Islamic State Claims Responsibility for Paris Attacks; Death Toll At 127

The L.A. Times reports that Islamic State, the group variously known as ISIL, ISIS, and Daesh, has claimed responsibility for the multi-pronged terror attack yesterday in Paris which left at least 128 people dead, most of them from among the audience of a rock concert at the Bataclan theater, in the heart of the city. Details of how Friday’s assaults were carried out remained hazy. It was still unclear, for example, whether the restaurants and concert theater were attacked by two separate teams of militants or one group that went from one place to another. ... Attackers opened fire on the crowd with automatic weapons, shouting “God is great!” or blaming France for airstrikes on Islamic State in Syria, according to some reports. Dozens of concert-goers were killed before French forces stormed the theater. Many Parisians posted appeals and photos on social media asking for news of friends or loved ones whom they had not heard from since the attacks. One man said on Twitter that a government hotline set up to inquire about missing persons was so overloaded that calls could not get through. In the wake of the attacks and with an overloaded public infrastructure, Facebook activated its post-disaster check-in tool for Parisians to notify loved ones that they are safe. According to Reuters, French President Francois Hollande has vowed to undertake a "mercliess" response to the attacks.

Comments

Another example

[Foobar of Borg]

It's awful what hate and fanaticism drive people to do.

Re:Another example

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

It's awful what hate and fanaticism drive people to do.

Bingo. Fanaticism of any kind is usually detrimental, but religious fanatics seem especially violent and destructive.

So it's another fabulous win for religious fanatics everywhere; the ones who did this will scream about how great their god is, and the ones on the other side(s) will scream about how awful those other religions are.

While those of us who don't follow or practice any religion look on in horror at what fanatical religious beliefs produce. :(

And now let's watch all the religious apologists mod me down to oblivion. To those people, if it makes you feel better then go right ahead.

Re:Another example

[Gavagai80]

Local terrorism in Iraq/Syria and the region is very effective, as terrorism feeds extremism. It can destabilize the government and help create the kind of power vacuum that inevitably leads to the most brutal group (presumably the terrorists) being the only ones capable of maintaining discipline and restoring order. In a situation like Iraq or Syria, moderates have the majority behind them but their fractured nature makes them inadequate once a civil war has turned to many-sided brutality -- moderates just aren't good enough at brutality to win at that game, and their soldiers hear the brutal stories and run away from their posts in fear.

Without 9/11 there would probably be no Islamic State, so clearly they can accomplish a lot with remote terrorism as well. It can draw a country into helping destabilize a region where the terrorists can take advantage of the chaos. It's also always useful to make your enemy panic and devote their resources to trying to defend against the indefensible. And if IS can make enough panicked westerners blame and shun Muslims, the shunned outcasts become much easier to recruit.

Re:Another example

[Feral Nerd]

What are the motives of these terrorist groups? What does killing people randomly accomplish?

Terror... 9/11 was appalling for a while but then the terror effect wore off. With actions like this, small penny packets of terrorists can keep up the pressure for months and years. Intelligence services in Europe are worried, those in the USA should be even more very worried right about now. The USA has thousands of miles of hard to partro coastline where squads of terrorists could land and ISIS has plenty of foreign fighters that would fit right in, even on the streets of US cities and these guys are not Syrian or Iraqi farm boys who speak broken english and stick out like a sore thumb, they are well educated and intelligent. Then there is logistics. In France/Germany/Britain guns are relatively difficult to get ahold of but as we can see quite doable. In the USA, however, guns are easier to get ahold of than a driving license so try to imagine the possibilities. Let loose 30 or so two man sniper teams in the USA, throw in some suicide squads for good measure and expend them one at a time over a long period. The sniper teams in particular would have no problem equipping themselves by buying firearms at garage sales, out of the back of cars in Walmart parking lots, at gun shows, etc... and they could be on the loose for weeks and months so if anybody thinks the Columbine High, Sandy Hook Elementary were bad or especially the Beltway sniper attacks imagine those kind of a scenario times hundreds of times over and going on for months and even years.

Re:Another example

[DarkOx]

The motive is to discourage western powers from interfering in their take over of Iraq and Syria.

Its worked too. Look why happen in the UK when Cameron tried to get support for an intervention. The Obama response to the Syrian situation has been similarly tepid, why? because the public is tired of it. The support for an on going war is soft. Partly because the citizens of Western nations know fighting ISIS paints a target on our backs. It effects the US a little less than other because 1) our military is so huge and 2) We are 'the great Satan' and know that we are going be a target anyway for legacy reasons.

Its just another facet of the asymmetric warfare strategy. They know our military structure isn't designed for troops to be on deployment after deployment after deployment. They stir up trouble, shrink away, stir it up again and force us to come back to the table. Its all about wearing us down. Part of that is attacking the public. They are not ignorant of history. They know a big part of why we did not achieve the outcomes we sought in the Asia proxy conflicts with the USSR is because of the erosion of support at home. Attacking the general public is a way to achieve that or hasten it.

Where OBL got it wrong was picking a target that was a little to symbolic. The WTC is something that is pretty removed from most of us. Most of America, France, and the UK does not look like NYC but its symbol of power for us. So the response become something like "Remember the Maine" or "Remember the Alamo" and gins up a desire to seek revenge out of national or cultural pride.

When you start routine attacks on movie theaters, eateries, and shopping malls on the other hand the danger is real to the public on a personal level. I go the movies, I go out to to dinner etc. I am not NYC banker that is a might as well be another world to me.

Re:Another example

[Bing Tsher E]

Pol Pot, Stalin, and Mao were all atheists. Suck on it.

Re:Another example

[serviscope_minor]

So, you're saying that because some atheists have done bad things, one shouldn't condemn people who murder in the name of religion? Or we shouldn't point out religious fanaticism is a bad idea?

In the case of Stalin and Mao, there was a strong cult of personality which is functionally identical to religion.

Re:Another example

[Anonymous Coward]

As anyone with even elementary reading comprehension can see, he didn't say religious attacks shouldn't be condemned, but that religions shouldn't be condemned if someone attacks and claim it was in their name.

It's unsurprising to me that you particularly didn't understand that, and I won't be surprised if you still don't after reading this, either.

Re:Another example

[Antique Geekmeister]

> You can't determine their strategy with insults.

"Terrorism", meaning intimidation of the civilian population through unpredictable attacks against people not directly involved in the conflict, is a useful description of the strategy. It can also be very effective: look at the history of Ireland, or of the resistance fighters in Poland during World War II.

Re:Another example

[Suffering Bastard]

While those of us who don't follow or practice any religion look on in horror at what fanatical religious beliefs produce. :(

I think it's too easy to say that this kind of violence is simply the consequence of religious fanaticism. It's not the religion that produces the violence, it's the extreme violence that these people have lived under that produces traumatized, unstable minds that are prone to becoming fanatic via whatever dominant fervor surrounds them. Whether it's Islam or some kind of state nationalism or some kind of philosophical ideal, whatever it is that gives them a clear conscience to kill those who have harmed them, that's the banner they carry.

The challenge to humanity is to break away from the "us vs them" mentality. Those we call terrorists are still humans like us. None of us can say how we would react if we were brought up surrounded by the horrors that these folks have. That is not an apology, only a perspective. Healing can only come when we truly understand the reasons why these events are happening and not write it all off to religious fanaticism.

Re:Another example

[DNS-and-BIND]

Yup, it's the familiar "all religions are the same" argument. Whenever Islam does something reprehensible, of course. Whenever a Christian does something reprehensible, it is uniquely a problem of that religion alone.

Why is it that Leftists are always out front and center defending Islam? It's like you're allied together against Western civilization or something. Let Daesh defend itself, it has an online division. Stop doing their jobs for them, you realize who you're working with, right?

Re:Another example

[chipschap]

INSULTS? Oh, yes, we shouldn't offend them with insulting words like "terrorist." They have their rights you know. Poor innocent terrorists, you must really feel for them.

Re:Another example

[serviscope_minor]

One shouldn't spend one's time talking about how terrible religious fanaticism is when atheistic fanaticism has killed 100x as many people this century alone.

Ah I see you're one of the comparison shoppers of bad things. As a general rule, no matter what someone has done, someone else has done something worse. By your "logic" one should only talk about the single worst thing ever and nothing else.

That's complete tosh. Come to think of it, why did you bother even replying to my post? That wasn't responsible for any deaths at all!

Second you ignored my comment about the personality cult. Those are functionally identical to religion and anyone not worshipping the word of Mao did not fare terribly well during the cultural revolution or the great leap forward. It's the blind unthinking worship which is the problem wither of a god or a cult leader.

Note that it is arguable that the Black Death killed more people than Mao and Stalin did (plus Hitler, of course, but he was small potatoes compared to Stalin and Mao), but there aren't any other human die-offs that even come close....

