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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (1005)	7/26/2008 1:42:48 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86352

You realize no one thinks Bin Ladin is in Afghanistan. Best bets are he's hiding somewhere in Pakistan, perhaps in the backward tribal areas, perhaps in a Pakistani city (where other top AQ leaders h/b captured, like Khalid Sheikh Muhammed). Do you think bin Ladin is in Afghanistan or is there another reason why you think we should be there? ------------------------------------------------------ I don't believe in waging a vague million year war on terrorism. That is a recipe for a bankrupt America. We need to secure our borders, cut off funding for terrorists, heavily fund our spy agencies, create international networks to find terrorists and prevent terrorism Personally, I think securing borders, cutting off terrorist funding, adequately funding spy agencies, cooperating with other nations to find and prevent terrorist are part of the inaptly named war on terror. And I think we're doing most of them. The exception would be securing our borders. I take it you support building a wall along the border where necessary? And I take it you think giving drivers licenses to people who enter the US illegally is not consistent with securing our borders? And you probably agree that the NY Times publicizing our SWIFT program to track terror financing was a very bad thing? But do you think giving captured foreign terrorists the same legal rights domestic criminals get is wise? --------------------------------------------------------- , and work to solve the ultimate root cause which is our dependence on oil. Those are the appropriate actions, not spending the next 100 years fighting wars in the Middle East. Which action do you will reduce the number of terrorist actions over time? a) American troops tramping around the Middle East killing large masses of hostile Arabs and masses of civilians along the way? or b) becoming oil independent and having zero presence in the Middle East, so we aren't the focus of all the ire of those crazy people and so that we don't send hundreds of billions of oil dollars to the Middle East, some of which ends up in terrorist coffers? I think a is a biased and inaccurate description of what we're doing. And I think B is an impossible pipe-dream. I note its not simply oil involved. As I've pointed out, we're going to be increasing our imports of natural gas in the future. And even if we were to import nothing from the ME, as long as the rest of the world does, the ME will be strategically important. ---------------------------------------------------- I'll add that your desire to have "zero presence" in the ME is contradicted by your support of our involvement in Afghanistan and your support for our getting bin Ladin. Afghanistan and Pakistan are either part of or very close to the ME and are both of deep interest to and home ground for islamists who support bin Ladin.