I'm curious what you and PapaG and anyone else who was offended by this post actually object to. As far as I can tell Krugman makes three distinct specific claims: 1) Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. 2) And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons. 3) [...] our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity [....] I doubt anyone gives a shit what the professional pundits did or didn't do, so we can probably rule out #3. So is it #1, or #2 that offends thee? I don't have an opinion about #1 (I didn't even remember who Bernie Kerik was, although Google seems to say he's in jail now), and #2 seems to me to be factually true, although I can imagine that you'll disagree. But what arouses your hostility? barfo
I don't think the idea is to celebrate the day, but to remember it and pay respect to the firemen and police who responded to the attack. To remember the innocent people who went about their normal routine that day and lost their lives. Kerik, Rudy, and W did their jobs and did those jobs well. The wars cost $100B a year on or off the budget. The government was running a surplus and increased its revenues to $2.5T from $2T. If government grew by $600B a year in addition to the wars, we'd have a balanced budget. So how is it that we're borrowing from China to pay for just the wars? We're borrowing from China for EVERYTHING else, for the MASSIVE increase in the size, scope, and spending needs of the government.
which unjustified war voted on by the Congress and enjoying large popular support at the time is he (are you) referring to? Iraqi Freedom or Enduring Freedom? Or the "Global War on Terror?" I mean, listen to the President: By "President", I mean William Jefferson Clinton in 1998, when he signed the Iraqi Liberation Act. Since when did Bill Clinton become a neo-con? Sounds like a matter of a guy not knowing (or caring) what he's talking about, attempting to use his platform to push a revisionist history and progressive present. More power to him, but he also should get called out for it.
We have the receipt for biological matter that could be weaponized. The gas he used was vx nerve gas and mustard gas. Those were of German and Russian origin.
Clinton bombed Iraq on the day the special prosecutor interviewed Monica Lewinski. Some people suggested he bombed that day to divert attention from his personal issues and impeachment. In spite of this, republicans in congress backed him, because Clinton had a job to do. There's no evidence the bombing completely destroyed all of Saddam's WMDs. This leaves three possibilities: 1. Both Clinton and Bush lied about the WMDs to justify attacking Iraq. 2. Both Clinton and Bush were telling us what (intel) they believed to be true. 3. Saddam fooled everyone.
The wars cost $100B a year on or off the budget. --I've read it was more. The government was running a surplus and increased its revenues to $2.5T from $2T. --By 9/11/01, anticipated surpluses had been lost. Bush had already blown it with increased spending and decreases coming in taxes. If government grew by $600B a year in addition to the wars, we'd have a balanced budget. So how is it that we're borrowing from China to pay for just the wars? --No one said we didn't borrow from China for any expenses other than the wars. The guy said we borrowed from China to pay for the wars, and you said we're not borrowing anything at all from China. Nice try to confuse everything. I'm still reeling, actually. We're borrowing from China for EVERYTHING else, for the MASSIVE increase in the size, scope, and spending needs of the government. --While that's irrelevant to you saying that we didn't borrow anything from China, I'll answer it. You're using average cost when you should use marginal cost (cost of making one more widget). If there had been no war, the savings would have been the marginal cost, not the average cost of all government expenditures.
4. He fooled you. But not the millions worldwide who demonstrated for months leading into the war, screaming bullshit that he had WMDs. In my hamlet the bridges over the freeway at every exit were full of people with signs all day for months, waving at cars passing below.
I'm not sure I understand your point, Brian. You seem to be arguing it is reasonable that Bush thought there were WMDs. But Krugman's comment was about his using 9/11 to justify the war with Iraq. barfo
As for large popular support, I've posted on this board a decade of polls showing that the majority of Americans never supported the war, even at the start. ------------ Clinton saying similar things to Bush doesn't justify Bush going to war over them. You notice Clinton didn't think the issues were bad enough to go to war. That's like saying that Kennedy noted the same problems in Vietnam that Johnson later did, therefore he would have agreed with Johnson sending 20 times as many troops as Kennedy did. There is no equivalence. Instead of finding minor similarities between Clinton's treatment of Iraq and Bush's, why don't you note the giant difference between them--Clinton didn't think the presence of tiny amounts (of leftover materials that Reagan had sold Saddam, hoping he would mass murder Iranians) was anywhere nearly bad enough to instigate a giant war.
I was talking about this quote from the article. I sincerely asked the question about "which war?" b/c I thought he could mean Afghanistan (direct result of 9/11, imo, and pretty easy to justify and having high popular opinion at the time); or GWoT (also, imo, justified, and as a direct result of 9/11); or Iraq. If he meant the first two, then I think he's revisionist. If he meant Iraq (as an "unrelated war") it was due to repeated non-compliance with the treaties ending the first Gulf War and non-compliance with UN resolutions. As quoted above, whether or not you think Bush knew that there wasn't a large amount of WMDs in Iraq, he used it as one of his three reasons (along with regime change) for action against Iraq, in almost the same wording as Clinton 4 years earlier. In that case, I don't understand how it was a "neocon" war. And I don't remember (though at the time, I was out to sea for 3 months at a time, so I acknowledge that maybe I missed it) Bush ever stating that Iraq (or Saddam) was responsible for 9/11. (EDIT I just looked up some quick articles to see if I was missing something, and it seems that public opinion was growing (some say 40% or so) that Saddam was involved in 9/11, but it wasn't administration policy.
You and I are probably not going to agree on going to war, but I was speaking specifically about Krugman's quotes. Bush, Powell, Sen. Clinton all have said publicly that Saddam was not involved in 9/11. Krugman stated that it was the justification for neocon invasions in an unrelated war. Again, we'll disagree about the necessity or not of invading Iraq in 2003. But what I don't think even you can deny is that Krugman is pulling revisionist fecal matter out of his ass when trying to denounce what 9/11 was, and what our leaders at the time were doing about it.
That's the sentence you're talking about. Krugman didn't say Bush had blamed Saddam for 9/11. Krugman didn't name names like Bush or Cheney. He just said that in the general propaganda rush (he might have just been thinking of the media), 9/11 was planted in the minds of Americans, which succeeded in motivating a minority of them to desire war. I don't have the links, but years ago I saw articles listing the quotes from Bush (and far far more from Cheney) in which those two insinuated a connection between Saddam and 9/11. Cheney did it again a couple of months ago, I read. Far more were the times newscasters said it and the Administration did not correct the general impression. The idea was spread mainly without the big shots saying it. No one corrected constant hints made in the media by neocon underlings. On purpose.
The administration, various people including Bush, early on stated Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 and repeated that often. Count the months from 9/11/01 to 03/03, when we took out Saddam. I count 18 months. That's pretty deliberative and not some rush to war. The debate was quite public, too. Bush gave the same reasons as Clinton did for attacking Iraq. WMD and Saddam will use them. The next 9/11 type attack would be devastating if WMDs were used. Bush enumerated several other reasons in his state of the union, including ending Saddam's torture of his own people, liberating the people, violation of UN resolutions, disarming Saddam, etc.
More revisionism. In none of those quotes does he accuse Saddam of being involved in 9/11. Got a better link? One that's honest!
