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10 Years of Translated Bin Laden Messages Leaked
DragonFire1024 lets us know that Wikileaks has obtained 10 years of messages and interviews by Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda. The documents were translated and the messages and interviews were authenticated by the US CIA. "The nearly three hundred page, 'official use only' packet from 2004, translated by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, a division of the CIA, includes interviews with bin Laden from various news agencies and also includes messages he sent directly to the US from the periods of 1994 to 2004. One message includes bin Laden's denial of having anything to do with the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania."
Wow, if the source is credible that's pretty damning. For those who don't like to RTFA:
One message includes bin Laden's denial of having anything to do with the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania.
"Following the latest explosions in the United States, some Americans are pointing the finger at me, but I deny that because I have not done it. The United States has always accused me of these incidents which have been caused by its enemies. Reiterating once again, I say that I have not done it, and the perpetrators have carried this out because of their own interest," said bin Laden on September 16, 2001, just five days after the attacks.
To me the timing of that message seems far more relevant to 9/11 than a vague message 4 months prior that he could "make life miserable for the United States", "If the Taleban allowed". It seems that in as much as we've had to deal with manufactured evidence to serve the cause of the Bush administration regarding the Iraq war now it's clear that the CIA has also withheld critical counter-evidence that the American people and its allies should have been aware of. Could this message have been too sensitive to release? Well, they seemed to release other messages and video around the time of the event that helped make the case and build support for war..
Anyone who stores local copies of these on their own computer and then get arrested/checked at customs can expect to be answering some very unpleasant questions.
No really, western security services are getting far too paranoid.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
"One message includes bin Laden's denial of having anything to do with the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania."
I don't understand, I was told he is directly responsible for everything that is wrong with the world!
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
I remember Bin Laden denying the attacks. I even remember quite a few people holding up the defense that Bin Laden couldn't have done it because "Muslim is a religion of peace". (Not that the two really go hand in hand, but it was the reaction of the time.) What is interesting here is something I missed when I heard the reports back in 2001. The key reason why Bin Laden denied his involvement:
Bin Laden had a pretty cushy safe-haven there. He figured as long as he didn't piss off the Taliban leaders, they'd give him safe haven. And he figured the U.S. would not attack a sovereign nation. Which may have been true under Clinton, but he probably miscalculated how much the political climate was going to change once those towers fell.
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...for mentioning "his denial" in the summary, you just turned this into a damn forum for "truthers." You know, the people who are do deluded, they thing that Purdue University and Popular Mechanics are part of the "vast right wing conspiracy." Seriously, I've read some of their ideas on the boards. They'll literally go A->B->C->D->E->F->G and be like "and that proves Purdue University's study is faked by the gov't."
Are you really surprised?
This is the administration that, when told that there *were* no wmds, essentially said "Fuck it, they're HIDING them!"
I wish someone had just assassinated that fucker...
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
To be honest, I don't think any of this is at all surprising.
Sure, the 9/11 conspiracy theorists will be able to make a new bunch of YouTube videos, but all the sane people realise that going to war was a sham anyway.
The office of the POTUS chose to ignore relevant information presented to them by other departments, and that there was some other agenda for the war in Iraq, that we are unlikely to find out for a long time if ever.
As the parent said, I think it may have more immediate implications for allies of the US who went to war based on the judgement of GWB etc. But then again, this kind of stuff on the Internets rarely gets looked at.
Speaking as a Brit who had similar bullshitting fed to them by our own Government regarding this issue...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.
Wow, if the source is credible that's pretty damning.
Erm, the "source" in this case is a known terrorist who issued a fatwa in the 1990s calling for Muslims around the world to kill Americans every chance they get. How "credible" can he be? Seriously, there is nothing new here. Bin Laden gave interview well into late 2001 claiming that he didn't do it. (And he probably didn't "do it" in any direct sense, since we know KSM was the main planner who put the operation together). But he has since given speeches praising the "magnificent 19" (what he calls the hijackers) and clearly taking credit for being their inspiration. Whether or not he had any direct hand in it, he was the leader of the organization responsible, and he had been calling (over and against other jihadi leaders) for attacks on the United States (the "far enemy") for quite some time. This message was not "too sensitive to release" -- it differed little from other messages he was giving at the time.
I wish someone had just assassinated that fucker...
Instead you re-elected him because Faux News said his opponent looked French.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I don't see anything particularly damning there. Bad men do bad things, then pretend they didn't in an attempt to avoid the consequences. Why is that surprising?
As I mentioned in my post, that comment does more to explain his denial than it does to provide evidence of his innocence. And don't forget that he later claimed the attacks as his own. After his cushy little safe haven was broken up, of course.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Is it *really* that hard to believe there are bad people in positions of power, even in the United States?
While I definitely agree that all kinds of evidence has been withheld from public knowledge, there are a couple points....
First, this is nothing new. Bin Laden has always denied involvement. The only time he acknowledged being responsible, was in some supposed sham video that was "found" in Afghanistan, and claimed by the CIA as some sort of smoking gun proving he did it.
Second, while I certainly have never seen a solid piece of evidence proving that he was involved... Him saying he wasn't involved isn't exactly proof of innocence either. He is after all a crazy bastard who thinks it's perfectly ok to murder people because of the country they were born in.
Damning my ass. Bin Laden initially denied involvement in the attacks, only to very publicly acknowledge his involvement later, on multiple occasions.
I guess knee-jerk Bush bashing is more popular than I thought.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Don't let the truth get in the way of us having a laugh at some crackpots.
Most of the people around here are smart enough to make their own conclusions about reality
OR trolls generally.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
not that Bin Laden would ever lie... nor would Bush.. They're both angels!
Just because one's lying doesn't mean the other is telling the truth.
This was commonly reported immediately after 9/11. It was back when any Osama tape was immediately broadcast and analyzed to death.
Osama is a douche bag - even he was surprised the towers fell and perhaps was a bit shocked by it. So much so that maybe he thought the USA could come kick the crap out of him quickly... I don't know.
He's a dick that killed thousands of people and supports the suicide bombings and beheadings around the world. You think he wouldn't lie???
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Send us a postcard from Guantanamo Bay!
Well, I was going to come up with a conspiracy theory just so I could lower Purdue's mediocre reputation , but then I found this and realized I didn't have to go through all that trouble:
Go Jackets!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
...and you think he has credibility, why, exactly?
Mod Parent Insightful, I'm out of points!
Bin Laden initially denied involvement in the September 11, 2001 attacks, and then later claimed credit in a 2004 video for personally directing the 19 hijackers. Sources, including a transcript of the video: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2004/10/29/binladen_message041029.html http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/29/bin.laden.transcript/
One dishonest professor does not a university make. Further citations are needed to back up your claim of Purdue's mediocrity.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
These bin Laden quotes are hardly proof of a conspiracy. Leaders twist the truth all the time. Surely you've noticed, after all you are in an election right now.
(of course what's frustrating is to watch conspiracy/counter-conspiracy rhetoric reach such a pitch that average citizens don't even know how to look for the truth any more)
If Bin Laden actually helped and/or planned these attacks, these interviews would most likely show nothing, he's not that dumb. If he didn't have anything to do with it, they are the interviews of the wrong person. Albeit his denial makes sense, but the American public will need a new face to focus on before accepting this.
Where genius and insanity become confused true wisdom is found
I guess knee-jerk Bush bashing is more popular than I thought.
And where have you lived for the last seven years?
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
Advocating assassination of a sitting president is never a good idea.
He's an asshole, but still our (USA) president for ~4 months.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
And that video has been universally decried as an obvious fake as the person in the video only looks similar to Osama bin Laden if you're a white American who thinks all Arabs look alike.
How we know is more important than what we know.
That's the movie script I was working on.
16 Jan 2004, 8:58am
Tim,
Can you bring some milk and bread over please?
Thanks,
O
18 Jan 2004, 5:24pm
What happened? I'm starving out here you know! I can't just pop down to the shop for supplies, it's a freaking desert out there!
22 Jan 2004, 3:42pm
Tim,
Are you mad at me? Is that why you're not talking? I'm sorry I was angry in my last email.
Just drop by, we'll talk and drink coffee. You'll need to bring the coffee though. And some milk and bread. Maybe honey too. I like honey.
O
28 Jan 2004, 5:30pm
Bob,
Can you check up on Tim for me? It's like he's frozen me out or something. I just want to know everything's okay.
Also, can you send me a few bottles of milk and some loaves of bread. Maybe honey and jam too. Oh, and coffee! Not that I need to stay awake out here. You never think you're bored until you're stuck in a cave in the wilderness. Luckily I've got ADSL here.
Thanks, and say "Hi" to Mary and the kids for me,
O
29 Jan 2004, 12:37pm
O,
I think Tim's gone. Looks like he left in a hurry. Typical of his type - I told you about him, you'll remember. Anyway, I'll get Chuck to drop over some supplies in the next day or so.
Look after yourself,
Bob
29 Jan 2004, 3:52pm
Damn it! I thought Tim was different. I thought he had commitment, you know? What happened to people who could take the long view?
Anyway, thanks for getting chuck to drop the food over. I appreciate it - there'll be an extra virgin for you in the afterlife!
Can you remind Chuck to bring a can opener? I don't want to have to shoot these ones open. Those soldiers nearly heard me last time.
Thanks again,
O
People invested in conspiracy theories that put the US government behind 9/11 will point out that there is no proof directly tying him to the attacks, that the FBI hasn't updated its file to include 9/11 as one of the crimes he is "wanted" for, etc. They'll say that the above video is faked, mistranslated, misinterpreted. And none of it matters -- OBL was the leader of the al Qaeda organization, he has openly called for Muslims to kill Americans going back to 1996, given interviews praising terrorist attacks and claiming that the Quran's proscriptions against killing innocents don't apply when dealing with the American's for various reasons. He led jihadists to broaden the fight against their local governments to a fight against the US and Israel, and transformed a significant part of the jihadist movement along those lines. The obsession with finding OBL's fingerprints on 9/11 begs the question of what we do know -- which is that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed planned the attacks and that they were carried out by Muslim extremists. Saying that we can't prove that OBL attacked the WTC does not mean that Dick Cheney did.
Just look at the evidence, it is so obvious. The location is... hey, what is that I smell... oh that's right, bullshit. I really don't know where he is, and I am sure the poster would not like me revealing his/her location.
I was calling bullshit on myself.
why?
You don't think Peak oil, the fact that the US Dollar is an oil backed currency and the profit, and power that will give to those who control it is enough reason?
You need to take a long hard look at the kind of people running America... And i don't mean the puppet figurehead who is in place.
Deleted
His also an ex CIA agent (using that term a bit liberally).
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Osama wasn't behind 9/11. Saddam Hussein was! I know because Mister Cheney told me.
The Land of Sarcasm.
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Another interpretation is that al-quaeda, "the base" was just a very small group before 9/11 that had no big international contacts. The US administration pointing finger at them helped them gain the stature they have today. The true responsibles of the 9/11 decided then to be part of al-quaeda, like many smaller terrorist group, just because Bin Laden was seen as the archetype of the anti-american terrorist.
From all that I read, it looks like al-quaeda is more of a stand-alone complex than a hierarchically organized group. I think most al-quaeda groups begin as independent entities, make a terrorist attack, claim responsability, get labeled by the CIA as "al quaeda linked group", get contacted or contact al-quaeda. (you can invert the last two steps)
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Collaboration page (here: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Talk:Wikileaks_obtains_10_years_of_messages,_interviews_from_Osama_bin_Laden_translated_by_CIA) has a nice little note saying that "authenticated by the US CIA" is essentially.. what's the word? oh yeah, "wrong".
Sure, if by "liberally" you mean "nonsensically." Bin Laden wasn't even close to being an "ex CIA agent." Chances that he met anyone from CIA in Afghanistan during the jihad against the Soviets are slim to nil. Steve Coll's book does a pretty good job of busting this myth.
No question OBL's gang of jihadists profited off of the CIA's investment in the war against the Soviets, but most of it was indirect. For example, it's true that some of the bases that al Qaeda used were originally built with CIA money. But that's a far cry from saying OBL trained under CIA on those bases.
Of course, arguments over that miss the forest in the trees -- the U.S. was behind bin Laden's rise to power whether or not OBL ever worked for the CIA. The U.S. strongly encouraged Saudi Arabia and other Arab allies to help out in the war in Afghanistan by stirring up Muslims with a call to jihad. The Saudis got clerics to issue fatwas and they underwrote travel and training expenses for jihadists. The way they saw it, it was win-win. Cozy up to the U.S. (we were selling them AWACS and other arms at the time) and get rid of a large group of potential troublemakers at the same time. Other Arab governments followed suit. You don't need shadowy conspiracy theories or phony news stories about OBL being visited in the hospital by CIA agents worried about his kidneys to find evidence for any of this -- it's all a matter of public record.
I wish someone had just assassinated that fucker...
wow. it's chess, not checkers. would you really have rather had Richard "Dick" Cheney as president? What must you think?
... citations are needed ...
Error 1/404: The website you are looking for WAS found. It is located here.
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
I think you're right about what's happening now -- al Qaeda in Iraq, for example, is not really any relation to al Qaeda other than a relationship of convenience -- but at the time of 9/11 al Qaeda was already a sort of "umbrella" group of different organizations. Or, more accurately, these were leaders from several jihadist organizations who had broken somewhat with the mainstream of those organizations and decided to join bin Laden's "World Islamic Front." But these weren't people who just saw bin Laden as an archetype ... they openly joined forces and signed a statement in 1998. (Though there is some debate over what was actually being called "al Qaeda" at that point).
Mod parent down! A quick search for Bin Laden confession a fake? only turns up the nutters and conspiracy theorists. What does that make the parent, then?
Exactly. Bin Laden is not in "charge" of Al Qaeda like Blowfeld was in charge of SPECTER. He is a figurehead and inspiration for groups that choose to call themselves affiliated with Al Qaeda. KSM was one of the masterminds of 9/11 and one of Bin Laden's chief disciples. Bin Laden did not come up with the idea of 9/11, mastermind it, organize it, or probably even fund it. He did, apparently, approve of it though beforehand and take credit for it elsewhere afterwards.
Disclaimer: IAAIA (I am an Intelligence Analyst)
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
DigitAL56K, you're an idiot. These statements were recorded and sent out ALL OVER OUR NEWS after 9/11. Where the fuck were you?
This is no more damning and it was well known that he would call out to his people to do horrible things to Americans whenever they could. We know it was carried out by people in his camp.
So we've got reports some of the supposed hijackers are still alive (BBC) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1559151.stm and now this. I'm having a real hard time not reaching for the foil hat these days.
You need more psychedelic art in your life. rhesusmonkey.deviantart.com
You can't fight logical fallacies with logical fallacies.
He is after all a crazy bastard who thinks it's perfectly ok to murder people because of the country they were born in.
Is that true? I haven't seen that opinion expressed.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
When he realized he just actually woke up the largest war machine on earth and the friends he thought he had in the islamic community didn't rally to him, you bet your ass he would say he had nothing to do with the attacks.
---- Liquid was a patriot ----
That does cut both ways, though:
"If I'm going to get attacked, I might as well take the fame."
Once he lost his "cushy little safe haven", it probably made more sense to take responsibility than to reject it... totally independent of whether or not Bin Laden was actually involved.
Whether or not he had any direct hand in it, he was the leader of the organization responsible,
Whoa... stop right there.
A terrorist organisation - or at least, one that's even remotely successful for any length of time - doesn't have the pyramid-style management structure that you're used to seeing.
Instead, it has a bunch of loosely-organised small groups, each consisting of no more than a dozen people. These groups may have a little communication between them but by and large they're fairly autonomous - they just use a common name to identify with the common cause they share. This is why it's damnably difficult to efficiently infiltrate the organisation - put simply, nobody knows much about anyone outside their own group and this is by design.
It follows that even if there are a few people who are considered inspirational by most within the organisation, getting rid of those few people won't necessarily achieve much. In fact, it could well be counter-productive because you'll turn them into martyrs.
Yeah, in September 2001 maybe he said he didn't do it. But check this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videos_of_Osama_bin_Laden#December_13.2C_2001
Here's the most memorable quote from bin Laden. I got it from the defenselink.mil transcript; the one in Wikipedia omits much (the part about the iron structure melting is replaced with an ellipsis).
But wait! The 9/11 Truthers say that this was an actor doubling for bin Laden! Oh, then how about the ones broadcast by Al Jazeera, such as:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videos_of_Osama_bin_Laden#October_29.2C_2004
He says it was his idea to strike the towers, and this direct quote: "If Bush says we hate freedom, let him tell us why we didn't attack Sweden, for example."
So, unless Al Jazeera is secretly working for Bush or cannot authenticate a bin Laden tape, there you have bin Laden refuting his claim that he had nothing to do with it.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Go look at the the FBI website. Osama Bin Laden is not wanted by the FBI for the attacks of 9/11.
Fat Osama only fooled easily lead sheep who are also fooled by other blatantly ridiculous shit... like faith healers such as Benny Hinn, speaking in tongues, and fools who claim cavemen and dinosaurs were on the Earth at the same time a few thousand years ago.
Not entirely. The implicit statement the GP made was that QuantumG failed to provide a source. If the only sources for his statements are unreliable, then QuantumG's statements are unreliable. QuantumG must therefore produce a reliable source if he wishes to be taken seriously. Q.E.D.
I'm not sure that "evidence" is the right word. I don't really see how you can call it anything other than a claim (or counter claim).
He certainly seems to claim involvement in other places in the same document:
Page 270
"Concluding, I tell the American people: God willing, we will continue to fight you. We
will continue the martyrdom operations inside and outside the United States until you end
your injustice, abandon your stupidity, and curb your insolent fellows. You should know
that we count our killed ones, may God have mercy on their souls, particularly those
killed in Palestine at the hands of your allies, the Jews. So, we will punish you for them,
God willing, just as what happened during the New York day. Just remember what I told
you at the time about our security and your security."
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Advocating assassination of a sitting president is never a good idea.
My client's posting contained no "threat" whatsoever, it merely stated his wish.
I think the term is ex-CIA *Asset*... or at least that is what they say in all the spy novels.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
The summary makes it sound like Wikileaks has some kind of mole in the CIA who handed them documents in a shadowy meeting on a grassy knoll... Wikileaks only "obtained" the documents in the sense that "obtained" means "read about in a blog." The documents were first published a couple days ago on Steven Aftergood's excellent newsletter, Secrecy News.
The thing I find strangest is that news reports that were covering the attacks started suggesting Osama bin Laden as a possible perpetrator of the attacks within hours of the event. It became "fact", and everyone was working on this assumption.
I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories, but that's a fact; news anchors repeated it enough, and people were shocked enough to just lap it up.
Stating a wish is advocating. And trying to justify advocating assasination of a sitting president is never a good idea either. Expect a knock on your door at any moment. When you hear the knock, duck and cover, because they're about to come through the opposite wall right after you hear the knocking...
The US's amazing technological superiority on the battlefield, combined with the lack of support on the Taliban's side. Part of the reason why the war with the Soviets went so well is that there was much more technological parity. The Soviets did have more men and equipment for sure, but their technology wasn't all that far ahead of what the Afghan fighters had. A large part of that was because the US was funneling weapons in there. They had access to some extremely modern weapon systems such as the FIM-92 (which was basically brand new in the 80s).
Well that wasn't the case this time around. There was no foreign power supplying modern weapons systems and the US military has some amazingly advanced technology. For example a ground unit that fell under attack could request a precision air strike. A plane already waiting, high above shoulder mounted SAM range, could then deliver accurately hitting a position quite close to the soldiers that called it.
All in all it adds up to a much tougher situation. Any sort of direct attack on US forces is almost guaranteed to result in the loss of the attacking force, often with no US fatalities. Without modern weapons coming in, they really had no way to even the odds.
I think that was another major miscalculation on his part. He thought it would be the same as fighting the Soviets. Well, no. The US military, for whatever else you want to say about it, is just amazingly technologically advanced. They can do things that even other military powers have trouble countering.
Incorrect. The 'Source' is wikinews, who's source is wikileaks, who claims the document to be Identical to one presented by Steven Aftergood of secrecy news, a section of fas.org (Federation of American Scientists.)
Defective Logic
The following transcripts are reproduced below (for people too lazy to click on links); note that these were published to the general public back in 2001 and 2002 respectively.
#1) Statement released by Al Qaeda (Wednesday, 10 October, 2001) at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/middle_east/1590350.stm
#2) Transcript of the videotaped interview between Tayseer Alouni and bin Laden that took place in October 2001 at
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/south/02/05/binladen.transcript/index.html
(Note: Tayseer Alouni would later be convicted of colluding with Al Qaeda -- which explains why he was able to get such close access-- and is now seriving a prison sentence under home detention)
Bold emphasis mine, to point out where apparently Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were all but admitting responsibility.
#1) Statement released by Al Qaeda
If not Osama and not Saddam, who did 9/11?
But it actually doesn't matter, bucause not 9/11, but the gov't reaction to it, was what has fucked the US completely. Any mavericks telling me $4 gas, no-fly lists, and spending zillions on war instead of medicare and science is a good thing, plese go wank off elsewhere.
[citation needed] seriously would like to read sources, have no opinion on your claim just curious.
meep
"Who thinks it's perfectly okay to murder people because of the country they were born in."
Take a look at our soldiers and contractors and, hell, our government, and the treatment of Iraqis over in the sandbox. What right do we have to treat them like that?
It's incredibly naive to think that bin Laden is the only one who thinks that way.
And this is coming from a Staff Sergeant who has seen action over there.
Crazy is a very poor way of describing him. He acts perfectly rational given his beliefs.
To describe him as crazy, removes his responsibility for his actions. If he truly were crazy, he would be no less a victim, than the people he has been involved in murdering. No, I want a sane, intelligent and rational Bin Laden - I want him caught, judged and sentenced and I want it done right. I want us to show the world, that we are, in every sense of the word, better.
Go look at the the FBI website. Osama Bin Laden is not wanted by the FBI for the attacks of 9/11.
What an idiotic argument. Does the FBI (which deals more with domestic crime) not listing someone everyone knows about already somehow prove that 9/11 was not the result of terrorists? I know exactly what you're implying with that statement as I've seen it before; don't go denying being a truther after this.
"On December 20, 2001, German TV channel "Das Erste" broadcast its analysis of the White House's translation of the videotape. On the program "Monitor", two independent translators and an expert on oriental studies found the White House's translation to be not only inaccurate, but also manipulative saying "At the most important places where it is held to prove the guilt of Bin Laden, it is not identical with the Arabic" and that the words used that indicate foreknowledge can not be heard at all in the original Arabic. Prof. Gernot Rotter, professor of Islamic and Arabic Studies at the Asia-Africa Institute at the University of Hamburg said "The American translators who listened to the tapes and transcribed them apparently wrote a lot of things in that they wanted to hear but that cannot be heard on the tape no matter how many times you listen to it."
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
"Known Terrorist"
Who isn't now days?
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
Indeed the American People. I know I had heard that one on the news in Belgium, Europe just after the attacks. I believe one or two days later. At least it was in the standard period where people would say "probably it group XYZ, but let us wait for the confirmation" and not jump to conclusions for their own interest.
The Spanish have done that with the Madrid bombing and they got not elected because of lying to their public and pointing fingers at the wrong terrorists.
As these 'leaked' documents include things send to news agencies, the real issue is why you did not hear it and other countries with lesser freedom of the press did. Later we did not hear about it anymore, because the fact that he denied it was irrelevant.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
It's been universally decried among 9/11 conspiracy nujobs. It's been confirmed as legitimate and real along with the second tape in 2004 where he admits responsibility. Not to mention the architect of the 9/11 plot was an Al-Qaida officer.
Do you really think Bin Laden wasn't aware of a plot to fly AIRPLANES into the WORLD TRADE CENTER of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA? Such a large scale attack would surely require approval? Or are they truly autonomous like you say?
I know nothing of it, I'm just conjecturing, but it doesn't sound too plausible that Bin Laden didn't know.
Do you think he found out September 11th?
FYI: I don't know what you guys are talking about half the time.
Suddenly I get images of "KILL THE MUSLIMS" bullshit in the US
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
At the very least he's a crazy bastard. How could you stay in a cave for days on end? His ass had to itch like crazy.
FYI: I don't know what you guys are talking about half the time.
I was going to say his website was in Singapore, but looking at his posts that may be for other reasons. He should be right though, he wished someone else had done it. He never called for it to be done.
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I reserve the write to mangle english.
``EAT AT JOES.''
>"thuthers"
Great, you even have a purgorative term for a person who thinks he's being lied to and is seeking the truth. Think about that.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Aftergood posted it on his blog a few days ago; you can compare it if you think Wikileaks changed it for some reason. Much of the document is stuff that was previously published in newspapers anyway. What's your point?
Did you just call one of them a queen?
