"The more aggressively we use our power to intimidate our foes, the more foes we create and the more we validate terrorism as the only effective weapon of the powerless against the powerful." - John Brady Kiesling http://tvnewslies.org/html/terror_myth.html
Sleep is one of the best methods of avoiding thinking that exists. bqcoins seems to be quite an adept practitioner.
"The Bush administration let this get by" yeah right, so the Clinton admin wouldn't have? So it's all Bush's fault. Where do you find this junk Danr?
Powerless, control of the majority of the worlds oil. Over one billion people. How can that be powerless. Powerless, the post above is so insulting to the millions of people right now being victimized by the muslims in Africa and in Asia, never mind entire christian villages and Presidents that they seem to like to kill off in Lebanon during the past 30 years of so.
We can meet and handily exceed any country on the planet with our record of interfernce, assassinations, overthrows, and coup d'états. Democratically elect governments or dictators are equal fodder for our ambitions. Pointing out the wrongs of other countries while ignoring the wrongs of your own is just a bit short-sighted and naive.
Moen they are engaging in genocide in the Sudan as I type this. As for us: There is nothing wrong with taking out a dictator or future Hitler to prevent massive death, oh yeah now it is for Carter pushed to make oversea assassinations an illegal operation of the CIA when the offer to take out the Iranian Clerics in France to stop the trouble they were brewing in the then Pro-West Iran came across his desk. And people wonder why the CIA is not as effective today as it used to be.
This has very little to do with either political party Andy. Sure Nixon will have directed one operation here or there and Carter will have directed one here or there as well, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. We take out leaders of democracies if they aren't to our liking just to further our own overseas business interests. Do you think that is a good use of our tax dollars? 40% of the CIA's budget is black. They don't have to account for what they do with it to anybody, the president or otherwise. We have even had rogue members of the House of Representatives take out entire counties with our tax dollars. Maybe you are old enough to remember when Afghanistan was a functioning democracy in the 70's? My point is that if you aren't aware of your own countries history and behaviors, what right do you really have to critize other countries.
Sorry wrong again, sleeping is my way of avoiding the idiotic obvoiusly flawed arguments or showing my boredom with the reprtitiousness of some posters.
I didn't mention political party, I just mentioned Jimmy Carter who placed in power the enemies that we have today. When he was advised to kill the handful of exile clerics in France stirring the trouble in Iran he decided to kick the shah out and bring them in. His reaction to the soviet invasion of Afghanistan was to boycott which only hurt our farmers and athletes as well as with Brezezinski begin arming and training of the mujahideen with the pakistani secret service. Yup, it started then a wrong move based upon logistics and already set up organization. Now getting back to the point muslims make up over a billion people, control the majority of the worlds oil supply, and are commiting genocide. So how can one say they are powerless. Terrorism is just one of many weapons that they use in Jihad. by the way that democracy you talk about in the early 1970's was just an alliance of tribal chiefs not a democracy but more of a round table of warlords. Their problem was that the soviets were always concerned about active Islam spreading into thier underbelly of cultural islamic peoples in the then docile muslim republics and always wanted a puppet state in Afghanistan as a wall just like they always wanted a warm weather port, for national security and power.