Will there be another "9/11" ?

Are you claiming that the oil industry was a free market in Iraq?
If I recall, Saddam had extravagant palaces and took to oil-for-food food and gave his military first pick.

????1) I have only posted one reply to you in this thread, it was short, and you haven't even answered it.2) In other threads where it may seem to go on and on... perhaps it is because the another person is responding as well and so it is a long, ongoing DEBATE?3) How do YOU determine who is trying to get the last word in a thread that is going long? Check my list of threads and you will find several where I have let others have the final word. Unless I have a lingering doubt, or something to say, I don't just post so that I speak last.4) Perhaps it seems relentless, because you are quickly overwhelmed by the facts, and when you respond with inaccurate statements the new set of facts which counter those?

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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 one have to do with the other?Take a look at who runs oil and energy in the US. Where do they live? Who gets a first pick of the moneys coming in from the energy money?We are capitalist right?

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Yes, very interesting, whatever. God in his infinite wisdom decided to spare the gays in New Orleans and go for the Bible Belt in Alabama. Heads Up, Birmingham!(:raig

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If I recall, Saddam had extravagant palaces and took to oil-for-food food and gave his military first pick.

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I love this criticism. In doing this, Saddam provided work. Makework, sure, but work. Its classic Keynesian spending in a depressed eceonomy - depressed by the sanctions that were also killing 1.5 million of its citizens.And its also the same argument made for trickle-down economics: that a nation of waiters and waitresses serving the rich in their palaces is the way of the capitalist future.This message has been edited by contracycle, 09-16-2004 10:01 AM

I thought the bible belt voted for the democratic party, since the democratic party is responsible for the liberal federal judges that legalized sodomy, it is interesting it turned on the bible belt.P.S. Perhaps the bible belt should vote for what they say they believe, for the canidate that is against abortion, sodomy, I explained in the GWB thread that GWB is the candidate against abortion, sodomy and that Abortion is actually unconstitutional, and the founding fathers never supported sodomy, etc...If it would of been a direct hit on New Orleans it might of destroyed New Orleans, however in respect to terrorists, heard that its believed that the French and Russians are supporting the terrorists, and I thought that Russia is supposed to be destroyed at sometime in the future date in prophecy, something about being hooked by the oil in the middle east. If there is any truth about the French/Russia supporting the terrorists, should we invade France/Russia (likely it will be brought to the United Nations who will likely support France supporting the terrorists. You have also hear the terrorists muslims have plans of taking control of the entire continent of Africa, like they have done in Sudan(butchering Christians that disagree, starving them, etc...), kind of refreshing that these terrorist muslims are not only picking on the United States/Russia, they seem to be bent on taking over the World, its interesting that the United Nations seems quite quiet about it all, showing that its all about your freedoms, unless you want to be slipping down the slippery slope as is happening in Canada, in legalizing Sharia laws over Muslims, so stoning will become acceptable punishment for certain crimes, etc...Its kind of interesting that the terrorists want to take over the world, then like in Africa the first thing they do is legalize sharia law, then start terrorising those that disagree, like in sudan butchering those that disagree with sharia law, comparing sharia laws with American laws, you really if you fear these terrorists tactics to make their laws soverign, you need to be voting Conservative, so these terrorists infidels will not be making their laws legal as they are moving forward in Canada, etc... I suppose though if you disagree with them, then its supports them terrorizing you with more 911's until you legalize their rights to behead, stone, etc... and muslim terrorists are not afraid of making house calls, like if one writes a book how evil muslim sharia laws are, they have no problem killing people against their Holy Jihad, this is the problem with the terrorists is that they are on a Jihad, etc...GWB stood up to them, but do you really feel JFK would see the problem, perhaps having assault rifles legalized is a good thing, if sharia laws become legalized in the United States as they are moving forward in Canada, Africa, and elsewhere in the World, etc...Like if Muslims kill someone and are judged by Sharia law, if its considered legal to kill Americans, by Sharia laws, not sure exactly the ramifications, but sure wouldn't want to be a muslim fleeing religious persecution in canada, only to be terrorized by Sharia laws in Canada, in America we thankfully have this separation from religion, so they can not do to us what they are doing in canada, but its something how agressive these muslim terrorists actually are, it truly is about freedom, this war on terrorists, 911 was about their attacking our freedoms, if women want to be have no rights if they are a muslim, like in Canada sharia law has become soverign over muslims, if your a muslim in America, you need to vote for the republican party, who will protect your freedom from Sharia law, to terrorize you here in America, as they are pressing forward in canada, Africa, and other parts of the world, America stands for freedom, etc...youmeworks.com - This website is for sale! - youmeworks Resources and Information.

