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To: Rock_nj who wrote (21609)	8/3/2004 12:04:44 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 57684

We give Israel $4 Billion per year that they turn around and use to build their military to suppress the Palestinians, which incites arab hatered towards the U.S The Palestinians will not be happy until they drive Israel into the sea....I used to share the same opinion you currently do, that Israel was far too strict with the Palestinians. That has changed over the past few years though. Re: If we become energy independent and disengage from the Mid East, our terror threat level will also diminish considerably I agree, but we need new ideas. And until we have workable ideas to replace our main source of energy, we will need to cut back. Unfortunately, it appears nobody is willing to do this....note the number of SUV's on the highways.

To: Rock_nj who wrote (21609)	8/3/2004 12:36:08 PM
From: Gerald R. Lampton	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 57684

>>The 9/11 terror attacks were initially conceived because of our unbending support for Israel. << No. This is way too U.S.-centric a view. In my view, the 9/11 attacks were carried out to achieve two strategic objectives, one of which was at least partly successful and one of which was not. The first objective was to demonstrate to the muslim world that the West can be attacked successfully, and thereby to precipitate a general uprising against all the various tinhorn dictators and lackey governments of the muslim world. Al Qaeda was not successful in this objective. No general uprising took place. The second objective was to throw down the gauntet to the United States, to do something we would have to respond to, thereby getting us to go after Al Qaeda and get us involved in a guerilla war in which Al Qaeda hopes to defeat us militarily. Al Qaeda has succeeded in getting us involved in two guerilla wars, the first one in Afghanistan and the second one in Iraq (the first one being our response to 9/11, the second one being Bush's gift to Osama). The jury is still out on whether we will be defeated in either of these wars. Kerry has nothing constructive to say about an exit strategy from either war. All he wants to do is get the rest of the West involved, which I am sure is fine with Osama, since it will only prove his point that the West is out to get muslims. Kerry wants to play both sides of the fence. He wants the votes of the Michael Moore Democrats, and he wants to sound pro-war enough to pick up moderate and independent votes, something he is going to have a hard time doing (and why it is so critical to him to keep Nader off as many state ballots as possible). This is the point of the Stratfor piece I quoted from earlier. >>As Kerry has already stated, we need to gain energy independence.<< This is typical Democratic advocacy of protectionsim/autarchy, reminiscent of the synfuels project of the Carter era. It won't work for the same reasons it didn't work then, and it will make everyone worse off. There do need to be some alternatives to oil developed, so that we can start to cut off the money supply to the Saudi princes who support Bin Laden. In addition, I would not be adverse to a tax on petroleum products to offset the cost of all our various troop deployments in the middle east to protect the oil reserves, since that is part of the real cost of getting the commodity to the U.S. I hate taxes, but at least an oil tax is not that hard to avoid, would encourage conservation, would discourage spending on a commodity whose sale benefits Bin Laden, and it beats the hell out of half trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. But those proposals are different from "energy independence," which is an oxymoron.