Will there be another "9/11" ?

Weapons of mass hysteria.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Nonsense. It is silly to say that liberals don't recognize the issue of terrorism. They may well disagree on how to try to keep it within manageable levels but you cannot say they don't recognize it. This shows that you may not really understand the terrorist threat; radical Islam is just one user of terrorist tactics. It's not the first and will certainly not be the last. Remember, it was Ronald Reagan and Bush senior, both strong supporters of terrorism, that helped fund, train and create the radical Islamic terrorist forces. Well, first, I believe we need to realize that terrorism is really unique. It is not a Nation State conflict. So far the administration has been treating the terrorist threat as though it were just another Nation State conflict; invade Afghanistan, invade Iraq, threaten to invade somewhere else.Such behavior is pointless when dealing with terrorism but may be great in the polls.Second, IMHO we need to address terrorism as a police/criminal manner, just like any other crime syndicate. You remove their funding, get lots of intellegence, and sanction the key planners and controlers.If you want specifics on how to bring the level of terrorist threats down to manageable levels world-wide, I would suggest the following.

1. Immediately legalize, federalize and subsidize all currently illicite drugs in the US. Give them away for free.
2. Create some way to identify who is allowed in a country, an identity method where the card or passport can be instantly verified against a central database.
3. Concentrate on controling borders and access. This would include internal access points (airports, inland waterways, etc. It would also include increased inspection of air-cargo containers that will transit national airspace.
4. Increase cooperation with Nation State intellegence networks.
5. Increase funding for on the ground-In country intellegence.
6. Concentrate on the Money. Stop funding and you do real damage to the terrorist organizations.
7. Identify which Nation States are really involved in funding terrorism. For example, most major Arab States fund terrorism because actions against the US or Israel lower internal pressures within their own nations. Better to have their disgruntled citizens looking outward instead of inward.
8. Identify what the really big exposure points are and make a real effort to protecct them. For example, the lock system on the Atchafalaya basin. If it was broached the whole channel of the Mississippi River could be diverted and every town from the port of New Orleans as far North a Baton Rouge would find themselves landlocked while millions would be flooded.
9. Stop creating and funding our own tame terrorists.
10. Finally, begin explaining to the public just what terrorism is really about. So far that is one of the big things that has not been done.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I did not miss your point, I simply believe you are completely wrong. WMD change nothing. Do you have any idea what can be done on a budget of under $10,000 with common, ordinary, easily available items? Do you know what keeps the Mississippi River flowing to New Orleans? WMDs are not a threat to a Nation. They are a risk, but no nation has ever been destroyed by WMDs. Actually, if you will study history, there was no slander, simply fact. Dear old Ollie North was directly involved in creating and supplying terrorists (non-Islamic by the way) and bring in drugs to be distributed in the US. It was interesting that one of Reagan's last acts was to seal away or destroy all of the evidence to protect Bush Senior.By the way, I am not a liberal but rather a Republican who has worked campaigns since Eisenhower's second run, so don't try running label games on me. Instead, check the history of the Iran/Contra investigation. Sorry, but that is simply rhetroric and not supported by the facts. The single biggest commodity in Afghanistan is Opium Poppies. Check and see what we did relating to the opium fields after invading and occupying the country.Eliminating their hiding places is also nonsense. Neither Afghanistan or Iraq were significant hiding places for terrorists. What terrorists need to succeed is access to infrastructure, industry, telephones, internet, easy movement. If you want to find terrorist hiding places look at London, Toronto, Miami, Detroit, Baltimore, Dallas, Rome, Belin, Madrid, Rio, Mexico City, Venice, Lisbon...You want to cut off funding, make drugs free and stop buying oil from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and place an embargo on those nations as we did with Lybia. Of course it's about political power. But terrorist organizations are not nation states. You cannot treat them as nation states. I agree that the tactics of warfare have changed. It's just too bad GWB doesn't know that. Of course you cannot win the war. To even imagine that is the case is simply silly. Even GWB knows that and has even said that it cannot be won. Well, to say muslims is to ignore most of the terrorism over the last hundred years or so. The muslim issue is only the latest, and maybe a minor, example of terrorism. Ask the Irish. Ask throughout South America.Terrorism will be brought within manageable levels when we help change the economic and social conditions on the ground. That means aid, massive aid, and health care and education. Instead, the adminsitration just asked to transfer $35,000,000,000.00 from infrastructure support in Iraq into military funds. Smart move?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Actually, we have had a very good idea of what happened to them all along. Most were logged and listed, inspected and deactivated. And he was complying. In fact, the UN had to remove the WMD inspectors that were working in Iraq when the US said they would invade anyway. They were certainly informed. They just didn't like the answers they were getting so they made stuff up. Like for Powell's UN speech. So did Lybia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the PLA and many other nations. Did we invade them?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Edited because it was off topic.This message has been edited by jar, 09-16-2004 07:56 AM

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Do you have any idea of how much health care we could provide for what we spent and will spend in the stupid Iraq campaign? Iraq had a capitalist economy. I listed what we need to do to keep the terrorist issue manageable back in message 15. I'll repeat it here in case you missed it.