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
the point was that commodoresloat was pointing out that a terrorist was the source, which would imply we shouldn't trust it. Whereas he was referring to the subject of the source opposed to the source itself.
Defective Logic
Wouldn't he take credit for it if he organized the attacks? A victory brings in the money and the recruits, and every military needs that. Even paramilitaries.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Wait, you start by knocking conspiracy theorists and then go on to state that half of their reasoning (bullshit war, creating evidence/ignoring facts, etc) is accurate?
Something is wrong here.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
"Saddam had no WMD's"
It's funny, and hypocritical in the extreme how everybody keeps claiming that.
Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, is doubting even in the slightest that Saddam did this :
http://pukmedia.com/kurdish/images/stories/news_small/m4.2008/halabja%20kolag.jpg
The halabja campaign ... a series of rocket-based poisonous gas attacks comitted by the Iraqi government (the fire order was given by the very son of Saddam) against it's own citizens. Nobody doubts it happened. But for conspiracy theorists it's a really very very very inconvenient truth.
After all, using those weapons obviously proves Saddam had rockets that distributed poisonous gas upon impact. Obviously every single weapon that does this is classified as WMD. It's true that they were not found. Given that Saddam actually USED those weapons that does NOT bring the question "did Bush lie ?", it merely brings the question "where are these weapons now ?". Unless you actually believe Saddam would shoot every last of his best weapons at unarmed civilians.
Can we please bring some common sense into this ? If we know a guy shot some children, then gets arrested with powder on his hands, but without a gun, that does not mean the witnesses who saw him shoot lied. It merely means we're short a gun. That would be a VERY good reason to search the neighbourhood for said gun (especially if the next door neighbour is a Jew hating theocratic massacrer like the Iranian government).
You're numbers are wicked sick!
FYI: I don't know what you guys are talking about half the time.
Stating a wish is advocating.
I doubt it, but it seems irrelavant in any case. Are you saying that advocating the assination of a sitting president is illegal?! (If so please reference the appropriate statute/case law.)
And trying to justify advocating assasination of a sitting president is never a good idea either.
Who precisely was justifying any such advocacy?
I repeat, my client made no threat, he merely expressed a wish.
Expect a knock on your door at any moment.
Oh, I'm expecting it already. Wait I think she's here ... gotta run.
I take it you've never been involved in a truly secret cell operation?
For all they know, Bin Laden or any one of his handlers were assets of the CIA and couldn't be trusted.
Yes, you heard me right -- do you really think it's in the best interest of the CIA to "catch Bin Laden"?
No, you need the figurehead alive in order to have an effective scapegoat.
Politicians get elected based on fear. Fear the terrorists to overshadow your more reasonable fears of big government and big corporations.
That sounds remarkably Fight Club-ish (yes, I know, rules 1 and 2 - I'm not a member, I can break them).
Where does that leave us? Osama is a schitzo with an obesession for Ikea furniture and a junkie girlfriend, and all we need to do is wait for him to kill his alter ego and this whole thing will work itself out?
Forget the lead-laced toys from China - watch out for the soap from the middle east.
Umm.... yeah.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Poison gas is not WMD, seriously, are we going after the local chemistry teacher for possesing chlorine soon?
Erm, the "source" in this case is a known terrorist who issued a fatwa in the 1990s calling for Muslims around the world to kill Americans every chance they get. How "credible" can he be?
Nothing what you wrote means that he isn't a man of his word. Indeed organization that repeated cry wolf tend to become more and more irrelevant over time. You need credibility to instill fear. It may well be -- though maybe I'm not correct -- that al-Qaeda tends to be fairly straight up with its claims of responsibility.
To whom precisely are you referring? That statement could apply to quite a few people with power these days.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
My guess is that this will be used to help McCain by the end of the week. Since 9/11, the feds have continually called alerts or released all sorts of faked data just in front of election cycles. Hopefully, Americans will quit being sheep and do the right thing in the booth.
This was commonly reported immediately after 9/11. It was back when any Osama tape was immediately broadcast and analyzed to death.
Thankyou for saying that. So often when these things are "revealed" I'm just left sitting, "Didn't we know that at the time?!" (Or is everyone else's memory working fine and I'm just mad &/or psychic.
As far as Bin Laden's denial of involvement ... it is not beyond possibilty that a bunch of Islamic terrorists could organise themselves to carry something that 9/11 out, even without Bin Laden's involvement. It would seem to be more self-serving for him to have claimed rather than disavowed it. His actions were (I'm not conviced he lives) usually marked by any fear of American retaliation whatsoever. I'm pursuaded that, on the balance of probabilities, Bin Laden really was surprised by the attack.
'Al Qaida' presents the administration with a convenient brand name. It's easy to talk about a single entity and make the folks in voter land understand what you're talking about, just like it was easier in the 60s and 70s to talk about "the Mafia," instead of confusing people with the reality of multiple (not all Italian) crime families, gangs, etc etc. Secondly it sounds better to say "we are fighting Al Qaida," instead of "we are fighting Muslims," or even "Muslim fundamentalists."
That being said, this isn't a case of some draconian regime of censorship imposed by a tyrranical government. It's just a bit of marketing folks. And if you seriously want to inform yourself and go beyond the 'Al Qaida' label, this is information has been out there, security failures notwithstanding.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
"He is after all a crazy bastard who thinks it's perfectly ok to murder people because of the country they were born in"
Which is the same policy US has with the other countries, just with some makeup. Or do you think that one American live worth more than one Pakistani, Afghan, African or South American life?
The turks are fighting their own religious nutters. The military would NEVER allow for turkey to support the likes of Bin Laden, turkey is secular and the army sees to it.
No, the likes of Bin Laden and Turks are natural enemies. Hell, Turkey is even friendly to Israel, almost allies, with Turkey using a LOT of Israeli made weapons.
No if you ever been to Turkey or met its people, you would know that the country is FAR to western and enjoying what that bring to ever go in support of extremists muslims.
The new religious uprising comes from poor people from the backwards parts of turkey migrating and when things go to good for to long people can forget what made things so prosperous and elect people who say that doing X would make it better when current properity has been down to avoiding X like the plague.
Look at the revival of christian parties in europe and the US.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I must confess I am already annoying all my friends in the US to register as voters and to do it right this time. It's a huge problem when the clever ones refuse to vote.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
"Unless you actually believe Saddam would shoot every last of his best weapons at unarmed civilians."
Or that he dismantled them. As he has said to other people, even in private. Why are you erecting a strawman ? The timing is all that's important here. Yes, Saddam used awful weapons on his own people. But that wasn't the question. The question was: did he still have them later on, and the answer to that, it seems now, is: no. Therefore, did Bush lie ? We don't know, but it looks like it an awful lot.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Are you saying that advocating the assination of a sitting president is illegal?! (If so please reference the appropriate statute/case law.)
TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 41 > Â 871
After numerous rounds of "We don't know if Osama Bin Ladin is still alive," Bin Ladin himself decided to send George W. Bush a note in his own handwriting to let Bush know that he was still in the game.
Bush opened the note which appeared to contain a single line of coded message: 370HSSV-0773H.
Bush was baffled, so he E-mailed it to John McCain. McCain and his aides had no clue either, so they sent it to the FBI. No one could solve it at the FBI, so it went to the CIA, then to the NSA.
With no clue as to its meaning, the FBI finally asked Britain's MI-6 for help. Within a few seconds, MI-6 cabled back with this reply: "Tell Bush that he is holding the message upside down."
> crazy bastard who thinks it's perfectly ok to murder people because of the country they were born in
as opposed to the country they happen to live in?
Wassup homies. Just wanting to let y'all know thanks for plugging my 10th year anniversary!
Me and the Taliban Massif have got some great stuff coming out for the anniversary, including the long awaited Osama - The Best Of album. Which includes my duet with Britney Spears: "Afghan Rose (Best get yo' Burka on Bitch)". And my own take on that famous Bob Marley classic: "No Jihad No Cry".
All that plus remixes by Pete Tong, Basement Jaxx and newcomers The Scientology Crew with their remix of my gangsta-rap classic: "Pop a Cap in G Dubya (Smack my Xenu Up mix)".
Love,
Osama B. and The Taliban Massif
"You need to take a long hard look at the kind of people running America"
Two things I would like to see are; the missing Saudi pages from the 2002 US intelligence report, and a transcript of the converstaion between Powell and Arrafat when Powell visited Arrafat during Israel's siege of his HQ's. The first was widely reported, the second less so but I am dammned if I can find a decent reference or news report about either.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
ROCKETS that distribute large doses of chlorine upon impact ARE WMD's.
And yes if your chemistry teacher were to make a rocket like that, that would be a WMD.
And soon we'll have more 'surprises'.
Russia : Israel +US before Novermber 5 will bomb Iran
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0oD7P7tsi4
...there was some other agenda for the war in Iraq, that we are unlikely to find out for a long time if ever.
I don't think that the agenda is even in question: it's what is euphemistically called "Energy Security". Anyone who thinks otherwise is paying too much attention to what the British government says.
The counter-argument that oil supply is now less secure than before is beside the point - the intention was to put Iraqi oil in friendly hands, the actual result merely proves the incompetence of the people who were in charge.
So you're actually blaming Bush for suspecting that someone who executed something like the halabja campaign might actually ... have lied.
Are you totally insane ? Are you truly someone who would truly be surprised if a massacrer lies ? Any massacrer has pretty much proved he's not to be trusted.
Btw, the actual "rumour" is that he sold them (and the "recipe") to Syria after the invasion started. May God prevent them from getting fired at Beirut.
It's all conspiracy, but no 'theory'...wake up people! You should open your eyes, America blew up the towers themselves to start the New World Order - I suggest you watch '9/11 : Loose Change', anyone with an ounce of intelligence would smell something fishy going on. Bin Laden was a CIA-trained actor. And no, this has nothing to do with alien reptiles or David Icke, it's to do with masonic lodges, world banks, power & dumbing down & controlling the general population.
http://nathanlindsell.blogspot.com/
The cbc article you link to provides about 4 direct quotes from the video, and as far as I can tell none of them are actually "I, Osama Bin Laden, was responsible for the attacks on the WTC." The quotes provided seem only to verify that Al-Queda was responsible, and that Osama was part of that group, and approves.
I'm not saying he didn't do it. I'm not saying that he didn't, at some point, claim individual responsibility. This article, however, does not actually indicate either.
A higher standard of evidence is required. We've all been misled before.
I doubt it, but it seems irrelavant in any case. Are you saying that advocating the assination of a sitting president is illegal?! (If so please reference the appropriate statute/case law.)
Actually doing it for anyone at all is illegal (and carries a criminal penalty). Doing it for the sitting, or any ex-president raises the maximum penalty to the death penalty.
You can get rewarded a hell of a lot for running against him, or campaigning against him. Advocating violence against his person however, is a grave offence. (advocating violence against any person without backing from a judge is a grave offence. Your victim does not need to be president for that)
And sorry to add this word, but you really deserve it ... Obviously. Does it really need to be explained that violence or advocacy of violence against political parties has NO PLACE WHATSOEVER in a democracy ? I mean come on.
You seem like an intelligent chap. Perhaps you have some kind of pamphlet or newsletter I can subscribe to?
who thinks it's perfectly ok to murder people because of the country they were born in.
I have seen other people acting like that.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
"Sure, the 9/11 conspiracy theorists will be able to make a new bunch of YouTube videos, but all the sane people realise that going to war was a sham anyway."
No conspiracy needed:
US funds terrorists
US stirs up hornets nest in other countries knowing someone will retaliate
US knows attacks are coming
US leaves doors open in the months preceding ti 9/11 expecting the attacks
Voila, no big conspiracy required, just hit the hornets nest and leave your doors open.
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77 HITS
Really Long Off Topic Combo
Is it *really* that hard to believe there are bad people in positions of power, especially in the United States?
There. Fixed it for you.
Haha, you're crazy.
Bin Laden initially denied involvement in the September 11, 2001 attacks, and then later claimed credit in a 2004 video for personally directing the 19 hijackers.
Sources, including a transcript of the video:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2004/10/29/binladen_message041029.html
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/29/bin.laden.transcript/
Says another Wiki (which anyone can edit) and sources suspected to have some sort of control by the BA.
They don't all have Bin Laden's current postal address and telephone hotline. If they did, it would be fairly trivial to track him down.
Of course, as soon as you start thinking of a terrorist organisation like this, you have a huge problem.
Conventional methods that you might use against a country (eg. declare war) or a criminal conspiracy (eg. infiltrate them) don't work. You just wind up playing whack-a-mole with a twist - for every mole you whack, there's a good chance that two will appear in their place.
Exactly how does that differ from the USA's modus operandi? They assassinate democratically elected leaders and bomb innocents civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq and many other countries prior to that.
There have been political tensions on and off between Ireland and the UK since the fifteenth century.
The latest bout has more or less calmed down now, but at one point we were arresting and holding people indefinitely for the "crime" of being Irish in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sound familiar?
The problem with this approach is that as soon as you arrest a man who was thought to be fairly blameless within his circle of friends and family, most of whom were aware of the political tension but were otherwise fairly ambivalent towards you, they turn against you. Lather, rinse and repeat a few times and if you didn't have a terrorist organisation before you do now.
so what your saying is that we don't have to be at war with eurasia?! gawd, i need some gin
Propaganda
To correct it even more: Bin Laden wasn't even a figurehead or a source of inspiration until the US made him one. He was the source of funding, and incidently the only person tying a several terrorist groups together because they were all smooching off him.
The US loves its conspiracies and the killing of JFK is perhaps the granddaddy of them all.
What is intresting to see is not the theories themselves but how simplistic and wishful they are. You get the idea that conspiracy theorists are people who desperately want to life in an organized world where at least SOMEONE is in charge. Look around, check all the conspiracy theories and they ALL lead to the same conclusion. SOMEONE somewhere is in charge. That makes the world a lot easier to deal with. If you like the world as it is, then X will keep it that way. If you don't like the world as it is, all you got to is topple X. Easy.
With JFK you got several theories who could have done the killing, all shadowy groups that are claimed to control far more then they are supposed to. If only you could expose them freedom of the people could be restored.
Yet the intresting thing is what the conspiracy theorists neatly ignore, because they don't want to hear this, but is far more damning. That several groups had seperate plans to assasinate the president of the united states. For certain groups like members of the FBI this in itself is treason enough. They never actually need to put the plan in motion, even discussing it should be enough to earn them some serious time at a secret location.
But the conspiracy theorists don't want to hear that the world ain't run by anyone and that bad things happen just because one group/person went beyond talking, that makes the world far to chaotic and random.
There were people planning to kill JFK, conspiracy theorists are right, they just didn't carry it out, but for a lot of them the planning alone should still be a crime in itself.
In a way it like a Murder She Wrote episode, where to find out the killer she tells everyone she has the evidence and will be at location Y. The person to then show up to kill her, is the killer. Well not always, SOMETIMES it is a person seeking to protect the real killer. This is what causes all the weirdness around JFK, various groups who had been thinking/hinting that JFK should be killed trying to cover up that they might have been involved. Had someone they knew taken their words to heart? The cover-up happened even when there was nothing to cover up.
The same, in a far more complex mess goes for 9/11. If you look at it, you can hope that someone somewhere is in charge OR come to the sickening conclusion that it all was just a mess of people suggesting things, others listening, misreading, misjudging until you come down to a case where some people did something and others failed to stop them because nobody really is in charge and all the things that normally go right, suddenly went wrong all together. 9/11 if you like was an accident. The idea that there is one person at the top on either side who planned it all is wishfull thinking. Osama on side and Dick Cheny on the other NEVER wanted this to happen. Not 9/11 and NOT the war on terror. Oh Osama wanted an attack BUT not one that would end up with two muslim countries under american control and NO worldwide muslim uprising. Realize this, Osama got NO response from western muslims. There are MILLIONS living in the west, and that is where they stayed.
Dick Cheney and the likes on the other hand haven't gained anything either. High oil prices? So what? America doesn't prosper from that at all.
No, 9/11 was just one of those things that happened.
If you want to make sense of it, then Captain Blackadder said it best. 9/11 happened because it was to much of an effort NOT to have a war.
Nobody planned it, just nobody worked hard enough to stop it. And that includes US the people who voted for the people to incompetent to create world peace.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Oh come on dude, many countries have bad shit, do US kick butt in all those? NO.
Admit it, there is a alternative motive here to take oil OUT of the market to INCREASE prices, to INCREASE demand for US $$$$ to prop up the bad debt USA will NEVER PAY BACK. Even shell have admitted it.
Japan $583b
China $503b
UK $283b
OPEC $170b
Brazil$151b
Caribiean $122b
Russia $65b
The UN/IMF/WorldBank are the worlds most successful criminals.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
The question was: did he still have them later on, and the answer to that, it seems now, is: no. Therefore, did Bush lie ? We don't know, but it looks like it an awful lot.
I don't understand why people believe this. If you look at The Downing Street memo
http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/docs/memotext.pdf
For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary.
This is supposed to be the smoking gun that proves that Bush and Blair lied about WMD. And yet one of the contingencies they planned for was that Saddam would use WMD on Kuwait or Israel. From what I can tell Saddam either destroyed his WMD in secret or shipped them to Syria. But what he definitely didn't do was to comply with the ceasefire at the end of the first Gulf War or the numerous UN resolutions to prove he had destroyed them. Given that Iraq had been found with surprisingly advanced WMD programs at the end of the first Gulf War and that he had used poison gas against both the Iranian army and the Kurds, it's silly to expect that anyone would believe he had disarmed without some sort of proof.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Popular Mechanics certainly cannot be trusted with any scientific theory. They are not interested in logical inquiry; they are merely interested in simply arguing to get attention.
If tall buildings can fall symmetrically into heaps of powder and small pieces, then there is a problem. Either 1) it is unsafe to work or live in or near any tall buildings because they may have similar "structural weaknesses", or 2) there was a controlled demolition.
It is necessary to investigate all theories. If some of those theories are later determined to be wrong, the investigators are still to be praised, because they did necessary work.
If it can be proven that the fall of the three largest World Trade Center buildings was not due to controlled demolition, we are left with the idea that tall buildings can be completely and thoroughly demolished by heavy shocks. (But that has never happened before or since.) Earthquakes or hurricane damage could cause them to fall, for example. It would be foolish to accept the explanation that, "oh, in that case it was an unusual structural problem, but that could never occur in other buildings." If tall buildings can fall to small pieces, then it is not safe to work in or around them.
It is interesting to note that one of the brothers of George W. Bush was an executive in the security company that was responsible for the WTC buildings. I'm not saying there is a connection. I'm not claiming there is no connection. It is simply interesting.
Recently, in a TV program, Popular Mechanics labeled everyone who agreed with them "experts" and everyone who disagreed "conspiracy theorists". One of the Popular Mechanics presenters was so young, angry, and obviously immature that it is surprising he is allowed to be publically connected with the company. Popular Mechanics simply does the minimum necessary to get viewers, to appease its advertisers; it is not in my opinion a reputable company.
I have voted in every election since 1978, and always say to everyone "vote as if it mattered". I work the polls so I can see what the voters look like. I am beginning to understand why a lot of folks refuse to vote. The vast majority of U.S. voters simply don't know anything.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
I'm pretty sure, sure as in 99% certain, that this denial by Osama was broadcasted in Europe/The Netherlands very shortly after the attacks.
I remember this very distinct because I was suprised that the US found a suspect that damn fast and that that same suspect denied it even faster (while knowing he would take the blame no matter what, so why deny the greatest act of terror ever if you are a terrorist?)
Ask your local news agency why it wasn't broadcasted in the US.......
Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.
Here is the big issue with this factoid.
Halabja, March 16, 1988
Kuwait invasion / Persian Gulf War August 1990
Iraq War, March 20, 2003
I think once we already go to war with someone, then end that war, and then wait a decade, we cant consider anything that happened before that "evidence". After `91 anything would be fair game, but it looks like Saddam actually kept his nose pretty clean, He probably figured it was all he had to do to keep his position, and that bush wouldn't dare invade without a good reason. Little did he know how unstable our leaders were eh?
The claims the bush administration fabricated involved vials of anthrax and large amounts of yellow cake uranium and weapons grade aluminum with long range missiles that present a clear an imminent threat to America's national security. I don't remember the "For the people who died 15 years ago!" rational for war.
Web Developers: Celebrate to our roots! Animated Gifs and Tiled Backgrounds, dont let our history die!
GP was referring to the 'source' as an ex-CIA agent, not referring to Osama.
Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
When he realized he just actually woke up the largest war machine on earth and the friends he thought he had in the islamic community didn't rally to him, you bet your ass he would say he had nothing to do with the attacks.
It seems odd to me that you can assume that they were able to plan and execute the attacks, and yet not expect the reaction. I think they must have expected retaliation on a grand scale and planned for it (even if only to create martyrs for the cause). And even if they were expecting more from the islamic community at large, that was offset by the decision to go to Iraq and leave Bin Laden and co as a secondary/lower-priority task. Waking up the largest war machine on earth isn't a big deal if their guns aren't pointed at you.
Lo. Witness the gears of the great Republican machine in action.
This is just another stunt by the Bush administration to pay back McCain for being a good lapdog the last eight years. I'm looking forward to the dramatic drop in gas prices coming soon in October.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
What does it really say then? Where is the "correct" transcript that proves the translation errors.
I will probably sound like a troll but duuh! That's what everyone with a real brain between their ears knew from the beginning but were to afraid to tell that to the US government (remember "you are with us or against us"? how democratic is that?) or was thought as a conspiracy nut. There may truth in there, after all there is no smoke without fire but come on... Everybody knows the US gov (or the oligarchy behind it) is after the oil in the middle east.
ics
I still wonder why the FBI hasn't updated their most wanted listing for OBL. The 9/11 stuff still is not mentioned: http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/terbinladen.htm
The documents were translated and the messages and interviews were authenticated by the US CIA
Well, they must be real then, mustn't they? Unlike all the other completely conflicting videos and messages that were also...authenticated.
You are being disingenuous. Everybody knows that the WMDs Bush and his cronies were talking about were the ones they said could be launched within 15 minutes and could reach the USA and result in a mushroom cloud over an American city. That is, they tried to convince people that Saddam had nuclear and could start destroying American cities at a moment's notice. And apparently people fell for it.
They were not talking about launching chemical weapons a short distance. Apologists like you who try to change history after the fact and imply that Bush and his lying cronies were talking about near-distance chemical WMDs are as bad as the liars in power.
Next you'll be saying that nobody in the Bush administration ever implied in any way that Iraq was linked to 9/11 and that our going in to Iraq was in part a result of their having been involved in Iraq.
No, the goal should have been to prevent terrorism. Hint: they don't do it because "they hate freedom".
I own a small company that sells tinfoil hats to angst-ridden European conspiracy "truthers". Thank you for your continued support... and remember: the CIA is watching you.
The only people who are decring it as fake are the 9/11 truthers and various Muslim group who say that the 9/11 attackers were all Jews.
I'd have thought that one of the relevant points is whether if Iraq had some poison gas weapons somewhere, it was legitimate cause to launch a full scale invasion, occupation and installation of a more amenable government. After all, certain other countries that are considerably less likely to be invaded have much greater stockpiles of "WMD" than Iraq has ever had.
But regardless, the UN weapons inspector (both at the time and a former one) are on record as saying that they were not finding (and had not found) evidence of "WMD". If the aim had been to deal with "WMD violations" then the logical course of action would be to allow the weapons inspectors to continue. However, as it looked more and more certain that they would find no evidence, they had to be pulled out as the US was already beginning its invasion. The carriers were in place, the troops on the move. How much evidence is needed that the US-led invasion was not motivated by WMD in any capacity? It was always a pretext and the attack took place before it could be exposed.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
I am not crazy, for I AM NAPOLEON!!
old news. it was in all the arabic papers back then.
_ In Egypt Networks: Network Solutions with a Twist
What does it really say then? Where is the "correct" transcript that proves the translation errors.
Good point. If Mister Professor of Islamic and Arabic studies says the transcript is incorrect then he can provide ones he asserts is correct.
He's had almost seven years to do it. Someone should contact him now and demand he produce it.
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I should have said "To fight terrorists"
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
From all that I read, it looks like al-quaeda is more of a stand-alone complex than a hierarchically organized group.
So, open source with Osama in charge of the kernel?
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Tell that to any remaining WW1 vets and see what response you get.
Wow, if the source is credible that's pretty damning.
Not as damning as what we already know for a fact: that the Bush administration was lying to the American people about Iraq and that the American people were stupid enough to believe that bullshit even though the facts were already on the table in 2004 at election time.
Buddy, I was positive it was Osama within seconds of the second plane hitting. Just because you were ignorant of world politics at the time doesn't mean the rest of us were.
Bugger!
I reserve the write to mangle english.
After Iraq, if the US asks to inspect anyone people will just say that the US is not to be trusted on weapons inspections. Dictators will be able to claim that the US is sending in spies, not working towards disarmament. With Russia going nuts, and Pakistan on the brink, the US has lost the credibility it needs to diffuse international conflicts.
