posted
At least according to Cheney. Is anyone else outraged about this? If we don't make the "right" decision, terrorists will attack again and do so in a devestating way.
Maybe I'm just reading that wrong. Is there a better way to read it? I mean, I read what the reporter says Cheney was trying to convey, but what I read is that if we elect Kerry, the terrorists will attack us again and it will be worse than last time.
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And certainly Kerry won't keep the pressure up. But the main thing is that if Kerry wins, that will count as victory for the terrorists in and of itself!
Get this, the whole point of terrorism is to use violence and intimidation as a means of effecting political goals. The terrorists don't want Bush re-elected ('cause he's one of those no-negotiation blockheads). If he gets thrown out of office, then they will have successfully used terrorist attacks against America and our allies to achieve "regime change" (anyone remember that little phrase? The Spanish do).
The whole point of terrorist acts is to destroy the enemy's will to fight. The whole point of voting for Kerry is to demonstrate that you lack the will to fight. Hence, if Kerry is elected, terrorists can celebrate a great victory. They'll be dancing in the streets, just like on Sept. 11.
I, on the other hand, will be properly grave and dignified.
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posted
mph, I cannot tell whether you are being tongue-in-cheek, or whether there was an incident before 9/11 that I forgot, or whether I'm just too sleepy to count.
I should stick to my bedtime. Safer. *grin
Regardless, I don't subscribe to the notion that we were attacked on 9/11 because Bush was our leader (or that we wouldn't have been attacked had we elected someone else to the presidency). Nor have I much suspicion that having Bush in or out of office come next January will make much difference in the upcoming terrorist attacks, here or elsewhere. I'm pretty sure the rationale going far beyond that, at least in the immediate future.
[ September 07, 2004, 10:55 PM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
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posted
I'm wondering how intense these threats will get. I mean, if I suggested heavily to my employer that if I were fired, something terrible would happen to his business, couldn't I be brought up on blackmail charges?
I mean, I don't think Cheney's threatening the US, given I have an utterly inexplicable idea that Osama bin Laden will be magically produced shortly before the election, and an even stranger distrust that the election will be conducted fairly or completely, but, eh. If these threats continue, I'm going to be suspicious if Kerry takes office and a terrorist attack happens right after the exchange of power. I can hear Fox News reporting Kerry's incompetence and lack of readiness already...
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posted
That assumes that Kerry does not have the will to fight.
If the idea behind Terrorism is to use fear as a tool in making people vote, then Cheney is a terrorist, since he has THREATENED the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA to Vote for him or suffer the wrath of some unnamed terrorist.
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quote: The whole point of voting for Kerry is to demonstrate that you lack the will to fight.
Don't people vote on who they think is the most well-rounded candidate? Some people may actually vote for Kerry because they like his policies/views over Bush's, not because they are cowards.
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I got this image of Bin Laden in a party hat trying to dance to Celebration, only he's trying to sing along and keeps forgetting the words until they get back to the chorus, and then goes all out.
quote: And certainly Kerry won't keep the pressure up.
Why is this a certainty?
In Spain, the opposition party promoted themselves as "Anti-Iraq war" and promised to leave the coalition as soon as elected. Kerry has made no such comments, and has sworn to stay in Iraq as long as needed.
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quote:If the idea behind Terrorism is to use fear as a tool in making people vote, then Cheney is a terrorist, since he has THREATENED the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA to Vote for him or suffer the wrath of some unnamed terrorist.
There's a difference between a threat and a warning, I'd say this is the latter, whatever motive promted it, a threat would imply that he will somehow cause this to happen as a result of Kerry being elected, as opposed to simply having the election of Kerry be the cause, which I think was what he was saying. Even if it was ridiculous.
posted
"If he gets thrown out of office, then they will have successfully used terrorist attacks against America and our allies to achieve 'regime change'"
Hm. I'd argue the opposite, actually, as Bush almost certainly would be losing this election by a landslide if he hadn't had a war to prop him up.
