OT: Could Bush Have Been Right?

[rogue]

I do read what Merry says Rogue.

If so then you would know that he and I won't be hanging out and singing Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue at the next Toby Keith concert because...

The funniest part of all of this rogue is that I voted for Clinton, Gore and Kerry.

See KL, you can have different views but still have a conversation. That way you can even find some common ground and maybe as in my case learn something. I don't always agree with MP, or even always like what he says, but the man has done his research and I have to at least consider what he's saying. It's called respect.

Keep it coming Cheney-bots, I got lots of sanity bullets and reason bombs left to ride out this tiny little battle.

What does that mean? I know people who work for Cheney and they are quite smart. And believe it or not nobody is battling you, we were discussing a approach for countering terrorism. Which could be considered self defense and a proper subject for a martial arts forum. If you have something to add please do but stop being a nudge.

[ZIM]

lol, more obfuscation. Now it's the attempted assassination and not the wmds ready to go in 45 mins?

man, you guys are scrambling like a hollywood sycophant with this nonsense.

Seeing as we are already interesting times, I guess I can't wish that upon you.

The flaws in your posts are your apparent undying support for the maniac you're calling a president down there. And your unfounded fear of arab peoples and your attacks on their religion as if yours is better.

Truth of the matter is the US has much dirtier hands than a lot of arab countries/peoples/organizations when it comes to manipulation, starting wars, killing innocents for dollars etc etc etc et fukking c.

The declaration for war, at the time it was written up, contained around 27 grievances, only one of which involved WMDs. Assassination attempts on leaders have always been a cause for war and this is internationally recognized. That Clinton chose not to pursue it is his failing but it hardly alters the fact.

Look at it this way [which should prove easy for you]:
Chirac comes to the US. Karl Rove has him killed. France does nothing.
Zapatero comes to DC and is found beheaded in a hotel. The FBI is implicated. Spain does nothing.
The Canadian PM visits NYC and is "suicided". Canada does nothing.

At which point was there a cause for war to be declared? By whom and why?

[wdl]

lol, more obfuscation. Now it's the attempted assassination and not the wmds ready to go in 45 mins?

The biggest one on top of my list wasn't WMDs before we went in. It was the fact that idea of hijacking planes with box cutters came out of Iraq. Bin Laden wanted to take down the WTC and failed the first time. He had operatives in Iraq being trained at Salman Pak that's been established. There it's been proven and you can verify it for yourself with many news accounts that Saddam had an airliner and was training people how to hijack one with box cutters, razors, pens, aka any small handy object. I'm not saying that the ones he trained actually did it, but it doesn't take too much to put two and two together and think like Bin Laden did:

"Easy hijacking with box cutter, fully fueled airliner, 550MPH air speed, HOLY JIHAD I CAN DO IT!"

Saddam had alot more to do with 9/11, you just have to connect the dots. What I said above has all been proven and it out in the open knowledge.

-Will

[rogue]

The declaration for war, at the time it was written up, contained around 27 grievances, only one of which involved WMDs.

Thomas, remember facts don't count.
Seems like the U.N. is better at stealing, whoring and raping kids than anything else.

you just have to connect the dots.

Problem with connecting dots Will is that you can come up with different pictures depending upon what you are looking for. We had a sidebar about Laurie Mylroie's book The War Against America and she presented facts, connected the dots and seems to have come up with the wrong answer. Some of the dots just don't have anything to do with the real picture.

[wdl]

Some of the dots just don't have anything to do with the real picture.

I've not seen or read her book. If there's a thread still send me a PM with the link please and I'll go read it.

Yeah, your right, the dots have to be kept in perspective and each dot's context analyzed. There are alot of dots in Iraq that involve ALQ, some of them can be connected most can't(to ALQ's credit, they aren't stupid, in that regard atleast). The case of the airliner and the hijacking training is probably the one with the most evidence to cite. There's no direct evidence that any of the ones on the planes on 9/11 were actually there. Lots of evidence points to members of ALQ training there and taking the knowledge home with them. From there you have to connecte the dots to the airplanes actually being hijacked. Atleast, publically, there hasn't been evidence released.

