Benjamin Netanyahu

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True, going after an ENTIRE NATION should be much harder than one man who we had located and pinned down but let walk away.
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We went into Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban based on their failure to deliver the waste of oxygen that is OBL, and their general support for terrorists. But once we got in, we hampered our own troops. Rumsfeld refused to allow the requested levels of artillery support as that would have made it look like a real war.

Can anyone imagine Henry Stimson ordering such insanity?
 
One can accept a little pompousness when the person knows what he is doing. Rumsfield will most likely go down in history as a pompous fool.

Trying to judge this war by yesterday's war is what caused many of the battlefield failures in history.
 
We don't want the publicity from the collateral damage of killing the goat herders in order to get him. The officer who ordered such a strike would get a court martial and an extended stay at Leavenworth.
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BINGO. We are back to my original point. America lacks the intestinal fortitude to see something through. This guy is responsible for THOUSANDS of American deaths yet we are afraid of inflicting collateral damage amongst the population giving him aid and comfort...

Recently an American SEAL was given the MOH for his actions in Afghanistan. They were in a Taliban infested area and were discovered by some goat herders. The Americans let them go... straight back to the Taliban fighters who killed several of the SEALS, including the one (Murphy I believe) who got the MOH trying to buy time to get his team out.

Murphy made a real sacrifice for his team and I take my hat off to him. Personally I would rather have seen the entire team alive and the goat herders dead though... War is war and our side should ALWAYS come first. America lacks that resolve now. We are perceived as weak willed around the world and because of that we invite attack. Every day Bin Laden breathes free air America's lack of resolve is evident and serves to encourage our foes.
 
Strangely I do not see the American public outraged and demanding his capture/death.

That is because of the bizarre failure of the Bush team to mobilize the country. Instead - he was in some delusion fog of Freudian dimensions to deal with Saddam as a counterpoint to his Daddy.

This is the mental giant of a president we have. Osama is alive and the Taliban are resurgent along with Al-Qaeda.

Bush 'Not Concerned' about Bin Laden in '02
By Maura Reynolds
The Los Angeles Times

Thursday 14 October 2004

WASHINGTON - Sen. John F. Kerry caught President Bush off guard during their final debate Wednesday night, asserting that the president once said he was "not concerned" about hunting down Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

In one of the testiest moments of the evening, Bush protested, "I don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. That's kind of one of those exaggerations."

But during a news conference at the White House on March 13, 2002, Bush said something close to what Kerry quoted. "I truly am not that concerned about him," the president said, according to the official White House transcript.

The exchange between Bush and Kerry came during rebuttals to the first question of the debate, when moderator Bob Schieffer of CBS News asked Kerry whether the United States would regain the sense of security it had before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"Six months after he said Osama bin Laden must be caught dead or alive, this president was asked, 'Where's Osama bin Laden?' " Kerry said. "He said, 'I don't know. I don't really think about him very much. I'm not that concerned.' We need a president who stays deadly focused on the real war on terror."

Bush's original comment came while U.S. forces in Afghanistan were searching for the Al Qaeda leader, who had eluded joint American-Afghan military operations designed to find him.

"We haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is," Bush said during the 2002 news conference. "I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run.

"I was concerned about him when he had taken over a country," Bush continued. "I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban. But once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, he became - we shoved him out more and more on the margins. He has no place to train his Al Qaeda killers anymore."

------- What more is there to say about the man? Only the ability of the Democrats not to put forward a decent candidate left us with this failure who tap dances on the portico of the White House while I talk to soldiers with no legs or arms in San Antonio.
 
I have big issues with Bush regarding OBL but I am really concerned with the nation as a whole. Why are not we the people screaming for OBL's head? Why are we content to let both parties slide on this one?

It is that type of short memory and complacency which I fear will invite the next attack, possibly from the likes of Iran and with a WMD.
 
Quote:
The leaders of the United States today are pygmies standing on the shoulders of giants.
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This has been said by generation after generation...and will be said of the government of today three or four generations down the road. It is a meaningless statement that can not be argued one way or another.
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Yet, you do so. Talk about meaningless statements.
 
Kind of hard to catch Osama when your Army and State Dept. are more concerned with fomenting war in Iraq than with catching the guy who actually attacked us.

Not sure why no one has never really taken the administration to task for not bringing OBL to justice. Oh wait, that's right, it's because my political party is a bunch of wimps...




Back to the fortitude of this generation:

Not to take anything away from the greatest generation but I think the modern media age makes destruction like WWII almost impossible. It would be harder to stomach a ship of 10,000 wounded refugees being sunk, or 500,000 civilians being fried if it was on TV, in color, without a chipper newsreel reader saying, "That'll teach those Krauts a lesson!"

