116 replies to this topic

[attis]

What would you rather America do? sit here and go "It's ok Al Qaeda, it was just two buildings... we have plenty more... just be careful next time"?

I would like the government to follow the Constitution and not violate my rights in a scattershot attempt to attack distributed renegades with a central military force.

I think a long-term occupation of the entire region is the only way that this problem will be resolved, and I think that is what will end up happening, even if it takes decades, however, within the next 10 years we will have some significantly advanced ground/air drone technology which will save American lives, and make the process much less bloody.

I won't support it. I'll probably be one of those 'terrorists' insomuch of not paying my taxes, nor allowing the government to 'process' me for 'national service.'

Great Britain got it's Black-Eye because it spread its forces WAY too thin, we however do not have that problem, we are the only nation with the logistics capability to wage a major overseas regional war for decades on end.

Two words: horse puckey! Why? Because the simple fact that no force, no matter how fancifully equiped can sustain a military operation for decades without some sort of fatigue and a need for new recruits. Recruit numbers are sporatic[sp?] at best, thus a 'national service' program will probably be put into effect despite it too being too late to repair the damage.

And you are also very wrong when you say that no one cares about the cause, you answer this... if there was no American military willing to die for your sorry ass how would you like to wake up to IEDs, RPGs and Suicidal freaks with bombs strapped to their stomach in your neighborhood?

They have to, it's in their contract of service. Four years of service for pay, training [college], and board [barracks, even a home at times]. I don't think the trade is a fair one, but it's a trade and upheld in court.

We aren't doing this for the sake of being a hero, but rather setting the world straight!

They need to start by getting the neo-conservatives out of the Republican Party. Even the late Barry Goldwater was frightened of them, and that's saying a lot from a man that would have used the 'Bomb' on the Soviets if he had the chance in his day.

you are just sitting in your comfortable chair at your nice little computer b*tching about how things aren't done right while others are doing all of the work!

Pointless and assumptive. I do my own thing, insomuch I look toward my own interests. I have no moral debt to strangers, thus to demand I play an altruist is to demand my life. I think that's even incompatible with Immortalism as it is with rational self-interest in general. Plus, what I do has little to do with pretending to be a Yoko Ono or John Lenon, rather it's more to do with science and reason, both which have a longer legacy than the typical 'lets save the world' pop-political action drivel.

When a nation is attacked, it must defend itself!, If a leader had your attitude their nation wouldn't last a year, it would be overcome by more powerful and forthcoming nations... we simply can't tolerate this terrorism in any part of the world, and we can't tolerate weakness!

Within reason and within the law.

It's a real shame that we don't have more nations like Israel, they really know how to deal with terrorists, they are just limited on their resources.

Israel has done a terrible job stopping the terrorists. Hell, they even have more draconic laws for identification, personal searches, and what not, and yet they still have bus bombings, kidnappings, and wars. The plead to Israel as the bastion of safety via anti-liberty laws is silly considering the track record.


In the end, the terrorists won't stop because they don't have a healthy respect for life. They want to kill, because it's all that matters to them. Whether it's for God or whether it's for economic or social justice. Their drive to kill overrides their self-interest to stay alive and enjoy life. That makes them dangerous, more dangerous than any army, since they don't wear uniforms, they don't have static bases, and they definitely don't have a singular homeland. This viral mobility to their nature makes them hard to stop. The best way to cease their actions is to stop trading with those that habor them. No more money to the Saudis, no more money to Pakistan. And definitely no more economic trade with the Mideast for as long as they habor such anti-life individuals. And I know you'll probably say, "Where will we get our oil?!" To which I reply, "In Wyoming there is a gigantic deposit of shale oil. Granted, it's expensive to extract, but it's over 100 times the amount the world has consumed for a century, thus making it the ideal source for our uses. Yes, gas won't go below 2 bucks a gallon, but that's what happens when you depend on a single source of fuel to power your economy. You pay or you fold." :-P

[JohnDoe1234]

Prometheus,

It is not only sons and daughters, it is fathers, wives, uncles, and cousins... and there hasn't been a decline in enlistees since the war had begun, some people find it worth their time to actually suit up and fight, and despite your German comment, the way that I structured that response was not alluding to anything other than if we remain passive we will fail... we must do something... I am not a fan of politics, but nothing angers me more than hearing people criticize the war when they themselves have not offered a solution, it is quite pathetic... I am not saying that we should just stomp on whoever gets in our way, but rather, we must respond when we are attacked, and by the word weakness I am also referring to people who demand that our government disclose how and where terrorists are held and tortured (Allows them to prepare for interrogation techniques!), and people who are opposed to building a fence/wall on our southern border, and people who sit and say that we should either pull out or reduce our troops... what will that do? they attacked us when there wasn't a single American troop in their country!

