Josh Marshall ALMOST Got It (update)

Among the several blogs I read, Talking Points Memo is one of them.  So, when I read the lede, “You can’t handle the truther!”, it caught my attention.

Of course, what really caught my attention was this:

There is after all a world of difference between saying that the Bush administration had enough information about a pending attack that they should have done something to stop it and saying that the Bush administration knew about the attacks and intentionally let them happen in order to get an excuse to go to war in Iraq.

But this latest poll finally gets the question tightly worded enough to get at just what people are saying. And the number of Dems who believe the latter is pretty high.

(original article emphasis)

I didn’t realize the logic was so hard to understand, so, let me explain it to Mr. Marshall…

The starting point for both statements is the same; that the Bush administration had enough information to do something.

It is at this point, the deviation point where these two questions differed, where the logic totally fails.  If it is a given that they had enough knowledge to have done something, but didn’t, the second is then true by default; they let it occur.  I didn’t realize that was such a hard leap of logic.

Next, you truly have to love the fact that the pollster lumped birther’s as being equal to 9/11.  There is absolutely zero reason, in fact or fiction, to believe that President Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii, especially considering that Hawaiian officials have now twice confirmed this fact.  However, how much President Bush knew, or didn’t know, prior to 9/11 is debatable with facts and empirical evidence leaning towards “too much to have done nothing”.

Also, the poll numbers themselves are quite skewed.  23% of those polled believe that President Obama was born outside the United States despite Hawaiian official statements.  Only 14% of those polled overall, and when broken down 25% of Democrats, believe that President Bush knew enough about the coming attack that he let it happen for political gain.  Again, this goes back to fact vs facts.

Fact:  Hawaiian officials have twice certified that President Obama was, in fact, born in Hawaii.

There is no debatable issue here.  There is no leeway.  There is no discussion.  The 23% of those polled that simply cannot accept the fact are simply morons.

As for 9/11, regardless of what people personally believe, there are some facts that are still unanswered, and, forever will be it seems.  But, one cannot say that it is a settled matter, that all the facts were known, by any means.

UPDATE:  I sent Josh Marshall an email, posted below:

Josh Marshall,

The “birther” movement simply cannot be equated to 9/11, or for that matter, Pearl Harbor or the assassination of JFK.  It is a matter of factual evidence.  Hawaiian officials have twice now stated, as fact, that they have President Obama’s birth certificate and that his birth in Hawaii is not in question.  That 23% still believe President Obama was born outside of the United States simply makes them morons.  The same cannot be said about 9/11, Pearl Harbor, or the assassination of JFK.  There is no doubt that these events occurred.  What makes these events different from the birther movement is not whether they happened, but, if there were facts about the events kept from the American public.  As a former law enforcement officer, I know that what seems like an ironclad alibi can crumble under one lie to a trained individual.  Thus, an official story too can crumble when the facts don’t support the story, or, when facts have been deleted from the story giving an incomplete picture.  

Condoleeza Rice is on record as stating, “who could have known that [the hijackers] would use airplanes”?  Yet, the fact is that our government was aware of this very plan since 1995 when the Manila government uncovered the plans in a raid on an Al-Qaeda cell.  In addition, John Ashcroft stopped flying commercial airlines two months prior to 9/11 based on an FBI terror assessment.  So, that was a flat out lie by the Bush administration.  The FBI Inspector General report provides a very clear picture of just how the FBI missed chances to uncover the plot prior to 9/11, mainly, due to management in the FBI not allowing its agents to follow up suspicious activity.  Was it incompetence?  Careerism?  These are questions that are unknown, and, likely will remain unknown the same as other major events in our history have had their own questions.  

Frankly, our government has kept so much from its citizens, that skeptism is natural.  The Army tried to cover-up the Mai Lai massacre, but, it was revealed that it did, in fact, occur and the slaughter of innocent villagers were a war crime.  The existence of Tiger Force in Vietnam was covered-up until the Toledo Blade uncovered its existence and the cover-up by our government.  President Bush stated that “America does not torture”, yet, we now know that we did torture prisoners, and as many as 100 prisoners died while in our custody in what even the Army deemed homicides.  In many of these situations, the same names keep popping up over and over.  Donald Rumsfeld.  Colin Powell.  Dick Cheney.  So, if we know, for a fact, these individuals have lied to the public in the past, we the public are quite within ourselves to ask what are they lying about to us now.

Being a veteran that served in the first gulf war in 1990-91, a military trained bomb disposal specialist, who has participated in Secret Service protection missions (four of which were Presidential protection missions), and a former law enforcement officer, I have unique qualifications and experience that lead me to question the official story of 9/11.  

Sincerely,

Michael Gass

If he answers back, will keep everyone up-to-date.