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Have Bush/Cheney Really Kept Us Man-Sized Safer?
Well, Bush/Cheney sure has kept me and mine and you and yours safe during their presidency, at least according to the current Republican talking points. Except of course for that one day in September, but that was only an aberration. You really shouldn't blame someone who only blew it one day out of 2922. Nobody crashed any planes into us for 99.9658% of the Bush/Cheney presidency.
Only a whiner would complain about the suspension of habeas corpus, posse comitatus and the de facto line item vetoes, aka "signing statements". Who cares if warrantless surveillance of American citizens is against the constitution? I'm not doing anything wrong. We are safer, right? They are telling us so.
We are so safe that Bush/Cheney cut back on the enforcement activities of agencies like the FDA and the SEC. In this enlightened capitalistic age companies can be trusted to do the right thing and regulate themselves. Just ask Sydney, "I'm Shocked, Shocked I Tell You", Greenspan.
Let's see how safe Bush/Cheney and Company kept us.
How about deaths due to no health insurance during Bush/Cheney? According to the Institute of Medicine, http://www.iom.edu/Object.File/Master/17/748/Fact%20sheet%205%20Quality.pdf, 18,000 people died in 2000 because they had no health insurance based on year 2000 data.
After 6 years of Bush/Cheney, [according to the the Health Policy Center of the Urban Institute and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411588_uninsured_dying.pdf,] 22,000 people died in 2006 because they had no health insurance based on year 2006 data. I found that info here: http://www.ninenineohnine.org/pages/Real_People#noinsurance.
The difference between the Clinton and Bush/Cheney numbers is that about 1000 more people [per year] died under Bush/Cheney than the 2998 who died on 9/11, or almost equal to the number of Americans who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq since we invaded them. My instinct tells me these results are more a factor of failed economics than the abrogation of the constitution.
If we are safer from terrorism because we gave up some freedoms then it stands to reason that we must be safer from other foreign threats. If that is the case, why did 47.1% of high school seniors say in 2007 that they could obtain cocaine fairly easily or very easily and 29.7% say the same for heroin? Data from US Dept. of Justice http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/dcf/du.htm
I reference cocaine and heroin because they are not domestically grown and must be smuggled into the US, therefore they are foreign threats.
According to he CDC, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm, in this pdf file, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr56/nvsr56_10.pdf, drug induced deaths climbed from 1999 to 2005 as follows:
1999 - 19,128 deaths
2000 - 19,720 deaths
2001 - 21,705 deaths
2002 - 26,040 deaths
2003 - 28,723 deaths
2004 - 30,711 deaths
2005 - 33,541 deaths
[The category 'drug-induced causes' includes not only deaths from dependent and non-dependent use of drugs (legal and illegal use), but also poisoning from medically prescribed and other drugs. It excludes unintentional injuries, homicides, and other causes indirectly related to drug use. Also excluded are newborn deaths due to mother's drug use.]
In the last 2 years of Clinton there were an average of 19,424 drug related deaths. For the first 5 years of Bush/Cheney, the average was 28,144. That is an increase of over 44%.
Again, the above statistics do not differentiate between illegal and legal drug induced deaths. The original document does have the breakdown by code if you are interested in breaking them down.
Let's say that only 10% of those deaths were from cocaine and heroin overdose. I'm guessing that is conservative.
Under Clinton that would average 1,942 deaths per year. Under Bush/Cheney, the 2,814 deaths per year almost equals the death toll on 9/11, and that is every year from 2001 thru 2005. I don't have later statistics. If anyone does, please post them.
If the surveillance etc. that Bush/Cheney has subjected us to is keeping us safe from terrorists because of intercepted communications, did they ignore the communications from the narco-terrorists? If you extrapolate from the years of data I used, you could say conservatively that at least 7 times more Americans died from narco-terrorism under the Bush/Cheney watch than the Saudi/al Qaida terrorists killed on 9/11. That number does not even include injuries, homicides and other indirect deaths related to drug use. Safer? Not so much.
But wait, there's more! The majority of the heroin that comes to the US comes from Afghanistan. "Despite more than 30,000 international troops in the country, Afghanistan now produces 92 per cent of the world's opium, a United Nations report said Tuesday. The 2007 World Drug Report http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/WDR-2007.html, which was released by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), said that production in Afghanistan increased nearly 50 per cent in the last year. CBS News, Tuesday, June 26, 2007"
Osama bin Laden is where? What if Afghan narco-terrorists know some al Qaida terrorists? I would say it is a given. If you believe the United Nations report and Fox News commentator Col. David Hunt's, "Al Qaeda Profiting From Afghanistan's Production of Opium" http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,296418,00.html then you might say that 92% of all heroin related deaths under Bush/Cheney since 9/11 have been terrorist attacks on American citizens on American soil.
And then there's this Reuters headline on Jan 14, 2008. "Pakistan Drugs Create Al Qaeda Chaos Under Bhutto Assassination Radar, Say ex-White House Drug Spokesman Robert Weiner and John Larmett; U.S. and Military, with 'No Plan,' Fail to Block bin Laden Funding Source" The full article is here: http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS99131+14-Jan-2008+PRN20080114. I am not feeling any safer yet.
