9/11 and Iraq Connection?

[CapelDodger]

No, we already learned that from Roosevelt. What we learned from Bush is that if you invade a country which has attacked you and your allies, there will be no shortage of people to completely misrepresent the situation.

The multi-national, UN-approved assault on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan for sheltering Al-Qaeda is not widely misrepresented. It was a good thing. I loved it. The invasion of Iraq is entirely unconnected with any assault on the US. Roosevelt taught the Japanese that a direct attack on the US would lead to war. The People would demand it. The People demanded the invasion of Afghanistan. The People did not demand the invason of Iraq.

 

[CapelDodger]

That's because it violated one of the most basic principles of warfare which America should have learned from Vietnam: go in to win, or don't go in at all. What military objective did firing cruise missles achieve?

Force is used for a political purpose, military objectives are subordinate. The basic principle of warfare is : what do we want to achieve? A basic reality of warfare is that, once the military get involved, social testosterone takes over. "Our boys are out there fighting for ..." well, it might be simple survival or avoiding loss-of-face. The original purpose, if not well-defined and readily-achieved, tends to get lost.

 

[Mark]

No, we already learned that from Roosevelt. What we learned from Bush is that if you invade a country which has attacked you and your allies, there will be no shortage of people to completely misrepresent the situation.

Iraq invaded the US? When? I must have been out of town that day.

Oh, that's right; you were talking about misrepresentation.

Btw, the lesson we should have learned from Viet Nam is not to get involved in an invasion with no plan for holding on to the country. We didn't learn it.

 

[Art Vandelay]

The multi-national, UN-approved assault on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan for sheltering Al-Qaeda is not widely misrepresented.

I never said it was.

The invasion of Iraq is entirely unconnected with any assault on the US.

On what you mean by "assault".

Roosevelt taught the Japanese that a direct attack on the US would lead to war.

My point that saying that Iraq didn't participate in 9/11 is like saying that Germany didn't participate in Pearl Harbor.

Force is used for a political purpose, military objectives are subordinate.

That's the problem: the cruise missles were purely a political act. There was no American interest that was advanced.

Iraq invaded the US? When? I must have been out of town that day.

And once again, we see Mark's dishonesty.

 

[mgidm86]

Great, the everyday, average, run-of-the-mill skeptic can guess where the targets are, why can't our government, especially AFTER they've had warnings?

With all of the possible targets it would be impossible to protect them all. We would need extremely specific intelligence - flight numbers, dates, names. Of course, the chance of thwarting the attack once the planes were in the air was next to none.

How confident are you in our government, even with the Patriot Act and all the new security measures, that a group of terrorists couldn't hijack another 4 planes and do the exact same thing today? It may be more difficult but I think it is a long way from impossible. Perhaps they will attempt to hijack 10 with the hope that just one attempt is successful.

I'm goin back to the strip club thread

 

[Mark]

And once again, we see Mark's dishonesty.

You're the one who said it.

Art Vandelay

What we learned from Bush is that if you invade a country which has attacked you and your allies, there will be no shortage of people to completely misrepresent the situation.

Were you not talking about Iraq? If not, I will apologize.

 

[Art Vandelay]

I said Iraq attacked, not invaded.

 

[Mark]

I said Iraq attacked, not invaded.

OK...when did they attack us?

 

[Dcdrac]

http://web.archive.org/web/20040623011104/http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1125339.htm

The Washington Post also ran this story at the same time I recall.

Taliban told US it would give up Osama: report
United States and Taliban officials met secretly in Frankfurt almost a year before the September 11 attacks to discuss terms for the Afghans to hand over Osama bin Laden, according to a German television documentary.

No agreement was reached and no further negotiations took place before the suicide hijackings in 2001, which bin Laden subsequently hailed in a videotape as the work of his Al Qaeda network.

ZDF television quoted Kabir Mohabbat, an Afghan-American businessman, as saying he tried to broker a deal between the Americans and the purist Islamic Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, who were sheltering bin Laden.

He quoted Taliban foreign minister Mullah Wakil Ahmed Mutawakil as saying: "You can have him whenever the Americans are ready. Name us a country and we will extradite him".

A German member of the European Parliament, Elmar Brok, confirmed that he had helped Mr Mohabbat in 1999 to establish initial contact with the Americans.

"I was told [by Mohabbat] that the Taliban had certain ideas about handing over bin Laden, not to the United States but to a third country or to the Court of Justice in The Hague," Mr Brok said.

