In a sign of the forthcoming bipartisanship and cordial politics of the right, Glenn Reynolds links approvingly to this piece, which argues that the Democratic victory in the midterm elections was actually a victory for al Qaeda:
Now, the stage is set for al Qaeda to win a major victory. It was a simple matter of getting the American media to ignore the battlefield victories while accentuating al Qaeda’s attacks. What could not be accomplished on the battlefield – an American retreat from Iraq – was instead achieved in American newsrooms.
Glenn is usually pretty obtuse, but linking to someone whose credentials are being a contributor on a video game web site, is a new low. Why do conservatives think our nation and our system of government are so weak? Why do they live in terror?
If American democracy is in such dire straits that an election is a major victory for Al Qaeda, doesn’t that suggest that President Bush and his rubber stamp Congress have badly failed us? How can Republicans keep claiming to be strong on terror when they’re so terrified?
Related Posts:Sun, Nov 12, 2006
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November 13th, 2006 at 7:31 am
What’s wrong with video games?
November 13th, 2006 at 7:38 am
Point.
I was playing Age of Empires the other night, and I think I have a new strategy for Iraq. I might go ahead and mail it in to someone at the Pentagon.
drumsfe….oh wait, not there.
November 13th, 2006 at 9:39 am
I hope you saw the latest column by George Will, that terrorist-loving leftist, who called the war in Iraq “arguably the worst foreign policy disaster in U.S. history.” I believe I’ll go to Glenn Reynolds site and alert him to the same piece.
November 13th, 2006 at 3:33 pm
I think more likely the stage was set when the Bushies fell in line with al-Qaeda’s plan to turn somewhere in the Middle East into jihadi recruiting and proving ground. Next on the agenda? Attacking Iran. Didn’t someone leave that same plan lying around the Pentagon?
November 13th, 2006 at 5:14 pm
Pogie - as far as AoE is concerned, I can’t help but think how nice it would be to have a few phalanxes of Elite Longbowmen and a couple unpacked trebuchets - but I’m still not convinced it would help much in Al Anbar province. Who knows - I’m certainly no military strategist…
November 13th, 2006 at 6:55 pm
I can see it now: Age of Empires IV: Iraq.
November 13th, 2006 at 11:48 pm
That’s the thing about George Will. I’d like him on our side. The man can write and think.
I think the longest lasting damage President Bush and his neocon/theocon allies have done to the Republican Party is that there is no place left for someone like Will. Their push for ideological purity is going to drive away the thoughtful members of the Right.
November 14th, 2006 at 3:48 pm
Speaking of “terrorism” let’s take a look at the event that precipitated the “war on terror”.
One thing that struck me as odd in the days after 9/11 was Bush saying “We will not tolerate conspiracy theories [regarding 9/11]“. Sure enough there have been some wacky conspiracy theories surrounding the events of that day. The most far-fetched and patently ridiculous one that I’ve ever heard goes like this: Nineteen hijackers who claimed to be devout Muslims but yet were so un-Muslim as to be getting drunk all the time, doing cocaine and frequenting strip clubs decided to hijack four airliners and fly them into buildings in the northeastern U.S., the area of the country that is the most thick with fighter bases. After leaving a Koran on a barstool at a strip bar after getting shitfaced drunk on the night before, then writing a suicide note/inspirational letter that sounded like it was written by someone with next to no knowledge of Islam, they went to bed and got up the next morning hung over and carried out their devious plan. Nevermind the fact that of the four “pilots” among them there was not a one that could handle a Cessna or a Piper Cub let alone fly a jumbo jet, and the one assigned the most difficult task of all, Hani Hanjour, was so laughably incompetent that he was the worst fake “pilot” of the bunch. Nevermind the fact that they received very rudimentary flight training at Pensacola Naval Air Station, making them more likely to have been C.I.A. assets than Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. So on to the airports after Mohammed Atta supposedly leaves two rental cars at two impossibly far-removed locations. So they hijack all four airliners and at this time passengers on United 93 start making a bunch of cell phone calls from 35,000 feet in the air to tell people what was going on. Nevermind the fact that cell phones wouldn’t work very well above 4,000 feet, and wouldn’t work at ALL above 8,000 feet. But the conspiracy theorists won’t let that fact get in the way of a good fantasy. That is one of the little things you “aren’t supposed to think about”. Nevermind that one of the callers called his mom and said his first and last name (”Hi mom, this is Mark Bingham”), more like he was reading from a list than calling his own mom. Anyway, when these airliners each deviated from their flight plan and didn’t respond to ground control, NORAD would any other time have followed standard operating procedure (and did NOT have to be told by F.A.A. that there were hijackings because they were watching the same events unfold on their own radar) which means fighter jets would be scrambled from the nearest base where they were available on standby within a few minutes, just like every other time when airliners stray off course. But of course on 9/11 this didn’t happen, not even close. Somehow these “hijackers” must have used magical powers to cause NORAD to stand down, as ridiculous as this sounds because total inaction from the most high-tech and professional Air Force in the world would be necessary to carry out their tasks. So on the most important day in