Your point? We shouldn't mention any human caused deaths because of the black plague?

Re:Another example

[rsilvergun]

Without [America destabilizing Iraq with a pointless war and a transparent wealth transfer in the guise of nation building] there would probably be no Islamic State...

Fixed that for you. And yes, I am an American, thanks for asking. Dear God, I wish Gore had fought for the presidency. Bush/Cheney did more damage to human civilization in 8 years than I think the rest have done in 2000....

Re:Another example

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Pol Pot, Stalin, and Mao were all atheists. Suck on it.

The difference is that Pol Pot, Stalin, and Mao didn't do the things they did because they were atheists, whereas religious fanatics do horrific things precisely because they're religious fanatics. Sorry to burst your simple little thought-bubble.

Re:Another example

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I think it's too easy to say that this kind of violence is simply the consequence of religious fanaticism. It's not the religion that produces the violence,

Errr, well, actually it is often the religion that produces the violence. Without the religion they'd have nothing to fight to the death over and nothing to motivate them or delude them into such action.

You don't see groups of disaffected model railroaders or snowboarders committing mass murder because their hobby or pursuit doesn't require them to kill others in order to be the dominant group.

-

it's the extreme violence that these people have lived under that produces traumatized, unstable minds that are prone to becoming fanatic via whatever dominant fervor surrounds them.

Yes, it's this too, but without the shared delusion of religion and a supposed afterlife, no one would be so keen to machine gun groups of complete strangers, would they?

Let's all just be honest and admit that religion often serves as the vehicle to induce people to do horrific things, things that they otherwise would never dream of doing.

Re:Another example

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Actually, Pol Pot, Stalin, and Mao did what they did because they were athiests.

Errr, no. And as someone who has studied Pol Pot a bit (due to family connections with some of his victims) it's clear that his atheism was not a significant motivating force in his rampage. And it's clear that neither Stalin nor Mao did anything due to their lack of belief, while o the other hand Hitler embraced the Catholic church and they embraced him back. Does "Gott Mitt Un" ring a bell?

It's hard to murder millions of people just because you don't believe in something.

For example, there are lots of people who don't believe in leprechauns, why aren't they out there committing atrocities? Why don't we label the "aleprechanists" and worry day and night about what they might do? Because it would be silly, that's why.

The fact is that lack of belief in something is rarely a motivator to do anything, let alone commit horrific atrocities.

Your average atheist isn't going to be motivated to kill people in the name of his/her magical sky-daddy or the promise of an afterlife. Most of us atheists realize that we only get one life to live, and so we try to make the most of it here and now. Yeah, some of us are assholes, but most of us just want to live our lives in peace and not be persecuted in the name of any of the 100,000+ religions that are all vying for dominance, often at the point of a sword or a thumb on a detonator.

Show me an example or two of atheists who've committed atrocities in the name of atheism (if you can), and I'll show you a hundred that have done it in the name of religion.

Seriously, show me some examples of people who have said "I'm killing people specifically because I don't believe in god!". Statistically there are probably some, but I can't think of any offhand.

Re:Another example

[ranton]

It's tempting to try to see history in these discrete 4 or 8 year chunks, but what's going on in the Middle East has been cooking for a long time.

Yes the Middle East is a quagmire and it has been for decades. But you can still identify specific executive decisions as being the cause of specific problems. The decision to invade Iraq had specific consequences. The political climate created over the past few decades impacted those consequences, but nevertheless it was the invasion that created a destabilization that did not exist before the invasion. It can be argued that the region is better or worse because of this, but the invasion did have its own specific consequences.

Just like pulling US forces out of Iraq had its own consequences. From what I can tell, the recent growth of ISIS was directly caused by pulling those troops out of Iraq. It is irresponsible to place any of the blame on the political climate created over the past few decades, because it takes blame away from the single decision that caused the problem. It would be no different than taking blame away from the Bush administration because its wars were made more difficult because of the political climate at that time.

If you try to blame past administrations for specific problems that have occurred in the past 6 years (like ISIS), you ignore all lessons that can be learned from the actions of the current administration. It doesn't really matter what happened over 10 years ago if actions could have been taken more recently to prevent the rise of ISIS. If you don't recognize that removing a policing force from a destabilized region was the primary cause of the problem, you lose the ability to learn from those decisions to prevent it from happening again. Talking about bad decisions made 10-30 years ago is mostly irrelevant.

Re:Another example

[schnell]

Hitler embraced the Catholic church and they embraced him back. Does "Gott Mitt Un" ring a bell?

I am taking no side on the current "religious assholes kill lots of people" vs. "atheist assholes kill lots of people" war. I just noticed the above statement, which I see a lot, and wanted to provide some historical context to it.

I have seen it frequently mentioned on the Internet that Hitler was Catholic and/or had a close relationship to the church. While Hitler may have been born to a Catholic family, he was never visibly religious throughout his life one way or another. Also, despite his Wagner fetish, he was not a devotee of the old Germanic paganism that mystic fringe elements of the SS seemed intent on reintroducing to German society. He never disavowed religion publicly, but it never played any role in his life either, at least according to modern Hitler scholarship.

Hitler's relationship to the Catholic church oscillated between uneasy truce and outright hostility throughout the time the Third Reich was in power. Germany was majority Protestant in the north, and majority Catholic in the south, and the Catholic church (which even had its own political party, the Center Party) was a useful ally at times. It disagreed with Hitler on many issues (primarily social), but Hitler showed no compunction about shutting down Protestant churches that preached against the excesses of its administration, and the Catholic hierarchy in Germany was perfectly willing to make a deal with the devil to avoid being shut down or expelled. There is also strong evidence (though not 100%) that the Pope (who had previously been Papal Legate in Germany) and his representatives made a deal with Hitler to turn a blind eye to Jews trying to flee the country in exchange for a continued presence in the country.

However, Hitler and the Catholic authorities in the Third Reich frequently clashed as well. Many Catholic priests spoke out against the human rights abuses of Hitler, and it was only through continued wrangling and negotiation with Hitler that priests weren't bundled off by the Gestapo en masse. Many politically active priests were nonetheless. And at times Hitler talked about putting the whole church on his "enemies" list and shutting it down for stirring up anti-government feeling (which wasn't hard to come by from 1942 onwards).

Long story short: Hitler wasn't a Catholic, and they weren't really allies. But the Catholic church did make deals with Hitler to preserve their power and legitimacy which are shameful in retrospect. If you're interested in more details, read the first volume of Ian Kershaw's excellent Hitler or Richard Evans's The Coming of the Third Reich.

Re:Another example

[angel'o'sphere]

They werent, Pol Pot was a Buddhist.
Stalin was Christian.
Mao was Taoist/Buddhist.

They abbolished religions because they feared them as competition, like any tyrant.

Re:Another example

[angel'o'sphere]

when atheistic fanaticism has killed 100x as many people this century alone.
There is no atheistic fanatisms. There are only fanatics that happen to be atheists or claim so or kill priests, whatever.
Hitler was no atheist either (in case you read my other answer to your idiotic posts).

Re:Another example

[west]

Whenever Islam does something reprehensible, of course.

Because Islam doesn't do *anything*. It's a belief. And among the billion *people* who hold that belief, a few of them are reprehensible.

And if we're talking about deaths of Westerners, then why don't we point fingers at some of the most efficient killers of Europeans: Europeans who initiated two world wars.

Compared to us, the feeble attempts by fundamentalists are laughable. If you really want to kill nearly 100 million Europeans/North Americans, you know who the real dangers are.

And if we're going to look at raw numbers killed in the current Middle East conflict, still no contest - we have ISIS beat 100:1 in civilian casualties. Now of course, we don't deliberately target civilians, they are just an *inevitable* outcome from prosecuting a war/blockade, so that let's us off the hook for literally any number of civilian casualties we cause.

At least this leftist doesn't go after Islam because Islam doesn't do anything - people do. And I don't pretend that the policies that I support to contain ISIS don't cause far more civilian casualties than ISIS has ever inflicted on the West.

If you cannot see the massive in-your-face crimes of your own culture, how on earth would you see yourself as fit to judge the crimes of another?

Does it mean ignore terrorism and terrorists? Of course not, but let's put it in proper perspective.

Re:Another example

[Solandri]

Terrorist is a pejorative term applied to them by the targets of the violence. They don't call themselves that. You can't determine their strategy with insults.

The schoolyard bully isn't a bully because we call him that. He's a bully because he beats you up just enough intimidate you into giving in to his future demands, but not enough to get in trouble with local authorities. He can call himself rightful ruler of the school for all we care. He's still a bully. It's the strategy which determines the name, not the other way around.

Likewise they're not terrorists because we call them that. They're terrorists because of their strategy of deliberately targeting soft targets with no or negligible military value. i.e. The goal is to terrorize the populace to induce a socio-political change in behavior, not to inflict military damage.

