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Messages - sirs

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26911
3DHS / Re: Is it torture if you only burn the soles of their feet?
« on: September 26, 2006, 01:24:24 PM »
The facts speak for themselves, sirs

No, that would be your Bush-is-a-moronic-version-of-Hitler pure speculation speaks to you personally.  And FYI, your mind reading ability really sucks 

26912
3DHS / Re: I wish some of you would get your terms right
« on: September 26, 2006, 12:05:41 PM »
Clearly not all of them become violent suicide bombers and terrorists. As adults we make our own decisions, correct? