Here's info you won't see on CNN:

Quote:

ASTANA, Kazakhstan (AP) - Russia gave the Bush administration intelligence after the September 11 attacks that suggested Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq was preparing attacks in the United States, President Vladimir Putin said Friday.

SOURCE:

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040618/D839DV0O1.html

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So what if it is for oil? It is for the world market. Most US oil comes from countries other than the middle east. As far as other proof, we have had proof for years that Saddam had plans to attack the US in some fashion. The real suckers game is the one you guys are playing acting like there is no threat at all from anyone BUT al-Qiada and if we play nice the bad guys will somehow leave us alone. It didnt work for Europe back in the 1500's: the moslems were stopped at the Danube River and stayed for 500 years.........Ask any Serbian about it.

The best way to win any war is to remove the cause. That requires getting into the head of your enemy. The difficulty of doing that is knowing the difference between one's projection of the enemies desires and one's own.

For example, As I understand it, Al Queda is a violent expression of a particular Islamic sect. That is, they share values and beliefs with violence performed in Al Queda but merely expressed and praised in Wahabbism. If that's not correct, I'd appreciate expert correction.

Since the origin of both is a particular belief that God has called them to act on God's holy word through Muhammed's teachings, I doubt that a direct argument in faith would persuade either Wahabbists or Al Quedistas.

So if you cannot dissuade the sect itself, perhaps you can dissuade the pool from which recruits are drawn.

As with any religion, the most fervent practitioners are found within the class that lives and feels the injustice of their circumstances and is seeking a moral solution to their problem. So if the injustice of their circumstances were ameliorated, then the potential recruit pool would shrink.

That is a very long-term solution. It is the same problem that this country had with racism until the sixties when society finally addressed the problem head-on. We are fortunate in this country, for all our *****ing, to have a government that responds to the will of the people. The government did not turn against blacks or whites, it adjusted the social contract between the people and the government. (As an aside, one of the great things that came of the 9/11 disaster is that we were all in it together. I have never seen in my lifetime our nation draw together across so many lines taht ordinarily divide us. Please don't go off on this observation, save it for another thread.)

Since Al Queda has made this a combined social and military issue, our response must also be social and military. We must encourage and force change in the societies that create a huge gulf between the powerful and powerless. In our country, we have no clue how saturated people are in issues of class. Here, if you work your ass off and conform to the values of the group, you can get into just about any social circle in a generation or two. There are few places on Earth that are that open. In our culture its mostly a meritocracy. Sure, there are some circles that are exclusive as hell. Boston and New York are packed full of that. New Orleans has its own rarified cliques (interestingly, one is mixed-race and has great political and financial power).

Most middleastern countries are extremely closed societies with very limited opportunity for social or financial advance. That must change or we will eventually get to the point where we will have to start killing those peopel by the tens of thousands.

So at this time, we kill the leaders as we can and work hard to change the social systems of their mother countries.

Bot

Oddly enough I heard that story today on NPR. The link you provided had the same information, or lack thereof, that the NPR story had. The absence of any real information and the apparent conflict it creates with Russia's Iraq war position probably signals the degree of credibility that it should be given.

Yeah, i saw that today. That's pretty suspect. It would seem to me that with all the hot warer Bush has been in for the last year, he would have mentioned that by now. Sures seems convenient coming out right now. I think Putin is paying back a favor for Bush looking the other way in Chechnya, by possiblt stretching the truth a little. I noticed even Foxnews was playing this story down. Actually, the story is on CNN. And they call me paranoid.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/06/18/saddam.terror/index.html

Weren't you supposed to showing some evidence of financial transactioons bewtween al-queda and Saddam? Or was that just more chickenshyt?

I think that's his proof. Jake=VD all over again.

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Might be VD with a spell checker. Actually, I thought of VD last night when I mentioned the Federal Judicary being tarred and feathered, and rowed across the Potomoc on a rail circa 1861. I bet his great grandpappy passed the paddle down to him, and its hanging over the fireplace.

The infamous VD is over on the diesel forum with a new name. He is behaving himself and actually contributing.

Jake has been a member for a year and a half, so not likely that he is a ringer of any kind.

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TRUMP .......... WHITEHOUSE
HILLARY .........JAILHOUSE
BERNIE .......... NUTHOUSE
0BAMA .......... OUTHOUSE

From an April 5 interview with Omar Bakri Muhammad, a suspected member of Al Qaeda and head of Al Muhajiroun, a radical Islamic group based in London. Of the eight suspects arrested on March 30 for planning to execute a terrorist attack in London, seven are known to have been Huhammad's proteges. The interview was conducted by Paulo Moura and appeared in the April 18 edition of Publico, a Portuguese daily...