Terrorism is a subset of psychological warfare, which encompasses tactics ranging from torture all the way to acceptable things like dropping leaflets to demoralize the opposition. All focus on destroying the opponent's will to fight, rather than his ability to fight. There's nothing pejorative about it; the word itself is pretty indicative of the strategy it's describing. Early colonial opposition during the American Revolutionary war could be considered terrorism (e.g. Boston Tea Party). Towards the end of WWII, after some off-target bombing raids opened the doors, both sides were wantonly bombing each others' civilian population centers to try to get each other to stop fighting. Basically terrorism.

Re:Another example

[aaaaaaargh!]

Terrorists intentionally kill non-combatant civilians. Of course the term is pejorative. Terrorism is despicable.

And you can call them any way you want, it will not change a thing about determining their strategy, as long as you base your assessments on evidence.

Re:Another example

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

When I think of atheist -- meaning, "there are no deities" -- that seems fairly specific to me.

But you can't really draw any other conclusions from that, other than that they don't believe in a deity. That's it, period.

Whereas when you say "christian" or "catholic", that implies all sorts of follow-ons...like church attendance, being baptized, some degree of belief in the bible, certain specific moral positions, belief in or practice of prayer, performing worship in certain specific ways according to a specific theology, beliefs about marriage, birth control, abortion, belief in an afterlife, etc etc.

And yes, some or all of those things can vary to quite a degree, some may be absent, some may be emphasized more than others, and so on...but there's definitely some correlation to those other things as a whole, as a set of practices or beliefs. Otherwise the words "christian" or "catholic" would have no real meaning.

It's a lot different with "atheist", which has one and only one value associated with it, namely the lack of belief in a deity. That's it, there's nothing else associated with it- no dogma, no practices, no follow-on beliefs, no rituals, no assumptions, nothing whatsoever.

That's why when people try to make generalized statements about atheists they're almost always wrong. The same isn't true in a general sense about "christian" or "catholic" (or Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, etc), because those terms imply all sorts of additional things even if every single one doesn't apply- some of them surely do or the term itself doesn't apply.

If someone identifies as a catholic but doesn't believe in any of the dogma or any of the teachings of the church or the bible or any of the moral positions or practices of the catholic church, then are they a catholic? No, not any more than someone who claims to be a bicyclist but who doesn't own a bike, never rides a bike, and partakes in no bike-related activities.

Re:Another example

[cold fjord]

Errr, no. And as someone who has studied Pol Pot a bit (due to family connections with some of his victims) it's clear that his atheism was not a significant motivating force in his rampage. And it's clear that neither Stalin nor Mao did anything due to their lack of belief, ...

The regimes of all three specifically targeted religious believers and institutions for heavy repression, including confiscation of property and death.

while o the other hand Hitler embraced the Catholic church and they embraced him back. Does "Gott Mitt Un" ring a bell?

The use of "Gott Mitt Un" predated Hitler's regime in German armies by hundreds of years. Hitler didn't "embrace" the Catholic church in any meaningful way, nor did the Catholic church embrace him back. The Nazis were bitter opponents of genuine Christian belief even while they worked to subvert the church for their own purposes. The christian churches were a source of considerable social resistance to the regime.

It's hard to murder millions of people just because you don't believe in something.

Atheists believe there is no god, some are extremists, and many of them hold religious belief in contempt. In the regimes of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot that often meant persecution and death.

Hard to do anything "because you don't believe in something"? League of Militant Atheists

For example, there are lots of people who don't believe in leprechauns, why aren't they out there committing atrocities? Why don't we label the "aleprechanists" and worry day and night about what they might do? Because it would be silly, that's why.

It would be silly because there belief in leprechauns does not constitute a mobilizing force in society and is at most a rare and quaint folk belief.

Your average atheist isn't going to be motivated to kill people in the name of his/her magical sky-daddy or the promise of an afterlife. Most of us atheists realize that we only get one life to live, and so we try to make the most of it here and now.

Individually that may be largely true. But in large numbers with support from the regime all bets are off.

Show me an example or two of atheists who've committed atrocities in the name of atheism (if you can), and I'll show you a hundred that have done it in the name of religion.
Seriously, show me some examples of people who have said "I'm killing people specifically because I don't believe in god!". Statistically there are probably some, but I can't think of any offhand.

League of Militant Atheists

... the League of Militant Atheists sometimes took a violent approach to those who would not accept the League's message. For example, "bishops, priests, and lay believers" were "arrested, shot, and sent to labour camps."[25]

The officially atheist communists killed 100,000,000 people in the last century. Religious persecution was only a portion of that, but it was there.

There are many fine people that are atheists, but atheism isn't a mark of good character, intelligence, or a guarantee of good conduct.

Re:Another example

[Mashiki]

The fact is that virtually ALL of the "leftist" people I know decry this stuff and none of them defend any of it, period.

You're not far left enough that's why. The far left are already falling all over themselves to whine and complain that it stole the spotlight from Mizzou or how it's not really a problem with Islam, but a problem with the west and how if we really weren't racists this wouldn't have happened.

Re:Another example

[tnk1]

Hitler really seems to have had no sincere beliefs in regard to religion for himself, he merely attempted to determine if a particular religion could be co-opted or if it had to be destroyed. While that doesn't make him an atheist necessarily, he just didn't think theology was important at all.

Ethnically, Hitler was a Catholic but considering his complete antipathy to the actual beliefs of that Church, makes him about as much a Roman Catholic as my Marxist Poli Sci professors were.

He had a belief in a Teutonic ethnic and "genetic" superiority, but frankly, this philosophy never reached the level of a consistent theology or even really discussed any authority which made Germans the Master Race. They were merely the Master Race, self-evidently.

In any event, a Hitler could just as easily exist in an atheistic world view as a religious one. He was a master manipulator of divisions and friction to make himself a third option.

I personally imagine that he probably thought that he would be a 'god' in the same sense that Roman emperors were: deified and bound to be celebrated by his victorious civilization as a paragon of a state cult or religion after he died. Thereafter part of ceremonies to inspire awe among future generations to maintain the state and the state philosophy.

Re:Another example

[tnk1]

They were that by background, not conviction. It may have informed the flavor of their Marxism, just like if I became a Marxist and decided that I really liked Easter, I might reform Easter into a worker's spring festival where you could hunt for hidden eggs (all red of course) and have some solemn processions of workers and soldiers. But if I persecute my ethnic religion, ignore its core rules, and visibly espouse atheism and Marxism, I'm no longer a Christian and using that label on me is mere background color only of interest to biographers.

Yes, they did abolish religions as threats, but the abolition of religion was also a central facet of the Marxist program. Marxism required the end of religion to come about.

Re:Another example

[Pentium100]

In the USA, however, guns are easier to get ahold of than a driving license so try to imagine the possibilities.

However, the advantage of the US system is that more "normal" people have guns compared to France or Germany where only the criminals have them. So, if a terrorist started randomly shooting in the middle of a street (especially in the more gun friendly states), he would not live very long.

All those school shootings happened in places where normal people are forbidden to carry guns.

Re:Another example

[radarskiy]

"Ah I see you're one of the comparison shoppers of bad things."

No, that would be JustAnotherOldGuy, who said "religious fanatics seem especially violent and destructive". The response consisted of pointing out that separating religious from non-religious fanatics was not a particularly useful distinction.

Re:Another example

[KGIII]

The claims of WMDs came from someone on the ground in Iraq, someone whom is believed to have been a member of Saddam's Revolutionary Guard. It's even possible that such existed and were moved to (thoughts were/are) Syria. It's also possible that it was a lie. It's also possible that the powers that be believed it to be unreliable intelligence. Except...

There were, indeed, WMDs in Iraq. The narrative that such did not exist is odd. We have search engines. It's pretty easy to find a LOT of information concerning this. Here is one such link - if you'll accept Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

For some additional reading (those injured by chemical weapons during the Iraq War) then I find this to be a fairly well balanced article:
http://www.nytimes.com/interac...

Re:Another example

[KGIII]

Not even the Crusades were about religion. The people fighting thought that they were but, no. They were about land expansions abroad and power grabs at home.

Re:Another example

[ultranova]

Best case scenario in Syria would be someone like Assad (but not necessarily him) to rule it with an iron fist and ensure that no terrorists are allowed to breed there.

So first iron-fisted tyranny gets people used to cruelty and violence as the "normal" way of life, and then the anarchy and civil war that result when enough star systems have slipped through that iron fist make for perfect conditions for terrorist recruiters to operate within them. That's pure strategic brilliance right there, sonny.

Duh ?

[Izuzan]

Of course they would claim it. Even if they didnt do it.

They did warn the world they had ISIS operatives mixed in with refugees. So its not truely surprising.

