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Politics : WAR on Terror. Will it engulf the Entire Middle East? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lorne who wrote (8068)	11/20/2004 10:23:03 AM
From: hdl	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32591

W may be getting ready to send NBA to Iraq, Iran and Syria. Perhaps the threat, alone, will suffice.

To: lorne who wrote (8068)	11/27/2004 11:17:21 AM
From: Dennis O'Bell	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 32591

Dennis, I have a question....If you or anyone for that matter believes that the time had come to confront radical islam where or what country should the USA have attacked. There are many islam controlled countries who's leaders hate the USA and who are likely actively plotting against the USA. So if one believes as I do that radical islam MUST be confronted and stopped then iraq was the logical place to start. I am convinced that invading and occupying Iraq was extremely ill advised because the greatest danger that the US faces is economic and not terrorism. And certainly not freak show side issues like "Gay Marriages", which Rove brilliantly and cynically played in this past election. What have we really gotten so far from our occupation of Iraq ? We're a long way from Appomattox I can assure you. 1200 and counting dead American soldiers while we run a ham fisted and extraordinarily costly military campaign. And we get for our efforts bin Laden himself on a tape giving us a laughing finger in our faces on the eve of our elections. We simply cannot win this existential struggle with military actions such as Fallujah, where we announce for an entire month that we're going in... and the week before announce "All right, all women and children out !". Wow, we eliminated a few hundred cannon fodder and had to leave things in rubble - did anyone seriously think that the ring leaders would stay behind ?!!!!! I'm dead serious, we cannot win this way, who in their right minds can believe otherwise. Bush has been on a drunken spending spree, and feeding the American public a nonsensical line that we can at the same time cut taxes. This isn't the America after Pearl Harbor, that our parents lived through. It's absolutely hallucinatory - you saw the news report last week how Congress has rubber stamped a cool $800 billion increase in our debt limit ? And how the government withdrew funds from a civil service retirement fund to make ends meet ? Heh... that was kept good and quiet till after the election. Any CEO of a publicly listed company that so blatantly violated GAAP would have been brought to trial by the SEC. Yeah, I know, Bush "Has Faith" on his side. Let me tell you, faith won't do us squat against Islam (easily the most obscurantist, inhuman, and false of all the major religions going.) The Democrats are no better. They put up a mediocre candidate, can't campaign their way out of a paper bag, suck up to goofballs like Micheal Moore.... that's really some clear thinking that'll win over the average American, NOT. We should have stayed in Afghanistan for starters, and completely cleaned out the shtbags in the mountains - you know, the ones who let bin Laden and all his associates pass to Pakistan, and who very likely have some idea where he is now, and are making money hand over fist on the opium trade, which money is going to you know what cause. I would have liked to see us get absolutely medieval with those creeps and warlords in Afghanistan, especially in those lawless mountain regions, out of sight of by now bored journalists looking for some scandalous scoop, because by now we would have gotten at least some of them to puke up what they know about where bin Laden and his team are really* hanging out. This wouldn't have cost us 1200+ American lives, though with the tenacious fighting we certainly would have lost some men there, but there was no other way to do the work. Saddam Hussein was only interested in himself, and like all paranoid dictators would never allow an outside organization like Al Qaeda a very long leash on his own territory. He may have wanted to convert a bunch of dollars to euros (the real reason the Europeans were so against our invasion), but our fundamental economic weakness with the trade deficit and our national debt simply means that if it wasn't Saddam Hussein changing dollars to euros, it would be something else eventually. Now, we've cost ourselves vastly more than any cost we may have faced in having to deal with Hussein, buying his oil on an open market. It is going to take an absolute giant of a statesman to pull the US out of the hole we've dug ourselves. Not a clown like Kerry or an idealogue fool like Bush. I don't see anyone on the horizon who will fill the bill, and am sick with worry about my country. But we have an open democracy, this is just one of the risks we take.