USATODAY.com – Some see Cheney’s terror remark as ‘fear strategy’
Exactly what is Dick Cheney thinking when he threatens the public like this? Is he in cahoots with Bin Laden?? Is that why Bin Laden hasn’t been caught? What else can Cheney mean when he says that we’d be attacked if Kerry is elected? It’s astonishing.
Vice President Cheney was not campaigning Wednesday, but his suggestion a day earlier that electing John Kerry would risk a “devastating” terrorist attack kept agitating the political arena.
Well, this is interesting. It’s true that we cannot know we won’t be attacked under a Kerry presidency. It’s also true that we know we HAVE BEEN attacked under a Bush one. Maybe Cheney’s forgotten that, or maybe he hopes voters have.
I think Cheney is probably right. A Bush defeat would be a terrorist orgasm and would probably lead to a lot of “jihad orgasms”.
Remember, in the next 2 days after 9/11, there were numerous cases of wannabees Osamas showing up at airports wearing airline uniforms with fake pilot licenses (and, of course, the fools were promptly rounded up and, I’m sure, given barbwire anal probes courtesy of John Ashcroft).
Btw, John you look nice in the ski-mask. It is nice to know that you are “prepared”. Haha.
Under a Kerry presidency, the nation could “fall back into a pre-9/11 mind-set” of viewing terrorist attacks as “just criminal acts” and the nation as “not really at war,” Cheney said.
Yeah, right.
All the people who are currently in a “post-9/11 mind-set” are going to develop a false sense of security with Kerry in the White House? 🙂
Kerry represents a good target for terrorists. He isn’t going to pull out of Iraq completely and he’s soft on defense. It’s not that we’d be lured into a pre-9/11 mindset, it’s that Kerry will do the worst thing possible: he’ll provide non-comittal leadership. Either we should stay in Iraq and finish the job right or we should pull out completely. But the worst possible thing would be to do both 1/2 way.
Either we should stay in Iraq and finish the job right or we should pull out completely. But the worst possible thing would be to do both 1/2 way.
Hard for me to know what you mean by “finish the job right”, since your criteria is probably different than mine. 🙂
Of course, I don’t know what Bush’s criteria for “finishing the job” is either. His initial vision of us being welcomed as liberators has evaporated, so all I hear is “stay the course…” – whatever that is.
Kerry is equally vague.
My best guess: The Kurd, Sunni, and Shia factions – and whatever other factions exist – are supposed to put-aside their long-standing differences and form a govenment acceptable to the US. Or else?
We have made a show of handing sovereignty over to them. If they are truly sovereign, we should not have much say in their internal affairs. Will we “recind” their sovereignty if we disapprove of the course they take?
The Soviet Union was held-together by force, and broke-apart when that force couldn’t be maintained. Why should Iraq be any different, now that we’ve ended Saddam’s iron-fisted reign of terror?
If that’s your opinion, great, then we should pull out completely. If you feel that we need to stay until the government is “stable” then we should keep the current force or increase it to fullfil that mission as effectively as we can. Regardless of your opinion about the direction we take, I think we can all agree that our decision should be decisive and complete. A partial pull-out would be the worse think possible.
Kerry strikes me as someone that is anything *but* decisive. So I have a feeling that he will put forth the worst of all solutions. He will do a half-ass pull out to appease the tremendous pressure he’ll get from the Left once he’s in office. BTW, I think we can safely ignore his “plan”. What we need to look at to evaluate Kerry’s potential decision making is his past Senate record and the general consensus of his party.
Regardless of his postering, I get the distinct impression that Kerry is against the war in Iraq. That’s a perfectly acceptable point of view. It is certainly one that would garner him greater support amongst his party and across party lines. The problem is that he doesn’t seem to have the balls to come out and stand up for what he believes.
The Vice president should worry about his safety as well. One more drink and his heart will go “poof”. Either that or some nanotechnologists would get pissed about the US getting attacked again during Kerry’s presidency and develop some nanobots to “disentegrate” the former Vice President. Don’t mess wifh teh hackers!
If that’s your opinion, great, then we should pull out completely. If you feel that we need to stay until the government is “stable” then we should keep the current force or increase it to fullfil that mission as effectively as we can.
I want us to stay until “the government” is stable – since I feel our decision to invade makes us responsible for helping to rebuild – but I’m too cynical to feel certain it will be a single government – in a unified Iraq.
And – something I haven’t heard mentioned yet – what does Iraq want us to do? Does their existing “sovereign” government want us to maintain and/or increase our presence? Will the elected government have a different view of our presence? We still discuss this as if they have no say in the matter.
Continuing that thought – before we invaded Iraq, there was a lot of concern that over-throwing Saddam would allow Iraq to split into autonomous regions (i.e. Turkey concerned the Kurds would attempt to form a Kurdish-state, encompassing the border-region between Turkey & Iraq).
To gain support for the invasion, we assured everyone that we wouldn’t let that happen.
The problem is, how do we intend to honor that commitment – now that they are already “sovereign”? Do we feel the exisiting government fulfills our promise to maintain a unified Iraq? If they choose to divide, will we accept that decision, or oppose it?