The Greatest Scam On Earth!

War on Terrorism is BS
The more I juxtapose logical world opinion with the Bush administration's actions in the war on terror, I realize one overwhelming theme: hypocrisy.

No one in any of the branches of government runs a physical risk to themselves by entering a war with Iraq, and we can bet that none of their family members are at risk, either. That is, until the next "terrorist" attack. I put "terrorist" in quotes because its definition is subjective, and I myself used to be in the Marine Corps, part of the most powerful "terrorist" organization on the planet: the U.S. government.

Of course, we never call our operations "terrorism" because every operation is considered legitimate to us. When found guilty by the World Court for violence in Nicaragua, we ignore the decision. Too bad the nations we hurt can't just ignore what we do to them.

When the planet condemns us for killing between 2,500-4,000 people in Panama, we're too busy planning the next invasion of a country that can't fight back.

I oppose this war as a U.S. citizen, a veteran, and a doctoral student in history.

While my military experience is what first made me skeptical about our government's motives in the developing world, it wasn't until I went to college and began reading hundreds of books and thousands of articles that I was able to truly grasp the profundity of our leadership's contempt for the freedoms they claim to protect.

As a rule, we have worked hard to prevent the rise of democracy in the developing world, all the while claiming legitimacy as "the world's police force" because of our so-called "democratic" values.

The hypocrisy is astounding. When one investigates our complicity in death squads, torture, massacres, rape, and mass destruction, one realizes that freedom often threatens the current power structure in this country.

I used to consider those incidents as anomalistic in comparison to the "protection" we offered the planet at seemingly no charge. But then I joined the Marines, and I realized why I had believed in the government: they were experts in manipulation.

Barely out of high school, the Corps broke us down and built us up in order to shape us into machines, willing to defend the ideals of the power elites in Washington and corporate America.

Just look at the companies, which are funding political campaigns, and benefiting from war: weapons producers, technologies, food, clothing, munitions, oil, pharmaceuticals, etc U.S. interventions since WWII have not been done in the name of the world's people (although that is always the claim), but for the preservation of concentrated power.

The fact that they have been carried out against the tenets of international law (i.e. the rights of non-intervention and self-determination), in itself deflates their validity.

If the U.S. government were held to the FBI's official definition of terrorism ("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"), their list of victims since WWII alone would include:

Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Panama, Mexico, Chile, Granada, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Uruguay, Paraguay, Ecuador, Zaire, Namibia, Lebanon, Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, Bangladesh, Iran, South Africa, the Philippines, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Iraq, Cambodia, Libya, Israel, Palestine, China, Afghanistan, Sudan, Indonesia, East Timor, Turkey, Angola, and Somalia.

In boot camp, deceit and manipulation accompany the necessity to motivate troops to murder on command.

You can't take civilians from the street, give them machine guns, and expect them to kill without question in a democratic society; therefore people must be indoctrinated to do so.

This fact alone should sound off alarms in our collective American brain.

If the cause of war is justified, then why do we have to be put through boot camp?

If you answer that we have to be trained in killing skills, well, then why is most of boot camp not focused on combat training?

Why are privates shown videos of U.S. military massacres while playing Metallica in the background, thus causing us to scream with the joy of the killer instinct as brown bodies are obliterated?

Why do privates answer every command with an enthusiastic, "kill!!" instead of, "yes, sir!!" like it is in the movies?

Why do we sing cadences like these?:

"Throw some candy in the school yard, watch the children gather round. Load a belt in your M-60, mow them little bastards down!!" and "We're gonna rape, kill, pillage and burn, gonna rape, kill, pillage and burn!!"

These chants are meant to motivate the troops; they enjoy it, salivate from it, and get off on it.

If one repeats these hundreds of times, one eventually begins to accept them as paradigmatically valid.

The demonization of the enemy is crucial to wartime planners, and the above examples of motivation techniques are relevant to the present. Before carrying out a security exercise in Qatar, my unit went through Muslim "indoctrination" classes. The level of racism was unbelievable.

Muslims were referred to as "Ahmed," "towlheads," "ragheads," and "terrorists." We were told that most Muslim males were homosexual, and that their hygiene was so primitive that we shouldn't even shake their hands.

