what are your feeling on the war on "terror"

[Bodacious]

You don't feel it because its happening slowly and quietly. Think about it, if it happend abruptly and overtly, everyone would be up in arms about it. But a little snip here and there and before you know it, you're in deep.

I highly recommend reading this book. Any library should have it.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/A...5/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-9618894-8695869

I'm not trying to compare bush to Hitler, I'm trying to point out that the errosion of rights doesn't happen all of a sudden. It happens very slowly, and as the author shows in the book, the German people didn't realize it until it was too late, while those who did were denounced as paranoid or imagining things. It doesn't have an agenda, it merely attempts to learn how the German people let that happen.

Do you live in America?

If you did you would know about a little thing called the 2nd ammendment. No American would willfully let that ammendment be repealed. In your link there that is what Hitler did, was take away the RKBA. That will never happen in America, not in my lifetime anways. That is what seperates us from the Nazis.

Anyone that draws that comparison is lying to themselves and grasping for straws to blame America or Bush for something.

 

[CptStern]

What is this? Stern will not admit fault when it is in his face? Man, I wished I could be so closed minded!

"Man, you conservatives never admit it when you are wrong. You should do that more often because we are better"

What a crock.

are you denying Wolfowitz said those words?

 

[seinfeldrules]

Now if you would actually take the time to think instead reverting to the instinctual sarcasm,

Sorry, I dont respond well when someone draws comparisons between my country and Nazi Germany.

you can see that the claims that we are gradually losing civil rights is not completely unfounded

You can twist things whatever way you want. Kind of like when the police 'abuse power' by shooting a suspect, the part people never report is that the suspect was pulling a gun at the time.

Personally, I think I have a good reason to be concerned. If we don't start questioning now, when do we?

Question all you want, but dont accuse Conservatives of using scare tatics then use them yourself.

Might have been csmonitor... You reference that site enough. The patriot act, and the color chart and all that nonsense is just that, nonsense. It useless and uncalled for.

Never even visited csmonitor, let alone cite it.

I would like to hear you explain to me what the color coded terror chart is good for? What does it do? Will we ever be at blue or green or any of the safe colors? Obviously not, common sense tells us that if they drop the warning color to safe thats when we will be attacked again.

You're right, the Feds should just let the public go about their lives in complete ignorance of the level of alertness the Gov't is at. They should deal with all problems in the darkness of nighttime, when nobody will see....

I hardly see how this administration has done anything good to protect us against terrorism, if I remember correctly, they were in office when 9/11 happened right. Wasn't the report titled "bin laden determined to strike within the united states"? I can't remember...

In office for less than a year right? If you need to place blame, why not mention Clinton? He allowed the planning to continue over the course of years.

Are you denying Wolfowitz said those words?

People can cut quotes whatever way they want. Gh0st presented you with the full one. If you had any sense of objectivity you would use the full quote. Hell, I bet Wolfowitz (as any person) has said things that sound wack when taken way out of context.

 

[staticprimer]

Question all you want, but dont accuse Conservatives of using scare tatics then use them yourself.

Funny you talk about twisting words. Find where I accused conservatives of using scare tactics.

 

[seinfeldrules]

Funny you talk about twisting words. Find where I accused conservatives of using scare tactics.

Excuse me, I must have gotten you confused with all the other posters in the thread talking along the same lines as you.

 

[staticprimer]

Do you live in America?

If you did you would know about a little thing called the 2nd ammendment. No American would willfully let that ammendment be repealed. In your link there that is what Hitler did, was take away the RKBA. That will never happen in America, not in my lifetime anways. That is what seperates us from the Nazis.

Anyone that draws that comparison is lying to themselves and grasping for straws to blame America or Bush for something.

Oh so you've read the book! What did you think of it? Personally, I found that his research in to the views and experience of the common German citizen was interesting, and unlike anything I read before.

I assure you, Hitler did much more to curtail the civil rights of the German citizens than just their right to bear arms. And saying that no American would willfully give up their right to bear arms is making assumtions. I'm sure there are pleanty of Americans who see the 2nd amendment as slightly archaic.

 

[Korgoth]

Sorry, I dont respond well when someone draws comparisons between my country and Nazi Germany.


