BAC:
You're theory that everything would have been the same in a Gore presidency, is entirely predicated on three huge assumptions.
1) That the 9/11 plot wouldn't have been uncovered or stopped under a President Gore. Let's face it, Gore was more engaged than bush, and the federal government transitioning to Gore would have probably not have been as disruptive as transitioning to a bush presidency. After getting the August PDB, would gore have proclaimed to the FBI agent: "Well, you covered your ass", and then gone back to clearing brush on the tennesse farm? I think not.
2) That Gore would have been assisnated by PNAC kooks.
3) That a president Lieberman could have convinced an opposition congress run by republicans, and also his own party, to authorize a war on iraq.
There are also other minor assumptions (e.g., that Lieberman would have short circuited the inspections as rapidly as Bush. The reasons for war were rapidly collapsing in March 2003 - that's why bush had to pull the trigger. It those inspection went on for merely another month, who's to say a President Lieberman wouldn't have chickened out about invading?)
My guesstimates for the various permutations are:
20%: Lets say there was a moderately small chance, Gore stopped the 9/11 plot. I think that's a reasonable assumpiton.
5%: Let's say there's a 5% chance Gore got assasinated by PNAC. Sounds reasonable. What, maybe 5% of our presidents have been assisinated?
50%: Let's say there's an even chance a President Lieberman could have gotten a GOP controlled congress, and a skeptical Democratic party to authorize his war. Again, reasonable. In fact, generous: Based on the GOP congress's opposition to military action, when there's a Dem in the white house.
Assuming my arithmatic is correct, the probablity of the various permutatons all collectively happening so Lieberman could wage war on Iraq is in the neighborhood of a 2% chance. And that's a generous guesstimate, because I'm ignoring several other minor assumptions that we have to happen as well.
First, I do not predict that "everything would have been the same" under a Gore presidency. What I predict is that had Gore been elected, he would have been assassinated and Lieberman would have become president. After that, who knows what the consequences would be, but I don't believe any of them would be good for this nation.
Lieberman would have still been driven by the exact same forces that brought us 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq and so would the Congress which remains Israeli occupied territory.
If the powers that gave us Iraq were able to confuse and make stupid the Congress and the American people with Bush, what makes you so sure that they wouldn't have been able to do the same without Bush, who after all is just a puppet. What were the circumstances of Gore's assassination? If they so easily made America believe that 19 cavemen caused 9/11, Saddam had WMD, and somehow he was tied to 9/11 although there was never a shred of proof of that .. what makes you believe that they couldn't have made Gore's death appear the work of Saddam?
With Lieberman at the helm, the country all fired up in a false sense of patriotism no different than before, 9/11, WMD, terrorism, the assassination of an American president, Bin Laden, and Saddam and the Taliban held responsiblle for everything including the sinking of the Titanic .. who knows what the unintended consequences might be.
Of course this is all speculation, but speculation based on knowledge of how we ended up in Iraq and Afghanistan and the depth of the shrewd cutthroat evil of the forces behind it.
Had Gore been president and stayed alive, I don't believe 9/11 would have ever happened. Not because he would have paid better attention to the warnings, but because those who planned it would not have had the pieces and elements within our government to make it happen.
Lieberman as president or anywhere near the presidency is a nightmare and the events of the day demonstrate that. Many who did not vote for Gore did not because of Lieberman. Gore's defeat rests in his lap, no one else .. and before you blame Greens for that defeat .. ever heard of Voter News Service (VNS)? It's proof positive that Bush simply took the election from Gore. Bush should have worn a mask while waiting for the results because the republicans strong-armed it away from the weakling Democratic Party. Then they turned around and did the exact same thing in 2004.
Bush rules because of the punkification of the American people and that gelatinous mass of sissyfied wimps called the Democratic Party.