I see... and if they had more resources - then what? Blow everyone up? Surround themselves in a nuclear wasteland? Bombs do not kill hate. They inflame it. For each dissident that is arrested or killed another three take his place. The region needs less war and more communication. Give these people hope, desire to achieve, means to look after their family and you stop feeding the hatred.

I said nothing of using any sort of nuclear weapons... merely that the way that their forces are trained to deal with terrorists much better than ours simply because they have more experience in the area...



attis,

I would like the government to follow the Constitution and not violate my rights in a scattershot attempt to attack distributed renegades with a central military force.

Ok... then explain a bit more here, how would you go about it? how would you change the war? how would you deal with homeland security?

I won't support it. I'll probably be one of those 'terrorists' insomuch of not paying my taxes, nor allowing the government to 'process' me for 'national service.

And that is your right as a human being, you can make your own decisions, but while living in a country which is funded by the citizens, protecting the citizens, it would be very low of you not to contribute back, even though you don't think that the country is taking "your" method of action.

Two words: horse puckey! Why? Because the simple fact that no force, no matter how fancifully equiped can sustain a military operation for decades without some sort of fatigue and a need for new recruits. Recruit numbers are sporatic[sp?] at best, thus a 'national service' program will probably be put into effect despite it too being too late to repair the damage.

It sure would suffer fatigue, from both public support and resources, but from a strictly marshal point of view, it is very possible, and who said it wouldn't require new recruits?... that is a given, the same troops can't psychologically fight for decades, they would have to cycled in and out, if not retired, and I'm not sure about you, but if my nation was struggling to win a decade-old war that would be a deciding factor on whether the nation would survive, I sure as hell would enlist to try to help.

They have to, it's in their contract of service. Four years of service for pay, training [college], and board [barracks, even a home at times]. I don't think the trade is a fair one, but it's a trade and upheld in court.

You are avoiding my question. It is a trade that they feel is worth it... and if they didn't think it was worth it, then we would have no way of defending ourselves... it is as simple as that...

Plus, what I do has little to do with pretending to be a Yoko Ono or John Lenon, rather it's more to do with science and reason, both which have a longer legacy than the typical 'lets save the world' pop-political action drivel.

I'm not a 'lets save the world' type of guy, I am a 'They attacked us, lets get em!' guy... I know that science by its very nature has a longer legacy, but it must be protected by shorter-legacy actions such as getting rid of anti-science and anti-life Muslim radicals...

When a nation is attacked, it must defend itself!, If a leader had your attitude their nation wouldn't last a year, it would be overcome by more powerful and forthcoming nations... we simply can't tolerate this terrorism in any part of the world, and we can't tolerate weakness!

Within reason and within the law.

It is within our law and interest to protect our nation... and if that is not within reason, what is?

Israel has done a terrible job stopping the terrorists. Hell, they even have more draconic laws for identification, personal searches, and what not, and yet they still have bus bombings, kidnappings, and wars. The plead to Israel as the bastion of safety via anti-liberty laws is silly considering the track record.

The reason why they have done so 'terrible' at stopping terrorists is because all of the nations bordering them want to see them wiped off of the planet, their people support striking back because they don't see any other way of surviving, you cannot reason with people who want to blow themselves up! They have one of the most talented and logistically superior air forces on the planet, their police forces are brought up and trained to deal with terrorists in the most effective ways because they have access to so much 'real life' training...