You can twist things whatever way you want. Kind of like when the police 'abuse power' by shooting a suspect, the part people never report is that the suspect was pulling a gun at the time.


Question all you want, but dont accuse Conservatives of using scare tatics then use them yourself.


Never even visited csmonitor, let alone cite it.


You're right, the Feds should just let the public go about their lives in complete ignorance of the level of alertness the Gov't is at. They should deal with all problems in the darkness of nighttime, when nobody will see....


In office for less than a year right? If you need to place blame, why not mention Clinton? He allowed the planning to continue over the course of years.


People can cut quotes whatever way they want. Gh0st presented you with the full one. If you had any sense of objectivity you would use the full quote. Hell, I bet Wolfowitz (as any person) has said things that sound wack when taken way out of context.

Are you sure? Are you really really sure?

Because your post history says otherwise... oh how quickly we like to forget our flaws eh?


Let Freedom Ring - More Iraqis voted than Americans did!
Views: 1,956
Posted By seinfeldrules
...

http://www.christiansciencemonitor.com/2005/0128/p10s02-woiq.html


It wasnt only FOX bud.


BTW you can find that on page 17 of your post history.

 

[seinfeldrules]

hahaha excuse me. I must have googled it once. Care to show me another example of where I cited it? Funny how you are so willing to dig throuh 17 pages of history too, actually it is scary. I can show much more than one reference to commondreams, and you can only provide one?

 

[staticprimer]

Excuse me, I must have gotten you confused with all the other posters in the thread talking along the same lines as you.

You're excused.

 

[Korgoth]

No i didn't have to dig, i remember calling you on it.. And of course you blew it off.

 

[seinfeldrules]

I can show much more than one reference to commondreams, and you can only provide one link to csmonitor? One from months ago probably.

 

[Korgoth]

That doesn't change the fact that you just lied and got caught in it, don't try and weasle out now.

If you didn't put forth this "holier than thou" attitude this wouldn't be such a big deal.

 

[CptStern]

People can cut quotes whatever way they want. Gh0st presented you with the full one. If you had any sense of objectivity you would use the full quote. Hell, I bet Wolfowitz (as any person) has said things that sound wack when taken way out of context.

it says what it says:

this is from a neo-con thinktank ...overly apologetic and blind but it suits my point:

"In short, Wolfowitz made the perfectly sensible observation that more than just WMD was of concern, but that among several serious reasons for war, WMD was the issue about which there was widest domestic (and international) agreement. "


let's examine wolfowitz's words more closely:


"One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people."

 

[seinfeldrules]

That doesn't change the fact that you just lied and got caught in it, don't try and weasle out now.

The link I provided was just an informational link designed to show how the elections would work. It wasnt an op-ed article. Again, it was the only site at the time that had a detailed description of the elections.

 

[seinfeldrules]

it says what it says:

Ok, then there is no need to misquote it again. Correct? Furthermore, I have yet to see you post anything near a retraction, or an admittance of being wrong. What a shocker that is! I guess it is better for you to skate around the issue than make a real statement :dozey:

 

[CptStern]

wolfowitz said and I quote:

The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction, as the core reason."

 

[seinfeldrules]

According to a tape recording made by the Pentagon, the actual quote is, "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction, as the core reason."

After a brief pause to take another phone call, Wolfowitz continues, "There have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually, I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one, which is the connection between the first two." (CNN)

 

[CptStern]

""There have always been three fundamental concerns"

to whom is he referring to? he's saying that to the government there has always been 3 justifications (lies as seen in above quotes) but to the public they agreed on the one reason: wmd he's talking about justifying it to the public. therefore:


"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction, as the core reason."

read the entire vanity fair interview

 

[gh0st]

read the entire vanity fair interview

Yeah the vanity fair interview was utterly taken out of context, I'm not even going to bother. Apologize for misquoting him, and trying to pass it off as a lie.

 

[PickledGecko]

Firstly, the US did not declare war on Japan and Germany to "save" Europe from the Nazis, or the Russians. They went to war when they were attacked at Pearl Harbor. There is no comparison between defending their country and invading Iraq. There were no WMDs, there was no link to terrorism and the Iraqis living under a Dictator was their own doing. Neither the US nor the UK were under any threat from Iraq, therefore they had no business interfering.

