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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (215499)	1/20/2005 4:08:18 PM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574004

Ted, Funny, I linked him the same Hirsh article about 10 post's back. John

To: tejek who wrote (215499)	1/20/2005 8:00:26 PM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574004

I can see your point. However, the CIA, and FBI for that matter, have both been collossal failures on at least three very recent occassions when their expertise was/is critical: 1) uncovering the 9/11 plot, 2) determining with a reasonable degree of accuracy whether Saddam had WMD or not, 3) and finding Osama. So if Bush is taking power away from those groups, maybe our intelligence will get more effective. As far as Rumsfeld, I think Hersh has it wrong. They are already planning for Rumsfeld's resignation as soon as they can find a successor. As far as special forces and covert ops, I'm all for it. If Clinton had not decimated our covert ops capabilities, perhaps we would have been able to have enough intelligence on the ground to uncover Saddam's true capabilities or find leads on terrorists to find Osama or uncover large catastrophic attacks like 9/11. One thing I hate about the Europeans and Clinton for that matter is that they wanted to negotiate with Iran and North Korea on the basis of providing economic aid in exchange for halting the nuke programs. That's like bribing a murderer not to commit murder. I am fundamentally against appeasement of any sort. Instead, I think we should take a very hard line against tyrants who flirt with WMD. Isolation, economic starvation, covert ops, sanctions. That's how you deal with rogue nations. However, in the mean time, as the Europeans try to get Iran to see reason, I think the threat of Bush ordering an attack is a nice piece of leverage the Europeans can use against Iran behind closed doors. So I think we should keep our tough stance, whether or not we mean it. As far as the impact of an attack on Iran, I do worry about it. Iran is not the pushover that Iraq was. Iran will use all its terrorist muscles to attack us at home and abroad. They are already preparing for it by recruiting a jihadi army. Also, I worry about Israel. If we attack and don't get all their missile capabilities first, then Israel will get bombed pretty badly. I also don't think Iran will collapse easily as some neocons might think. Those mullahs are a fairly widespread cancer. They have a chokehold on Iran that will not be easily broken. Again as far as covert ops going after terrorists to "find and finish" them, I'm all for it. Let's take the gloves off. This isn't a gentleman's war. It's a dirty fight with heads being sawed off. Let's pack them off to their 42 virgins as fast as we can. What I see them doing is that they are setting up true intelligence units that can act swiftly and effectively, without having to go through 15 layers of management. Intelligence usually means having to act quickly to get things done. You may not like it, but these covert ops units run by the Pentagon are far more effective at fighting Al Qaeda than our battlefield units, or covert ops units run by the CIA that clearly were incapable of providing us crucial intel prior to 9/11 or on the ground in Iraq. So what are you concerned about in particular? Is it the concentration of covert ops control under the Pentagon, with Rumsfeld at the helm?