I DEBUNK RIGHT WING BS

Here are excerpts from two different posts at the forum of my local paper (my response follows the right-wing posts):

Post 1:

"The irrefutable fact remains: If Clinton takes OBL when he had the chance, then 9-11 doesn't happen. Then we don't go to Iraq."

Post 2:

".........and I do know this: without regard to a donkey or an elephant ---- radical Muslim extremists wish to kill us. They wish to kill us without regard to who gets mail at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. They wish us obliterated from this universe. Anybody remember 9-11? I do. If they could do it again today and the next day and the next day and the next day, they would. I know we've not had another attack since then and we must take the fight to them, or they'll bring it over here."

My response

I posted the following at the forum:

They want to kill us for two reasons:

1) we kill them
2) we exploit them

If we stopped doing those things, voila, no terrorism.

Also, Manny had this to say: "The irrefutable fact remains: If Clinton takes OBL when he had the chance, then 9-11 doesn't happen. Then we don't go to Iraq."

This piece of fiction is easily refutable. Here's how:

1) Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, not Osama bin Laden, is considered the "mastermind of 9/11." If KSM hadn't had OBL, he could've worked with some other rich fundamentalist. 9/11 was KSM's idea.

2) Even the FBI doesn't think they have enough evidence to charge bin Laden with 9/11. Check out his wanted poster at the FBI's website.

3) Osama bin Laden was involved in the planning and financing of 9/11, but he didn't actually carry out the mission.

Therefore, we see that 9/11 was possible independent of bin Laden. Clinton could have personally beheaded bin Laden and 9/11 could have still happened.


The other part of Manny's assertion is more troublesome in that it assumes that because 9/11 happened, we had to invade Iraq. In fact, George W. Bush and the people he chose to serve in his administration wanted to topple Saddam Hussein long before 9/11.

-Rumsfeld was told by Richard Clarke that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, even though Rumsfeld made it clear that he wanted Clarke to tell him otherwise.

-We know from the Downing Street memos that "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. "

-However, Bush was saying publicly at the time that war was not inevitable and the inspectors would do their work and we'd work with the U.N. and so forth. And by this time, Bush had already been repeatedly told that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11.

-A new article in Playboy about Lockheed quotes then-deputy (and now current) national security advisor Stephen Hadley telling a Lockheed official in November 2002 that we were going to go to war but “they were going to war and were struggling with a rationale” and “still working out” a cause. If the Iraq war were really a necessity because of 9/11 in the minds of Bush and his national security people, they wouldn't have had to "work out a cause" or "struggle" with a rationale.

-Bush himself said in 2004 as all this was coming to light that "This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al Qaeda."

So in no way, even by Bush's own admission, does 9/11 necessitate an attack on Iraq. In fact, Iraq was a distraction of resources from the hunt for bin Laden, who is now alive and well in Pakistan, and supposedly free as long as he is a "peaceful citizen." Because Bush didn't get bin Laden when he had the chance.