Understanding terrorism

(From A Moment to Think via Monkey Muck)

Rudy "A Noun, A Verb, And 9/11" Giuliani forgets 9/11 happened

Rudy "A Noun, A Verb, And 9/11" Giuliani made the claim today on Good Morning America that “We had no domestic attacks under Bush.”


A spokesperson for Giuliani later claimed that Giuliani was “clearly talking post-9/11 with regards to Islamic terrorist attacks on our soil.”

Uh huh.

Of course now you're probably thinking to yourself that Rudy has also "forgotten" the Shoe Bomber. But, you'd be wrong. According to Rudy, the Shoe Bomber's attempted attack happened before 9/11:


He also claims in the above video that President Obama waited ten days to comment on the Crotch Bomber when it was 72 hours. Further point of fact -- aside from 9/11 and the Shoe Bomber happening on Bush's watch -- there were multiple anthrax attacks and the attack against an El Al ticket counter at LAX.

But back to Saint Rudy. "America's Mayor" severely fucked up when it came to New York City's security. He was the fucking idiot who insisted that the Command Center be placed at the World Trade Center even after it was attacked in 1993 and who also failed to "find a replacement for the radios that malfunctioned in 1993 left them unable to talk to each other, even about getting out of a tower on the verge of collapse." Moreover, '[a] Times editorial concluded in May that the Giuliani administration "failed in its duty to protect the workers at Ground Zero."' [ibid]

The country needs to go back to how it viewed Rudy right before 9/11: a national joke.

This, after all, was the guy who informed his then wife that he was divorcing her via a press conference and actually moved his goomah in with his wife and kids at Gracie Mansion. He's also the same guy who while running for mayor against the incumbent David Dinkins participated in a police riot where Dinkins (an African American) was hung in effigy and an African American City Councilwoman was roughed up on the steps of City Hall.

Rudy, you needed to turn in your NYC card a long time ago.


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Tom Ridge Confirms It

From USNews:

Tom Ridge, the first head of the 9/11-inspired Department of Homeland Security, wasn't keen on writing a tell-all. But in The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege...and How We Can Be Safe Again, out September 1, Ridge says he wants to shake "public complacency" over security. And to do that, well, he needs to tell all. Especially about the infighting he saw that frustrated his attempts to build a smooth-running department. Among the headlines promoted by publisher Thomas Dunne Books: Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was "blindsided" by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush's re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over. [emphasis added]

Atrios put it best:

Sometimes it's a bit hard to remember just how nutty the world was in those post-9/11 days. Suggesting that Bush was using the terror alert for political purposes would have made you a crazy person, the mere suggestion of it would've put you outside the bounds of acceptable discourse.

And now it's been confirmed. Wonder how that'll get played out.

But I Thought Global Warming Was A Hoax

Take a look at this:

The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.

Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.

But maybe they're just answering the questions posted to it by the deluded-by-Al Gore Obama administration. But if that's the case, then how do you explain this from later in the same article?

The National Intelligence Council, which produces government-wide intelligence analyses, finished the first assessment of the national security implications of climate change just last year.

It concluded that climate change by itself would have significant geopolitical impacts around the world and would contribute to a host of problems, including poverty, environmental degradation and the weakening of national governments.[emphasis added]

But The Tribune Review editorial board (and many others living in Wingnuttia) say it's all a hoax. If that's the case then why did the Bush Defense Department waste all that money (money it should have been using to fight the war on the evil-doing terrrists) on the report?

Waiting for an answer, wingnuts.

Shepard Smith: A tiny ray of light on Fox News

First up: Shep on the DHS report and the Holocaust Museum shooting: "It was a warning to us all, and it appears now they were right."



Next: He calls out "more and more frightening" Fox e-mailers.



Maybe, just maybe, Mr. Smith will someday realize that those scary, scary people who email him are Fox's base audience and that they are the base audience because Fox pushes tea-bag revolutions and unrelenting and over-the-top criticisms of President Obama and all things liberal/Democratic.
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White Supremacist Wounds Kills Security Guard at U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

From the April Department of Homeland Security report that assessed the threat of “right wing extremists":

Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.

