The war on terrorism

[piqaboo]

Dad, I'm going to John's house for dinner. Dont worry about us, John's parents are really strict.



Will you remember to ask if John's parents will actually be present?

[analog]

its not really relevant whether Clinton lied .......

I was shocked at the treatment Clinton got.
What happened to "A gentleman never tells?"

Reporters never asked JFK.
Clinton shoulda dismissed 'em with a wisecrack about strange bedfellows.

[barfle]

Analog, if you recall, at first, he denied everything, doing whatever he could to wiggle out of a bad situation, and that's why he was impeached.

Monica is the one who told.

Not that either one of them showed any maturity.

[Shapley]

In that regard, his situation was similar to President Nixon's. A relatively minor transgression, which could have been remedied with a few personnel changes and acknowledgments of error and the problems would soon have been put behind them. As it was, each chose to cover up and deny, and their problems escalated.

V/R
Shapley

[OperaTenor]

Saddam has ties to al Qaeda,............................................................................................................al Qaeda attacked us on 9/11.

Saddam has ties to al Qaeda,.............................................................................................al Qaeda attacked us on 9/11.

Saddam has ties to al Qaeda,..............................................................................al Qaeda attacked us on 9/11.

Saddam has ties to al Qaeda,...............................................................al Qaeda attacked us on 9/11.

Saddam has ties to al Qaeda,................................................al Qaeda attacked us on 9/11.

Saddam has ties to al Qaeda,............................al Qaeda attacked us on 9/11.

Saddam has ties to al Qaeda,.............al Qaeda attacked us on 9/11.

Saddam has ties to al Qaeda, al Qaeda attacked us on 9/11.


Shap, you really ought to try your hand at stand up!

[OperaTenor]

In that regard, his situation was similar to President Nixon's. A relatively minor transgression, which could have been remedied with a few personnel changes and acknowledgments of error and the problems would soon have been put behind them. As it was, each chose to cover up and deny, and their problems escalated.

V/R
Shapley

A few personnel changes for Nixon?!! It would've had to start with that guy sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office.

10 yard penalty for revisionist history!

[Shapley]

Iraqi Gov't Takes Command of Armed Forces

[Haggis@wk]

The Guardian

”I will spell this out, because it has not been broadly assimilated. The most extreme Islamists want to kill everyone on earth except the most extreme Islamists; but every jihadi sees the need for eliminating all non-Muslims, either by conversion or by execution. And we now know what happens when Islamism gets its hands on an army (Algeria) or on something resembling a nation state (Sudan). In the first case, the result was fratricide, with 100,000 dead; in the second, following the Islamist coup in 1989, the result has been a kind of rolling genocide, and the figure is perhaps two million. And it all goes back to Greeley, Colorado, and to Sayyid Qutb.”

I have been researching Sayyid Qutb for several weeks after learning he was considered the father of radical Islam. He went to college in Greeley, CO in the 50’s and was disgusted at what he thought was the excesses of American culture, vulgarity materialism and promiscuity. Now if those excesses were on full display in Greeley Co in the 50’s you have to wonder how low his “shock and disgust” meter was set.

Actually, from my limited research Qutb was convinced that America’s style and dazzle would blind people from the real height of civilization – and this is the most important bit – which in his mind began in the 7th century with Muhammad and reached it’s peak Middle Ages through victories of the Muslim Armies. And a direct line of influence runs from Qutb to OBL and al-Zawahiri and from them to another Egyptian visiting the United States, Mohammad Atta.

Qutb’s gripes about the U.S. are important because it pretty much answers that stupid question “Why do the hate us?” Given his philosophy it was inevitable that he would come to view the western world in general and the U.S. in particular as the antithesis of what he held most dear, a return to the glories (his version, anyway) of Islam.

He theorized that the modern world is jahiliyya, the age of barbarism that existed before Muhammad and only by strict adherence or application of the laws of the prophet will change that.

So nearly a thousand years of history became an offense caused by the crusaders and the Jews. So Qutb called for a holy war against jahiliyya which is essentially all of the modern world.

Qutb was executed in 1966 in Egypt when he would not renounce his call for holy war. His brother moved to Saudi Arabia and continued teaching Qutb’s philosophy. One of his students was OBL.

[OperaTenor]

Here's half of the lie exposed:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/iraq/20060909-0044-iraqreport.html

[Shapley]

Saddam himself is quoted in an FBI summary as acknowledging that the Iraqi government had met with bin Laden but denying that he had colluded with the al-Qaeda leader.

I believe this would be the meetings that Democrats have been telling that never took place.

[Shapley]

Trail of bin Laden goes "Stone Cold'

[analog]

Big O just doesn't look to me a back-country type. I still think he' in a penthouse with film-studio in New York City.

[Shapley]

I found this interesting, from the link above:

Pakistan will permit only small numbers of U.S. forces to operate with its troops at times and, because their role is so sensitive politically, it officially denies any U.S. presence. A frequent complaint from U.S. troops is that they have too little to do. The same complaint is also heard from U.S. forces in Afghanistan, where there were few targets to go after.

This actually makes sense to me. While the Taliban have been stepping up their attacks recently, most of the job there is just waiting for intelligence reports on targets to attack. Putting more troops there doesn't change that scenario. The Germans, despite all the troops they could send into France, could not stop the French Resistance.

