As long as it is my enemy's blood (none / 0) (#96)
by jimakaPPJ on Fri Oct 26, 2007 at 02:20:21 PM EST
I wear it with pride.

In a global economy where corporations and investors are free to wire their money from Mexico City to Liberia, I believe a laborer must also be free to move to where the wages are highest.

Let's look at some historical facts:

December 5, 2001 By MANSOOR IJAZ
President Clinton and his national security team ignored several opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden and his terrorist associates, including one as late as last year.
I know because I negotiated more than one of the opportunities.

That would have been in the year 2000.

LA Times

Bill Clinton denies it now, but he once admitted he passed up an opportunity to extradite Osama bin Laden.

And NewsMax has the former President making the claim on audiotape. [You can listen to the tape yourself] -- Click Here

Link to site and then lick on the link to hear Clinton claim that he didn't think he had a reason to arrest him. HAHAHAHAAHA

What did Clinton's NSA, Richard Clarke say?

Second point is that the Clinton administration had a strategy in place, effectively dating from 1998. And there were a number of issues on the table since 1998. And they remained on the table when that administration went out of office -- issues like aiding the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, changing our Pakistan policy -- uh, changing our policy toward Uzbekistan. And in January 2001, the incoming Bush administration was briefed on the existing strategy. They were also briefed on these series of issues that had not been decided on in a couple of years.

So Clinton did nothing about al-Qaida because they couldn't aid the Northern Alliance because they couldn't work with Pakistan. Ergo. OBL had a free ride and hiding place courtesy of Bill Clinton's policies and his failures.

So, what did Bush do when he came into office? Did he dither? No. Again from Clinton's NSA:

So, point five, that process which was initiated in the first week in February (2001), uh, decided in principle, uh in the spring to add to the existing Clinton strategy and to increase CIA resources, for example, for covert action, five-fold, to go after Al Qaeda.

And then changed the strategy from one of rollback with Al Qaeda over the course of five years, which it had been, to a new strategy that called for the rapid elimination of Al Qaeda. That is in fact the timeline.

QUESTION: When was that presented to the president?

CLARKE: Well, the president was briefed throughout this process

When President Bush told us in March to stop swatting at flies and just solve this problem, then that was the strategic direction that changed the NSPD from one of rollback to one of elimination.

Richard Clarke Link

Now. Let's remember the August 8 PDB that the Left   likes to make so much about. The problem is, all of that was old news:

"At the special meeting on July 5 (2001) were the FBI, Secret Service, FAA, Customs, Coast Guard, and Immigration. We told them that we thought a spectacular al Qaeda terrorist attack was coming in the near future." That had been had been George Tenet's language. "We asked that they take special measures to increase security and surveillance. Thus, the White House did ensure that domestic law enforcement including the FAA knew that the CSG believed that a major al Qaeda attack was coming, and it could be in the U.S., and did ask that special measures be taken."

Link

Guess your schooling missed that, eh?? You complain, but what a reasonable person will come away from that is that the Clinton Administration could have picked up OBL and aided/attacked the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan but didn't because of problems with Pakistan that had existed for over two years and a failure to understand the threat. Put another way, they took a law enforcement approach that said we have to be attacked before we can respond.

That doesn't work with terrorists. That "stand and wait" philosophy led straight to 9/11 and enabled the terrorists.

The same reasonable person will see a President who was immediately engaged with the problem and increased resources and told his staff to get busy and fix the problem.

And they will also see a President who had his NSA call all of the security agencies together and warn them, just over two months prior to 9/11, that an attack was expected.

See Rovie? You don't know the history, just what your buds have been telling you.

Now. On top your other false claims.

I also like the way you despise freedom of speech

Provide some proof. You can't and you know it. So what you have done is make another false claim.