In the end, the terrorists won't stop because they don't have a healthy respect for life. They want to kill, because it's all that matters to them. Whether it's for God or whether it's for economic or social justice. Their drive to kill overrides their self-interest to stay alive and enjoy life. That makes them dangerous, more dangerous than any army, since they don't wear uniforms, they don't have static bases, and they definitely don't have a singular homeland. This viral mobility to their nature makes them hard to stop. The best way to cease their actions is to stop trading with those that habor them. No more money to the Saudis, no more money to Pakistan. And definitely no more economic trade with the Mideast for as long as they habor such anti-life individuals. And I know you'll probably say, "Where will we get our oil?!" To which I reply, "In Wyoming there is a gigantic deposit of shale oil. Granted, it's expensive to extract, but it's over 100 times the amount the world has consumed for a century, thus making it the ideal source for our uses. Yes, gas won't go below 2 bucks a gallon, but that's what happens when you depend on a single source of fuel to power your economy. You pay or you fold." :-P

Yes, we know what terrorists are and how they operate (at least in a general sense), and stopping trade with their harboring nations will not stop them, they will simply move on and find another niche, the mindset still remains... we have to eradicate these people, and the materials that they poison middle-eastern schools with. And that oil shale that you are speaking of... lol... you get about 15 to 20 gallons of oil per ton of shale extracted... so as you can see there has to be a VERY significant energy investment. And the stuff that is extracted isn't actually petroleum yet, it has to be compressed and heated from kerogen into petroleum... and that is why Exxon has quit funding on research in the area because they don't see how it is economically viable, and if for some reason our oil was cut off... our gas prices would soar past $2.... you are badly mistaken...

[attis]

Ok... then explain a bit more here, how would you go about it?

Total economic and social quarantine of the mideast. No one deals with them and they can't deal with us. If they try to make the 'Bomb', we go in and take it out. If they try to escape, we those folks out. After five decades of such isolation, I think the fanatics would get the hint and start being replaced by more docile, possibly more rational agents.

And that is your right as a human being, you can make your own decisions, but while living in a country which is funded by the citizens, protecting the citizens, it would be very low of you not to contribute back, even though you don't think that the country is taking "your" method of action.

Funded by the point of a gun, and, worse, the pen? No thanks, but a rational society thrives on dissent like mine, not on mindless servitude to a mythical 'greater good.' If anything can be said about this supposition you present, it's not even wrong, to quote Enrico Fermi.

It sure would suffer fatigue, from both public support and resources, but from a strictly marshal point of view, it is very possible, and who said it wouldn't require new recruits?... that is a given, the same troops can't psychologically fight for decades, they would have to cycled in and out, if not retired, and I'm not sure about you, but if my nation was struggling to win a decade-old war that would be a deciding factor on whether the nation would survive, I sure as hell would enlist to try to help.

Good, but if people protest conscription to the point of civil war, is the war on [T]error worth it? Consider how many lives have already been lost and how many minds we have not won over. There are still islamic fanatics taking over other parts of the world, especially Africa, with morons like Mugabe in Zimbabwe, the imams in Somali, and the slaughter of black muslims by arab muslims in Dafur the world is getting over whelmed by a savage 'nation' of people who don't really care if they die tommorrow, because they think they're not only right, but that some magical force will make their sense of rightness into some tangible reality. If we focused on isolating these folks, basically starving them out [no more food aide, no more money for oil, no more medical aide, and etc], they would just dry up or die. In either case, we would win by default and have more forces to protect our borders with a lesser exhaustion of man power and resources.

You are avoiding my question. It is a trade that they feel is worth it... and if they didn't think it was worth it, then we would have no way of defending ourselves... it is as simple as that...

Avoiding? I would like you to quote where I am avoiding anything.

I'm not a 'lets save the world' type of guy, I am a 'They attacked us, lets get em!' guy.

Then carpet bomb them and be done with it. Turn the Saudi penisula into glass. But, don't play nation builder and then claim "sick'em sick'em" revenge mentality at the same time. It's sorta like beating your wife and saying sorry at the same time. Mixed signals and mixed intents don't ever work.

I know that science by its very nature has a longer legacy, but it must be protected by shorter-legacy actions such as getting rid of anti-science and anti-life Muslim radicals.

Do that by stopping any economic sanction to their causes. No money means no guns. No guns also might mean no food. Which means, no babies growing up to be trained as thugs. It's a hard sell to tell people to starve out a population, but it's the right answer.

It is within our law and interest to protect our nation... and if that is not within reason, what is?

Then declare war as the US Constitution requires.

The reason why they have done so 'terrible' at stopping terrorists is because all of the nations bordering them want to see them wiped off of the planet, their people support striking back because they don't see any other way of surviving, you cannot reason with people who want to blow themselves up! They have one of the most talented and logistically superior air forces on the planet, their police forces are brought up and trained to deal with terrorists in the most effective ways because they have access to so much 'real life' training...