Does this mean that Dick Cheney didn't write them?
You are welcome on my lawn.
The question wasn't whether Saddam ever had WMDs, the question was whether he had them at the time we invaded Iraq.
All of the evidence indicated that he did not, including reports from UN weapons inspectors who were actually working in Iraq at that time. By the way, in the month building up to the invasion, George Bush forced the inspectors to leave Iraq.
By now, there is plenty of evidence that the decision to invade Iraq was made long before September 11, 2001. You can bet that John McCain has similar plans for the event of his own inauguration. It's what Republicans do.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The problem seems to be that in this particular case, the mass-killer *didn't* lie. But Bush didn't get his information directly from Saddam, did he ? He can't just make a phonecall or something. Instead, he had to rely on the CIA, who also doesn't ask Saddam directly, but instead (as it seems to be now) is pushed by Cheney's office to produce damning evidence.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
"Do not enforce your values on them and they will not try to enforce their values on you."
Call me a cynic, I can live with it, but everyone stand on their head who believes this.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
I don't think that anyone's disputing that he once had some rockets. However he didn't seem to have any when we invaded. The justification for war was that Saddam apparently possessed WMDs at that time and was preparing to use them. In that context, the fact that Saddam didn't in fact seem to posses any such weapons casts doubts on both the integrity or the competence of those who took us into the war.
You mean he was saving some to use against a greater threat? Like invading foreign troops, maybe?
On the other hands, rockets aren't guns. You shoot a rocket, you don't have it any more. What you're suggesting (to use your analogy) is launching an operation that could engulf half a city in riots, purely on the suspicion that there may be some more bullets somewhere around the place.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
No, there were *three* issues; one (the one that Tony Blair used) was that there were long distance rockets (to deliver a chemical or *normal* payload to Cyprus, for example), the second one was that he had nerve gas (to be delivered on the battlefield). The first one is a threat if you happen to live in Europe, the second one only when you invade his country (or live in it, but that was never really brought up in this context). The third one was that he had Uranium (the Niger letter) - against which there is no real protection on the battlefield. The first and third issues were definitely lied about, the second one was questionable to say the least.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
OK, Afghanistan is a difficult battlefield, with no real oil. If the US wanted a scapegoat, they could have gone straight for Saddam, or that guy in Iran. Framing Osama bin Laden for 9/11 does not make any sense, it's just plain paranoid. Why not pick a scapegoat who is either easier to blame (like Saddam), or completely fictional (1984 style).
"Why not write something useful"
In this conversation? OK.
Don't worry about OBL. Worry about the Russian bombers in Venezuela. Worry about the possible share market crash when Wall Street opens. Worry about Pakistan allying with Russia if you cross its border once again. Worry about the unidentified sub seen in Japanese waters.
Then, at the end of all that, don't worry about it because there is nothing you can do about it. Be happy, love one another, and believe in yourself.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
"the term is ex-CIA *Asset* " .. I think banks have similar terminology.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I have a feeling there will be more and more information and mis-information of this kind as the Presidential election comes closer.
So with anything this time of year, I'll take it with a grain of salt and speculation.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
Bin Laden was already on the Most Wanted list long before 9/11, for the bombing of the USS Cole.
No portion of this post may be rebroadcast without the express, written consent of Major League Baseball.
If you're going to have the blame pinned on you for something, you might as well try to take the credit for it as well.
Authenticated like the passport of Mohamed Atta found in the rumbles of the WTC???
Ehh, did you read the quote? The passages in question weren't definitively comprehensible -- meaning no clear translation for those passages is possible.
Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. ...voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
~ Hermann Goering, Hitler's Right Hand Man
Disclaimer: IAAIA (I am an Intelligence Analyst)
Spooky
That's not what I'm reading in the quote. Prof. Gernot Rotter seems to be saying that the words in the American translation can not be heard in the entire video, not that the video is unintelligible. He also says that the words are not identical, so it seems that he has a different translation. Where is it?
See? Bush was right. The US did invade the right country. 9/11 is the whole reason for the war in Iraq.
"And what about the war in Afghanistan?"
Afga-What?
--
Was that a good Palin?
Of course. Was that your point?
I personally think we should go back to the senate being elected by the state congress...
It would certainly do wonders for state's rights, which have been steadily eroding for over a century.
He did, apparently, approve of it though beforehand and take credit for it elsewhere afterwards.
Exactly where and when did Bin Laden take credit for the attacks? I've only heard hear-say on the matter, so where's the evidence? Just curious.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Dick Cheney and the likes on the other hand haven't gained anything either.
Four more years?
Patriot act to control the peasants?
High oil prices? So what? America doesn't prosper from that at all.
Some rich fat Americans in Texas probably had to be sedated cause all that excitement over a 4$ a gallon price was bad for them.
9/11 happened because it was to much of an effort NOT to have a war.
Wait...wha... WHAT?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I guess it's impolite to mention at this point that we've just spent 5 years killing the exact same people we're demonising Saddam Hussein for killing, isn't it?
I guess it's really impolite to mention that killing people in a country that hadn't attacked us, hadn't the means to attack us at the moment, and had no plans to attack us in the future makes us murderers.
It's been a long time.
http://www.amazon.com/Messages-World-Statements-Osama-Laden/dp/1844670457/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221481223&sr=8-1
And sorry to add this word, but you really deserve it ... Obviously.
What I asked for was citation that "advocating" the assasination was illegal. Which was my obtuse way of saying that the provision cited did not. Forgive me if that was a little too subtle.
I deserved what? Your misintepretation, your outrage? For what? Pointing out that OPs speech was not prohibited under the cited provision? I mean come on!
Does it really need to be explained that violence or advocacy of violence against political parties has NO PLACE WHATSOEVER in a democracy
Not only does it not have to explained, but it is impertinent (i.e. it is of no relevance to the discussion of whether s871 makes 'advocacy' an offence).
Perhaps he was hoping to ignite the jihad in all the islamic countries so he didn't have to worry about the backlash so specifically against him. Instead, he was condemned by them all.
---- Liquid was a patriot ----
Thank you. I totally respect our military for their skill and their honor. I just didn't know if anyone in the military has compassion for the people in Iraq.
What I mean to say is that you are at least looking at the people there before making any assumptions about who is a terrorist or a murderer.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
What does the Arrafat thing matter? The Palestinian territories don't have any oil.
No US "staff sergeant" would suggest moral equivalence between the US and bin laden. I'm calling bullshit, and I'm calling you a liar.
What absolute bullshit. Nobody who has served over there thinks we have treated "Iraqis" poorly. We liberated the country from a sociopathic dictator, turned it into a democracy, and didn't even ask them to pay for it with oil revenue. Oh, and we killed a bunch of al Qaeda invaders in the process.
I am utterly astounded that the people on Slashdot are willing to give bin Laden the benefit of the doubt, but presume Bush guilty. You people are absolutely nuts, and when a US city has a mushroom cloud over it, good luck modding people like me "troll," since your computer will be dripping off of your melted face.
A bit early in the morning for you? Haven't had your first coffee yet?
You've cited the provision under discussion which we know (at least those of us who have read it), deals with making threats to the President or VP, especially via the postal system. It does not make 'advocating' his assination an offence. If it did I would hardly have asked for a citation for a provision that did, duh!
OPs original statement, "I wish someone had just assassinated that fucker...", cannot constitute a threat, if only for the fact that you can't reasonably threaten to do something in the past.
What's funny is people think that because they are tolerant, they can convince everyone else to be. People have their values all screwed up...
Talk about intolerance... which societies are more tolerant of gays? Which society is more tolerant of interracial and interfaith marriages?
Yes, a lot of so-called "Christians" will frown upon homosexual relationships... but very few will throw you in jail for it. They will frown upon someone deciding to leave and join another church, but they won't execute you for it. I simply don't understand why we in the west are continuously asked to be tolerant while others get away with honor killings and complete intolerance of others.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
huh? Even the CIA said it was faked.
Anyone with eyes can tell it is faked. The guy looks nothing like Osama bin Laden.
How we know is more important than what we know.
You can't prove any of these were lies. E.g. the yellow cake allegation is something which MI5 still believes but the CIA doesn't. Iraq had bought yellowcake from Niger in the past, after the first Gulf War the IAEA found 400 tonnes of it. Following the invasion US troops found it, and shipped it off to a Canadian uranium producer.
Polish troops actually found Sarin
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-07-01-poland-iraq-sarin_x.htm
Insurgents actually tried to use it against US troops
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3722255.stm
And obviously Saddam used gas on both the Kurds and Iranians.
And the Iraqis used missiles against coalition forces in Gulf War II. They'd destroyed their long range missiles in secret. This is what I think happened
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WMD_theories_in_the_aftermath_of_the_2003_Iraq_War#Saddam_lied_to_retain_power
On 14 December Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. forces. Time Online Edition reports that in his first interrogation he was asked whether Iraq had any WMDs. According to an official, his reply was:
"No, of course not, the U.S. dreamed them up itself to have a reason to go to war with us." The interrogator continued along this line, said the official, asking: "if you had no weapons of mass destruction then why not let the U.N. inspectors into your facilities?" Saddam's reply: "We didn't want them to go into the presidential areas and intrude on our privacy."
Of course in retrospect WMDs were a brilliant casus belli for the US to choose. There's absolutely no way a regime like Saddams would be willing to tell the UN weapons inspectors enough about WMDs to convince them that it had disarmed.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Yes, Saddam used awful weapons on his own people.
Allow me to clarify this statement. Saddam ordered a village of 100 or so people to be killed (there are different accounts in Iraq that Saddam had no involvement and that it was more likely the Curds. They had a mutual hatred of each other) by WWI relics like mustard gas, which the U.S. had been selling across Iraq and it's neighboring countries. He's nowhere near the evil slaughtering mastermind hoarding away nukes the gubmint made him out to be.
Or to quote Donald Rumsfeld: "We know they have WMDs, there is no debate about it".
(For that quote alone he should get a Weasel Of The Year award, a free punch in the stomach, and a one-way trip to Guantanamo).
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
You're right. He did have WMDs...over 20 years ago when the US was an ally selling him these weapons. Saddam doesn't have these weapons anymore and hasn't had them for years. We know because the US fought another War with Iraq almost 20 years ago where all the weapons were destroyed by bombings and all inspections since the first war have come up clean.
Actually the CIA has its own doubts. In fact they know that the attacks on Halabja were not against Iraq's own people. The Iranians had control of it and Saddam attacked with chemical weapons. Let's not forget that Iran also used chemical weapons and no one is really sure which side we can attribute the Halabja deaths to.
Extremely bad analogy. The US is not the World Police first of all. Second, we have seen how we invading a soveirgn nation on a hunch works out in the end and it isn't pretty. Third, keeping with your bad analogy, hiding WMDs in Iran is like crips hiding a gun in a bloods neighborhood.
Time makes more converts than reason
+1
That's wrong, though. I mean, it may be partially correct, but the "real" Al Qaeda did/does have people in Iraq. They may not have, at the start of the war, but several prominent members have been caught.
It's more likely a mix of new recruits with some old leaders.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
But we already know that he has said, for years, that he was part of 9/11 and the 9/11 commission traced the evidence to him.
This is not discourse. This is not reason.
We need to consider why this information is out now.
So, the CIA, who have operated outside the law since inception, have claimed that they didn't train OBL? What a fucking surprise!
Let me ask you a philosophical question. If an organization is charged with defending a country, and that organization has unlimited funding, no oversight, is inherently paranoid, and more subtly, is aware that it will only have these powers if the American people believe that they are always in danger, do you think that same organization would ensure the success in intercepted terrorist plans which have "acceptable" outcomes in order to have the resources to stop possibly "unacceptable" outcomes?
The CIA and British intelligence decided on their own, and with fewer than 100 people succeeded in, overthrowing a democratically elected government in 1953. And stated specifically it was so we could control their nationalized oil industry. God only knows what they are doing today.
Ignoring the anti-American screed there, this is a serious claim, and one, I confess, that I've never heard. Can you provide some reference that the video of Bin Laden admitting he planned the 9/11 attacks has been 'universally decried'??
- Necron69
If I read bin laden correctly, his main goal is to replace the corrupt, dictatorial, apostate regimes in the islamic world with a single religious state, the caliphate. He hates us cause we support those govt; he doesnt really care about our western freedom and life style all that much
Bush say that bin laden hates us cause of our freedom.
what is amusing is that bin laden is loosing the war he started - we are more involved, with more corrupt regimes then before 9/11; at the same time bush is loosing his war, as we have less freedom.
I finally understand the curse part of the (supposed) chinese saying, may you live in interesting times.
Why Afghanistan? Got some proof that they're behind it that we haven't seen? Or are we to believe the government's conspiracy theory? How do you know it wasn't domestic? Could've been some wacko Tim McVeigh groupies or Branch Davidians. You know that some people were still trying to pin OKC on a foreign threat?
What?
It took ten years translate cause his beard muffled everything the said.
Really? Because I live in the U.S. and I hear a very small fringe minority of kooks saying things like "kill all the muslims."
The left in the U.S. characterizes the right as being that way but it's simply not true for all but a tiny fraction of the U.S., and given 300 million population, you will be able to find fringe groups with ANY philosophy (look at Fred Phelps, for example).
Stupid sexy Flanders.
No, that would be a chemical weapon, not a WMD.
There's like 5 left, and you probably wouldn't have to worry too much about their response. But I agree with your point.
So, Osama Bin Laden == Emmanuel GoldStein. What a convenient guy he is...
As an intelligence analyst, what is your take on the possibility of Osama still being an American Operative?
I'm certainly claiming that everyone we've fought since the republican guard fell has been a civilian.
Do you think Saddam gassed those people because he was bored and wanted to see something cool? He did it to prevent massive sectarian conflict like we've been trying to police since the government in Iraq fell. He was worried that Iran was funding terrorist groups, and needed to use force to prevent those groups from getting a foothold.
Oh wait. He said exactly what WE said, and did exactly the same thing WE did. The bastard!
He was trying to quell a riot, so it's OK to gas women and children?
Are you honestly trying to compare that his targeting and using chemical weapons on civilians is the same thing the US and its allies did in Iraq?
Really?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I guess that means it's really Cheney's fault, not really Bush.
It seems to me, that Bush is more of an innocent idiot. Cheney however, knows what the fuck he's trying to do.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I read this article and my first response was to assume Bin Laden (a leader of a terrorist organization) was telling the truth, and that our President and his Cronies were lying. In China that statement would seem sensible, but in Amercia it shouldn't. *sigh*
He didn't know Bush. This plan was conceived and mostly built with Clinton in office. Clinton who, rightly or wrongly, was letting the effort in Iraq (do remember we were there already) stagnate and who might lob a few cruise missiles out in the desert somewhere to retaliate.
I honestly think that was the response they were expecting... some retaliation the ultimately would have made the plan well worth the sacrifice.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
It is precisely because of the fact that he called Muslims to a Jihad against the Americans that I tend to believe this statement. Mind you, Bin Laden doesn't say he didn't want to do this, he plainly states he was not allowed to carry this out by his Taliban hosts. Contrary to popular belief, there are plenty of Islamic clerics who adhere to strict morals and a relatively exhausting honor system. In many ways it reminds me of the Purists, the Calvinists and certain Roman Catholic factions we've had throughout history.
Just because someone has a different religion than yours and just because someone's honor system makes them want to wage holy war against what you stand for it does not render everything they say null and void. I would be much more worried about certain other parties that seem to wantonly install, sponsor, demonize and then eradicate all manner of regimes across the world to further their (financial) self interest or because they misguidedly think their right cause is furthered by those actions. Because the former group is predictable if you know their morals and their honor system while the latter group is totally unpredictable and hence dangerous as hell.
I don't "know" who the main planner of the 9/11 operation is, and probably no one ever really will, nor is it interesting. All I know is that the USSR, the USA and the world at large are partially responsible for the situation in Afghanistan after the Russian withdrawal, and we "corrected" that fuck up by invading that country and bombing it some more while we're at it. In the mean time half of Iraq is dead and/or injured and I'm sitting here wondering who the terrorists are, because I'm quite sure the crunch of army boots on gravel, the roar of jet engines and the crackle and static of radio transmissions between soldiers strike terror into the hearts of Afghan and Iraqi civilians by now.
Here in Israel I see a lot of this. The other party in the conflict is not "credible" because they've issued Fatwahs and called for Jihad. In the mean time, most of the people you talk to feel that this is their country because the Torah claims they once lived here and the death toll on the Islamic side outstrips the death toll on the Israeli side at least ten to one. Religious War, anyone? If I were living in an Arabic town here that doesn't get decent schools or even a closed sewage system from the federal government because the "municipality doesn't receive enough taxes", I'd bloody well declare a bit of a war too. And if it takes religion for people to join it.... You get the point.
If you (us Western nations) beat a dog (most of the rest of the world) long enough, it will bite.
Mazaltov! We've reached that stage.
"innocent civilians", "enemy combatants", "insurgents"... they're all so hard to tell apart these days...
None of this information will change anything. No one will stop paying taxes, engage the media or policy makers, or do anything except mention it briefly on this website.
Fnord.
The primary objective that the US government has had the last years have been to divert the attention of the US citizens to imagined and potential threats while failing to take care of the necessities at home. This was evident when Katrina struck.
And it's worth to notice that there are more people in the US killed in traffic accidents each month than it was at the 9/11 attacks.
So improved traffic safety measures would have more effective than the hunt for terrorists. But that's not a sexy action.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
No. Dot-Com-Boom (Dot-Bomb-Boom) with Osama bin Ladin as a VC investor, who hopes to get a big bang for his buck.
But this wikileak transcript VERIFIED by the CIA (which LIED to us about Atta's passport and faked Bin Laden's video)
is inarguably TRUE!
Yes, a lot of so-called "Christians" will frown upon homosexual relationships... but very few will throw you in jail for it. They will frown upon someone deciding to leave and join another church, but they won't execute you for it.
Only because the law prevents them.
Until recently (e.g., the past few decades, homosexuality was against the law. There are still ordinances in some towns and states that make it illegal to perform certain sexual acts. It's only with recent liberalization of sexuality that such things have become permitted, but Fundamentalists would still love to be able to toss you into the clink for being gay. Fortunately, the law stands in their way.
Similarly, leaving the church was also against the law back in pre-Revolutionary times, but fortunately THAT law was replaced by the rights enshrined in the 1st Ammendment. But even so, all you have to do is look at how Atheists (the ultimate abandonment of church) are viewed to imagine what it would be like without that constitutional protection.
Christian Fundamentalists are only "tolerant" because the law forces them to be.
Actually, along with biological weapons and nuclear weapons, poison gas IS a WMD. With or without a sophisticated delivery system.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
And despite the overwhelming amount of facts depicting the administration as liars, thieves, murderers, traitors, cowards, etc. Nothing will happen to them. They are and have been laughing in your faces. They'll go back to their ranches, mansions, boats, etc. without punishment and raising the bar for how much they can get away with under the noses of the ignorant Americans and the cowards in congress.
Not to worry, though, with BushIII McCain on the way.
"Breaking News: Planes fly into buildings in New York. We don't know why. Could be terrorism, kinda looks like it, but we wouldn't want to speculate. Who would do such a thing? While America has some fairly prominent enemies, we don't want to name any. In other news, Britney Spears is pregnant. Who's the father? We know a few people she's had sex with, and it seems all but certain to be one particular person that she's been hanging out with, but it wouldn't be proper to name them at this time. And the President is to address the nation later today: but which one? With all this terror around, it could be the current President is dead, or going to be assassinated before he gets to make his speech. We have a list of names of people who might make that speech, as President of the United States, but it would be completely improper of us to actually name any names."
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Do you think we haven't killed women and children, that there are NO women and children in the 50,000 dead civilians the Pentagon insists have been killed(though most organisations put it ten times that)?
Really? Do you think that?
Really?
It's been a long time.
If he had such weapons at his disposal, surely he would have used them when his country was being invaded...
He had nothing to lose, he was always going to get defeated and ultimately executed facing such a large and well equipped enemy.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
As another poster pointed out, the messages may have been mistranslated by CIA operatives. They missed some of the nuances of the original language. I think I know what they were missing: something about infliction at the start and end of the message. I can't remember exactly how it works in the original language, but I believe it translates roughly into:
UTF-8: There and Back Again
That's not mass destruction. That's just destruction. Most of the poison gas Iraq has was given to it by... US! We used to be big friends with Saddam Hussein. Rumsfeld shook his hand. I have the picture. 1970s. WMDs are nukes and such. Duh.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Surprise, surprise, the government lies...
Umm, no. According to those parts of the Geneva Conventions the USA hasn't signed, dealing with guerrillas, they're NOT civilians, and must be treated as enemy soldiers. According to USA rules of engagements, since we haven't signed the relevant parts of the Geneva Conventions, they're NOT civilians, and can be treated as enemy soldiers or not at our discretion.
Sorry.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Sorry, that can't be right. If they're enemy soldiers, then we've got to do things like not torture them, or give them rights under ths ame convention.
Listen, you can't have your torture and your Geneva Convention too.
It's been a long time.
Because good old fashioned nepotism has worked so well for us in the past.
They knew they had WMDs because THEY gave the WMDs to them. Quote from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-iraq_war#The_Tanker_War_and_U.S._support_for_Iraq "In 1982 with Iranian success on the battlefield, the U.S. made its backing of Iraq more pronounced, supplying it with intelligence, economic aid, normalizing relations with the government (broken during the 1967 Six-Day War), and also supplying weapons.[31] President Ronald Reagan decided that the United States "could not afford to allow Iraq to lose the war to Iran", and that the United States "would do whatever was necessary to prevent Iraq from losing the war with Iran."[32][33] President Reagan formalized this policy by issuing a National Security Decision Directive ("NSDD") to this effect in June, 1982." They gave them the WMDs, but they couldn't be sure they got all of them in the First Iraq War.
***Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, is doubting even in the slightest that Saddam did this :***
Not so actually. Do a little research and you will find that the attack at Halabja was originally blamed on the US's enemy d'jour -- Iran. It was not refocused on Iraq until America's great and noble ally Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, an action that caused him to morph into "The Beast of Baghdad".
Most people who have looked at the issue are pretty sure that Saddam Hussein was responsible, but it is by no means the open and shut case that you present.
***
"Saddam had no WMD's"
It's funny, and hypocritical in the extreme how everybody keeps claiming that.***
Get a grip man. The fact that Iraq had WMDs in the early 1990s does not prove that it had them in 2003. In fact, it said it did not. International inspectors with pretty much unrestricted access to Iraqi facilities found none. And US investigators after the invasion found only a handful of chemical tipped artillery rounds of an obsolete type that Iraqi sources with no particular reason to lie said had been collected and destroyed prior to the 1991 Gulf War. If you've ever served in the military or worked for a large company, it'll be pretty clear to you how a few old artillery shells could have survived.
In point of fact, had Iraq had WMDs, it would surely have used them against US troops in 2003 -- probably with devastating affect.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Incidently al-Qaida had claimed responsibility for the largest terrorist attacts on the U.S. before: the U.S.S. Cole and the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Do you think we haven't killed women and children, that there are NO women and children in the 50,000 dead civilians the Pentagon insists have been killed(though most organisations put it ten times that)?
Really? Do you think that?
Really?
Sure, civilians have died. Of those that have died, many organizations that you get your numbers from include the numbers killed by things like market bombings done by terrorists, not US troops.
Either way, this is not a numbers game. The point is that civilians killed by US forces were accidental, and apologized for. Not since WWII has the US intentionally targeted civilians, and even then the targets were war related manufacturing facilities. The US military goes far out of its way to avoid civilian deaths to the point of putting themselves at risk.
Comparing accidental collateral damages with the intentional mass slaughter of civilians is sickening, and shows an extreme naivete of how the world operates.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Yeah, because the accusation that the notoriously violent leader of a nation-state is harboring illegal weapons of mass destruction in plain sight is more reasonable?
We couldn't know beforehand that he DIDN'T have WMDs, because anybody with two brain cells would be smart enough to hide them. Of course that doesn't mean we should invade every country just to check for WMDs, but when Saddam refuses mandated inspections, doesn't that at least make you suspicious? Yes, and justifiably so.
I'm not saying that the war was justified -- I don't even know all the facts, nor can I rattle off the supposed evidence for WMDs that was used to support it. All I'm saying is that your condemnation of the administration is weaker than weak. There are plenty of strong cases to be made, but you decide to go with "well, Bush said they were HIDING the illegal WMDs instead of showing them off to us, so Bush is obviously a retard." Yeah, nice one.
The vast majority of his chemical weapons were destroyed under the watch of the UN after the first Gulf War. This is well documented for anyone who cares to look. The whole argument was over the few weapons that couldn't be accounted for because of bookkeeping errors and the regular amount of chaos that happens after your country is bombed to hell. Bush did lie about the status of those weapons for political reasons, just like Clinton did in 1998, but at least Clinton had the sense not to try and take over the whole country.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
You have stuff. I don't want you having that stuff. You say you got rid of stuff. You provide me no proof you did what you said(everybody lies). Therefore I must conclude you still have them...