You say you want to see the Islamic flag flying at 10 Downing Street. Is this a dream or an agenda?

I believe that one day it will happen, because this is my country. I like living here. God said: "Don't live among nonbelievers unless you call for their conversion".

...further...

Is terror the only way to make people aware of this? (This meaning the Islamic predicament and terror as retaliation against Western aggression).

Terror is the language of the twenty-first century. If I want something, I terrorize you to achieve it. To support George Bush is a kind of terrorism. To support Al Qaeda is the same. Everybody is involved. Every Muslim is a terrorist, every non-Muslim is a terrorist. This is the "time of killing". It is predicted in the divine text. Muhammad said "I am the prophet of mercy", but he also said "I am the prophet of massacre". The word "terrorism" is not new among Muslims. Muhammad said "I am the prophet who laughs when he's killing the enemy". It is not a question of killing the enemy. It's laughing while we are killing.

...further again...

How many memebers does Al Qaeda have?

About 11,000. They gather, they spread all over the world, and they gather again. If they didn't recruit, they would disappear, because their destiny death. It's time for Bin Laden himself and his companions to die.

This interview was reprinted in part in the July Harper's if anyone wants to check it out.

I don't know how you win a war against terrorism or radical/fundamental Muslim ideology without destroying or fundamentally changing the ideology. It reminds me of the arguments/periods when I listened to the monologues, of hard line Marxists in undergrad. Any argument outside the system is sucked into it and turned into support for what is really a closed system of thought.

I absolutely agree, and it is why I am so opposed to the stupidity in Iraq. We need to destroy their headquarters operation, which is not in Iraq, but Pakistan, and then hunt these 11,000 people he is talking about down and kill them using any means necessary. We did the same thing to the Nazis at the end of world war II. After destroying their German base of operations, we hunted them all over the world until they were exterminated.
We need a CIA style war, not an old style occupation, to destroy these people. Killing them is the only way to deal with them - they are the same thing as Nazis.

I appreciate Jake’s been there done that, need to get the job done attitude. He’s very right about OBL just being this week’s fashion. Buy putting the hurt on a lot of their finances we’ve damaged them, but this has been going on forever, it just got right in everyone’s face since 9/11. We’ve got our own crazy Ted the letter bomber and right wing militias blowing up buildings. There’s not that much difference – rooted in the same type of frustration.
This Hanbali thing is a legal school, where the Wahabbis are a teaching sect that preaches a fundamentalist line, stressing moral virtues and with Saudi money set up the madrassah schools. This is where the distaste for western decadence and consumptive lifestyle comes from. The Hanbali legal definitions have perfected the art of justifying terrorism with the Koran, by avoiding the flexibility of applying common sense opinions and cultural precedents to issues the Koran and Hadiths (traditions) do not specifically address.
ie: if the Wahabbis read Leviticus they’d condemn gays, maybe wear a little brad on the side, maybe roast a bull on the alter once in a while and never eat bacon. If the judge was of the Hanbali schools he’d stone the above along with women who wore cotton/polyester blends, farmers who grew beans and corn in the same field and anybody wearing glasses in a mosque. They’d both be sickened by somebody who would selectively condemn the gays, but still eat bacon as a blasphemer.
I believe that much of all of this has something to do with the maturity of the religion. If you knocked seven hundred years off of the growth of Christianity or put the KKK or some of our own right-wing nut jobs together with a some brains and a lot of money, you might very well have the same problem with a different face.
I think time, lots of time, will probably humble us all and this will work out. In fact it’s my faith, but that ultimate unity comes from either the necessity for survival from some unforeseen calamity, or just because the lights come on for us all. I’d like to think the lights will come on, but in the meantime I’ll just live my life as independent as I can be. It’s a little troubling that while we deal with all of this China is just sitting back getting stronger and faster than anyone ever has before.

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"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."
Marcus Aurelius

Fundementalist Islam is the expression of the Medieval world in the world of today. They are a totally lost, totally out of place and very threatened people. The ironic thing is that Saddam was polar opposite of them and opposed them tyranically. The Baath movement wants to bring the Arabs into the modern world as a unified socialist nation. Women had more rights in Iraq than any other Arab nation, for example. Saddam was a counter weight in that region to Wahhabism. The whole idea of a connection between the two ideaologies is ridiculous. Our real problem is in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, both states being a danger to our national security and both Sunni states were Wahhabism has millions of followers.