The object was demonization through feminization and dehumanization, so as to make it easier for us to pull the trigger when ordered to. But Qatar is our ally, so imagine the language being used today in these indoctrination courses about Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Iraqi population has suffered countless U.S. supported atrocities over the past eleven years. Not only were between 100 and 200 thousand people killed in 1991, but the bombing has continued ever since then, and sanctions have led to the deaths of possibly 1 million people, in a nation of 17 million.

Former UNSCOM execs assert that they destroyed 95-98 percent of Saddam's weapons by 1998, and that a nuclear weapons capability is extremely unlikely due to their devastated economy.

According to this morning's New York Times, the U.S. reasons that Saddam's gassing of his own people and his hatred of the U.S. are what warrant our harder stance toward Iraq in comparison to North Korea.

While we pursue diplomacy with North Korea (which has admitted to having nukes), we prefer to invade Iraq, who we claim is only looking for nukes. Have we forgotten the 1994 Congressional report revealing that we supplied Saddam with biological and chemical weapons during the 1980s?

Although U.S. casualties will be lower than that of Iraq, let's not forget the danger we are placing squarely on the shoulders of U.S. troops, who have been indoctrinated as I was. Funny how the people who are least likely to go to war are the ones working the hardest to convince others to fight it for them.

Chris White is an ex-Marine and current doctoral student in history at the University of Kansas, Lawrence.

He can be reached at: [email protected]

CounterPunch, October 23, 2002
Why I Oppose the US War on Terror:
an ex-Marine Sergeant Speaks Out
by CHRIS WHITE

He'll probably be arrested as a subversive!

Compelling and persuasive. Never have I seen the threat we face because of our present administration laid out so well. I will copy this for my own use, giving you all the credit you deserve, and send it to many who need to consider the threat we face in the context in which you present it. Thank you.

Im sorry John and pistoff. I have to rely on evidence, and , so far Im getting coordinated haranguing from you. Good speeches but, I understand why weve been feeling duped on the preemptive war on Iraq. Now draw the dots for my feeble mind why the "Alleged terrorism" of 9/11 is based on cynical manipulation by the US govt. Thats where ya lose me.
If we could, lets keep the events separate in their rationale, perps, and outcomes. OR, show evidence that is superior to what weve been given by the worlds media.(Including Al Jaezeera)

Farmerman, if you are seeking evidence, consider Quantanimo Bay and those the Administration are denying a trial in open Court, the so-called Patriot Act and all the threats of terrorism which have come to nothing? Yet which keep giving massive and draconian additional powers to the Administration.

Then there are all the highly publicized searches of incoming aircraft and the fingerprinting of passengers, whilst illegals are still pouring into America from Mexico - without fingerprinting and without searches?

As I have indicated "Scamming at it's best by experts!".

Blaming the victim or the friends of the victim for the horrors perpetrated by the victimizer is at best irrational and at worst evil.

Blaming the victim or the friends of the victim for retaliating in self-defense in an effort to minimize future horrors anticipated to be perpetrated by the victimizer is at best irrational and at worst evil.


What are the major moral, ethical, and practical differences among the following American Actions?

A. Bosnia:
(1) Murder? Thousands of Muslims (e.g., Bosnians) murdered by Serbians;
(2) Threatened Murder? Thousands more Muslims threatened to be murdered by Serbians;
(3) American Troops on the Ground? Yes;
(4) UN Approval of Americans in Bosnia? No;
(5) Purpose of American Troops on the Ground? Minimize additional murders by Serbians by separating Serbians from Muslims;
(6) Financial/Weapons Support of Murderers? Russians supported Serbians.

B. Afghanistan
(1) Murder? Thousands of Americans (e.g., occupants of World Trade Buildings, Pentagon, three airliners) murdered by al Qaeda;
(2) Threatened Murder? Thousands more Americans threatened to be murdered by al Qaeda;
(3) American Troops on the Ground? Yes;
(4) UN Approval of Americans in Afghanistan? No;
(5) Purpose of American Troops on the Ground? Minimize additional murders of Americans by minimizing al Qaeda;
(6) Financial/Weapons Support of Murderers? Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Libia, Egypt, North Korea, Iraq etc. supported al Qaeda.

