The Repubs Sprung Another Logic Trap On Themselves

[ProfessorGAC]

All weekend i heard from pundits and callers doing apologiae for Li'l Georgie and his gang.

But, there is now another logic trap that these dullards have opened up.

Rice, Rummy, and at least one other, claims that nothing could have been done to prevent 9/11. Nothing!

However, these same idiots, and callers to Washington Journal all weekend, are still running the same "Clinton should have gone to war 8 years ago to prevent this. You can't pin this on Bush!"

Hmmmm?!?!?

So, NOTHING could have prevented it, but Clinton should have prevented it! Huh?????

What this brings to mind, then, is that there are two possible reasons for this cognitive dichotomy. Either:

1) When these same "couldn't prevent" folks were saying it was Clinton's fault, they were lying about that, knowing full well that NOTHING could have prevented it, or;
2) They think Clinton could have prevented it because HE WAS A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN LI'L GEORGIE!

There is not fair third option. Either they think that Clinton's competence was so much higher that he could have done something to head it off, or they lied when they tried to blame him.

These folks are so oblivious to the truth they're incapable of seeing how transparent their lies are and how faulty their logic is.
The Professor

[buddy22600]

1. There is a third option

What most republicans are saying is that bush could not have prevented it in the 9 months that he was in office. UBL;s people were here for several years and if Clinton had invaded a country with no justification and murdered thousands of people and happened to get lucky and kill the thousands of terrorists as well, then he could have prevented it.

[ProfessorGAC]

3. Sorry, No

That's the same as my second option. They didn't say they had insufficient time to stop the attacks. They said NOTHING was likely to have stopped the attacks.

So, even if Clinton had more time, the only way this washes is if they are admitting he was more competent.

I understand your point, but your reasoning still fits my first two options. So, i stand by my original point.
The Professor

[displacedtexan]

8. So, Bush I was responsible for 1993 WTC attack?

Funny, I don't hear republicans screaming for Bush I to confess.

Also, we've learned the truth (from the 9/11 hearings) about the dates (Spring-Summer 2001) that those UBL people entered the country.

[coloradodem2005]

2. Didn't Clinton head them off?

Didn't he prevent terrorist attacks. Richard Clarke said that even. We all know Clinton was a better President than Lil'Georgie.

[ProfessorGAC]

4. Well, I Sure Know It!

But, this requires the Repubs to either admit they lied when they blamed Bill, or to admit he was better than them. Either way, they trapped themselves in their own tortured logic.
The Professor

[Lindacooks]

7. Yes he did, especially Y2K attacks

There was one planned against the LA Airport, and also some stopped from enterting the US from Canada.

That's what our government can do when it pays attention, has daily high-level meetings and 'shakes the trees' for info. Which is exactly the opposite of what that lazy chimp and his bunch of incompetent boobs did.

[coloradodem2005]

12. I think Boston was a target of these planned attacks.

[Dogmudgeon]

5. Good argument, Prof!

They've been talking this scenario up in bits-and-pieces for months now, but in the last week, it's been promoted to a Talking Point.

The decent thing to have said would have been, "We followed 24 (not 9) years of tactical response, and we got caught short. The policy failed us, and we failed the American people. We must now create a new, intelligent, and nonpartisan military and law-enforcement doctrine to deal with terrorism and terrorist threats."

But the political lexicon of Team Bush does not include a definition for decent that isn't about Democratic genitalia.

Their logic isn't just faulty -- their rhetoric is becoming more and more transparent. Listening to GOP shills, you would think that Bill Clinton himself planned and executed the operation -- not Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

--bkl

[AP]

6. Furthermore, why did I have my nose hair clippers confiscated last week...

...when I flew if there's nothing that could have been done? And why are we paying software companies millions of dollars for special software which indentifies people who are potential terrorists who are then pulled out of line for a an extra-special body search?

I mean, if there's nothing we COULD have done, why are DOING all that stuff now?

Couldn't they have started doing all that stuff before 9/11? If it wouldn't have helped then, why do it at all, now?

[Toucano]

10. Right on target as usual, AP!

They have also said they only had 233 days in office, and imply that wasn't enough time to thwart the plan.

Yet they then pat themselves on the back for how quickly they established the Homeland Security Dept. and passed the Patriot Act.

Had they done something and the attacks still happened, they might get the benefit of the doubt. But since they did NOTHING and the attacks were successful, they have to bear the responsibility.

[Brotherjohn]

9. These are the same 2 choices on every logical trap they set for themselves

1) They're lying
OR
2) They're incompetent.

On issue after issue regarding 9-11 and justifications for the Iraq War (especially the WMD issue), the facts keep contradicting their statements. THIS is what puts them in these logical traps, and the only answers to these traps are listed above.

They claim the latter (incompetence) because they of course can't claim the former (lying). But they claim incompetence by saying things like "We were all wrong".

That one's a great example. The CIA, the FBI, foreign intelligence agencies, and especially the U.N., ALL had evidence expressing great doubts about Iraq's WMD capability and the Bush administration's claims of same. And they presented this evidence BEFORE we initiated the Iraq War.

In this case, the FACTS show that we were NOT "all wrong", and these same facts trap the Bush administration into being either incompetent or liars. And it is hard to believe that such a team of seasoned professionals could be so blind to the facts as to be so totally incompetent, so one is left with the only realistic option being that they are lying.

It is their ideology and arrogance which leads them to do things with complete disregard for the facts, things which force them to lie later on if things go poorly. They feel that even if they are discovered, they are too powerful to dispute, and even if they are disputed, they believe that they are ultimately right and that the ends justify the means.

[zbdent]

11. I love # 2, but a note about # 1

I guess that when you pull off FBI agents from terrorism duty to:

Try to search for a link between a Democratic congressman and a missing woman (whose body shows up in a park a year after they searched it) (Condit)

Try to find out just what was "trashed" in a White House office, which later was not really "trashed"

Research the history of people that the exiting President rightly (if not intelligently) pardons so that they can continue to smear him

Then you are capable of saying that the resources couldn't process the information with all the duties that they were doing at the time.