JBX

In a parallel universe if 9/11 never happened...
PRESIDENT-ELECT John F. Kerry's rise to the nation's highest office came as little surprise following almost four years of remonstrations against President George W. Bush for his bizarre attack on the defenseless people of Afghanistan.
Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, was the right man for a nation outraged by the Bush administration's pre-emptive war, which, it now seems clear, was based on highly speculative intelligence that Saudi
Arabian- born terrorist Osama bin Laden was planning an attack on the United States.
Absent absolute proof of such an imminent attack, Bush's Sept. 10 bombing of Afghanistan earned him international condemnation and, in all likelihood, an indictment in coming weeks. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, appearing last night on "Larry King Live,' said the United Nations' International Criminal Tribunal likely would bring charges of genocide against Bush.
Bush also faces federal charges at home for his baseless arrest of 19 foreign nationals, many of them native Saudis, whose "crime' was attending American flight schools. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has joined the American Civil Liberties Union in a joint suit against both Bush and former Attorney General John Ashcroft, charging racial profiling, unlawful arrest and illegal search and seizure.
Kerry's campaign mantra "You go to war because you have to, not because you want to' clearly resonated with Americans as they tried to make sense of Bush's Sept. 10 attack on Afghanistan. Neither the president, nor national security adviser Condoleezza Rice convincingly defended their actions during the recent "9/10 Commission' hearings, which Congress ordered in response to public outcry.
The commission's purpose was to try to determine what compelled the president to launch a war against Afghanistan. What kind of intelligence suggested that such an act was justified?
The main target of the attack was bin Laden, friend to Afghanistan's brutal Taliban regime, as well as al-Qaida training camps in that war-ravaged nation. Al-Qaida, an international terrorist network, has been blamed for numerous attacks on U.S. interests, including the USS Cole bombing, which killed 17 sailors.
Even though Bush's military campaign was successful in ending the oppressive Taliban regime, bin Laden apparently escaped and al-Qaida continues to flourish.
Some intelligence sources speculate that bin Laden's operatives may be trying to secure weapons of mass destruction from Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
Even though Saddam continues to send money to the families of Palestinian terrorists and is believed to have programs for developing WMD, Kerry says he is committed to containing Saddam through continued sanctions and the U.N. oil-for-food program.
In any case, experts say that intelligence about Saddam's WMD program is just as speculative as was the intelligence that prompted Bush to attack Afghanistan. The man credited with sounding the alarm on bin Laden and al-Qaida was Richard Clarke, a counterterrorism expert who has served four presidents, including Ronald Reagan, George H. Bush and William Jefferson Clinton.
In a Jan. 25 memo to Rice, for instance, Clarke urged immediate attention to several items of national security interest: the Northern Alliance, covert aid, a significant new '02 budget authority to help fight al-Qaida and a response to the USS Cole.
At Rice's and Clarke's urging, Bush called a meeting of principals and, after "connecting the dots,' decided to wage war against Afghanistan.
What did the dots say? Not much, in retrospect. Apparently, the president decided to bomb a benign country on the basis of "chatter'
that hinted at "something big.'
With no other details on the "big,' and weaving together random bits of information from a variety of questionable sources, Bush and company decided that 19 fundamentalist Muslim fanatics would fly airplanes into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon on 9/11.
Under questioning by the "9/10 Commission,' Clarke denied that his memo was anything more than a historical overview with a "set of ideas and a paper, mostly.' The bipartisan commission concluded, therefore, that Bush's "dot-connecting' had destroyed American credibility and subjected the United States to increasing hostility in the Arab-Muslim world.
Last week, Saddam Hussein and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat joined French and German leaders in condemning Bush and urging American voters to cast their ballots for regime change in America. Kerry was the clear response to that call.
In a flourish of irony and the spirit of bon vivant for which the new president is widely known, Kerry gave his acceptance speech from Windows on the World, the elegant restaurant atop the World Trade Center's Tower One.

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"Youth and Strength is no match for Age and Treachery"

theusername

BRAVO!

Before 9/11 there's no possible way that they would have let Bush invade Afghanistan.

I agree with you on Saddam but its hard to say that knowing the current state of affairs over there, hopefully things improve.

Obviously this is largely a political spin but not much different from all the anti-Bush talk I've been reading which has just turned into its own tunnel of lies.

djtestudo

Ah, alternative history, how I do love thee

This is very clever, and most likely true.

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"Final thought: I just rented Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. Frankly, it was the worst sports movie I've ever seen."
--Peter Schmuck, The (Baltimore) Sun

HarmlessRabbit

I like your alternative history. If only it were true. The USA would be hundreds of billions richer, several hundred USA soldiers would still be alive, and the economy would be on an upswing.

I can dream, though, thanks for the uplifting thoughs. Kerry in '04!

shakran

I read that with interest. My initial reaction was that it's a load of bullshit, but on further reflection I decided that it is in fact a load of bullshit.

We didn't have to attack Afghanistan had we known about the 9/11 attacks. We could have just upped security on airplanes and not let the terrorists board.

djtestudo

Well, if we had traced the 19 suspects arrested in that scenario to bin Laden in Afghanistan, and they refused to turn him over, I could see us being justified in doing it.

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"Final thought: I just rented Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. Frankly, it was the worst sports movie I've ever seen."
--Peter Schmuck, The (Baltimore) Sun

Man/Amazing

Well written, a nice read.

