@Cycloptichorn,
Quote:What is the point of the US 'sowing terror?' It is a tool that is used by those who lack the resources to accomplish their goals using economic or military means. Now let me ask you: does the US lack in either of those areas, to the point where we must turn to low-cost terror attacks?
Cy, forgive me, but that is a real dumb, and I must admit that I haven't seen much dumb out of you.
Just because a country possesses hi-tech and expensive military hardware doesn't mean that it can't engage in terrorist activities. That's ludicrous on its face.
But to address your point, yes, the USA has engaged in, still engages in many low cost terrorist activities. They have developed and deployed many soft target terrorist activities.
There are a number of reasons but the point is clear; the USA has sown terror around the globe for well over half a century. Torturing, raping and murdering civilians is meant to terrorize. It is, clearly, terrorism, state sponsored terrorism.
There is so much that the United States has done, is still doing that clearly meets the FBI definition of terrorism that I'm shocked that you would even consider such a stand.
I'm sure that you don't want to argue this. I'm just not sure of the reasons. Have you read any of the material at
The Real Reagan the Real United States?
@JTT,
I'm pretty sure I was clear in saying that I didn't want to argue your misuse of definitions; you are trying to get me to do exactly this, and I have no desire to do so, because I do not believe you are willing to be flexible in your conclusion that the US is a 'terrorist nation.'
Cycloptichorn
@Cycloptichorn,
You've made that pretty clear, Cy. It's not my conclusion that the US is a terrorist nation. The facts show that the US is a terrorist nation.
Out of the mouth of high US officials, even a president;
Quote:Even Reagan's conservative ambassador to Guatemala took notice.
Two days before the State Department report was issued, Ambassador Frederic Chapin sent a cable to Washington decrying the "horrible human rights realities in Guatamala."
Chapin wrote that "we must come to some resolution in policy terms. Either we can overlook the record and emphasize the strategic concept or we can pursue a higher moral path. We simply cannot flip flop back and forth between the two possible positions."
In 1990, George Bush [George Bush Senior] again cut military aid after a U.S. citizen was murdered by Guatemalan soldiers, though covert aid by the CIA continued.
Only after the war ended did the United States acknowlege the damage it had done.
In March, President Clinton surprised his hosts and the audiance[sic] at Guatermala's National Palace of Culture by publicly expressing regret for four decades of U.S. support for "military forces or intelligence units which engaged in violent and widespread repression."
I'm more than willing to be "flexible". The US doesn't have to continue being a terrorist nation, but people, including you, have to come to grips with the facts and those facts show, President Clinton stated it, that the USA has engaged in terrorist activities.
Nothing can be clearer, that makes it a terrorist nation. And flimsy excuses and quotes around
terrorist nation can't change the facts.
@Cycloptichorn,
Cycloptichorn wrote:
Quote:
Your mind reading sucks. I ask you for a time when they intentionally target civilians and you tell me about an event in which they asked civilians to leave. It doesn't qualify. Try again.
Asking civilians to leave, and then attacking anyway when they don't, is intentionally targeting them. We had no right to order them to leave their homes whatsoever. It most certainly does qualify.
How mendacious can you be, Brandon? These little one-line responses are your version of trying to dismiss the argument without actually having to discuss the specifics. It is failing spectacularly.
Cycloptichorn
I'll be more explicit. I asked you for an instance in the Iraq or Afghanistan conflicts when American soldiers attempted to kill civilians intentionally and were following orders. Only this would be comparable to the terrorists, because this is what they do. Apparently you cannot relate even one such case.
@Brandon9000,
Brandon9000 wrote:
Cycloptichorn wrote:
Quote:
Your mind reading sucks. I ask you for a time when they intentionally target civilians and you tell me about an event in which they asked civilians to leave. It doesn't qualify. Try again.
Asking civilians to leave, and then attacking anyway when they don't, is intentionally targeting them. We had no right to order them to leave their homes whatsoever. It most certainly does qualify.
How mendacious can you be, Brandon? These little one-line responses are your version of trying to dismiss the argument without actually having to discuss the specifics. It is failing spectacularly.
Cycloptichorn
I'll be more explicit. I asked you for an instance in the Iraq or Afghanistan conflicts when American soldiers attempted to kill civilians intentionally and were following orders. Only this would be comparable to the terrorists, because this is what they do. Apparently you cannot relate even one such case.