I saw an interesting interview on MSNBC this evening - it seems to dovetail what you are saying. The commentator, an Arab professor of some sort, said we are missing the purpose of the capture and beheading of the American. Al-queda gains more mileage by showing the Saudi populace that the Saudi government will come to the aid of the infidel being beheaded. In the twisted logic of Saudi Arabia, the infidel deserves getting beheaded as a matter of course - thats not even arguable to a typical Saudi. The real argument is whether a muslim should come to save him. The professor said it was no accident the man was beheaded, and the al-Queda operative was captured and killed shortly after. The Saudis probably new where he was and probably could have saved him, but they had to let him die to save their own asses. Once the Christian was dead, they were free to kill the muslim for some other reason, if they could find one, like "resisting arrest" here in the states. This is a seriously, seriously f***ked up society. We are dancing a dance of death with them.

I agree with you but vd never ever gave any proof of anything. he would just spout off. Jake may not DNC this or that but I still haven't seen the proof.

As to stopping terrorism: a lot of good ideas have been expressed lately. the one about IRE is right on. We either have to completely wipe them (alqaida, terrorist) of the face of the earth or we and them have to change our views. the latter isn't going to happen any time soon so I guess we just have to try to wipe'em out and quit wasteing time in Iraq.

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No – not quite, but I’d give odds they knew where he was and could have saved him. There are many Hanbali’s in the police and military, just as there are many conservative – take no BS types in our security services. You’re right that they’re gaining mileage, but not to any majority – a significant minority maybe. Think of the Wahabbis as the Mennonites (no offence) of Islam and the Hanbali school of thought as the Nazis (sorta) – That 1000-year deal of Hitler’s was very Biblical by the way – He thought a lot of himself. The vast majority of Muslims were appalled by what happened today or anything that brings shame to their faith. This Medieval comparison is all wrong, and may be the root of the conflict between the two cultures. Again I’d have to use the Mennonites or Amish as a reference in the west. It’s a rejection of consumption – when the going gets tuff those Mennonites won’t feel any pain, they’ll loan money to their neighbors. This is not a perfect comparison by any means, but you can get the idea here. It’s a spiritual thing, kinda like if you don’t get, I’m sorry for you – but it’s up to you – I can’t tell you about it, you have to live it. The Wahabbi sect has opened up most of the Islamic schools here and all over the world because of the Saudi oil money, but they’re not a majority of Hanbali thinkers.
Now before you jump on the great wealth, and lifestyle in some of the Mideast, understand the difference. They’re just like Jed Clampet they didn’t fight and claw their way to the top. They didn’t put the quest for riches ahead of God and family – it was just there, and in their heads a gift from God. Big difference in what they see in the west.

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"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."
Marcus Aurelius

I am not sure who (or what) this VD is, but I assure you I am not him. I am just a guy with my own opinions living on a little ranch in NW Texas. My opinions are based mostly on a belief and love for my country: call me a nationalist. I am not too worried about seeing the "proof" for everything, because I know in my heart that what we are doing is the right thing. Call me naive, or blind, but I base what I think on my own analysis of the situation tempered with an educational background of political science. Habali, or Wahabism are both a threat to our nation and culture. You don't need to know exactly what these guys are doing to know that it is not good for us. As far as Saddam being diametrically opposed to the fundamentalists, you guys have a point. However, it would not be the first time that opposites crawled in bed together to fight a common enemy. By clandestine associations with the terrorists, Saddam could strike out at the US and have some plausible deniabilty regarding his actions. Do I think that Saddam planned or participated in 9-11? No, nor do I care. What matters is that there is proof that he harbored and cared for Islamic terrorists of many sorts during his reign. He might have viewed them as "useful idiots" in his plans to get back at the US for Gulf War I and his eventual conquest of the more succulent parts of the middle east, ie, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. We could not leave him in power where he could threaten the entire middle eastern oil fields (save Iran) and continue to harbor and encourage Islamic terrorism. He had even begun to behave (in public) in a less secularist fashion, quoting and espousing God.

The bottom line is these guys are a danger to us: it doesnt take a huge standing army to bring a country to its knees when there are many more effective ways of striking out. A tac nuke or suitcase nuke set off in Chicago or Houston (more likely targets than New York or DC this time) with casualties in the tens or hundreds of thousands would do more than an invasion of screaming hordes of soldiers. The question is, do we wait until the enemy gets to the point where he does this before we strike, or do we effectively disarm him while we can? I live outside a major metropolitan area and dont particularly want to become glowing ash one day while at my office in Fort Worth. I would much rather do something and raise the ire of the world and be safer than sit on my ass wringing my hands until it happens.

The main thing, this is not a matter of Democrat or Republican beliefs: this is a matter where our whole country needs to unite and realize that, although different, we are once again faced with a threat like we had during WWII. This nation is under attack, and the terrorists are not going to ask to see your voter registration card before they behead you or trigger that fissionable device.

cheers