"The message was: 'There is willingness to talk about handing over bin Laden', and the aim of the Taliban was clearly to win the recognition of the American Government and the lifting of the boycott," he said, referring to the international isolation of the Taliban.

Mr Brok said he was not in a position to judge how credible the offer was but he passed it to the US ambassador to Germany, John Kornblum.

He said Mr Mohabbat was then summoned to Washington to be interviewed by US officials.

This led in turn to the German meeting, which ZDF said took place between Taliban ministers and US officials in a Frankfurt hotel in November 2000.

The documentary, broadcast on Thursday evening, said the Afghans put forward "several offers" and there was talk of holding further negotiations at the US embassy in Pakistan on where and when bin Laden would be handed over.

In fact, no more talks took place before September 11.

But negotiations did resume five days after the attacks, in the Pakistani city of Quetta, ZDF said. This meeting has been previously reported in US media.

Mr Mohabbat said the Americans pressed in Quetta for the handover of bin Laden within 24 hours, but the Taliban were unable to meet that demand.

Within weeks, US-led forces intervened in Afghanistan to drive the Taliban from power and kill, capture or disperse Al Qaeda fighters based in Afghan training camps.

Bin Laden still has not been captured.

Mr Brok said he had not personally taken part in either of the reported meetings between the Taliban and the United States but believed there had been a "political decision" not to pursue negotiations after the one in Frankfurt.

He told ZDF: "I have to say that I consider this offer [on bin Laden's handover] very much more seriously with hindsight than I did at the time".

-- Reuters

 

[Dcdrac]

http://www.infowars.com/saved pages/Prior_Knowledge/US_met_taliban.htm

Diplomats Met With Taliban on Bin Laden
Some Contend U.S. Missed Its Chance

 

[WildCat]

We HAD metal detectors in place before 9/11. If they were so effective why didn't they stop a group of men from carrying box cutters on board an airplane?

Box cutters and other small knives were not banned from airplanes pre-9/11. Does that answer your question?

 

[Ladewig]

So Bush was warned of hijjackings. What exactly was he supposed to do? I want a serious answer.

Not gone into the classroom after learning of an airplane hitting the WTC. Not sit there dumbfounded, when told of a second hit.

How about this one: he should have read the bi-partisan report on the growing threat of terrorism produced by the previous administration instead of ignoring it and deciding that Dick Cheney would write his own terrorism report when he got around to it.

 

[Mephisto]

With all of the possible targets it would be impossible to protect them all. We would need extremely specific intelligence - flight numbers, dates, names. Of course, the chance of thwarting the attack once the planes were in the air was next to none.

How confident are you in our government, even with the Patriot Act and all the new security measures, that a group of terrorists couldn't hijack another 4 planes and do the exact same thing today? It may be more difficult but I think it is a long way from impossible. Perhaps they will attempt to hijack 10 with the hope that just one attempt is successful.

I'm goin back to the strip club thread

It certainly would have been great to have all that intelligence beforehand, but the fact remains, we were given warnings that weren't heeded or taken seriously and 3,000 people died. This is because this administration was too busy trumping up "evidence" of WMD to pay closer attention to the actual threat. They blamed intelligence failure or inadequacy for the lack of WMD, but they took no action whatsoever when they DID have intelligence pointing to a probable attack.

The targets shouldn't have been that difficult to figure out - the WTC (which had been attacked before), the White House and Pentagon are certainly the most likely targets, so anything flying over, near or around those buildings could have been suspect (meaning it was less likely that a flight from L.A. would have been hijacked).

I'm actually not comfortable at all with the Patriot Act, and I think that legislation will be used to turn an eye inwards rather than looking for actual threats. Besides, they ignored intelligence once before, and blamed faulty intelligence for the lack of WMD, who is to say that even with accurate intelligence and ample time they will act appropriately. Until then, I guess our security relies on little old ladies taking off their shoes in airports, and Arabs securing our seaports.

 

[Mephisto]

Box cutters and other small knives were not banned from airplanes pre-9/11. Does that answer your question?

Well, let's just suppose you're an airport security officer working at a gate. Three or four middle eastern men come through your station and they're all carrying box cutters, would YOU personally be suspicious or just write them off as attending some sort of warehouse convention?

Maybe you can tell me what we're looking for when the make little old Jewish ladies from Florida take off their shoes before going through the gate?