I just related one to you. You pretended that it didn't fit your criteria when it clearly did. This is the same thing you plan on doing no matter what anyone brings up - just wave your hand and pretend that your opponent's argument doesn't meet your criteria. It's bullshit and you know it.
Unless you can specifically discuss our decision to turn a whole city into a free-fire zone and the use of WP weapons there, you don't have much of a leg to stand on here, Brandon.
Cycloptichorn
@Cycloptichorn,
Quote:The FBI defines terrorism as:
The unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a Government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.
Quote:Cycloptichorn: Unless you can specifically discuss our decision to turn a whole city into a free-fire zone and the use of WP weapons there ...
Yup, Cy, that fits the definition of terrorism even without considering that the entire Iraq invasion was and is an unlawful use of force and violence.
State terrorism on numerous counts, untold instances of terrorism against how many people, how much property?
@Diest TKO,
Quote:Not asinine if you read the original article which is about how the US responds, not how the world responds. The basic point of the author is that we can sacrifice every moral we have, and in the end, it won't make us safe. Therefore, the solution is not going to come from diving deeper into immoral acts. I'm sure you agree.
I do agree, TKO.
I guess the part that really made me angry was he missed the main reason for terrorist actions against western targets;
They hate our freedoms!
@JTT,
Quote:They hate our freedoms
they think that too much freedom makes individuals and collectives weak, and thus too much freedom is a bad thing. They are certainly correct. The question is, where is the line. Modern terrorists have the placement of the line wrong in my opinion, but them being wrong is not a slam dunk.
@Cycloptichorn,
Cycloptichorn wrote:
Brandon9000 wrote:
Cycloptichorn wrote:
Quote:
Your mind reading sucks. I ask you for a time when they intentionally target civilians and you tell me about an event in which they asked civilians to leave. It doesn't qualify. Try again.
Asking civilians to leave, and then attacking anyway when they don't, is intentionally targeting them. We had no right to order them to leave their homes whatsoever. It most certainly does qualify.
How mendacious can you be, Brandon? These little one-line responses are your version of trying to dismiss the argument without actually having to discuss the specifics. It is failing spectacularly.
Cycloptichorn
I'll be more explicit. I asked you for an instance in the Iraq or Afghanistan conflicts when American soldiers attempted to kill civilians intentionally and were following orders. Only this would be comparable to the terrorists, because this is what they do. Apparently you cannot relate even one such case.
I just related one to you. You pretended that it didn't fit your criteria when it clearly did. This is the same thing you plan on doing no matter what anyone brings up - just wave your hand and pretend that your opponent's argument doesn't meet your criteria. It's bullshit and you know it.
Unless you can specifically discuss our decision to turn a whole city into a free-fire zone and the use of WP weapons there, you don't have much of a leg to stand on here, Brandon.
Cycloptichorn
I didn't pretend that it didn't fit the criteria I laid down - it didn't. I'm not asking you for a case of recklessness, negligence, or indifference. I am asking you for a case during the Iraq or Afghanistan conflict of American soldiers, following orders, attempting to kill civilians on purpose as the
intended, hoped for target, and the case you related isn't that. You can drag this out for multiple pages, but you have yet to find an example that fits my challenge. You won't find one because we don't do that. The people who do are violating orders.
@Brandon9000,
Quote:
I didn't pretend that it didn't fit the criteria I laid down - it didn't. I'm not asking you for a case of recklessness, negligence, or indifference. I am asking you for a case during the Iraq or Afghanistan conflict of American soldiers, following orders, attempting to kill civilians on purpose as the intended, hoped for target, and the case you related isn't that. You can drag this out for multiple pages, but you have yet to find an example that fits my challenge. You won't find one because we don't do that. The people who do are violating orders.
Yes, it does fit your criteria. Here you are hand-waving again. I am informing you again that it doesn't work.
Cycloptichorn
@JTT,
Quote:Brandon advances the big lie yet again:
You won't find one because we don't do that. The people who do are violating orders.
Quote:Guatemala is a particularly striking example of American imperial policies in its own "backyard." In 1954, the Eisenhower administration planned and the CIA organized and funded a military coup that overthrew a Guatemalan president whose modest land reform policies were considered a threat to American corporations.