Men's News Daily? World Net Daily? Buh?
From your Washington Post link:
From your Fox News link:
Hmmm. Way to support your own argument there.
So yeah, sure, he had some rotting leftovers, but not the massive "set to attack the US" stockpiles they beat their drums about leading up to our 2003 invasion. Yeah, not everything got dismantled. But, was that malice or incompetence? Looking back at that Washington post article:
Sounds like malice to me. Oh wait, no, that's incompetence.
Program Intellivision!
As someone who has seen the original German broadcast and is native german, Prof. Rotter actually said that the words were unintelligible, and one could understand it the way the U.S. translation did it, but any other interpretation was also possible.
If I remember correctly, what you were hearing was something along "rhubarber rhubarber", and it could have meant "I did it" but also "I approve of it" or "I know about it".
We shouldn't, and more importantly we shouldn't be changing our rules to bend to the will of others...
If you want to go and live in an islamic country, you will be expected to follow the existing rules, you will be expected not to eat pork etc... You don't see people from the west migrating to islamic countries and demanding the right to eat pork, expected to learn the language or anything else that islam forbids...
Why then should people come to western countries and demand exceptions to the law just for them, like their own religious holidays (in addition to existing holiday allowances), the right to wear a turban instead of a motorcycle helmet etc...
Western countries bend over backwards to accommodate immigrants, most other countries do not...
In my opinion, if you choose to move to another country you should know what that entails and what laws and customs are already in place there... And if you are not willing to obey those laws, respect if not follow the customs, and learn the local language then you have no business going there.
If you want to live in a country with customs laws and language like your home country, then why not stay there? If they way they do things is so great, don't leave... And if you want to move somewhere else because you think that country is better, ask yourself WHY that country is better, could it have something to do with the culture? If you change their culture to match the country you came from, then you will end up right back where you started.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
The U.S. military announced in 2004 in Iraq that several crates of the old shells had been uncovered and that they contained a blister agent that was no longer active. Neither the military nor the White House nor the CIA considered the shells to be evidence of what was alleged by the Bush administration to be a current Iraqi program to make chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
I think you are being every misleading when you say WMD's were found in Iraq. You're trying to give the false impression that there were WMD's that were still a threat. Basically all that were found were refuse from previous stockpiles NOT a current WMD program. If the agent is no longer active, is it a WMD?
Bin Laden did not come up with the idea of 9/11, mastermind it, organize it, or probably even fund it. He did, apparently, approve of it though beforehand and take credit for it elsewhere afterwards.
Disclaimer: IAAIA (I am an Intelligence Analyst)
The thing is, it's illegal to come up with the idea, mastermind it, organize it, or fund it. It isn't illegal to approve of it or take credit for it.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
The weapons inspectors were UN, not US
Which Saddam did anyway.
The "credibility" needed to defuse international conflicts is enough military force to make both parties take notice. We don't (and never did) have that with Russia, at least not on their doorstep, as a number of Soviet-crushed revolutions during the cold war should demonstrate.
And yet, they're still dead. It's small consolation, isn't it? Whether we accidentally killed them trying to keep the peace or they were intentionally killed to keep the peace (Saddam) it matters little to the dead or their relatives. It might make you feel better about it, it doesn't make me (as an American citizen) sleep any easier.
Whether we were targeting them or not, they are equally as dead. I wonder what the civilian to 'terrorist' kill ratio is in Iraq? 5 to 1? 10 to 1? I can't imagine why the Muslim world thinks of the US as "The Great Satan".
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
I never heard anyone say that Iraq had NUCLEAR weapons. EVER! They claimed that Iraq was working on nuclear weapons and might have them in 5-10 years, and that they already had chemical weapons. The stated threat was NOT that they could blow up our cities NOW, it was that we had to stop them before they could blow our cities.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Did you actually READ the links you posted? Here's a quote from one of them:
http://www.skullsecurity.org/blog/
An "Agent" is someone who is a CIA contact in the field-- an asset. Actual employees and operatives of the CIA (what we think of being "Agents" in other government agencies) are referred to as Officers.
--Obyron
anybody with an IQ less than 10. They not smart enough to think.
"Yes, a lot of so-called "Christians" will frown upon homosexual relationships..."
Why the quotes around Christian. Yes, real Christians do not like homosexuality...it should be all of them. At the same time, real Christians don't judge others (or at least we try not to) and realize it is far less of a sin than say, cheating on your husband or wife. The quotes should be around anyone claiming to be Christian and condemning others...and there are a lot of these people.
The same is true in most Muslim countries...most true Muslims will befriend almost anyone. Most do not judge others (or try hard not to). I have taken Muslims into my church, and I've visited a Mosque a number of times. The ones that are true to their religion aren't the ones causing the problems.
As for honor killings and complete intolerance? Can we take a look back 50 years? Blacks were still considered less than human animals by a large group of southern US 'Christians'. They were beaten to death or hung or set on fire...a number of horrible things happening to these people. And the group behind most of these claimed to be doing it in the name of God. 50 years ago, a white man in the south could not be convicted of killing a black man. Just wouldn't happen. In some communities, this is still the case. Families are tormented and abused for being in interracial marriage. And this isn't saying anything about how these same people treat folks of other faiths and sexualities.
So we are continually asked to be tolerant? It is the least we can do...most of us are better educated and have better resources and should know that the average person is not the same as the extremist, we should be tolerant enough to judge people on their own action as opposed to the action of others that they most likely disavow. Tolerance is one of the cornerstones of Christianity and western civilization (even if you aren't a Christian, most likely your values are a result of it).
I think the term is ex-CIA *Asset*... or at least that is what they say in all the spy novels.
It's in the DoD dictionary, as well as Wikipedia. OBL may not have a CIA 401-k, medical, and dental plan, but he still may have worked for them as an independent contractor. There are other well documented cases of the CIA hiring people as independent contractors.
The beauty of independent contractors is, when somebody says, "that person used to work for you," you can say, "no they didn't," and not be lying. Technically, they aren't on your payroll.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
The charge was that he was stockpiling new WMDs, possibly including nukes, after the Iraqi surrender at the end of Gulf War 1.
If you want to talk about some crap, consider that the rockets he used against the Kurds were of American manufacture, and that America supported the action at the time (remember the infamous photograph of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam?).
The Bush administration has continuously moved the goalposts and changed objectives and reasons for this war to hide the fact that it is nothing more than an unjustified war for oil. In fact, it might even be worse than that, since they didn't really seem to move to secure the oil infrastructure (just the oil fields) one wonders if they didn't invade to drive UP the cost of oil. If that is the case, then it is the one thing his administration has succeeded in doing. Now, we think $100/barrel oil is cheap, where before Bush took office, we thought $30/barrel oil was expensive...
Not at all. Bush is bad, but that doesn't mean that he blew up the twin towers.
Not true - the Provisional IRA managed to successfully launch attacks against the British for 40 years, and they had a hierarchical organisational structure.
You're just outright lying, which stupidly enough isn't even necessary in this situation.
You didn't get the press release a few moments ago that retroactively changed the reason for the war yet again?
Seriously, though, for some reason I find the constant retconning of the reasoning for the war even worse than the original lie. You might be able to claim that the original reason was due to faulty intelligence and admit to having a "we goofed" moment. (Sure, that goof resulted in tons of deaths on both sides, but stay with me here.) However, to constantly change the reasoning behind the war after the fact ("Sadaam has WMDs and nukes!", "Sadaam was trying to get WMDs and nukes!", "Sadaam was starting up programs which might have eventually, one day, resulted in a WMD/nuke.", etc.) shows that not only does the administration not care whether they lie or not, but they also don't care how good their reasoning is and they think that the American people are stupid.
I guess they're right, though. I had a friend actually try to tell me that the reason we're in Iraq now is so we can keep a better eye on Iran. Yes, folks, the true reason that we invaded a sovereign country that posed no real threat to us, destabilized it to the brink of civil war, wasted the international good will we had after 9-11, fought a war that resulted in thousands of US dead (and even more Iraqi dead), and tied up our military resources so much that other tin-pot dictators feel they can thumb their noses at us is so we could get a bit closer to Iran to keep an eye on them. I guess it makes sense that we'd want to keep an eye on them, though. With our hands tied up in Iraq, and eye is about all we can spare.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
And the extreamist suicide bombers are a tiny fraction of the world over there... doesn't stop us from judging the whole of their society based on their actions.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
The funny thing about the WMD issue in Iraq is that once somebody did figure it out, it turned out to be one of those things that was stranger than fiction.
After the end of the first stage of the Iraqi War, a group of American historians got their hands on Saddam's archives, and tried to work out what was happening on the Iraqi side of the war, and why no WMDs were found. The book they produced is available to the public as the Iraqi Perspectives Project: http://www.foreignaffairs.org/special/iraq/ipp.pdf
Essentially, Saddam had a bunch of WMDs in the first Gulf War and was preparing an active WMD program after that war ended, but the international scrutiny by the UN forced him to cancel it. However, he was afraid that if his neighbours ever believed that he had cancelled the WMD program, they would invade him. So, he didn't tell anybody he had cancelled the program, including his generals, and tried to give his neighbours the impression he still had an active program.
The smokescreen was so effective that Iraqi war plans drawn up by the Iraqi generals up to the end of the 2004 war were based on the deployment of WMDs that had been cancelled close to a decade earlier, and all of Saddam's legitimate efforts to obey the UN were interpreted as hiding evidence.
So, it is true that Saddam had no WMDs at the beginning of the Iraqi War. But thanks to his smokescreen, all of the intelligence analysis said that he did.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Because we have the seat numbers of most of the terrorists reported by the people in the planes before they died, and we know who were sitting in those seats. And we know how they were paid for and how that money entered the country, along with how the people who were sitting in those seats entered the country. There is a lot of confusion about the exact chain of command in Al Quaeda and who knew exactly what when, but there's no viable conspiracy theory that explains the attacks as anything other than something perpetrated by a bunch of middle eastern men (mostly Saudis) funded by folks tied to Al Quaeda.
E pluribus unum
The message would not necessarily be "too sensitive to release" because it provided genuinely new information, but because it counteracted the administration's justification for going to war. The optimist would say that it reduces a figurehead which is used to pump up our troops and help insure victory, the pessimist would say that it would reduce the nation's vitrol and lower Haliburton profit margins.
Considering that over 50% of americans still believe that Iraq was connected to the attacks on 911, don't you think that we need these great figurehead enemies to power this war effort?
The ______ Agenda
Or the Europeans in Africa/India/the far East, or the Soviets in Eastern Europe, or the Spanish in South America, or the Vikings in Ireland... The Assyrians to the rest of the known world (heh)... and so on... It really is an endless cycle. Every era has power struggles like this. To think we're somehow "more" evil than the rest of the previous thousands of years of human history is a bit silly. We generally gauge our "bad guys" based on our own interests... as the rest of the world has done since we started living in caves and peeing art on walls. If you don't share the American interests, I can accept that. But those who do will not simply stop because you find it morally reprehensible we manipulate the planet for our own ends. The Russians do, the Brits do, the French do, the Italians do, the Saudis do, the Iranians do... I could go on and on.. and quite frankly, if I had to choose between us or them (and we often do, since that's the way the game has been played and will continue to be played) I choose us (for me, that's the USA). Whoever is "good" or "evil" in the world is often only based on where you live. With some notable exceptions through history, the concept of who are the "good" and "bad" guys is all from your (and their) own point of view.
:)
Is it morally bankrupt? Depends on your perspective. Sitting in a nice home (or office depending on where you post/read), having abundant food, vastly superior choices in whatever I want to do sorta clouds my judgement on whether or not my country's moral superiority is up to snuff. Is that morally reprehensible? If you're on the outside looking in, I suspect it is. I don't condone missteps in keeping our way of life going (like Iraq), but I certainly don't step onto the moral pulpit and wag my finger at the US like the rest of the world seems so eager to do (and has since oh, 1783?) We've been doing this forever, but so has everybody else. This is the world we live in... making it a land of happiness and hugs is going to take a lot more than simply kicking the top dog off the pedestal. There's another dog waiting in the wings.
Think about it... even when the US has BEEN correct and had the moral high ground, someone finds something to nitpick about and create a cloud of "evil" around America's actions. I tend not to be so dramatic about it. Because make no mistake, if the tables were turned, there'd be news crews in your neighborhood cataloging the injustices of some other world power (and having most of it censored by that power, I suspect.) It's not like the US created the concept, because it's basic human nature... If we want to solve it, the only way we ever will is to all look, act, and believe exactly the same. That's the solution to world peace. I leave it to you to figure out how to do that.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
And you think murders that happen in NYC and DC aren't domestic crimes?
Prove it.
I heard that the CIA said it was real. And the FBI. And Al Jazeera. (Who originally aired it.) And the government of the UK. And just about everyone else.
I can't believe you're getting modded up for such baseless bullshit.
For starters, it is irrelevant whether Iraq had any WMD or not. Saddam hadn't shown any will or intention to use them against the US or any close US ally. And since the US also has (for real) plenty of WMDs, there goes the moral argument. It was none of its business. But even if it was, I think it became pretty obvious that he had no WMDs since he didn't used them against a foreign invader like the US.. What would he have them for then? To kill children and women only? Come on... The US is a great nation, and I respect it's people but sometimes it becomes pretty obvious why someone says "No one has ever lost money underestimating American intelligence" The current president and his entourage certainly did not...
And you think somehow the FBI is incapable of adding additional charges to those already on the Most Wanted List?
If the FBI wanted to charge Bin Laden for the 9/11 attacks, the charges would be there.
You can't prove any of this is the truth. But ah, that's always been the problem, isn't it ? We live in democracies, don't we ? How much time must pass before we can hold our elected executive accountable, even when the information they deal with is highly classified ? This affair hasn't made the answer any clearer, because the answer according to Tony and George obviously is: never.
I'm not within MI5 or the CIA, so I can't assess in any way the validity of these documents. But, ironically, neither can you. These governments are reaping what they have sowed: in a climate of secrecy, only gossip blooms. And my take is that it is all phony, the very scarce public evidence tells only one story: the WMDs you point to, were all rotten beyond use, and Saddam insisted, even when he had nothing to lose anymore, that he had cooperated with Blix et al.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
No, I don't think homosexuality was illegal, only the acts, and laws against the acts have been found unconstitutional when challenged.
Do you have any references for that?
Nevertheless... except for the occasional Eric Robert Rudolf, even extremists seldom step over the line. That's fine, you can't control how people think, and if someone thinks I will burn in hell for my actions (or inaction) then that is their prerogative so long as they don't take it upon themselves to "enforce god's will."
It's also much less useful to dredge up things like the Inquisition (I know you didn't do that) or things that happened hundreds of years or even decades ago. Nobody denies that there certainly was a lot of intolerant behavior in the west in the past (and certainly still ongoing). There was never really an age of enlightenment following the dark ages... it's been a continual, slow slide into enlightenment and I'd say anyone who thinks they're there is full of themselves, but it's quite obvious who has and who hasn't taken the journey, and by and large the west has.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
That is entirely different. It's ok to murder because of religion.
That's certainly how I meant it. I should have used stronger language... so-called "Christians" have beaten and killed homosexuals simply for being different. The difference is that that behavior is certainly not taught in Christian churches, with very few exceptions. Yet hatred of homosexuals is taught in many Mosques and brutality towards homosexuals is condoned in many Islamic states.
As for the rest, it goes beyond religion... it's tolerance in the West. I didn't claim we were angels, just that we are a hell of a lot MORE tolerant than the people who are asking us to be more tolerant of them who are, ironically, nearly completely intolerant of anybody else.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Just FWIW, the "Foreign Broadcast Information Service" is now called the "Open Source Center" and is not part of the CIA any longer.
For more info about the classification level, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOUO
Is it *really* that hard to believe that there are bad people in positions of power, even in the United States, *and* that they're competent enough to pull off 9/11 in secret?
Cause when you ask the question that way, you start to remember that while "rotten" can sometimes describe some of the members of the US government, "retarded" can *always* describe *a lot* of them.
"interviews were authenticated by the US CIA" Don't you mean censored?
"It is not because no one sees the truth that it becomes a mistake" (Mahatma Gandhi)
It's what Republicans do.
To be fair, it's not what all Republicans do. Ron Paul, for instance, would not be interested in starting another war.
It's just recently that the Republicans have nominated people who seem to prefer getting soldiers killed over having profit margins drop.
I am officially gone from
Forgot about that rule, my mistake
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
As compared to video-taped interviews where he discussed specifics of the planning & execution of the attacks??? Yeah right, the "9/11 was an inside job" lunatics will grasp at any straw...
THAT explains why they want creationism in schools so bad. It's anti-terror to stupid up the nation.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
Actually, as I've just said, it does. I know very few people that condemn the entirety of Islam because of Islamic terrorists. They exist, but they are hardly representative of the U.S.
There is merely a great deal of temperance... most, if not all, of the terrorist acts in the last decade have been performed by Muslims; and when someone like Eric Robert Rudolf blows up abortion clinics, he's widely condemned by most of the U.S. and the vast majority of religious organizations he claims to have represented. You don't often see that kind of reaction when the reverse is true.
There's a lot higher percentage of Muslims who shrug and say "well, they deserved it" then the percentage of Christians who would say the same thing about someone like Rudolf.
There is an anti Muslim sentiment here because of it, but there is no one who has ever been given serious attention that called for the extermination of Muslims. The same can't be said of Muslim sentiment of Jews and Christians and, frankly, any non-Islamic religion.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Saddam wasn't intentionally killing civilians as such, he was just killing villages with traitors, and the other people were just collateral damage.
It's no different than when we bombed a resturaunt because we thought Saddam may be inside, but he wasn't inside, though a bunch of civilians were. How are we any better -- because we're the "good guys"?
It's been a long time.
Moron.
A Weapon of Mass Destruction is defined as a Nuclear, Biological (ex, anthrax), or Chemical weapon (ex, mustard gas).
Saddam's chemical weapons are most certainly weapons of mass destruction.
I'm not crazy,I'm actively irresponsible.
Wouldn't he take credit for it if he organized the attacks?
Al Qaeda rarely (if ever) takes credit for attacks externally.
What some people are forgetting, though, is that we have a video tape of bin Laden with his lieutenants discussing the plan after it happened, and talking about how it went better than any of them expected. (He said he didn't expect the towers to fall, only the top floors). It was widely disseminated shortly after it was found during our invasion of Afghanistan. I'm not sure how you refute that. This video was also authenticated by the CIA, so if someone's using them as proof that these documents are real, then they should believe that video tape as well.
Saddam did not pull those weapons out of his ass, mostly he got them from US! Since the enablers in this country should be easy to find and prosecute, why have they gotten off the hook? After all, as suppiers they are essentially as guilty as Saddam. As someone once said "pluck the beam from your own eye before worrying about the splinter in your neighbors". And, the enablers of Saddam have enabled similar atrocities all over the world, so some might consider them even more guilty than Saddam. Yet they walk free. As long as you keep pointing the finger at Saddam and ignore the criminals in this country you are just an enabler yourself.
It was always known he had them, He did use them against the Kurds. That was never in question.
However Bush went in there with the claim that he STILL had them and was STILL a threat. Saddam claimed that they were destroyed in accordance with the UN mandates after the Gulf War. No WMD have yet surfaced.
The only time he acknowledged being responsible, was in some supposed sham video that was "found" in Afghanistan, and claimed by the CIA as some sort of smoking gun proving he did it.
So the video was authenticated by the CIA, and you don't believe it. But these documents! These documents were... authenticated by the CIA. Totally different!
I mean, how stupid are you people?
I don't for a second care what this or any man *says*. Just look at his actions. Years' worth of terrorist attacks outside the US, on American and non-American civilians. Is it really such a leap to believe thathe'd take his attacks *inside* America?
Does the fact that he deny it once really mean anything? What about the countless TV interviews post-911 where he *did* admit to having carried it out? There are plenty of documentaries by independent journalists to back this up.
It's what Republicans do.
Please don't lump all of one party into one stereotype. You are only playing into their game of "good cop/bad cop".
Though, I most likely won't be voting for McCain OR Obama, I don't think it's right to group someone by what someone else has done.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I'm pursuaded that, on the balance of probabilities, Bin Laden really was surprised by the attack.
This is kind of like saying that, on the balance of probabilities, George Bush was surprised by the capture of Saddam Hussein.
Yes, he probably was. That doesn't mean he didn't order, authorize and finance it. I'm not sure where this idea that leaders of organizations have a direct hand in all of its operations comes from. Does the CEO of a corporation write every little piece of text in all of the company's press releases? Does he program all of the Flash in the company's web site? No, of course not.
But bin Laden clearly knew about the plan, clearly approved it (admitting as much in the video we all saw), and it was his money that financed it. Did he know that it would happen on September 11, 2001? Probably not. Was he surprised by the amount of destruction? Could have been. He wasn't the guy on the ground coordinating the attack, just like Bush isn't the guy on the ground directing our forces around in Iraq.
But that in no way diminishes his culpability.
So in other words... we are going to invade EVERY COUNTRY ON THE PLANET which puts down domestic insurgencies. You know, like Columbia, who we give billions of dollars a year to, or any of the many other brutal dictatorship right-wingers are propping up throughout the globe.
So, why didn't we invade Zimbabwe? How come we didn't stop Georgia from invading another country (and in fact, condemn Russia for doing the exact same thing we did after Kuwait)?
The answer is simple: right-wing leaders are liars, and support fascism... and their constituents are hypocrites. That's why every right-wing presidency contains massive amounts of fraud, criminal activity, a war against international law... and of course deficit spending like there's no tomorrow. Republicans are the party of fiscal irresponsibility, as every Republican president since the puppet Reagan has proven.
Conservativism is a poison people take, hoping it will kill Liberals.
Silly AC, you never had any points. ;)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
An Intelligence Analyst who doesn't post AC?
What the hell does decomcracy have to do with making death threats or advocating the same? If anything, speaking one's mind is democracy, though that isn't really true. Democracy is nothing more than a system in which everyone gets a say. It says nothing about what is said.
The lack of corporal punishment has reduced this country to the mess it is in, where murderers are victims and the dead are guilty. What that has to do with democracy, however, completely baffles me.
Saddam had had WMDs, nobody ever denied that, including Saddam himself. However, after the first gulf war, Iraq was forced to dismantle her WMD production capability and destroy weapons in her arsenal. Which she did. There are records of destruction, and those reports were audited by UN officials.
Bush claimed there were unaccounted for WMDs. But there wasn't ever any proof of that. Nothing concrete had been shown to public, before of after the war. The "proof" Powell had presented was ridiculous, vague and misrepresented. At that time no one outside US was convinced, and even half of the Americans had sense to see through the misdirection.
But no matter. Bush went to war anyway, claiming that Saddam was a threat because he had WMDs. NONE WERE EVER FOUND. NONE. Old ruling class of Iraq has been totally destroyed. Even though there is still a powerful resistance against invaders, they are relatively new or foreign or both. They found their way into Iraq through power vacuum and discontent. Nobody in power today has anything to do with Baathist regime of Iraq. The most important figures are captured, interrogated and sentenced. So your implication that Iraq is still hiding WMDs is ridiculous in the extreme. Who will do that, how will they be able to do that and why would they?
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
Alas, you didn't actually read what I wrote. The parts of the Geneva Convention that make guerrillas "enemy soldiers" weren't signed by the USA. Therefore we are not bound by them.
However, that doesn't actually prevent us from treating them as soldiers (or civilians) at our discretion. Or as common criminals. Or as none of the above. Traditional (pre- those addenda to the Geneva Conventions) usage for guerrillas was to treat them FAR worse than enemy soldiers. They could be killed on sight, executed without trial, all sorts of interesting options, none of which included treatment as soldiers. Note treatment of such during the 19th Century and early 20th Century, before the Geneva Convention tried to give them the same rights as soldiers, without requiring from them the same obligations as soldiers.
Further note that the USA didn't sign those parts of the Geneva Conventions because they were proposed by the USSR during the Vietnam War, and would have required us to refrain from actually shooting at the enemy till the enemy had shot first (armed men not actually shooting at you had to be considered civilians), and to refrain from shooting at them as soon as they stopped shooting at you (again, armed men not actually shooting at you had to be considered civilians). Which would effectively make warfare against guerrillas impossible.
Note that the USSR did not sign onto that provision of the Geneva Conventions either, even though they had proposed it.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
To be fair, anyone who knows cold war history knows that the US lost credibility a long time ago.
Seriously though, how many "damning" items have already come out and been quashed by the Bush Government? I think they're sunk in enough that they're bulletproof.
