Nice, good to know the Government is doing everything it can to protect Americans. Its not!!. Big surprise. The followup commission just finished another report on checking back on what the 9/11 recommnedations were and the result? The government is failing miserably in just about every area they was combed through. Waiting for the Repugs. to now say that the American people haven't told them they need to make the adjustments and corrections necessary now. Since we can afford what $1 billion a week for Iraq, then we sure as hell can afford to make these adjustments now!!

Color me stunned.

But...but we can take nail clippers and small scissors on airplanes again! How can anyone say we're not safer???

Yes, perish the thought I should get a hang nail during an airline flight and not be able to do anything about it! Oh, the humanity! This is just another chapter in the most incompetent presidency this nation has ever seen. When, oh when, will January, 2009 finally arrive! Am I surprised by this report? Hardly. I would have been far more shocked had it given a glowing report.

Don't be so ridiculous. This has NOTHING to do with Bush and EVERYTHING to do with the simple fact that it's typical government bureaucracy. It always has been.

Whether it's Bush, or Clinton, or Reagan, or any other president, we cannot seem to get rid of governmental incompetence and bloated bureaucracy. It's been a joke of talk show hosts and pundits for decades, and it's so tiresome--sad even.

The Left was screaming about our having to hire "regular" (whatever the hell that meant) airport screeners after 9/11, while the Right said it would be a disaster. So what did the country do? Yup. Congressional Republicans wimped out to emotional public pressure and created the TSA, which now says we can take screwdrivers, nail files, and some other sharp objects onto a plane. Oh, THAT makes sense.

Of course, the GOP also caved to the pressure to create another whole cabinet department, that being Homeland Security. Yet another appeasement to the Left's demand for more government (both sides are at fault in all this crap, though the GOP's penchant for government expansion lately is sickening). So now we have an entire department, into which FEMA was relocated--thanks, Congress!--where managers can't even frickin' literally communicate with other departments and agencies. How typical.

This whole mess is not too unlike those fools who believe we should have mandatory health care in this country. Yeah, right! Let's take an already volatile health care industry and destroy it by putting the government in charge of it. ("I'm sorry, Mr. Jones, but you're going to have to wait another 24 months for that tonsillectomy.")

More government, more bureaucracy = a bigger mess, a sad fact about Washington's way of doing things since the early 1900's at least. When will we ever learn?

Note: For another example of politics and bureaucracy at work, visit this thread.

[ December 07, 2005, 09:19 AM: Message edited by: MIB ]

MIB, are there vapors in your chambers?

Al Gore oversaw a multiyear "reinventing government" process that actually trimmed hundreds of thousands of government jobs in the 1990s. I know you're constitutionally incapable of giving the Democrats ANY credit, but actually this was one of many areas in which they did succeed during Clinton's terms. Under his Goreness, they actually SHRANK the size of the government and its bureacracies. Since W has taken office, he has continued to increase not only the size of the government but also its expenditures every single year, for the largest spending increases since LYNDON JOHNSON.

The basic fact is that 9/11 happened on W's watch. He let it happen. He then fought the appointment of an independent panel to investigate the most spectacular non-domestic attack in our nation's history. His surrogates and other Republican partisans repeatedly attacked the bipartisan panel (which I'm sure you've forgotten), though its chair was a Republican. Tom Kean was undaunted and issued not only a booklength report (which I'm sure you read), but a series of recommendations that ONLY THE REPUBLICAN ADMINISTRATION AND THE REPUBLICAN-CONTROLLED CONGRESS CAN IMPLEMENT! Got that?

Painful as it must be for you to realize that your party controls both of these branches of government (actually all three, since Roberts, Kennedy, O'Connor, Scalia, and Thomas are all Republicans and form a majority on the court, and Stevens was appointed by a Republican as was Souter), you ought to accept the truth. This is the WORST PRESIDENT EVER, and this Republican Congress cannot be bothered to implement a number of basic and obvious recommendations FOUR YEARS after a horrific attack. Why? It's not because of bureaucracy, but because THEY DON'T CARE.

As for the TSA, the workers in airports don't make policy, the politically appointed head of that organization does. So the workers status as union or non-union is far less of an issue than the TSA director's decisions. We could have union workers in those jobs, being paid a decent salary, or go the Republican way and perhaps have illegal aliens or whoever is willing to work for the lowest price, but nevertheless, the policy is set from the top, not the bottom. Why we cannot scan cargo FOUR YEARS after 9/11 is just beyond me. If we can blow money on secret torture prisons in Romania and throw money down the black hole that is Iraq and underwrite the corrupt rule of the president of Uzbekistan, for God's sake we can do a bit more to protect our own citizens from the threat of cargo bombs, vulnerable nuclear facilities, and so on. AND we can act like we have a national border and not come up with failed plans like Germany's Gastarbeiter policy, which was bad the very minute W proposed it.

