Hey!!! Didn't we abide by Bin Laden's wishes

[CatWoman]

and agree to withdraw our military from Saudi soil?

The terrorists won all right. Only the prize wasn't Spain.

Speaking of Spain, poor Chimpy couldn't even pronounce Aznar's name correctly. It's gonna be fun hearing him mangle Zapatero's name.

Wait a second!!! Maybe the terrorists DID win after all :think:

[Kazak]

1. Yeah, I had a similar thought.

If terrorists can overthrow various governments ruling party by carrying out pre-election attacks...look out!

Edit: slight rewording.

[enki23]

2. isn't it amazing....

that we instantly assume that the *ends* of the terrorists are bad, when what we really oppose is their *means?*

their ends are important too, of course. the conditions that breed terrorism can be changed sometimes. some of that might entail a few "terrorists" getting what they wanted. big fucking deal. if someone blows up a building to "stop the oppression of palestinians" the answer isn't to fucking oppress more palestinians.

personal note to all the idiots out there: the goal is not to make sure terrorists "lose." the goal is to stop people from blowing things up in the first place.

[Name removed]

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[CatWoman]

5. We need Mr. Spock here to invoke some logic

[bushisanidiot]

7. How many terrorists has AWOL captured in his brilliant

"war on terra"? he's been focusing on sadaam instead of osama.. the more innocents he kills in his blind greed for more oil, the more terrorists he is creating.

osama wanted us out of saudi arabia and he wanted sadaam gone. i guess we gave osama just what he wanted.

what a fucking ignorant president we have. i can't wait to see his miserable ass frog marched out of the white house!!

[enki23]

8. that's simplistic bs

i don't know why i'm bothering to respond... but hey, nobody ever said i had good judgement.

let's imagine you're a corporate polluter who is illegally dumping in a local waterway. if you received a threat that you would be killed if you didn't stop the dumping, would you continue dumping on the premise that "appeasement doesn't work?"

[Name removed]

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[enki23]

12. you missed the point entirely

i could have used a more neutral example. someone could put a gun to your head and force you to wear brown shoes instead of black. it would be equally stupid to wear black simply to spite them.

if there were a sufficient reason, and sufficient justification to remain in saudi arabia--enough to offset the increased motive for terrorist attacks--then we should have stayed. apparently the administration felt otherwise. one thing they seem to have gotten right.

[Name removed]

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[Brotherjohn]

24. The analogy is not entirely appropriate.

There are many actions we can take, by being more diplomatic, to prevent situations from coming to a situation where someone has a gun to your head.

What I think the initial poster about this analogy was trying to say is that we take actions which lead to terrorists "holding a gun to our head", but this happens over time with many, many factors involved. Yes, when a terrorist action is in progress, or demand are being made, we should not give into those demands on that basis alone. There is a danger of encouraging terrorists. But there are many other bases to make these decisions on, and we can act in such a way so that it does not come to, say, the threat of nuclear holocaust unless we give into some demands.

We can take different approaches so that we do not get into a situation where it's either "give them your shoes, or die".

[LoZoccolo]

13. Right, and the Iraq War II was illegal and unjustified.

Glad we got this all squared away.

[DulceDecorum]

17. And HOW

did the US obtain the authority and consent of the Saudi government?

In fact, as early as 1949, the Truman administration investigated the most effective methods for preventing an enemy from using Middle East oil fields. Fearful of a possible Soviet invasion of the Arabian Peninsula, President Harry S. Truman put in place a plan to blow up the Saudi oil installations so as to prevent the Soviets from making use of the oil and thus becoming even more powerful.
In 1950, the CIA conducted a feasibility study that considered the use of radiological weapons as a way of making it impossible for the Soviets to benefit from the oil.
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/sadat/opeds-other/seriousrisk.htm

Truman....
wasn't that the guy behind Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
I guess he now has the authority to do as he damn well pleases.