And? You haven't explained why Israel can't stop the influx of terrorists with what is known to be the best armed forces in the world.

you get about 15 to 20 gallons of oil per ton of shale extracted... so as you can see there has to be a VERY significant energy investment. And the stuff that is extracted isn't actually petroleum yet, it has to be compressed and heated from kerogen into petroleum... and that is why Exxon has quit funding on research in the area because they don't see how it is economically viable, and if for some reason our oil was cut off... our gas prices would soar past $2.... you are badly mistaken...

I didn't say they would just hover above that. I said we would never see gas below that level again. So, please stop adding context to my words which have their own inherent context. And what you seem to fail to understand is that you feel you have the right to cheap gas? LOL, I would like the US Statute number for that, cause the last time I checked, this was still partially a capitalistic nation. Thus, you pay the price or you fold. Also, who said the muslim controlled nations had to give us their petrol for cheap? It's their oil isn't it? National Sovereignty? That doesn't matter huh? The last time I checked, annexation is not a power in the US Constitution and it's still a hotly contested issue by legal scholars in light of Puerto Rico, Guam, Texas, and Hawaii being clearly unconstitutional additions as member states.

I'm not trying to be a snide, but I'm just tired of folks trying to dance around the principles of this nation to play the pragmatics game. Pragmatics rarely works in light that no principle guides such ideas. Whatever works is the dictum of Pragmatics, not what is right and just.

Ayn Rand once said morality and force are opposites. She was right on that, but she acknowledged that defense of one's life is a moral principle and that it must be the primary to any action taken. For a nation or government, this principle to defend the lives of citizens must be followed, but not at the sacrafice of the citizen's own rights to life and liberty [and property]. You can't steal away rights in the name of security and claim to have saved any rights at all. To ensure a just society, any pragmatics as applied by the blowheart politicians of this era must be disposed. And I gave a solution to the problem, a solution that would cost millions of lives in the mideast, but it would be the better since it would follow a just and moral principle of negative liberty for both parties [Us westerners and the arab islamic people of the mideast]. Both sides in the solution would have to be more careful in the future, and that a jubilee would have to be enacted by both sides to cover any moral or tangible debts accrued.

In the end, to make this world better, we have to let others decide their own fate, good or bad. And that's all we can do beyond simply defending ourselves, nation building and unilateral policy making doesn't come under those provisos.

Edited by attis, 29 September 2006 - 07:19 PM.

[JohnDoe1234]

First, I misread your statement about gas prices, I read it as "Gas won't go above $2 a gallon", so sorry about that... but no I don't think we have a 'right' to cheap gas... but for right now suddenly cutting off foreign oil is a bad idea, because we simply don't have a backup infrastructure to fall upon... if bush was planning ahead even at the least we would already have had a nifty little hydrogen/electric transportation system set up... he's been in office for nearly 7 years and he has made very little progress, he simply does his little speeches about it to make everyone think he hasn't forgotten that the technology exists... personally I think the man needs to be thrown our of office...

Total economic and social quarantine of the mideast. No one deals with them and they can't deal with us. If they try to make the 'Bomb', we go in and take it out. If they try to escape, we those folks out. After five decades of such isolation, I think the fanatics would get the hint and start being replaced by more docile, possibly more rational agents.

Good, but if people protest conscription to the point of civil war, is the war on [T]error worth it? Consider how many lives have already been lost and how many minds we have not won over. There are still islamic fanatics taking over other parts of the world, especially Africa, with morons like Mugabe in Zimbabwe, the imams in Somali, and the slaughter of black muslims by arab muslims in Dafur the world is getting over whelmed by a savage 'nation' of people who don't really care if they die tommorrow, because they think they're not only right, but that some magical force will make their sense of rightness into some tangible reality. If we focused on isolating these folks, basically starving them out [no more food aide, no more money for oil, no more medical aide, and etc], they would just dry up or die. In either case, we would win by default and have more forces to protect our borders with a lesser exhaustion of man power and resources.

Do that by stopping any economic sanction to their causes. No money means no guns. No guns also might mean no food. Which means, no babies growing up to be trained as thugs. It's a hard sell to tell people to starve out a population, but it's the right answer.

