I see I left out a key step in my ‘Mecca’ strategy. (I was wondering why I was being called a mass murderer!) No, we threaten Mecca with destruction, forcing the Muslims to turn on their murderous brothers. If and when an American citizen is killed in a terrorist attack, we simply say, “OK. You had your chance. And now you have two weeks to get as far away from the Ka’bah as possible. Because Mecca is going ‘bye bye.’”
Honestly, I’d like to see what kind of response this threat would have on the Muslim world. Because I honestly believe Islam is a religion of peace…but unfortunately the stakes haven’t been high enough for the necessary people to get involved in the War on Terror. Let’s show 'em we mean business.
This is GQ, not MPSIMS. So let’s see some objective evidence for that claim, or else retract it.
Why would we need to ‘get back’? It’s a childish simple question, and the answer should be blindingly apparent. This wil apparently surprise you Stephe but possession of explosives and conspiracy to commit murder are not legal. The ‘actual criminal’ was not a law abiding citizen for several months before this morning’s commute and could have been arrested and imprisoned at any point.
Call me crazy, but I believe there is some obscure old law on the books that makes conspiring to hijack a plane and kill several thousand people a crime. Maybe you think it’s just a misdemenaor though, and if he had been caught going through check-in they would have written him a ticket and let him board the flight.
Not even dicussing your statement about their motivations, if it’s retalation, it’s acceptable? So, for instance planting a “suitcase nuke” (assuming they would exist and available in suficient number) in one american city each time an iraki rebel is killed by an US soldier would be morally justified, if I understand correctly?
(Or one nuke for each civilian killed as a “collateral damage”, if you like it better.)
Terrorists don’t just happen to do things, they plan them. In groups. Consisting of people who communicate with one another. These communications can be intercepted; these groups can be infiltrated.
Remember how Bush received a memo entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US,” before he went on vacation for a month? How do you think anyone knew this was the case? Remember how the Bush Administration blew Al Qaeda mole Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan’s cover? What do you think he was doing? Spying, that’s what. These people can be watched, their organizations can be infiltrated.
I know very, very little about terrorist networks. Your assertion that terrorists just happen to up and commit acts of terrorism out of the blue shows you know even less.
Remember when Bill Clinton received his PDB (Presidential Daily Briefing) in 1998, a full three years before 9/11, which indicated that Osama bin Laden was targeting US airliners? What steps, exactly, did he take upon receiving this information? (By the way, it’s very likely that it was the notes on this PDB that Sandy Burglar, key Kerry adviser, risked his entire reputation to steal and destroy. We may never know what Clinton’s administration did!)
Who are “these insects” exactly? Since you intend to “hit back” all muslims by destroying their most sacred place, I can only asume that it includes all of them. Since you intend to kill the children living in Mecca as well as the elderly making the hadj, I can only assume they also are amongst the insects…
Tap dance all you like, but that was a bald faced lie.
It sure did, since the evidence of a possible Al-Qaeda involvement was weak as per your cite too (this deserves another :rolleyes: )
It is still the concept that separate us from them, one can not take away the fact that we overreached in Iraq, we attacked the wrong target in TWAT, it has created more terrorists that are willing to sacrifice their lifes to “correct an injustice”, I think they are bananas, but it is even more stupid to not understand were are they coming from.
There is the fact that one can indeed capture the terrorists that are “abiding citizens” before they do harm:
I’m sorry, Stephe96 I should have continued, “and tried to kill him in a missile strike in August '98, then offered a $25 million reward for information leading to his capture, and then helped convince the UN to put sanctions on Afghanistan to try and get the Taliban to give him up.”
The important thing, as opposed in the OP, is to rethink things. In every war we’ve ever been in there was an assumption: they want to kill us, we want to kill them, both we both would like to preserve our own lives. Terrorism thows a wrench into this. So if these people do not valu their own lives here on earth, we need to understand what they do value and threaten it: whcih in this case seems to be the life after this one. The one with 72 virgins.