It seems to be easy to get literally tons of cocaine and heroin into the country. It also appears to be a fact that many narco-terrorists and plain old run of the mill terrorists are one and the same. Given those facts, I'd say it would be easy for any self respecting terrorist organization to get explosives, biological agents, nuclear material, suicide bombers or whatever else they want smuggled into the USA.
I assert that we haven't had a major attack inside the US because either no one is ready or has wanted to, not because any Bush/Cheney policies have prevented them from attacking.
I don't know about you, but every time someone says Bush/Cheney made us safer, I shall not keep my mouth shut. I will take Molly Ivins advice and "Raise hell!" [Molly died 2 years ago tomorrow Jan 31. She must be loving all this. I miss her.]
Then again, maybe it's just another incredible set of unexplainable coincidences that just happen to make Bush/Cheney look bad.
Only a whiner would complain about the suspension of habeas corpus, posse comitatus and the de facto line item vetoes, aka "signing statements". Who cares if warrantless surveillance of American citizens is against the constitution? I'm not doing anything wrong. We are safer, right? They are telling us so.
We are so safe that Bush/Cheney cut back on the enforcement activities of agencies like the FDA and the SEC. In this enlightened capitalistic age companies can be trusted to do the right thing and regulate themselves. Just ask Sydney, "I'm Shocked, Shocked I Tell You", Greenspan.
Let's see how safe Bush/Cheney and Company kept us.
How about deaths due to no health insurance during Bush/Cheney? According to the Institute of Medicine, http://www.iom.edu/Object.File/Master/17/748/Fact%20sheet%205%20Quality.pdf, 18,000 people died in 2000 because they had no health insurance based on year 2000 data.
After 6 years of Bush/Cheney, [according to the the Health Policy Center of the Urban Institute and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411588_uninsured_dying.pdf,] 22,000 people died in 2006 because they had no health insurance based on year 2006 data. I found that info here: http://www.ninenineohnine.org/pages/Real_People#noinsurance.
The difference between the Clinton and Bush/Cheney numbers is that about 1000 more people [per year] died under Bush/Cheney than the 2998 who died on 9/11, or almost equal to the number of Americans who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq since we invaded them. My instinct tells me these results are more a factor of failed economics than the abrogation of the constitution.
If we are safer from terrorism because we gave up some freedoms then it stands to reason that we must be safer from other foreign threats. If that is the case, why did 47.1% of high school seniors say in 2007 that they could obtain cocaine fairly easily or very easily and 29.7% say the same for heroin? Data from US Dept. of Justice http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/dcf/du.htm
I reference cocaine and heroin because they are not domestically grown and must be smuggled into the US, therefore they are foreign threats.
According to he CDC, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm, in this pdf file, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr56/nvsr56_10.pdf, drug induced deaths climbed from 1999 to 2005 as follows:
1999 - 19,128 deaths
2000 - 19,720 deaths
2001 - 21,705 deaths
2002 - 26,040 deaths
2003 - 28,723 deaths
2004 - 30,711 deaths
2005 - 33,541 deaths
[The category 'drug-induced causes' includes not only deaths from dependent and non-dependent use of drugs (legal and illegal use), but also poisoning from medically prescribed and other drugs. It excludes unintentional injuries, homicides, and other causes indirectly related to drug use. Also excluded are newborn deaths due to mother's drug use.]
In the last 2 years of Clinton there were an average of 19,424 drug related deaths. For the first 5 years of Bush/Cheney, the average was 28,144. That is an increase of over 44%.
Again, the above statistics do not differentiate between illegal and legal drug induced deaths. The original document does have the breakdown by code if you are interested in breaking them down.
Let's say that only 10% of those deaths were from cocaine and heroin overdose. I'm guessing that is conservative.
Under Clinton that would average 1,942 deaths per year. Under Bush/Cheney, the 2,814 deaths per year almost equals the death toll on 9/11, and that is every year from 2001 thru 2005. I don't have later statistics. If anyone does, please post them.
If the surveillance etc. that Bush/Cheney has subjected us to is keeping us safe from terrorists because of intercepted communications, did they ignore the communications from the narco-terrorists? If you extrapolate from the years of data I used, you could say conservatively that at least 7 times more Americans died from narco-terrorism under the Bush/Cheney watch than the Saudi/al Qaida terrorists killed on 9/11. That number does not even include injuries, homicides and other indirect deaths related to drug use. Safer? Not so much.
But wait, there's more! The majority of the heroin that comes to the US comes from Afghanistan. "Despite more than 30,000 international troops in the country, Afghanistan now produces 92 per cent of the world's opium, a United Nations report said Tuesday. The 2007 World Drug Report http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/WDR-2007.html, which was released by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), said that production in Afghanistan increased nearly 50 per cent in the last year. CBS News, Tuesday, June 26, 2007"
Osama bin Laden is where? What if Afghan narco-terrorists know some al Qaida terrorists? I would say it is a given. If you believe the United Nations report and Fox News commentator Col. David Hunt's, "Al Qaeda Profiting From Afghanistan's Production of Opium" http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,296418,00.html then you might say that 92% of all heroin related deaths under Bush/Cheney since 9/11 have been terrorist attacks on American citizens on American soil.