Ok, I see where you are going now... and I think that would work, however, I think that we would also need to keep some sort of force occupying the region within that quaretine-wall... because places like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Syria Probably won't just flicker out... they will find a way to survive within that bubble and hatred will foster, kind of like what happened to germany in WWI

I'm not a 'lets save the world' type of guy, I am a 'They attacked us, lets get em!' guy.

Then carpet bomb them and be done with it. Turn the Saudi penisula into glass. But, don't play nation builder and then claim "sick'em sick'em" revenge mentality at the same time. It's sorta like beating your wife and saying sorry at the same time. Mixed signals and mixed intents don't ever work.

I'm not playing nation builder here... I don't see where the mixed signals are coming from... I think that the region needs to be permently occupied, because it seems that no country in that region is able to responsibly handle modern technology. They run around like 9 year olds shooting and blowing each other up... we need to significantly increase UAV and UGV reasearch funding and start sending those into the region which would allow us to significantly reduce the number of troops we would have to send there...

Funded by the point of a gun, and, worse, the pen? No thanks, but a rational society thrives on dissent like mine, not on mindless servitude to a mythical 'greater good.' If anything can be said about this supposition you present, it's not even wrong, to quote Enrico Fermi.

True... but a rational society also thrives on our tax-dollars.

I'm not trying to be a snide

I know you're not trying to be a snide, neither am I... it's a debate... things get heated [tung]

Oh, and to answer your question... I feel that the reason why we see so much conflict within Israel is because they simply can't keep track of all of the terrorists flowing into their nation, I think it is similar to our situation with Mexico right now... we just don't have an effective way of stopping them from invading in mass numbers...

[Athanasios]

Prometheus, I would be interested in what you think of Iran and their nuclear developement.

[Athanasios]

Well, you pretty much summed up my thoughts on every political conversation I have ever had. It seems one only has to get in ankle deep before being up to the waist in lies.

[eternaltraveler]

Israel will not let Iran have nuclear weapons. The US will back Israel.

[jaydfox]

Israel will not let Iran have nuclear weapons.

I suspect Iran will have nuclear weapons within a decade, probably faster.

It's not as simple as the last time around. There isn't a well-defined technological/industrial target to take out. Surgical airstrikes of nuclear targets is out of the question, short of some miraculous intelligence gathering.

Israel is in no position to invade. Bombing non-nuclear targets is out of the question, as it will lead to a full-scale Middle East war.

Economic sanctions are out of the question: the rest of the world doesn't have the will-power or resolve to see them through, especially given how tight oil supply is.

The only thing I see happening that can prevent Iran from getting nukes is if the U.S. pre-emptively attacks, the way we did with Iraq. But here's the irony: our stated reason for invading was because of WMD's, though it's clear now that the administration should reasonably have known that there weren't WMD's, so we basically invaded for other reasons (vindicate Bush senior, get oil, establish a democracy in the region, etc.).

Now the reason really would be to prevent WMD's. But we've already had our teeth kicked in once. I don't know if the American people can handle it again.

In the end, then, I see this as a looming existential risk for humanity.

[Lazarus Long]

Fact check.

Iran has double the population, more than twice the area, and a far more tactically worse terrain to operate in.

When we supplied Saddam with WMD's to use against them in the Iran/Iraq war they responded by using human wave assaults with unarmed troops and fought Saddam to a standoff and eventually even routed his technically superior forces.

They are a relatively moderate people that will become fanatic in defense of their territory.

When they were progressing toward a more moderate posture in relation to the west we poignantly turned our back on them and declared them the enemy. The effort of George the II at undermining the Iranian reform movement is only rivaled by the disdain his father showed the Kurds after convincing them to rise up. Talk about missed opportunities the end result is the situation we are in.

I suggest before anyone talks about military campaigns in relation to Iran that a little more time is spent on analysis.

https://www.cia.gov/...eos/ir.html#Geo

The worst case scenario is that we actually use nuclear weapons in the form of bunker busters to go after Iran's program thus justifying to the whole world the need to engage us in another massive nuclear arms race.

If one looks at the Mutually Assured Destruction scenario played out during the Cold War then it is logically arguable that the idea of Iran getting nukes is a positive one that will force the various players to recognize their mortality.

The Soviets and the US balanced one another with MAD for fifty years and while we were always courting disaster somehow more rational minds generally prevailed.