1. Immediately legalize, federalize and subsidize all currently illicite drugs in the US. Give them away for free.
2. Create some way to identify who is allowed in a country, an identity method where the card or passport can be instantly verified against a central database.
3. Concentrate on controling borders and access. This would include internal access points (airports, inland waterways, etc. It would also include increased inspection of air-cargo containers that will transit national airspace.
4. Increase cooperation with Nation State intellegence networks.
5. Increase funding for on the ground-In country intellegence.
6. Concentrate on the Money. Stop funding and you do real damage to the terrorist organizations.
7. Identify which Nation States are really involved in funding terrorism. For example, most major Arab States fund terrorism because actions against the US or Israel lower internal pressures within their own nations. Better to have their disgruntled citizens looking outward instead of inward.
8. Identify what the really big exposure points are and make a real effort to protecct them. For example, the lock system on the Atchafalaya basin. If it was broached the whole channel of the Mississippi River could be diverted and every town from the port of New Orleans as far North a Baton Rouge would find themselves landlocked while millions would be flooded.
9. Stop creating and funding our own tame terrorists.
10. Finally, begin explaining to the public just what terrorism is really about. So far that is one of the big things that has not been done.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

You'll find if you do the research, that Nationaly owned companies are not at all unusual in capitalist economies. Do a search on national airlines, nationalized industries and you will find it is quite common.Actually, the Oil For Food program existed because we had destroyed Iraq's economy, but yes, historicly Iraq was a secular, capitalist economy. Saddam was certainly corrupt but not on an unusual scale.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

What does that have to do with the thread. Are you just bringing all the nonsense from the closed down thread over here to get this one shut down too?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

IMHO, having GWB in office makes us more vulnerable to a terrorist attack.The reason is, as I have posted in Message 15, GWB doesn't have a clue what terrorism is all about or how to oppose terrorists and terrorist attacks.One clear indication is that almost all of the infrastructure and social support services funding for IRAQ have not been spent and now GWB wants to convert $35,000,000,000.00 (35 BILIION dolars) of the infrastucture money to the military.This certainly increases the recruiting capability of terrorists, provides a definite example of why the US should be opposed, and increases the likelyhood of another major incident on US soils._{edited to fix spelling}This message has been edited by jar, 09-16-2004 10:52 PM

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I find that surprising since most Republicans I know don't realize that today's, Republican party used to be the Democrats or that John Hanson was the first President of the US. They seem unaware that one of the biggest issues that held up ratification of the Articles of Confederation was waiting on New York and Virginia to cede title to their western lands. They do not know how Presidents are elected or the history of the electorial college.But what does any of that have to do with the question of whether or not there will be another major terrorist incident?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Actually, I am amazed that anyone was even suprised by what happened on 9-11. It's like saying folk were surprised by the attack on the USS Cole.First, the WTC had been an earlier target. Terrorists have a long history of continuing to try something until it works.Second, almost a decade before they had tried the same tactics in Paris when they (actually an allied group called Algerian Islamic Group) hijacked a Airbus and tried to fly it into the Eiffel Tower. In that case none of the terrorists knew how to fly the plane so it failed and they had to land. It would have been resonable to expect them to learn from the incident and spend the time trying to learn to pilot aircraft.Third, there had been a best selling Tom Clancy novel where the plot was crashing a plane into the Capitol to wipe out our government.Fourth, we had foiled a plot by Ramzi Yousef based in Manila where the plan was a coordinated attack on 11 US airlines and a seperate attempt to fly a plane into CIA headquarters.Finally, there was the attempt to bomb the USS Sinclair in the same port a full year before the Cole incident.None of these things were secret, they were all covered in the news.So why was anyone surprised?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

You're very close Robert. But it wasn't the Zionist Jewish group this time but rather the FCCC_CB (Fundamentalist Christian Creationist Cabal _{Canadian Branch}) that inflitrated the government at the highest levels The goal was to precipitate Armageddon and hasten the second coming. They also feared that the additional evidence that would be found in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and even Iran would further disprove some of the tales told in the OT and increase support for the TOE. They really had no other choice but to conceal the likelyhood of additional terrorist attacks so that they could control access to those critical archeological sites.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

IIRC, the suspected spy is an aide to Douglas Feith.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

What do you think the is goal of Muslim Extremist terrorists?What do you think is the goal of Basque terrorists?What do you think is the goal of terrorists in general?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion