Brit Hume: "Repubs think we are war - Dems think it is a law-enforcement

[kentuck]

..issue". Do you agree with Brit Hume? Do you think we are at "war" or do you think this is a law enforcement issue where these people should be brought to justice with the assistance of our allies? Why do most of our Congressmen and Senators agree with the Republicans? why are they afraid to say what they truly believe?

[blm]

1. Kerry just stated on CNN that every success against the terrorists has

been from LAW ENFORCEMENT while all Bush's military decisions have created MORE TERRORISTS and more attacks than ever before.

He added that the military should be used as needed to back up law enforcement but not used to drive the effort.

[kentuck]

5. I like that response...

The Democratic Party should adopt it. In direct opposition to Bush and the Republicans.

[Bluzmann57]

2. To be honest

I don't care what brit hume has to say. He is just another mouthpiece who knows how to follow orders given him by his repub masters.
edited for awful typing.

[wtmusic]

3. Hume couldn't even answer you

if you asked him with whom we were at war.

[City Lights]

4. Why can't it be both?

Why is it always one or the other with pukes?

I had no problem with a war in Afghanistan in an attempt to get bin Laden, but the war in Iraq is another issue.

Law enforcement efforts resulted in lots of terra-ists in jail.

It's both to me.

[ananda]

8. Why can't it be a third way?

The USA gets out of the ME, undergoes sensitivity training,
learns diplomacy, and creates and supports an educated
populace that knows how to redress wrongs, change the
course of global warming, and appreciate the diversity
and differences among us.

Sue

[City Lights]

13. Good (and obvious) point!

You're right, of course! :hi:

Too bad our current lawmakers will never go that route.

[leesa]

15. What good does carpet bombing and killing tens of thousands of civilians

do?? Other than produce thousands more "terrorists" anyway? Did we catch anyone? Did we bring anyone to trial? Total bullshit. You can't wage war against a handful of criminals. It would be like bombing America to catch Al Capone. STUPID.

[City Lights]

20. Guess I should have made myself more clear.

I don't support carpet bombing anyone, nor do I advocate the killing of civilians, but I do think we could have been successful in using the military to hunt for bin Laden.

Sorry if I offended you or anyone else.

[BurtWorm]

19. The war in Iraq IS the phony "global war on terror."

It's all a sham. Counterterror is a law enforcement issue.

[11 Bravo]

6. Brit needs to read the Constitution. (I'll help him with the big words.)

We are not at war until Congress says we're at war.

[Hosnon]

12. Yeah well...that is actually an extremely complex issue.

Congress is not, contrary to popular perception, the only "legit" way for the U.S. to engage in combat.

[C_U_L8R]

7. GiveUplicans don't believe in rule of law...

only the rule of force.

That's exactly how they have
betrayed our country and our constitution.
I've had it with GiveUplicans selling
our nation out to fear and fascism.

What a bunch of chickenshit chickenhawks.

[Lexingtonian]

9. yeah, so?

Republicans want to do things the bloody and barbaric way, and Democrats the civilized way. What else is new?

[napi21]

10. It's actually both. The problem with the 9/11 attack is that all the

perps are dead! You can't get vengence from a dead man. The next option is to find & punish those who instructed the perps to do the attack. There seems to be a problem figuring out just who they are! I guess most people agree at least one was Osama Bin Laden, but we've heard so many other names of people who were supposed to be his #2 man, my brain is spinning! I think one of the reasonsthe "war" isn't being successful is because we don't really know who were fighting. How do you tell an al Qiada member from anyone else? Are they now including Hamas, Hesbola, etc? We went and started a war with a Country that wasn't part of the 9/11 attack, sonow, are all Iraqi's who want their Country back andthe US out our enemy too?

This admin. has muddied the watters so much, I don't think we even know who wer're fighting or why!

[WinkyDink]

14. Are they? When did Bush and Cheney expire, then?

[leesa]

11. Absolutely. It is why bombing to fight terrorism is such an idiotic idea

9-11 was a crime. It required an investigation, which never occurred, an international effort to capture the planners, which never occurred, and a trial, which never occurred, and punishment, which never occurred.

This is how it's done.

The other way is an OBVIOUS failure.

[sgxnk]

21. absurd

911 was a crime is similar to 'pearl harbor was a crime'

911 was an act of war, (in a war that had already been declared by al qaeda years earlier i might add)

plenty of democrats (thankfully) agree with the philosophy that this is not a "crime problem", this is a war problem. imo, the correct thing to do is criticize HOW the war is being fought and the decision to invade iraq. arguing that this is a LE problem is absurd imo

[Uben]

16. Bret Hume is wrong

Last week, I read where the chief of strategic planning on the Pentagon's Joint Staff strategy was to change the term "War on terror" to portray Al qaeda as criminals instead. Anyone else remember that?


edit:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 (UPI) -- The United States should rethink the label it uses for what is known as the "global war on terror," the chief of strategic planning on the Pentagon's Joint Staff said Tuesday.

What is needed, said Army Col. Gary Cheek, is to recast terrorists as the criminals they are.

"If we can change the name ... and find the right sequence of events that allows us to do that, that changes the dynamic of the conflict," said Cheek at the Defense Forum Washington, sponsored by the Marine Corps Association and the U.S. Naval Institute.




http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=2...

[BurtWorm]

17. It is a **law enforcement and espionage** issue.

Robert Dreyfuss has an excellent summary of the bone-headedness of turning it into a military issue in the current Rolling Stone. Unfortunately, it's not on-line. But anyone who reads about what jokes Rumsfeld and Cheney are to the real counterterrorism agents will have a hard time takng "the global war on terror" seriously ever again.

[alcibiades_mystery]

18. That's probably right

We are not "at war." We are dealing with a law enforcement issue that sometimes (rarely) requires military assistance. The whole "we're at war" thing causes us to misunderstand the nature of the problem, and therefore misunderstand the nature of the possible solutions.