You may see some Jr. Lackeys get some slaps on the wrist, but for all the insanity that's happened in the last 8 years, no one of any real consequence will be held to account for their actions. Bush will rely on the 5 sec attention span of the masses to let him waltz out of the oval office spinning the "We brought democracy to the middle east" story all the while. And we'll be so caught up in "the new guy" we'll let it happen.
In 10 years enough spin will have happened that Dubya will be remembered as "The guy who made tough decisions" instead of "The guy who waged a personal war, and killed over one million innocent people."
While he may not have been working *with* the enemy, he certainly was working *against* the office of President and the Citizens of the USA. The fact that nothing was/has been done about any of that proves my point even further.
Following your logic the members of the UN security council + a few others should be put in jail.
Actually, that is what really should be done rather than comb the deserts and backyards of countries that most have never heard of.
I donno. I find that my regimen of listening to NPR on my commute, plus an evening with the voter's guide is generally enough to let me make some kind of informed decision.
I admit that local offices can be a challenge, but I usually find an issue or two that the candidates disagree on for any position, and vote based on that issue.
My general guideline? People are generally selfish - let's get some laws that reasonably mitigate some of that selfishness.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
"Can we please bring some common sense into this ? If we know a guy shot some children, then gets arrested with powder on his hands, but without a gun, that does not mean the witnesses who saw him shoot lied. It merely means we're short a gun. That would be a VERY good reason to search the neighbourhood for said gun (especially if the next door neighbour is a Jew hating theocratic massacrer like the Iranian government)."
And by "bring some common sense into this" I assume you mean "make an extremely inaccurate analogy which makes any argument against it appear to be an argument in favor of murdering children." And way to go pointing the finger at Iran, and not any country that was on even remotely friendly terms with Iraq; I applaud your great work loading arguments and questions.
I also can't help but notice that you did not mention even a single car in your analogy...
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Of course. How else can people support their ludicrous beliefs without a few wild claims?
although it would be easier to support Bush and Cheney if they didn't completely ignore the CIA. Cheney's distrust of the quality of intelligence at the CIA resulted in Bush making some bad decisions.
People like to make it out to be more than it is, I suppose in this day and age nobody will listen to you unless you hold some extreme views and wave them around with fanatical devotion. Political moderates are obsolete, rational views and reasonable debate are equally obsolete.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Well, absent any real cross examination of the info and its source, I believe I'll hang on to my doubts.
What?
Nevertheless, they were WMD's. So this does indeed disprove the claim that "no WMD's were found in Iraq".
Reality ... welcome ... yes we're aware of just how ugly it is, thank you very much. You have to go in anyway.
Yeah....so...um....
Treatment of insurgents is to be handled in the most nihilistic and amoral way possible. "They're fighting us, so they're sort of soliders but not real soldiers, and even then, they're lucky not to be dead if we don't kill them because we feel like it."
I'm so glad we're the good guys.
It's been a long time.
So you're actually blaming Bush for suspecting that someone who executed something like the halabja campaign might actually ... have lied.
After a decade of inspectors crawling all over Iraq saying there are no WMD? Yeah.
Poison gas *can* cause mass destruction; but it's easier for the secondary effects of Nukes (radiation) and biological agents (sickness, death) to cause problems. Poison gas is only effective over a limited area, whereas radiation spreads and kills people over long periods of time.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
I would like to point out that no one, not even the so-called Palastinians, deny that Jews lived in Israel in the past and had autonomous governments in the centuries leading up to the Roman invasion. That the Romans overthrew Jewish rulers is documented by the Romans.
In actuality, non-Jews never formed a nation based on the territory known as Israel. From the time of the Romans until 1948 it had always been ruled by foreigners as a vassel state of some kind.
The decision to invade Iraq appears to have been unofficially made in 1997-1998 (or earlier) according to this letter to congress. Notice the signatory parties at the bottom. This Statement of Principles is apparently their mission statement.
The Republicans (or more accurately, those in the Bush family mafia) have been trying to take over Iraq nearly since the first conflict was over in 1991. They tried advising congress on this in the late 90's and failed. But all it took was one good reason for America to say yes, and they took advantage of that fact.
The real question is whether the Bush mafia made 9/11 happen or simply turned on the media spin machine afterwards to brainwash the American public into supporting the fucking mess we've gotten ourselves into since.
What could possibly hurt the security of the American people more than giving our own government the ability to hide its
No, I said that even after they were told, fairly conclusively, that there were none, they said "Look harder, they must have them!"
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
Though I do understand your point, please do not refer to accidental or coincidental death as "collateral damage". That completely desensitizes the reality of the situation: innocent people dying. And it makes you sound like a media puppet.
-Will P.
By the way, in the month building up to the invasion, George Bush forced the inspectors to leave Iraq.
Bzzt! Wrong!
Sorry, but the UN pulled the inspectors out when it was obvious the US wouldn't listen to them. They were pulled out in the days immediately following Fmr. Gen. Colin Powell's infamous "this much anthrax could kill everyone in this room" speech.
freeflux-powered open-source blog
Do you think Saddam gassed those people because he was bored and wanted to see something cool? He did it to prevent massive sectarian conflict like we've been trying to police since the government in Iraq fell.
They did it because they were sadists.
Al-Anfal is the eighth sura or chapter of the Qur'an which explains the triumph of 319 followers of the new Muslim faith over almost 900 pagans at the battle of Badr in 642 AD. Al Anfal literally means the spoils (of war) and was perhaps quite fitting for a military campaign of extermination and looting commanded by Ali Hassan al-Majid. His orders informed jash (literally "donkey's foal" in Kurdish) units that taking cattle, sheep, goats, money, weapons and even Kurdish women was legal.[3]
(source)
Oh wait. He said exactly what WE said, and did exactly the same thing WE did. The bastard!
Not at all.
Besides, chemical weapons were not the "mushroom cloud" Bush was talking about to scare us, nor was it the "Yellow cake" or "aluminum centrifuge tubes" they were screaming about. Bush was talking very specifically about Saddam building nukes.
THERE WERE NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION FOUND IN IRAQ. PERIOD.
I think there's some quote relevant here....something about forgetting history and repeating it....
C Pungent
Not that we should judge the entirety of the Arab population based on the relatively few murderers, but there is a difference between action and thought. There is no wide-spread murder of Arabs or Moslems in the US. I can't think of even one incident being reported in the last 7 years, though I suppose there was probably one or two. There are certainly enough murders of Blacks or Latinos in certain areas of the country.
More like Bin Laden being the mascot and the PR director.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
There have been political tensions between Ireland and what would become the UK since 6,000 BC. Possibly earlier. Given the intensity of blood feuds and the fact that violence was always the solution used, I'm damn impressed with the way things are going in Ireland today. The differences are still very visible, and the whole thing could still fall apart if someone sneezes the wrong way, but I honestly never expected things to even reach this point in my lifetime.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
You can't prove any of this is the truth.
WTF? You said Bush/Blair lied. I said you can't prove it and the facts I've seen indicate they didn't. Now you say that there's a conspiracy of X files types to manipulate those facts. So basically you don't have any evidence that they lied, you just want to believe it.
If I'd have been in Bush'n'Blair's position I would have used Saddam's non compliance UN disarmament resolutions as a legal way to get rid of him, because he needed to be got rid of. But I would also have believed he was up to no good with WMD based on his previous behaviour. Actually Iraq's obessesive non compliance with weapons inspections was the reason that the US and UK decided to get rid of Saddam. Post Gulf War the consensus was to leave him in power but contained and when that containment failed that consensus changed.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I think once we already go to war with someone, then end that war, and then wait a decade, we cant consider anything that happened before that "evidence". After `91 anything would be fair game, but it looks like Saddam actually kept his nose pretty clean, He probably figured it was all he had to do to keep his position, and that bush wouldn't dare invade without a good reason. Little did he know how unstable our leaders were eh?
CNN may have lost interest but the war didn't end. There was a cease fire and a laundry list of requirements to maintain that cease fire. Saddam then played an interesting game with weapons inspectors (apparently attempting to prove to the US that chemical weapons didn't exist while implying to Iraq that they did) while siphoning funding from oil sales meant to maintain civilian infrastructure.
it's what most Democrats do too, including Hilary. And you may not have noticed the Democrats have fallen into line supporting the continuation of war in Iraq even recently (as well as following most of the rest of the Republican agenda).
I still think Bush was speaking on the best intelligence he had at the time, when he said they had the weapons. I also think that any president in office would be receiving the same intelligence. So did he lie? I don't think so. Was he given false information and spoke it as truth without realizing it was incorrect? Possibly. Could it have happened to anybody who was in office? I believe so.
No, I'm not a fan of Bush. I just think people give him TOO hard of a time sometimes.
10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
20 DRINK COFFEE
30 GOTO 10
I don't vote because the voting system is broken.
I must conclude it's broken since bush was elected twice.
-------
Incite and flee.
Come back and talk when you've had to make these kinds of decisions. When the safety and well being of every person in your country is at stake, a few women and children start looking mighty insignificant.
I'm not defending his actions or saying what he did was somehow justified. But until you've been in a situation where you have to make an executive decision where all choices would result in somebody innocent suffering and dying, you're in no position to judge. And no, the 2004 elections don't count.
I am going to shoot your wife. After a while the police will come, and will find an empty gun in my hands, and 7 "inert" shells on the floor.
At the trial I am going to argue that I did not have a weapon. I did not have a weapon, after all, just "inert capsules".
And since you believe me, you will agree there is no evidence whatsoever linking me and the crime.
Clearly you will agree with me at the trial that There was no weapon found in his hands. Period, and will convince the jury of this.
Correct ? Or do you see a problem here ?
"+5 Interesting"? Well, yes, I suppose that derangement and conspiracy theories are "interesting" to an extent, but come on ...
No, Bin Laden has admitted multiple times to being responsible for the attacks, including in 2004 - right before the presidential election - while attempting to ridicule Bush and sway the US public to vote against him. He again admitted to it in 2006 in an audio broadcast on Al Jazeera, as verified by the Times of India.
Try to keep up with the news, will ya?
Actually he didn't admit anything in the tape - the tape was a recording of a conversation he had with Khaled al-Harbi, in which his statements seem to indicate foreknowledge of the attacks. He didn't actually make a public admission until 2004.
As for the video being a sham ... lemme guess, you're put off by the fact that he looks fat and wears a gold ring, huh? Do you get ALL your opinions from "truther" websites?
There's nothing crazy about him - he's a perfectly sane individual who just happens to think he's on a crusade from God. Human history is full of people like him.
It's also pretty annoying when people go, "I don't like either candidate so I'm not voting."
When living in a democracy, voting isn't simply a right--it's a responsibility.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
You can't prove any of this is the truth.
This phrase has much further implications.
How do you prove a negative, anyway ? I don't know how people that comes from a system where everyone is innocent until proven guilty can keep going over and over again that people has to prove Iraq had no WMDs. Or people at least barely scientifically minded.
Is it possible to prove, beyond a shadow of doubt, Iraq had NO WMDs ? No. Again, can't prove a negative. All this argument is, at best, pointless.
Was there enough proof to indicate Iraq had WMDs ? That is the point. If there was, it would be very easy for the Bush government to say: "Well, looks like they really didn't have any, but this is the data we had to work with. I'm sure most of you will come to the same conclusion we had".
The problem is that, even to date, the Bush government keeps insisting there were WMDs, but somehow keep failing to find them. And the supporters here and everywhere else keep insisting on that. I will say it again: people are not saying there was enough evidence of WMDs to make an honest mistake; they keep insisting there were WMDs.
With all this denial and cover-ups, I have to ask the same question: was there enough evidence to make an "honest mistake" ? Doesn't seems likely.
morcego
That argument makes as much sense as, technicalities of how much bin Laden was actually involved aside, of, say, a hypothetical situation where a leader of a foreign nation ordered air strikes on California being put on the FBI 10 most wanted.
What point are you trying to make with bin Laden not being on the FBI 10 most wanted list? That is somehow proves that the FBI secretly knows 9/11 was a hoax and they are trying to hint to that fact? Please.
Of course, there are some problems with my argument; special allowances have been made. I'm trying to show possible reasons he wouldn't be on.
The actual reality is, you're just parroting bullshit, because he is on the top 10 most wanted list!
http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/fugitives/fugitives.htm
WHAM!
WMD is a post WW1 term, that is the heavy chemical warfare used in WW1 has never been called for WMD's.
Does anyone here remember that the topic of the original article was Osama bin Laden, not Saddam Hussein? RTFA, folks. Stick to the topic.
Because insults really help your cause.
In truth WMD is not defined as all, it's a mostly political term that was made popular by a news story from 1937 that described a bombing in spain as being done by weapons of mass destruction.
Since then various people have defined it however they liked and your definition is among them.
So yes you can claim that my kitchen is a WMD by your definition but sane people use the word for nukes.
If you claimed you were going to shoot my wife, but she never gets shot, why the hell would the police be there? The shells they found were "inert" like a bullet would be "blank", there was no payload. If the police showed up and all you had were blanks and no gun to trace the bullet that killed my wife to, then yeah that wouldn't even be considered as there was no proof that you had the murder weapon. That's kinda how our legal system works.
There were no weapons that were a threat to us or anyone else. The shells found were old shells we had given him long ago and the payload was dead, so thus he could not cause any harm with those shells.
So again, if the shells you are claiming were the "WMDs" we went to war for were not actually capable of creating the "MD" part, then you merely have "Ws", which after the past 8 years having our own W in office I can see is a bit scary, but not enough to justify being invaded.
Now, unless you want to actually back up your inane claims that we found the WMDs but for some crazy reason Bush never made a huge deal about them, I'm going to mark you as "troll" and move on.
C Pungent
As an intelligence analyst, what is your take on the possibility of Osama still being an American Operative?
BAH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. Whoooo. Good one. Do you still beat your wife?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
But sticking the whole chicken up your butt DOES make you very kinky.
Sorry, had to respond to your .sig. Couldn't resist.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
I'm not a fricken spy. Geez.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
In point of fact, had Iraq had WMDs, it would surely have used them against US troops in 2003 -- probably with devastating affect.
There was effectively zero chance that the regular Army of Iraq prior to invasion was going to defeat the US Army, Navy, and Marine Corps in open battle, even if WMDs (chemical weapons, it was well known that Iraq had no strategic or tactical nuclear capabilities) were used. Now, suppose that you were the Iraqi commander, would you want to give the order to use WMD? Suppose that Saddam had ordered their use personally and you were the commander in the field, would you give the order then? Probably not if you cared about saving your own skin after the end of hostilities (the US was certain to win, 99.999% chance, and using WMDs as part of a losing strategy would only get you a trial and long drop on a short rope following your capture). No, you would surrender to the nearest American commander and show him where all of your WMD cashes were to get into the good graces of the winning side (they didn't pay you enough to get shot full of holes for the captain of a sinking ship).
The problem is your logic. The US and UK governments claimed they had evidence that Iraq possessed WMD at the time of the invasion. Your claim that Iraq possessed WMD at some time prior to that time period is irrelevant to the issue, unless you are claiming that those weapons were still functional which you admit they are not.
Also, using the shooting of someones partner as your analogy is tasteless.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
This is no big deal. The "Foreign Broadcast Information Service" was a pre-Internet version of Google News, run by the CIA. It was a bunch of people listening to the public radio broadcasts of foreign countries. (Imagine listening to Radio Albania during the Cold War, taking notes, as a full time job.) Once in a while, something important might be mentioned. It wasn't secret, and transcripts were provided to the US press on request. It was a cheap way of finding out what other countries said they were doing.
Then you have absolutely no right to complain...
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Funny, I was positive it was Bush within the same time frame. That the same didn't occur to you as well seems to indicate YOUR ignorance of world politics leading up to that event.
Or maybe you're just being a little hard parent poster. He has a valid point. There was NO evidence at the time to suggest who the perpetrators were, but by sunrise on 9/12 everybody seemed to KNOW it was Bin Laden. I think that's a little fishy, or at the very least indicative of the gullibility of the American people and the power of the suggestive media.
What could possibly hurt the security of the American people more than giving our own government the ability to hide its
...he was the leader of the organization responsible,...
...he was the figurehead for an organisation which may have inspired (or even assisted in some way) the actual purpetrators,...
There, corrected that for you.
I think that then fits with the rest of your post, an then also recognises the complex nature of the disperate collective groups often refered to simply/lazily by western press as al-Qaeda but actually a web of like minded but independent groups, very few of whom are actually 'controlled' by Osama Bin Laden.
And this is coming from a Army E5 Sergeant, currently working in Tikrit, who works in JAG, and did lots of Detainee Operations while I'm over here. If you saw any kind of abuse, bad treatment, or did any yourself, you have a duty to report bad treatment or abuse of Iraqis. It doesn't matter if it's physical abuse like beatings or emotional or humilitation types of abuse such as racial epithets like "Hadji" "Towel Head" or anything else.
If you're not reporting these things, then you are in violation of many orders and a couple of UCMJ articles. If you would like me to cite specific examples, please send me a private message and I will provide you with my CENTCOM email address to start the process of reporting others. Because its people who don't report these things that make the rest of the Army look bad, since none of it will get prosecuted and dealt with in an appropriate way.
Of course, I should take an AC comment with a grain of salt: either you were protecting your own identity from fear of retribution, or you were making it up. Either way, you should send me a message, and we can make sure the right thing is done.
WMD is a post WW1 term, that is the heavy chemical warfare used in WW1 has never been called for WMD's.
As a matter of interest, where do you draw the line? Both my grandfather and my great-uncle were victims of gas attacks in WW1, and those weapons definitely hurt or killed an awful lot of people at one time.
Does a WMD have to operate on the scale of the Allied bombing of Dresden, or the US bombing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki?
While I am aware that everybody thinks they're on the side of righteousness, as I write this I am again struck by the fact that the biggest atrocities of the last century have been committed by "our" side.
Correct ? Or do you see a problem here ?
Yes. I see that if you reason like this in the face of the evidence found (or rather, not found) in Iraq, then I believe you are incapable of reasoning at all. Sorry.
Actually, the fact that Osama bin-Laden denied being responsible for the 9/11 attacks was aired on TV worldwide - even in the USA, I believe.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
...the US has lost the credibility it needs to diffuse international conflicts.
...the US failed to gain the credibility it would need to diffuse international conflicts.
There, corrected that for you. The US has never had the credibility globally to act as 'neutral arbitors and peace keepers'. For a brief time around the time of the 1st gulf war there COULD have been an opportunity for the UN to become such a body. If there was, then it was a very slim chance and a very short time and both US and Russia certainly managed to miss it, and China probably wouldn't have joined the party any way.
The biggest problem is that the US has not recognised that it has not inheritted a right/responsibility or even ability to act as a global police force. The problems of the world will not be solved by smarter bombs, more planes, bigger guns but by making the world a better place by "doing the right things" and thus winning hearts and minds.
As long as the west continues to exploit over half the world and pollute the planet while campaining to prevent the other half from developing equally (to prevent them polluting and wasting very limited resources too), then the US/west will have no global credibility. ...and that's not even facing the prospect that if most of the world wants to turn its back on science and democracy, and yes, also turn its back on christianity, then the US and the west does have a fundamental (forgive the pun) problem.
Saddam Hussein was never near the top of my birthday greetings list, but let us not forget that the US was perfectly content to prop up his regime and sell him armaments when it suited them.
You could call this kind of group organization "P2P" without a central server so us geeks can better comprehend how the structure is (or lack thereof).
There is no CEO/President of Al Qaida no more than there is a president of the internet.
But you can't really explain that to politicians so you need a guy at the top who pulls all the strings for these things to make sense.
Like that mythical 2$ gallon of gas?
Crude oil going for 60$ a barrel?
Lies! It was NEVER that cheap!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
More like Bin Laden being the mascot and the PR director.
Osama=Tux, then.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Clearly we need to find terrorists and deliver better recording equipment to them so we don't have to argue about what they said 10 years later because we couldn't hear what they were saying.
A law that says transcripts must be provided for all propaganda materials would also be a good start.
In Soviet Russia meme tires of you!
And terrorists should schedule their attacks better and coordinate with the news outlets to have them ready for primetime TV.
Please don't lump all of one party into one stereotype.
I thought that was the point of political parties. A party decides on a political platform and people who agree with it join the party.
To be fair, political platforms change over time. Members of the party might disagree with the new political platform. Those members can attempt to change the platform. However, if they don't succeed, they are left with the choice of supporting the platform or leaving the party.
Request a Linux Shockwave player here: http://www.macromedia.com/support/email/wishform/
Now, some poison gasses aren't especially problematic that way. Mustard gas can be a problem for longer than you might think, but not months. Non-persistent chemical agents aren't a big deal for more than a few days. But there are agents that are extremely hazardous for extended periods, and that can deny use of an area for a very long time.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Of course Saddam had chemical weapons, we (the American people) sold them to him - that should be a warcrime in itself, but the people who did this were never held accountable for their actions and can't be because the US doesn't believe in the Geneva convention, the world court or anything like that - but we love to send our enemies there anyhow.
Thing is - after years of UN inspections they found that Iraq's weapon stockpile was either non existent or obsolete and useless.
Plus the other major argument was that he had nuclear weapons which wasn't true either.
Where do you draw the line? Ironically it was Rush Limbaugh of all people during the war in Kosovo that said there were something like 240 individual conflicts going around the world (I can't remember the exact number obviously) - many of which involve warcrimes - is it our job to respond to each and every one of these?
You're gun analogy would work best if we knew a guy had a gun in his house (Iraq), we sent some competent and trusted people in to find it (the UN) 10-15 years later - while finding evidence of guns, never found the gun that caused the crime so we blew up the entire city because hell - that gun has to be in there somewhere.
We just needed to send the message that nobody is allowed to kill our civilians but us.
Actually doing it for anyone at all is illegal (and carries a criminal penalty). Doing it for the sitting, or any ex-president raises the maximum penalty to the death penalty.
Well, not quite. Everyone can advocate the death of Bin Ladin, or Saddam, or any other "terrorist" we've identified.
And sorry to add this word, but you really deserve it ... Obviously. Does it really need to be explained that violence or advocacy of violence against political parties has NO PLACE WHATSOEVER in a democracy ? I mean come on.
But it's a perfectly legitimate way to start a democracy, as the war in Iraq shows.
It's amusing watching the U.S. try to keep its hypocritical head out of its ass when it applies circular logic to everything.
Actually there is nothing new here, Bin Laden credibly denied everything on Sept. 17, 2001 to CNN -- it simply went down the memory hole, since the MSM, has not mentioned his denial since. http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/16/inv.binladen.denial/ And let's never forget that Mullah Omar offered to turn over Bin Laden, all he asked was for the US to show him some evidence that Bin Laden was guilty. Bush told him to get lost -- and started bombing. Bush could have had Bin Laden. He did not want him. America can send cruise missiles to Afghanistan, but it couldn't send a fax?
And that video has been universally decried ....
Universally? Sources please...
If it's so bloody "mass" how is it that Saddam fought the Iranians for 8 years (using gas), until it ended in a stalemate? Real WMD, i.e. nukes, would have ended it in 20 minutes. You overreach.
If he did send them to Syria, and these putative WMD are so dangerous and destabilizing, then why has the US not attacked Syria? Lack of oil perhaps? We had proof, the UN inspectors found nothing.
Listening to the radio this morning I heard a long interview with Steve Coll, addressing exactly this question among others. You can hear or read the transcript here. He not only debunks this myth and explains how OBL did manage to equip his army in Afghanistan, he also addresses the so-called "phantom flight" of bin Ladens out of the country in the week after 9/11. Worth your attention if you're interested in actually looking into these questions.
And yet, they're still dead. It's small consolation, isn't it? Whether we accidentally killed them trying to keep the peace or they were intentionally killed to keep the peace (Saddam) it matters little to the dead or their relatives. It might make you feel better about it, it doesn't make me (as an American citizen) sleep any easier.
You are correct. It is tragic and painful to anyone with a soul. Unfortunately, that's what happens. Many innocent people died in the US Revolutionary War. Many more died in the US Civil War. Were their lives worth it? I'm afraid I must say yes. Does the Jewish descendant of a holocaust survivor think that the millions that died fighting the Nazis were worth it? I believe they would say yes as well.
I know it sux, and I don't want to belittle human life at all, but sometimes, people have to die in order to achieve a better life for future generations. Ask the descendant of a slave if their freedom was worth the lives of the million or so men, women and children who died in order for them to be free.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
No one trusts the United States and has not for many decades. You should read teh "foreign" papers once in a while. And the United States does not send in weapons inspectors, the UN does. Russia is not going nuts. Georgia attacked and killed hundreds, perhaps thousands of ethnic Russians in Ossetia their reaction was quite measured compared to what America did after 911. Try those foreign newspapers again. Pakistan is indeed on the brink.
Since you killed over a million of them, you either targeted them, didn't give a shit, or are really lousy shots. Collateral damage is always on purpose.
It was broadcast in the US.
Q.