I also found this interesting:

...Rumsfeld was putting in place his own aggressive plan, led by the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), to dominate the hunt for bin Laden and other terrorists. The overall special operations budget has grown by 60 percent since 2003 to $8 billion in fiscal year 2007.

Rows and rows of temporary buildings sprang up on SOCOM's parking lots in Tampa as Rumsfeld refocused the mission of a small group of counterterrorism experts from long-term planning for the war on terrorism to manhunting. The group "went from 20 years to 24-hour crisis-mode operations," one former special operations officer said. "It went from planning to manhunting."

Which supports my response to GC earlier regarding the removal of the CIA's unit which, according to the article, hasn't had a solid lead in two years, with a military unit, since the war on terror has shifted from a police operation to a military one, this only logical, IMHO.

And this:

Who’s calling the shots?
Today, however, no one person is in charge of the overall hunt for bin Laden with the authority to direct covert CIA operations to collect intelligence and to dispatch JSOC units. Some counterterrorism officials find this absurd. "There's nobody in the United States government whose job it is to find Osama bin Laden!" one frustrated counterterrorism official shouted. "Nobody!"

"We work by consensus," explained Brig. Gen. Robert L. Caslen Jr., who recently stepped down as deputy director of counterterrorism under the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "In order to find Osama bin Laden, certain departments will come together. . . . It's not that effective, or we'd find the guy, but in terms of advancing United States power for that mission, I think that process is effective."

But Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the JSOC commander since 2003, has become the de facto leader of the hunt for bin Laden and developed a good working relationship with the CIA to the point where he recently persuaded the former station chief in Kabul to become his special assistant. He asks for targets from the CIA, and it tries to comply. "We serve the military," one intelligence officer said.

It seems that a different approach is being used than was used in previous years. Those involved in the old process are grumbling about the methodology, but that doesn't make it wrong. It would also seem that, far from 'staying the course', we are trying new and different approaches to the hunt. The news media reports each change in direction as 'abandoning the hunt' but, as I've argued in the past, there are things going on that they are not privy to, or they choose not to report.

V/R
Shapley

[OperaTenor]

What was that "We will smoke them out of whatever hole they're hiding in" promise?

5 years, and the finest resources and manpower on the planet, and we can't find one lousy guy.

[piqaboo]

There's something that is commonly said about committees....

Im not saying all those depts shouldnt work together but 'rapid response' and 'consensus' are not compatible terms.

[Shapley]

OT,

5 years, and the finest resources and manpower on the planet, and we can't find one lousy guy.

Which, I'm sure, is the same thing they were saying about the hunt for Eric Rudolph, in the comparatively tame environment of North Carolina...

Piq,

As the article notes, Lt. Gen. McChrystal does not need consensus authority to respond if he has bin Laden in sight. That is one of the issues that the Clinton administration had removed from the TV miniseries on 9/11 - the scene suggesting that they had bin Laden 'in their sights' but couldn't get the authorization to strike.

V/R
Shapley

[piqaboo]

quote
. . It's not that effective, or we'd find the guy, but in terms of advancing United States power for that mission, I think that process is effective




I be confused. What do he think? It is or it is not effective?

[Shapley]

Me also is confused, but I don't recall the context of the quote, and I don't want to read it again to figure it out, so I'll leave it be.

[OperaTenor]

OT,

5 years, and the finest resources and manpower on the planet, and we can't find one lousy guy.

Which, I'm sure, is the same thing they were saying about the hunt for Eric Rudolph, in the comparatively tame environment of North Carolina...

Piq,

As the article notes, Lt. Gen. McChrystal does not need consensus authority to respond if he has bin Laden in sight. That is one of the issues that the Clinton administration had removed from the TV miniseries on 9/11 - the scene suggesting that they had bin Laden 'in their sights' but couldn't get the authorization to strike.

V/R
Shapley

Did Eric Rudolph perpetrate the largest attack on American soil in history?

Good grief.

Here we go again, blaming Clinton!!!

If you rub two brain cells together, you may recall we hadn't been attacked at the time Clinton was looking for opportunities to hit him on another sovereign nation's soil, and the connection wasn't crystal clear in 1996/8 between UBL and the 1993 WTC bombing.

Pulling this shoulda/woulda/coulda carp is getting really old, especially in the face of current lies by the GWB administration, which has had a vastly larger moral, human , and material price tag than anything Clinton ever aspired to do.

End of rant.

[Shapley]

Where did I blame President Clinton????

I pointed out that the miniseries was changed at Former President Clinton's request because it indicated that OBL could not be taken out without orders from on high. I was pointing out that this is not currently the case.

We hadn't been attacked? Why did President Clinton declare war on UBL? Can you say USS Cole? Can you say US Embassies? Why were we trying to take out UBL if he hadn't done anything? Talk about revisionist history? Sheesh!

As I said, I didn't blame President Clinton for anything. You seem to think that if I mention President Clinton, I'm blaming him for something. Maybe that's why you still think President Bush said Saddam was responsible for 9/11. If I put two nouns together in the same sentence you think I'm blaming one for the other.

V/R
Shapley