Sunday, September 09, 2007
Rudy 9/11!!!!
If a domestic group crashed the planes on 9/11 would that mean that Giuliani doesn't have foreign policy experience?
The notion that Giuliani is equipped to deal with Iraq, North Korea, the Israel/Palestine issue because he was a mayor when planes hit buildings is something the media has taken way too seriously. The proper response would be too laugh hysterically and uncontrollably.
Does the mayor of Oklahoma City not have the experience because Mcveigh was American? Did Rudy call NATO, consult with our allies, go to a war room and discuss ways of capturing Bin Laden as a result of 9/11? How does two planes hitting the towers give him foreign policy credentials? Anybody?
But there were foreigners on the planes! They were dead foreigners by the time Rudy got there. Was he going to have the police anally probe the bad guys with a broomstick? Was Abner Louima Rudy a dry run in anticipation of running Gitmo?
The fact that Giuliani is taken seriously as a candidate for President by anybody is a great stain on this nation. He has a looser zipper than Clinton, and George Bush's authoritarian and foreign policy instincts. He was a fucking mayor. Sure, it was of a big city, but he was a fucking Mayor.
9/11 happened though. So, he is ready.
I need a drink.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Rudy Giuliani 's Foreign Policy Experience?
Newsday is reporting that James Baker kicked Giuliani off of the Iraq Study Group because Giuliani didn't bother to show up for meetings. He was giving $200,000 speeches to business groups in South Korea and the like. He had different priorities. Giuliani could have used this experience to bolster his non existent foreign credentials, but the money was too good to pass up.
I would also like the public and the press to quit saying that 9/11 gave him foreign policy experience. It didn't. It gave him disaster experience. If two planes accidentally collided and blew up the towers would he have foreign policy experience then? What if they were flights out of Paris? It is ridiculous. His role as mayor was to co-ordinate a disaster response. People may find that experience useful in a president, but he didn't consult with our allies, decide to shut down planes, engage in a briefing with NATO. He got briefings from city officials, and relayed information to the public during a terrible tragedy.
His foreign policy experience is how to get $200,000 to speak in South Korea. Let's be real here.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Rudy Giuliani either new the towers were going to fall and didn't order an evacuation, or didn't know they would crumble depending on whom he was speaking to at the time.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
There is an article in the Observer detailing the NY Firefighters protesting Giuliani's leadership. Rudy's abrasive manner, and dictatorial style pissed off a lot of NY'ers during his mayoral career. Making the fire fighters stop trying to recover bodies of their comrades at the WTC, was the last straw for those who still had warm tingly feelings about "America's Mayor".
We have all the UFA, the UFOA, and the fire members are all behind us -- the International Association of Fire Fighters,” said Riches. “And we’re going to be out there today to let everybody know that he’s not the hero that he says he is.”
The group’s complaints center on the faulty radios used by the fire department that day and what they say was a lack of coordination at Ground Zero.
And Riches disputes the notion that Giuliani provided any form of leadership on September 11 or in the days following.
“If somebody can tell me what he did on 9/11 that was so good, I’d love to hear it. All he did was give information on the TV”
“He did nothing,” Riches continued. “He stood there with a TV reporter and told everyone what was going on. And he got it from everybody else down at the site.”
Riches is right of course. The mainstream media suggesting that Rudy Giuliani has foreign policy experience because foreigners flew planes into the WTC is ridiculous. If a natural gas leak vented a large explosion and brought the towers down, would he then not have the "requisite experience" in foreign policy. Did Rudy round up terrorists, consult the joint chiefs, and reach out to the diplomatic community or something? Giuliani was Mayor during a disaster, that was compounded by the fact that he signed off on putting the command and control center in a prime terrorist target; the World Trade Center.
The reason that Giuliani is fondly remembered is he wasn't George W. Bush. Reading 'The Pet Goat' for seven minutes after he learned of the attacks and flying around in hysteria to Nebraska to avoid the terrorists wasn't all that comforting.
Giuliani was briefed by people, and related it to the public. He did his job in otherwords. There is a soft bigotry of low expectations for Republicans these days.
Monday, April 16, 2007
French secret services produced nine reports between September 2000 and August 2001 looking at the al Qaeda threat to the United States, and knew it planned to hijack an aircraft, Le Monde newspaper reported on Monday.
One document prepared in January 2001 was entitled "Plan to hijack an aircraft by Islamic radicals", and said the operation had been discussed in Kabul at the start of 2000 by al Qaeda, Taliban and Chechen militants.
Le Monde said the French report of January 2001 had been handed over to a CIA operative in Paris but that no mention of it had been made in the official U.S. September 11 Commission, which produced its findings in July 2004.