its history the Air Force was totally worthless. Then they had to make one of the airliners look like a smaller plane, because unknown to them the Naudet brothers had a videocamera to capture the only known footage of the North Tower crash, and this footage shows something that is not at all like a jumbo jet, but didn’t have to bother with the South Tower jet disguising itself because that was the one we were “supposed to see”. Anyway, as for the Pentagon they had to have Hani Hanjour fly his airliner like it was a fighter plane, making a high G-force corkscrew turn that no real airliner can do, in making its descent to strike the Pentagon. But these “hijackers” wanted to make sure Rumsfeld survived so they went out of their way to hit the farthest point in the building from where Rumsfeld and the top brass are located. And this worked out rather well for the military personnel in the Pentagon, since the side that was hit was the part that was under renovation at the time with few military personnel present compared to construction workers. Still more fortuitous for the Pentagon, the side that was hit had just before 9/11 been structurally reinforced to prevent a large fire there from spreading elsewhere in the building. Awful nice of them to pick that part to hit, huh? Then the airliner vaporized itself into nothing but tiny unidentifiable pieces most no bigger than a fist, unlike the crash of a real airliner when you will be able to see at least some identifiable parts, like crumpled wings, broken tail section etc. Why, Hani Hanjour the terrible pilot flew that airliner so good that even though he hit the Pentagon on the ground floor the engines didn’t even drag the ground!! Imagine that!! Though the airliner vaporized itself on impact it only made a tiny 16 foot hole in the building. Amazing. Meanwhile, though the planes hitting the Twin Towers caused fires small enough for the firefighters to be heard on their radios saying “We just need 2 hoses and we can knock this fire down” attesting to the small size of it, somehow they must have used magical powers from beyond the grave to make this morph into a raging inferno capable of making the steel on all forty-seven main support columns (not to mention the over 100 smaller support columns) soften and buckle, then all fail at once. Hmmm. Then still more magic was used to make the building totally defy physics as well as common sense in having the uppermost floors pass through the remainder of the building as quickly, meaning as effortlessly, as falling through air, a feat that without magic could only be done with explosives. Then exactly 30 minutes later the North Tower collapses in precisely the same freefall physics-defying manner. Incredible. Not to mention the fact that both collapsed at a uniform rate too, not slowing down, which also defies physics because as the uppermost floors crash into and through each successive floor beneath them they would shed more and more energy each time, thus slowing itself down. Common sense tells you this is not possible without either the hijackers’ magical powers or explosives. To emphasize their telekinetic prowess, later in the day they made a third building, WTC # 7, collapse also at freefall rate though no plane or any major debris hit it. Amazing guys these magical hijackers. But we know it had to be “Muslim hijackers” the conspiracy theorist will tell you because (now don’t laugh) one of their passports was “found” a couple days later near Ground Zero, miraculously “surviving” the fire that we were told incinerated planes, passengers and black boxes, and also “survived” the collapse of the building it was in. When common sense tells you if that were true then they should start making buildings and airliners out of heavy paper and plastic so as to be “indestructable” like that magic passport. The hijackers even used their magical powers to bring at least seven of their number back to life, to appear at american embassies outraged at being blamed for 9/11!! BBC reported on that and it is still online. Nevertheless, they also used magical powers to make the american government look like it was covering something up in the aftermath of this, what with the hasty removal of the steel debris and having it driven to ports in trucks with GPS locators on them, to be shipped overseas to China and India to be melted down. When common sense again tells you that this is paradoxical in that if the steel was so unimportant that they didn’t bother saving some for analysis but so important as to require GPS locators on the trucks with one driver losing his job because he stopped to get lunch. Hmmmm. Further making themselves look guilty, the Bush administration steadfastly refused for over a year to allow a commission to investigate 9/11 to even be formed, only agreeing to it on the conditions that they get to dictate its scope, meaning it was based on the false pretense of the “official story” being true with no other alternatives allowed to be considered, handpicked all its members making sure the ones picked had vested interests in the truth remaining buried, and with Bush and Cheney only “testifying” together, only for an hour, behind closed doors, with their attorneys present and with their “testimonies” not being recorded by tape or even written down in notes. Yes, this whole story smacks of the utmost idiocy and fantastic far-fetched lying, but it is amazingly enough what some people believe. Even now, five years later, the provably false fairy tale of the “nineteen hijackers” is heard repeated again and again, and is accepted without question by so many Americans. Which is itself a testament to the innate psychological cowardice of the American sheeple, i mean people, and their abject willingness to believe something, ANYTHING, no matter how ridiculous in order to avoid facing a scary uncomfortable truth. Time to wake up America.
