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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mph who wrote (15063)	9/1/2004 10:35:26 AM
From: Original Mad Dog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

A few random (independent?) thoughts..... I always thought that independence of thought, while important, is less important than the quality or content of thought. Even Sybil had independence of thought. Kerry himself has exhibited independence of thought over time as well.... According to K, Iraq was entitled to keep Kuwait, or at least we shouldn't throw them out, back in 1991 (he voted against Bush Sr.'s request for authorization to kick Saddam out of Kuwait in Jan. 1991); Iraq's WMD's meant we should authorize force to eject Saddam if necessary in 2002; we should support the troops in the Spring of 2003; there were no WMD's and the whole thing was handled wrong from the start (late 2003); we shouldn't send money to support the troops (2003 and 2004); and so on. His thoughts on a range of other issues also reveal no dependence on past positions when asserting current positions. Perhaps they are on to something over on that other thread. Maybe Teresa's independence of thought has been helping Kerry's positions as they continually evolve. Then there is the matter of 9/11 and Afghanistan. If preemptive war is always wrong, which seems to be Kerry's position, then how is it that Bush was supposed to root out Bin laden and the Taliban before 9/11? Are we supposed to wait for each terrorist act and then react (the other option besides preemption)? The criticism that Bush didn't prevent 9/11 seems to suggest otherwise -- that he somehow should have preempted the threat. Maybe they didn't want a preemptive war in Afghanistan against bin Laden and the Taliban in the Summer of 2001 (or 2000 or 1999 or 1998 etc.) but rather a way to figure out the 9/11 plot before it was executed. Maybe they think that we should have found these sleeper cells, figured out what Atta and the others were up to, and arrested them at the security checkpoints. But how would we have been able to do that? Should we have been gathering boatloads of domestic intelligence through wiretaps and subterfuge to try to find out what young Muslim men who have recently relocated to the U.S. were really up to? Should we have been fingerprinting and questioning suspicious Muslim men at the borders and airports all along? The opposition to the Patriot Act and racial profiling and immigrant fingerprinting suggests that those sorts of 9/11 preventive measures would not have gone over well either for Kerry and his supporters.