Why does Condi Rice still have a job? Why does George W. Bush still have 30% approval? Btw, I don't believe it was a conspiracy; it was incompetency. These people are genuinely feckless, clueless, and disinterested in policy. I am sure this report got sent to somebody who should have done something with this. Likely, Condi Rice knew of the French Intelligence when she spewed her crap stating that we would have no way of knowing they would do such a thing.
But, according to the media, these are the types of people we would like to have beers with so what the heck. Pass me something harder instead, and wake me up in January 2009.
Friday, April 06, 2007
Dan Froomkin joins the dogpile on Dick Cheney for his ludicrous comments about Iraq and 9/11 yesterday. It becomes a lot easier when the Pentagon report rejecting such a link comes out on the same day.
WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney repeated his assertions of al-Qaida links to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq on Thursday as the Defense Department released a report citing more evidence that the prewar government did not cooperate with the terrorist group.
Cheney contended that al-Qaida was operating in Iraq before the March 2003 invasion led by U.S. forces and that terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was leading the Iraqi branch of al-Qaida. Others in al-Qaida planned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“He took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organized the al-Qaida operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June,” Cheney told radio host Rush Limbaugh during an interview. “As I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq.”
Has evil Dick Cheney lost his cotton picking mind? What is wrong with that man. My headline speaks to the fallacy of his argument. Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein did not get along with each other. Let's review for the retarded amongst us. Hi George!
Osama Bin Laden wanted to promote theocracy. He envisions a reborn Caliphate where the Islamic world is re-united under religious rule. In contrast, Saddam Hussein supressed radical islamists. He ruled secularly. He put nominal christians such as Taraq Aziz in his government. Osama Bin Laden was not very amused with him. But, there was a person who was loosely allied with Osama who fled into Iraq. Therefore Iraq must be destroyed in order to save it.
Under Cheney's theory, if there is any member of any organization who breathes air in a country, that means there is a link. By his logic, there are members of every group that pisses off somebody in the United States; therefore everybody has the right to invade us.
We harbor Henry Kissinger at the moment. Several countries believe he is a war criminal. Do they have the right to invade us to take him? This is just window dressing. Cheney's policy is actually worse than this crap he spews. It is simple might makes right. In a way, I wish he would just say that then bellowing out these inanities.
Al-Zarqawi had nothing to do with 9/11 as far as any intelligence shows. The intelligence shows that we knew where he was however. We could have dropped one massive bomb on his neighborhood and killed him and a few hundred people if he was truly our concern. Instead we have chaos. Cheney can not stop lying.
Update:
The Washington Post today has a story titled "Hussein's Prewar Ties To Al-Qaeda Discounted". This is from a report from the Pentagon. This would be the opposite of what Dick Cheney is saying. Funny that.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
2,974 people died on 9/11. 24 others are presumed dead. That is just under 3,000 who perished from that horrible act.
Since that terrible day, other bad things have occured as well. Around 42,500 Americans die in traffic accidents annually. Most of these could be prevented. It has been 5 1/2 years since 9/11. Approximately 275,000 Americans therefore have been killed.
In response to 9/11 we passed the Patriot Act, the NSA began spying on our emails, our phone calls. We are going to end up spending over $1,000,000,000,000 in Iraq by the time we are done. Our country has tortured suspects to get information on terrorist attacks, we have suspended habeus corpus for our citizens. We have sent prisoners who haven't been charged with crimes to places like Syria and Iran to get tortured as well. We take off our shoes before flights. We live with terror color codes. We do this in fear of terror. Terror has won.
We could have saved most of those 275,000 traffic victims by re-organizing our society and taking away our freedoms. We could legislate a computer chip in all cars that doesn't allow one to speed. We could install a breathalizer in all cars so drunks can't drive. We could do random drug and urine tests all the time to prevent impaired people from driving. There could be road tests for all drivers every year to make sure people are skilled enough to stay on the road.
We don't do these things though, because we don't want our freedom to drive stripped from us, and 116 deaths a day spread throughout 50 states is easy to ignore. That is 2 deaths per state per day roughly. But it adds up. Almost 100 times as many people have been killed in accidents since 9/11 than that very event.
I would rather be killed by terrorists than live in terror. Live free and die, or we can live in fear and die spiritual deaths afraid of our own shadow. What we have done in response to 9/11 is a much greater tragedy than the actual events that transpired that day.
Those who demand that we live in terror to defeat terror don't seem to grasp the irony of their beliefs. Blow me up if you must radical terrorist, but damned if my government will blow up my constitutional rights in the name of saving them.
