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Lost and Found/TRR

Found the sneaker. It was in a place that I know we looked at least ten times last night - in the closet, under the train set, behind the guitar. Our place is at this weird stage between packed and unpacked. We started off so nice, with boxes labeled correctly and packed nicely. The closer it gets to closing date on the new house, the more haphazard our packing gets. Which is why, I suppose, it became difficult to find that one sneaker. However, while digging through the boxes and whatnot, I did come across a box of things I bought at a yard sale in D.C. last year. Must have been at George Tenet's house. Look what I found: [click for bigger] Know what I'm saying? Check out Easterbrook today. I think this has to be the definitive (for me, at least) take on the whole damn thing:
AN ALTERNATIVE HISTORY: WASHINGTON, APRIL 9, 2004. A hush fell over the city as George W. Bush today became the first president of the United States ever to be removed from office by impeachment. Meeting late into the night, the Senate unanimously voted to convict Bush following a trial on his bill of impeachment from the House. Moments after being sworn in as the 44th president, Dick Cheney said that disgraced former national security adviser Condoleezza Rice would be turned over to the Hague for trial in the International Court of Justice as a war criminal. Cheney said Washington would "firmly resist" international demands that Bush be extradited for prosecution as well. On August 7, 2001, Bush had ordered the United States military to stage an all-out attack on alleged terrorist camps in Afghanistan. Thousands of U.S. special forces units parachuted into this neutral country, while air strikes targeted the Afghan government and its supporting military. Pentagon units seized abandoned Soviet air bases throughout Afghanistan, while establishing support bases in nearby nations such as Uzbekistan. Simultaneously, FBI agents throughout the United States staged raids in which dozens of men accused of terrorism were taken prisoner. Reaction was swift and furious. Florida Senator Bob Graham said Bush had "brought shame to the United States with his paranoid delusions about so-called terror networks." British Prime Minister Tony Blair accused the United States of "an inexcusable act of conquest in plain violation of international law." White House chief counterterrorism advisor Richard Clarke immediately resigned in protest of "a disgusting exercise in over-kill."
Read the rest. Twice.

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Comments

Come on now.. Since when do we turn people over to the Hague.

Committee report should be a bowl full of laughs...

Exactly. Even if we HAD actionable intel on the threat...even if we had written plans in Atta's own hand...even if we had agents on the planes in question...if we had acted BEFORE those planes did the deed we would have a world of hurt dumped on us.

There's an OPED at CP that talks about this by a brilliant man..good looking too. ;)

Perfect. Easterbrook can be a ninny at times, but this is as spot-on as anyone's gotten.

When Easterbrook is good, he's amazing. I agree completely. One of the persistent claims from the anti-war camp and the left in general (I'm not necessarily being redundant, there) is that the Iraq war was "a war of choice." Well, had Bush determined that an attack on the US was imminent, and then attacked Afghanistan, we'd be hearing the same damn thing from the same people.

This is the thing that really pisses me off about attempting to assign blame to Bush over 9/11. If he had actually done what would've been needed to stop the attacks by the time he took office, Dante would have to come back from the dead and expand the Divine Comedy for the levels of hell we would hear over it.

Good memo.

I'm pretty sure that the police have memos along the lines of, "Bad guys are determined to kill people and sell crack." That doesn't mean they know when or where. Duh.

Ain't.
It.
The.
Truth!

Obviously President Bush should have consulted your Psychic Friends that you mentioned in your previous post. And now of course, they'll soon be receiving subpoenas from the 9/11 commission demanding they explain their failure to take action and prevent 9/11 in the first place. Furthermore, the commission will soon discover that DJ's other shoe is actually located next to Iraq's missing WMDs. And that my missing tinfoil hat was stolen by the guys in the black helicopters...

Great Easterbrook column.

I watch the 9/11 commission and notice people that are complaining about Iraq arguing that we should have been more "pre-emptive" before 9/11.

Obviously, a huge failure pre 9/11 was the lack of communication between the CIA and the FBI (as required by law). The Patriot Act fixed that... but it's "evil".