WORST. PRESIDENT. EVER.

At least we're protected from bipolar men who haven't taken their medication. Thanks to folks like Florida Representative John Mica ® all sorts of USA citizens might now face death without trials.

Shame on you for saying such an asinine statement borne of ignorance and blind partisanship! Any credibility you had disappeared after saying such a stupid thing.

Considering the planning for 9/11 and everything that surrounded it, including the earlier bombings of the twin towers, all occurred during the Clinton years, I should be saying Clinton let this happen, that he did nothing to stop it. However, unlike you, I am not blinded by ideology and will not make such a foolish statement.

Really, that has to be one of the most ridiculous comments ever made on this board, and coming from you, that surprises me (though nothing said by the uber-left here surprises me anymore, for they're like lemmings following the same, stupid playbook).

And your point is...?

What was the air marshall supposed to do, get into a discussion about the guy's medical history first?

I love the armchair quarterbacks who think they have all the answers when it comes to how to handle instantaneous, life or death situations like this. It's sad that the guy who was shot apparently was off his meds, which seemingly caused him to act the way he did. However, the air marshall didn't know this, and when someone even HINTS at having a bomb on a plane, there is NO room for error or guessing.

The air marshall did what he was supposed to do, what he had to do. For that, he, along with Congressman Mica, are to be commended and not blamed.

Maybe his wife should have made sure he took his meds?

Are you INSANE? 9/11 happened on September 11, 2001! George W. Bush received REPEATED WARNINGS all summer long about Osama bin Laden's desire to attack the US. When the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993, Clinton found and prosecuted the people behind it. Clinton did not address the Khobar Tower and USS Cole bombings, but HE WASN'T IN OFFICE ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001. In fact, George W. was so incompetent he SAT FOR SIX MINUTES AFTER THE FIRST TOWER WAS DESTROYED, like a dazed doe, not sure WHAT TO DO. He illegally put his VP in charge, when he wasn't officially incapacitated, yet between these two and the Secretary of Defense, they were unable to 1) stop the destruction of the second World Trade Center Tower or 2) the bombing of the seat of our military! Why weren't fighter jets scrambled more quickly? Why was W so utterly incoherent and confused at first? Why was Cheney the one calling the shots?

Your blind partisanship has made you forget all of this. Or maybe you're totally in denial, as usual, about Republicans. But 9/11 happened UNDER GEORGE W's WATCH!!!

Also, you didn't address ANYTHING else in the post, as usual, because you cannot be bothered to deal with any criticism of your beloved Republicans. Typical.

I thought MIB said he was an independant? I am confused. :confused:

Exactly MIB - and the bloated bureaucratic mess that is sucking most of the money that could have gone to homeland security is (drumroll, please), the Iraq war!!! Yeah for the Bush administration's completely misplaced priorities. Rather than let the UN deal with Saddam (as it was right before we unilaterally and illegally invaded), Bush decided that enriching Cheney and his buddies was more important than the safety of Americans. So we ignored bin Laden, did no disaster planning (as Katrina proved) and threw millions of dollars down the bottomless pit of no-bid contracts so that Halliburton could make a ton.

Wow, that's effective government in action - first Bush, et. al. refused to take the issue of terrorism seriously (as documented by a number of former Bush appointees, including O'Neil and Whitman) and then used the 9/11 attacks to get the guy who dissed Bush's Daddy. That's just stellar government.

And that did a lot of good, didn't it? He only incited them to attack a second time, on 9/11. Logically, then, 9/11 is Clinton's fault.

Fortunately, most sensible Americans know that 9/11 isn't Bush's fault. Your assertions really have gone off the deep end.

I am, but I understand your confusion. You see, I am not some ideological lemming who has to read from the playbook of the uber-Left like fantomas and his ilk here do. For some of them, they've progressed--or regressed, I guess you can say--into flights of conspiracy or other ridiculous assertions, oftentimes sounding oh so coincidentally like the Michael Moores, George Soroses, and other lefty loons out there.

I'm an equal opportunity pragmatist, but more often here prefer to offer points not usually seen by the Kool-Aid drinkers that permeate this joint. I refuse to be a left-wing conformist who has to get his marching orders from the likes of the aforementioned socialists, but by being so, I'm still far from being a right-wing conformist. Heck, my voting record alone would prove that wrong.

