It's hard to argue with the statement "We must fight them over there, so we don't have to fight them

[Poiuyt]

over here.

I mean it's hard to argue it because it's such a stupid statement. It has absolutely no basis in fact. How do you debate an irrational statement like that? All I can think of is to come up with other stupid, irrational statements. "We must fight the terrorists over there, or the Swiss will invade us," or "We must fight them over there or the Grand Canyon will fill up with ping pong balls." The best I can come up with is "What's preventing one or two of them from coming over here right now?" but I hate to debate by asking a question.

Has anyone ever asked Bush or Cheney upon what they base their statements on? And does anyone have a good, rational argument to refute that?

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

1. Supposedly a reporter called shrub on the "they'll follow us here if we leave Iraq" talking point

just the other day, which is just a variation of "fight us over here".

Apparently shrub had no answers and just dodged it.

[Kikosexy2]

3. Well...

don't mention that to Boehner or he'll start crying (again)...

[Cha]

4. I remember reading that..

it was priceless. I should have saved it.

The reporter was calling out bush on the potency of "homeland(nazi-sounding) security and bush could only say, "duh duh".

As in.."aren't we well protected here?" Too bad we don't have more reporters questioning bush on his lunacy. I think when this is over there's going to be more than a few reporters who wished they'd spoken up when they had the chance instead of being such cowering, little meek, mice.

[Duer 157099]

6. I heart that exchange, and it wasn't quite like that

And I was annoyed when I heard it because the reporter blew a good opportunity to ask exactly that question.

Instead, he said that the "fight us over here" part of the equation is a damning indictment of how "Homeland Security" is supposedly protecting us.

Which of course is in itself a perfectly valid argument, but the problem is that it concedes the premise of the argument which is nonsense, as most of us realize.

And while I remember hearing Bush's response, my brain naturally blocked it from my memory to protect me from too much inanity floating around inside my skull.

[MrModerate]

2. You've hit the answer on the head --

Nothing we're doing in Iraq is preventing terrorists from hitting the US or our allies (ask the Brits about "fighting them over here"), and in fact the waste of resources, universal disdain, and inflamed passions that are the Bush legacy make it *much* harder to prevent future terrorist attacks.

[scarface2004]

5. i just fought off a couple of terrorists in my goddamn kitchen!!!

the policy is a failure...my hood is overrun with terrorists!!! i just beat one to death in my garage with my calloway big bertha driver! now who s gonna clean up this shit!!

[Loge23]

7. 9/11

They love to use 9/11 as a reason for everything. So do I.
Like how they did NOTHING, even with sufficient warning, to prevent 9/11.
LIHOP or MIHOP not withstanding, they did NOTHING to prevent it from happening.

So how the %#$& is "fighting them (btw, who??) over there" going to prevent another 9/11? And what about "so we don't have to fight them over here"?? Do "they" have a Navy now? ...an Air Force? How are they going to get here? And who the $#%& are they anyway??

They don't know the answer to this, and the people we are murdering in Iraq are not "them".

9/11, bush/cheney. You blew it and I'll never forget it.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

8. Yeah, I know.

I mean consider Vietnam. After we left, communism spread all throughout South East Asia. And then it started spreading across South Pacific Islands, just like dominoes. Then it hit Latin America. Then back in 1984 we were invaded by communists from Vietnam, China, Cuba, and the Soviet Union, just like LBJ said would happen. And if it wasn't for the Wolverines, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

[MiniMe]

9. Clue to *, they are already here

[walldude]

10. Well Iraq is the only place in the world

harboring terrorists right? All the 9/11 hijackers came from there right? Osama's hiding there right? :puke: :puke:

[Terri S]

11. this has always been an amazing statement to me

Remember... the terrorists followed us into Iraq. They weren't there before. So, in essence, those who say this are talking about hundreds of thousands of innocent people dying and saying.. hey, better them than us. How they reconcile that statement with their professed caring of the Iraqi people just astonishes me. To hear people say it with such pride just leaves me speechless... and no one, not ever, has pointed this out. We don't care who we destroy.. at least it's not us... gee.. why do other countries hate us????

[Bucky]

12. I'm thinking the opposite way. It's inevitable that "they" will come "over here."

The longer we fight people over in the Middle East, the more terrorists we recruit for the enemy. Al-qaeda alone has more than doubled in fighting strength since the March 2003 invasion. Most of the attacks and plots in Europe were carried out not by al-Qaeda itself, but by self organized copy cats. The US won't produce anybody like that (we get a different brand of Arab immigrants than Europe does), but the number of people who hate us is growing the longer we stay. Some day someone is gonna get the plan, the funds, the recruits, and the gumption together long enough to try something big over here. Even after we leave Iraq, Bush's real legacy of higher security requirements will go on and on.

[Poiuyt]

20. Bucky, I think you're right that we will be attacked agin, but it won't be the

Iraqis or the Iranians. It will come from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. And you're absolutely right about how us being in Iraq is increasing the number of terrorists. That's what our own NIE has said. I just don't think the little pea brains of the average freeper could handle an assessment like that.