Iraq war was illegal and breached UN charter, says Annan Ewen MacAskill and Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday September 16, 2004
The GuardianThe United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, declared explicitly for the first time last night that the US-led war on Iraq was illegal.Mr Annan said that the invasion was not sanctioned by the UN security council or in accordance with the UN's founding charter. In an interview with the BBC World Service broadcast last night, he was asked outright if the war was illegal. He replied: "Yes, if you wish."He then added unequivocally: "I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter. From our point of view and from the charter point of view it was illegal."Iraq war was illegal and breached UN charter, says Annan | World news | The Guardian

Yes it is interesting...considering that your claim of voting democratic is whack.Those bible belt states being hit, in fact all the hurricane central states voted Bush in 2k

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Asgara
"Embrace the pain, spank your inner moppet, whatever....but get over it"http://asgarasworld.bravepages.com
http://perditionsgate.bravepages.com

I'm really surprised you need the difference explained.People who die in motorcycle accidents accepted the risks of a voluntary activity. While everything should be done to reduce the number of fatalities in motorcycle accidents, this is a matter of engineering, traffic safety, and rider education.Unless you are advocating banning motorcycles in pursuit of the pipe dream of a "risk-free" society...People who died in the 9/11 attacks were deliberately targeted by brutal ideologically motivated terrorists, and had no opportunity to either defend themselves, or give informed consent to the risk of being brutally attacked by terrorists. And engineering, or traffic safety, won't reduce that risk. It requires political and military action and improved security.Unless you are arguing that periodic terrorist attacks should simply be accepted as an inevitable, normal part of living...

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People who die in motorcycle accidents accepted the risks of a voluntary activity. While everything should be done to reduce the number of fatalities in motorcycle accidents, this is a matter of engineering, traffic safety, and rider education.

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What about the fact that more people die in industrial accidents annually?

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People who died in the 9/11 attacks were deliberately targeted by brutal ideologically motivated terrorists, and had no opportunity to either defend themselves, or give informed consent to the risk of being brutally attacked by terrorists.

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The first part I agree with, but I point out that this applies to the citizens of Iraq as well - and in fact, the citizens of any country in which the US has fought its foreign wars.Secondly, I'd suggest those people did in effect give consent to being attacked by terrorists because they, with their democratic franchise, support America's reign of terror across the globe. If the American democratic system is to be assumed to work as advertised, then those "ordinary citizens" were the ultimate architects of the sanctions regime and sundry other acts of brutality by the American state. Likewise, Australian and British citizens etc.

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Unless you are arguing that periodic terrorist attacks should simply be accepted as an inevitable, normal part of living...

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Not a normal part of living, but a normal part of war. If the US insists on funding Israeli terrorism, bombing civilians, and unilaterally invading states, it must and should expect that the people it is fighting will strike back.And finally, I mention once again that we didn't see this sort of concern when the US was funding and hosting Irish terrorists who were killing British citizens.

So did people who took jobs in the World Trade centers, which, as you'll recall, had already been the target of terror attacks.This is a non-difference. Certainly our society has a responsibility to ameliorate risk to whatever degree is effective; but we've gone way overboard to the extent that we've jeapordized more lives than otherwise would have been at risk.Let's say, for example, that I told you that we could eliminate the risk of dying in motorcycle accidents, via some massive, expensive engineering project. It would save 3k lives a year.So we do it. It turns out that we spend 200 billion dollars fixing the roads, and over a thousand construction workers are killed in the massive project. As it turns out, the engineering behind my idea was fatally flawed, and we wind up making the roads worse - killing even more motorcyclists. Is that maybe something we shouldn't have done? Absolutely. Until we have an idea that isn't going to make things worse, we'll just have to live with the risk of dying in a motorcycle accident; which, by the way, can kill you even if you're not the one riding the motorcycle (struck pedestrians, etc.)Likewise with this lame "War on Terror." No country we've invaded has been successful in making Americans safer; in fact, quite the opposite. We've increased everybody's risk of dying in terror attacks, and we've spent billions and 11,000 lives in doing so.I don't know about you but that makes me think that maybe, just maybe, the guy we have in office isn't the guy to do this job. Just like you'd fire me if my proposal was as fatally flawed as I described above, it's time to fire the guy that got us into this mess.

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Don't worry, he "corrected" himself to be wrong again right after saying that by claiming that it CAN be won after all.

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Figures. So would you say this is a flip-flop?I guess we can add the War on Terrorism to the list of wars we are on the brink of winning. Also on the same list is the War on Drugs and the War on Poverty. So much for honesty and integrity in the White House.