And as for comparison between the US and Nazi Germany, I don't think Bush has any genocide plans, but its clear the the erosion of civil liberties has started. Where it will end depends on how long you are willing to be scared into believing in these "immediate threats" people keep talking about.

The simple fact is, 9/11 happened because nobody considered it. Just like when terrorists started hijacking planes, it was done because there was no security, they were easy targets. Now that America has realised that these terrorists have considered the homeland a valid target there is a risk of another attack. But now that the American agencies have realised it too, its going to be a hell of a lot harder to pull off. Not because of any new laws that are introduced, but because its expected. The CIA knew about 9/11, they just didn't believe it. If they had, they could have stopped it without the Patriot Act and other such things.

To date, the US and UK governments have talked a lot about high risks and immediate dangers. But what has come of it? A lot of innocent people have been taken in, without any evidence, and questioned. Now you may see that as good, that the authorities are doing their job to make your country safe. But the fact remains, not one single proven terrorist has been detained under these new laws. Lots of innocent people have been arrested, with a lot of media attention, and then let go when its clear that they've done nothing wrong, of course, without any media attention at all. And yes, some terrorists have been stopped, but it didn't take draconian laws to stop the "shoe bomber", it just took vigilance.

 

[bliink]

This is sad.
Everyone should stop fixating on petty crap, and generating huge arguments because you all want to save face/win points.

Get on topic.

EDIT: PickledGecko, excluding you (you posted when I did)

 

[Nofuture]

Here is an interesting comment about "the war on terror":
http://www.cfba.info/analyst/johnson_democracy_now_interview.html


"AMY GOODMAN: Chalmers Johnson, how do you respond to General Wesley Clark saying that this redeployment [of US troops from some millitary bases]will compromise the war on terror?

CHALMERS JOHNSON: Well, I don't see that it has anything to do with the war on terror. That is to say the war on terror -- we have applied wrongly an overly military approach to it from the beginning. There is no question that the situation is worse today than it was on 9/11. That is, between 1993 and 2001, including 9/11, al Qaeda managed to carry out five major bombings internationally. In the three years since 9/11, down to and including the attacks in Riyadh, the suicide bombings in Istanbul, the bombings of the commuter railroads in Madrid, they have carried out well over 20 that -- Rumsfeld asked last October, you know, we need a measure of how we're doing in the war on terrorism. Well, baby, we have got a measure. We're losing it.

We're losing it rather badly, and it's because of an excessively military approach to these problems without any real understanding of the needs to alter our foreign policy in order to do the only known way to deal with terrorism. To try and separate the activists who are incorrigible from their passive supporters. The only way so that you can get information from their passive supporters on who the activists are and arrest them in courts of law.

The only way to separate the activists from their passive supporters is to recognize the legitimacy of the grievances of their passive supporters, grievances that are easily illustrated in the Middle East by the fact that we have American troops in Iraq, that we are the world's sole supporters of the Sharon government in Israel, and its extremely militaristic policies toward the essentially defenseless Palestinians. The result is that the entire Islamic world are now passive supporters of al Qaeda.

I've spent a fair amount of time traveling in Indonesia. It's the world's largest Islamic country. And I guarantee you until very recently, Islam was carried very lightly in Indonesia. More or less the way an Italian man carries his Catholicism. Four or five years ago, 80% of the population were pro-American. It was one of the easiest places on earth to visit. Now 80% of the public distrusts the United States and is sympathetic to al Qaeda. T-shirts with pictures of Osama bin Laden are common on any kid in Jakarta today. Only George Bush could have brought about such a disastrous outcome."


As I've said before: US must change its foreign policy...

 

[Calanen]

""There have always been three fundamental concerns"

to whom is he referring to? he's saying that to the government there has always been 3 justifications (lies as seen in above quotes) but to the public they agreed on the one reason: wmd he's talking about justifying it to the public. therefore:


"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction, as the core reason."

read the entire vanity fair interview

Is this like Take 5 of this quote Stern after Ghostfox made you get on your dinky and backpeddle?