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quote: The whole point of voting for Kerry is to demonstrate that you lack the will to fight.
Or one could support Kerry because one believes that Bush's strategy for fighting terrorism is misguided, a sentiment that has been expressed by many experts in the field.
Or one could support Kerry because one believes that Bush isn't fighting terrorism at all but is instead using the threat of terrorism to bludgeon his opponents into supporting his imperialist agenda.
Or one could support Kerry because they feel he is capable of reviewing the facts before making decisions rather than adhering unswervingly to an illadvised course of action.
Or one could support Kerry because one thinks that US unilateralism is decreasing our security rather than increasing it.
What's more, the idea that only reason to oppose war is because one lack's the will to fight is shear idiocy. Did Gandhi and his followers stand unflinchingly while they were beaten because they lacked the will to fight? Did Jesus tell Peter to put down his sword when the Roman troops came for him because he lacked the will to fight?
Some of the greatest heros in history, the bravest and most courageous were refused to take arms, not because they lacked the will to fight, but because they were commited to an ideal.
[ September 07, 2004, 11:15 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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quote:The Noble Pacifist was also gassed, tortured, raped and generally abused during WW2.
Yes, over the millenia many people have chosen to follow noble ideals even at great personal expense. This does not negate the validity of their ideals or the courage of those who hold them.
Do you think that allowing onesself to suffer such things rather than kill other human beings is evidence of cowardice?
If so, you and I define bravery in opposite terms.
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posted
You can call it bravery - much like the fabled Charge of the Light Brigade.
Brave, foolish and only vaguely effective in the proper setting.
If you think allowing yourself to be butchered will somehow stir some deeply held emotion in the soul of a person willing and eager to see you dead, more power to you.
I'll settle for killing my enemy and going home at the end of the day.
quote:The whole point of terrorist acts is to destroy the enemy's will to fight.
No. The point of a terrorist act is to instill enough fear in the audience that the audience forces their government to change. That is the single point of terrorism -- to instill fear. Nothing more, nothing less.
You could say, in a lot of ways, that the terrorists did not succeed after September 11th. Americans are not afraid to go to work. We did not demand that our country pull out of the Middle East, or insist that the government change our foreign policy. To al Qaeda, the president of this country is *entirely* irrelevant. Entirely. Anyone who thinks Bush is bad for the terrorists because he 'doesn't negotiate' is full of sh*t -- terrorists don't negotiate with anyone. And Kerry's not any more likely to negotiate with terrorists than Bush. Please. He just wants to negotiate with the Europeans, which, honestly, we all know are about as far from terrorists as you can get.
Moral of the story: it was not presidential failure that allowed 9/11 to happen. Read the 9/11 report. The problem was primarily intelligence-related and, to a lesser extent, priority-related. Terrorism is now and forever a number one priority, no matter who is president. What matters now is how quickly the intelligence agencies can get their acts together and how effective Congress can be in overseeing that particular effort. Really, Bush and Kerry have little to no policy differences when it comes to the war on terror. Iraq, maybe, but terror, definitely not. So cast your vote based on other issues.
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quote: The terrorists don't want Bush re-elected ('cause he's one of those no-negotiation blockheads). If he gets thrown out of office, then they will have successfully used terrorist attacks against America and our allies to achieve "regime change" (anyone remember that little phrase? The Spanish do).
That is bull, to put it politely.
Bush is the best thing that ever happened to the terrorists movement, if not individual terrorists themselves. For years Bin Laden and others have been trying to "awaken" Muslims to the dangers that the USA holds to Islam. He was starting to look silly with all of his predictions of the US invading and taking over an oil-rich Middle east nation...and then Bush came along and did EXACTLY WHAT HE HAD BEEN WARNING OF for years.
So we caught a few bad guys, but at what cost? Now there is a whole new generation of terrorists training, and they are SURE that the US wants to deal Islam a killing blow.
Welcome to the Jihad.
The terrorist want Bush to win, probably, because they aren't afraid to die, or be captured.