C. Iraq
(1) Murder? Thousands of Muslims (e.g., Shiites, Kurds, Kuwaities) murdered by Saddam Husseiners;
(2) Threatened Murder? Thousands more Muslims threatened to be murdered by Saddam Husseiners;
(3) American Troops on the Ground? Yes;
(4) UN Approval of Americans in Iraq? No;
(5) Purpose of American Troops on the Ground? Minimize additional murders of people worlwide by minimizing Saddam Husseiners;
(6) Financial/Weapons Support? France, Germany, Russia supported Saddam Husseiners.

D.Israel
(1) Murder? Thousands of Israelies murdered by Arafaters;
(2) Threatened Murder? Thousands more Israelies threatened to be murdered by Arafaters;
(3) American Troops on the Ground? No;
(3a) American Financial/weapons support? Yes;
(4) UN Approval of American Financial/Weapons support of Israelies? No;
(5) Purpose of American Troops on the Ground? No American troops are on the ground in Israel;
(5a) Purpose of American Financial/Weapons Support of Israelies? Minimize additional murders of Israelies by Arafaters by maximizing Israeli ability to defend itself against Arafaters;
(6) Financial/Weapons Support? Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, Syria support Arafaters.

i see very little ican, which i guess is why i've always supported all these efforts and wish the US would intervene more...

BUT... this doesn't change the fact that Bush blatantly lied to the world with all this supposed evidence of weapons of mass destruction, lied to the world about the US's true reasons, made very little if any effort to rally support worldwide for our effort, and has acted here where we stand to profit from oil where he failed to act in nearly identical circumstances throughout regions all over the world.

I don't know whether or not Bush believes/believed his alleged falsities or not. Of course if he did not believe them when he uttered them, then he did in fact lie.

Several possibilities exist.

1. Bush has not alleged any falsities and the evidence of this will be found.
2. Bush has alleged falsities and he knew it at the time.
3. Bush has alleged falsities and he knew it at the time, because he is a fraud.
4. Bush has alleged falsities and he did not know it at the time.
5. Bush has alleged falsities and he did not know it at the time, because he believed/believes false reports.
6. Bush has alleged falsities and he did not know it at the time, because he is incompetent.
7. Bush has alleged falsities and he did not know it at the time, because he is a fanatic and chooses to believe only that which he wants to believe.

But the consequences of Bush's actions are what is important to me, and not his intentions. I don't know how to determine what Bush's intentions actually are. I do know how to determine whether or not I approve the consequences of Bush's actions. Like any fallible human being (that's a redundancy), I approve some but not all the consequences of his actions. I bet that on balance we're better off with fallible Bush than known past and future alternatives. Admittedly, we cannot ever rationally expect perfection, so I look for either least worse, or occassionally, when I feel lucky :wink: , best.

if I were president
after 9/11, I would have made even more hawklike pronouncements and would have inserted even more troops on many more freonts in Afghanistan. I think we didnt pull this off as well as we wished

As far as Iraq. I have no idea re the connections and the duplicity involved by the admin. Any scientist that has any familiarity with nuke programs knows that target isotopes are unique to U enricment and U3O8 beneficiation, and these isotopes are easily spotted on the wind of a state as big as Texas (or Ireaq) so we know we were being buffaloed.
Iraq stands alone as a bad move and stupid policy by (I believe) the Cheney faction.

john, I think your jumps to the world of conspiracy and induced Armegeddon is giving too much credit to a simple man who is way out of his league.
a question on TOTN two weeks ago elicited a response that, facing 9/11, Gore would probably have done the same, but not try to tie Afghanistan and Iraq in a single bow.

QWe ARE not all evil or all good but ceratainly mega naive in our present foreign policy

ican711nm said "1) Murder? Thousands of Americans (e.g., occupants of World Trade Buildings, Pentagon, three airliners) murdered by al Qaeda;"

Living, breathing proof that the brainwashed will come to believe any lie if it is repeated to them often enough.

The current official, but rarely publicized, death toll is less than 1000, including firefighters. The remaining 1800 were foreigners. The Administration want everyone to continue believing that thousands of Americans died that terrible day, it makes it easier for them to sell their police state legislation.

Many times more innocent Afghans and Iraqis have since paid with their lives for the atrocity.

This war on terrorism is bogus
Of course I do not attribute the concepts leading to the actions to GW Bush. GW is merely a puppet that acts on the manipulation of his puppet masters.

