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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cosmicforce who wrote (34757)	10/21/2001 8:38:12 PM
From: bela_ghoulashi	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

In dying by the thousand at the hands of conscienceless murderers, we also lose our humanity. And our humanity is far more valuable to the future of the human race than the humanity of those willing to die simply in order to kill as many of us as possible. I didn't say I would take glee in doing it. I said I would be happy to do it. I used it as an example, a deliberately shocking example, because it is precisely, exactly the sort of thing that is done today (and worse)in Muslim countries. What I am really saying is exactly this: I absolutely believe we need do whatever is necessary, take whatever steps are necessary, to make these people talk. It is unconscionable, imo, that we are not. The lives of our citizens are at risk on our soil. We cannot bury our heads in the sand and pretend our opponents are playing by any set of civilized rules whatsoever. We are in a fight to the death with these people. Until we fully understand that, until we wake up and realize that's what is really happening, we will continue to die, here in America, and eventually it will happen in massive, inconceivable numbers. We need to understand the depth of the hatred and virulence we are facing. Not because we're responsible for it, not because we caused it, but simply because it will stop at nothing to see us dead. And the means are out there and available to make it happen if we don't do everything in our power to stop it. I am far, far, FAR more concerned with that than what anybody on this board thinks of me personally.

To: cosmicforce who wrote (34757)	10/21/2001 8:54:40 PM
From: jcky	Respond to of 82486

There's no more humanity in torturing people to obtain information for our personal safety than the Talibans' funding bin Laden's holy war with opium cultivation or arming ten year old Afghan boys to fight against Americans. Discussing absolute humanity is no more futile than discussing absolute morality; and this is especially true, in war.

To: cosmicforce who wrote (34757)	10/23/2001 1:12:56 AM
From: bela_ghoulashi	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

“Putting these men’s balls in a vise until their eyes turn purple” Okay, now I finally have a moment to stop long enough to try and explain this. The reason I made such a lurid statement is, frankly, because I am outraged. And when I am outraged, I look for words and images to concisely and graphically express that outrage. And here is why I am outraged: I am outraged to learn that we have been holding these people for 35 days and have been unable to extract, in all that time, any significant or useful information from them. That tells me several things…all of them bad: 1. Our FBI is evidently clueless and inept in dealing with these people. We are just talking about 4 of them, and we have no idea how many others may still be at large in our country, or what they may be planning next. We can’t get any information out of them, and as long as we can’t, our public safety (yours, mine, and ours) is still at risk. Our lives are still in jeopardy. 2. If we were to suddenly capture 400 of these people, all equally red-handed, our FBI would just be that much more clueless and inept in dealing with them. 3. These four men are not afraid of us. They do not respect us. Evidently they understand that they aren’t in any real danger. They aren’t facing anything threatening enough to them personally to persuade them to cooperate and tell us what they know. And this is just four of them. We are talking about potentially thousands of them right here on our own shores who now are watching us impotently dither over this issue and what we should do next and how we act like such spineless worms and they all have to be laughing their heads off at us. We don’t get it. Why SHOULD they be afraid of us, here on our own soil? We’re no danger to them. We’re no threat to them. Not even if they choose to make war on us here on our soil, from our own soil. We aren’t willing to do whatever it takes to defend ourselves against them. We are more frightened of hurting them than we are of them killing us by the thousands. We still don’t take this threat seriously. We still don’t understand what we are up against. 4. Our FBI is more concerned about potential lawsuits than about saving our citizens and the cities they live in. This is the threat we take seriously. We are at war here on our own soil for the first time in almost 150 years and we are evidently going to fight it with lawyers… until enough of us are finally dead that we realize that lawyers aren’t going to save us. But meanwhile these four guys will be safe, well-fed, and secure. No effort will be spared to protect their “rights”, their safety, and presumably their self-esteem. 5. Our borders are an absolute sieve, and we can’t bring ourselves to decide to be mean enough to close them. I read the other day that we have more illegal immigrants crossing our southern border from the Middle East than actually from Mexico. (I’m trying to find the article to cite, I thought I had saved it, but I can’t locate it at the moment. It was originally posted on the FADG, I believe). Not only are there those sleeper cells who are already here in place watching this fiasco, but you have to know the leaders and the membership of al Qaeda are watching it too. And this is what they see: as long as they are in Afghanistan, we are willing to bomb the living sh*t out of them. But if they’re here, they’re pretty much safe and free from harm. We’ll let them go about their business. What conclusion would you draw from that? What course of action would you take, if you were in their shoes? My personal conclusion is, and can only be, that we need to put the fear of Allah into these four men, and we shouldn’t bother to mince any words about it…because, because….it’s not just these four men that we need to convince of our seriousness and our resolve. And right now our FBI and our internal security forces look about as intimidating as a circus of buffoons and fools. I can’t believe it. It’s an utter fiasco, and even in the midst of it, we are still clueless about the message we are sending.