If he did send them to Syria, and these putative WMD are so dangerous and destabilizing, then why has the US not attacked Syria? Lack of oil perhaps
Because the Iraq war turned out to be more trouble than expected. Mind you much of that is because the of the help the Syrians have given the insurgency.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Yeah, but who did the Jews take Israel from?
Also, upon leaving office every politician at the national level should be required to spin a mad-max style Wheel-of-Death N times.
Where N is the number of terms served - 1 (if voted out) or number of terms - 2 if they choose not to run again.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
You know that. I know that. Can you suggest a reason why the US and UK intelligence services didn't know exactly what the effect would be as well? The only question is *why* they wanted that result, in Northern Ireland, Eurasia, Algeria, Vietnam...
That's not what the truthers believe. Or, rather, not all.
They believe that there are bad people in so many positions of "power" that, from an epistemological perspective, *all* information is tainted.
For instance, the chemical and thermodynamic properties of several steel alloys mentioned in my 20 year old materials science book? Obviously faked as prep for the 2001 hoax.
And the references in said book that date back even further? Also fake. And not necessarily as old as they claim. Conspirators probably printed up millions of fake journals and secretly replaced them in the archives of every university library in the country.
Heck, they probably artificially aged my book and millions of other books to make it *appear* used. Even though they didn't have to because the conspiracy goes back to Jefferson and his Asimovian plan to enslave Americans, eventually.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Nothing "just happens." Or do you think that nearly a hundred thousand people dying doesn't really have a cause, it's just "what happens."
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
How quickly they forget...
It was widely reported at the time that bin Laden initially denied involvement. This is not news to anyone who's been paying attention.
Whether his initial denial, or later claims of responsibility, should be believied, is left as an exercise for the reader.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Dude, it's SPECTRE
I didn't claim we were angels, just that we are a hell of a lot MORE tolerant than the people who are asking us to be more tolerant of them who are, ironically, nearly completely intolerant of anybody else.
You speak as if all Muslims share the same beliefs and tolerances/intolerances. That's not even remotely true. There's probably as wide a range of beliefs within the Muslim faith as there is within the Christian faith. You can't just generalize about an entire religion that has 1.5 to 2 billion adherents.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
You know that. I know that. Can you suggest a reason why the US and UK intelligence services didn't know exactly what the effect would be as well? The only question is *why* they wanted that result, in Northern Ireland, Eurasia, Algeria, Vietnam...
I wish I knew.
Jeffrey Archer's prison diary provides insight (albeit at a slight tangent) insofar as it paints a picture of a man who knew nothing about crime and punishment that hadn't been filtered through several layers of advisors suddenly finding himself on the wrong end of the system. If all the other politicians are in a similar boat (and it's fair to assume they are), then it's not stupidity. Rather, it's a level of naivety which is simply breathtaking to anyone who lives in the real world. Most senior politicians are so far removed from the real world that they can't even remember it.
Nothing "just happens." Or do you think that nearly a hundred thousand people dying doesn't really have a cause, it's just "what happens."
Sure there is a cause. If it "just happened", then it would not have been worth it.
So many wrongs happen in the world because someone decides that someone else's life is "worth it." What do you think those people would say if they could be asked? Isn't the person whose life it is the most entitled to say whether their life is worth giving up for something or not? Seriously - try and answer that question.
I've asked myself question. I wrestled with it for quite a while. I knew that I wouldn't be fighting for US security as the US was pretty secure at the time. I asked myself if I was willing to die for the freedom of someone I had never met, that had little or no effect on my family or loved ones, that wasn't even American. When I came to my answer, I joined the US Armed forces. Sure, I'd gladly fight for my freedom, as many others would as well. That wasn't the issue. What makes me so damn special that I would fight for ME, but not someone else? Is their right to live free no more important than my own? So, yeah, I was willing to die fighting for someone else. So is every other US Soldier.
It might upset your sense of post-action rationale, but the murder of Jewish people in Nazi controlled areas was not the motivating factor for either the UK or the USA to get involved in the war. The US didn't even know that there was systematic genocide going on until Allied forces started pushing their way into Germany. If you honestly believe that either that or the US occupation of Iraq is about protecting ethnic groups then you need to be reading some more factual history books.
I never asked if the rationale was worth it. I asked if the result was worth it. No one at Auschwitz refused liberation because we were there for another reason.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
There is no "moderate dead". It's a pretty binary thing.
Actually, you could probably say one of the only truly binary things in the world. After "am I dead?", which can be answered with a definitive yes or no(and if you can ask the question, I'm betting you're going to answer 'yes'), pretty much any non-abstract question you ask has to be answered with a degree of "In some cases it can be tough to say for sure".
That's probably why it's so difficult to be moderate about the war. The decision to kill people has a certain finality to it. In fact, the moderate decision is usually not to kill anyone at all. Just look at the muslim world; Who are the "moderate clerics"? The ones who are saying "Let's not destroy the Satan America".
It's been a long time.
Of course you have some evidence that Saddam sent his weapons to Syria? And by evidence I don't mean the MSM, or the Bush Whitehouse. If I gave you several bad cheques in a row, would take another one? They lie. They lie all the time.
wow. it's chess, not checkers. would you really have rather had Richard "Dick" Cheney as president? What must you think?
Do you honestly think that Bush is running the country?
But if you think like a terrorist you would be proud to announce to everyone you were behind the biggest attack ever.
Doesn't make any sense for him to lie in this matter.
Yes, I hear that a lot but I don't understand the logic behind it.
-------
Incite and flee.
Your ideas intrigue me, and I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Ah yes, the "They were crazy and evil" defense.
You're right, Abu Ghraib was sadistic. It's amazing that the politicians are even defending the use of torture.
It's been a long time.
LOL. Good one. Certainly dubbya has a lot of "hep" from his friends, but, ultimately, I do believe he is the decider. I mean, think about it. Only a man with such incompetence could have inflicted so much damage in such little time. Res ipsa loquitur.
..the only person tying a several terrorist groups together because they were all smooching off him.
While we may never know how many hot desert nights were spent in naughty terrorist on terrorist action, I do believe the word you're looking for is "mooching."
Okay, so how do you explain away the Al Jazeera tapes?
Bin Laden says he wasn't behind attacks
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/16/inv.binladen.denial/
Note the date, it was even reported back then.
it's in my head
Look, I'm not a theorist. It's not my role to explain anything - I'm not in the right position and I have virtually no firsthand information.
But I am in a position to evaluate the explanation given to us by the government, by simple virtue of my status as a citizen and a taxpayer. And it disturbs me that the only direct link between 9/11 and Osama bin Laden is critically regarded by some fairly neutral parties.
The duty is on the federal government to respond to such doubt with more credible evidence - a fleet of academics, let's say, testifying as to a particular translation. But it didn't do that, and we didn't hold its feet to the fire... much as we've failed to hold government accountable for anything since 2001.
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
I suspect you will have better luck arguing with your dog. At least the dog will pretend to understand.
Seconds? Positive? On what rational basis? Sure he was on the list that morning, but so were a lot of people. What process did you go through that allowed you to be sure? Are you still thinking that way?
The real perps of 9-11 are the neozioncons in the war and oil industries along with their partners the "dancing israelis" mossad operators, remember those guys? The ones who got caught celebrating and filming the destruction as it went down? The ones where their "moving van" tested positive for the same sort of explosives you would need for controlled demolitions? What's that, chopped liver? People can't add 2+2 anymore?? How many clues do people need anyway?
False flag events are one of their specialties, a previous example, they almost pulled off with the USS Liberty incident, which they were going to try and pin on Egypt. Also see the "Lavon affair". Fucking murderers and we should have immediately gone to war against them when that happened, it wasn't an "accident". High level treason in the US establishment combined with the israeli lobby and their undue influence and control in the government and especially across the mass media where they can control the propaganda.
9-11 was an orchestrated mass murder coup, and they "needed" a new pearl harbor event in order to galvanize public opinion to go into the middle east in a big way on the ground. That is direct from the published PNAC documents. Those people who run that government over there are NO friend of the US and never have been, they use the loons here who support them as their bitches, useful idiots, including the fundamentalist Armageddon worshipers who infest the government and are in the highest ranks of the military as well.
Anyone who still believes the official US government fairy tale conspiracy theory is...well...either stupid or evil or both. I can dismiss the drunk jock rednecks and their hooting and wanting to treat war like a football game, but anyone with a normal or higher IQ can look at the overwhelming evidence out there and see this was a controlled intel operation that was heavily compartmentalized. Please, running "wargames" on 9-11 and those games involved planes hitting buildings? People believe that was a fucking coincidence? The same in London on 7-7, a "coincidence"???
And no, I am not "anti Semite", I am anti murdering lying assholes. I got no use for the Taliban or the Wahabis either for that matter, same sort of scumbags. The US would be LOADS better off if they stopped supporting both Israel and Saudi Arabia in particular, those people are NOT friends.
They have not a clue who did it, but have a hunch is was a damn dirty brown person!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maher_Arar
Just one example, there are many more (saw an interesting feature on Discovery about innocent people flown to foreign countries for "aggressive interrogation" by the US government, I think it's called "Taxi to the Dark Side" and I highly recommend it)
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Bush is dick who killed millions around the world, and supports torture, and extra-judicial killings around the world. You think he wouldn't lie???
Yes, well, if you had taken your meds like the nice lady said, you wouldn't have had that problem ...
When I was still a fairly young soldier back in 2000, my RSM at the time said something like:
"Pay close attention to your training gentlemen, because - mark my words - within the next few years we're going to see a terrorist attack on the US carried out by Bin Laden, and then we'll be going to war alongside them"
At the time I thought he was a bit of a weirdo, but then again I was young, a bit naive, and quite unaware of middle-east history and politics.
He was, of course, basing his prediction on Bin Laden's previous proclamations, and his attacks on various US facilities that had occurred up to that point - especially the attack on the USS Cole which had occurred only a few weeks prior.
So yeah, when the planes hit a year later, my first thought was "Holy fuck, the bastard was right". My second thought was "Shit. We're going to war". There might have been no immediate evidence to suggest who was responsible, but anyone who had been paying attention to the middle-east knew immediately who the most likely culprits were. When someone keeps saying "I'm going to burn your house down", and repeatedly starts small fires on your lawn, it's pretty easy to figure out who's responsible when you come home one day to find it engulfed in flames.
That's nice. I hear the same complaint from the weirdos who insist that the US never landed on the moon. I don't particularly care what you find fishy - if you really cared about the truth, you'd do a bit of research instead of simply repeating a bunch of ludicrous accusations.
Yeah, sure, he let it "stagnate" the sanctions in Iraq only produced 500,000 "extra" deaths, so if 30 million was the goal, then yeah, I guess he let it "stagnate". If only we could kill enough people then our problems would soon be over.
My apologies - "fairly sure" would be a more accurate description of my mindset at the time. As to what basis, check here. I admit that my knowledge about the middle east and terrorism at the time was rather limited, so my assessment was based mainly on what I had heard from other, better informed individuals.
It's safe to say that nobody was "certain" until a couple days later when the flight manifests had been checked and the background of the perpetrators had been made public, but it's also fair to say that not many in the military and intelligence agencies were surprised by the confirmation.
Dude this is slashdot. That old question won't work here. No wives to be found.
It might not have been an actor, (it was) but it sure wasn't an engineer, not if he had the slightest tiniest belief that aviation fuel could melt "iron". Disinfo. And why didn't they attack Sweden? No warrantless wiretapping there!
Actually the manifests as published by CNN at the time contained NO Arab names. http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/evidence/passengers.html Since then the lists seem to have been "revised" and now include the names of the hijackers. Including of course the ones the BBC has reported as still being alive. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1559151.stm
Because OBL is the kind of guy who would take credit for this. Thats the kind of strike he likes. He is already marked for death, why would taking down the TTs make him scardey cat?
True, but remember that we invaded because of NUCLEAR weapons that we thought he had. We already knew about the chemical weapons (that was 20 years ago, before the first Gulf War).
It's no different than when we bombed a resturaunt because we thought Saddam may be inside, but he wasn't inside, though a bunch of civilians were. How are we any better -- because we're the "good guys"?
It's completely different. Saddam indiscriminately killed civilians with poison gas. That's barbaric. We indiscriminately killed civilians with high explosives. That's fair game.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
*sigh*
I see that you're a "truther". I'm sorry to hear that. I was rather hoping for a rational exchange.
CNN didn't publish the manifests, it published a victims list, which is a fact that 9/11 "researchers" continue to get wrong, even after being corrected hundreds of times. Are you so dense that you can't understand that a "victims list" would not include the murderers who carried out the attacks? Or did you just not bother to read (and think about) the material which you're quoting?
The guy who turned up alive and well certainly SHOULD have been alive and well, since he was a completely different person than the Waleed Al Shehri who was on board the aircraft. Apparently, 9/11 "truthers" don't understand that there are many people in the world who share the same name.
The fact that people like you keep repeating these lies for YEARS after they've been conclusively disproven is just ... well, it's pathetic. It's like you've been living in a cave for the last 7 years. I really don't understand how you can brainwash yourself in this manner, and then have the gall to accuse me of not being rational.
You don't understand the logic behind it? The fact that a civil democratic society can only be run by the informed actions of its citizens - and the fact that you're not willing to do the most basic, fundamental, and EASY things to support your democracy?
If you don't take that basic step, you are not part of the informed and engaged citizenry this Republic is designed to serve. You have no voice, you have no vote, you have no right to complain.
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That's just because of your definitions. What do you call the routine bombing of Iraqi airspace between Desert Storm and 2002, and the imposition and enforcement of sanctions that kept medicine and food out of Iraq? The estimate in 1998 for the number of children under 5 who were killed because of the sanctions was 500,000. Do you call that terrorism?
Do you call it terrorism that the US imprisons a larger percentage of its population than any other country in the world? Do you call it terrorism when police officers shoot a kid in the back, killing them? Do you call it terrorism when police routinely use tasers on people who aren't even violent, and often, haven't broken the law?
Do you call it terrorism when a kiloton bomb is dropped from 35,000 feet? When a home is bulldozed in occupied territories for not having the proper permits, despite the fact that no Arabs have ever been giving building permits for large swaths of land? Do you call it terrorism when the CIA arms both sides of a conflict? Call it terrorism when the CIA installs the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein of Iraq?
Did you call it terrorism when law enforcement threatened to shoot anyone who attempted to leave New Orleans by foot when Katrina struck?
The reality is the term "terrorism" is subjective, emotional, and largely bullshit. We could sit here and discuss semantics but I wouldn't want to. We could argue about definitions, but what does it matter? Or we could talk about who is oppressing and who is being oppressed (and surviving!), and I assure you, the majority of oppressors aren't Muslims.
-bugg
I've been trying to form a response to your nonsensical comment, but can't.
All I've got is - WTF? Is this supposed to refute something I or the summary said?
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We took a stable, secular country and turned into a cesspit of religiously-motivated civil war.
Stable, because the Thomas Jeffersons and James Madisons of Iraq were thrown into tree shredders, feet first by Saddam. Yeah, one thing Iraq had was stability, except when Saddam was invading other countries like Iran or Kuwait.
Imposing democracy is tyranny. Period. Bush is a tyrant.
Yes, up is down, criticizing your country is patriotism, black is white, "imposing" democracy is evil. Got it. Absolute nonsense. Typical lefties, got it all backwards. How dare we "impose" democracy on Saddam, clearly the chosen government of the people of Iraq. Saddam took power by force you idiot. It's not like the Iraqis just handed power over to him for life. He was a dictator that ruled through terror, aka, a tyrant. We turned the country over to them, and now they can pick their own leaders, and speak freely without being tortured and murdered. But you prefer "stability." Easy for you to say, you humanitarian idealist, you.
Anyone who believes in "spreading" democracy is a tyrant.
Yeah, Saddam was the good guy, Bush is the tyrant. And Truman and Reagan were tyrants too. Anyone who lets the people choose their leaders is a tyrant, got it.
You can disagree with the war, fine. But when you start calling someone a "tyrant" because you disagree with them (as opposed to a dictator that rules by terror), you are a moonbat. Tell me someone as crazy as you is sterile. Please.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Stop dropping bombs and maybe we might have a conversation about it :)
You said, you knew right away, and that this intuition was confirmed when you read the lists. I was talking about lists that were published "at the time" which is relevant, because you are telling us that lists without Arab names supported your immediate belief that it was Bin Laden. I am aware that the BBC has since backtracked. They even admitted to altering their own archives to "correct" the error. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't make them irrational. It's the man who resorts to insults who has run out of ideas.
Meant the same thing, really.
Really now. I don't believe the government did 9/11. It's too damned incompetent and beauricratic. Ibeleive they knew about it, and just decided to use it too their gain.
Ah yes, you publishing the wrong lists proves conclusively that we couldn't possibly have known who did it! Thank you for that extremely rational and intelligent presentation. I'll bet you've got a PhD in BS or some such.
Funny, your comment sure seemed to be conveying the complete opposite.
Absolutely right! On the other hand, insisting that the hijackers weren't on the flight manifests and that some of them are still alive - THAT makes you irrational.
It's the man who resorts to insults who has run out of patience after repeating himself for the billionth fucking time because loony assholes insist on repeating the same fucking lies over and over without respite. With that said, STFU and go play with your truther buddies. I've had enough of your bullshit.
Of course you have some evidence that Saddam sent his weapons to Syria? And by evidence I don't mean the MSM, or the Bush Whitehouse. If I gave you several bad cheques in a row, would take another one? They lie. They lie all the time.
There have been several reports that WMD was moved to Syria, including from a top Iraqi air force general, from a top Israeli general and a Syrian journalist:
The Iraqi and Israeli generals are quoted here:
http://www.nysun.com/foreign/iraqs-wmd-secreted-in-syria-sada-says/26514/
The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein's air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed.
The Iraqi general, Georges Sada, makes the charges in a new book, "Saddam's Secrets," released this week. He detailed the transfers in an interview yesterday with The New York Sun.
"There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands," Mr. Sada said. "I am confident they were taken over."
Mr. Sada's comments come just more than a month after Israel's top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, told the Sun that Saddam "transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria."
There's more there.
The Syrian journalist's report:
http://www.2la.org/syria/iraq-wmd.php
A senior Syrian journalist reports Iraq WMD located in three Syrian sites
06 January, 2004
AFP
Nizar Nayuf (Nayyouf-Nayyuf), a Syrian journalist who recently defected from Syria to Western Europe and is known for bravely challenging the Syrian regime, said in a letter Monday, January 5, to Dutch newspaper âoeDe Telegraaf,â that he knows the three sites where Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) are kept. The storage places are:
-1- Tunnels dug under the town of al-Baida near the city of Hama in northern Syria. These tunnels are an integral part of an underground factory, built by the North Koreans, for producing Syrian Scud missiles. Iraqi chemical weapons and long-range missiles are stored in these tunnels.
-2- The village of Tal Snan, north of the town of Salamija, where there is a big Syrian air force camp. Vital parts of Iraq's WMD are stored there.
-3-. The city of Sjinsjar on the Syrian border with the Lebanon, south of Homs city.
Nayouf writes that the transfer of Iraqi WMD to Syria was organized by the commanders of Saddam Hussein's Special Republican Guard, including General Shalish, with the help of Assif Shoakat , Bashar Assad's cousin. Shoakat is the CEO of Bhaha, an import/export company owned by the Assad family.
And, again, there's more there.
On the other hand, stories like this came out, in Apr. 2005, about how it was unlikely that WMD was shipped to Syria after a report about the issue came out:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/25/AR2005042501554.html
Report Finds No Evidence Syria Hid Iraqi Arms
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 26, 2005; Page A01
U.S. investigators hunting for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq have found no evidence that such material was moved to Syria for safekeeping before the war, according to a final report of the investigation released yesterday.
Given the way things work in the middle east, though, and given how clueless Western intelligence can be about the area, I wouldn't dismiss the possibility too quickly.
What does the Arrafat thing matter? The Palestinian territories don't have any oil.
Everything Palestinian matters because Israeli interests have a disproportionate effect on US Middle Eastern policy.
Palestine is a rallying point for Mid-East countries, whether they have oil or not.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Let me put it simply-
a) anything of any political content on slashdot is ultra left biased, if a story is posted and makes the claim that its "official" thats your 1st clue that its going in the anti-bush, anti-republican direction as it ALWAYS does here
b) all you slashtards are in complete denial of how your bread is buttered, its at the hands of unfettered capitalism of which you benefit but consistently are in denial of by being the propaganda arm of the marxist socialist leaning DNC and its current Donkey Du Jour Barack Hussein Obama
c) my dog is in possession of a much higher degree of understanding than you will ever be and its obvious, just look at your world, its in shambles and doesn't work despite the facade here that it does
a few news stories posted on some web page is not justification for anything that is said here, its simply a journalistic circle jerk
There will come a time when you will grow up and face all of this and pretending to not understand what I have said in all of this, just proves my point
Now go home and suck Baracks cock
Link if you have it, please.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Alright. Here's a hypothetical situation:
Say Diebold counts all the votes in America, and then discards them and just comes up with some numbers of its own. In that situation, would you say that I have no right to complain if I don't vote?
I'm not even saying that is a likely scenario. I'm saying that I don't think our voting system makes sense, so I won't participate.
I don't like US democracy.
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Incite and flee.
I think many of us young US voters who work and/or have kids would agree with me: it can be downright difficult to fit in voting! While I was still in college, voting was pretty manageable, but after starting to work full time and raising children, it was difficult enough just keeping up with the daily grind, much less get to the polls on voting day. To make the U.S. truly a democratic nation, it seems we should have the right to a single day each year whe
My belief now is that the single most important federal law that we could see passed in our lifetimes would be to make federal election days a holiday.
> Clearly we need to find terrorists and deliver better recording equipment to them
We TRIED to equip them with cell phones, but someone leaked that. We would LOVE to equip them with the latest video equipment, but he has to sign for it. Wouldn't want to snuff^H^H^H^Hend it to the wrong person.
The Jews took Israel from absolutely no one. It was given to them by countries which as a collective had "ownership" (for lack of a better term). It couldn't be a more legitimate state.
If you can tell OBL from any other guy with a beard and a keffiyeh, you're smarter than most people. In fact, most people can't tell a keffiyeh from a turban, which is why so many Sikhs have been victims of hate crimes lately.
What has legality to do with advocating assassination being a not-so-good idea under current regime? They certainly don't care about that.
(Substitute your own "them", for example the neighborhood association keeping the neighborhood clean of wrong thinking... ;-).
The US started things off by saying "mother may I" and pressing for extradition. Invasion, even in Afghanistan, was not foreordained. Look up the history of that time and you'll see us getting more and more belligerent about our demands for extradition and the Taliban sticking to the line that Bin Laden said he didn't do it and he'll remain their guest in Kabul.
To further the Taliban's line, Bin Laden put out a press release in Pakistan saying "wasn't me guv, you've got the wrong guy" and that press release was translated from arabic to pashto to english. That's what was actually in the package and nothing that we hadn't heard in 2001 already (ie no shocking relevation). What we didn't know was that we didn't just rely on the Pakistanis but also did our own translations to english.
Actually, the source in this case is a public press release put out in 2001 to give cover for the Taliban's refusal to extradite him. If you actually download the packet and go to page 157 or so, it says its a release.
...but there's nothing quite like seeing a couple of close-minded, out-of-touch demagogues going at it. Thoroughly entertaining. Bravo!
Nice fallacy. "No criticizing the president until you're a president!"
Hell, you're right! Why even have elections? All these people who aren't president thinking they know what it takes; Let's abolish elections and just let George W. Bush rule forever, to be succeeded by surviving presidents until we run out of former presidents!
It's been a long time.
Not the so-called Palestinians :)
The nation of Israel warred for those lands against the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaims, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites (The Jebusites first built Jerusalem) to be more precise. There was even some action against migrant tribes from Greece called the Philistines.
There you go. Several centuries before Islam was even a twinkling in Mohammed's eye Israel was already "occupying" (to use a term popular with Palestinian sympathizers) that entire area of land. Essentially everything east of the Nile and west of the Euphrates.
Then get out!
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Guess again.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9902E7DD1638F932A05752C0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print
That is incorrect. The CIA openly acknowledge the OBL was an asset and was in fact trained by the CIA. Who do you think trained the majuhadeen in Afghanistan?
He was code named by the America name Tim Osman.
this is well documented.
-nathan hale
Why do you call it "Faux News"?
You do realize that when it is spelled that way it is pronounced "Foe", right?
against it's own citizens
"its".
"What does the Arrafat thing matter? The Palestinian territories don't have any oil."
If Arrafat was unimportant then why send the US sectratary of state into a bombed out building surrounded by tanks and 2.5 million "terrorists"? Don't they have mobile phones in Palestine?
Afghanistan, Pakistan and Lebanon, not a drop of oil between them, do they matter?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Holy bullshit. He's taken responsibility for the attack more often than he has denied responsibility.