Also, what gives with the relaxing of the items banned from airplanes? Is a box cutter more dangerous than a pair of scissors?

 

[Carn]

Well, let's just suppose you're an airport security officer working at a gate. Three or four middle eastern men come through your station and they're all carrying box cutters, would YOU personally be suspicious or just write them off as attending some sort of warehouse convention?

Maybe you can tell me what we're looking for when the make little old Jewish ladies from Florida take off their shoes before going through the gate?

Isn't the point, that metal detectors back then and now are unable to detect small metal items in shoes?
The reason that nobody cared was, that nobody supected, that one could hide something in a shoe, that is enough to hijack a plane. That was obviously a dire mistake, done by all security services, police forces and politicians in every country around the world.

Everybody learned that specific lesson, so today old Jewish ladies from Florida have to take off their shoes.

What are you talking about?

Carn

 

[Mephisto]

Isn't the point, that metal detectors back then and now are unable to detect small metal items in shoes?
The reason that nobody cared was, that nobody supected, that one could hide something in a shoe, that is enough to hijack a plane. That was obviously a dire mistake, done by all security services, police forces and politicians in every country around the world.

Everybody learned that specific lesson, so today old Jewish ladies from Florida have to take off their shoes.

What are you talking about?

Carn

Funny, I thought little old ladies were having to take off their shoes because of this:

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0UBT/is_48_15/ai_81228512
_______

Still, I believe that metal sensors in airports detect metals of a certain density (and I believe the sensitivity levels are adjustable) and a knife or a razor certainly falls into the same category as a gun (there are handguns that are mostly ABS plastic, btw). I don't know how anyone could find out if the box cutters the hijackers carried were plastic with metal blades, or all metal construction, but considering our laughable airport security before 9/11 (it's not much better now), I'd be willing to bet an airport security officer could be convinced they worked with the Port Authority inspecting packages.

I guess my point is; no amount of technical advantages (i.e. X-ray, metal detectors, image recognition, etc.) in a security situation are going to help if someone isn't suspicious. Even pre-9/11, several Middle-Eastern men boarding almost simultaneous flights on the east coast with box cutters in their pockets isn't suspicious, right?

The problem was we were complacent. Now, we've been told that scissors and long-(rule 8)ing knitting needles are okay! I practice a martial art with Muslim roots and can't begin to tell you how dangerous either can be

I think we're still complacent regarding our security. Until we toss political-correctness aside long enough to treat everyone equally, but realize that Mrs. Goldstein isn't as likely to be a terrorist as a young Middle-Eastern man, we'll be didi-bopping along when it happens the next time. For the record, I am searched nearly everytime I travel. I don't mind, however, I am fairly dark-skinned and look more Middle-Eastern than Mrs. Goldstein does so I accept it and welcome it.

Not taking the security of our country seriously doesn't cut it. Relaxing constraints on items allowed onboard aircraft doesn't cut it. NSA wiretapping of U.S. citizens doesn't cut it - you won't find out anything more than you would have if you'd noticed several Middle-Eastern men (some stating they didn't need to know how to land) taking flight lessons or carrying box cutters. Putting business before security and handing our seaports over to the UAE doesn't cut it. Starting wars in countries unrelated to 9/11 doesn't cut it (remember Bin Laden?). Making boldfaced lies like, "We do not torture," while maintaining secret prisons doesn't cut it, it only gives terrorists more reason to hate us and more likely to attack us.

I guess it all boils down to one thing, do YOU feel safer?

 

[Art Vandelay]

OK...when did they attack us?

Are you seriously claiming that you are unaware that Iraq repeatedly attacked US planes?

 

[Art Vandelay]

Let's face it, this is Cheney's administration already, and always has been. It was he that wanted to make war in Iraq from the minute they were elected in 2000.

Yes, and what we've learned from Bush is if you attack America, we'll invade some other country which had nothing to do with it and get lots of the good guys and gals killed in the process.

I'm posting this in both threads to highlight the Left's inconsistency.

 

[DavidJames]

I'm posting this in both threads to highlight the Left's inconsistency.

There is nothing inconsistent. HGC believes Cheney wanted to make war with Iraq "from the minute they were elected in 2000." I pointed out the excuse they used to carry it out.

That just basic reading comprehension Art.

 

[Art Vandelay]

You didn't claim it was an excuse. You claimed that it was a consequence. You clearly implied that if it weren't for 9/11, Bush wouldn't have invaded Iraq. That's just basic reading comprehension.