I'm all for the tribunals down at Gitmo. I think it will get alot more evidence out in the open that the administration has kept secret. As I said earlier in the thread, my opinion on Iraq is that it will take about 10 years to know fully if it's going to be successful and if, "Bush was right". That being said, look at what happened in previous wars such as Vietnam. We are only now starting to find out some of the details of what really went on over there. In the past two years thousands of WW2 documents were finally declassified. It will be YEARS before the world really and truely knows what's happened in Iraq.

-Will

[David Jamieson]

zim is playing hypotheticals again. yeesh, where was that coming from?

wdl is saying Iraq had something to do with 911. Ok, now that is just ridiculous and you would think you would know that...unless of course you're watching some secret news channel that none of the rest of us know about. According to the commision, the gov itself, the fbi and the cia, teh guys on the planes were saudis not iraqis.

27 greivances sure, ok, but lemme tell ya, Powell was waving a vial of powder, showing blurry sat photos (i don't know why the tech is way better than that) and shouting about yellow cake and nukes and wmds.

they attempted to get another resolution, they attempted to get everyone on side with their lie and the rest of teh world refused for the most part.

people do know what happened and is happening in Iraq, a great deal of us feel that the USA and the UK acted in an aggressive and illegal fashion. Unfortunately, most of the world has passively let the USA build up it's own wmd and now it is this pretty much uncontrollable monster.

But that is changing too. Anyway, You guys are dreaming with the sh.it your making up and dumping here like little turds. Absolute nonsense. NOt even worth arguing with. You are merely trying to justify a crime against humanity and call it liberty freedom deluxo.

you are buying into serious disinformation, just like your president. and on top of it you are trying to spread it here. Here of all places! why here?

[FatherDog]

Okay, KL, calling Merry a republican spin doctor has to rank among the stupidest things you've said to date, and that's saying something.

Merry's been quite critical of the Bush administration, and the neo-cons in general. But because he disagrees with some of the ridiculous stuff you've postulated about them, you immediately assume he must be a republican supporter. I suspect that this is because you, like so many other people, treat politics as something akin to sports, and assume that anyone who finds fault with your team is rooting against you.

Frankly, my politics are further to the left than yours (and probably anyone else on this board, with the possible exception of Chang Style Novice) and way further to the left than Merry's, but I can easily see that you're simply wrong on most of the things you're saying here. You're not addressing MP's points; you're just yelling unrelated things at him.

Merry:
I concur that AQ's leadership has the destruction of the West in general and the US in particular as a stated goal, and that this would not change regardless of whether or not the US maintained an interventionist policy in the middle east. What I think your analysis is missing, however, is that the views of the AQ leadership aren't necessarily the motivating factor behind the majority of their membership. Isn't it entirely possible (and even likely) that the US interventions in the middle east breed widespread resentment that contributes to people sympathizing with and providing aid and enlistment in AQ?

Basically, you seem to have been arguing that the US interfering less in the middle east would have no effect on AQ because the leadership is not motivated by the US' interference in middle eastern politics, but by their hatred of the West and desire for an Islamic caliphate to dominate the world. While I agree that the latter is true, wouldn't you say that the motivating factor for a good amount of AQ's support is the former, and that lack of the former might well reduce AQ to a fringe organization with a very small and thus ineffective membership?

[David Jamieson]

must be something in the water down there???

everyone is lining up to call me stupid, but then puttin forth the most dumb ass sh.it i have read to date.

what a pack of ditto heads.

whatever, keep patting yoursleves on the backs guys, it really does nothing but make you look even more foolish with each lie you tell and retell.

your president is a liar, you are perpetuating lies.

people are dying and for what? what was that? come again?

freaking zombies is what you are. be that, things will change and you will still not understand.

[wdl]

Isn't it entirely possible (and even likely) that the US interventions in the middle east breed widespread resentment that contributes to people sympathizing with and providing aid and enlistment in AQ?

This is quite true. But how do you combat a group that's still PO'd about the Shores of Tripoli and the Barbary Wars of the early 1800s? They are still holding a grudge and are motivated by things that happened 200 years ago.


-Will

[David Jamieson]

and lets not forget where ALQ began, it's an american invention. an experiment gone awry. deal with that.