[eternaltraveler]

Israel will at least do it's very best to prevent Iran from having nukes whatever the cost. Iran is a nation sworn to wipe Israel off the map. It would be pure lunacy on the part of Israel to allow them to have nukes.

As far as intelligence gathering goes, Israel has the best.

[JohnDoe1234]

America was not attacked by Iraq. Yet America invaded and continues to occupy Iraq. The reason then for invading was that Iraq possessed WMD's. Now the reason is that it cannot be allowed to harbor terrorists. All along they keep mentioning the word "democracy", but it appears to have lost its meaning. Young patriots leave US soil to spill their blood for ambiguous reasons in a foreign land that could not care less. Back at home, their sponsors praise their sacrifice whilst they fatten their fortunes. FoxNews keeps the populace distracted. Paranoia and cronyism reign supreme.

Why did America invade Iraq?

Who attacked America?

I never said that prometheus... Iraq contained many Al Qaeda training camps, and even had financial ties with them... invading Iraq IMO was not about WMDs... not at all, it was about getting rid of an unpredictable tryant who would destroy entire villages when people spoke "badly" of him... It was also another place where America could stick its foot in the middle east, I really doubt Bush thought that they possessed WMDs... Iran has been on America's bad side ever since that prisoner incedent in the 80's and they are also known to be linked to Al Qaeda, so it was just another way to put more pressure on Iran, and if the public opinion hadn't have dropped so much about invading the region I wouldn't be suprised if the Bush administration had more ambitious plans in mind...

[RighteousReason]

though it's clear now that the administration should reasonably have known that there weren't WMD's, so we basically invaded for other reasons (vindicate Bush senior, get oil, establish a democracy in the region, etc.).

There wasn't just one single reason that *everyone* KNEW we should invade Iraq. It was rather apparent to many people in total opposition to this administration. To say this was a unilateral lie on the part of Bush to somehow "trick" people by claiming Iraq should be invaded because it has WMDs is either a damn lie or a mindless attack.

[RighteousReason]

Durrrr

[RighteousReason]

In either case, we would win by default and have more forces to protect our borders with a lesser exhaustion of man power and resources.

This is the obvious solution- focusing on effective homeland security and the development of mature nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. The government would still f**k it up miserably, though. (Why is it so hard for us to simply build a big ass fence?)

It's pointless to get so worked up about politics when any individual has practically no control over the situation.

[jaydfox]

To say this was a unilateral lie on the part of Bush to somehow "trick" people by claiming Iraq should be invaded because it has WMDs is either a damn lie or a mindless attack.

I'm sure a lot of people would have been willing to invade Iraq to vindicate Bush senior, or to get Iraqi oil, or to oust a brutal dictator, or... The point is, none of these reasons was just cause for a preemptive invasion by the U.S.

The only reason that seemed to be acceptable by most people was the threat of WMD's. Had the Bush administration been honest in conveying what intelligence we had on the matter (i.e., there was no proof), then there would not have been public support for the war.

Bush did "trick" people. It's as simple as that.

[RighteousReason]

must be easy to trick so many people

[Lazarus Long]

(Josehpjah)

...Iraq contained many Al Qaeda training camps, and even had financial ties with them...

No offense guy but where do you get this intel considering the CIA and most intelligence agencies around the world (including Israel) state openly now that all such claims are false. This one was pure invention on the part of the US and they have been caught in this lie around the world. Saddam never had ties with al Qaeda either financial or political, they were sworn enemies and the operations al Qaeda did have in Iraq were for the overthrow of Saddam.

In one the of the latest CIA reports they also admit that the al-Zarqawi claim involving supposed asylum in Baghdad was also false.

[Lazarus Long]

(Hankconn)
must be easy to trick so many people

All to easy I am afraid when the intelligence is cherry picked and spoon fed to a government all too willing to collude and a people more interested in vindictive human sacrifice than realpolitik. We have serious reasons to mistrust both parties and you frankly have demonstrated as much when the opposition failed in its sworn duty to closely scrutinize the claims at the time. I suggest instead you read the speech of Sen Byrd and realize what a true patriot and experienced politician was saying rather than these panderers.

The American people wanted a bloodletting and these guys gave it to them, while in the process squandering our treasury to their personal gain and they have seriously undermined our defensive position and global support network. Iraq was not merely the epitome of hubris and incompetence, it is the clearest example possible of MIC corruption and the political perversion of our defense posture through the most heinous political misuse of our armed forces since Vietnam.

