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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (186129)	5/3/2006 6:24:56 PM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Everyone has a position. Everytime you post to me to criticize one of my positions, you've taken the opposite position. Hogwash. The difference is that I have the intellectual guts to explain why I hold my particular position. You parrot a bunch of stereotypes that someone else gave you. I put my ideas forth to be critically analysed and discussed. You parrot .... You yourself are stating that no one knows what your positions are. Well, I'm not a psychic... so I guess we know who to blame for the ethereal nature of your perspectives. Please check for inconsistency with you previous statements. You fail. As is the Hamas government. Otherwise they wouldn't need international handouts to run their economy. They were just elected. What did they have 8 hours to fix everything. Israel won't even allow them to have the money that Israel collected from the Palestinians. And you think Iraq is enraging anti-US sentiment in the Arab world?? Putting a base in Israel would CEMENT that belief. Everyone has figured out by now that the US is pro-Israel. The slightest pretenses have vaporized. US presence in Arab countries is viewed as an attack on Arab culture. A US presence in Israel is not infringing on Arabs culture. But why not put a UN multi-national peace-keeping and humanitarian assistance mission in the West Bank and Gaza?? To date, Israel has not allowed it and the US has backed that up in the UN. But you ignored the statement of purpose which was quite clear. The statement of purpose was to have a US presence in the mid-east. So it's time for your daily "reality slap" pal... A truce is NOT peace for them. A truce is merely a necessary interval that permits them to consolidate their power and eliminate their internal enemies. Reality slap. A truce is a truce. You sometimes have to take cards your dealt and play them the best way you can. You don't preach bringing democracy to the mideast for 5 years and then say, ~Sorry, not this time; you didn't vote the way we wanted you to vote.. We're bringing democracy to Iraq as long as they vote the way the US wants them to vote. If not, all bets are off. It's called zero credibility. Remember credibility. Kennedy showed the UN intel on Soviet missiles in Cuba and by jove, there were Soviet missiles in Cuba. Powell shows them intel on WMD in Iraq and nothing is there. Zero credibility. Why should anyone believe any intel on Iran from the US? And Israeli missiles only fly at Palestinians when suicide bombers, mortars and rockets are being used against Israelis first. Or when Israel wants an extrajudicial execution. Or when Israel decides on a little collective punishment. Yep.. tremendous problem. But I don't see you providing a solution. In reality it's going to be similiar (on a grander scale) to what Germany had to go through with East Germany. Much worse than the reunification of Germany. I don't think you can compare the brutality of the North Korean regime to that of East/West Germany at the beginning of the reunification other than to say North Korea is a lot worse. But your question [providing a solution] is a distraction from the point. You can't stroll into North Korea and have any hope of having a democracy. Gee.. that's deep.. I guess I can say the same thing about Darfur, right?? They are in a civil war that the world failed to prevent, which is what happens when there are "no good ideas" left, right? But you want to get us involved there... On Iraq. I could suggest breaking up Iraq again. But what's the point, the Administration has precluded it. On Sudan. You can protect Darfur which is a small region of the Sudan. Or does it have to be all or nothing with you. Make Sudan a fledging democracy or forget the whole thing. Maybe if Bush had tackled Haiti as a democracy, he might have some remote idea about the difficulty. But now we have OTHER threats we have to worry about, such as shipping containers with WMDs and possibly cargo planes being hijacked, or deliberately plunged into target by Jihad motivated pilots who have infiltrated the airlines industry. There's a border control point on the US/Canadian border that is operated under the honor system. Unmanned, you park your car, call a remote US border agent, put your passport in front of the camera and get permission to enter the US. I suppose the Administration expects that terrorist will cooperate with the honor system. Of course there are.. Who do you think you're talking to here? I've been involved in the security field for well over 15 years now. But if you know anything about security, you know that there's a continuous battle between security policy and economic policy. Security has a direct, and an indirect, economic cost. It's economic benefit is only recognized when it prevents an incident that would have caused far greater economic impact. But security is generally pretty low on the list of things that any policy maker, or businessman, thinks about, let alone spends money on.. That is.. until they are forced to. Really? What was the economic impact of changing policy to not allow hijackers in the cabin vs. the economic impact of flying a 747 into the world trade center? [Please note your thoughtless parroting of indirect, direct cost, etc. You didn't give a single thought about the economic impace of a policy change. You just rattled off the standard excuse for not implementing security measures.] "Prevents" in what sense? Absolutely prevents or significantly reduces the probability. See DoD Dir 5200.16 [S] jttmab

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (186129)	5/4/2006 5:58:50 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 281500

Until then, the official advice, and compulsion was for everyone to be surrender monkeys. People were told to comply with hijacker instructions, enjoy a free trip to Havana and then regale friends and relatives with the story: <NOW, we have the greatest threat mitigation factor by virtue of every passenger now recognizing that they are ALL combatants, in the event of such a future hijacking. 9/11, in my opinion, has DRASTICALLY REDUCED the likelihood of a future attack of that nature. People just will not sit still in their seats and permit it.> That is still official advice for normal criminal activity in the community. If anyone dares to defend themselves, especially with gunfire, they are prosecuted for excessive force. We are supposed to dial 111 [New Zealand emergency number], then talk to a disbelieving phone centre person who might, if they can be bothered, send a taxi to the wrong address to help. "Taking the law into your own hands" is considered a heinous crime. But in the particular instance of airlines, I think it is now considered normal and reasonable to prevent hijackers or anyone who is even a bit abnormal from upsetting things. Hence, trigger-happy air marshals killed an obviously mentally disturbed person who had left the aircraft and was obviously no threat to anyone. The problem seemed to be that he didn't comply with instructions to lie down. When people who light a smoke in the dunny get fighter aircraft escorts and diversion to the nearest airport, and mentally ill are killed, it's pretty obvious that regular terrorists are going to meet some more serious resistance than a wide-open cockpit door which I witnessed in the 1990s from directly behind the door. Mqurice