In a parallel universe called 'what if.'

TownHall.com ^ | 10 April 2004 | Kathleen Parker

[txradioguy]

NEW YORK - 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 the American voters to cast their ballots for regime change in America. President 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.

[risk]

bump - things might have been this way!

[Naomi4]

Thank you for posting this. She has it so right.

We don't and can't do things before the fact.

The Democrats want it both ways.

[DoctorMichael]

Very good! Takes the arguments of the partisan, scumbag, lefty DemocRATS to their logical conclusion.

Bttt

[NonValueAdded]

She left out the part about the Toon appearing at the 9-10 hearings and saying "we saw the same intelligence and decided to do nothing."

[txradioguy]

The scary thing it that we here all KNOW this is how it would have been played out by the RATS. The WOT is the ultimate Catch-22. And IMHO no one out there could have handled what;s happened over the last three years better than President Bush.

[arkady_renko]

Later.

[Gorjus]

tag for later

[SelmaLee]

Exactly - I went over to TownHall and thanked her for writing this piece. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.

[stevie_d_64]

The irony of the "what if" senario...

Later,
Steve

[Northern Yankee]

The commission was formed due to a public outcry.

What public outcry?!

[SamAdams76]

Super post. I've been trying to say the same thing here for weeks now but couldn't put it in words as good as this. It's a classic "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. But in reality, had the horror of September 11th been averted due to pre-emption, Bush's head would have been on a platter long ago. He'd surely have been impeached and probably convicted in the senate. I'm not kidding either.

In another alternate universe, the assassin of Adolph Hitler in 1933 rotted away in a lonely jail cell, the world refusing to believe his ridiculous claims that he saved the lives of millions of innocent people. The German people were shocked by this terrible crime and may never recover from the assassination of this "great man" who pulled Germany together and got the trains running on time.

[M Kehoe]

Kerry gave his acceptance speech from Windows on the World, the elegant restaurant atop the World Trade Center's Tower One.

Imo, in this IF world, ironically, the WTC still would have been hit. Just at a different time. These Islamic a$$holes won't stop until they're dead.

5.56mm

[reed_inthe_wind]

excellent.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Irony is lost on some people. This kind of satire is soooo obvious. It probably won't change anybody's mind. People who are shocked, shocked that "Bush knew", are the same ones who protest the fairly minimal security measures taken since 9/11.

[Jack Armstrong]

In a related story …
Kerrey recalls hundreds of thousands of U.S. National Guard Troops from the Texas Mexican border.
“Our long time peaceful relationship with Mexico has been strained because of the “Isolationist Policy” of the Bush Administration.” Kerrey told a large group of ELWFP temporary citizens, on Friday.
As you know the ELWFP (Entry Level Work Force Project) temporary citizens are now able to come in the country freely due in large part to Kerrey’s willingness to appease all foreign countries.
ELWFP temporary citizens have recently begun to flood into the country across all U.S. borders. Kerrey’s new ELWFP includes the brilliant sub-clause of allowing any foreign citizen to print their own Yellow ELWFP Card on a laser printer. In a stroke of genius Kerrey signed off on the recent MacCain-Frumpman bill which encourages all class one felons from Mexico to download official ELWFP Yellow Card permit forms from the Pueblo Colorado home office. Now American citizens are free to enjoy the good life while the Mexicans can do all the jobs that Americans refuse to do! Kerrey and President Fox of Mexico hammered out a plan to begin sending all Mexican Class One Prisoners north across the new open border, in a handshake agreement last week. President Fox thanked President Kerrey for helping solve their serious Mexican Prison “Overcrowding” situation.
The Department of Interior will begin the Water for Visitors Program, next week. This program, Kerrey says, will supply needed fresh purified water to the southern border regions through a massive pipe grid system along our border with Mexico. The project will be competed in mid 2009.
But until it is finished U.S. Border Patrol officers will tow ample supplies of fresh water around in huge tanks built for the government. “We don’t want our new temporary citizens to get the idea they are second rate” said Kerrey, “I have instructed the officers to assist all Mexicans in their arduous journey from the south”. In a memo from the White House Kerrey suggested officers carry maps and help direct all Mexicans to the nearest hospitals, to avoid potential law suits from them.

[Allegra]

What public outcry?!

Translation: Public Outcry = Deomcrat desperation to regain the White House. There is no limit as to how low they can stoop. The Dems are so low they carry unbrellas so the ants won't pee on them.

[Dr.Deth]

Can you write a "What If Democrat politicians upheld their oaths of office instead of being traitorous power-drunk worms?"

[Timmy]

It would have been more realistic had the 9-11 attacks occurred "in response to" Bush's war.