Except for Barack Obama, and perhaps Rep Ron Paul and Rep Dennis Kucinich, every other politician has basically said that the use of nuclear weapons is an option.

So what the politicians are really saying is, if the enemy kills our children in a nuclear strike, we will retaliate and kill their children by the tens of thousands in a nuclear strike.

With that kind of attitude among civilized American politicians, is it surprising that we read about Iraqi suicide bombers, who might have experienced the deaths of their own family members, not caring about who they kill ?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: loveverybody,

Viewed from a military perspective, the Iraq War has been a fiasco from day one. The repeated failure of our elected civilian leadership to meet the uniformed service chiefs' requirements for success in Iraq has been inexcusable. Much of the ordeal of occupation could have been avoided if only adequate resources and troop levels had been allocated to our mission from "day one". By ignoring military realities on the ground in Iraq, policy makers have done a great disservice to our men and women in uniform, keeping them in harm's way without either the resources or force levels adequate to the task. In my opinion, that is the major crime of Iraq.

SO WHAT MOTIVATED THE HIJACKERS ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 ?

Radical people usually appear after some
kind of calamity like a war.........

.....and that is the reason
why war should be avoided if at all possible......

...the reason why radical people appear after a war
or famine or some other disaster is because when society is basically destroyed its so much easier for some paranoid or angry person to be able to recruit from the suffering or angry population.......

... that is how bin laden had been able to recruit.......

.....Bin Laden recruited those 19 hijackers (who killed 3000 americans) by showing them propaganda videos of how America supported the Lebanese "christians" in the killing of innocent muslims during the Lebanese civil war,

how America supplied weapons to israel who in turn used those very weapons to collaterally kill innocent palestinian women and children (because tanks and military jets are imprecise in targeting),

Bin Laden also probably showed the 19 hijackers, videos of the UN reports on how iraqi children were dying due to American sanctions during the 90s,

and Bin Laden might also have shown them how the CIA overthrew a democratically elected government in Iran in the 50s and replacing that government with the Shah who reigned terror on iranian dissidents

and Bin Laden probably showed the hijackers, propaganda videos of how the US military presence in Saudi Arabia during the 90s actually supported the unislamic hedonistic lifestyle of the rulers of Saudi Arabia

and last but not least, Bin Laden probably showed them videos of how he tried to get US troops out of Saudi Arabia during the 90s to no avail and that he had no choice but to attack the US homeland itself to try to get the US troops out of Saudi Arabia.........

..If not for the September 11, 2001 attacks, the US would still be having US troops in Saudi Arabia to this day,

but after about 13 years of US troops present in Saudi Arabia and several Al-Qaida attacks to get the US troops out of Saudi Arabia, the US finally announced in 2003, that US troops were no longer needed in Saudi Arabia and finally after 13 years in Saudi Arabia, the US pulled out.

If the US was never military involved in the Middle East or if wars had never taken place in the Middle East, a person like Bin Laden could never have inspired anybody to carry out the devastating attacks on September 11 , 2001.

Every bad person in history has usually risen to power due to war or some kind of intense political oppression from the rulers of the land.

If we want to avoid having future bin ladens and hitlers from rising to power, we need to avoid wars and we need to greatly enhance the power of the CIA to stop bad people from ever becoming powerful and we do it through covert actions and other non-war actions.............

........any feedback would be much appreciated

PS.........Timothy McVeigh knew very well that there was a day care in the oklahoma city building and yet he bombed the Oklahoma City building in 1995 and he got radicalized by watching the way the US government violently treated the people in Waco and Ruby Ridge and Timothy McVeigh was not even in a war zone at the time,

so can you imagine how people in war zones can easily be radicalized when they see their own children being blown to pieces or their loved ones being maimed for life.........so much so they do not care who they kill in revenge and that is why we see shias and sunnis killing each other in Iraq............WAR CAN BRING OUT THE WORST IN PEOPLE

MrSinatra wrote:
the problem with that is the following:
1. you are saying that by HELPING Afghanistan and Iraq fight communists, which is what THEY WANTED US TO DO, we created al queda.
thats stupid.

comment :

I never said we created Al-Qaida.

Blow back is a CIA term.

Blow back means the unintended consequences of actions taken.

Since when do we do the bidding of others, especially the bidding of dictators like Saddam Hussein and the terrorist Mujaheddin in Soviet Afghanistan ?

The US has almost always acted in its own self interests and pushing back communism was one of those ill conceived interests.

By helping the terrorist Mujaheddin in Soviet Afghanistan, we were actually creating blow back.