This war on terrorism is bogus
The 9/11 attacks gave the US an ideal pretext to use force to secure its global

Michael Meacher
Saturday September 6, 2003
The Guardian

Massive attention has now been given - and rightly so - to the reasons why Britain went to war against Iraq. But far too little attention has focused on why the US went to war, and that throws light on British motives too. The conventional explanation is that after the Twin Towers were hit, retaliation against al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan was a natural first step in launching a global war against terrorism. Then, because Saddam Hussein was alleged by the US and UK governments to retain weapons of mass destruction, the war could be extended to Iraq as well. However this theory does not fit all the facts.

The truth may be a great deal murkier. We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush's younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says "while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document attributed to Wolfowitz and Libby which said the US must "discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role".

It refers to key allies such as the UK as "the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership". It describes peacekeeping missions as "demanding American political leadership rather than that of the UN". It says "even should Saddam pass from the scene", US bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently... as "Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has". It spotlights China for "regime change", saying "it is time to increase the presence of American forces in SE Asia".

The document also calls for the creation of "US space forces" to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent "enemies" using the internet against the US. It also hints that the US may consider developing biological weapons "that can target specific genotypes [and] may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool". Finally - written a year before 9/11 - it pinpoints North Korea, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes, and says their existence justifies the creation of a "worldwide command and control system".

This is a blueprint for US world domination. But before it is dismissed as an agenda for rightwing fantasists, it is clear it provides a much better explanation of what actually happened before, during and after 9/11 than the global war on terrorism thesis. This can be seen in several ways.

First, it is clear the US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad experts were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation (Daily Telegraph, September 16 2001). The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested.

It had been known as early as 1996 that there were plans to hit Washington targets with aeroplanes. Then in 1999 a US national intelligence council report noted that "al-Qaida suicide bombers could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House". Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers obtained their visas in Saudi Arabia. Michael Springman, the former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah, has stated that since 1987 the CIA had been illicitly issuing visas to unqualified applicants from the Middle East and bringing them to the US for training in terrorism for the Afghan war in collaboration with Bin Laden (BBC, November 6 2001).

It seems this operation continued after the Afghan war for other purposes. It is also reported that five of the hijackers received training at secure US military installations in the 1990s (Newsweek, September 15 2001). Instructive leads prior to 9/11 were not followed up. French Moroccan flight student Zacarias Moussaoui (now thought to be the 20th hijacker) was arrested in August 2001 after an instructor reported he showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer large airliners.

When US agents learned from French intelligence he had radical Islamist ties, they sought a warrant to search his computer, which contained clues to the September 11 mission (Times, November 3 2001). But they were turned down by the FBI. One agent wrote, a month before 9/11, that Moussaoui might be planning to crash into the Twin Towers (Newsweek, May 20 2002). All of this makes it all the more astonishing - on the war on terrorism perspective - that there was such slow reaction on September 11 itself. The first hijacking was suspected at not later than 8.20am, and the last hijacked aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania at 10.06am. Not a single fighter plane was scrambled to investigate from the US Andrews airforce base, just 10 miles from Washington DC, until after the third plane had hit the Pentagon at 9.38 am. Why not? There were standard FAA intercept procedures for hijacked aircraft before 9/11. Between September 2000 and June 2001 the US military launched fighter aircraft on 67 occasions to chase suspicious aircraft (AP, August 13 2002). It is a US legal requirement that once an aircraft has moved significantly off its flight plan, fighter planes are sent up to investigate. Was this inaction simply the result of key people disregarding, or being ignorant of, the evidence? Or could US air security operations have been deliberately stood down on September 11?

If so, why, and on whose authority? The former US federal crimes prosecutor, John Loftus, has said: "The information provided by European intelligence services prior to 9/11 was so extensive that it is no longer possible for either the CIA or FBI to assert a defence of incompetence." Nor is the US response after 9/11 any better. No serious attempt has ever been made to catch Bin Laden. In late September and early October 2001, leaders of Pakistan's two Islamist parties negotiated Bin Laden's extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for 9/11. However, a US official said, significantly, that "casting our objectives too narrowly" risked "a premature collapse of the international effort if by some lucky chance Mr Bin Laden was captured".

