THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ, ELEVENTH THREAD

I just want to make it clear, that you are alledging that significant percentages of the Muslim population here in America would support and shelter terrorists who planned on attacking America, in spectacular fashion.
...
Cycloptichorn

Are you not aware of the large Muslim population in the US? I doubt you know enough about their range of views about al-Qaeda to justify your comment, "No such group exists here in America".

ican, Your sweeping generalizations that most, if not all, Muslims are potential terrorists are about as bigoted as one can be.
...

Ican,

The baseline state for Americans - and this is based on observation of their past behavior, not just some theory - is to not support groups such as AQ and give them shelter, money and comfort. And there's no evidence that the Muslim community here in America is likely to do so either.

If you have evidence that they are likely to do so, present evidence. Otherwise there is no reason to believe that they are any different then the baseline.

Cycloptichorn

ican: Yes, I deny this! Are you not aware of the large Muslim population in the US? I doubt you know enough about their range of views about al-Qaeda to justify your comment, "No such group exists here in America".

Your inference is clear; you are a bigoted fool.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Ican,

The baseline state for Americans - and this is based on observation of their past behavior, not just some theory - is to not support groups such as AQ and give them shelter, money and comfort. And there's no evidence that the Muslim community here in America is likely to do so either.

If you have evidence that they are likely to do so, present evidence. Otherwise there is no reason to believe that they are any different then the baseline.

Cycloptichorn

What is your evidence to support your "baseline" claim? I thought some of the prisoners in our jails and prisons were people who gave shelter, money and comfort to various groups of bad guys.


By the way, I do recall the 19, 9/11 terrorists obtained their money from outside the US and used it to buy themselves training, boxcutters, transportation, shelters, and comforts that were provided by businesses such as flight schools, hardware stores, motels/hotels, restaurants, night clubs ... who had no idea what kind of people they were serving.

07.17.07 -- 10:35PM // link
Big Picture

Let me return one more time, at least for today, to this issue of who's al Qaeda and who's not. Obviously, at one level it is simply a semantic question. And it can seem like a lot of ink to spill on a point of words and definitions when so much carnage and controversy are unfolding before our eyes. So it is worth stepping back to see just what the big deal is and how it plays into our predicament in Iraq and how we might get our way out.

Beginning in the months just after 9/11 and ever since the president and his deputies have tried to float their foreign policy on the shock, fear and desire for revenge spawned by the 9/11 attacks. The first signs (though these weren't clear in their details at the time) came in the decision to pull troops away from the hunt for bin Laden himself in late 2002 in order to ready them for the assault on Iraq little more than a year later. There we have the kernel of deception which is like the original sin of the Iraq War and, because of that, keeps coming resurfacing again and again. The claim that attacking Iraq was attacking the people who attacked the United States on 9/11, that the two things were related in anything more than a mental figment.

So at the outset it was that Iraq and al Qaeda are connected and either did attack us together (as Dick Cheney frequently suggested) or could in the future (as everyone else did). Then the beginnings of the insurgency were not a problem because we were drawing al Qaeda into Iraq to fight them on our own terms. Then we couldn't leave Iraq because doing so would hand it over to al Qaeda.

As the cycle progressed there was an mounting tendency for the administration to argue that we could not abandon its policies precisely because of the scope of the failure of those policies up to the present point -- a veritable perpetual motion machine of disaster and incompetence. But setting that aside, the enduring pattern has been for the White House to ask us to make our decisions about Iraq not based on what is happening in Iraq but on what happened in New York and Washington on 9/11.

Don't look at Iraq to make this decision, look at the Twin Towers. That's been the administration strategy for over five years. So when we see the scam popping up in a slightly different guise, even if it requires getting deep into the weeds and raising an alarm over key points of word choice and emphasis, then we simply must do so. Because this is the original sin, the founding deceit upon which everything has been built and from which the entire catastrophe followed.

