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Do most Republicans really think Bush deserves more credit for killing Bin Laden?

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senseamp said:
Do most Republicans really think?
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Mostly in support of simulated rationality- first establish the conclusion, then bolster it with whatever can be found in support, discarding any contrary information. It's dogmatic ontology, the opposite of the scientific method.
 
xj0hnx said:
You and Gonad are so full of shit. Plenty of republicans have given Obama a lot of credit for this action. The point is that you two have you lips wrapped so tightly around Obama's nut sack that you just can't possibly accept that they have given him credit.
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Did you even look at the OP and the bolded part of the poll results within? To use your imagery, 80% of Republicans are too busy gargling Bush's jewels to give Obama his proper cred.
 
woolfe9999 said:
Per Panetta's comments, the intel was actually gained from multiple sources, of which "enhanced interrogation" was one. That said, I'm not sure why you think whoever is in office deserves "all the credit." In my view, that is a problem with the way we view politics. The fact is, any President in office would have instructed the intelligence brass to make a top priority to find and neutralize OBL. That part of it was a no brainer. It was the people on the ground, gathering information, who really deserve the cred.

Similarly, we tend to blame whoever is currently in office for all mistakes on the ground, so it does go both ways. And it's often a fallacy whether it is a matter of either credit or blame.
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I agree.
 
eskimospy said:
Nowhere in that video does Panetta say that any information used in this operation came from waterboarding.
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"In the intelligence business you work from a lot of sources of information and that was true here," he told NBC News. "It's a little difficult to say it was due just to one source of information that we got. I think some of the detainees clearly were, you know, they used these enhanced interrogation techniques against some of these detainees."
 
Atreus21 said:
I agree.
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Except
The fact is, any President in office would have instructed the intelligence brass to make a top priority to find and neutralize OBL.
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has been demonstrated as an unsafe assumption to make.

Edit: Also, as far as I remember, of all the 2008 candidates on both sides, Obama was the only one to say he'd unilaterally go into Pakistan and get him if necessary. All the others said that was either a bad idea or flat BS.
 
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Gonad the Barbarian said:
Did you even look at the OP and the bolded part of the poll results within? To use your imagery, 80% of Republicans are too busy gargling Bush's jewels to give Obama his proper cred.
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Did you even look at the poll the article is summarizing?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/postpoll_05022011.html

Maybe you can point to where MSNBC, who as we know never have a leftist partisan slant to their news /snicker snicker, came up with those percentages.

Partisan hack is partisan hack.
 
Don't worry, the lefty General Betrayus crowd would have also been all over the military and the decision to go in if obl had not been found in the building.
 
Atreus21 said:
"In the intelligence business you work from a lot of sources of information and that was true here," he told NBC News. "It's a little difficult to say it was due just to one source of information that we got. I think some of the detainees clearly were, you know, they used these enhanced interrogation techniques against some of these detainees."
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If you're trying to use that quote as your basis for thinking it, that's quite a stretch.
 
Atreus21 said:
yes that's it. All aversion to the darkie is clearly rooted in xenophobia.

Jesus Christ.
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Thank you. That's an excellent example of the kind of xenophobia I was talking about. A reactionary sarcastic response that summarily dismisses the argument by invoking an emotional appeal and an ad hominen attack based on a straw man argument.
 
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xj0hnx said:
Did you even look at the poll the article is summarizing?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/postpoll_05022011.html

Maybe you can point to where MSNBC, who as we know never have a leftist partisan slant to their news /snicker snicker, came up with those percentages.

Partisan hack is partisan hack.
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They are pretty obviously from the cross tabs, which unfortunately are not included in that poll link. It's bad journalism to not include those, but it's pretty unlikely that they are just made up as you are implying.

I mean also, are you really surprised by those results? I could have guessed that without doing a poll.
 
Hayabusa Rider said:
Harry Truman is the reason and he was merely stating the obvious.
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Yes that statement has unfortunately caused much mischief in our way of thinking. The person at the top taking ultimate responsibility is the professional attitude. However, it doesn't get you any closer to determining what the real problem was, or in the alternative, why something worked well. If my assistant screws up I don't tell the judge that in court. I take responsibility for it, and I have it out with my assistant later on. I am the face of our office when in court and I am the professional, so I have to take responsibility in public. And in some sense, one could fairly accuse me of negligent supervision in a situation like that.