Re: Duh ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fear mongering my arse. They warned the world. Governments around the world pooh poohed it.

You have refugees rioting in Europe, have refugees refusing to get of busses because its to cold, its to far from a city, their rooms dont have TV's. How are people to take this ? Giving these people places to live and they are whining its not a 5star hotel with pool, jacuzzi, hot tub and full cable.

There will always be one in a large enough group that you can point to as a bad apple regardless of what you are looking for. Not everyone reading slashdot is a bleeding liberal or a guntoting conservative (or any other political label).

The fear-mongering is there to internally justify to oneself when saying no to refugees instead of saying "we do not want to spend money or space on you". The latter is not "charitable" and people like to view themselves in a good light.

You can also do a risk analysis. Many of those fleeing Syria, and other countries, are at great risk to be forcefully "drafted" into ISIS should they remain. What is the cost of allowing all these people getting forcefully drafted into ISIS? What is the cost of allowing refugees into your country and risk that among them a small number of ISIS nuts are hidden?

Stopping refugees at the border will not stop ISIS from sending idiots anywhere. There will be radical idiots living in every country, that are even born in that country. You can't stop them from getting into your country, they are already there.

My semi-serious proposal is that we allow all refugess into all countries. Let ISIS build their caliphate. Then have them celebrate their "victory" and while they do it, nuke it from orbit and rid ourselves of a good 90% of them. Then start hunting them down all over the world, without pardon.

Re:Proof?

[loonycyborg]

Nobody said they work for catching actual terrorists. They exist only for peace of mind and illusion of safety. Competent investigators do their work while incompetent ones gathers astronomic amount of useless data.

Re:Proof?

[JoeyRox]

Or it's proof that terrorists are trying harder to attack France than Spain.

A self-fulfilling cycle that must be quashed

[rmdingler]

Hatred and terrorism are instigators of each other.

Each act of terrorism breeds hatred from the victims, which leads to the mistreatment of those considered like the aggressors, which leads to the formation of circumstances likely to breed terrorists.

So yes, it appears these hateful acts are quite likely to continue.

Re:A self-fulfilling cycle that must be quashed

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

So yes, it appears these hateful acts are quite likely to continue.

Exactly, this is what these people do. This is what they live (and die) for.

They won't stop. Even if they "won" they wouldn't stop, they'd just find something else to fight against.

Re:A self-fulfilling cycle that must be quashed

[Kjella]

A lot of hatred and terror comes from a false sense of superiority and a spurious blame-fest of the victims, to act like the terror would cease if we only were ever kinder sheep who bend over to appease the aggressors is folly. Whether it's genetic superiority (übermenschen vs untermenschen), religious superiority (true believers vs unbelievers), cultural superiority (enlightened vs savages) the result is mostly the same. And it's always easier to blame shit on an external enemy, whether it's the jews or the african-americans or the western imperialists.

There are many apologists who turn the cause and effect upside down and blame the victims for causing the conditions that cause terrorism, for the most part they make me want to puke with their self-loathing and victim-blaming. Usually they think themselves so very enlightened and civilized when they're really just blaming the rape victim for wearing a short skirt. No matter how badly Saddam treated the Sunnis what the IS is doing to Christians and other minorities has nothing to do with revenge and everything to do with a megalomanic desire for world domination and genocide.

It's a cancer that will only grow as long as it is allowed to grow. The last time the world had to stand up to such evil and say "enough is enough" ~15 million allied soldiers and ~35 million allied civilians died. I'm kinda hoping we can get away with less this time, but I think there will be a lot of blood spilled before then and the longer we let them control and indoctrinate large parts of the population in Syria and Iraq the messier it will get. Evil is breeding right now, whether we attack it or not.

Who still thinks is a good idea?

[DarkOx]

Who still thinks is a good idea to allow mass immigration of refuges from the region? Lets face it ISIS is going international they way its progenitor was. We simply can not allow people from that region to enter without being fully vetted and as we have no way to do that for the vast majority of the refugees. I think they need to be kept right where they are.

If anything we should simply help Turkey, Jordon, and Lebanon secure their borders. The safe thing to do is assume anyone crossing the boarder is a threat.

Re:Who still thinks is a good idea?

[aaaaaaargh!]

Most of the refugees are are fleeing from IS and it is not a good idea to not help hundreds of thousands of legitimate refugees just because several dozens or even hundreds of them might be terrorists. By your logic, you should kick all car drivers out of your country because some of them might drive drunk and kill your loved ones.

The world does only revolve around you and your family, there are also some higher values to defend.

Re:Who still thinks is a good idea?

[phantomfive]

I'm sure Turkey would be willing to take money to build more refugee camps.....scraping some of the money off the top.

Re:Proof?

[avandesande]

How quickly we forget.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Facebook to the rescue

[JoeyRox]

"Your friend Mary Lawrence has checked in as safe. Good news, Safe Lock & Co. is having a sale on wall safes. Click this advertising link for details".

Re:Reality acceptance issues...

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

It's pretty obvious the world would be far better off without religion.

^^^ THIS.

Someday people will look back on the shared delusion of religion and wonder what the fuck was wrong with everyone.

It's like a mind virus or brain disease that most people simply accept. WTF??

The amazing part is that most people don't consider it as a disease to be eradicated.

Re:Proof?

[aaaaaaargh!]

I'm against extensive surveillance laws, but this is still a non-sequitur. France has a very special problem with citizens with an immigration background (2nd and 3rd generation) from former colonies, particularly Algeria. Many of them live in ghettos, have poor education and only dim chances of success in society and created their own subculture. As a consequence, the risk of home-grown terrorism is way higher in France than in Italy or Spain.

Re:Reality acceptance issues...

[ranton]

Someday people will look back on the shared delusion of religion and wonder what the fuck was wrong with everyone.

And yet some of the regimes which have the largest murder count of their own populations weren't religious.

I assume JustAnotherOldGuy would agree that people will also look back at things like fascism, totalitarianism, etc. and wonder what the fuck was wrong with everyone. That seems like an unrelated tangent to his original comment though.

Re:Reality acceptance issues...

[ranton]

It's pretty obvious the world would be far better off without religion.

The greatest tragedies of the 20th century were not committed in the name of religion.
Maybe you should learn history before spounting such nonsense about religion.

What does that have to do with his point? If I said "I would be better off if I don't drink sulfiric acid", would your response be "but that isn't even a major cause of death in the US"? Because that is exactly the type of irrelevant argument you just made above.

Someone can claim something is bad even if it isn't the only or even worst thing in the world.

You can make claims that religion does more good than harm, but referencing other evils of the world is very irrelevant.

Re:Reality acceptance issues...

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

In the U.S., mass shootings are often done by atheists and rarely by religious groups.

That's debatable, but it's also irrelevant.

Religions like Islam and Christianity have foundational writings that all followers of that religion accept in one form or another. Those writings describe acts of unspeakable violence and cruelty, in several instances ordered or condoned by God, that all followers of those religions at least acknowledge and usually tacitly condone. That is what religious terrorists who label themselves as belonging to these faiths refer to and use to justify their actions. So, there is a direct connection between the actual religion and the acts of religious terrorists. That's true even if the terrorists are considered "not really" belonging to the religion according to the "mainstream".

Nothing like that is true for atheism. Atheists share nothing other than a non-belief in God. Therefore, the beliefs or actions of one atheist tell you nothing about the beliefs of another atheist.

Re:NUKEM!! NUKEM NOW!!

[ShanghaiBill]

One thing that makes us better than them is....we try hard to limit civilian causalities when striking military targets.

Except the leaked Collateral Murder video shows Americans deliberately attacking and killing civilian first responders. America considers this a war crime when our enemies do it. None of the killers were ever charged with a crime, and neither were any of the officials who covered it up and lied about the existence of the video before it was leaked.

Re:Thanks Bush/Cheney

[DNS-and-BIND]

It's good to see the old "Blame America First" mentality is alive and well, and that the Left is front and center defending their co-belligerents, the Islamists. Again? It's like a broken record with you people. Let them defend themselves, why are you always rushing out to do it?

Also conveniently leaving out that your hero Obama, the Chosen One, did the exact same thing in Libya. Oopsy-doodle, it's off to cognitive dissonance land, where doublethink is the only escape from thoughtcrime.

Motives?

[Alwin Henseler]

What are the motives of these terrorist groups?

Strike fear in the heart of infidels?
Help erode the freedoms that citizens in most Western countries enjoy? (especially those freedoms that enable lifestyles hated so much by Islamic State supporters).
Revenge for whatever wrongs they think were done to them? (regardless of justified or not).
As a show of force? Letting everybody know they're still here, and capable of carrying out coordinated attacks abroad.