[JohnDoe1234]

...Iraq contained many Al Qaeda training camps, and even had financial ties with them...

No offense guy but where do you get this intel considering the CIA and most intelligence agencies around the world (including Israel) state openly now that all such claims are false. This one was pure invention on the part of the US and they have been caught in this lie around the world. Saddam never had ties with al Qaeda either financial or political, they were sworn enemies and the operations al Qaeda did have in Iraq were for the overthrow of Saddam.

In one the of the latest CIA reports they also admit that the al Zawahri claim involving supposed asylum in Baghdad was also false.

Hmm, Well here is an article that speaks of the training camps in Iraq http://www.weeklysta...06/550kmbzd.asp

Could you point me to where this information might be? I've never heard of such claims...

[Lazarus Long]

Hmm, How do we explain this? http://www.weeklysta...06/550kmbzd.asp

Outright lies on the part of a war machine's spin dept perhaps?

http://www.cnn.com/2...t.ap/index.html

http://www.washingto...6090800777.html

http://www.washingto...-2004Jun16.html

http://tvnewslies.or...aeda_links.html

http://news.bbc.co.u...cas/5328592.stm

Actual CIA report read it for yourselves

[Lazarus Long]

Also I think it is time to remind everyone here why we have a Freedom of Information Act, it is not about providing support to our enemies, it is about protecting ourselves from the abuses of power that are all too easy when government can control the dissemination of information.

The truth is more dangerous to our own government than any enemy of this state. That alone should make everyone suspicious. There has been a criminal abuse of the public trust on the part of this administration and it is long past due that they are called on the mat for it.

There not only was NEVER a connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, but parts of our own government's Executive Branch knowingly misled the people and the legislature through a concerted effort to suppress all information that contradicted their deception.

This alone is an impeachable offense as it has compromised the security interests of the United States but their motives are also suspect as they may include collusion for personal gain.

Just repeating the lies will never make them true and the fact that all too many of our own people still believe the deception and how it is now bringing us closer and closer to a irreparable schism of our nation is testament to how it has severely harmed our nation. They have violated the public trust in an unforgivable manner for a democracy.

[JohnDoe1234]

I have a week off, time to do some reading, thanks for the link to that CIA report, LL

[Lazarus Long]

I will add one thing Joseph the author you cite is now standing virtually alone in these claims and he is supporting a book he wrote based on the claim. He is also unable to produce many of the actual documents he claims to have seen as they are still *classified* except the agencies involved that would be aware if such documents exist, either deny their existence or discredit their validity.

Additionally this administration is in considerable trouble for doing something that has destroyed its credibility around the world and and made all such claims suspect, they have been caught doctoring the news by paying journalists to publish their claims as supposed news when it was fabricated or spoon fed to them as wholesale propaganda.

The Weekly Standard is a well known Conservative Talking Points journal and that alone does not discredit them but the fact that they have been involved in some of the practices I am referring does make them a bit suspect. There has been a terrible lack of fact checking going on in all of journalism of late and it demonstrates not merely a compromised press but simple incompetence and a gross lack of professionalism.

I suggest you broaden your sources and believe nothing without substantive corroboration. I also suggest you take the time to read the opposition and not just those whose opinions you favor. For example I spent a lot of time reading the PNAC before coming to the conclusion that the US was being intentionally misled. I took the time to read Perle and Kristol and many others, I noticed that foreign press like the BBC had discredited many claims even before they had been exposed here and that these counter points were buried prior to them being presented to the UN by Powell, who has now disavowed them and tried to distance himself from them.

I also noticed that none of the people making the grandiose claims for what we were going to do in Iraq were competent at Nation Building, they never credited the concept as valid, anyway they had no plan prior to invasion. As I said in my debates at the time; these guys don't do Nation Building at home so what makes anyone believe they can accomplish this practice in Iraq?

The people making the most grandiose claims for what the military could do were not experienced soldiers and the advice of the Joint Chiefs and even Colin Powell was being ignored. The issue of post invasion security was raised and suppressed, the issue of what to do with the Iraqi army was ignored, the questions about the risks of sectarian strife were sidestepped and the practical realities of what the costs were going to be was openly lied about. When the Under Secretary of the Treasury raised a red flag about the probable cost for the war he was dismissed from office.

Never do business with types like this because you will always get burned.