--Josh Marshall

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/015494.php

Quote:

07.17.07 -- 10:35PM // link
BAs the cycle progressed there was an mounting tendency for the administration to argue that we could not abandon its policies precisely because of the scope of the failure of those policies up to the present point -- a veritable perpetual motion machine of disaster and incompetence. But setting that aside, the enduring pattern has been for the White House to ask us to make our decisions about Iraq not based on what is happening in Iraq but on what happened in New York and Washington on 9/11.


--Josh Marshall

Cycloptichorn

For years, the Bush administration has lived in fear of this moment. The formal consensus view of the U.S. intelligence community is that Pakistan's federally administrated tribal areas ("FATA" is the new jargon-y acronym, natch) is al-Qaeda's new "safehaven," where the al-Qaeda Senior Leadership (similarly, AQSL) is reconstituting its "Homeland attack capability." Now comes the hard question: what to do about it?

Frances Fragos Townsend, President Bush's chief homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, gave an answer that was at least honest in its straightforward obfuscation. The administration has a two-fold strategy: first, rely on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf; and second, pray.

OK, so Townsend could have given a better answer than saying Iraq is the center of the war on terrorism because... Bush says it is. (And because bin Laden is "clear" about believing the same thing -- of course, were I bin Laden, I'd want to tie the U.S. down in Iraq, far away from where I am and what I'm plotting. But anyway.)

When considering a global, decentralized network (or movement, if you prefer), it's misleading to suggest that there's a single, fixed "center" that would mean the destruction of the network if defeated. But the effort to avoid affixing special significance on Pakistan arises for a simple reason: neither the administration nor its critics is prepared to invade Pakistan. Even the infiltration of special forces and intelligence assets into the area is potentially destabilizing. Bush once said before 9/11, when casting doubt on a Richard Clarke-authored plan to go after al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, that he didn't want to "swat at flies." In Pakistan, fly-swatting is the most anyone has proposed against a well-entrenched AQSL. Welcome back to 2001, when the most robust option against a looming al-Qaeda threat is exactly the one that remains unthinkable.

That leaves the U.S. with just one choice: backing Pervez Musharraf. Townsend attempted to shift away from the conclusion that Musharraf is the central figure in the South Asian theater of the war on terrorism, but it could hardly be otherwise. Until the U.S. is prepared to risk the destabilization of Pakistan by moving U.S. and allied troops into the FATA, there's little other option except getting Musharraf, already on shaky political ground, to clamp down on the area. This is where we are after six years, two wars, 4,000 U.S. troop deaths and around half a trillion dollars -- except with exhausted military resources and far more recruits for al-Qaeda.

The White House faced fresh political peril yesterday in the form of a new intelligence assessment that raised sharp questions about the success of its counterterrorism strategy and judgment in making Iraq the focus of that effort.

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush has been able to deflect criticism of his counterterrorism policy by repeatedly noting the absence of any new domestic attacks and by citing the continuing threat that terrorists in Iraq pose to U.S. interests.

But this line of defense seemed to unravel a bit yesterday with the release of a new National Intelligence Estimate that concludes that al-Qaeda "has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability" by reestablishing a haven in Pakistan and reconstituting its top leadership. The report also notes that al-Qaeda has been able "to recruit and indoctrinate operatives, including for Homeland attacks," by associating itself with an Iraqi subsidiary.

My hypotheses are not what you keep trying to make them. My hypotheses are IF AMERICA LEAVES IRAQ BEFORE SUCCEEDING:

(1) Al-Qaeda WOULD train at least 340 suicidal mass murderers per year each capable of killing at least 150 American non-murderers;

(2) Al-Qaeda WOULD train at least 340 suicidal mass murderers per year to enter America;

(3) Al-Qaeda WOULD enter at least 340 suicidal mass murderers per year into America.

and, (4) The average number of American non-murderers that WOULD be killed each year by each one of those recruited 340 would be at least 150.


MATHEMATICAL IMPLICATIONS OF MY HYPOTHESES.

If my hypotheses are true and we leave Iraq before we succeed in Iraq, then after that at least 51,000 American non-murders will be murdered per year by al-Qaeda suicidal mass murderers (i.e., 340 x 150 = 51,000).