We should never be involved in helping others commit violence against anybody, even if it is against the Soviets, just like we are now wisely persuading the Iranians not to help the Iraqi insurgency to commit violence against US troops.

And we are wisely persuading Turkey not to invade Northern Iraq to get rid of the terrorists PKK

Like I said before, in the 25 years of my life, I was neither pro-war or anti-war and then after 911, I began to study what motivated those who attacked us on 911 and I came to the conclusion that the CIA's blow back term is a reality

and that by proliferating weapons, using or encouraging violence, the US has reaped the consequences.

Helping anybody through violence in the extreme, which is what war is, creates chaos of unimaginable proportions, not only in the form of blow back but the collateral damage that kills and maims and deforms and paralyzes for life innocent kids and babies


MrSinatra wrote:

the number one cause for creating al queda imo, was/is our support of Israel. should we not support Israel simply b/c of that? answer that question.


comment :

We know that Osama was never really into the Palestinian cause because he went to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan and not the Israelis in Palestine, even though his partner in crime was a Palestinian by the name of Abdallah Azzam.

Osama Bin Laden's hatred for American foreign policy started in the early 80s due to the American involvement in the Lebanese civil war in which America was perceived to have taken sides with Israel and the phalange "christians" who massacred innocent arab civilians and kids.

American military support of Israel started in the 60s, so if America's support of Israel was the main cause of creating of Al-Qaida, than one should conclude that Osama's hatred would have started at least in the 70s when he was a teenager, but why did he wait till he was in his twenties before mentioning America's support of Israel in the early 80s

and why did he have to wait till after the US established bases in Saudi Arabia to launch his decade long terrorist campaign in the 90s to get US troops out of Saudi Arabia ?

So if Israel were the main reason for the formation of Al-Qaida, Osama would have created Al-Qaida in the 80s and launched attacks against the US in the 80s..

But the US bases in Saudi Arabia was the " main or crucial straw that broke the camel's back" and all of Al-Qaida's attacks came after the US military presence in Saudi Arabia and secondarily because of US military aid to Israel that started in the 60s.

Off course, Osama Bin Laden did mention US military aid to Israel as one reason for his attacks on the US, but it definitely is not the main reason

and if the US had not had its base in Saudi Arabia, the attacks on 911 would not have happened because secondary reasons is not motivation enough to go after the US, because if secondary reasons were actually the main reason, the US attacks would have started in the 80s and Osama would have been in Palestine attacking Israel.

and the attacks on 911 happened only after a decade long terrorist campaign to get US troops out of Saudi Arabia to no avail and if not for the 911 attacks, US troops will still be in Saudi Arabia today.

lastly, Osama in his 1998 declaration of war on the US, mentions only US bases in Saudi Arabia and he reiterated the religious communities call in 1991 for the withdrawal of US military assets from Saudi Arabia. Here is an excerpt from the 1998 fatwa :

This Fatwa from the religious scholars of Afghanistan, which calls for the ejection of the American forces from the Land of the Two Holy Mosques, is the same Fatwa that the religious scholars and the truthful students of religion issued ( in 1991) when these forces entered the country. At the forefront of those who wrote the Fatwa were Shaykh Salman al'Awdah and Shaykh Safr al-Hawali. They and their brethren broke out the truth, at a time when others were talking falsely and influencing others to deviate from the truth. They have willingly paid the price of their truthfulness. The Saudi regime threw them into the darkness of prisons, an act intended to wipe out the truth and to hide the facts from the nation.
........ These forces were forces of flagrant occupation, nothing more and nothing less. Allah - Glory be to Him - wanted nothing but to uncover the conspiracy of the Saudi regime and the other conspirators around it. ......... The circle of interest in this matter by the nation of Islam is still growing day by day, both inside and outside the Arabian peninsula.
The last homily of the Imam of the Prophet's Holy Mosque was nothing but a model for expressing the level of rejection that the nations feel about the presence of the infidels. In his homily, the Imam of the mosque displayed the truth about the religious animosity of the Americans towards the Muslims, the level of influence of the Jews in America, the refusal of the Muslims to the presence of the American forces, and the necessity of forcing them out. .......The Prophet's last wish, may Allah's prayers and peace be upon him, is to drive the Jews and the Christians out of the Arabian peninsula, and this must be acted on.
Regarding the allegations that these forces came for peaceful purposes to help the inhabitants of the region, he said, "The security of the region is for the nations of the region, and that is their right. The large countries are the cause of problems and instability in the region, and they are the ones that create the incidents. They show up every time there is an incident under the pretense that they will improve the situation and eliminate the danger, yet they are the biggest danger of all. How can the fox be the shepherd for the sheep?We have backed the Fatwas of the imprisoned Shaykhs before,.............
On their behalf,
Usamah bin Muhammad bin Ladin (end of excerpt)



As for supporting Israel, we should be supporting everybody in the Middle East including Israel, but not militarily.