[Brotherjohn]

10. "Terrorism" is not equivalent to a few bank-robbers holed up in a bank.

For starters, we have the bank-robbers definitively identified and cornered.

Terrorism is a world-wide phenomenon bred by just the type of actions we are pursuing in fighting it. This does not justify terrorist actions (sane people would protest, or try diplomacy). Nevertheless, our actions are creating newer and more massive breeding conditions for terrorism than ever before. This is just an obvious, yet inconvenient, fact. It is one of the things that makes fighting terrorism so difficult.

If fighting terrorism were as easy as taking over countries, there would be no terrorism. When there is a drive-by shooting traced to a resident of a housing complex, the cops don't invade that complex, indiscriminately killing and capturing many innocent men, women, and children. They perform orderly investigations and searches, and try to capture the responsible party, lest they breed much more antagonism resulting in much more violence and bloodshed (and likely let the perpetrators get away).

Many have said that Clinton's "law enforcement" approach to fighting terrorism resulted in 9-11. But Clinton's approach (which was the same as the rest of the world's, except Israel, BTW) caught and prosecuted the criminals behind the first WTC attack, and foiled the Millenium plot, which arguably could have been as bad as 9-11. Whose watch did 9-11 occur on? And whose watch did the Spain bombing occur on? How many criminals behind 9-11 have been brought to justice? (it wasn't just the suicide-bombers who were behind it)

Terrorists commit criminal actions, and they should be sought down and prosecuted as any other criminals are: with law enforcement investigations and limited use of force... albeit on a more massive, international scale, and perhaps with "special ops" type activity that sometimes may infringe on sovereign nations' territories.

As I posted elsewhere, a military war can defeat countries because military might can change regimes. But a military war cannot defeat terrorim because military might cannot change minds.

[Name removed]

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[CatWoman]

18. yeah

Clinton can't hold a candle to Bush's abilities to catch and execute all those terrorists who blew up the Twin Towers.

When will we learn?

[proud patriot]

19. Clinton Tripled the Terrorism fighting budget

All the time repukes fought him on increasing
the terrorism budget , and repukes fought him on
capturing Bin Laddin also. Monica was far more important
than the security of our nation to the repukes .

Bush pulled our troops out of Saudi Arabia .

Bush is the apeaser ..He plays right into the
terrorist hands . He is a weakling little boy !

[leftchick]

20. Yes Bill Clinton had a plan and handed it off to aWol*..

Sandy Berger has said on many occaisions how he stressed to Condiliar ("who could have imagined Planes into buildings?") and the rest of bushco* how important al-Qaida/Osama were. Along with the Hart Rudman recomendations they were ignored totaly. Chimpy had to "Take Saddam Out!" That was his priority even before he was installed boy king*.

[Brotherjohn]

21. Oh please, not that you're "trying to tout the Bush admin"...

Give me a break.

"Slick Willy" as you call him, was more successful at prosecuting terrorism than Bush has been.

How many trials have there been, how many convictions has Bush obtained? Where is the evidence that, of all of these reported kills and captures, anyone has been responsible for 9-11? If the evidence is so strong, why aren't we prosecuting these people? For that matter, they have never presented any real evidence that Bin Laden was behind 9-11 (not that he wasn't, but they have steadfastly refused to give us any evidence when everyone was asking prior to the Afghanistan invasion). The Army itself admits that few if any of the captures in Iraq are Al Qaeda.

You can invade whole countries and arrest, detain indefinitely, and kill thousands upon thousands of young men (not to mention women and children), and you might get lucky and capture a few people involved in terrorism. But that doesn't make your approach either right or productive.

Should I point out that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, your "most notable" Bush capture, was captured in a law-enforcement raid with joint cooperation of the CIA and Pakistani police? We didn't need to invade Afghanistan to do that.