Just to name a few - surely there's more. In the end they will not accomplish their goals. First and foremost because Islamic State seems incapable of leaving peace-loving 'neighbours' alone. Action = reaction, a law of nature. If they'd just pick some limited area to call theirs, focus on primarily peaceful (r)evolution, and leave their neighbours in peace, they might have a chance at getting just that. But if they want to conquer the world through violence, and stop at nothing in the process... well then: nope, not gonna happen.

Second, because declared enemies of Islamic State aren't going to give up their lifestyles, countries, democracies etc NO MATTER WHAT. As a typical Westerner, personally I could care less what they do in Syria, Irak or neighbouring countries. But any Islamic State fighter is welcome to try and pry my freedoms from my dead fingers in a fight on my turf. Likewise, when their actions cause millions of refugees to "invade" our countries, how could they possibly expect us to not care? Again: action = reaction.

Lastly, because no matter how many crazies are out there, they are vastly outnumbered by regular / reasonable / peace-loving people. And quite a few of those have guns too. And planes. And bombs. And an intelligence apparatus. It's like a car picking a fight with a freight train... yes it'll be ugly, but the outcome is certain: a car cannot possibly win that fight.

What does killing people randomly accomplish?

In the context of these Paris attacks, you may want to re-think in how far victims were chosen "randomly". Not to suggest in any way that victims were known or specially selected. But hey if you start shooting on a busy Paris street, you're pretty likely to hit French people, right?

Re:Thanks Bush/Cheney

[Anonymous Coward]

"No, Iraq fell apart and ISIS rose because Obama prematurely pulled the plug on the stabilizing presence of the US military. That was years too soon."

But...!

"I can't tell you if the use of force in Iraq today would last five days, or five weeks, or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that."
--Donald Rumsfeld, November 14, 2002
"It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months"
-- Donald Rumsfeld, February 7, 2003
"I think it will go relatively quickly. Weeks rather than months."
-- Dick Cheney, March 16, 2003
"No one is talking about occupying Iraq for five to ten years."
-- Richard Perle, March 9, 2003

http://www.ontheissues.org/Archive/Doonesbury_Quotes_Dick_Cheney.htm

Re: NUKEM!! NUKEM NOW!!

[slasher999]

You're a fool if you believe that. Drones save American lives, reduce costs, and civilian casualties are no higher than any other type of targeted strike.

Re:NUKEM!! NUKEM NOW!!

[reboot246]

You win wars by killing civilians. That's why wars seem to never end nowadays. They go on forever because we're afraid to hurt anybody. It's war, stupid. Once it starts, it doesn't matter who started it or why it started. You either win it or lose it, and you win it by breaking your enemy's will to fight. You have to kill the civilians to do that.

That's what ISIS is doing - killing our civilians. And judging from some of the wimpy-ass responses here and on the news, it looks like they're succeeding. Europe and the U.S. have just about lost the will to fight. Go ahead. Give up your guns. Let your "leaders" defend you. They're sure doing a bang-up great job now, aren't they?

It's not fanaticism

[rsilvergun]

it's hopelessness. ISIS is just a bunch of men with no jobs, no wives, no future and no hope for a future. This is what happens when you've got millions of people with nothing to lose. Stop calling it Fanaticism. It misdirects you from the real issue, which is the 1% war profiteering in the Middle East and stealing their oil. We can't solve _anything_ until we start recognizing the real problem and start actually _rebuilding_ Iraq and Afghanistan. If you're American though this probably means giving up your SUV. I'm not trying to troll, you can't have one and have a happy/stable world. There's a lot more to it than that, but our ridiculous thirst for oil is part of it...

Re:It's not fanaticism

[KGIII]

Are you aware that the US doesn't actually get jack shit for oil from any of these countries? We get our oil from our own soil, Canada, Mexico, and a couple of places in South America. We, literally, don't rely on Middle Eastern oil to run our automobiles. (We do get plastics and other petrochemicals from nations that do use oil sourced from the Middle East.)

Re:It's not fanaticism

[speederaser]

How the hell did you weave SUVs into your argument? The terrorist attack on Paris is the fault of SUV owners?

Maybe you're trolling but I'll bite.

The Middle East contains oil. A LOT of oil. The kind that's easy to extract and easy to refine. The countries in the Middle East with oil are governed by autocratic dictators who give themselves titles like "Sultan" or "King". They keep the oil profits for themselves and their family (the "1%"), and everyone else is dirt poor.

Being dirt poor sucks. It sucks everywhere in the world, but in the Arab world being dirt poor is even worse if you're male. In Arab culture, a young man cannot get married until he has a decent job and enough money to pay a dowry. And given the control that male family members maintain over every aspect of the lives of their daughters and sisters, a poor young Arab male has little prospect of getting married, getting laid, getting kissed, or even talking to a young lady that isn't a relative!

These dictators make a lot of money from oil. Enough money that foreign governments fall all over themselves selling military hardware and know-how to them. The foreign governments also like to put military bases in Arab countries to guarantee continued access to oil. The result is these countries have a lot of military power arrayed against any peasants with revolution on their mind.

So what's a poor young Arab male to do under these circumstances? Well, as it happens, the oil-rich Arab dictators tend to have a strong interest in supporting various militant groups that fight under the banner of their brand of Islam, and a lot of oil money flows in that direction. So when a poor young Arab male with no prospects hears he can make a bunch of money if he joins a militant group and fight for Islam (or at least one brand of it), that is attractive, and many of them do join.

So, due to the political and cultural realities in the Arab world, oil money fuels Islamic militant organizations. Since gasoline and diesel come from oil, driving a vehicle that gets poor mileage (like an SUV) instead of a fuel efficient car (like a Prius) means more money for Islamic militants.

And that's the link. Does that mean that the terrorist attack on Paris is the fault of SUV owners? No, of course not. SUV owners find themselves in a situation (large family/little league coach in a car-centric country) and they deal with it, much like young Arab males find themselves in a situation and deal with it. But the fact remains that those two situations will continue to lead to attrocities like we had in Paris if nobody changes.

But I can't change other people, all I can do is change myself. But what can I do? Well, I can buy a Prius and stop driving my pickup to work. I can install solar panels on my home. I can visit relatives via Skype instead of driving or flying. There's a lot I can do. Whatever I do, I won't be able to stop Islamic terrorism but I will at least be doing my part.

Post-attack 'responsibility' NOISE

[TheRealHocusLocus]

Once upon a time, people were generally less stupid.

If any 'claim of responsibility' emerged hours or days after a terrorist attack it would be treated with the utmost suspicion. Even if transmitted directly to them, news networks would notify the authorities of course, but they might not even report it publicly. Unless a phone call or fax was received at the moment of breaking news, some times even minutes before, the information was deemed to be zero-credible or less than zero, more likely than not the work of a crank. And news sources were generally averse to being cranked.

News sources did not even want to be cranked by governments. They'd never forget to add the words "allegedly" or "believed to be" when repeating a government source who was pretty sure who was behind something. Some acts of terrorism in those days would end up being reported as if they were... simply crimes. The 'who' would not be examined at length until or unless individuals were actually brought forth and charged. Then, their connections to organizations would be explored.

Then the 21st century dawned and people have become generally more stupid.

Now ascribing an organization to an attack is as simple as starting a rumor or sending a tweet. Everyone is on the verge of believing anything, they just need a little push either way. There is no burden of proof, only a preponderance of NOISE. Axe-grinding news sources and governments are already blaming them anyway to take advantage of this lower IQ, so they're already on the ball. Just like Michael Ledeen at AEI was blaming Saddam Hussein for 9/11 on the afternoon of 9/11. (Hint: that was Donald Rumsfeld's favorite website. Can you see a decade of bad road ahead?)

Now a claim by a single so-called 'unnamed source within the government' is cause enough for a press association like AP to drop the 'allegedly' and report the deed as having been done by those people, ready to put in the history books.

If all information should be free, we're sure getting what we paid for.

Drones are better than no drones

[mi]

There are multiple layers of failure-prone processes, any one of which can produce truly disastrous results

Which was and remains true about processes, that do not involve drones. You aren't contradicting slasher999 at all.

Re:Drones are better than no drones

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Which was and remains true about processes, that do not involve drones. You aren't contradicting slasher999 at all.

Which was why I said "Yes and no" at the start of my reply. Some of what he says is correct, some of it isn't that clear cut. Civilian casualties being a prime example, unfortunately.

Yes they save American lives (most of the time).

Reducing costs? That depends on what costs you're tallying. Do you have any idea what a fully-staffed drone program costs? It ain't cheap.

This "sensor fest" circle jerk goes all the way back to Vietnam (PRACTICE NINE and IGLOO WHITE, for example) and neither of those worked worth a shit. Things have gotten better, but stop believing that now everything is a surgical pinpoint strike with no collateral damage...it's simply not true, not by wide margin.

