Terrorism in London

That’s how you present arguments? You didn’t like the art work so the content of the message must be invalid, eh? Ok, let's examine it:There was a car bomb.
The plot was led by Iraqi nationals.
The target was President Bush and the Emir of Kuwait.
This is terrorism.
This is a link to Iraq.

maybe we;ve been talking right by one another. I thought you were arguing that there has been a healthy, open dissent within Arab and iranian societies, and I was arguing that there has not. If I now underatand, you are saying the same, and so does tehari. police states, including theocracy police states, do not allow siddent, not in iran, not elsewhere.

Sounds like you just can't accept good about your nation when republicans are in charge, no matter the evidence.

You made a weak, obfuscatory argument, one so vague that you can deny having said anything you did, because you didn't actually say anything - other than that, somehow, Bush and the Republicans sure are such bad guys...again. As i wrote before, even the Arab press has pretty much dropped the war for oil claims. time for the homegrown conspiracists to move on too, and find another batch of rationalizations for their hate-on for Bush and conservatives. Warning: History will judge you badly for that, while it judges Bush very positively in light of his freeing 50 million Muslims from tryanny, and having ignited a democratic revolution throughout the islamic world that brought prosperity, rights, political moderation and peace.

Is it terrorism? Could there be some other explanation? Do I really have to spell it out for you?As to Powell. No it was not just the art work, although that was about like a pre-k fingerpainting you'd find on Mommy's refrigerator.The evidence that the Administration presented to the UN was inconvincing then, and we now know that most of it was cooked. Frankly, compared to the presentations that Kennedy made to the public in general as well as the UN (I happened to see them as well), the performance of the Bush Administration was sophomoric at best. They had no evidence. They still have found no evidence.Once we deal with your first example we can go on, but so far I don't see terrorism in the attempted assasination of former President Bush. Looks like pretty straight forward revenge to me.Makes you wonder if the invasion was not just the kid's car bomb.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

So we should base our decisions around the fact that a minority of non-British people might be very unhappy about something? We went to war, it's not a big shock that a couple bombs get set off around the country. I've never heard that self-defence rationale used by anyone, including Blair...it can't have been used a lot. The only reason I heard surrounded the whole 'we have to finish the job or Iraq is knackered' lines. It wasn't the worst terrorist attack on Britain. In terms of fatalities, the Lockerbie disaster was worse, in terms of property damage, the Manchester bomb was worse. In terms of terror, the IRA was worse. If Britain's enemies found him weak, why wait until the majority of Britain's security were concentrating on Scotland to attack London? Maybe Blair should resign - but not because of this, the British people are more upset about the Iraq affair and the thousands of civillians dead there, or the Africa affair where thousands die every day, than they are about fifty unlucky people killed by some nutters.

I don't know how this is being reported in the USA, but I think you might be being getting a very skewed 'Americanised' version. I've seen a few minutes of American news, and they have totally sensationalised it, you should check out the British news. This is the current climate in Britain, as immortalised in this email forward making its way around:

quote:

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There has been a widespread outbreak of grumbling and tutting today in London, along with a large number of people going home instead of to work, with a certain amount of guilty pleasure.

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Sorry, bad guys. We've been bombed before, and we just adjust our day to account for it. This is London calling.

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I've always found this type of argument a bit odd Crash. Civil liberties have always been tempered by their effect on society as a whole. The right to free speech ends when you incite violence, for example. Do I take it that it would be OK for someone in the states to own a jet fighter? Do the words "It's not the surface-to-air missiles that kill, it's the people who kill!" regularly trip off your toungue?I think, as already touched upon in other posts, that the more worrying threats to peoples rights come from racist reactions to asian and muslim people, or from over-zealous implication of anti-terror laws (again, likely with asian and muslim people as targets).But,as modulous pointed out, I haven't seen anything racist about the coverage in the news channels over here, or in the statements of politicians. If anything, the general consensus has been - The muslim council of Great Britain has made statements and the mayor of London has been especially keen to demand that no communities be ostracised as a result of these attacks.

Sorry for taking a while to reply... Having lived in Luton for several years, I appreciate that the idea of deploying tactical nuclear weapons to the place has a certain appeal, and would sort out the problem of parking at the airport. Bradford, on the other hand, is actually quite nice and it would be a shame to turn it into a big crater. We'd better just hope they're not from London, since we would then either have to work out how to detonate a device so that it takes out, say, the borough of Hammersmith without futher disrupting the tube services.A second option, of course, is that - like the 9/11 attackers - they came from Saudi Arabia, and you are sugesting we make Riyadh into a glow-in-the-dark sandpit. Might not do the price of oil any favours, though.The third option is that you (like the London terrorists themselves) are an idiot who thinks killing innocent civilians is actually worth considering. Ah. You've chosen option 3. Moron.

You can prove it by backing up your statements.