Again, bullshit.
Catch up a bit: http://www.911myths.com/index.php/Responsibility
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
He only posts story summaries that fall into the following two categories:
If a story is submitted several times, he will go with whichever submission has a summary that best fits the above criteria. If the summary only meets the criteria by being untrue or misleading in some way, that actually seems to increase the chances he will post it.
I love this... OK, so you're suggesting that the Bush Administration has lied about OBL's involvement in the 9/11 attacks... ...but they couldn't get the FBI onboard?
Actually, "Fat Osama" isn't as blatantly ridiculous as you'd like to believe: http://www.911myths.com/index.php/Confession_video
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
Faux is a French word used to describe something made to resemble something else. The original French word means false, fake, imitation or artificial. In the decorating industry faux painting is a surface design technique employing a variety of products and methods to resemble something else.
Of course, you knew that already.
Who gives a shit how the french pronounce it. As if English has ever respected the accent of the language it borrows words from.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Nobody denies that Saddam committed atrocities of various forms. He was even tried and hung for them (and then pardoned, posthumously).
The point the original poster was making was that at the time of the invasion by the US and its coalition of the willing the justification was the existence of weapons of mass destruction that were imminently usable. This claim turned out to be false.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Yes, folks, the true reason that we invaded a sovereign country that posed no real threat to us, destabilized it to the brink of civil war, wasted the international good will we had after 9-11, fought a war that resulted in thousands of US dead (and even more Iraqi dead), and tied up our military resources so much that other tin-pot dictators feel they can thumb their noses at us is so we could get a bit closer to Iran to keep an eye on them.
Let me invite you to have a look at a map of the region one of these days for the first time in your life. First I'd like you to note the location of Saudi-Arabia [1], home of 19 out of 20 of the WTC perpetrators.
Then I'd like you to note the location of the TWO sovereign countries the US has attacked under GWB (namely Afghanistan [2] and Iraq [3]). THEN I'd like you to note the identity of the country between these two [4].
Then I'd like you to note that 9/11 keeps being floated for invading #2 and #3 but somehow #1 never gets mentioned.
Now reconsider -- is your friends suspicion that the US would like to lay its grubby fingers on #4 really as absurd as you were trying to make it out to be?
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
You need to take a long hard look at the kind of people running America
You mean bankers ?
The country has become so obsessed with the stock market, the whole war thing seems like a distraction. A flashy event to draw attention away from the real reason the country's in hell: financial abuse.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
This is kind of like saying that, on the balance of probabilities, George Bush was surprised by the capture of Saddam Hussein.
No it isn't, because the use of the word 'surprised' in that context was an ironic reworking (to opposite intent) of OPs expression that Bin Landen may have been surprised that the towers collapsed.
Yes, he probably was. That doesn't mean he didn't order, authorize and finance it.
Apparently I didn't make myself clear. So allow me to reformulate. I'm pursuaded, on the balance of probabilities, that Bin Laden did not plan, order, authorise, or finance the 9/11 attacks.
But bin Laden clearly knew about the plan, clearly approved it (admitting as much in the video we all saw), and it was his money that financed it.
Are you taking about the 'admission' made in the English translation to the 2001 tape, which later scrutiny revealed was not contained in the Arabic original? Here in an extremely interesting analysis of the translation (you need to be able to read German). The only direct evidence of Goldstein's involvement would seem to be derived from propagada.
If instead you are talking about the, (what would in any case be self-serving), statments contained in tapes revealed during the 2004 American presidential campaign, I find these even more problematic.
Please note, I have no particular desire to exonerate the man. I'm merely sceptical about most of what we are told in relation to these matters and study the evidence with the critical eye of both of an historian and a lawyer (which are in fact two of my qualifications). And finally whether or not Bin Laden bears any personal culpability, it does not detract from, nor add to, the monstrosity of what was done that day.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Well, I am a westerner, and have lived in an islamic country for 16 years, so that's clearly not universally true. I can eat bacon and drink beer any time I want. I don't demand the right to do these things (well, I might for the beer) but they are freely given in Indonesia.
I'll agree that all countries are different in this respect. Further, in general, North American countries, at least, are more welcoming to immigrants than others. I'm not sure if that goes for European countries or not, as I've never lived in one for more than three months. I think you overstate the case dramatically, however, based on my experience. Indonesia, for one, is much more tolerant of the quirks and foibles of its guests than, say France. In my experience, etc.
I couldn't agree more.
The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures (Junius)
What insult? I use the term in an exact sense. If the fella can't be bothered to look up the term to use it accurately, then I belive it describes him pretty well.
Wiki has a pretty good writeup on the terminolgy.
Let's put it another way. No one, and I mean, no one, in the US military or intelligence services uses WMD's to mean ONLY nukes. NBC (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) weapons have been treated as the same class of weapon since the 50's. Sure, average people mostly think of the nuclear kind, but to quote Mr. Montoya... "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
I'm not crazy,I'm actively irresponsible.
"Saddam has incredible weapons. Incredible weapons."
"How do you know?"
"Uh, we looked at the receipt. . . . but as soon as the check clears, we're going in."
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Bin Laden also states that he was living in Afghanistan at the time of the attacks and that "I have held talks with His Eminence Amir ol-Momenin [Taleban leader Mola Mohammad Omar Mojahed], who does not allow such acts to be carried out from Afghanistan's territory."
Bin Laden was in Afghanistan when the embassies were bombed in Kenya. His minions carried out the terrorist acts so he could have been anywhere else he wanted. I don't believe him that terrorist acts were not allowed to be carried out from Afghanistan. By the way, bin Laden being in Afghanistan during the embassy attacks came from the 9/11 Commission Report that I'm in the middle of reading.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Slowdown there Cowboy!
I meant that you would literally get a better response from your dog than from the slashdot crowd.
Do yourselves a favour and watch fabled enemies on google video
http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=-2144933190875239407&ei=SB3PSIH_CYuKqQPF97jJAg&q=fabled+enemies&hl=en
This film covers all the evidence the government had of the impeding attack, from its own FBI people to intel shared from governments abroad.
Do yourselves a favor, get educated and learn the truth.
Foe news.... lulz
"Wow, if the source is credible that's pretty damning. For those who don't like to RTFA:
One message includes bin Laden's denial of having anything to do with the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania."
Good Lord, do you people have short memories. Yes, Bin Laden initially denied complicity in 9/11. But as evidence gathered against him, he reversed himself and admitted Al Qaeda was behind it. He warned that unless the West complied with his demands, more attacks were coming. The Koran allows the faithful to lie in the course of jihad if it furthers the cause.
What pisses me off is that this article is going to be used as a justification by the Truther movement, when we have a videotaped confession by Bin Laden himself.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
You are right. It's just best all the way around if you didn't vote.
Yo, buddy...Daily KOS and the Democratic underground is...
-------to the left.
Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Insurgents are to be handled in the most convenient manner possible in accordance with governing laws. The Geneva Conventions on the Treatment of Insurgents and Guerrillas are NOT governing law in the USA.
The UCMJ is a governing body of law, with limited applicability, primarily to OUR soldiers, though it can be used to punish our soldiers if their treatment of insurgents/guerrillas is considered over the top by our own military command structure.
Local law in the country in question can also be applied. Note that in most places where the subject comes up (we're fighting insurgents/guerrillas in some other country), local law is far harsher than our own laws, and far harsher than our routine treatment of insurgents/guerrillas. Note that local law is considered the closest to ideal (meaning least likely to be found illegal at some later date).
Local law in the various States applies in cases of insurgency/guerrilla warfare within the USA. Note that in that case, Martial Law would likely be declared (I don't think it's actually legal to use the US Military to put down an internal insurrection in the USA without a pre-existing declaration of Martial Law), so the UCMJ or Federal Statute would apply, not local/State laws, necessarily.
If you disapprove of the USA handling of insurgents and guerrillas, I strongly suggest that you write to your Congresscritter, Senators, and the President/VP expressing your desire that we (the USA) sign onto the additional Protocols to the Geneva Convention regarding insurgents/guerrillas. And ask everyone you know to do the same.
I doubt it will do any good, since we haven't signed onto those Protocols in the last 30 years, but it's possible Obama will be willing, if he becomes President. Note that ratification is required like any other Treaty, so it will require a vote by the Senate, which may be harder to get past than the President.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Busy dealing with important paperwork and other vice presidential duties in recent weeks, Dick Cheney was forced to put off until the last minute a cherished annual tradition: gift-shopping for his favorite holiday, 9/11.
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/cheney_waits_until_last_minute
Learn to read what is written on a thread.
Nowhere did I say Bin Laden wasn't on the Top Ten Fugitives list.
I said "Osama Bin Laden is not wanted by the FBI FOR THE ATTACKS OF 9/11."
He's not.
Read Bin Laden listing onu the FBI website. What crimes is Bin Laden wanted by the FBI for?
"USAMA BIN LADEN IS WANTED IN CONNECTION WITH THE AUGUST 7, 1998, BOMBINGS OF THE UNITED STATES EMBASSIES IN DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA, AND NAIROBI, KENYA. THESE ATTACKS KILLED OVER 200 PEOPLE. IN ADDITION, BIN LADEN IS A SUSPECT IN OTHER TERRORIST ATTACKS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD."
The Embassy Bombings. Not one word about 9/11.
Why? Because they know they have no evidence linking Bin Laden to 9/11.
Why?
Because they know the Fat Osama tape wasn't just a fake, it was a bad fake that would get laughed out of court if someone attempted to use it as evidence.
Yes, thank you.
The US military was far more respected when it wasn't in use. The US diplomatic arm was able to use the perceived strength of the US military as a "stick" to prevent other nations from doing things that would not be favourable to the US and her allies (Australia being one). Due to the US forces being continually hounded by poorly armed, equipped and trained forces they have lost their reputation as the worlds most advanced and capable military, a reputation that took a while to rebuild after Vietnam but was well proven in the 90's with the Gulf war and Kosovo. Now the US military could barely manage to intimidate a kitten.
If it went for the Iraqi conflict the US military would still have significant power, Afghanistan would be well in hand (and maybe have earned a little respect amongst central Asia, something that was and still is sorely lacking). Due to this power we (US, NATO and APAC allies) would still be able to intimidate governments like Iran and even Russia without the need for force. Unfortunately due to the US performance in Iraq (or lack there of) they are not afraid.
The conflict in Iraq has only proved that US generals and strategists have forgotten many of the lessons learned in Vietnam, particularly when it came to dealing with a populous that was aligned against them. US leaders failed to take into account the needs and desires of the Iraqi people, most people will accept a tyrant so long as he's a local tyrant, never underestimate the power of nationalism.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Exact sense? The exact definition of moron is someone with an IQ between 51-70, how accurate usage of you.
May I call you hypocrite yet?
The US military defines WMD's pretty vaguely as any weapon that can kill a large number of people leaving large undefined.
Saddam used 100 bombs (14 sorties of 7-8 planes) to kill 30,000 people which ends up at 300 per plane/sortie which could be compared to Hiroshima which is estimated at over 100,000 deaths by one bomb would you really put those two weapons in the same.
I remember seeing a tape in the days a bit later, after the destruction of all those people, and the cops and the firemen, and of course, the buildings. And the tape was being pitched as bin Laden being all happy at the success of the mission, right?
But as I watched it (and bear in mind I hadn't heard any conspiracy stuff yet], I saw a guy enter the room, bin Laden with a quizzical look on his face, the heavyset guy pops a tape in a VCR, and Osama seemed just as surprised as could be. it looked as if this was the first word, he might even have asked who did this, because I don't speak the language but it looked he was inquiring and then getting details from the guy who brought the tape, and being almost shocked as more was revealed.
It was a gut feeling I had, with no axe to grind or anything like that. I have no proof of anything, but I've seen gut reactions from New Yorkers who were on the scene, like those 4 or 5 firemen, across the street and a little up the block, describing the successive demolition-like sequence of 'booms' with smoke and dust being blown out the windows of each floor as the thing just pancaked down, nice and neat like, into its own foundation, where Giuliani could order the beams to be carted off, and in effect, tampered with the biggest crime scene in American history. A demolition expert even said it 'was no accident that the beams happened to have been blown, all the way down, in pieces that fit perfectly on the flatbeds' that ended up carting them away.
And, you know, I remember the Daily News with, "Ford to New York: Drop Dead." And the Republicans, Reagan and Nixon, laughing and calling it Jew York. That's an insult to everybody in that city. I grew up in San Francisco, loved my City, and I might have been pretty upset when the Yanks beat the Giants in the Series.
But I went to New York, over the years, a lot, and you can't go there, and hang with the people, and look around, for long at all, without falling in love with that City.
But I swear to their god, if we find out that these Trotskyist so-called neo-con traitors had anything to do with this... well, all I can say is that anybody who thinks we should leave it to the invisible man in the sky, for the meting out of justice, is deluding themselves.
If I was a New Yorker, I'd make it my life's work to find out what really happened, gather my thoughts and ammo, and clean this mess up once, and for all. And where's the military? Every member of the officer corps puts his hand on a Bible, and swears to defend the Constitution from its enemies, both within, and without. So, when does that start? I apologize for the rant, but this stuff hurts, if you stick around long enough.
Instead of moronic patronising suppositions about how the "Us loves it's conspiracy theories" How about some facts. - Skull & Bones society. Secret fraternity that worships death and is essentially satanic. Grave robbing of famous people and all kinds of sick rituals with hoods. Friendly and harmless fun? Read on and decide for yourself... it was started out of Germany in the town of Gotha, and Hitler was involved with this society, which is why the SS uniform and Nazi symbolism has the skull & bones on it. The version at Yale university is really just an American version of the society. - Grandfather of George Bush, Prescott Bush, was key in funding Hitler and arming him through various entities including the Carlyle group out of New York, before, during, and after the war. This is documented fact. He was called "Hitlers Angel" by the New York Tribune once these facts (part of them) were publicly uncovered. The Bush fortune started with Hitler and the money they made during that war. -George Bush father. Skull & Bones member also (ie. Nazi religion) President. If anyone takes the trouble to learn properly about the documented facts that we KNOW about they will find out that he is one of the biggest criminals in US history. We always hear about the crimes of other nations, never the US. He has been involved in massive drug running operations into the United States while simultaneously conducting war on drugs. It's just a scam. George Bush Jnr the twit of the last two centuries, even more stupid that Hitler, and puppet of the neocon movement is ALSO Skull and bones member, as is John Kerry (don't taze me bro) but it's true. George Bush Jnr has admitted on mainstream television that he is a member, as has Kerry, so don't anyone say this is a conspiracy "theory", as we are so conditioned to hearing those words together, It ain't no theory, it's a fact. The Skull & Bones has had a couple of exposes done on it over the years and it is known that the pledge of allegiance to the religion as I call it, puts the religion first, and the country last on the list or at least it has that effect. It should be illegal for any president or member of office to participate in any secret society that puts itself above the country and by oath at that. By this line of decendants father to son, and by observing that Skull & Bones only has 15 new members every year, and that at the last election the "opponents" were two members, and of the vast population of the United States with it's varied background and a land where so called "anyone can become president" it is rather stinkingly suspicious that the father to son, clinton to clinton, skull & bones involvement is so thick. In fact, we can see the very evidence that it is a one party system by the fact of who is paying for these big political election campaigns. Many times, the same people first fund the democrats, then the republicans. As they say, no matter who you vote for the government gets in. Why do people assume like morons that just because these people are in power that they are "good" "benevolent" and "kindly". When history has shown us repeatedly for thousands of years that almost ALL who attain power, especially great power, are by their nature corrupt and therefore attracted to that power, and ruthlessly dedicated to attaining it. Why do we assume that the government is working daily in our interest, that "the system", by and large "must" be benevolent because by it's nature, eventually bad people get weeded out somehow. What if the corporates ran the government now, in effect. What if Congress was afraid for their lives after the anthrax. That anthrax was shown to come from high grade, refined US military supply. Therefore could that not be a clear message from "fed" agencies that they "aint' Playing...". Nobody was shown to be responsible, and it's all seemingly forgotten. No weapons of mass destruction in Iraq Osama not responsible for 911 The buildings were demolished by explosives (it is impossible for a building to fall at near free fall
I said that I think that it is very probable that George and Tony lied on the topic of Saddam's missile capacity and nuclear threat. About these, they had no information, but, apparently, from their intelligence agencies. That information was forged in plain defiance of Hans Blix' findings. At least, that is my opinion. On the subject of poison gases, they just said that they didn't believe Saddam, who clearly stated (as was later made *very* believable) that he had gotten rid of them. Inhowfar these levels of displayed disbelief by George and Tony were genuine, I don't know. I suspect that, given the other two 'reasons', not so much. But that's just me. Total cynic when it comes to Iraq. And honestly, given the history of it that you know too, can you blame me ?
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Nonsense. The "Tim Osman" stuff is garbage someone made up and plastered all over the internet shortly after 9/11. It was based on the rantings and scribblings of some mental patient with a tangential connection to an intel agency if I remember correctly, and I probably don't. But it's complete bullshit that "The CIA openly acknowledge that OBL was an asset and was in fact trained by the CIA." They acknowledge no such thing and they even had a blurby disclaimer on their web page for a while explicitly stating that bin Laden never worked for CIA. as for training mujahideen, it depends whom you mean. The CIA did help train Afghani fighters (through the ISI who did most of the dirty work). The CIA did not train bin Ladin or his rag tag band of jihadists, and had very little contact with them if any.
Except OBL never worked for the US even as an "independent contractor" (e.g. mercenary). OBL isn't and never was a merc. He led an army of jihadists against the Soviets in Afghanistan and spun some good stories about how he singlehandedly won the war. But he never worked for the Americans, not even on a contract basis. The record is pretty clear on this based on extensive research by (among others) journalists Steve Coll and Peter Bergen.
The fact is his army was mostly militarily insignificant to the war and certainly wasn't worth the time of the US to get involved with -- we were busy funding and training the Afghani guerrillas who far outnumbered the "Arab Afghans" and played far more decisive a role. (And who, not incidentally, lived there and weren't planning on leaving, unlike OBL's jihadists). bin Laden was never a CIA agent, asset, associate, or mercenary.
You're a Jerk. Yes, a gun has not been found, neither powder, but the reason why is that he was DISARMED under control of the UN. And you can't assume that he MUST have another secret gun which just "hasn't been found yet", after turning over the whole country. This is just stupid, Bush.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
The US blamed Iran for the Halabja massacre at the time.
Also, the chemical stockpiles were destroyed after Gulf War I. There's ample photos of weapons inspectors with bulldozers destroying the munitions. The inspectors when ordered back in did not find WMDs. The scientists also agreed no WMDs, even expats and those brought out of the country.
The inconvenient truth is that Saddam knew he would be killed if he attacked America, a sort of MAD scenario. Suddenly the media painted him as some irrational man willing to commit suicide. Never happened either.
But you still can't prove they lied about the missiles rather than honestly overestimating the threat. Particularly as the intelligence agencies kept finding stuff that did imply that Saddam had active WMD programmes after the Gulf War, just like he did before.
This being slashdot, consider a car analogy. You have a car it starts to make funny noises and then fails. You take it to the shop and get it fixed. Later on it starts to make funny noises again. You say you think it's going to fail. You take it to the shop and this time it's ok. Does that mean that you lied when you said you thought it was going to fail?
It seems not. Saying Saddam was actively developing WMD was a reasonable inference given his part behaviour. The fact that it turned out he seemed to have stopped in secret is not something either Bush or Blair could have known.
If you want to accuse them of lying, you need some piece of evidence that they knew of and concealed. You don't have that.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Hey, guess what? Nobody said Saddam never had any WMDs. We knew he had them. Because we sold them to him. Look it up, asshole, Why do you figure we got the Center for Disease Control and several big Universities to spot Saddam a shitload of chemicals? Because he was going after the Iranians.
Remember them, or The Pueblo, dumbfuck? We were pissed because the Iranians got rid of the Shah that our CIA installed over there, the dictator that the Iranians finally got rid of. Saddam was our man on the front lines of Iran, you pathetic, dull fuck. US Special Forces targeting guys and their CIA handlers were the ones doing the 'aiming', courtesy of AWACS planes up in the sky. The fact that he killed a lot of Kurds didn't matter to US foreign policy, or our hypocritical 'morality' at all. Why?
Because the Turks hated the Kurds, and guess what else? The Turks had let us have radar bases and nuclear launchpads aimed at Moscow for a couple decades. They're our buddies and the Turks are still doing ethnic cleansing against the Kurds, right now, and we don't give a fuck, as a country of freedom lovers, I mean.
It's been a genuine pleasure giving you a cram course in well-documented recent US Foreign Policy, but, I can tell by the link to that cartoonish, un-captioned news item, that you probably think of as 'proof', that you won't understand stupid little things like 'facts' or 'matters of record.' Right? Right.
But don't worry, my dear little retarded patriot. There's a Plan B, just for you. And the best part of it is, it's easy, which is a real break for you, eh Bubba? And it goes like this: You're gonna switch off the old Dell, go have a last can of lukewarm Coors, and come back and sit down at your desk.
Then, open the drawer, and pull out the anti-negro .45, and slap in a clip. Now, at this point, I'm going to guess that one of your last thoughts might be something along the lines of, "How did he know I had a life not worth living?" But don't worry about all that, because this is your moment, and you've got your patriotic duty to do.
So, just imagine that the gun is 'actually' that Cub Scout's dick that you sucked in the bathroom at Church that time. Then make sure the the end of the barrel is right up against the roof of your mouth (after all, this would be the worst time for one more of those endless fuckups you used to call your 'life', right?), This is the best part: You pull the trigger, with American pride. Your country first. Amen.
See how easy that is? I mean, who needs to get out of the boat, run back into the jungle alone, get wounded, just to save a couple of his men, like that Commie, John Kerry, right? We'll show 'em who the real heroes are, tonight. This may be the first logical, or meaningful, thing that you ever had anything to do with, in your pathetic, lonely excuse for a so-called life. I'll say a little prayer to jesus for you, so you know your future in the afterlife will be guaranteed, after that, for sure.
There were no weapons that were a threat to us or anyone else. The shells found were old shells we had given him long ago and the payload was dead, so thus he could not cause any harm with those shells.
"he could not cause any harm with those shells" ... so people, remember : this is not harm :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_poison_gas_attack
Everyone remember Saddam executed some 30000 civilians with NON-EXISTING chemical weapons. If this is not true, the "Bush lied" meme is rather idiotic and lefties in general look bad. So these people were killed with weapons that DID NOT EXIST ! Everyone capiche ? Or do I have to call the thought police ?
P.S. Can you explain to me how exactly you do that ? Executing even a single person with non-existing weapons ?
Saddam wasn't intentionally killing civilians as such, he was just killing villages with traitors, and the other people were just collateral damage.
It's no different than when we bombed a resturaunt because we thought Saddam may be inside, but he wasn't inside, though a bunch of civilians were. How are we any better -- because we're the "good guys"?
Is there anyway to get Bush the right information and the right intelligence on this... Osama Bin Laden issued a fatwa on 10/14 which is my birthday.. and this is equivalent to a protective order in the USA.. What if he was just trying to help me in business or help me get married... and it was misinterpreted due to mass media or unknown third parties?? And then to bomb Pakistan when we have had peace in our country for the last 7 years, is shocking.. why?? Osama Bin Laden seems so smart, that i cannot understand the point of killing the man. His mind was reveresed if he did any of the bombings.. b/c he was a builder, right?? So, fear and negative programing from somewhere stepped in.. there is plenty of oil it is a faulty belief pattern is all... somewhere.. I think that he is good.. and now we are in a war, he will protect himself.. and is showing the government that we do not need huge powerful weapons to cause destruction. Also their justice system is SCARY.. maybe they use rhetoric like that so that people do not get hurt by being lead astray from the right path. I think that only way to lead this man out of war.. is to give him a guide. I love his humor though... when he exercises it.. Anyway for me to get help with this?? lamiceli2007@yahoo.com
'Overestimating a threat' and 'lying'; the difference is one of degree. An amount of degree we can fight about until infinity. Also 'actively developing WMD' and 'we found some ten year old unusable stuff buried in the sand, but that must have been from after the first gulf war'; again, a question of degree. 'Hans Blix said so. Saddam said so. The intelligence was never conclusive' and 'George and Tony could not have known'. Here I go again. There are no scientific truths in politics. My feeling is, and no argument of yours has yet convinced me, that George needed a case for war, Tony was only too happy to be a lapdog, and the both of them didn't mind stepping onto a few truths along the way. You say: nothing but inference and innocent until proven guilty. I have no rebuttal. The problem with finding these people guilty of lying, is that they have executive power over the evidence used.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
You know there's a deeper philosphical difference we have here. Someone once parodied conservatives as believing in "my country right or wrong". Clearly, that's not good if your country turns out to be wrong.