They are afraid of their country becoming a servant-state of the US.
I don't really know what was the other options when 9/11 happened...but if you think Bin Laden would vote for Kerry, you are even more ignorant of the rest of the world than you appear.
posted
"regime change (anyone remember that little phrase? The Spanish do)" And you don't. The Spaniards were somewhere between 7to1 and 9to1 in strong opposition to being in Iraq long before the train bombings. And "the opposition party promoted themselves as "Anti-Iraq war" and promised to leave the coalition" well before any Spanish troops were even in Iraq. Then there was the little matter of Aznar -- the leader of the party that was in power -- being directly responsible for the world's most massive oil tanker spill landing on a large swathe of Spain's Atlantic coastline.
"...the fabled Charge of the Light Brigade" was the result of incompetent chest-thumpers giving orders instead of proper leadership. Kinda like nearly all of the US military casualties after mid-May of 2003. And now we're being told that we should be on our knees beggin' -- voting for a continuance of that incompetent Administration -- in hopes of being spared from Dubya/Cheney's threat of continued terrorist attacks.
quote:mph, I cannot tell whether you are being tongue-in-cheek, or whether there was an incident before 9/11 that I forgot, or whether I'm just too sleepy to count.
Al-Queda bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 or 94.
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posted
Last I heard, we hadn't managed to pin that bombing on anyone, and Al Qaeda is notable for claiming its attacks (though they could, of course, not have in some cases).
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quote:n May 1994, four men - Mohammed Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, Mahmud Abouhalima and Ahmad Ajaj - were sentenced to life for bombing the World Trade Center, which killed six people and injured 100.
In October 1995 Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind cleric who preached at mosques in Brooklyn and Jersey City, was sentenced to life for masterminding the bombing,.
He was also found guilty of the murder of extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane and a scheme to assassinate Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak during a trip to New York in 1993.
The bombing of the World Trade Center has been totally eclipsed by the events of 11 September 2001 which saw thousands killed, the collapse of both Twin Towers and an all-out "war on terror" declared by the Western world.
Rahman's organisation, the Islamic Group, is believed to have links to Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, accused of carrying out the 11 September attacks.
So technically it wasn't Al Quada, but we do know who did it.
posted
The bombing of the WTC in the 1990's was the first attack on the US, Sara. Then USS Cole. The bombing of the embassy in Kenya. At the time, OSC asserted that Al-queda believed we were at war, but we did not. Neither administration, Clinton or Bush, took the war seriously, although IMO, the signs were there.
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posted
For the record, Dick Cheney is fear-mongering, and I hate that he's doing it. I'm disillusioned with the Republican party right now-- and when I vote, I'll probably write in my mission president's name.
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quote:So technically it wasn't Al Quada, but we do know who did it.
That was my understanding -- that it was Muslim men, but that a formal organization had not been pinned. Other than that, I wasn't aware of attacks on strict US soil. I suppose we could go back further than 9/11 and note the 1998 explosions at two US embassies in East Africa if you like, or even further. One could make a claim for the WTC (bin Laden, yes?), I guess, but that was under Bush Sr's presidency -- and I don't see how that supports that having a "Hawk" in office will prevent terrorists from attacking.
I agree that it's been brewing for a long time, whether organized under just one umbrella or not. I don't agree that the November election is going to change much in regards to the plans of terrorists at hand. I don't think it really factors into the game.
quote:My what a short memory some of you have. No wonder you can be democrats.
P.S. I'll apologize for that right away. I really need to stay out of these threads.
*shrug It's an emotional topic and people say divisive things. Nature of the beast. Not terribly helpful, but certainly understandable.
[I certainly do this too. I also post when I'm sleepy and unclear, both foggy-headed and too lazy to do simple research to factcheck myself. Not smart, but there it is. Thank you for the information ScottR, and thanks for the velvet paws in delivering it.]
[ September 08, 2004, 11:01 AM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
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posted
I meant we didn't know which organization was behind it. We do know at least most of the people directly involved, yes.
