Although I’m glad the Saudis got them, I do think something’s fishy in that they supposedly got on to the terrorists after the terrorists were spotted dumping Johnson’s body, yet the body hasn’t actually been found, after all.
I don’t know – The Saudis knew who they were looking for. The Saudis were doing searches and stops before this al Qaeda group murdered Johnson. I suspect that while the terrorists had Johnson they weren’t moving themselves or Johnson around. After the murder they may have resumed moving in what they thought were their protected circles. It appears, however, that the Saudis had information that they didn’t have before since they were able to kill four and arrest 12 in this group. I think that maybe it was so important to the Saudis that these people get killed or caught that it could be that information was sold or informants or prisoners were ‘pressed’ for information. Just all conjecture though –
Cite?
Cite?
A cite, please, on where I contend we are no better than terrorists.
Hmm…I’ve just a heap of calumny piled on me, haven’t I, Hentor? 
(But I do thank you for introducing a delightful new word into my vocabulary.) 
Gee, another lie from milum. How unique. Oh, wait, it is not unique, it is his SOP.
The standard that some of us (liberals, conservatives, libertarians, and just about everyone who does not turn their brain off when listening to neo-con propaganda) wish to hold the U.S. government is that standard to which it pretends to aspire. We do not seek to change Muslim nations. And we do not equate Muslim extremists with Muslims, in general. That is the sort of lie in which you prefer to indulge.
Who is talking about commerce with respect to terrorists? The OP never mentioned this. So why now bring it up?
Perhaps the law enforcement agencies that utilize profilers and such in attempts to catch criminals and other crazies must also have it all wrong.
Wasn’t it Patton who said one must try to understand your enemy in order to defeat them?
With all due respect, the OP was in regard to the strangely quiet response of the liberals on this board to the beheading of Paul Johnson, given their human rights concerns vis-a-vis the prisoners in Iraq. He was wondering why they weren’t agonizing over it as well, if human rights concerns were really the issue. However, he knew, as do I, that “human rights” and the suffering of those being mistreated is really just a bludgeon with which to attack the U.S. war effort, and that their concern is oddly blunted when it comes to terrorist activity that would tend to give impetus to the war effort, such as Johnson’s beheading does.
The thread is about hypocracy, not about holding other people to our standards or trying to equate Muslim extremists with Muslims in general.
As I said in a subsequent post, law enforcement agencies do this to help catch criminals.
I never assigned any “blame” in my original post. Thank you for inventing something that was never there in a failed attempt to discredit the point.
Please don’t add my name to your banks and commerce thoughts.
Because it speaks to your suggestion that we try to understand their point of view and grievances. They don’t want anything to do with Western culture or Westerners in general. The terrorist activity that’s going on in Saudi Arabia is a result of the alliances and commerce that exist between Saudi Arabia and the U.S.
Perhaps it was. I’m sure many tacticians over the centuries have said the same thing. However, your post seemed to indicate in a superior and condescending way that Muslim terrorist activity is in large part our fault, and that until we learn to understand (and by inferrence, capitulate to) their greivances and motivations, we can only rightly expect more of the same. And my response was intended to show that no matter what we know or understand, there is no way logistically or practically in which to satisfy their complaints.
If this was not your intended message, I will certainly apologize.
You weren’t speaking of the nation as a whole when you made your remark that “we” need to understand their grievances and motivations? That was what I was referring to in using your name, as should be apparent in my quotation that you yourself included in your own post.
You really shouldn’t shoot from the hip like this. It only detracts from your credibility.
This is simply manufactured hokum. As I have already pointed out, one does not waste time decrying human rights abuses by criminals. One expects criminals and terrorists to violate the rights of others. Beyond that, there is no actual debate, so decrying Mr. Johnson’s death in this Forum would be pointless.
There is no hypocrisy demonstrated here, except by milum. Since every rational poster (and the majority of the irrational posters) on this board find Mr. Johnson’s death tragic and cruel, the only thing that milum can do to create a “debate” is to pretend that people who oppose the war might support Mr. Johnson’s death. Since he knows that this is false, he is simply being hypocritical–or lying–in his condemnation of people for something he knows in advance they do not support.
Mind you, he began this “debate” at 5:06 p.m. on the day of the event, whining that “no one” was talking about the issue–by which time there had already been four separate threads begun on the topic. Since there is nothing to debate on the subject (unless you or he would like to argue that it was a “good” thing) all the threads were started in the appropriate Fora (unlike this one that should have been in IMHO or the Pit).
I am a bit surprised that you are willing to join him in this charade.
Perhaps one more repetition of the screamingly obvious will help. There is nothing remotely “strangely quiet” about the response. There is nothing whatever to debate as to the barbaric slaying of Mr. Johnson. There is quite a bit to say regarding treatment of prisoners under the control of our soldiers, acting on our behalf, paid and equipped from our taxes, and frequently members of our families. The creeps who killed Mr. Johnson fit none of these criteria. I’m sure you are willing to stipulate that this is, in fact, the case.
One believes oneself to be sincere, and finds it unlikely that you are more familiar with my motivations than I myself. Have you always been telepathic? Who bestowed upon you the magic power to peer into the minds of others and inventory the contents thereof?