But what about the case where you believe "my country is always wrong". Might that too turn out to be not good if your country turns out to be right? And the thing is given their totalitarian scumbag opponents, the US/UK are usually the good guys. Particularly I think during the Cold War free societies should have had much more self confidence that they were in the right.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
No kidding. Thanks for this piece, it was very well written. I was almost tempted to suggest using paragraph tags, but you know something; nobody here in the US reads anything, anyway, so what's the difference? The ruling class knows that the bigger the lie, the more likely it is, to be believed by the most people.
The evidence is so overwhelming, and the cracks in the system, and the steady diet of bigger and bigger lies, is so overwhelming, the people miss it, or just cannot bring themselves to admit that 'it's come to this.' I have traveled the world, I was lucky that way. Kids in the UK are like college professors, as far as history is concerned, compared to my own people. And that sounds like a putdown, but I don't mean it that way. Americans, on the street, on the buses, in the fields, working in the community, maybe raising cash for actual benevolent charities, and whatnot, are a good people, but when it comes to dealing with authority or the unknown, they are just crippled. My mother died of cancer, in Orange County, California, in '83. Her father was a socialist, Worker's party, in Madison, Wisconsin. My mom was at the Ambassador the night Bobby Kennedy was killed. On the last day of her life she said, "Look, I know things look bleak, but have faith, the American taxpayers and working class will reach a point of enough-is-enough, and they'll rise up."
It hurts me to admit the number of times I was actually glad that she had passed, and wasn't around to see the latest atrocity. My daughter called me last year and said she was scared. This may not mean much to a lot of younger guys, but decent men do not want their children scared, or in danger, ever. I was alarmed, because she's bright, creative, and was 18 then, and I asked her, "What's up Bunny? What's scaring you?" And she said, "Daddy, I'm scared of what the world will be like when I'm your age." I don't even remember what I said to her, because what can a man say to that, in the face of all this?
Bin Laden is not wanted by the FBI for WTC and never has been :
http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/terbinladen.htm
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
If you think any powers that be only care about oil prices you have a very limited understanding of the economy. Surely any shadow goverment capable of organising this also realises that a high oil price would seriously hurt the rest of the economy?
As for four more years of power. If there is a secret goverment, they are in charge always, no matter who is sitting in the white house. Dick Cheney was hardly unemployed working for minimum wage before Bush and neither will he be unemployed afterwards.
Frankly if you want shadow goverments you need to go the whole way and accept that a shadow goverment doesn't care about oil prices or elections.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I love how FACTS get modded troll.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Ron Paul, to his great credit, is not really a Republican. He chose "R" to make it easier to raise money.
If he wasn't such a religious loon and anti-abortion he'd be elected on Nov 4.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Very insightful, Bent.
Unfortunately, this is one of the rare mornings I don't have mod points.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Oh, I have no question that Bush would love to invade Iran and "bring Democracy to them" if he could. What I found absurd was the constant retconning of the reasons for Iraq. To say that the reason we invaded Iraq was always so we could keep an eye on Iran is completely false and is an insult to the intelligence of the American people. As one reason is shown to be false, the Bush administration always shifts to another reason and then claims that that was always the case. Unfortunately, the news media needs to grow a pair and call politicians (from both sides of the aisle) when they do sudden reversals like this. Changing opinion based on new information is one thing. Claiming that you were always for/against something when you clearly weren't or that your reasons were Y when you stated over and over that they were X is not something that the media should let slide.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
So how is that different from the US forcing them to leave?
If the US was going to invade anyway, what good would it done for a bunch of nuclear scientists, biological weapons experts and military technologists to hang out and wait to have bombs fall on their heads?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Unfortunately, yes.
That's why we have to reward the people who were against the war from the beginning and elect him President.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yes, but we've got an unstable dictator who (a) we know we *gave* WMD to in the past to fight the iran/iraq war, (b) we know developed and used his own WMD's during subsequent actions, such as the issue with the poison gas and the kurds, and (c) refused, for more than 10 years, to ever sustain substantial co-operation with UN weapons inspectors on documenting his inventory and capabilities, in spite of numerous sanctions and threats over the years.
In that scenario, a claim that he destroyed them does not suffice. Either he allows the inspections to prove it or he's just making crap up. Nobody else in the world is going to believe him on his word at that point.
It's crazy how much you people ignore the facts when you politicize this.
11*43+456^2
Oh, you mean the weapons inspectors who basically gave up and left because they never got any meaningful co-operation from the Iraqi government? The same ones that recommended sactions against him numerous times between the two us/iraq wars? Only one of them came out said, for apparently political reasons, that he thought iraq didn't have WMD's.
Question: if he used up or destroyed his stockpiles, then why did he refuse to co-operate with the inspectors and stall them out for over a decade?
11*43+456^2
"International inspectors with pretty much unrestricted access to Iraqi facilities found none"
Bullshit. He failed to co-operate for a decade. Hence all of the sanctions during the time between the two iraq wars.
11*43+456^2
The difference is between the UN losing faith in the US, and the US bossing the UN around. This is a case of the UN losing faith in the US.
freeflux-powered open-source blog
If the FBI wanted to charge Bin Laden for the 9/11 attacks, the charges would be there.
Thanks for showing us how little you understand. The FBI doesn't charge anyone of anything. Bin Laden hasn't been indicted by a grand jury (or DA) for his role in the 9/11 attacks.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
I'm not saying Saddam was an Ok guy who shouldn't have been removed. I'm not saying that there was a solution to that sentiment other than to invade. I'm saying that the reasons given were (to my mind) bogus, and I have a *terrible* thing against leaders who hide behind executive privilege and lie at the same time. I *hated* it when Clinton bombarded Sudan to get out of Monica-gate, and I *hated* it when George invaded Iraq for reasons that I cannot yet imagine, but I'm fairly certain were different from the actual reasons he gave.
Not because I was in love with Saddam. I didn't really care about Saddam. But because that which was much closer (an allied leader of the free world) *lied*. And these people shouldn't lie. At least not about things that concern enormous costs, both in military equipment en human lives. We expect dictators to lie, not our leaders. And the system that allows for something like that, is rotten.
So I'm not of the mindset 'my country, always wrong'. I don't think so at all. I hope I'm still in charge of my critical faculties. And those critical faculties tend to fire up greater and quicker when things hit closer to home. Yes, I think Western countries should be held to greater scrutiny because that's one of our goals. We (well, I) think harsher of Israel's action than those of Palestinians - why ? Because we think of Israel as a first world democracy and of the Palestinians as subjects of corrupt governments or tyrants. People (soldiers) from democracies who do things, do those things representing the people that chose the executive that sent them out. On the other side we have canon fodder that does the wishes of a single psychopath, and not once, *once* will I want to think that our system can successfully harbour such a psychopath as leader, making us no different from those we find on the other side of the trenches. That is not to say I think of us as 'better', no, the people that live under tyrants are victims, not 'worse'. But I just don't want to be 'worse', and the minute I start feeling like I'm also part of the 'worse', is the minute I start wanting to do something about it. Like calling (perceived) liars on their lies. Or ousting them.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
I doubt you have the same problem complaining about Christians, but regardless, that's not what I was doing.
In any given religious group, you're going to have a range from hard core fundamentalists (who wouldn't hesitate to use violence) to the lackadaisical.
Somewhere in the middle is the group that that wouldn't be violent, but thinks "well, they had it coming." There were actually quite a few Eric Robert Rudolf supporters, I'll admit. But seeing as how most Christian institutions roundly condemned Rudolf and were upset that he killed in the name of their church, by and large we see that the vast, vast majority of Christians don't support violence against people with other beliefs.
The same simply cannot be said of the Muslim community; there was very little condemnation of terrorist attacks and when there was it was disingenuous rhetoric like "we regret the deaths of innocents." (spoken by a CAIR representative). Now you have to ask them who they consider "innocent." Not me, certainly.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
That all sounds quite admirable. But you still don't have any real reason for saying Bush and Blair lied other than a skepticism of governments. I remember at the end of the Gulf War thinking that the US should have bitten the bullet and backed the uprising against Saddam, even if that wasn't what they originally planned.
And from then on until the second Gulf War it seemed like it would be a better thing to pay the short term finite cost of removing him than get slowly bled dry by the regime.
So when it was clear that Bush planned to get him, I was obviously sympathetic. The WMD pretext was a clever way to legalise it, courtesy of Jack Straw, Blair and Powell. I'm not sure I'd have supported it knowing the duration of the insurgency, but that seems to be ending.
Both Bush and Blair will lose power in disgrace for it, so it's not like it's the beginning of empire.
Actually the best objection I can think of to it is that it ties down troops and that might make the Chinese push their luck just like the Russians did. Since I'm in Taiwan at the moment, I'm likely fucked in that case. Still, The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, gang aft agley, as Napoleon said with a chuckle on his return from Moscow.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
In 1988, the shells worked. In 2004 they didn't. Chemical weapons have a shelf life, we already knew that going into the war, and what we found were inert.
Seriously, are you really that stupid?
C Pungent
If they invaded the US with the claim we had WMDs, and proceeded to directly or indirectly cause the deaths of tens of thousands of US citizens, many of those that condemn the insurgents would be insurgents.
It would be a lie to claim the US military deliberately targets civilians, but civilians are dying nonetheless, for a war that didn't have to happen.
We could have carpeted Nevada with solar panels for what this war has cost us and told the entire middle east to fuck off.
This comment is my opinion and does not represent an official position of Donald Trump or others I do not work for
Note to self: more caffeine, better proof-reading.
I meant that Saddam was attempting to imply to IRAN (and perhaps others - maybe Iraq isn't so far off at that) that they had still had a chemical arsenal at their disposal.
Sort of like Britain "owned" India, or the U.S. before the revolution? I generally assume that the people actually living in an area "own" it, if nothing else due to squatters rights if they've been there their entire life.
Yeah, but unlike traditional old time nations (China, India, etc.) they weren't able to actually occupy and control their own country for any great length of time. I'd think shared ownership and governance with any number of other people whose ancestors have occupied Israel over the centuries would be a bit more fair.
To me, it sounds a lot like giving the U.S. back to native Americans, or giving Australia back to the Aboriginals. Impractical and sure to make a lot of people angry. It's not like genocide wasn't committed against those original occupants either. "Reservations" would be more like giving Israel the Gaza Strip and leaving everything else for the Palestinians.
Yes, stagnate... like letting malignant cancer grow without getting surgery because the surgery would be too painful/costly.
If Bush Sr. had just finished Hussein off like he should have, none of this would have happened.
So yes... maybe a lot of people would have died up front, but in the long run things would have been a lot better.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
"But you still don't have any real reason for saying Bush and Blair lied other than a skepticism of governments."
bzzzt. Skepticism of this particular episode of these particular governments, thank you.
I think I've discovered once again during the course of this discussion that I'm actually perhaps more deeply conservative than you. That is to say: the idealism of neoconservatives is really not for me. Nation building, ousting of dictators - it's all the work of idealists, and to my mind, they should take their money spending hobbies elsewhere. Start building model trains or something. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. That sort of thing. Needless to say, I was against invading Iraq, and in spite of it going a bit better now, I'm really quite unconvinced that it was worth the money and the blood and the loss of reputation. As to Georgie's lying, I think history will show that I was at least more than just a little bit right about that. But you're right in that nothing can be said about that, really. Yet.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Yeah, better for everyone except all the dead people. You should sign your posts - God.
I doubt you have the same problem complaining about Christians, but regardless, that's not what I was doing.
I try to back up my claims when I make them. So if I did make a claim about Christians, I would at least try to present some evidence.
The same simply cannot be said of the Muslim community; there was very little condemnation of terrorist attacks and when there was it was disingenuous rhetoric like "we regret the deaths of innocents." (spoken by a CAIR representative). Now you have to ask them who they consider "innocent." Not me, certainly.
Until you can actually back that up with evidence, you just sound like another religious bigot.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
WMDs are NBCs: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical weapons.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Thanks. I wasn't trying to be nasty to Americas. I agree with you whole heartedly the average Americans are kind and good people. Their government is almost wholly corrupt and this is by design. I strongly suggest to anyone remotely interested to read some books by David Icke, especially from "and the truth shall set you free". If you don't want to read, view his lectures and discussions online for free. They are excellent. But if you want facts he is one of the most expertly thoroughly researched journalists, that is why his books are good. I dare you to check each fact as you read. You will spend a lot of time but you will start to see the paper trail of dots that he has connected. He is an excellent researcher and his material is very easy to read. IF you do so, I think 9 out of 10 people will have to agree that there is absolutely undoubtedly some large conspiracy. Look at this way. Why do we never hear about Satanists in public office, in media, etc. We always hear about how such and such good christian rose to the top of some arena, but we don't hear about the Satanic worshippers. I'm not religious at all. In fact I subscribe largely to the views presented in zeitgeistmovie.com - but what I'm saying is that these are some sick depraved human beings. And they do worship the devil. Of course, they do it in secret. These things are not covered. God I'm not really a good writer, but for heavens sake just read some of David Ickes material and you will be convinced of much of what he says, if not all. There are many other excellent writers. Most of all don't be put off by the media brainwashing you have received of the casual scoff and wink as they utter the words "conspiracy theorists" or "conspiracy theory" on fox or cnn. It's a joke to them. Do you understand that those people do absolutely ZERO investigative journalism? They just repeat what they're told. Another fantastic documentary maker is John Pilger - watch "The war on democracy" among many others online. He is a hero and a legend! What a brave man. Not like those morons on cnn or fox who have sold their soul to satan. A question for you. IF Satanism is not involved in US politics WHY then is the Washington monument EXACTLY 555 feet high. And why does the foundation extend down into the ground EXACTLY 111 feet. 555+111=666. By design. This goes way back. Why is the statue of washington send from France pose him half naked in the posture of Baphomet Why from the sky does the street plan of Washington form the image of a pyramid with a capstone, circle behind it and an owl sitting on top. I urge everyone to read the material presented by people like David Icke, John Pilgar and other brave individuals. Again. Kennedy, revered for what he meant to America as a bastion of freedom and liberty, imperfect, but striving for honesty in office (a rare gift that even the people of that time knew was precious) said 10 days before he was brutally assassinated words to the effect that a "Global monolithic conspiracy threatens to overthrow the office of the presidency." he then urged the press to "assist me in alerting and informing the American public". Do you understand? This is why he was murdered among other things. If you don't question the official story you are just blinded by it. Once again I urge you to go and listen to this speech on youtube or where-ever. LISTEN carefully to his words since many Americans are just deaf to anything but newspeak and all of us our attention spans are purposefully and systematically reduced to nill by chemicals in our diet and environment and worst of all the media brainwashing flashing on the hypnotising screen.
but Obama has voted for all of Bush's war funding requests since coming to the senate even though he said he wouldn't.
Blah blah who cares. It's pathetic that people haven't figured out the al-Qaeda enigma yet: it's been an FSB operation since the late '90s, when bin Laden merged with Ayman al-Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Bin Laden's the public face, but al-Zawahiri has been the brains of the operation ever since the merger. That's also when al-Qaeda's big string of attacks started, from the embassies to the Cole to 9/11 to 7/7. Right before the merger, al-Zawahiri was clearly trained by the FSB. After the merger, the rein of terror begins. And energy prices go up. And who in the world benefits most from high oil and natural gas prices? Russia.
(It sure wouldn't be the first time the Russia's backed false flag Islamic terrorism operations).
We bombed a restaurant because we thought Saddam was inside? I Laughed-Out-Loud at that.
Too bad Saddam is dead now, because we could have used that excuse for all the civilian casualties!
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
"It isn't illegal to approve of it"
California state law says if you have prior knowledge of a felony, you must take steps to prevent it. It is in fact, illegal to "approve" of felonies.
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
Good thing he wasn't in California... (Though he might not known of any details before hand.)
I wasn't being clear though. I meant "approve of it" in a broader sense. It isn't illegal for people to approve of segregation or the acts of the KKK. It might be disgusting, but it isn't illegal.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
***Bullshit. He failed to co-operate for a decade. Hence all of the sanctions during the time between the two iraq wars.***
He did fail to cooperate up until late 2002. But he permitted inspectors relatively free access during late 2002 and early 2003. UNMOVIC inspected over 400 sites of their choice with no significant access delays and with nary a sign of Chemical, Biological or Nuclear weapons or weapon development. The Iraqis did continue to impede access to Iraqi scientists so it's possible that there might have been some stuff hidden. Hell, it might still be hidden. But it seems unlikely there is a significant amount.
May I suggest that you either cultivate some tact or do a little research before starting up with that Bullshit crap. It keeps the taste of foot out of ones mouth.
In point of fact, the US apparently knew perfectly well that many/most Iraqi WMDs were destroyed by the Iraqis in the late 1990s. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction
And then there is the minor point that despite scouring the country for WMDs after the invasion, US troops found only one small bunch of elderly artillery shells and encountered one IED that apparently had a nervegas charge instead of the (presumably) expected explosive.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
They are in plain sight.
It ain't like Bushes did even a passable job of covering anything up.
They have their Texan and Saudi oil friends and their boom-boom industry buddies and they did very well for both of them.
Choking civil liberties is just an added bonus.
Its not a secret Illuminati-like society ruling the world and hiding the Roswell aliens.
Its a bunch of rich old fat white guys with a lot of money and lot more greed for more money.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I love how you never defend yourself when somebody actually calls out your "facts" for the bullshit it really is.
I couldn't agree more. Don't come to MY country and tell ME to change my ways. And if your old country ways are so superior, STAY IN THE OLD COUNTRY. Don't tell me that *I* have to be tolerant of *you*, then come here and force me to live under YOUR standards.
We've gotta stop this crap, before we get drowned in it.
BTW it's not just immigrants. City folks move out to rural areas and do the same thing -- can't have those cows making noise and stinks, so let's get rid of the dairy farm that we knowingly moved in next door to!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Men's News Daily? World Net Daily? Buh?
From your Washington Post link:
From your Fox News link:
Hmmm. Way to support your own argument there.
So yeah, sure, he had some rotting leftovers, but not the massive "set to attack the US" stockpiles they beat their drums about leading up to our 2003 invasion. Yeah, not everything got dismantled. But, was that malice or incompetence? Looking back at that Washington post article:
Sounds like malice to me. Oh wait, no, that's incompetence.
Incompetence? Wait, I thought it was lying. So was it an intelligence failure (incompetence) or a malicious lie? It can't be both. Bush can not be an incompetent boob and Dr. Evil at the same time.
I'll gladly admit that US intel screwed the pooch on Iraq. That's a given. However, I will not have someone say that NO WMD's were found. That is simply not true (AKA, a lie). Kurdish villages full of women and children don't gas themselves. Nor will I sit idly by when someone calls someone a liar because they were wrong. You can be wrong and honest at the same time. In this case, it would be impossible for Bush to be both a liar and wrong about WMD's.
Seriously though, do you think the world would be a better place if Saddam got away with gassing men, women and children? I know you don't think that the end justifies the means, but you shouldn't protest so loudly unless you don't like the result.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Check your reading comprehension. I was accusing the Iraqis for incompetence, by burying their arms and losing them for 15 years, rather than rushedly burying them to hide them from weapons inspectors in the months just before we invaded so that they could be easily readied to attack us.
We were taken to war on the premise that Saddam could attack the US, Europe or Israel with weapons of mass destruction in short order, and that he had active weapons development programs in order to add nukes to the mix. Neither of these statements were true.
(BTW, who sold him the weapons he used on the Kurds? We did.)
Anyway, yes, the world could end up better off without Saddam, although the way things have gone since we've shown up, that certainly wasn't true in the short run. The real question is, why Iraq? It's not like Saddam had a global monopoly on brutal dictatorship, genocide, and so on.
Oh, wait, Iraq has oil.
Program Intellivision!
Uhm. No, they weren't WMDs, because they were inert. They could not cause Mass Destruction, which is the "MD" part of "WMD". They were just big hunks of steel.
Besides, chemical weapons were not the "mushroom cloud" Bush was talking about to scare us, nor was it the "Yellow cake" or "aluminum centrifuge tubes" they were screaming about. Bush was talking very specifically about Saddam building nukes.
THERE WERE NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION FOUND IN IRAQ. PERIOD.
I think there's some quote relevant here....something about forgetting history and repeating it....
Uh, didn't a whole bunch of yellow cake just end up in Canada from Iraq? Why YES, yes it did.
And again, when you say that there were NO WMD's found... um, my links prove otherwise. I said they were not in the quantities expected, but they were there. And to say they were inert.... well, I guess that inert YellowCake is going to power those inert Canadian homes this winter. Besides, would you like the inside of one of those shells?
THERE WERE NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION FOUND IN IRAQ. PERIOD.
So did THESE guys gas themselves? Well, they must have if there were no WMD's in Iraq. Unless, of course, you are wrong, or maybe even lying.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Check your reading comprehension. I was accusing the Iraqis for incompetence, by burying their arms and losing them for 15 years, rather than rushedly burying them to hide them from weapons inspectors in the months just before we invaded so that they could be easily readied to attack us.
We were taken to war on the premise that Saddam could attack the US, Europe or Israel with weapons of mass destruction in short order, and that he had active weapons development programs in order to add nukes to the mix. Neither of these statements were true.
Granted, but we did not KNOW that those statements were not true. Even Russia, who did not want us going into Iraq, thought that an attack on the US was imminent.
(BTW, who sold him the weapons he used on the Kurds? We did.)
Wikipedia has a good writeup on this:
"The United States exported $500 million of dual use exports to Iraq that were approved by the Commerce department. Among them were advanced computers, some of which were used in Iraqâ(TM)s nuclear program. The non-profit American Type Culture Collection and the Centers for Disease Control sold or sent biological samples to Iraq under Saddam Hussein up until 1989, which Iraq claimed it needed for medical research. These materials included anthrax, West Nile virus and botulism, as well as Brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene. Some of these materials were used for Iraq's biological weapons research program, while others were used for vaccine development.[18]
The United Kingdom paid for a chlorine factory that was intended to be used for manufacturing mustard gas.[19] The government secretly gave the arms company Matrix Churchill permission to supply parts for the Iraqi supergun, precipitating the Arms-to-Iraq affair when it became known."
Many other countries contributed as well; since Iraq's nuclear program in the early 1980s was officially viewed internationally as for power production, not weapons, there were no UN prohibitions against it. An Austrian company gave Iraq calutrons for enriching uranium. The nation also provided heat exchangers, tanks, condensers, and columns for the Iraqi chemical weapons infrastructure, 16% of the international sales. Singapore gave 4,515 tons of precursors for VX, sarin, tabun, and mustard gasses to Iraq. The Dutch gave 4,261 tons of precursors for sarin, tabun, mustard, and tear gasses to Iraq. Egypt gave 2,400 tons of tabun and sarin precursors to Iraq and 28,500 tons of weapons designed for carrying chemical munitions. India gave 2,343 tons of precursors to VX, tabun, Sarin, and mustard gasses. Luxembourg gave Iraq 650 tons of mustard gas precursors. Spain gave Iraq 57,500 munitions designed for carrying chemical weapons. In addition, they provided reactors, condensers, columns and tanks for Iraqâ(TM)s chemical warfare program, 4.4% of the international sales. China provided 45,000 munitions designed for chemical warfare. Portugal provided yellowcake between 1980 and 1982. Niger provided yellowcake in 1981.[20]
So, it wasn't just us. We sent samples of biological agents, not ready the ready to use chemical agents used against the Kurds.
Anyway, yes, the world could end up better off without Saddam, although the way things have gone since we've shown up, that certainly wasn't true in the short run. The real question is, why Iraq? It's not like Saddam had a global monopoly on brutal dictatorship, genocide, and so on.
Oh, wait, Iraq has oil.
DING-DING-DING!!! Oil! That is the reason we went into Iraq. Not because we wanted to take the oil, we haven't, but because the funds from oil sales in the hands of a dictator with a record like like Saddam Hussein's would be very dangerous.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Well, I am a westerner, and have lived in an islamic country for 16 years, so that's clearly not universally true. I can eat bacon and drink beer any time I want. I don't demand the right to do these things (well, I might for the beer) but they are freely given in Indonesia.
Well that's fine, if the Indonesian people want to allow people to eat bacon and drink beer so be it... The rules existed before you went there, and you didn't try to demand they change them.
It's not about how tolerant a country is, if a country chooses to be tolerant of it's own accord that's one thing... But noone should have the right to go to a country and change the way they already do things.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
The part of your metaphor that doesn't map: "gets arrested with powder on his hands." Saddam Hussein was never found to have ***any indication*** of WMD's in the run-up to the 2nd Gulf War. In fact, the direct opposite was continually found. So, to expand your metaphor: We know a guy killed 3000 of ***our*** people. We get him pinned down in one neighborhood. Then, rather than finish this job, we send our police into a neighboring village that had ***nothing to do with this***, because the chief of police has a problem with him that has ***nothing to do with any evidence*** that he intends us harm. As a result of this, the guy who actually killed 3000 of our people gets away. Was this operation a success?
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.