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Paq

I"m pretty much against bush, i'll admit, but even i don't htink any of that would have happened.
You get a terrorist threat warning, etc, and you quietly take out the threat. The public would barely hear of the 19 people who were "detained"

however, if he did bomb on sept 10...wow..that would have been interesting...

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Live.

Chris

Superbelt

If Bush did all of that, and we had the reaction we did, Bush would have been an unsung hero. A misunderstood giant of america who over 3000 people owe their lives.

But he didn't and 3000 people are dead. Not saying that 9/11 was all his fault with that statement either. There's enough blame to go around. But blame, he deserves.

Also, Easterbrook, the guy who wrote that fiction, takes everything too far. He goes to the entire other end of the spectrum. There was plenty of evidence against the 9/11 hijackers to at least deport all of them. Learning to fly jets and specifically declining learning how to land them is more than just highly suspicious behavior. Our own FBI recognized this. That, plus positive associations with Al Qaeda is enough to deport. And that is probrably what would have happened. They would be forever flagged, and an alert government would (should) be doing more extensive background checks to keep those types of people from entering.

We wouldn't have attacked Afghanistan outright without providing credible evidence. At least, a calm and intelligent president wouldn't. That the mistake Bush made over Iraq. So of course the world would be right to condemn it. There may have only been enough evidence to place stiffling sanctions against Afghanistan. And I would take that any day over a justified war with them because of 3000 dead americans.

About the only thing that Easterbrook gets right is Kerry being elected President. Bush came into office an unpopular president. The only thing that ever bounced his polling was military actions and without 9/11 he would have remained a sub 50% president. And that means a changeover.

dy156

Uhm..., Superbelt:
Gregg Easterbrook, one of my favorite internet writers, did not write the piece above. He wrote a similar piece, found here that talked about Bush getting removed from office through impeachment, and John McCain running for Pres.

Text of his article appears below. I think it's more chilling and better written, but I'm wondering why you criticized him, rather than the author of the piece that was posted above? Maybe I'm just confused.

hari

I think articles like this are intended to shift the debate to "Bush was asleep at the switch". I think it's fair to say most people wouldn't blame him if he was.

The debate isn't about how no one saw September 11 coming. The debate is about about the response to it, mainly the invasion of Iraq.

Easterbrook's article is chilling, by the way. President Cheney?

Mojo_PeiPei

Iraq wasn't in response to 9/11 , it was merely lightly incinuated to dupe the boobs of America.

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To win a war you must serve no master but your ambition.

Superbelt

dy156, thanks for pointing that out. I assumed Easter wrote that because I heard he wrote a similar article though I had not seen it yet, apparently. So I though this was it.

I only criticised him because I thought he was the one who wrote the thread starter article. I would have otherwise, of course, left him out of it.
I like Gregg and agree with him from time to time.
Of course, seeing his article, the similarites are eerie. Someone is a plagarizer. Apply everything I said to both I suppose.

Kadath

Mmmm...boobs....

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it's quiet in here

queedo

Perhaps you would be happier with Al Gore the war hero and inventor of the internet as president. He would had showed those terrorists a thing or two just like Clinton did huh? And his wife Tipper would be burning books left and right and we would see a new world of censorship that wouldn't allow sites like the TF. Taxes would be double and yes the US government would have lots of money but the people would be much worse off!

Don't worry though, if Kerry gets ellected this could all come true, and then we can play nice with countries like France and Germany again who are harboring terrorists and we could pull out of Iraq and Afganistan and let that part of the world become unstable and cause a world war.

You Liberals have it all figured out, and just like Bill Clinton you know what is best for the rest of us without asking. Please raise my taxes, plese cut millitary and NASA budgets, please pass laws that force business out of the country, please try to get votes by raising minimum wage so companies will have to raise prices of their products to compensate for the loss in revinue. Lets all just get votes and look good rather than doing what is right for the country and not being too popular like what Bush is doing right now.

Canada is a very liberal socialist country perhaps if you move there people might agree with you more.

This is not personal against you, I am just fed up with people who believing everything they read in the papers and see on TV.

Peace

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If you think you can or you can't, you are right!

Zeld2.0

I think the same can be said for those who believe what others say is true

Of course, in truth, we're all-knowing powerful beings who are never wrong nor is there any truth other than the one we know

hari

You are asked what you want when it's time to vote. In the meantime, pick up the phone, write a letter, or go visit your representative. Run for office yourself, or go work for someone you believe in.

Don't assume that anyone who disagrees with you is a nutcase. The voices in our heads would never lie to us.

analog

seretogis

Bush is unpopular because he's an incumbent Republican, not because of his policies. If Gore was in office right now we would still be in Iraq and Afghanistan -- the only difference is that there would likely be less negative press about it.

As a Republican, however, he has failed miserably to promote the ideals of his party. He caved to Democrats on Education, Pharmaceuticals, and the AWB. He dramatically increased the size of the federal government, and seeks to increase peoples dependence on it. He is humoring the totalitarian far-far-right of his party, but seems to have forgotten any Reagan-esque ideology that his father may have passed down.

It's not a matter of Bush being better than Kerry, it's a matter of Kerry being worse than Bush.

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seretogis - sieg heil
perfect little dream the kind that hurts the most, forgot how it feels well almost
no one to blame always the same, open my eyes wake up in flames

Superbelt

seretogis, why do you think a President Gore would have taken the step of going to war with Iraq?

I don't see a chain of events leading to it. Bush, we know, was and is obsessed with Iraq. Gore had no such preocupation.

I honestly don't see how you can come to this conclusion.