The US should not be in the business of proliferating weapons (of mass destruction) of any kind in the middle east or any other part of the world.

It is simply cruel to supply weapons and those same weapons are used by those governments in which innocent civilians and kids and babies are collaterally killed and the blame is directed at the US for having supplied the weapons.


MrSinatra wrote:

if you look at all the official video tapes from Al-Qaida, they mention Israel, but not as the sole cause of their jihad activities against the US. You notice that Al-Qaida was created inn
2. the second reason is that when we defended Kuwait from Iraq, we based in Saudi Arabia.


comment :

If Israel is ever mentioned, its to reinforce the fact that the US has been military involved in the middle east, but in the above official declaration of war, Israel is not even mentioned.

If Israel is the main reason, Israel would have been mentioned as the main reason in both the 1991 fatwa and the 1998 fatwa, but the presence of US military assets and personnel in Saudi Arabia resulted in the urgent fatwas in both 1991 and reiterated in 1998, while the terrorist campaign started in 1992, and continued on and off for about ten years, in order to underscore that Al-Qaida was serious about getting the US out of Saudi Arabia.


MrSinatra wrote:

should we not have done that simply b/c of al queda? do we let al queda dictate our foreign policy?


comment :

Violence through war is never the answer.

How can the US justify kicking out one dictator from Kuwait, only to be replaced by another dictatorship ?

The emir of the Al Sabbah family , rich beyond belief, who ran Kuwait, lived in an opulent palace with a lot of gold trimmings. There never was, a democratic government in Kuwait. The tribe, the family, the dynasty run Kuwait.

After the Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait,
Amnesty International appealed to the emir of Kuwait to intervene personally to end the massive human rights violations taking place in Kuwait after the Iraqi withdrawal.

An Amnesty delegation visited Kuwait from March 28 to April 9, 1991 and documented hundreds of arbitrary arrests, torture, and killings carried out first by Kuwaiti resistance fighters and then by people identifying themselves as Kuwaiti armed forces personnel.

"Their [the human rights violations'] scale and persistence threaten to leave an indelible stain on Kuwait's human rights record. This is all the more lamentable in light of hopes that the kind of violations that occurred under the Iraqi occupation would be a thing of the past, " Amnesty International stated.

"Victims have been gunned down in public or taken away, tortured and killed in secret, " the report concluded. "Hundreds of victims were plucked from their homes, taken from streets or arrested at checkpoints, many to be tortured in police stations, schools and other makeshift detention centers." (end of excerpt)

No, we do not let Al-Qaida dictate our foreign policies but we should listen to the aspirations of the religious communities in Saudi Arabia and the main religious leaders in Saudi Arabia (who were not under the control of the corrupt and despotic Saudi dictatorship) those religious leaders and communities were against the deployment of US forces in Saudi Arabia.

The US should use the CIA to get an accurate feedback from citizens and not rely on the word of dictators and one reason the US never knew that 911 was coming was because the CIA never accurately knew about the aspirations of the people in the middle east due to the CIA's heavy reliance on the words of dictators, despots and shady war mongering characters.


MrSinatra wrote:

the Saudi gov't wanted us there. they are corrupt but there is nothing else we can deal with alternatively.


comment :

When the US starts supporting corrupt dictators, there is always the possibility of blow back resulting in some angry people (who are victims of the dictatorship ) being brainwashed and finally recruited by Al-Qaida.

If the US wants to make Al-Qaida ineffective and marginalized, the US needs to start doing what is right and one of the first things is to stop the proliferation of weapons to cruel and despotic dictatorships in the Muslim world.

The US has spent $5 billion on arming the dictatorship in Pakistan and now that very dictatorship is using part of that US military aid to put down democracy in Pakistan and all that US military aid might end up as another blow back story in the future.


MrSinatra wrote:

regardless, we weren't in Iraq or Afghanistan in any serious way prior to 9/11 and its patently outrageous and stupid to blame the US for doing things to cause 9/11.
we didn't do a damn thing to deserve it or cause it.


comment :

Why do you think the CIA came up with the words "blow back".

The CIA is smart enough to know that for every military action on our part, some person in the third world either gets hurt, or his loved ones get killed or maimed for life or paralyzed for life or deformed for life and the trauma that that person goes through is an opportunity for people like Osama Bin Laden to recruit him.

