posted on October 10, 2001 02:16:22 PM newdonny - How much is the American public going to accept unquestioningly as being in the National Interest, a Matter of Security, Necessary in a Time of War? Judging by the crowd here, whatever's handed out. Chow.
posted on October 10, 2001 02:43:57 PM new How much is the American public going to accept unquestioningly as being in the National Interest, a Matter of Security
This is the problem. Some things legitimatly should be secret, other things shouldn't. If the people that are suppose to keep their mouths shut, do, you will never know the difference. Like it or not, you have to trust them.
posted on October 10, 2001 03:11:08 PM new
I'm definitely not into "trusting" government. I want facts...not opinion. And I require far more than unsubstantiated quotes.
We need to remember...all news media needs to constantly fill space. It's how they justify their existence...and make their money. The dissemination of news is a business. Big business. It requires very careful reading to determine if we should give serious credence to any sexy, trendy story of the moment...no matter how serious the subject. A lot of it is merely barely disguised speculation...not hard to dissect, if you ask the basic questions of the article.
Who, what, why, where, how. And, of course, the source of the answers to those questions.
posted on October 10, 2001 03:12:11 PM new
Im reading. I asked, they are answering. I still like the link supplied on the first page. What that commentator said is still where I am myself. Still, its interesting to get so many views. Minus the personal semi-attacks if some don't agree with others.
posted on October 10, 2001 03:33:29 PM new
"Congressional members are hardly going to repeat to the press or public what was not to be said out loud in the first place, per Bush, IMO."
Folks...
The reason that the President was pissed was not because what was printed in the Wash Post but rather what was thankfully NOT printed...
From this mornings Mullings.com
"Members of Congress (House and Senate) were briefed by Administration officials. At least one Member couldn't keep the secrets and they got blabbed to the Washington Post.
Washington Post reporters, Susan Schmidt and the somewhat more famous Bob Woodward (and five other reporters who got "also contributed" credit), got a lot of information about military or other sensitive activities from this Hill source or sources.
The Post went to the White House with what it had, listened to the White House's position, and decided not to print everything it knew. So, The Washington Post showed more restraint and judgment than Members of Congress."
It seems that the Congress Critter blabbed about something that could have put our soldiers in jeopardy.
posted on October 10, 2001 03:52:37 PM new
"I guess the peacemakers could not come up with any answers. No big suprises there."
Yes, not surprising at all. I hear a great call from their side that we should bring Bin-Laden to justice before an International Court of Law. They seem to be hazy on the details on how we get his keyster to the Hague.
Their plan appears to be that we send a U.S. Marshall who then flashes his badge at the border and informs the guards that he has a subpoena and would they be so kind as to direct them to Bin-Laden's cave du jour.
But then, he might also be so taken by the heartwarming renditions of "Imagine", "Give Peace a Chance", (songs I like btw) and "Kumbayah" and remorsefully surrender of his own accord...
posted on October 10, 2001 04:03:37 PM new
Oh for God's sake.
Did you notice at all what Toke's objection was? That unnamed "White House Officials" are never credible sources of information because they're anonymous.
posted on October 10, 2001 04:47:02 PM new
I've always found that unnamed sources are reliable when they mirror one's thoughts and are totally bogus when they don't. Jess
posted on October 10, 2001 06:03:49 PM newdonny...
I said: Since that's an anonymous source, it's meaningless. It could just as easily be disinformation, to obscure the actual leak that was deemed important.
I did not say: That unnamed "White House Officials" are never credible sources of information because they're anonymous."
I understand your need to quote only partial bits...the need on your part to be correct in all things, is obviously great...though clearly futile.
posted on October 10, 2001 06:41:49 PM new
Well, the most important thing at the moment, as my buddy Trent Lott said, the law will continue to be followed in Congressional briefings.
posted on October 10, 2001 06:57:51 PM new
This issue isn't as simple as, "if we kill a few thousand innocents, at least we'll stop terrorism." (And even that is hardly simple.) Is military action against Afghanistan necessary or justified? How much collateral damage is acceptable? Is Afghanistan our trump card, or just an opening gambit?
I don't wish to speak against our government, but I don't mind discussing (and even criticizing) military strategy. If we're sending ground troops into Afghanistan, we should have a clear goal in mind, not just "destabilizing the government" and hoping some faction takes over. That didn't work in Iraq. We fought that war with white gloves on, refused to target Saddam, and he's still thumbing his nose at us and developing WOMD.
The Israeli strategy is well known. First, air strikes to flatten the country. Then send in armor to flatten it down some more. Then send in ground troops to finish off anyone who's still miraculously alive. It sounds harsh, but I think Israel has more concern for the welfare of its troops.