And then you launch into attacking the country:

And yes, clearly the US has committed acts that compare to those of Pol Pot, Stalin and Hitler, if not in number, then certainly in type.

heh. So your contention is that bombing in Germany and Japan was the same as Pol Pot killing people who wore glasses. Or Stalin's forced resettlement of the millions of peasant farmers. Or Hitler's killing of 6 million Jews.

The bombing was to do two things:

1. Reduce their ability to wage war by destroying factories and infrastructure.

2. Thus ending the war sooner and save the lives of the Allied soldiers who were engaged in trying to get rid of Hitler.

Or do you even care about them?

I find your blather regarding the NA's and blacks instructive of your general level of understanding. Watch my lips.

None of us existing today are responsible for anything, bad or good, done by our ancestors. To claim otherwise is to believe that Time Travel exists and we are continually going back in time to do evil things.

I find your attempt to place blame on us illogical but demonstrable of the self-blame culture so prevalent among many on the Left.

But to help you get a better understanding of the situation I recommend you get a copy of a book titled, "The Contested Plains." The author's name(s) escapes me, but it was published by the University of Kansas Press.

If your school's library doesn't have it, check with your local high school.

You will find that among the excellent points it makes is that the NA's terrorities were poorly defined and subject to change quite easily. In fact, the tribes had been displacing each other for some 10,000 years.

On a personal basis I think it plain that the NA's ran into another society/culture that was very aggressive and more technological advanced that wanted what the NA's had. And took it.

Just as we will be displaced and our culture lost if we continue with self-hatred and don't defend our borders and cultures.

And then we come to this.

If you think that the US is so weak that words spoken by a politician

You claim to be a history major, yet you apparently have no understanding of how the morale of the troops and the enemy is affected by words. Especially words of supposed leaders.

So let's look at Vietnam, and how the actions of the Left were treasured by  North Vietnam:

Bui Tin, a former colonel in the North Vietnamese army, answers these questions in the following excerpts from an interview conducted by Stephen Young,  a Minnesota attorney and human-rights activist  [in The Wall Street Journal, 3 August 1995]. Bui Tin, who served on the general staff of North Vietnam's army, received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975

Q: Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi's victory?
A:  It was essential to our strategy.  Support of the war from our rear was completely secure  while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m.  to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement.  Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence  that we should hold on  in the face of battlefield reverses.

Link

Now. To the war. Unlike that noted warrior and military guru, Harry Reid, I make no great claim as to what I "know." But I do think I know more than you, and I certainly know that Reid's comments, and Durbin's and all of the other "we lost - we bad" comments are studied closely by the leaders of the Radical Moslem Terrorists. Just as the comments of the war protesters and lily livered politicians were watched by the leaders of the North Vietnamese.

Again, a reasonable person would say that if the North Vietnamese were encouraged by such statements, then so are the Radical Moslem Terrorists.

Can we overcome this handicap and win?

I think we can. The surge is working, and deaths are down. As I type this I heard on the TV that for the first time since the war started there were no deaths in Anbar Province. But, I again don't claim to be an expert.

Was that elite school you attended West Point? Naval Academy? Air Force Academy?

As to your:

You were a naval aviator

Yes. I was in Naval Aviation for 10 years. I have made no other comment about my service.

Again. Did you serve?

Finally, I am not a Repub or a conservative. I am an Independent who is a Social Liberal. My comments in support of national health care, gay rights, minority rights, tax reform, drug law reform, etc are well documented in the archives of this blog. I am also a strong believer in national defense and understand that we are engaged in a long war with an aggressive, intelligent and violent enemy who is motivated by a warped view of the Islamic religion. I oppose Bush's social polices but support his war efforts 110%.

BTW - I note you never provide any links to information that support your points.

History shows that those that do not are not paid a lot of attention.

That was the context. What would happen to a WWII Demo Senator should he remove an American Flag lapel pin.

As does this:

Posted by Squeaky at September 19, 2005 11:19 PM
Rove never needed proof for his smear machine, why should I.

;-)