The US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Myers, went so far as to say that "the goal has never been to get Bin Laden" (AP, April 5 2002). The whistleblowing FBI agent Robert Wright told ABC News (December 19 2002) that FBI headquarters wanted no arrests. And in November 2001 the US airforce complained it had had al-Qaida and Taliban leaders in its sights as many as 10 times over the previous six weeks, but had been unable to attack because they did not receive permission quickly enough (Time Magazine, May 13 2002). None of this assembled evidence, all of which comes from sources already in the public domain, is compatible with the idea of a real, determined war on terrorism. The catalogue of evidence does, however, fall into place when set against the PNAC blueprint. From this it seems that the so-called "war on terrorism" is being used largely as bogus cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical objectives.

Indeed Tony Blair himself hinted at this when he said to the Commons liaison committee: "To be truthful about it, there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11" (Times, July 17 2002). Similarly Rumsfeld was so determined to obtain a rationale for an attack on Iraq that on 10 separate occasions he asked the CIA to find evidence linking Iraq to 9/11; the CIA repeatedly came back empty-handed (Time Magazine, May 13 2002). In fact, 9/11 offered an extremely convenient pretext to put the PNAC plan into action.

The evidence again is quite clear that plans for military action against Afghanistan and Iraq were in hand well before 9/11. A report prepared for the US government from the Baker Institute of Public Policy stated in April 2001 that "the US remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a destabilising influence to... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East". Submitted to Vice-President Cheney's energy task group, the report recommended that because this was an unacceptable risk to the US, "military intervention" was necessary (Sunday Herald, October 6 2002). Similar evidence exists in regard to Afghanistan. The BBC reported (September 18 2001) that Niaz Niak, a former Pakistan foreign secretary, was told by senior American officials at a meeting in Berlin in mid-July 2001 that "military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October".

Until July 2001 the US government saw the Taliban regime as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of hydrocarbon pipelines from the oil and gas fields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. But, confronted with the Taliban's refusal to accept US conditions, the US representatives told them "either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs" (Inter Press Service, November 15 2001). Given this background, it is not surprising that some have seen the US failure to avert the 9/11 attacks as creating an invaluable pretext for attacking Afghanistan in a war that had clearly already been well planned in advance.

There is a possible precedent for this. The US national archives reveal that President Roosevelt used exactly this approach in relation to Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941. Some advance warning of the attacks was received, but the information never reached the US fleet. The ensuing national outrage persuaded a reluctant US public to join the second world war. Similarly the PNAC blueprint of September 2000 states that the process of transforming the US into "tomorrow's dominant force" is likely to be a long one in the absence of "some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor".

The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the "go" button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement. The overriding motivation for this political smokescreen is that the US and the UK are beginning to run out of secure hydrocarbon energy supplies. By 2010 the Muslim world will control as much as 60% of the world's oil production and, even more importantly, 95% of remaining global oil export capacity. As demand is increasing, so supply is decreasing, continually since the 1960s.

This is leading to increasing dependence on foreign oil supplies for both the US and the UK. The US, which in 1990 produced domestically 57% of its total energy demand, is predicted to produce only 39% of its needs by 2010. A DTI minister has admitted that the UK could be facing "severe" gas shortages by 2005. The UK government has confirmed that 70% of our electricity will come from gas by 2020, and 90% of that will be imported. In that context it should be noted that Iraq has 110 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves in addition to its oil. A report from the commission on America's national interests in July 2000 noted that the most promising new source of world supplies was the Caspian region, and this would relieve US dependence on Saudi Arabia. To diversify supply routes from the Caspian, one pipeline would run westward via Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. Another would extend eastwards through Afghanistan and Pakistan and terminate near the Indian border.

This would rescue Enron's beleaguered power plant at Dabhol on India's west coast, in which Enron had sunk $3bn investment and whose economic survival was dependent on access to cheap gas. Nor has the UK been disinterested in this scramble for the remaining world supplies of hydrocarbons, and this may partly explain British participation in US military actions. Lord Browne, chief executive of BP, warned Washington not to carve up Iraq for its own oil companies in the aftermath of war (Guardian, October 30 2002).

And when a British foreign minister met Gadaffi in his desert tent in August 2002, it was said that "the UK does not want to lose out to other European nations already jostling for advantage when it comes to potentially lucrative oil contracts" with Libya (BBC Online, August 10 2002). The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the "global war on terrorism" has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project. Is collusion in this myth and junior participation in this project really a proper aspiration for British foreign policy? If there was ever need to justify a more objective British stance, driven by our own independent goals, this whole depressing saga surely provides all the evidence needed for a radical change of course. · Michael Meacher MP was environment minister from May 1997 to June 2003


http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4747953-103677,00.html

Well that changes everything.