Anyway, I agree with KRS. This whole war should be waged by special forces. We can't practically bomb the entire Middle East. And you can bet that when we telegraph our punches weeks in advance, the terrorists are long gone from any target. They'll keep moving around, and the U.S. isn't in any position to occupy the Middle East. Reckoning with Arab leaders is useless. They will decry terrorism, and go home to plan more dirty attacks. The answer is simply to take out the Jihad leaders. We can do this with far less bloodshed than our usual policy of creating an effigy and then punishing an entire country. The U.S. needs to take off the white gloves and stop playing a "nice" kind of war at our own expense.
Bush's anger at Congress was pure posturing. He's trying to draw the Arab nations into his "coalition" (God knows why) and to do that he must appear strong and in command. It's the same thing with Sharon all over again. (BTW, Bush would never throw away his only ally in the Middle East.) JMHO.
posted on October 10, 2001 07:09:36 PM new
So you think the special ops can do better this time than they did in the past? Or do we simply forget about those times and pretend that we have supermen who can walk on water?
posted on October 10, 2001 07:31:44 PM newdeliteful, whether U.S. special forces can accomplish the task is another argument. I believe that is the correct strategy for waging a war on terrorism. Not the entire strategy, but an important and main part. Obviously we can not level the entire Middle East. Targeted air strikes are not enough, and even if they were, it's not likely we'll be bombing Syria any time soon. I'm not saying there wouldn't be casualties. But there would be less casualties than waltzing our ground troops around in an open-ended and poorly-defined war.
posted on October 10, 2001 07:45:34 PM new
deliteful,
I'll bet that it has never occured to you to ask yourself why no one ever responds to your ignorrant and petty little misinformed posts, has it?
Presidents are restrained in most cases in what they can do aggressively. A little thing known as the War Powers Act does that. They can also be very restricted by other couuntries as to what US forces are permitted on the other country's territories and what those forces can and cannot do while there.
In this case though the president has the permissions from congress that he needs and the agreements made in coalition efforts give him latitudes of operation in other countries that very seldom have been available to any US president.
So now what to do? In this instance only, not the past more restrained instances which you so painstakingly continue to make reference.
Bomb? Bomb all year and these people will pop up surviving and laughing at us. Envision little cartoon character bin ladens with their thumbs in their ears and their tongus sticking out at the united states saying "neener, neener!". I've no doubt at all that such imagery is not beyond your capabilities.
No, go after them with the dark quiet forces which we have available--people so well trained, so selected for excellence, and so very able to perform the act of personal and up in the face killing that their suspected presence would terrorize these towelheaded visionary smalltime criminals with bucks. You think that people like that only exist in your television or comic book characterizations? Sorry, they are real but most of the time governemnts don't like to publicize their existence and they like it that way.
I'll bet that it has never occured to you to ask yourself why no one ever responds to your ignorrant and petty little misinformed posts, has it?
is disrespectful and inflammatory. Please remember to treat your fellow AW members with respect and consideration. To continue to post in this manner could place your posting privileges in jeopardy.
posted on October 10, 2001 08:46:00 PM new
"Obviously we can not level the entire Middle East"
Actually when you consider how few cities there are and how much empty space between it would not be hard to take them back to about 3000 years ago. Even the goat herders out in the wilderness would have a rough time with no cities and fall out.
posted on October 10, 2001 10:27:44 PM new
Do the math folks. There are 1 billion muslims. If only 1% are likely to engage in terrorism, that is 10,000,000. We don't have enough Rambos to kill them one-by-one. And we don't have the latitude in any of the countries to operate freely and safely.
Our thrust should be to have the Arab nations themselves do the heavy lifting. These terrorist pests are just as much a thorn in their sides as ours -- even more so because they don't have to cross an ocean to wreak havoc and have the ability to overthrow their regimes overnight. In every kingdom and dictatorship, there are always plenty of ambitious majors and colonels plotting to be the next grand poopah.
Survival at the top of the power pyramids in these nations are quite precarious and when the footing gets wobbly, the tyrants at the top will not hesitate to recreate the Nazi "Night of the Long Knifes" for their self-survival. That is, the ones that haven't gotten too corrupt or brutal that they've lost to ability to control their secret police and keep the guns pointed in the right direction.
As for standing up to us militarily -- the air force is gone the first night, the air defenses and communications the next day and their offensive capabilities within a week. They do not have any munitions factories to resupply and no way to import any arms.
I heard today that the next in line are Iran and Lebanon. Iran will fold because its people are tired of the clerics and wish to go Western. Lebanon is a proxy of Syria which will withdraw all their shiny armaments and trained troops so they won't be decimated.