The only fault for 9/11 are the people who attacked. That's it! It's not Bush, whom I can't stand, or Clinton, who I happen to like, but for whom I lost a lot of respect for during the end of his presidency. I mean really. It's a ridiculous notion to blame either President.

Everyone always wants to blame someone for horrible things like 9/11, like Katrina, like...whatever other horrible or natural disaster happens. It sucks, these are horrible things, but the blame lies with whoever planned it, or in some cases Mother Nature. Can we do stuff to be better prepared, obviously, but it's not as easy as so many people seem to think, nor will it prevent horrible things from happening.

Look at victims of sexual assault. It is not a woman's fault if she is raped because she was wearing a short skirt, and most people would agree with this statement and fortuitously argue the point with anyone who disagrees. The fault lies with the perpetrator. Same is true for 9/11.

It does no one, most of all the victims and their families, any service to blame Bush or Clinton for the attack. Further, it only shows, for many people anyway, that one is more interested in being right and bashing or backing their particular brand of politics. Certainly calls into question credibility, I think.

But what the hell do I know, as I'm sure this will be feverently dismissed by most people around here.

Harldy, Shep. I couldn't agree with you more. Well written and well said.

Uh no, you're logic doesn't work. Clinton prosecuted the people behind the first attack. Had his successor done his job, he could have prevented the attacks. But hey, blame Clinton, that's typical GOP logic for everything.

Shep, I hear what you're saying. I understand yours and others desires to absolve George W. Bush of culpability. Comparing the United States to a rape victim, however, is offensive and really wrong. The United States has the largest and most powerful military, the most extensive intelligence services, and the greatest destructive (nuclear) capacity in the world. Most rape victims don't. The United States also received REPEATED warnings--both from people within repeated branches of the government--and from its intelligence sources that a massive attack was going to occur. Most rape victims do not receive such warnings. When the United States was attacked on 9/11, we had the capability of at least shooting down several of those planes. Most rape victims usually are not armed or are disarmed. Like it or not, 9/11 happened on W's watch, and it will join the Iraq War, the recession, the Hurricane Katrina debacle, his bloated spending, the Plame spy outing scandal, the propaganda rulings, the institutionalization of torture, Abu Ghraib and secret renditions, his anti-gay activism, and so many other blots on his record as the WORST PRESIDENT EVER.

As for MIB's babbling about "socialists," if you really think Michael Moore, who is a capital par excellence and a millionaire, and George Soros, a billionaire, are socialists, then you are even more deluded than I thought. But neither I nor many of the other critics of the abomination we have in the White House are taking marching orders or drinking Kool-Aid from anyone. We didn't support this war that has led to the deaths of over 2,200 American soldiers alone and 14,000 wounded or badly injured. We didn't support the complete destruction and Islamicization of a country based on phantom WMDs. We didn't hope that Iraq's new army would set up secret underground torture prisons and start assassinating innocent people like Saddam's, once again with US support. We didn't push to have a puppet of Iran, Ahmed Chalabi, installed at the head of the Iraqi government, and now the two countries have signed military agreements and the psychopath running Iran just denied the Holocaust, suggested Israel should move to Europe and previously called for Israel to be wiped off the face of the map. Who drank the Kool-Aid, bub? Certainly it wasn't the leftists.

[ December 09, 2005, 08:21 AM: Message edited by: fantomas ]

I'm not trying to absolve Bush of anything. I think he is quite possibly the worst President ever. Don't make a mistake about that, but to say he is responsible for 9/11 is ridiculous. Did we have warnings, proabably, but how many of us, before 9/11 actually thought something like that was going to happen. Not many of us. It is easy after the fact, to blame and say "well we knew it could happen", but to go back to my other arguement, that was dismissed as I thought it would be, many women are warned that wearing short skirts and/or walking alone might lead to a sexual asault.

Still doesn't make it their fault.

I know some people are more concerned with being right than with moving forward. I accept that.

I accept the argument about fault - my example is not locking my car; a thief who rips me off is a thief, but I still got ripped off.

He's wrong, but I still got ripped off. Could I have at least helped prevent my loss?

Honestly, I don't give much credence to a commission that had Jamie 'The Wall' Gorelick as one of its commissioners instead of a target. Even if her actions didn't contribute to 9/11 they definitely need to be fairly investigated and having her cochair that investigation was a HUGE conflict of interest.

The fact that no one on the commission complained about it lowers all their credence, in my mind.