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

This shows that you did not bother to read my posts within this thread to determine my position. I do not connect the bombings with Iraq, as if it were revenge that would not have happened without it.The point of the very quote which you did not deal with, is that Britain was at risk, the leader proposed a mechanism to alleviate that risk, and it has been shown quite clearly not to have worked. Making a mistake would not have been bad, but making a large and provocative mistake is a sign of poor leadership. How could the pretext to invade Iraq be that we have to finish the job? I said once the WMD pretext had been removed, one of the remaining pretexts for THE INVASION was that it would create a front line and so protect nations from AQ attacks.If you had not heard him, or members of his administration, back Bush's argument of this I am not sure what I can say. I was laughing when yesterday a BBC segment said exactly what I just did, that their claim Iraq had acted to create a front line had been demolished. Apparently someone at BBC has heard the same commentary.I might add that I agree with both Bush and Blair's claims that now that we have invaded we have to finish the job. Things could get much worse if we do not help a new govt into power... and I mean that for the Iraqis. I got this from both BBC and CNN who were discussing that with security experts, and if I am in error then I apologize and stand corrected. I will note that they specifically did not include IRA nonmainland bombings (or other acts), and were discussing lives lost to terrorist acts on ground targets. So limited to ground attacks that killed people in England. Do you find that an odd criteria? Again, please read my posts. I specifically answered this question earlier. My argument is 100% not that he should resign "because of this". Indeed there are much more important reasons. The POINT I MADE is that this... one of the worst terrorist attacks on mainland England, coming after his gambling his reputation on the success of Iraq making Britain SAFER... ought to be a sign to himself that it is time to step down.Thus that this event is not the biggest problem ever, but is symbolic of his failure, and should be the last one allowed. As I said, and I said no one else had to agree with my OPINION, any decent leader would opt out at this point.I have liked some of your posts, so please do me the courtesy and read my posts first to learn my position before replying. If you are coming in late on a subthread then read back a few.

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

Gee someone said something about another having disappeared once there had been a rebuttal, and that it would likely happen again... I wonder who just disappeared after having received a rebuttal?M-O-N-KAbE: By the way, I do agree with pre-emptive strikes, just not pre-preemptive strikes. One we ourselves would recognize as lawful, and the other not. Iraq was of the other, if not known completely beforehand (by those with bad intel), is known now 100%.I do deplore the Bush doctrine, as I have said and you ran away from in panic, it is indicative of cowardice. Willingness to use bluster, coercion, and violence is not necessarily a sign of strength and often a sign of the rank coward. Bush's critical moments of decision while in power have sealed who he is, and what he is trying to make of the US. I reject the cowardly Bush doctrine.This message has been edited by holmes, 07-09-2005 08:25 AM

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

We might very well be talking past one another. Let me remind you where this particular line is talking about.In this post you made the claim that as a result of the invasion of Iraq "Arab intellectuals are no longer afraid to speak about democracy". You seemed to feel it is so important that you repeated it in this post.I merely used Iran as an example where people were speaking about democracy well before the gulf war, despite the threat of retaliation, and where the government has cracked down harder on dissent after the invasion.Of course I realize that Iranians aren't Arabs, but since your concerns seem to be about Islamist regimes I thought Iran would be a good enough example.My point stands. I am merely asking why you think that "Arab intellectuals are less afraid to speak about democracy". Are there more pro-democracy newspapers being published? More pro-democracy statements being broadcast? More pro-democracy speeches being made at political rallies? What evidence do you have that there is less fear to promote democracy?Furthermore, if there is less fear to promote democracy (and as far as I know that could very well be true -- I just want to see some evidence that it is), what evidence links this to the US led invasion of Iraq?

I have no idea what you are talking about. We are not speaking of Republicans in general, nor are we speaking about "good about a nation", whatever that is supposed to mean. We are discussing the current president of the United States and his administration, and the invasion of Iraq that he implemented. In particular, in this line we are discussing your claim that it is because of this invasion that there have been no further terrorist attacks in the US. You made this claim in this post and repeated it in this post.I have given sufficient reason to doubt this statement. Terrorist attacks have occurred in the UK and in Spain. Clearly terrorism has not been prevented by the invasion of Iraq, and I see no reason why the invasion has made the US especially immune.In this post you merely repeated this claim, and gave a fanciful scenario as to why it was true, but you failed to provide any evidence whatsoever for anything you said in this post.In this post you gave several alternate reasons that there has been no further attacks in the US, some I disagree with, at least one I agree with, and one or more I think might be possible. But then you again simply repeat your claim that the invasion is largely responsible for preventing terrorism on US territory, repeated your reasons why this would be the case, and again failed to provide any evidence whatsoever that any of this is true.All I am asking for is evidence that the invasion of Iraq has prevented terrorism from occurring on US territory. Since the UK and Spanish incidents show that the invasion has not prevented terrorism, it seems that it is at least as plausible, if not more so, that there have been other reasons that there have been no further terrorist incidents in the US.

I'm sorry? If there's WMD to be found, why did the Bush administration call off the search for them? Well, no, it's only a rebuttal to one justification for the war - "Saddam has WMD's and he's going to use them on us." Now, granted, that was pretty much the only justification given for the war at the time. Yet, none of those represent WMD.I mean, of course he wanted them, of course he was trying to get them; he didn't have them and having them is pretty much the only way to keep the US from invading you.I don't see how wanting WMD's constitutes justification for invasion. I'm not at all certain what you think you've just proved.