The outgoing Clinton administration told the incoming Bush administration that Al Qaeda and terrorism would be the Number 1 issue taking up their time. And where did the Justice dept. place Al Qaeda, bin Laden, or terrorism on their list of their top priorities (there were some 70-80 listed) prior to 9-11?

Nowhere.

[Name removed]

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[Brotherjohn]

25. Think, please. I never said it's the same thing. It's a matter of scale.

Invading and conquering a country wholesale and conducting a few special ops raids are both infringements of a nation's sovereignity. But they are hardly the same thing, and they hardly have the same consequences.


We could have sent in special ops types, CIA, etc., and had them quietly crawl all over the Afghanistan. The Taliban would have been pissed (IF they even knew about it in time to say anything), but so what. What would they have done about it? The world wouldn't have stood in our way any more than they did when we invaded Afghanistan (even less so).

We did not have special ops and law enforcement activities "happening all over the place" in Afghanistan until after we made it known that we were going to invade if they did not turn over Bin Laden. There's a little thing called the element of surprise that we forfeited in the rush to war. It is extremely difficult to capture one person by invading a whole country. Our chances of actually capturing any terrorists actually responsible would have increased significantly had we proceeded more quietly, and cautiously, but still with more force and direction than we had in the past (9-11 did give us leeway to act more aggressively).

Where is Bin Laden? Clinton was able to pinpoint him to a place at least within a few hours. Not accurate enough in time, however, to ensure cruise missiles would get him (and Repubs blasted him anyway whenever he tried). With the stakes raised after 9-11, we had more justification and could have easily sent in teams to get him, without overthrowing two countries.

[DulceDecorum]

22. Credit where credit is due

Clinton pulled the US out of a war in Somalia which was started
- for no good reason unless you like stealing other people's oil -
by Poppy Bush.

Now, just look at what Dubya is doing to the military
while he makes sure that his own shoes do not touch honest American dirt.

Incidentally, since Bush is supposedly better than Clinton, how come he took the entire month of August off instead of trying to protect the nation from terrorists?
And why did he run sniveling looking for his Mommy on September 11?
Everyone else stayed put.
(Even NORAD and their fighter jets.)

And as for Clinton and business, remember when we all had jobs?
And a surplus?

Monday, 24 June, 2002, 12:07 GMT 13:07 UK
US could default on debt
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2062429.stm

Mar. 14 - Late last year, Moody's Investors Service did something astonishing. The ratings agency said it could foresee a set of circumstances that would force it to downgrade the sovereign debt of the U.S. government.
<snip>
Much of the country's profligacy is supported by the good graces of foreign central banks. They hold nearly one-third of the outstanding debt in the form of U.S. Treasury bills and regularly lend the United States the difference between what it brings in and what it spends.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/national/8186533.htm

[Brotherjohn]

6. Exactly! As I posted elsewhere regarding Spain's election...

... (though the same can go for us in November), terrorists are evil. They are pathologically insane. But if a goverment commits injustices in fighting them, then both that nation's people and the terrorists can share the same interest in having that government replaced.

Your means and ends point is right on the money. Unfortunately, I don't think many in the U.S. could ever bring themselves to accept that some of what terrorists are admittedly committing cold-blooded murder for could have some merit, despite their actions.

But our actions every day are giving them more and more moral high ground with which to lure more recruits into committing more atrocities.

3. if a higher voter turnout than expected

means the terrorists have won, what does that imply?
That the terrorists lose when there is a low turnout?

[Brotherjohn]

11. Yeah, and I thought the terrorists hated freedom and democracy!

[sweetheart]

14. This wish is not fulfilled in the least

Stop targeting us, release our prisoners and leave our land and we will stop attacking you. The people of the US allied countries have to put pressure on their governments to immediately end their alliance with the US in the war against terror (Islam). If you persist we will also continue … We want to tell you the Death Smoke Squad will reach you soon, and then you will see your dead in their thousands – God willing … This is a warning …

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/2CDD53D6-7AF7-40C7-AF88-32A16072F81B.htm