We mistakenly kill a *lot* of people who simply had the bad luck to have the wrong phone number or were mistaken for someone else or had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. :(

Re:Drones are better than no drones

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

What does this have to do with drones? Would their deaths have been any more justified, if they were killed by a SEAL from short range, rather than a drone from afar?

The imagery from drones isn't nearly as great as they like to claim, and in fact SEALs would almost certainly NOT make the same mistakes as drone operators and their handlers do.

That's why they (the controllers) often ask for A-10 flybys to determine what's *really* on the ground because a lot of the time you just can't tell what the fuck is actually there from 40,000 feet.

The same goes for SEALs, they get up close and personal so they can see what's actually there, and they would rarely mistake a woman carrying a broom for a "military age male" carrying a rifle. They wouldn't mistake a caravan of families going to look for work with a "convoy of combatants", as has happened over and over again.

All that super hi-res video you see of cool "kill shots"? That's mostly taken from Apache helicopters a kilometer or two away at 1000~2000 feet elevation, a whole different imaging system that's right on top of the action. Totally different story.

Ever wonder why they don't show much actual drone imagery? Because it often sucks monkey balls, that's why- just blobs of this and that, no real definition from 4 or 5 miles up through smoke and fog and haze, surprise surprise. And that's why we all too often blow the shit out of total innocents who are just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Re:Drones are better than no drones

[KGIII]

This is going to sound cold but... Err... Okay, it is cold.

This is war. Nominally or not, it is war. In wars, bad shit happens to good people. If you think drones are bad then I'd suggest looking at the alternatives more objectively. I can assure you that a drone with a Hellfire is much less costly than 2000 pound JDAMs or smarter bombs. I can assure you that the loss of life, on the side of those with the drones, is at a much smaller risk. I can assure you that there are fewer lives, on the side with the drone, at risk than they would have if they put boots on the ground.

War is not about playing nice - it's not even about being fair. If you think this is bad then you do not know any history. This? This is tame. The Russians, for example, lost 24,000.000 (that's the *low* estimate) people in WWII.

My only advice is this: If you're in a combat zone - get to ground or get out. Or join the combatants and be willing to die, I guess. That's a choice one can make. Shit happens. This, this is pretty minimal.

#prayforparis

[X10]

Americans introduced the hash tag #PrayForParis. To which a Parisian replied "Friends from the whole world, thank you for #prayforParis, but we don't need more religion! our faith goes to music! kisses! Life! champagne and Joy! #ParisisaboutLife". I found that amusing, despite the fact I read it last night shortly after the attack.

It seems that American tweeps don't know that the French value their secular state. Which must seem odd to people in a country where so many people are still religious.

Re:#prayforparis

[cold fjord]

Praying for Paris, the people of Paris, does nothing to undermine the secular state and it is confused thinking to believe so. The Parisian that made that reply was equally confused - prayer doesn't introduce more religion in places where it isn't. But there is an interesting question to ask that Parisian - assume God exists ... does the Parisian turn away God's mercy? What good would come of that?

Re:#prayforparis

[sonamchauhan]

Do you actually live there, or are you a victim of confirmation bias?

"The 2007 CIA World Factbook lists the religion of France as: Roman Catholic 83–88%, Protestant 2%, Jewish 1%, Muslim 5%–10%, unaffiliated 4%."

"The mood in Paris following the worst attack in peacetime history, is something of bewilderment, numbness but also huge outpouring of grief with locals openly weeping and making signs of the cross as they pass the many street fronts where their country men and women died."

Re:#prayforparis

[Milharis]

I don't want to get to get into a theological argument, but just a quick answer to the last part of your message.

That's more or less Pascal's Wager, mixed with some "Is God good if he lets innocent people suffer?".
There was a philosopher we studied (sadly I forgot his name) that made the case that despise there are children being crippled and dying, among others, God was still good. His argument was that God wasn't interfering not because he will evil or impotent, but because of free will. Actively interfering would interfere with the free will he had given to mankind.
I do think this is an incorrect argument (why does something like polio exists, and if it exists for a purpose why are we allowed to eradicate it through vaccines?), but for the sake of it, let's just go along with it.

If God does not want to interfere because of free will, he will not in this case.
If God is impotent, then even if he wanted to do something he could not.
If God is evil, or at least does not care about humanity, he has no reason to act.
We have no reliable proof that God ever acted to prevent evil, there's little reason reason to believe he will start all of a sudden. So praying to God, even if it exists isn't going to change anything.

If by God's mercy you meant salvation after death, like going to Paradise or whatever, it gets a bit complicated. Those people that were killed were drinking, listing to music and probably doing a lot of things forbidden by the bible in the first place. Is being savagely killed by fanatics a good enough reason to be given mercy? And are prayers going to change anything, like God saying "I was going to send him to hell, but John prayed for him so I'm gonna change my mind."? That does not really go with the belief that God is omniscient.

To sum it up, praying seems pretty useless to me. It can help people deal with the situation at a personal level, but it's not going to help the dead.
On the other hand, praying goes in hand with faith, and putting faith above everything. The same faith, no matter in what it is, or how misguided it is, that convinced the guys to go and blow themselves up.
Maybe if we had less faith in the world, and more rationality and thinking, this kind of things would not happen. I think that's the message the Parisian wants to convey, let's battle blind faith with something more than more faith.

Sticks and stones

[Ungrounded Lightning]

We should stop calling them Islamic State ... and start calling them islamic sodomites, or something that might offend their world views.

You would respond to violence by calling them names. They would then laugh, and continue with the violence. It's obvious which is more effective.

If you really want to call them something that might do some good, call them "Brigands". That puts them in a class, in Islamic law, where the appropriate action by other Muslims is neither to support them, nor avoid criticizing them as members of a different-but-possibly-valid branch of Islam, but to apprehend them and put them to death for their crimes. It also fits their actions, so it may be persuasive.

Re:NUKEM!! NUKEM NOW!!

[mi]

shows Americans deliberately attacking and killing civilian first responders

Only when it is not obvious, they are "first responders" — and civilian ones at that, because shooting the corpsmen attempting to evacuate a wounded comrade is not at all illegal...

The video's description says:

Wikileaks has obtained and decrypted this previously unreleased video footage from a US Apache helicopter in 2007. It shows Reuters journalist Namir Noor-Eldeen, driver Saeed Chmagh, and several others as the Apache shoots and kills them in a public square in Eastern Baghdad. They are apparently assumed to be insurgents. After the initial shooting, an unarmed group of adults and children in a minivan arrives on the scene and attempts to transport the wounded. They are fired upon as well. The official statement on this incident initially listed all adults as insurgents and claimed the US military did not know how the deaths ocurred. Wikileaks released this video with transcripts and a package of supporting documents on April 5th 2010 on http://collateralmurder.com/

How was an Apache pilot supposed to discern the motives and the allegiances of the newly-arrived group of people?

But, for all your hatred of America and our military, you illustrate the OP's point — if the incident really was a war-crime rather than an unfortunate mistake, it would be a cause for real outrage among the Westerners. This undoubtedly deliberate killings of concert-goers, on contrast, elicit nothing but insincere "official" condemnations from their society.

We really are better than they.

What are they thinking?

[golodh]

Perhaps someone can tell me, as I can't make head or tails of what motivates ISIS.

It is as if they've got a list of parties (nations) to piss off and are going down the list one by one. By this logic China, Japan, or Brazil ought to be next in line.

Besides which, they do seem to be doing their damnedest to drum up popular support for military action against them. Both the US and the UK will point to this attack and say to their respective electorates: "See? Told you that restraint won't help against these extremists. Now will you believe me? We need to actively engage those criminals *now* before they become too large to contain.".

I could understand (but not agree) if they just wanted to have their "caliphate". If you wanted to build a state you'd want to control territory and then secure it.

But going after a Russian airliner? The country ruled by an ex-soviet KGB colonel? The one who has shown he can (and will) use dumb (read: cheap) bombs to raze whole villages simply to get at one target? The one who comes from a long tradition that has demonstrated that as far as they're concerned normal rules of war don't exist? The one party that might otherwise be persuaded to sell arms (as long as they're to uses against US and UK forces)? Well ... if they looked for another adversary they've just got one.

And France? How much of the coalition's bomb runs are carried out by French aircraft? How many of the drones do the operate over Syria and Iraq? Not all that many? Man! We gotta change that! Lets piss 'em off big time and see if they can't do better.

The only reason I can think of is that they hope to goad Paris into dropping a nuke on Raqa ... decapitating ISIS ... and (I suppose) starting WW-III. Could that be it? Could they really aim at igniting a full-scale war between approx. 1 bln. muslims and 4 bln. non-muslims?

Or is thinking not their long suit? Are they too absorbed in their faith for that?

Anybody?

