{"id":3759,"date":"2008-12-05T13:05:01","date_gmt":"2008-12-05T18:05:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3759"},"modified":"2008-12-05T13:05:01","modified_gmt":"2008-12-05T18:05:01","slug":"the-only-verdict-that-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3759","title":{"rendered":"The Only Verdict That Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

For those days when Swiftee and Anti-Strib are just too damn oblique and tactful, Cigar Mike at Babalu gets specific<\/a>:<\/p>\n

They don’t want to admit it. They like to say things are more dangerous here today than they were pre 9\/11, but the fact is they are so full of caca that they will come up with some other inane argument (stolen from Noam Chomsky) to say something to the contrary. They’re tearing down their Obama altars since they are pissed that not enough “progressives” have been appointed to the cabinet, and will continue to blame Bush for everything including the festering sores on their bodies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If only Mike would learn to open up and express himself.<\/p>\n

Mike, of course, directs us to Peggy Noonan, who is – well, less obstreporous, but makes a similar point<\/font><\/a>:<\/p>\n

She notes:<\/p>\n

This is an argument that’s been around for a while but is newly re-emerging as the final argument for Mr. Bush: the one big thing he had to do after 9\/11, the single thing he absolutely had to do, was keep it from happening again. And so far he has. It is unknown, and perhaps can’t be known, whether this was fully due to the government’s efforts, or the luck of the draw, or a combination of luck and effort. And it not only can’t be fully known by the public, it can hardly be fully known by the players at all levels of government. They can’t know, for instance, of a potential terrorist cell that didn’t come together because of their efforts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To some extent both sides have to swim through weed-choked hypothetical ponds – Bush’s critics will be right, to some extent, in saying “you can’t know what might <\/em>have happened!”.<\/p>\n

But we know what did not happened – the thing that has <\/em>happened to countries that tried to steer a “moderate” course on the issue – nations like India and Indonesia, who’ve been pummeled by terror strikes since 9\/11.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The thing that everyone <\/em>sincerely believed would<\/em> happen, inevitably,\u00a0about this time seven years ago.<\/p>\n

If Obama does as well, it’ll largely be due to Bush’s efforts, unpopular as they turned out to be (in 51% of the US, at least temporarily).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For those days when Swiftee and Anti-Strib are just too damn oblique and tactful, Cigar Mike at Babalu gets specific: They don’t want to admit it. They like to say things are more dangerous here today than they were pre 9\/11, but the fact is they are so full of caca that they will come […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-republicans","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3759\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}