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Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Ummm, dickhead- if you think something is an important fact you need to explain why its important.
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As a matter of pure laziness, I understand the appeal of arguing that Clinton didn't do anything, on the ground that you're unfamiliar with anything he did, and then answer "so?" to any post that tells you what he did. We all know, thanks to Donald Rumsfeld, that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence, but your style of argument here is to make us work hard to show the difference. Apparently you're waiting for us to get bored or tired of reminding you of recent history.
Use that brain of yours. Try to figure out why they'd want Predators over Afghanistan. I'll give you one reason. They were trying to kill Osama bin Laden, but lacked good information about where he was. The Predators could help to fill this gap.
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Like remember when i took on "the I understand and fully appreciate evolution" crowd- then pretty soon by bringing up facts i got some of them to show they were just accepting it on faith. That is how one uses facts, and then inferences to win an argument.
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Yes, but here you're using neither using facts nor inferences. You're playing dumb.
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You have bothered to read the book- good for you! You say the book shows that Clinton did more than Bush, and I ask what? - you say "Clarke decided on 1/25/01 to start up Predator filghts and they wouldn't let him!"
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That's not what I said, which brings us to another irritating facet of your mode of argument on this subject: Not content merely to play dumb, you twist things.
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Beyond the obvious question of whether the flights might have helped a year or two earlier is a more basic question.
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That is a basic question. My recollection of the book is that there is a basic answer to it about the technological capabilities of the drones, which were under development and scarce in numbers, but I don't have the book in my office, so I can't go look just now.
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Al Queda is a mobile group. We weren't in Afghanistan and had not made any decision to go in. The question "Drone flights are valuable because?" seems a legit question, especially because it is the basic support for your argument that Bush didn't do anything. We'd get pictures, okay but what would we do with them?
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Launch cruise missiles from the Navy submarine stationed off Pakistan. Or, if Clarke had his way and got senior support, send in ground forces (Green Berets, Delta Force, Rangers, etc.), though the military resisted these steps, as they later would under Bush.
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But more to the point, in the Government policies once started stay in place until stopped. So if clinton had great things grinding away and Bush didn't stop them (listen now dimwit)- THEY WOULD STILL HAVE BEEN GOING ON.
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No, they didn't. The counterterrorism effort involved several agencies, each of which had their own agenda and interests. Clarke had few people working directly for him -- his job was to make sure that others devoted resources and efforts to fighting Al Qaeda. When he didn't get the support he need from the NSA, progress stopped.
Nice rhetorical touch with the all-caps, though.
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It sounds like the big change was people didn't sit and listen to Clarke talk about things he wanted to do but had never been allowed to do.
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If it sounds that way to you, you aren't listening very hard.
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Of course more should have been done- but drone photos from an Afghan desert 3/01 wouldn't have done much to stop 9/11. Worrying about Al Queda wouldn't have stopped 9/11. doing some things might have- but most of those things would have needed to be done in 97 or 98.
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I'm not sure I agree that there's nothing we could have done to stop 9/11, but that's not what we were talking about in any event. And if you think the things that Clarke was proposing "needed to be done in 1997 or 1998," you are just showing, again, that you haven't bothered to look at this history much.
