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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (72867)	2/10/2003 2:38:51 PM
From: paul_philp	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Jacob, There is much that you and I see the same. Until the people of the Middle East have a real hope of an alternative future, very little will change. However, you under estimate the challenge, IMO. You are simplfying Isalm, for example. While large number of Muslim's think as you suggest, a large number do not. It is an article of faith in Wahhabism that the infidel must be defeated. Wahhabism imagines an Islam-only world and anything less is unaccetable. OBL, AQ and most of Saudi Arabia are Wahhabi. We need to deal with what is so about that. True, there is too much testosterone in the war drums right now. That is too be expected so close to war with the opposition to war so pitched. Paul

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (72867)	2/10/2003 2:47:52 PM
From: carranza2	Respond to of 281500

We are at a stage where everyone's opinion's are fixed,.. Not mine. For example, I've thought all along that the invasion would be a quick event--I no longer think so. The mass of WMDs Saddam has at his disposal will make progress a lot more slow and perhaps a lot more bloody than I originally thought. He may also strike in the US with WMDs. And AQ may very well do the same. Thus, the possible costs of the invasion are significantly higher than I had originally thought they would be. Nevertheless, I still do not think that the risk/benefit analysis favors restraint. The case for the proposition that AQ is in some sort of loose alliance with Saddam in my opinion has also been recently strengthened not only by Powell's speech but also by Goldberg's New Yorker article. My opinion that it was unlikely that there was a Saddam/OBL connection is changing. Please don't presume too much about how people think--I doubt that there are too many people here whose opinions are fixed in concrete.

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (72867)	2/10/2003 2:57:44 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

>>We are at a stage where everyone's opinion's are fixed, and data is used mostly to back up those fixed beliefs.<< Is that the Royal We, or do you have a mouse in your pocket? Or, maybe, are you some kind of conjoined twins, never separated since birth? Because many of us, and by US I mean people who post on FADG, have open minds, and listen to each other's arguments when they are backed up with facts and reasons. I wouldn't dream of speaking for the entire 290 million Americans as a whole, far less the entire 7 billion humans on the planet. But then, I don't suffer from Male Answer Syndrome.:)