In every criminal case, there is what you call a motive.

What is motive ?

its the fuel that drives revenge or some other intense human emotion.

Are you never motivated to do anything ?

and some people are motivated to murder and kill, just like the US was motivated to go to war because of the attacks on 911 and motivation works with terrorists too.


What did the US do to deserve the 1995 horrific bombing attack in Oklahoma city by Timothy McVeigh ?

Timothy McVeigh was living in a peaceful, trauma-less US

and yet he was motivated by just looking at TV in which he saw how violently the US reacted to the situations in Waco and Ruby Ridge

and those two incidents in which kids died motivated Timothy McVeigh to bomb a federal building when he knew very well that there was a day care in that building.

So why did Timothy McVeigh want to blow up a building with children in it ?

Because terrorists do not think of anybody except only revenge and revenge is paramount in their minds,

just like the US did not think of all the poor children and babies in the horrific atom bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki because the paramount motive was to just end the war quickly


If Timothy McVeigh can be motivated by just watching TV in peaceful America, can you imagine what Osama Bin Laden experienced first hand in the Lebanese civil war, the Soviet-Mujaheddin war and the gulf war happening next door in which he was affected in ways we possibly cannot understand

and coupled that with recruits who themselves experienced war first hand, and especially in the gulf war and Lebanese civil war where the horrors of war ( through propaganda Arabic media ) made it look like the US was behind every single death in the gulf war

and the cruel sanctions after the gulf war in which the UN confirmed that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children died

And to add fuel to the fire, the massacres of innocent kids in the Lebanese civil war in which the US backed "Christians" and Israelis were accused of the massacres

and adding more fuel to the fire, the US weapons being used by the Israelis in the collateral deaths of innocent Palestinian kids and babies

and adding more fuel to the fire, the growing concern ( through Arabic media propaganda ) in the 90s that the "hedonistic unbelieving, pro-choice " US military personnel were never leaving Saudi Arabia even with a decade long terrorist campaign to get the US out of Saudi Arabia

and adding more fuel to the fire, the growing concern that the US military presence in Saudi Arabia was actually helping to keep the despotic, hedonistic Saudi dictatorship in power

and you can realize that with all the above, there is plenty of motivation and propaganda for the attacks on 911.

The founding fathers kicked out the British who only wanted a little compensation for helping the colonies and are we surprised that the Arabs want the US out of the middle east and Muslim countries, because of all the propaganda mentioned above ?


MrSinatra wrote:

if i walk on my neighbors lawn on the way home, have i given him due cause to shoot me?


comment :

The US was not just walking by in the middle east in order to get home.

The US has had a long campaign of war, violence, CIA assassinations, arming despots, dictators, even in the 50s overthrowing a democratically elected Mossadegh in Iran and having military bases in countries in which people did not want us there

and if we are trying to justify the actions of the founding fathers in trying to get the British out, we should understand that people in the middle east might feel the same way too.

Most people in the middle east want the US out without the violence, but some people say that only violence will get the US out as proved by the US getting out of Saudi Arabia only after a decade long terrorist campaign culminating in the attacks on 911

and if not for the 911 attacks, the US would still be in Saudi Arabia like the US is still in Germany, and Japan even though the world wars have been over for decades.

Is the stubborn presence of US forces in Saudi Arabia in the 90s, justification for the attacks on 911 ? off course not.

I am and will always be an anti-war person because I believe covert CIA operations with minimal force is the best way to solve problems unless its purely for self defense along the lines of Switzerland's policies on self defense


MrSinatra wrote:

you act like the terrorists reactions to our actions are justified as a reasonable response, and that's what totally discredits you as a reasonable person in my eyes.


comment :

I never said that.

A psychologist can explain the behavior of a serial killer.

Does that mean the psychologist is justifying the actions of the serial killer ? off course not.

Explaining the behavior of terrorists does not equate to justifying their actions.

Yes, without the decade long terrorist campaign launched by Al-Qaida culminating in the 911 attacks, the US would still have been in Saudi Arabia to this day, but that is still no justification for the 911 attacks.

What the US needs to do is, what is right

and that is, not wait for decades long simmering of resentments to boil over into outright violence,

but to nip the problem in the bud by changing our militaristic foreign policy to a more pragmatic, long sighted and intelligent policy that is motivated by a true caring for Americans and also people abroad

and if we care for people like how Jesus taught us, we will go a long way to truly bring peace on earth and marginalizing fanatical groups like Al-Qaida

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