There is a story about how General Blackjack Pershing stopped muslim insurrectionists in the Phillipines. He captured 50 of them and tied them to poles execution style. He then had his men bring in pigs (which they consider unholy) and slaughter them. He then soaked each bullet in pigs blood and shot one man at a time, throwing him into the grave (which he had dug himself) facing away from Mecca, then covered him with pig entrails. He did this to 49 of the fifty, letting the last one go. The terrorism stopped.
You are partly correct. I regard Mr Bush and his fellow ideologues as major criminals and suspect that they will never be brought to justice.
But that is absolutely no excuse for suicide bombers targeting civilians. It must be stopped and I don’t think there is likely to be a way to stop it that is clean and nice.
I know many Iraqi civilians have been killed and maimed. That is blood on Bush’s hands. But the big difference is that the terrorists actively target civilians while the coaltion military accidentally kills civilians due to their ham-fisted ineptitude.
Also please remember that these terrorists did not start their violence because of the invasion of Iraq. Bin Laden and his merry gang of cut-thoats exploded bombs in US consulate buildings in Africa and tried to blow up a US battle ship back in the 90s. The twin towers were destroyed 2 years before the invasion of Iraq.
The invasion has surely inflamed the situation, but it did not create their hatred for us.
You asked for ways that terrorists could be detained before they killed anyone. Apparently you couldn’t understand that they weret committing criminal acts simply by making explosives and planning hijackings. We gave examples of how they could be detained to answer your question, amongst those examples was one about a spy who would aid in them being detained.
So how exactly is giving us evidence of yet more spies and yet more prior knowledge stengthening your position here Stephe? You are demolishing tour own argument. If Clinton knew 3 years in advance then why excatly would it be impossible to detain them 3 years in advance?
WTF is your point here Stepehe? Are you arguing that everyone knew years in advance, or that nobody could know until the morning before?
You are contradicting yourself now, never mind that you have contradicted the facts and made shit up.
So you’d agree that terrorist can be subjected to investigations by intelligence services before they commit terrorist acts, then? You understand that your original assertion that terrorists are law abiding citizens indistinguishable from the general population until they strike has no merit, yes? Good.
No idea. I didn’t follow US politics then. What does this have to do with the subject at hand, namely your assertion that one cannot investigate suspected terrorists?
As I told you previously, the originals still exist for anyone with adequate clearance to peruse. What does this have to do with your assertion that one cannot investigate suspected terrorists?
How exactly is blowing up government offices and television stations anyhtingt but deliberate killing of civilians?
And if you want to argue that random public servants aided in the war effort then so did Manhattan investment banker. Either both sides target civilians or niether does.
You can’t go after him once he’s dead. And no retaliation will change that fact. You seem to want some blood to be spilled as a vengeance, regardless of whose blood is it, a baby in Mecca being just as good if you can’t get at a british terrorist blood.
What you can do is trying to go after his accomplices, people who hide him, funded him and of course to catch him and his accomplices before he blows himself up.
Now, that’s enough. I do not intend to argue anymore with someone advocating for terrorism and mass-murder.
Exactly. The originals still exist. Sandy Burglar was not interested in the originals…he was interested in destroying the notes on copies of these memos. So he smuggled them out of the National Archives, took them home and destroyed them. He admits to this. Well, first he tried to claim it was an “honest mistake” but then he backed down and admitted to doing it deliberately and pleading guilty in court. This was Bill Clinton’s former National Security Advisor.
Amazing. I’m still stunned by this one…and in shock at the ‘pass’ he’s received from the Dems.
That is just the classic good-history-to-tell-even-if-it-is-a-lie Ronald Reagan maneuver. The interesting point here is to see someone base his/her actions on a false history, but then if one swallowed the WMD, Kool-aid is a good way to make it go down.
Sorry. I’ve elected to respond to this again because it’s just so far out there.
Stephe, you do know that the IRA and ETA [Basques] used EXACTLY this tactic, right? They made demands and warned people “We’re going to put a bomb in this building in a few hours, so kiss it goodbye.” Then they’d blow up the building. They killed comparatively few people as a result, but they’re absolutely terrorists nonetheless.