Wednesday, September 08, 2004

Wingnuttery

According to Cliff May, 1000 soldiers died in Iraq because Clinton didn't invade Afghanistan.

I'll donate $100 to the RNC if anyone can locate Cliff May suggesting, at the time, that Clinton do anything of the kind.


...okay, May didn't quite say what I said. Here's the transcript:

KAMBER: Well, again, you know, I'm not one that really wants to sit here and certainly not gloat. It's a sad day for America. I don't care who is president to have lost one life, ten lives, 100 lives and now 1,000 lives. It's a very sad day.

Seven thousand plus injured and more importantly no end in sight for this. You know hopefully these young men and women haven't died in vain but at this point we don't know. There is no plan to get out of Iraq, to stabilize the country in the way that was promised to us.

And it's a very sad day for America.

HEMMER: Answers, Cliff?

MAY: Yes, it's terrible but we've never fought a war in which there wasn't loss of life. If we'd gone into Afghanistan in the 1990s we probably would have lost this many lives but we would have prevented 9/11 and we would have killed al Qaeda long before it became the menace it has become. If you believe that this is a real war fighting and that the war on terrorism and the totalitarian ideologies behind terrorism is being fought in Iraq as much as anywhere else then you understand we have to do this and we'll be there for the duration.

If you don't think so, if you think that Iraq has nothing to do with it and I disagree with that and I think Senator Kerry disagrees with that view, then obviously you are very skeptical of what we're doing in Iraq. But what are you saying that it's 1,000 lives and if we get to 2,000 lives we're going to surrender, we're going to give up, we're going to abandon the Iraqis?

A war is a terrible thing but we're at war.


So, he's arguing that if Clinton had invaded Afghanistan then the cost/benefit (1000 soldiers + $X < 3000 lives + $X on 9/11) would have justified it.


But, my offer on May stands. $100 to the RNC if anyone can find May saying Clinton should invade Afghanistan during his presidency. I'll even do $25 if anyone can find May discussing al Qaeda or bin Laden as a genuine threat during that time. You'd think that one would be easy.

What was May doing in the 90s? Arguing that we should invade... yep, you guessed it... Iraq!