Your country is expansionist and warmonging. deal with that.

the USA has contributed to more death, starvation and strife and I would put them up there as thinly veiled regarding real intention. No different than the British or the spanish laying out blankets covered in small pox to kill of the original americans, just spun up nicely in politics and jibba jabba.

you guys got some tiny little heads.

try to think of things that happened more than 2 weeks ago please.

ah why bother, this is just a fukkin sausage fest. You guys will probably never understand the damage your country is doing around the world. Your attitudes and beligerence i an extension of your environment.

remember this, live by the sword and you will die by it. that axiom is true and you bet that Bush's action will indeed bring forth several more generations of terrorist who will attempt to kill people that are american in anyway they can. Thanks Mr. Bush!

[wdl]

Your country is expansionist and warmonging. deal with that.

Being in a state of expansion is better than being in a state of decline.

ALQ as a group might have started in Afghanistan as a result of cold war intervention by the US, but the US didn't create their mindset. They only took advantage of it and used it against the Soviet Union. The mindset they operate out of has been around for centuries.

-Will

[Christopher M]

The Canadian PM visits NYC and is "suicided". Canada does nothing.

Nothing!? We'd send a thank you bouquet and gift basket!

[unkokusai]

Your country is expansionist and warmonging. deal with that.!

And your...I guess you could call it a country...is weak and irrelevant. Oh, and any economic and military security you enjoy is entirely thanks to your superior neighbor. You know this, which is why you resentful inbreeds spend so much time worrying about us.

[dezhen2001]

Being in a state of expansion is better than being in a state of decline.

ALQ as a group might have started in Afghanistan as a result of cold war intervention by the US, but the US didn't create their mindset. They only took advantage of it and used it against the Soviet Union. The mindset they operate out of has been around for centuries.

-Will

The mindset they operate out of is something that was created a few centuries ago by the combining forces of the ibn Saud family and the fundementalist Muslim scholar Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahab. When even his own father and brother write rebuttals against his religious thought (as traditionally qualified scholars in their own right), then you really should wonder how "mainstream" and representative of the generic Islamic thought he and his school is. If you want to talk about it we can, especially interesting is the influence the British and other European countries had in supporting their movement against the power of the original Ottoman Caliphate (which was still in control at that time).

Sadly because of oil money and the lack of organization in the Muslim community worldwide, the Wahabbi school and its ofshoots the Salafiyya (which tend to come more from the Wahabbi created Ikhwan movement in Saudi and have a more violent and extreme mindset) are gaining presence, especially in the cut-off-from-tradition Western muslim populace. This has caused the rise of such groups as Hizb ut-Tahrir and others even more extreme such as al-Muhajiroun who are gaining in popularity in Europe and even here in Australia. The lack of education most Muslims in the west have is staggering, and its no surprise to me at all that many fall prey to such an approach - simply because of their lack of knowledge of traditional scholarship and works.

Its a shame you guys have no working relationship with the muslim community like i do (being Muslim and living in a majority Turkish/Lebanese immigrant community here in Sydney), because if you did then you would be able to clearly see that those who have "sympathy" towards such people has nothing to do with religious ideology, but more to do with global politics and the attitude the US has towards the rest of the world - at least as they percieve it. In fact, most of the Muslims i have met - young and old, from all over the middle east originally, knowledgeable and your average village idiot - were all disgusted by all the nasty events that have happened in Iraq, especially the kidnappings and roadside bombings and civillian deaths caused by "mujihadeen" etc.

Not only that, but trying to develop an identity in which you have no choice but to be "western" but still want to be fully "muslim" is something that all 2nd generation immigrant kids have to face, and its not easy. It can lead to a lot of angst especially as the current intellectual leadership of the Muslim communities here in the west are severely lacking and are mainly based on the "home country" mindset. There are a number of intellectuals working on it though - but when you bar one of the most important from coming to the US to teach at University on nothing but heresay - then i wonder what the US expects everyone, especially muslims to do?

[Christopher M]

Of course, Bush went in for Oil, even though it doesn't make any sense, so what do you expect?

Making sense is just an invention of the bourgeois to oppress the working classes.