And then there's this Reuters headline on Jan 14, 2008. "Pakistan Drugs Create Al Qaeda Chaos Under Bhutto Assassination Radar, Say ex-White House Drug Spokesman Robert Weiner and John Larmett; U.S. and Military, with 'No Plan,' Fail to Block bin Laden Funding Source" The full article is here: http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS99131+14-Jan-2008+PRN20080114. I am not feeling any safer yet.
It seems to be easy to get literally tons of cocaine and heroin into the country. It also appears to be a fact that many narco-terrorists and plain old run of the mill terrorists are one and the same. Given those facts, I'd say it would be easy for any self respecting terrorist organization to get explosives, biological agents, nuclear material, suicide bombers or whatever else they want smuggled into the USA.
I assert that we haven't had a major attack inside the US because either no one is ready or has wanted to, not because any Bush/Cheney policies have prevented them from attacking.
I don't know about you, but every time someone says Bush/Cheney made us safer, I shall not keep my mouth shut. I will take Molly Ivins advice and "Raise hell!" [Molly died 2 years ago tomorrow Jan 31. She must be loving all this. I miss her.]
Then again, maybe it's just another incredible set of unexplainable coincidences that just happen to make Bush/Cheney look bad.
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You are a lunatic. But feel free to change the subject.
I am fine if you want to talk about health care, drug abuse, etc.
But that's not the point that's up for discussion.
The debate is whether Bush was successful POST 9/11 in "keeping the country safe".
We all know what happened on 9/11 but that's not what the "kept us safe" time period is about.
There were alot of other terrorist attempts on US soil post 9/11 and thankfully none of them resulted in any serious casualties. That's the point.
But if you want to broaden the argument to discuss other aspects of his presidency, that's your right.
January 30, 2009 10:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bill, you're a(n) [insert descriptor here].
January 31, 2009 1:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Your points are well taken bali. There are no easy answers here, at least from me. I remember reading a paper shortly after 9/11, that extrapolated the effects of closing down borders and tightening overall security measures on the potential for terrorist attacks. The think tank piece noted that such measures would decrease the incidence of terrorist attacks, but would conversely, all but guarantee a more destructive attack when one occurs. So the next time, it'll could be much worse than what happened in September 7 years ago. Bushco didn't make us safer, they just delayed the next attack, and likely insured an increase to the damage we can expect. One other rhing I have to consider is the effect of the economic crisis on funding of terrorism. In the end,Bush may have done more to protect us by crashing the economy than all his Homeland Security machinations.Thanks for posting.
January 31, 2009 1:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks Miguel - but my point is that we've had another attempts post 9/11 and we've been able to catch these people (and put some in jail thankfully).
I don't give Bush full credit for this but I give him some credit.
January 31, 2009 7:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
The conversation from the right is that Bush gets all the credit for the fact that we have not had an attack inside our borders post 9/11.
I think the draconian measures instituted by Bush went far beyond what was needed to give us that result.
Our response was way out of proportion. Much in the same way the Israeli response in Gaza was. Ours and the Israeli responses created blowback that will plague us all for who knows how long. We and Israel certainly need to respond to the attacks, but I think we both went too far.
We had the almost whole world on our side after 9/11 and the Bush response destroyed all that good will. Had we built schools and hospitals in the developing world instead of throwing our weight around, the terrorists might not have many places to hide.
January 31, 2009 3:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
The list of foiled attempts to launch terror attacks on US soil mostly reads like a terrorist version of the keystone cops. They include:
1. 2 guys plotting to bomb a subway.
2. 2 guys trying to buy a grenade launcher to kill a Pakistani diplomat.
3. Catching a guy who attended a terror training camp.
4. A group of ex-cons who planned a series of attacks. They were going to finance their operations by robbing gas stations.
5. A single man planning to blow up a gas refinery and pipeline in Wyoming.
6. Three guys planning to launch terror attacks in Iraq, but were planning them here in the US.
7. Two guys who videotaped potential targets in the US and sent the tapes to an extremist group in Britain
8. Five guys with no known terrorist connections planning to attack US army base , Fort Dix.
9. Most of the serious conspiracies were tied to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, captured in 2003.
All of these plots were foiled by police type investigation, and their failure had little to do with the massive infrastructure of Homeland Security.
January 31, 2009 4:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here here! Many of those were announced coincidentally on the day there was some other news that would make the administration look bad.
The day Greg Palast presented evidence of vote caging was the same day the administration announced the arrest of, I think, #8, the Ft Dix guys.
So many coincidences, so little time.
January 31, 2009 5:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
You don't think Homeland Security communicates with the NYC police? Plus the FBI arrested many of these groups - including the Lackawanna Six, Yassin Aref, Sears Tower group, Fort Dix group, JFK group, etc
January 31, 2009 11:55 PM | Reply | Permalink