If what you allege is actually true, then to hell with those damn foreigners, right? I should have written:


Or, ought that correction change anything else?



True

Also: Many times more guilty Afghans and Iraqis have since paid with their lives for the atrocity.

Even more innocent and guilty will pay "with their lives for the atrocity" as well as new atrocities like that. Should we do anything to minimize new atrocities like that? If so, what should we do?

Re: This war on terrorism is bogus


Britain's actual original reasons and America's actual original reasons for going to war against Iraq, whether rational or irrational, whether narrowly self-serving or broadly human serving, whether honest or dishonest, whether good or evil, are worthy of study.

However, the higher priority question is whether or not it was/is in the interest of the human race to terminate Saddam Hussein's tyrannical government and replace it with one chosen by the people of Iraq.

Which is more important? Actual Consequences or actual Intentions?

?
The intentions for the illegal, pre-emptive invasion were stated clearly. Now the intentions have been changed.


The consequences have not yet been determined.

Speaking of evil dictators read about Indonesia and the US support when you can spare 10 min. or so.

ican711nm, all innocent deaths are to be condemned. However, there remains a huge difference between the highly emotive 'thousands of Americans' and hundreds.

And why were Airforce jets not scrambled as required by law to have prevented the atrocity? And who ordered them to stand-down?

If the answer is plain and simple GROSS INCOMPETENCE, who was running America at the time? Not Bill Clinton!

Or does the Buck no longer stop at those in the White House?

To you, perhaps, there is a huge difference between thousands and hundreds of dead Americans. But not to me. The tens of Americans killed in the 1st World Trade Center attack plus those on the Destroyer Cole plus those victims of several other terrorist attacks on Americans prior to 9/11 are all just as grevous to me.



Not true! Airforce jets were scrambled as soon as the FAA's Air Traffic Control determined that each airliner was hijacked. At that point there was an understandable reluctance to shoot down these airliners because of the populations living and working below them, and because neither the FAA or the Air Force was clairvoyant about the intended objective of the hijackers of the three airliners. Thankfully, at least the Pennsylvanian flight was terminated by its own passengers over an unpopulated area.


Yes! Gross incompetence on the part of more than one administration -- especially that administratration that turned down its opportunity to incarcerate bin Laden long before 9/11. Lots of bucks stopped at the White House both before, on and after 9/11.

Which President and/or Presidential candidate is least worse?

Re: ?


No! One stated intention/objective was to change the tyrannical Saddam Hussein/Baathist regime in Iraq -- consequence: this was accomplished.

Another stated intention/objective was to replace that tyrannical regime with one that would not murder its own citizens -- this has not been accomplished, yet.

Another stated intention/objective was to obtain a replacement regime that would not murder or finance the murder of citizens of other states -- this has not been accomplished, yet.

What were the justifications for these intentions/objectives?

1. The tyrannical regime's failure to fully comply with multiple UN resolutions.
2. The tyrannical regime's alleged continuing possession of toxic chemical and biological agents that it had employed to murder its own citizens.
3. The tyrannical regime's alleged program for developing nuclear weapons capability.

The first justification was/is sufficient all by itself. The second and third justifications may yet be proven valid. It took us 8-months to find a fuzzy faced murderer in one of the many 8-foot holes he chose to hide in over that period. I suppose it's reasonable to expect that finding the 8-foot holes in which toxic agents that require neither food nor air are stashed might take a tad longer to find. Finding the scientist and engineer notebooks that provide evidence of nuclear weapons development might take even longer.



I have read about this and many other instances of US support of tyrannical regimes over the last six decades (it took me a little more than 10 minutes ). It's nice that at least now we have a US Administration that has eliminated one more tyrannical regime since World War II.

Which US Administration over that period is least worse?

Of course, we still support Morrocco, Turkey, Egypt, Uszbekistan, Azerdbajian, Israel, etc.... Yeah..way to go us. Woo.hoo!

Interesting! What evidence do you have that each and every one of the nations you listed murder their own innocent citizens and murder the innocent citizens of other nations? Also which of these nations act in their own defense to stop the murder of their own citizens.