Blowback from this led to a Marxist guerrilla insurgency in the 1980s and so to CIA- and Pentagon-supported genocide against Mayan peasants. In the spring of 1999, a report on the Guatemalan civil war from the U.N.-sponsored Commission for Historical Clarification made clear that "the American training of the officer corps in counterinsurgency techniques" was a "key factor" in the "genocide.... Entire Mayan villages were attacked and burned and their inhabitants were slaughtered in an effort to deny the guerrillas protection. According to the commission, between 1981 and 1983 the military government of Guatemala-financed and supported by the U.S. government-destroyed some four hundred Mayan villages in a campaign of genocide in which approximately two hundred thousand peasants were killed.
Jose Pertierra, an attorney representing Jennifer Harbury, an American lawyer who spent years trying to find out what happened to her "disappeared" Guatemalan husband and supporter of the guerrillas, Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, writes that the Guatemalan military officer who arrested, tortured, and murdered Bamaca was a CIA "asset" and was paid $44,000 for the information he obtained from him.
Visiting Guatemala in March 1999, soon after the report's release, President Clinton said, "It is important that I state clearly that support for military forces and intelligence units which engaged in violence and widespread repression was wrong, and the United States must not repeat that mistake.... The United States will no longer take part in campaigns of repression."
But on virtually the day that the president was swearing off "dirty tricks" in other people's countries, his government was reasserting its support for Turkey in its war of repression against its Kurdish minority.
Cy, you are helping Brandon and others in perpetuating these lies. The facts stand before you all in such emblazoned stark relief, the USA is a terrorist nation, the USA has long been involved in terrorist activities that make even the combined total of all the activities of transnational terrorists pale into insignificance.
The US and its NATO henchmen rushed into Serbia screaming genocide, all the while they were responsible for the deaths of half a million Iraqi children, which, in the words of top US official, Albright, was well worth it, considering that the US gets what it wants.
The lie tells us that the US wants freedom and justice for the oppressed; what freedom and justice was there for these Iraqi children? What freedom and justice was there for the 300,000 Central American murdered civilians just during the Reagan debacle?
Brandon goes on with his big song and dance demanding proof from this latest terrorist intrusion on a sovereign nation when it's clear that all the lies from past US terrorist actions have yet to be uncovered. Criminals don't advertise their crimes.
Quote:
For any empire, including an unacknowledged one, there is a kind of balance sheet that builds up over time. Military crimes, accidents, and atrocities make up only one category on the debit side of the balance sheet that the United States has been accumulating, especially since the Cold War ended.
What we have freed ourselves of, however, is any genuine consciousness of how we might look to others on this globe. Most Americans are probably unaware of how Washington exercises its global hegemony, since so much of this activity takes place either in relative secrecy or under comforting rubrics. Many may, as a start, find it hard to believe that our place in the world even adds up to an empire. But only when we come to see our country as both profiting from and trapped within the structures of an empire of its own making will it be possible for us to explain many elements of the world that otherwise perplex us.
The most direct and obvious form of blowback often occurs when the victims fight back after a secret American bombing, or a U.S.-sponsored campaign of state terrorism, or a ClA-engineered overthrow of a foreign political leader. All around the world today, it is possible to see the groundwork being laid for future forms of blowback.
You know what's really odd. Setanta, who never misses an opportunity to give a history lesson, misses every opportunity available to him to delve into any depth on the history of USA terrorist actions against other nations.
Anyone wonder why?
@JTT,
JTT wrote:
You know what's really odd. Setanta, who never misses an opportunity to give a history lesson, misses every opportunity available to him to delve into any depth on the history of USA terrorist actions against other nations.
Anyone wonder why?
JTT. I'm just gonna be honest here. You aren't very pleasant to talk to.
And it's not because of the positions you hold, per se; there's nothing wrong with bringing up historical data and forwarding an opinion, we all do it. But you tend to slide straight into this fanatic position, where anyone who disagrees with you is obviously an ass or something.
Cycloptichorn
@Cycloptichorn,
Cycloptichorn wrote:
JTT. I'm just gonna be honest here. You aren't very pleasant to talk to.
And it's not because of the positions you hold, per se; there's nothing wrong with bringing up historical data and forwarding an opinion, we all do it. But you tend to slide straight into this fanatic position, where anyone who disagrees with you is obviously an ass or something.
Cycloptichorn
just for the record, i am an ass
@djjd62,
djjd62 wrote:
Cycloptichorn wrote:
JTT. I'm just gonna be honest here. You aren't very pleasant to talk to.
And it's not because of the positions you hold, per se; there's nothing wrong with bringing up historical data and forwarding an opinion, we all do it. But you tend to slide straight into this fanatic position, where anyone who disagrees with you is obviously an ass or something.