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posted
And Scott, an underlining and italics to the thanks, please.
I'm reading old CNN articles online. The details are a depth of ignorance for me (the play-out of WTC, Kenya, etc.). Why? I can only think of the fact that I was so overwhelmed with work in the last eight years. Still, I should know this. Thanks.
(and thanks to mph)
Posts: 2919 | Registered: Aug 2004
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quote:In May 1994, four men - Mohammed Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, Mahmud Abouhalima and Ahmad Ajaj - were sentenced to life for bombing the World Trade Center, which killed six people and injured 100.
In October 1995 Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind cleric who preached at mosques in Brooklyn and Jersey City, was sentenced to life for masterminding the bombing,.
He was also found guilty of the murder of extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane and a scheme to assassinate Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak during a trip to New York in 1993.
The bombing of the World Trade Center has been totally eclipsed by the events of 11 September 2001 which saw thousands killed, the collapse of both Twin Towers and an all-out "war on terror" declared by the Western world.
Rahman's organisation, the Islamic Group, is believed to have links to Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, accused of carrying out the 11 September attacks.
So technically it wasn't Al Quada, but we do know who did it.
Dagonee
So Bill Clinton, who has been blamed over and over and over and over again by Republicans for not knowing his ass from his elbow as regards how to respond to terrorism, actually CAPTURED, TRIED AND CONVICTED (in a normal court of law, not the kangaroo courts of Guantanamo) the principals responsible for the earlier WTC attack?
quote:My what a short memory some of you have. No wonder you can be democrats.
Please read my immediately previous post.
This is funny; normally we get along here pretty well. But unless you're kidding, which does not seem to be the case, please feel free to blow it out your ear.
posted
(Anyone else feel like he or she is sitting on a powderkeg, delicately balanced on top of a whole pile of powderkegs, surrounded by Boy-Scout tinder shavings, with nary a drop of rain in sight? *rueful smile)
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quote:So Bill Clinton, who has been blamed over and over and over and over again by Republicans for not knowing his ass from his elbow as regards how to respond to terrorism, actually CAPTURED, TRIED AND CONVICTED (in a normal court of law, not the kangaroo courts of Guantanamo) the principals responsible for the earlier WTC attack?
Some would say his mistake was STOPPING THERE and only using military force against Al Quaeda training camps in Afghanistan when something bad about him popped up in the news.
posted
This isn't new, either. It has often been pointed out (to humorous extent on the Daily Show) that Tom Ridge would conveniently come out with vague threat warnings just as the Democrats would have some large bit of news like after the announcement for VP, for example. Tom would always add a bit of campaign rhetoric, just in case. The one I saw last had him saying "thanks to the President and his administration..." as if he himself were not a part of it. A shout out, if you will, to he and his own people.
I wonder how long the ruse of using the War in Iraq in the same breath as "War on Terrorism." One is clearly exclusive of the other. Afghanistan had terrorists (and now I am hearing Pakistan has the ones that got away). Iraq had oil and a dictator, not terrorists (until we declared victory there a year ago...now we have terrorists there, too). In fact, since the "War on Terrorism" has been on in 9/11/01, statistics of world-wide terrorism has gone up, not down. And more and more women are getting involved as well as young folks. Not only a new generation, but a whole new gender to pick from. Wheee!! I feel safer already.
I think this statement is going to bite Cheney in the butt...or it would if the media did more than take a pass and move on.
I am with some of the posters above...one can argue that the terrorists already HAVE won. We are a country guided by fear and ruled by fearmongers. Who cares about the economy or jobs or schools or freedom when the cheap, sustainable resource like FEAR can be used more effectively.
posted
It was all over CNN, MSNBC, and my local news yesterday. The only thing it didn't beat out was Ivan/Frances.
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I got this image of Bin Laden in a party hat trying to dance to Celebration, only he's trying to sing along and keeps forgetting the words until they get back to the chorus, and then goes all out. ![[Laugh]](graemlins/laugh.gif)
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