Although we've been in a near media blackout for most of the Iraq war the foreign audience has gotten to see a lot more gore than any other conflict in history and books will inevitably be written about how we lost a media war with islam.
 
Everybody wants to compare this war to the last.


Well, the WWII Japanese general in China killed 3 or 4,000 Chinese just to put their heads on stakes lining the road to honor the visit of his superior.

I'm not taking up for Islamic funamentalist, but to try an compare these insignificant thugs to the level of atrocities in the past is apples and fish.
 
Aren't we slightly off topic. I will say that there will be no peace in the ME, as long as the Israelis take a hostile stance against the majority of the population who they treat like 2nd class citizens. Israelis should remember that they took the land of the Palestinians 60 years ago. Palestinians have a right to be angry at their situation. And before anyone goes off an calls be a bigot for not taking Israel's side, I will add that I was educated on the real situation in Israel by a Jew. Actually most of the Jewish people I have personally met greatly detest the nation of Israel. We have a large Jewish community in this area. During the last Israeli assualt on Lebanon two years ago, a local Jewish group, and the Lebanese group got together to host a fund raiser to help displaced Lebanese. Netanyahu is the face of the oppressive Israeli regime. The man is not to be trusted.
 
I will say that there will be no peace in the ME, as long as the Israelis take a hostile stance against the majority of the population who they treat like 2nd class citizens.
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Yeah Arabs are so much better off in Arab countries LOL......

WildthewordregimeyouuseshowstheapllicabilityofmysigAlaska ™
 
I'm not taking up for Islamic funamentalist, but to try an compare these insignificant thugs to the level of atrocities in the past is apples and fish.
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Don't mistake lack of capability to achieve a goal with lack of desire to achieve said goal. They aren't able to match the atrocities of the past (except via government action such as in Sudan). That doesn't mean the desire to match or exceed the atrocities isn't there.
 
No you're right,it's much better to be machine gunned for throwing a stone at a tank or be a child shot in the head by a sniper than to live in Iran.
 
We don't want the publicity from the collateral damage of killing the goat herders in order to get him. The officer who ordered such a strike would get a court martial and an extended stay at Leavenworth.
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That statement is not true. If you keep up with the news in Iraq/Afgan you'll see that there are weekly air strikes against supposed Bin Laden's deputies, feild commanders, ect. that kill all kinds of civilians. I'm yet to see the goveremnt/military bring charges against one officer since the begining of the war. In order to get court marshalled in Iraq now adays for a crime against humanity you have to 1)stalk a thirteen year old for a week 2) show up to her house, drunk and rape her in front of her family 3) stuff family into wardrobe and riddle them with bullets 4) set fire to the bodies.

As far as I know, aside from abu graib, thats it trials that involved harming civilians. I dont think public opinion is much to worry about either, forx news and CNN have that covered with the blackout.

The officers are safe, bombs away.
 
I will say that there will be no peace in the ME, as long as the Israelis take a hostile stance against the majority of the population who they treat like 2nd class citizens.
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Arabs who live in Israel are treated much, much, MUCH better than Jews who are unfortunate enough to live in any Arab state; they have the right to practice their own religion, build their own churches, and have equal standing under Israeli courts as any Jew, none of which can be said for Jews in Arab countries. The "Palestinians" (Palestine was an invention of the British) have received more aid than Israel could have ever hoped for when Israel was founded, but they turn around and spend it on arming for a war against Israel, instead of trying to build their own country. At the same time, Israel took a barren desert that was used for little more than nomadic sheep herding, and developed it into a prosperous country that is a leader in science and high-tech manufacturing. If US history was put into the same terms as the pro-Arab factions do for Israel, they'd be demanding that California and Texas be given back to Mexico.
 
There is a big difference between an atrocity carried out by someone who has been at the sharp end and come unglued and the will of the entire American people and its leadership to conduct widespread retaliation against a civilian population for use of a WMD in our current nation.

I, living here, doubt the will of the people and leadership to demand such a response to a WMD attack on the USA. What do you think the mullahs in Iran think of American resolve?

That is one of the problems with assuming a nuclear Iran will not act for fear of reprisal, they may not think the reprisal will really come.

The second problem is that they may not CARE if the reprisal really comes.

We are dealing with a very different culture and are not properly accounting for their different value systems. What is more we are assuming their understanding of our resolve is what we want it to be, not what it may really be or is seen to be.
 
But that assumes that the government of Iran is insane and is waiting for its own destruction. They may be different but they are sane within their own framework and are not waiting to die.

Lets go back to 9/11. Saudi's. Why do I feel the need to re-iterate this?
 
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