Reddit reviews Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror

No sir, there is no honor in it; it's a terrible, terrible tragedy. Those boys should be home taking care of their families and getting an education, instead they are embroiled in a war masterminded by our political and economic elite.

http://www.amazon.com/Against-All-Enemies-Inside-Americas/dp/0743260244


Glorifying warfare simply plays into their hands; they can convince naive young people that they are doing a great thing for their country, when in fact the greatest thing we could have done was stay out of Iraq in the first place.

Warfare should be for defense, and only as a measure of last resort. There is no honor in it; in fact the reverse; if you are forced to engage in it it means you've failed.

You really want to argue this do you?

You can start with this book by Richard Clarke, outlining how completely he was prevented from doing his job when the Team Bush/Cheney took over.

We can do more if you like, but I'm betting you haven't read it or done any research whatsoever on this at all.

Of course I'm more than willing to chat if you have any details at all to back up your thesis, but please don't start quoting from the thoroughly discredited ABC 9-11 docudrama of 2004.

Well, it was Bush's administration that essentially manufactured the evidence that Kerry and the other senators were shown. There were doubts in the administration about the reliability of that intelligence (including from people like Colin Powell); those doubts were not shared with the senators. And the information was cherry-picked.

Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies is not a perfect book, but it's a decent starting place if you want more info on this topic.

Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror is pretty awesome, and he lays out exactly how much they knew, and it certainly seems like the Bush administration could have done way more to prevent an attack. The first few chapters alone cover how ridiculously overlooked his suggestions were. He narrates the audiobook version too, and it's prettty riveting stuff, to say the least.

Maybe.

I suggest reading "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror" by Richard Clarke, who served through three administrations (Bush 1, Clinton, Bush number 2) and gives a very candid picture of the motivation behind the Iraq invasion and related issues.

>private sector jobs is not necessarily an important metric to pick

Tell that to the people that need jobs to survive. Not everyone can live off of family, etc.

>It really tells us nothing about the prosperity of the people.

Once again, tell that to the people who need employment to pay for their housing, food, clothing, health care insurance, etc.

Having a job versus not having a job tells you very much about the state of average Americans' prosperity especially when you consider that many Americans are only a couple of paychecks away from bankruptcy, losing their home, etc.

Job reports are considered one of the most major economic indicators. Did you not know this?

It's a key economic indicator that's one of the most likely to affect average Americans instead of just Wall Street fat cats. Inflation is another factor for average Americans, but that's been somewhat steady since the mid-1980's. Income disparity and lack of mobility is important and also goes up during Republican rule. I guess I could add that to the chart as well, but I tried to keep it simple in that regard.

To me, focusing on jobs that most affects average Americans keeps it more effective. If you disagree, I suggest you make your own chart. I mean that, by the way. All the time you've spent bickering about my chart, you could have made your own superior chart by now. I hope you make one and present it. If it's accurate and effective, I'll be the first in line to put it out there.

>Third, it's unsourced. I'd be really surprised if this data was actually from somewhere. ... For all we know, the high dem numbers are just from Clinton, and the "positions" of each entry on the graph is simply made up.

Are you kidding? The only source anyone with any credibility uses is from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. There's nothing controversial about the numbers on private sector job growth. All anyone has to do is look it up. It's not controversial at all.

http://bls.gov/home.htm

>rather than relating it to the population or factoring in the number of public sector jobs

With public sector jobs it follows the same pattern.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-s-mcelvaine/the-gops-big-lie-on-job-c_b_1827627.html

The reason I focused on private sector jobs is because many on the conservative right errantly claim that Democrats kill private sector jobs and only increase government jobs, when that's completely untrue.

>What you end up getting from this is literally something meaningless.

Well, you may have family that can front you money when you don't have a job, but for the rest of Americans that rely on gainful employment to survive, those numbers are anything but "meaningless".

>THEN it points at the two (made up) trend lines and basically just goes "evil" and "less evil". Like evil had anything to do with it.

First of all, the data wasn't "made up". If you're going to argue that Republicans create more jobs than Democrats do, then cough up some fake numbers. Secondly, if I need to explain the concept of greater evil versus lesser evil to you, then I think we're done here.

>It even fills in the alternate history shit, as though it knows how that would go down.

You obviously are having a catastrophic problem comprehending the chart and feel the need to take out your frustration on me. If the chart "knows how it would go down" (as you say) it wouldn't have a large, green, bolded, question mark there, would it?

ಠ_ಠ

>Finally, WHAT THE FUCK is with that 9/11 shit?! It's irrelevant to the graph, it's irrelevant to the conversation, it's unsourced, it's very assuming of both Gore's "woulda" reaction and ofthe way it went down with Bush in '01, oh and also ITS MEANINGLESS SCAREMONGERING.

Once again, it's common knowledge. All anyone has to do is hit the books. I didn't make that chart for people who lack critical thinking skills and have an innate inability to perform a modicum of research. People like that are lost already and I'm not going to bother to pander to them.

If it prods people to read Richard Clarke's books on how his warnings were ignored by the Bush administration, then great.

http://www.amazon.com/Against-All-Enemies-Inside-Americas/dp/0743260244

The kind of people that won't bother to get the facts straight aren't going to bother themselves with anything I say anyway.

Once again, if you dispute the facts I present, then hit me up. Otherwise, I think you're missing the point of the chart and certainly the forest for the trees. It has nothing to do with scaremongering and everything to do with showing the vital differences between lesser evil and greater evil in presidential elections.

Also, the main point of it is that it shows that we have never consecutively voted in Democrats into executive office in modern history. We just keep flip-flopping (and worse, we've consecutively voted in greater evil Republicans). So to those who claim we've already tried consistently voting in lesser evil and it's failed, I've proved them completely wrong. We haven't done that.

>ITS MEANINGLESS SCAREMONGERING.

Please stop SCREAMING, hyperventilating and use your brain and critical thinking instead. The point is that the Bush administration was catastrophically inept and I succinctly explained how and why. If you have evidence to the contrary that Gore would have ignored Richard Clarke's dire warnings and sat on his hands, then please dig it up and show me.

I only have to point to Richard Clarke's own words to back myself up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_A._Clarke#Early_warnings_about_Al-Qaeda_threat

>that 9/11 shit is just straight up foolish.

I apologize that I'm not going to take your word on it.

But... if you've got more credentials than Richard Clarke who worked for the State Department for Ronald Reagan, then George H.W. Bush for the Counter-terrorism Security Group and had a seat on the United States National Security Council. Then for Bill Clinton who promoted him to the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism and the chief counter-terrorism adviser on the National Security Council. Then under George W. Bush he continued in the same position...

If you've got those kind of credentials, then have at it..........................

>Look, the thing is that I agree with the conclusions, essentially. This false equivalence bullshit IS causing a bunch of problems

Agreed! :)