[karlrschneider]

13. Wait...they want to wait until our military is back home to attack us?

What a brilliant strategy. :eyes:

[Liberal In Texas]

14. Freeper-types have this magnet theory about Iraq. That somehow all the terrorists in the area were

sucked to Iraq to battle us there, completely dropping any plans they were cooking up for another 9/11. And that little by little, we are ridding the world of terrorists.

It's completely insane thinking. Iraq isn't fly-paper for terrorists.

It's a factory to make more. A factory that's churning out people that will hate us for generations to come.

[xchrom]

15. death tax, it was cold in conneticut, universal testing for children, etc

they have a whole host of STUPID that's hard to argue with -- because you can't believe somebody who would say that hadn't been run over by a bus yet.

[L. Coyote]

16. Are the Sandinista terrorists on the Texas border yet? Remember that one?

Given ther current lies leading to war, an examination of past lies is in order. Please contribute past rhetoric that parallels the current propaganda effort.

One of my favorite whoppers is that the tiny nation of Nicaragua was an invasion threat to Texas. Reagan and George Bush deprived the nation and the world of sleep with rhetorical worries that the terrorist cabal controlling the government of Nicaragua had to be militarily overthrown to prevent the invasion of Texas.

.....more..... http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x503712

That's just one chapter in the rhetoric book, the one that introduced "terrorist" into our lexicon. Is this why they are building the wall?

=======================

What did Reagan do in the Near East? Who did he drop bombs on? And, if Reagan had not decided to make enemies of parties there.....???

I guess the argument could be made that Reagan cut and run after poking the hornet's nest.

What Bush has done is far more than Reagan did. What do his actions bode for the future, irrespective of where one is on the globe?

A better axiom is, "It is easier to start a war than to end one."
You do not get to decide when OR where a war ends.
It takes two sides to make that decision, and I don't see Bush taking to any other sides in this complex of now long-standing conflicts.

We live in a connected world, and there is no here vs. there or us vs. them. There is only one humanity, with individual actors. Each person must be considered in light of their personal actions.

[riverdeep]

17. Here's the actual exchage, parenthesis mine

"Ed.

Q Mr. President, good morning. You've talked --

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. Good morning, that's a good way to start.

Q You've talked about the consequences of failure in Iraq, and you've said that enemies would follow us home. I wonder, given that, it seems like that's not exactly a ringing endorsement of people who are charged with the responsibility of keeping America safe. So what --

THE PRESIDENT: What was that again, Ed?

Q Well, you say that the enemies would follow us home --

THE PRESIDENT: I will -- that's what they'll do, just like September the 11th. They plotted, planned, and attacked.

Q So I wonder, in your own mind, how does that vision play out? How do they follow us home? Because we've spent so much money and put so much resources into making this country safer.

THE PRESIDENT: Ed, I'm not going to predict to you the methodology they'll use. (I will not answer your question) Just you need to know they want to hit us again. (FEAR! FEAR! FEAR!) We do everything we can here at the homeland to protect us.(Homeland? Like Fatherland?) That's why I've got a Homeland Security Department. That's why we are inconveniencing air traffickers, to make sure nobody is carrying weapons on airplanes.(No creme rinse on airplanes! None!) That's why we need border enforcement, with a comprehensive immigration bill, by the way, to make sure it's easier to enforce the border. I mean, we're doing a lot. That's why we need to make sure our intelligence services coordinate information better. (Why haven't I done jack shit in four years, don't ask that.)

So we spend a lot of time trying to protect this country.(And line our pockets.) But if they were ever to have safe haven, it would make the efforts much harder.(Like Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia, our allies?) That's my point. We cannot let them have safe haven again. The lesson of September the 11th is, if these killers are able to find safe haven from which to plot, plan and attack, they will do so.

So, Ed, I don't know what methodology they'll use. We're planning for the worst. We cover all fronts.(Trust us. With Katrina we've proven we can be trusted to handle large scale problems.) And it's hard to protect a big country like this,(it's hard work) and I applaud those who have done a fantastic job of protecting us since September the 11th.(heck-uva job) But make no mistake about it, there's still an enemy that would like to do us harm. And I believe, whether it be in Afghanistan, or in Iraq, or anywhere else, if these enemy are able to find safe haven, it will endanger the lives of our fellow citizens.

I also understand that the best way to defeat them in the long run is to show people in the Middle East, for example, that there is a better alternative to tyrannical societies,(by obliterating 600,000 of them) to societies that don't meet the hopes and aspirations of the average people; and that is through a society that is based upon the universal concept of liberty.

Iraq is a very important part of securing the homeland,(translation-they've standing on our oil) and it's a very important part of helping change the Middle East into a part of the world that will not serve as a threat to the civilized world, to people like -- or to the developed world, to people like -- in the United States.

So thank you all very much for your interest. I hope you have a nice holiday. Appreciate it."

Fromhttp://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/04/20070403.html, so it's public access.

As you can see, he didn't answer anything. Same awful broken recording since, well, September the 11th.

[ThomWV]

18. Nonsense. Ever Hear Of " Home Court Advantage"

Where could they hide if we were fighting them 'over here'?

[stillcool]

19. there is so much I don't understand...

about geo-politics and how things work...or don't...but I would think one of Newton's laws, about action and reaction ought to be taking hold soon. Unfortunately I'm not clear on who 'they' are anymore.