First Dr. Tiller, Poplawski, then Dr. Tiller, now this.

Napolitano should have never apologized.

Lots on the background of the shooter at Talking Points Memo and AMERICAblog.

UPDATE:
From Think Progress: "Brunn has been approvingly cited on Stormfront, a national white supremacist website." If you recall, Poplawski kept an account at Stormfront.

UPDATE II:
Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns, security guard at U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, has died of his injuries.

Can we all agree that shooting up a Holocaust museum is the very definition of evil?
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Why do you hate America?

Apparently not only would a Clinton/Obama presidency be a "surrender to terror," it would put "prosperity and peace" at stake.

So I guess that means that a Clinton/Obama presidency would mean that we'd have a large scale terrorist attack on our watch (after ignoring any and all warnings) in which we'd sit frozen like a deer caught in the headlights when it happened, be in the middle of two wars (one civil which has increased the number of terrorists), never capture Bin Laden on our watch, have nearly 4,000 troops die on our watch, create record deficits and start a recession.

Damn, I agree! A president who'd do that would not only be the biggest piece of shit, but would also pose a real danger to our country!

(File this under: IOKIYAR -- It's OK if you are Republican.)
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Is there *ever* a time we can believe these guys???

When I first heard about Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff's "gut feeling" my immediate reaction was that someone needed to mash Chertoff's statement:


with this video:


However, the day after he made his remarks he said he hadn't meant to alarm anyone and Official White House Spinmeister Tony Snow responded as following in a presser:

Q: Does the White House and the President share that same gut feeling?
MR. SNOW: I don't want to try to get into gastrointestinal descriptions.

Fine.

So we were told: "Don't worry, be happy" only to discover later that night that:

"The al Qaida terrorist network has rebounded and is at its greatest strength since it was expelled from Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a new top-level U.S. intelligence assessment concludes..."

And, then there's this:

The White House has called an urgent multi-agency meeting for Thursday to discuss a potential new al Qaeda threat on U.S. soil, ABC News reported on Tuesday.

[snip]

The unnamed official told ABC the level of concern of a new attack in the United States was now higher than it had been in some time.

So which is it?!?

Do we believe the Bush Administration or the Bush Administration???

Maybe it's because the NeoCONs are so completely conflicted about a possible terrorist attack themselves, they can't keep their stories straight.

After all, they tell us we're in Iraq because "we have to fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here" and that they are the only ones who can save us, but then they have to periodically scare us into submission with terrorist warnings every time Bush gets some bad PR.

So who's a poor girl supposed to believe?

Then to top it off we have this from Virginia's own (he never moved back to PA, did he?) batshit crazy Rick Santorum:

Santorum Suggest New Terror Attacks Will Change View Of War

[...]

Santorum went on to clearly imply that terror attacks will occur inside America which will alter the body politic and lead to a reversal of the anti-war sentiment now dominating the country.

"Between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by this time next year, the American public's going to have a very different view of this war, and it will be because, I think, of some unfortunate events, that like we're seeing unfold in the UK. But I think the American public's going to have a very different view," said the former senator from Pennsylvania.

Yep, that's Lil Ricky getting all misty-eyed about how another big terror attack on US soil will bring the American public back around to the right way of thinking.

[sigh]

So, to review, according to the Bushies:

Run! Run! We're all going to die!

It's all cool! :-)

Run! Run! Only we can save your sorry asses!

We're creaming our jeans for a big BOOM from al Qaeda to put you bitches back into line -- our only hope for November '08.

Got it?

Good!

So, what's the only things that we do know?

1. According to our own government, the Iraq War has created more terrorists.
2. Al Qaeda is now as strong as ever.
3. Bin Laden has still not been captured "dead or alive."

Heck of a job, Bushy!

(h/t to Bram for emailing me the Santorum quote.)