November 14th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
Jeff over at Speedkill.org tried to make a point about the flight manifests, asking for me to respond, then turns off the comments so I CAN’T respond and so he can then fold his arms smugly and say “See? He isn’t responding” which I anticipate he will soon do, or perhaps just leave it the way it is letting him get the last word, dishonestly making it appear that I am not trying to respond when the douche knows he turned off the comments. Sounds like somebody’s not too confident in the “official” story after all Jeff. Since he apparantly reads other Montana blogs and it is impossible to respond to him there since he is being profoundly intellectually cowardly, I will respond here.
One problem with the manifests is that different networks released different manifests, not matching up entirely. In fact there were a few too many “innocent victim” passengers, some apparantly fake. So what does that tell you about the reliability of the flight manifests in the first place?
http://www.911closeup.com/index.shtml?ID=65
Another problem is that the government supposedly did autopsies on the people on board Flight 77 (the one the “official” story claims crashed into Pentagon), not letting independent medical examiners have access (I wonder why?) and there were no Arabs among them. Now a preponderance of evidence proves that Flight 77 was not what crashed into the Pentagon anyway, but regardless, Jeff’s own beloved government that did alleged autopsies on the people supposedly on board the plane can find no Arabs among them. How do you explain that Jeff? Did the “Arab hijackers” magically turn into non-Arabs or what? Doesn’t any of this smell fishy to you?
http://www.apfn.net/Messageboard/03-17-05/discussion.cgi.58.html
Still another problem is that the government supposedly found DNA of three people that were not ever claimed to have been on Flight 77.
http://www.arcticbeacon.com/16-nov-2005.html
Yet another flaw in the “Arab hijackers” fantasy is that some of the accused “hijackers” turned up days later alive and well, wondering why they were being accused of something they obviously did not do.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1559151.stm
Nevertheless, the F.B.I. claims that it correctly identified the “hijackers” and that they were who they (the F.B.I.) say they were, even though this is now a physical impossibility.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/fbi_denies_mix_up_of_911_terrorists.htm
But hey, this is the same F.B.I. that admits that it has no hard evidence whatsoever linking Osama bin Laden to 9/11 in the first place, so what do you expect?
http://forum.afghansite.com/index.php?showtopic=9349
In sum, Jeff, if quibbling about the very controversial and apparantly altered or at least very slipshod flight manifests is the best you can come up with then you are grasping at straws. It is astounding that someone could read or at least presumably read the looooooooong post I wrote that shows many, many holes in the “official” myth and ignore all of it except one tiny part that you seem to think suits you. Jeff, there are many holes in the myth that I didn’t even mention, such as Bush’s Secret Service allowing him to remain at Booker Elementary for at least 35 minutes after being told by Andy Card that there had been a second crash at the Twin Towers, meaning it was apparant to anyone concerned that it could be no accident; at that time Bush should have been IMMEDIATELY picked up by the armpits and physically carried out of there to a much safer, less-publicized location because if the “official” story were true then his Secret Service would have had to assume Bush was at least a possible target. But instead of following standard procedure like they would any other time, on that morning they didn’t. Bush was allowed to remain there for at least 35 more minutes, and even carried out a press conference at the school! What can this tell you Jeff except that Bush and his Secret Service chief had to have known that the high-value target that is an American president was not even a possible target that morning? And what can them knowing that tell you but that they had to have known the 9/11 plans beforehand if they could be so confident? What do you make of that? Or the record amounts of “put” orders (betting a stock will decline in value) placed on stocks of United Airlines, American Airlines and Morgan Stanley-Dean Witter in the week before 9/11? The half-assed “debunking” site you linked to amazingly regards this as a normal occurance, vividly illustrating its lack of credibility. (Just like it claims an airy figure of between 10 and 15 seconds for the “collapses” of the Twin Towers, claiming that various websites state various “collapse” times, when all the stooge had to do was to look in the so-called “9/11 Commission Report” and see that even THAT obvious whitewash handbook admits that the Twin Towers’ “collapse” times were 10 seconds apiece, which accounting for air resistance is freefall rate for that height, hence all the 9/11 websites that claim freefall rate or freefall rate accounting for air resistance “collapses”. Why? Because not only is it seen in video footage but the “official” story even is forced to admit to the 10 second “collapse” times. So if you think that ridiculous “debunking” website is anything other than a placebo salve to make people like you feel good about being in denial of the truth, think again. And try acting like an adult and actually allowing someone to respond when you ask them to respond. What an immature douchebag.
November 15th, 2006 at 1:38 am
This immense paragraph is even better read the second time.