As for Iraq, once we take over Afghanistan -- since last time we were clucked at for bailing out too soon after the Russian defeat -- we will stick around to do some nation rebuilding. This would mean repairing the runways in Western Afghanistan that we pockmarked. Lo and behold, Iraq would be looking at airfields to the south in Oman and Saudi, north in Turkey, and us in the east in Afghanistan -- directly on their border (with no weak-kneeded Saudis reining us in).
My stategy would be to lean on the Arab states with a smidgen of bombing and quarantines and then let them implode. The smart ones will vacate taking all their gold and skills and leave the rabble to destroy what's left of their infrastructure in turf wars.
These nations do not any options or fall back positions. All they have is sympathy for the oppressed from deluded members of the West -- and oil. Further terrorist attacks will dilute public opinion rapidly. If they do something nasty to us or our allies it will give us carte blanche to go up a notch or two. And if they use their trump card and cut off the oil or even go as far as to detonate the wells they commit economic suicide.
posted on October 10, 2001 10:37:09 PM new
Gravid---the Middle East is not full of goat herders and desert. You've been reading too many National Geographics
posted on October 11, 2001 05:26:39 AM new
A previous posters ramblings made me wonder if anyone else saw CNN this morning.
Did anyone pick up on the CNN phone interview with the B1-B bomber pilot "Tank" talking about her bombing run? I was curious if she had to wear a veil while in Afghani air space, they didn't bring that up in the interview.
posted on October 11, 2001 05:55:52 AM newI guess the peacemakers could not come up with any answers. No big suprises there.
I could be wrong, but I suspect this whole thread is a bit of a straw man argument to beign with [you know, when you put up an argument that nobody has actually made, and then go about debunking the nonexistent argument]. As I mentioned before, I don't recall anybody here saying that "war is unfair and is killing innocents". I do recall various people, myself included, saying that we need to be sure we know who the correct targets are before launching a military attack, that we should provide a measured response instead of dropping nukes, and that there are other options we should consider in addition to [not instead of] military action.
If you're looking for "answers" to what can be done as part of an overall strategy [i.e., in addition to military strikes], though, let me quote from that Newsweek article I cited in another thread:
First, we have to help moderate Arab states, but on the condition that they embrace moderation. For too long regimes like Saudi Arabia’s have engaged in a deadly dance with religious extremism. Even Egypt, which has always denounced fundamentalism, allows its controlled media to rant crazily about America and Israel. (That way they don’t rant about the dictatorship they live under.) But more broadly, we must persuade Arab moderates to make the case to their people that Islam is compatible with modern society, that it does allow women to work, that it encourages education and that it has welcomed people of other faiths and creeds. Some of this they will do—Sept. 11 has been a wake-up call for many. The Saudi regime denounced and broke its ties to the Taliban (a regime that it used to glorify as representing pure Islam). The Egyptian press is now making the case for military action. The United States and the West should do their own work as well. We can fund moderate Muslim groups and scholars and broadcast fresh thinking across the Arab world, all aimed at breaking the power of the fundamentalists.
Obviously we will have to help construct a new political order in Afghanistan after we have deposed the Taliban regime. But beyond that we have to press the nations of the Arab world—and others, like Pakistan, where the virus of fundamentalism has spread—to reform, open up and gain legitimacy. We need to do business with these regimes; yet, just as we did with South Korea and Taiwan during the cold war, we can ally with these dictatorships and still push them toward reform. For those who argue that we should not engage in nation-building, I would say foreign policy is not theology. I have myself been skeptical of nation-building in places where our interests were unclear and it seemed unlikely that we would stay the course. In this case, stable political development is the key to reducing our single greatest security threat. We have no option but to get back into the nation-building business.
It sounds like a daunting challenge, but there are many good signs. Al Qaeda is not more powerful than the combined force of many determined governments. The world is indeed uniting around American leadership, and perhaps we will see the emergence, for a while, of a new global community and consensus, which could bring progress in many other areas of international life. Perhaps most important, Islamic fundamentalism still does not speak to the majority of the Muslim people. In Pakistan, fundamentalist parties have yet to get more than 10 percent of the vote. In Iran, having experienced the brutal puritanism of the mullahs, people are yearning for normalcy. In Egypt, for all the repression, the fundamentalists are a potent force but so far not dominant. If the West can help Islam enter modernity in dignity and peace, it will have done more than achieved security. It will have changed the world.
Regards,
Barry
---
The opinions expressed above are for comparison purposes only. Your mileage may vary....
[ edited by godzillatemple on Oct 11, 2001 05:56 AM ]
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