Re:What are they thinking?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have an excellent article on ISIS in the atlantic, the amount of catch-22s in the DAESH view of the world is a thing of beauty, as a school of thought they are literally too dumb to live.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

Re:What are they thinking?

[swb]

It's truly hard to understand the motives of ISIS by any rational, realpolitik kinds of analysis.

The attacks on Paris make rational sense in that they are probably one of the weaker world powers. While stronger than most, they don't have the kind of unilateral military reach and power of the US or Russia. France couldn't invade any part of the Middle East on its own for all kinds of practical reasons involving troop levels, troop transport and material assets. And politically they aren't aligned strictly with the US in terms of "war on terror" policy and seem less likely to react militarily (the US got hit on 9/11 and we invaded and occupied two countries, and still occupy one of them).

Ideologically, France has been one of the most militant in opposing Islamic cultural traditions and was military involved in pushing back ISIS affiliates in North Africa.

But Russia? It's arguable that they're more dangerous as an adversary now than when they were the Soviet Union, and the track record in Chechnya indicates they're not willing to abide by the Marquis of Queensbury rules.

I think ISIS is gambling that the existential risk of a no-holds-barred ground campaign isn't in the cards, but I think these direct attacks on adversaries capable of such a campaign really increase. If the US and Russia can sort out their issues and the future of Assad, I think this risk becomes a lot more of a gamble.

Re:What are they thinking?

[golodh]

Read the article. It makes sense, sort of. Found another piece, on CNN this time:

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/11...

The article they refer to is this one:

https://azelin.files.wordpress...

Didn't have the stomach to read it in one go. It's written from a revanchist religious point of view and it lays every single failure since the fall of the Ottoman empire of the Islamic world to get its house in order and rise from a violently squabbling mob at the West's door. Apparently we have been doing Satan's work on them.

Their preferred response is "savagery", according to the author of that pamphlet. I think we can see what he means..

Somehow I don't see us working out our differences with them through reasoned debate.

It's a religious sect writ large, and it's one huge pitcher of cool-aid they've got there.

The only good news seems to be that this little masterpiece doesn't seem to base itself on the authority of Islamic texts per se. As far as I can see, it's based on an interpretation of Islam that's driven by an revanchist view of history.

That ought to give us something to work with when dealing with radicalising youths (their main supply of manpower).

Revanchism and envy are probably easier to deal with than straight-up religion.

Re:NUKEM!! NUKEM NOW!!

[mi]

That's also one of the Israeli government's favorite tactics.

Citations?

Putin profits

[mi]

It's awful what hate and fanaticism drive people to do.

Behind the dumb homicide bombers — full of hate and fanaticism — are the enablers, that provide them with explosives, training, targeting, and other logistics. And behind those are people, who pay for all that.

It is obvious, that France's Le Pen and other European "right" nationalists stand to rise enormously in the wake of this tragedy. It is also a fact, that Vladimir Putin finances these guys. Would he not be happy to see his allies gain ground — while the electorate's attention shifts away from his crimes?

In this case, the answer to the famous question: Cui bono? (who profits?), has an obvious answer.

Re:Why is the Left so fiercely defending Islamism?

[serviscope_minor]

What motivates educated people to sit in front of a keyboard for 40 minutes composing a thousand-word defense of the disgusting mass murder Islamists committed in Paris today?

Pics or it didn't happen. Do you actually have any examples of "the left" defending these attacks, or are you just finding someone to hate?

Re:The Bigger Problem *is* European law

[IamTheRealMike]

The U.S. does not have shootings happening every day - and France just surpassed years of U.S. mass shootings of innocents.

Yes it does, actually more than one in 2015. As of August 26th the number of "mass shootings" (defined there as at least four people getting shot) had passed the number of days in the year. Multiplied out that's 247 shootings * 4 people == 988 minimum but those stats are for "at least" four people: each incident could have had more than four. So it's in reality higher.

So that's say around a thousand people, vs 129 people in this Paris attack. It simply is not comparable. Your attempted rebuttal is based on fiction, which is never a good start.

The U.S. has more gun deaths per year but almost all of that is gang violence, who aren't buying guns legally anyway so I'm not sure how you plan to stop them...

You seem to think that gangs are somehow special. The UK has gangs too. They're the ones renting the same gun to shoot at each other with because they can't obtain their own. Gun control, properly implemented, takes guns away from everyone. Or did you not read any of what I wrote above?

Over the next few years Europe will have a vastly higher death toll at the hands of guns, precisely because the populace has been disarmed and pacified.

You are delusional. What do you think is going to happen, some sort of mass EU-initiated genocide? Although the events in Paris are tragic, they don't fundamentally change anything: Europe isn't about to experience a "vastly higher death toll at the hands of guns". Even if the occurrence of Paris-style attacks becomes 10x more frequent, that'd merely bring it into the range of US mass shooting deaths, not exceed it.

Re: NUKEM!! NUKEM NOW!!

[Cederic]

Is this a US definition of 'civilian' by any chance, where any male of military age is deemed a combatant?

Fuck that.

You're pretty much all wrong

[rsilvergun]

pulling boots off the ground has nothing to do with public opinion. Americans were pretty much opposed to the 2nd Iraq & Afghan wars. Our leaders ignored us, like they did with the bank bailouts. We accomplished everything we wanted though. In Afghanistan we wanted an oil pipeline and we got it. We also wanted a gov't sympathetic to our cause, and we got it. In Iraq we wanted control of their oil fields and we wanted to funnel money to military contractors under the guise of nation building. We got that too.

You're not following the money. That's where your mistaken. Everything is always about money. Always. Nothing else really matters. You're feeling instead of thinking. Your gut tells you that the ones you can see, the ones yelling 'Great Satan' are the ones that matter. It's the ones you can't see. The ones pulling the strings from behind that matter. I know I'm starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but come on, it's hardly a theory when the war profiteers were holding conventions out in the open leading up to the Iraq war. It's hardly theory when any fool could tell you Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11.

Good lord ...

[cascadingstylesheet]

... I know it shouldn't surprise me, but even after this, the top rated comments are still slamming generic "religion" and talking about "backlash" playing a role.

What exactly would it take to wake you up? Would anything do it? Your own head being sawed off? Your city being bombed?

Re:Why is the Left so fiercely defending Islamism?

[Beetle B.]

This is probably not worth my time, but let's try:

Reading this thread and the last, I am struck by how the Left is not just defending Islamism

Why does the Left defend Islamism like this?

Congratulations! You have just demonstrated the breakdown of reasonable dialogue by imposing your view of the world in your queries.

You made a general statement without addressing any specific comments. According to you, people are defending Islamism. Not just people, but "the Left".

• You provide no definition of Islamism. Hence, any comment could fix that description.
• You don't quote examples of these comments so people know what you're talking about. It's like me walking into a public meeting about the police's excessive use of tasers, and then just standing up and saying "Looking around in this room, why is the right defending racism?"
• You attribute all of these comments as coming from the "Left", with no evidence whatsoever. Essentially, you're just redefining Left to mean whatever you'd like (in this case, defending Islamism).

Re:Why is the Left so fiercely defending Islamism?

[jader3rd]

I haven't seen the Left defending Islam. Most of the comments seem to be along the lines of "All religions suck; let's get rid of all of them". Which certainly isn't a defense. Other comments have been along the lines of "Instead of continuing the violence, let's not retaliate and end the cycle." Which doesn't seem to have anything to do with Islam, but is more of a belief they would have in any situation. Can you provide a concrete example?

Re:doubled murder, rape, and total violent crime

[IamTheRealMike]

No they did not. You didn't read my post, did you? Reporting standards changed around that time so all crime figures went up, but that's a statistical artifact: the BCS figures show there was no spike around that time and crime started to steadily fall around the late 90's.

Re:Proof?

[squiggleslash]

Unfortunately we can't make that claim on the basis of today's horrors. I hate to be the bad guy here (*puts on Hitler mustache*) but without data on how many terrorist plots France has foiled, we can't say whether France is using the wrong methods, or simply enduring significantly higher numbers of attackers and plots (and being overwhelmed as a result.)

And if France is enduring more attacks, that might explain the draconian laws, rather than vice versa.

Re:NUKEM!! NUKEM NOW!!

[whoever57]

Except the leaked Collateral Murder video shows Americans deliberately attacking and killing civilian first responders.

You don't need to go so far back.What about the recent attack on the MSF hospital in Afghanistan?

Re:ISIS?

[squiggleslash]

They're massive rivals and hate each other. ISIL is largely a bunch of religious nuts who murder people because they hate them. Al Qaeda has more of a specific agenda and is trying to use terrorism to produce certain governmental responses that will result, in the end, in a pan-Arab state.

ISIL is basically fucking things up for Al Qaeda, which would be great if it wasn't for the fact that both groups are evil monsters that see Westerners as convenient scapegoats and great people to murder.