Cycloptichorn
just for the record, i am an ass
No, you're not. But you try hard to look that way sometimes for fun. It's easy to tell the difference.
Cycloptichorn
i wonder if this still applies, i mean this means we could be in danger at any time
POLITICS
Terror Experts Warn Next 9/11 Could Fall On Different Date
JANUARY 6, 2009
WASHINGTON"In an alarming development with wide-reaching implications for America's safety, Department of Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff and CIA Director Michael Hayden issued a joint report Monday warning that the next 9/11 could in fact occur on a different date.
The report, based on intelligence gathered by field-agents, found that a future 9/11 might take place on an entirely new month and day, including 4/24, 6/13, or even 10/12. According to the report, the nation could realistically find itself in the midst of a 5/25 scenario, as well as a potential 3/14 situation in the months to come.
8/28, 6/19, and 11/7 were also cited as possible 9/11s.
"While 9/11 has historically always fallen on 9/11, we as Americans need to be prepared for a wide range of dates," Chertoff said during a White House press conference. "There's a chance we could all find ourselves living in a post-6/10 world as early as next July. Unless, that is, we're already living in a pre-2/14 world."
"1/1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5," Chertoff continued for nearly 45 minutes, "12/28, 12/29, 12/30, 12/31"these are all plausible and serious threats."
An addendum to the report that includes leap years will be released by the end of March.
Though the DHS has identified more than 7,000 sensitive dates spanning the next 20 years, it did manage to rule out 4/15/04 and 10/38 as future 9/11s. The government report also confirmed that the next 9/11 would more than likely not involve an assault on the World Trade Center's North and South towers as it has in previous attacks.
Furthermore, the 350-page document rejected long-held beliefs that the next 9/11 would commence at 8:46 a.m. on a sunny Tuesday morning. In fact, it warns that a future attack could occur on a cloudy, snowy, or even brisk day, at 8:53 a.m., 10:42 p.m., or any one of the other 1,440 known times.
"We are dealing with agents of terror who are willing to carry out another 9/11 on"if you can imagine it"6/8," Hayden told reporters. "Indeed a day may come when we as a nation have to live in fear of another 6/8, recount where we were when 6/8 happened, and swear never to forget the events of 6/8."
"At some point we might even have to come to terms with the harsh lessons of 6/8," Hayden continued.
Hayden assured citizens, however, that no matter what date the imminent attacks fall on, he has every reason to believe that the next 9/11 will be carried out by militants, radicals, zealots, or extremists, who will stop at nothing, next to nothing, or very little to destroy America.
Hayden also said he was certain that at least one of the world's 6.7 billion human beings will plot the future 5/24 or 3/17 attacks, and that it will most likely target either the nation's subways, seaports, landmarks, stadiums, buildings, structures, or other indoor or outdoor areas where large groups of people tend to gather.
"Instead of calling major terrorist attacks on their soil 'our 9-11,' other nations may soon refer to their own national disasters as 'our 11/28,'" Chertoff said. "Which, incidentally, is also my birthday, though I admit that is neither here nor there."
At the conclusion of the press conference, Chertoff urged Americans not be alarmed by the recent news, and to continue living their lives as they have for the last seven years"with the crippling fear that at any moment they, or someone they love, could die in a fiery inferno.
@Cycloptichorn,
I appreciate your honesty and I understand fully that these realities are extremely difficult to face. However, there's nothing fanatical about pointing up how people studiously avoid the horrendously sick actions that their government has engaged in.
Setanta, who prides himself on being an historically aware individual, just doesn't want to go to those places where the historical realities are just too uncomfortable to face.
You yourself do the same thing. All this information is readily available. Did you never know that President Clinton said what he said? Did it not engender any degree of interest on your part to find out exactly what he meant?
If it did, then how could you possibly ever come out with a statement that the US does not engage in terrorist actions?
If it didn't, then you've really got to ask yourself why, you, a person who obviously holds the truth in some regard didn't search out the whys.
Don't try to flip this onto me. Try doing a bit of research yourself, Cy. The stark realities I put forward may not be everyone's cup of tea but what's being hidden and what has been hidden by benign and active neglect, by purposeful deception, by people who do know better, is a much much sadder commentary than a few unpleasantries.
@djjd62,
The rolls of construction grade plastic sheeting will be flying off the shelves now. Better get to your broker quick. There's piles of money to be made.
