like Rice and Bush didn’t?

Yeah, they have — almost always after the terrorists have committed their attacks. Law enforcement is a REACTIVE force; they need solid evidence of a crime before they can act. They can’t go on hunches, or inferences, or tips from non-credible sources, or suspicions.

Here’s a radical thought: why not stop the terrorists before they attack? While I’m certain the possibility of being arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to life (or death) certainly gave the 9/11 hijackers pause before they chose to go on their suicide mission, I can’t help but think that it might not deter others.

And Greenwald is typically dishonest.

That terrorist attack took place just seven weeks after Bill Clinton was inaugurated, but after that attack — to use the Beltway parlance — Clinton kept us safe, for the rest of his presidency. No more foreign Terrorist attacks on the Homeland.

Nicely weaseled. He manages to phrase it so Tim McVeigh and the Unabomber are excluded, along with Al Qaeda’s attacks on US embassies in Africa are excluded, as well as the near-sinking of the USS Cole. Those were attacks on sovereign US territory, but not technically “the Homeland.”

J.