Post #151,394
4/16/04 10:14:40 AM
|

Ok. Call it what you want.
But put simply a well organized and well funded group declared war (def >jihad<) against the United States.
We, in traditional fashion, tried to arrest them.
So far, we're short a few 767s and a couple of very large buildings.
No they don't have a border or a constitution or a patch of land to carpet bomb.
But "war footing" is not a replacement for "at war" either. It is as much a state of mind by the people in this country. That state of mind is that there are certain people who are not going to be afforded a public attorney before they are whacked and we damn well better be prepared for it.
Bombing a pill factory and a barren patch of desert because "thats all the polls will support" is NOT going to solve the problem.
Call it whatever the fuck you want, but wandering over with a badge and a snub-nosed 38 and saying "yer unda arrest, pardner" is NOT gonna work. You'll have all the folks crying once you get him here about how his "rights" have been violated, and how we have to make sure that he is treated fairly and given access to the best attorneys (if the turbin don't fit, you must acquit!).
Aiding is also a crime. So how do you arrest the sitting government of several nations that actively support these criminals?
Maybe we should all just sit together and sing kumbayah.
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
|
Post #151,395
4/16/04 10:36:04 AM
|

We are (used to be?) a nation of laws, beep.
Do try to remember that. CR is correct. This was not a "declaration of war". This was a criminal act of mass murder. Immediately after the fact, we had a choice:
1) Leverage the world-wide sympathy we had to illicit the help of the world's criminal investigative powers to root out the co-conspirators, bring them here, try them, convict them and send them to prison for the rest of their lives (similar to what we had done during the Millenium threat and the first group of thugs that tried to blow up the WTC).
-OR-
2) We could become just like the terrorists we were trying to capture while simultaneously alienating almost the entire world in the process.
Guess which one we did?
|
Post #151,397
4/16/04 10:39:20 AM
|

I don't think you get it either.
you cannot threaten someone willing to DIE with life in prison.
The fact they they can kill several thousand that then get 3 squares and 100k a year to support them with free cable...yeah baby!!!
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
|
Post #151,398
4/16/04 10:41:35 AM
|

Whose threatening?
I'm talking about getting them behind bars so that they can plot no more.
Or does your protest, as I LARGELY suspect, have more to do with an infantile "I gotta hit 'em back" attitude than it does with making us a safer, more humane and more respectable place?
|
Post #151,437
4/16/04 2:01:17 PM
4/16/04 2:02:57 PM
|

I dunno, BeeP
Putting a martyr-wannabee behind bars for-basically-ever, and making sure they can't ever become martyrs strikes me as being a death worse than fate, and wholly appropriate punishment.
(And the occasional boo-foo would surely add insult to injury, as well.)
jb4 shrub\ufffdbish (Am., from shrub + rubbish, after the derisive name for America's 43 president; 2003) n. 1. a form of nonsensical political doubletalk wherein the speaker attempts to defend the indefensible by lying, obfuscation, or otherwise misstating the facts; GIBBERISH. 2. any of a collection of utterances from America's putative 43rd president. cf. BULLSHIT

Edited by jb4
April 16, 2004, 02:02:57 PM EDT
|
Post #151,465
4/16/04 4:51:36 PM
|

Depends on what you regard prison AS.
Do you think of it as a place of rehabilitation, a place of restraint, or a place where you exact your revenge?
Peter [link|http://www.debian.org|Shill For Hire] [link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal] [link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Blog]
|
Post #151,464
4/16/04 4:50:37 PM
|

Declare war then.
Until then, accept that you're indulging in bilateral (UK + US) armed conflict.
But you ain't at war. No way, no how. Who are you declaring WAR on?
And we're not on a war footing, either; that means conscription, and all the shit that goes with that.
Whine all you like, but the evidence (huge contracts awarded to American companies (Halliburton, for one)) indicates that the reason we're in Iraq is pure and simple business.
Peter [link|http://www.debian.org|Shill For Hire] [link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal] [link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Blog]
|
Post #151,485
4/16/04 6:53:07 PM
|

war IS a business, when has it not been?
All you euros for centuries trudging up and down the continent killing each other ever since you found out the buggers over the hill have something you want. thanx, bill
"You're just like me streak. You never left the free-fire zone.You think aspirins and meetings and cold showers are going to clean out your head. What you want is God's permission to paint the trees with the bad guys. That wont happen big mon." Clete questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
|