Ironically for all the claims about how we could remake Iraq like we did Japan and Germany in the post WWII period they neglected to notice that they in fact were committing exactly the same errors as the Japanese High Command in the period leading up to WWII when they were committing to a battle strategy without a plan for victory. They were so focused on the battle they could win they forgot to plan for the war they were starting and how they would have to fight it.

The worst aspect of this is that the Flypaper strategy they did employ is criminal, because at best it is responsible for turning Iraq into a Cambodia style killing zone that we must take responsibility for this time. It is also incompetent because rather than achieving its climed objectives it more serves the objectives of the enemy by providing them a training ground for familiarizing themselves with our weapons and tactics, as well as a potent recruitment tools that is not yet matched on our side.

The argument about fighting them over there so we don't have to do it here is a terrible mistake because what we have done instead is make that the objective for thousands upon thousands of new terrorists. For them it is not merely a waiting game in their favor, it is a period of gaining strength that works to their advantage as rather than ameliorating the conditions that make them less able to operate we have generated more chaos globally and provided them with a cause celeb that they can all too easily exploit.

Iraq was never the threat claimed and the real threats have been underestimated. The effort in Iraq has cost us the relatively simple victory possible in Afghanistan and this is combined with a gross lack of foresight on the part of this administration because what they have done is engage in a generational conflict that promises to continue long past our populations short attention spans and eventually we will again expose our soft underbelly and next time they will many more the numbers of of even better trained attackers to use against us.

Case Open

For the record here is Hayes response to the report
How Bad Is the Senate Intelligence Report?

In which he doesn't back peddle so much as obfuscate and never address the actual claims of the report.

The Weekly Standard is the voice of voice of the PNAC and the Neo-Con agenda and they are still touting a line all the way to the Niger Yellow Cake debacle. Even Hitchens who was so pro war in the beginning is going to have to have second thoughts eventually as the death toll of civilians in Iraq approaches more than all the Iraqi civilian deaths Saddam was ever responsible for combined. we have failed in the most basic aspect of such an occupation'; we have failed to secure the ground and rebuild the infrastructure, and YES, it is OUR responsibility since as Powell said to the President, "we broke it so now we own it."

The majority of the Iraqi's now want us out. Ready or not, sooner or later we must leave or make an all too obvious mockery of our claims of bringing democracy to the region.

[chipl]

begin quote:

"Hitler was appointed Chancellor by the German President, Marshall von Hindenburg, on Jan. 30, 1933. The Enabling Act was passed less than two months later. It has taken the Georgites close to six years to get similar powers. Hitler actually went through the formal process of amending the Weimar Republic's Constitution with a 2/3's vote of the German Parliament, the Reichstag. The vote was fixed a bit, to be sure. Hitler banned the large number of elected Communist Party members completely. (Most of those who had not been immediately arrested in early February, 1933 had fled Germany anyway.) Most of the Socialist members were banned or under arrest also. The Nazi members, less than an elected majority, showed up for the vote wearing their SA "Brownshirt" uniforms and the hall was surrounded by SA troopers in uniform. However, Hitler at least went through the motions of amending the Constitution. He had, after all, upon taking office promised Pres. von Hindenburg that he would respect the Constitution.

In the US, the Republican Congress, with some Democratic allies, have amended the US Constitution without bothering to go through the amendment process provided for in that document. Neither force nor the threat of force as applied to the members of Congress was necessary. Why is Bush so successful, despite the fact that (like Hitler) he has only a minority of the population behind him? There are two reasons, only. First he has the Congress. He has it in large part because of the un-Constitutional re-districting for House seats; the grand tilt to the under populated, right-wing states in the Senate caused by the two-seat formula; and the Rovian Grand Theft Election machine (active in Congressional as well as Presidential elections). But he has it. Second he has his vast Privatized Ministry of Propaganda. It's a contemporary Orwellian World, as so eloquently pointed out by my friend Michael Carmichael in his essay "Ignorance is Strength" (The Planetary Movement.org, 9/26/06). "

end quote.

Steven Jonas is comparing the recent legislation that usurps human rights to the 1933 German "Enabling Act." To quote him again: "The US version gives the President the power to over-ride Articles I, II, V and VI and Amendments I, IV, V, VI and VIII of the US Constitution if he determines that it is necessary to do so..."

from http://www.buzzflash...icles/jonas/019