There is no way, No Way, that we could have staged a pre-emptive strike prior to 9/11. If we had simply started interrogating all Middle Eastern men before they boarded flights we might have stopped it- but do you think for one second the ACLU wouldn't have been screaming? I'm not suggesting we do it now... but you could damn sure make the argument for it- but we won't. We have no political will to be proactive... we just scream at are leaders when they fail to do something we wouldn't accept anyway.

The last line in Easterbrook's column reminds me of this: Every time I see a movie that has footage of the WTC, I get a lump in my throat. It reminds me of what we've lost... and what we still could lose. Can we stop trying to score partisan points (either side) and focus on not losing more?

Thank you for the link, Michele. Easterbrook's essay is amazing. I came here from Michael Totten's comments where I went postal on some snot who sneered about how major combat operations weren't over, and how no one could tell him with a straight face that sovereignity would be handed over on June 30th.

Many of the people who criticize the administration's war policies are passive-aggressive shits who feel no responsibility to provide a rational alternative for the actions that they criticize, and no realization for how important this war is to Western civilization. They award themselves points over any minor failure in America's efforts, and don't worry about the many times that they are grossly wrong.

There is no reason to respond to such people with anything other than mockery and abuse. To engage them in rational discourse is merely to give them unwarranted credence.

Jack Grey

The democrats are now the party of Catch-22

There's the problem with inter-agency communication

But there are better examples.

the 9-11 commission report will blame Bush for not being pre-emptive enough, while blasting him for being pre-emptive.

It will be sited by John Kerry who will also promise to never be preemtive.

The report will critisize the government for not being on a war footing. And then the democrats will site the report and promise that they're not going to be on a war footing anymore (don't want to lose any Deany babies).

Kerry will agree with the report and agree to never go on a war footing. Though he'll nuance it - if Syria, China and France give him permission, he'll be off like a shot. In other words his response to the next attack will be to nuke Israel.

Absurd scenario--the Democrats would insist on impeaching Cheney first. We'd be looking at a Denny Hastert Administration--or if the Democrats had held the Senate in 2002 and Hastert couldn't serve for some reason--the President Pro Tem of the Senate would get the big chair. By the way, for those without a scorecard, that would have been Robert "KKK" Byrd. Gee, that would have been great.

( closed-captioned for the sarcasm-impaired )

"Our place is at this weird stage between packed and unpacked. We started off so nice, with boxes labeled correctly and packed nicely. The closer it gets to closing date on the new house, the more haphazard our packing gets."

LOL. I'm moving next week (to a bigger quieter apartment) - I can certainly relate. You can pack up to a certain point and still live your life - cook dinner and all that - and then you get to the point where you have to do the rest in the 12 hours before the movers come.

The kind of behavior now being engaged in by many politicians and media types can have very serious consequences. May 10 is the anniversary of the German invasion of France. The behavior of many French politicans of that era--focusing on attacking their rivals rather than working together to protect the security of their country--shows eerie similarity to the way in which several leading Democrats are now conducting themselves.

blink was that really posted at the New Republic?

Not exactly where I'd expect to see it.

Yeah, except in the case of this oh-so-very irrelevant hypothetical they'd be able to declassify documents to defend their case, instead of supressing ones that undermine it.. Ahh, but it's too obvious. But I'm glad the Rabid Right is resorting to fantasy to make it's points.

Need I mention again that most of the 911 hijackers were your favorite President's bestest of friends, the Saudi's? If I were a detective, i might look there first for the sources of the problem (bin Laden was primarily pissed off about the bases there. Iraq had nothing to do with it) But this administration isn't exactly stocked with Hercule Poirots is it?

It's a fallacy on it's face. You could use this excuse for WRONGLY invading any country...

If you've read the Easterbrook column, you really should check out this link:

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/kathleenparker/kp20040410.shtml

I'm sure many writers had the same thoughts, but it's an odd coincidence.

At Townhall Kathleen Parker offers a remarably similar post. Read "In a Parallel Universe Called 'What If.'"

Dan,

Link isn't working.

That is an incredible essay. Thank you for linking it.