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WWII was practically defined by the extent of the waring parties to try and raze each other into submission

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Civilian deaths (outside of the holocaust) in WWII were approximately equal to military deaths (most of them being not during intentional "kill the civilians runs", but during sieges - most notably in Germany's attacks on the USSR, in which 27 million soldiers were killed and wounded, and 19 million civilians. And yet, civilian deaths are far, far easier to cause.In general, when the German or Soviet armies rolled through a city, they didn't raze it and slaughter it's inhabitants. There were "terror bombings", as you aptly described. However, there's a big difference between making your strategy be the killing of as many soft targets as possible, and making your strategy be trying to destroy the enemy's army, while at the same time making the public fear by a comparatively small amount (but still devastating) of random attacks on soft targets as well.

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"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

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Both are irrelevant to the point I was making and you missed.

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Lets start at the beginning. I stated that people's fears of terrorism are far disproportionate to the problem. You said that there's no way to know that. I pointed out that we have numbers of how many people die to terrorism each year, and they're miniscule compared to other types of death.Your rebuttal is....?

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Not everything is published. Those weapons, the means of delivering them even today can kill thousands

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No, they bloody well can't. Quit asserting and back up your claims. I documented the fact that chemical and biological weapons have *awful* success rates, *especially* when deployed by terrorist groups. You have not presented one piece of evidence to counter this. Do so, or quit asserting. I tire of people who debate without presenting facts.

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Has it ever occurred to you that terrorism would have increased anyway

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And the reason for a *dramatic* increase in global terrorism would be....?

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Your logic is baffling. The whole point is to scare people

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We're not talking about that - we're talking about how much of a threat terrorism poses to the American people. Concerning a dirty bomb, the level of threat is tiny. They're not very dangerous. Case closed. Yes, they scare people more, but we're not talking about that - we're talking about how deadly they are.

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I never said SARS was a threat. You did. This is your attempt to trivialize a real threat (if terrorist have or can get cholera and other deadly biological weapons). The flu seems fairly easy to spread around to many people, so the process of infection is a proven dispersal technique. The only question is how deadly a virus can be obtained and spread.

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SARS was a demonstration of how a highly contageous disease (you don't get much more contageous than flu variants; perhaps Lhassa fever or whatnot), given ample time to start spreading around the globe, *still* can be easily quarantined and stopped. It's already been demonstrated. Are you going to respond to this? I'm assuming "No", since you've dodged everything else.

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Duh!! Rei, you missed the point punctuated by humor. Liberals tend to want negotiation out the kazoo before conflict. Your reponse seems to eliminate negotiation (I am surprised), and you don't seem to favor troop commitment, and you avoided answering the "what would you do?" question.

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1. I *DO* want negotiation. I tried to demonstrate that the groups that are committing terrorism, noone is trying to negotiate with them (or only minimally attempting to do so), and in fact, noone tried to negotiate with them *before* they started committing terrorism. This is the *problem*. I thought I made this clear in my last post; apparently not.2. You are correct, in that I *generally* don't favor troop committment, excepting the case in which conventional forces are outgunned. The proper response, then, is covert special forces operations. In cases like Iraq in which there was no terrorist threat, attacking it with the justification of stopping terrorism is incredibly counterproductive. You might as well attack Canada because there are fears that terrorists are sneaking in through the Canadian border. I think this also answers the "What would you do" question (which I never saw posed, BTW)

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I give up. You still don't get it.

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1) I explain that the problem is not so much terrorism, persay, but assymmetrical warfare, of which terrorism is a symptom.
2) You state that I'm wrong, but then go on to pretty much define asymmetrical warfare.
3) I accuse you of parroting what I said. (perhaps I should have accused you of simply not knowing what asymmetrical warfare is?)
4) You give up.

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Apparently I've read more than you, since you are ignoring some things about America that he has stated. I guess I have to dig those up to convince you. Also, you have to put on your thinking cap to not take everything he says for its face value. Hmmm. Are you a fundamentalist Christian, per chance?

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Do it. Dig it up, and *leave it in context*. And even if, based on your pure speculation, he doesn't believe what he says (despite the fact that such grievances are widely shared), the people who follow him sure do.

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If you keep thinking that they're "fighting because they like evil", ...

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Why are putting that in quotes when I did not say that?
Where is the Admin when you need him?

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It's called paraphrase. I assume you know what that is.

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Has it ever occurred to you that whoever said that is trying to lure them out? Why do you assume our troops are do dumb? Of course they realize they have the advantage in weaponry.

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Yeah, complaining to CNN and The Guardian is going to draw non-English speaking people with no access to the internet or satellite TV living in a cave in Afghanistan out to fight. Sure. Any more brilliant pieces of insight you wish to offer?

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"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."