However, the problem of assigning blame or responsibility at the top is compounded when there are 14 layers between the person at the top and the person on the ground. There are literally millions of federal government employees. Blaming the POTUS for every error of any of those employees, or in the alternative, giving them credit for every achievement, is problematic at best. It's the same with the economy, where the POTUS isn't anywhere near wholly responsible for gas prices, unemployment, etc. It's the correlation/causation fallacy, where whoever is in office is assumed to somehow be the root cause of *everything*. We need to get a clearer sense of what POTUS's do and do NOT do, of what they can and CANNOT do. We'd make much better and more informed decisions at the ballot box if we did. Obama, for example, shouldn't be getting a 9 point bounce in approval because of OBL's death, but then again, he shouldn't be taking quite as much heat for the current economic situation as he is either.
 
xj0hnx said:
Did you even look at the poll the article is summarizing?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/postpoll_05022011.html

Maybe you can point to where MSNBC, who as we know never have a leftist partisan slant to their news /snicker snicker, came up with those percentages.

Partisan hack is partisan hack.
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I did look and didn't see the part they reference. This is more than a partisan slant, it's an outright lie if their assertion isn't true. Which leads me to believe there is an actual basis to this, this isn't Fox news we're talking about. Hell, I hope the poll is at least wrong, I don't rejoice in the fact that so many Republicans are so far off the reservation. But there's enough anecdotal evidence out there alone to lend credence to this, and this article was posted yesterday morning and hasn't been changed or corrected since then.
 
wuliheron said:
Thank you. That's an excellent example of the kind of xenophobia I was talking about. A reactionary sarcastic response that summarily dismisses the argument by invoking an emotional appeal and an ad hominen attack based on a straw man argument.
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And he's probably a fundamentalist Christian to boot! But I fear that the irony is lost on you. Sarcasm is an appropriate response to your horseshit post.
 
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Gonad the Barbarian said:
Except has been demonstrated as an unsafe assumption to make.

Edit: Also, as far as I remember, of all the 2008 candidates on both sides, Obama was the only one to say he'd unilaterally go into Pakistan and get him if necessary. All the others said that was either a bad idea or flat BS.
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As I said earlier, I can understand the point that the significance of one man to the entire war effort is negligible. Yes, Osama's death was a turning point, but of what practical application was it? Probably little. By this point, Bin Laden I'd wager was little more than a figurehead.

Still, I'm glad Obama got him.
 
eskimospy said:
If you're trying to use that quote as your basis for thinking it, that's quite a stretch.
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I don't think that's so much of a stretch. That Panetta (a democrat who has spoken out against the practice before) is hinting at it much less not denying it outright is telling.

It's not indisputable proof, certainly. But I don't think it's unreasonable to draw that conclusion based on what was said and by whom.
 
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boomerang said:
Interesting article here. The credit may need to be directed to Panetta.

http://socyberty.com/issues/white-h...panetta-issued-order-to-kill-osama-bin-laden/

But to reply to the original question, OBL was terminated under the watch of the Obama administration. They did their job - nothing more and nothing less. No gold star on the forehead needed or required.
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Wow (if true).

The article mentions Obama being pulled off the golf course and informed at the last minute. Interesting in that I earlier heard Obama ususally would play 18 holes that day but instead only played 9. They said he was in such a hurry he took off his golf shoes in the Oval Office and left them there.

I don't find anything odd or uncharacteristic about this report of him being indecisive either. So far that's been his habit (Iran, Egypt, Libya etc)

Fern
 
Some credit? Yes. Credit to Obama? of course. Credit to the boys on the found facing the bullets? For sure.
 
Kanalua said:
And Panetta. Fascinating read (plays like a West Wing episode)...
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Yeah, fictional.
http://barthsnotes.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/pam-geller-and-the-ulsterman/

And be sure to check out this account from another one of his anonymous sources:
http://newsflavor.com/politics/us-politics/the-ulsterman-report-sex-and-murder-in-the-land-of-obama/

I also love how so many folks are using Obama's clothes as supporting evidence, like a golf shirt is just wildly improper assassination attire.
 
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Well Obama did look rather superfluous in images I saw of war room. Like sitting off to the side and unengaged. You know like the kid no one want's to pick to be on their team in a game of half court...Hard to say but fun read.
 
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