Why do you imagine that the beheading of Mr. Johnson has even the remotest bearing on the “war effort”? Precisely which Iraqis do you hold responsible? Who do you suggest we bomb? Given as, of late, we seem to be a bit clumsy when it comes to seperating out the targets from the victims.
The thugs who killed Mr. Johnson killed one man. That is reprehensible. We, on the other hand, killed thousands of Iraqis to obtain ends that are at best questionable. Tell me again, who we should regard as savage, and who civilized?
Tom, I believe he posted in this forum because this is where most of the people he has engaged with on this subject can be found.
As far as my participation, I, too, perceive this hypocrisy, as I’ve explained.
(And thank you to my opponents who have refrained from correcting my spelling from hypocracy to its correct spelling above. I just noticed I’ve been doing that. Pardon.) :smack:
Oh? Such as, what…protecting American citizens from calamitous terrorist attack? Yep, that’s questionable, all right. And haven’t most of those killed been Iraqi soldiers and/or militants?
Oh, please!
With regard to the rest of your post, I believe I’ve described what I believe and why I believe it numerous times in this thread. I’ll just let my previous posts stand as my response.
How many times are GW’s defenders going to disinter this shabby claim that invading Iraq protects “American citizerns from calamitous terrorist attack?”
Such wrongheadeness has just got be an attempt to use the “big lie” technique. Innocent ignorance can’t explain it.
“… in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility. … the broad masses of a nation … more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. … they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. … The grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down …”
Mein Kampf Vol. I, Chap. X
Well, in a twisted sort of way, he has a point. There are several thousand ex-Iraqis who we can be entirely certain will never threaten us again. How many? I’ve heard guesses, centering around 10,000.
Isn’t that always the way of it? We know precisely how many of our own have been fed into the grinder, but thiers are always in round numbers, thier lives are just fuzzy math. Somewhere between 9,000 and 11,000. Roughly. Somewhere in there.
We don’t care, we don’t have to care, we’re the Americans. Fighting to defend civilization. From savagery. Because a body insulted by shrapnel is ever so much more dainty, more demure, than beheadings. Because a thousand of them is a statistic, and one of us is a person.
And you wonder why they are so ungrateful, why they hate us. How could they not?
At last, a point to debate. I don’t think he does have a point because I don’t agree that those 10000 would have “committed a calamitous terrorist act” in the US. It just isn’t possible to eliminate “calamitous terrorist attacks in the US” by depending on ‘collateral damage’ during a combat action that is targeting something entirely different.
It’s nice you have Adolf to do your talking for you, but it speaks to nothing pertinent. You can deny it all you want, but there was a very real possibility, and I would say probability, that should Iraq have had or been able to develop WMD at some time in the future, it would have only been a matter of time before such weapons fell into the hands of al-Qaeda. You can spare me the denials and protestations that al-Qaeda would have had nothing to do with a secular regime such as Hussein’s; I don’t believe it. I also have no doubt that had such a thing happened, you and your ilk would be shaking your fists and raging to the skies, demanding to know why Bush didn’t realize such a thing could happen and therefore took no action to prevent it.
Hussein hated the U.S.; he hated Bush, Sr. and tried to have him killed; he had developed WMD in the past and used on Iranian soldiers and on his own people, as well. I’m sure Bin Laden, et al would have no compunction whatsoever about buying WMD from Hussein (the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and all that). Both Hussein and Bin Laden/al-Qaeda have shown they are perfectly willing and capable of mass murder and both hate the U.S. for frustrating their ambitions. Does not 2+2=4 anymore?
You can look for the “big lie” and all sorts of other things to explain what you don’t understand, but the simple truth is that you and most of those like you were simply against the war from the very beginning and nothing anyone says is going to persuade you otherwise, and you cannot believe anyone else could possibly have a legitimate reason to believe the action we’re taking is correct, so you suspect we’re engaging in the “big lie,” etc. It’s been my experience that people are either for or against something for deepseated reasons that even they can’t always explain or even recognize. People who oppose the death penalty come op with all sorts of reasons why it’s wrong. Debunk one and they’ll come up with something else, debunk that and they’ll come up with something else. The reasons they give are just attempts at justifying what they already believe, and if one is shown to be bogus they’ll sieze upon something else. The same with the other side. Try to explain to a death penalty advocate that it isn’t a deterrent, that it’s uncivilized, etc., and he will have none of it. In short, you’re either for the way the Bush administration is handling the terrorist threat or you aren’t. Everything else is just semantics.
I’m just thankful that we now have a president who will take the hard but necessary steps that have to be taken now (even at the cost potentially of his own office), rather than turning a blind eye and waiting until tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of American men, women and little children are vaporized (or killed by chemical or biological weapons) before taking the action he should have taken to prevent it. The threat of WMD from Iraq falling into the hands of al-Qaeda or some other enemy of the U.S. is as plain as the nose on your face and no amount of denial will make it otherwise.
Where did I say those 10,000 would have committed a calamitous attack on the U.S.?
Well…I’m waiting.
That’s what I thought. Nowhere, that’s where!
And I find it somewhat suspicious that you and elucidator have neither one answered my question about whether most of those 10,000 were Iraqi military, i.e. people who were supposed to fight and kill American soldiers?
Dear Dave:
Please re-calibrate your irony detection apparatus, and re-read.
Your pal,
e.