The intelligence was cooked. It was not reliable. They knew it. Durbin, who is on the FIC said he knew it was cooked but by law could not say what he knew from his committee hearings. He voted against AUMF and told people as much as he could that it was all bullshit. It has since come out that it was bullshit. It has since come out that they knew it was bullshit. You don’t read the news, do you?

Also, would you have sent our military to Afghanistan? Would you have taken any military action at all against al Qaida?

Yes. And we did. And we pulled out when we almost had bin Laden. We invaded a country that had nothing to do with our being attacked and pulled troops out of a country which was harboring people who did attack us.

I’m just curious about what you might have done differently, at this time in our nation’s history. I see a lot of people bashing the current administration, accusing our nation’s leaders of “war crimes,” and being generally negative about every single post-9/11 action our government has taken. I see all of that, and I accept that people are entitled to their opinions, of course, but I’m also given to wonder what they think they might have done differently.

I would have done the job in Afghanistan and never set foot into the quagmire that is Iraq. Invading and occupying Iraq, killing so many of its population, for no good reason, for cooked intelligence that they knew was bad intelligence, should have led to impeachment and nowhere else. Paying generals to promote propaganda should have led to impeachment. Lying to the American people to garner support for a war that never should have happened should have led to impeachment.

Fair enough. Here’s my new, more concise question:

Given the intelligence information available at the time, how would you have acted, as President of the United States of America, in the wake of the September 11, 2001 airline hijackings and terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon?

More specifically, would you have taken any military action against Iraq, if your intelligence information led you to believe that there was a possibility of WMDs there (remember, WMDs can be biological, chemical, etc., not necessarily nuclear weapons).

Also, would you have sent our military to Afghanistan? Would you have taken any military action at all against al Qaida?

I’m just curious about what you might have done differently, at this time in our nation’s history. I see a lot of people bashing the current administration, accusing our nation’s leaders of “war crimes,” and being generally negative about every single post-9/11 action our government has taken. I see all of that, and I accept that people are entitled to their opinions, of course, but I’m also given to wonder what they think they might have done differently.

Going forward, we should have a policy that is solution-oriented. We should know how best to handle situations like the one we were in right after 9/11. Talking about the best way to deal with such situations, rather than playing the blame game and the participating finger-pointing, partisan, vitriolic, divisive activity that is the hallmark of Leftist politics in America, today (and, admittedly, a much smaller far-right political machine, as well) seems the best way to go about things, in my humble opinion.

With respect to that view, I was asking how you would have done things differently. How would you have run the country? That may be a broad question, but the topic you’re discussing is broad, so I don’t feel it was inappropriate.

I hope this response was sufficiently concise. I didn’t mean to write so much, but I felt I owed it to you to be clear.

Perhaps if you asked something that wasn’t as broad as this planet, you might get a more reasoned answer.

All sarcasm aside, my point was that it’s easy to play armchair politician, but when you were asked how you might have done things differently, you listed a lot of things you would “not” do. I didn’t see anything you WOULD do.

From my admittedly limited point of view, it seems like taking the easy way out to sit back and snipe at the obvious targets, rather than really thinking issues through and proposing viable solutions to problems.

But what do I know? I’m just some moron that stopped by your blog and hoped to find an intelligent person to talk to. How foolish of me!

I do caption contests when I find a great pic. Check in. I will keep my eyes out for something.

Cheers, darlin’! Thanks so much for stopping by!!