I believe ISIL came out of Al Qaeda, but that's the only connection.

Re:Why is the Left so fiercely defending Islamism?

[squiggleslash]

I've not seen a single person in this thread even defend ordinary Muslims (who had nothing to do with it) let alone anyone defend terrorism or Islamists.

It's convenient though for the extreme right to pretend that the "left" is the boogieman. Makes it easier to silence them as radical, anti-Muslim policies are promoted that assume every Muslim is a terrorist.

Me, I thought the bad guys were a bunch of religious extremists who killed 127 people in Paris today. But apparently it's straw left-wingers. Who knew?

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Re:NUKEM!! NUKEM NOW!!

[PopeRatzo]

Citations?

I was hoping you'd ask.

http://972mag.com/report-detai...

You can find more examples by Googling "double tap bombing".

Crackpipe insanity.

[foreverdisillusioned]

There isn't a single part of this post that isn't pure fantasy. I try not to complain about the mods too much but fuck me, +5 Insightful?

ISIS is just a bunch of men with no jobs, no wives, no future and no hope for a future.

Where do you get your news? ISIS's economy is a hell of a lot more robust and stable than many nations that have a seat at the UN. ISIS fighters and leaders routinely have wives. Many of the most high profile jihadis (including but not limited to ISIS) have had good career prospects and families or at least romantic interests, including the computer programmer "Jihadi "John" (whom we just killed yesterday) and the Ph. Ds and graduate students who flew into the WTC.

Go watch VICE's report on ISIS (one of the few organizations willing to send people to do some reporting on the ground.) Listen to the guy driving the car talk about how he's leaving his wife and children to go fight for ISIS because, bottom line, Allah means more to him.

the 1% war profiteering in the Middle East and stealing their oil.

The Iraq war was moronic. We gave a bunch of contracts to Haliburton and other American companies. And there were conflicts of interest there, yeah.

But we did not fucking steal anyone's oil. Stop making shit up. Iraq has been getting billions from it for quite a while now. That oil doesn't get shipped to American companies. It gets sold on the international market at regular market price.

We can't solve _anything_ until we start recognizing the real problem and start actually _rebuilding_ Iraq and Afghanistan.

How. Fucking HOW. It's hard enough to try to fathom what we could do to rebuild Iraq that we haven't already tried but... "rebuilding" Afghanistan is a contradiction in terms--there's nothing to rebuild. It's a shithole dominated by highly religious tent dwellers, petty warlords and Pakistani agents and slummers. It's been that way long before 2001.

If you're American though this probably means giving up your SUV.

Your post has now gone into stream-of-consciousness ranting. Yes, we need to achieve energy independence. That has fuck-all to do with rebuilding places that we've already spent hundreds of billions of dollars on trying to rebuild for over a decade.

I'm not trying to troll

lol.

Re: Crackpipe insanity.

[foreverdisillusioned]

You didn't touch a nerve--nonsense on the internet is nothing new. A string of unique nonsenses at +5 on Slashdot touched a nerve.

You're lying, simply lying at this point. Or willfully ignorant. Cheney is an asshole and the conflicts of interest are worrisome, but no one in America is siphoning off 40% of the Iraqi economy.

Jihadis have had wives before and/or after leaving their old lives behind. ISIS has even managed to convince a few females to travel on their own to Iraq, just to become jihadi brides. Go watch the VICE videos (VICE is not known as having a conservative stance, btw.) See the proud jihadi dads watching their kids playing in the river.

Re:Thanks Bush/Cheney

[bongey]

FYI : Obama has been the president for the last 7 years. ISIS is clearly Obama's fault for not doing anything on Syria and pulling out troops from Iraq too soon.
Air strikes alone is like causal sex. All the gratification without any commitment. Obama did the same failed Clinton policy of using only air strikes. Air strikes alone didn't stop Al Qaeda then and it isn't going to stop ISIS now, it is just going to piss them off more.
I was in US Army deployed to northern Iraq and we controlled it with minor issues. Crap I use to drive back and forth from Tal Afar to Mosul without issue, go look up who controls those areas now. We took much longer to with draw down forces from Japan and Germany, which provided the governments there enough time to build up stability.
Don't say we shouldn't have gone into Iraq, we cannot go back in time, we can only improve going forward. Pulling out troops prematurely leads to security vacuum.

Re:Why is the Left so fiercely defending Islamism?

[angel'o'sphere]

Any links or other proof where a 'left' or 'liberal' 'defended' or fought for Islamism?
Please show some ...

Re:Reality acceptance issues...

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Someday people will look back on the shared delusion of religion and wonder what the fuck was wrong with everyone.

The funny part is that they already do. For example, Ra or Ptah aren't popular anymore.

Exactly. No one will take you seriously if you say you worship Thor or Neptune or Ganesh or Anubis, but lots of people will happily try to lop off your head if you don't worship Jesus or Mohammad. And really, what's the difference?

(Although at least Mohammad appears to have been an actual living person, as opposed to Jesus, who is now pretty well proven to have never actually existed. And yes, I'm serious- there's a ton of proof now that Jesus never really existed.)

So yeah, we're ALL atheists to some degree. I just happen to believe in one less god than my neighbor (a devout Christian) does.

Re: NUKEM!! NUKEM NOW!!

[fyngyrz]

More people have died due to the Republican's failure to expand Medicaid than have died in terrorist attacks. So, who should we really nuke?

Now, as to who France might see fit to nuke, Mecca seems like it would make a fine object lesson about religion-based acts of terrorism.

Re:NUKEM!! NUKEM NOW!!

[rbrander]

>You either win it or lose it, and you win it by breaking your enemy's will to fight. You have to kill the civilians to do that.

Very popular sentiments about Vietnam. Won yet?

Re:Why is the Left so fiercely defending Islamism?

[serviscope_minor]

Request for citing examples or sources for something that is fucking obvious

Ahh so demanding evidence of the Lefty conspiracy proves I'm part of it.

Of course.

Re: NUKEM!! NUKEM NOW!!

[nbauman]

But note that France does not conduct any drone strikes,

France was bombing ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/27/...

I don't like ISIS, they've done horrible things, but if you attack someone, you can reasonably expect him to attack you back.

the two issues have nothing to do with each other, and there should be no doubt that terrorist attacks like in Paris are even more heinous crimes than any drone strikes anyone could imagine.

If I were Syrian I would have a hard time understanding why it's more henious to machine-gun down 100 people in a theater than it is to kill 100 people with a drone strike at, say, a wedding.

As I said, its a question of the intentions.

That's a distinction without a difference.

If I were a Syrian, I wouldn't care whether my wife and children were killed by someone who was intending to kill them or who just killed them as collateral damage.

If you drop a bomb, you know what's going to happen.

Re:The Bigger Problem *is* European law

[SuperKendall]

There were two of the attackers in the theater, shooting slowly. Are you really so stupid as to think a single armed woman or man could not have changed that course quickly?

The only reason so many were killed is because many laid on the floor and the terrorists had all the time in the world to shoot each one in the head. A hail of bullets going into a crowd would have had a vastly lower cost in human life (a person can easily be shot a few times and live through it just fine), and the terrorists could have been stopped.

Re:The Bigger Problem *is* European law

[SuperKendall]

Not innocents - again gang violence is a wholly different thing.

Re: NUKEM!! NUKEM NOW!!

[nbauman]

Yes, but civilized people attack the enemy military/governments. Not the people going to see a metal concert.

I agree. Everyone should follow international law. People who violate international law should be prosecuted and punished.

But that doesn't happen. We kill innocent civilians all the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

And if we ignore international humanitarian law, it's pretty difficult to convince the other side that they should follow international law too.

Although sometimes they do anyway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re: NUKEM!! NUKEM NOW!!

[khallow]

So what you are saying is that attacking civilian targets and killing many including children from a position of military power backed by a large government and from a nice safe distance is somehow OK but a bunch of seperarist religious nuts attacking civilians is unforgivable and the traction should be wars against reasonably moderate states?

What large government is attacking civilian targets? Just because there are civilians near a military target who are harmed or killed by a subsequent attack doesn't make the target a civilian target.

While on the other hand, it is quite clear that the Paris attacks targeted civilians without regard for any military justification.

And what wars against what "reasonably moderate" states?

Unless you see and agree both are horrific and needed to be addressed you are just part of the problem.

Horrific is a matter of degree. It's not a bit you set. I hope you think that killing 100 people in a concert is more horrific than wearing plaid and stripes, but I can't tell from your words how discerning you are. War ultimately is about not playing by rules. The more ethical rules you can actually get participants in a war to follow, the relatively more humane the war will be. But when such as in the case of ISIS, one party isn't following any rules to reduce harm to civilians, then you should expect lots of civilian deaths, no matter how horrific you find this sort of thing to be.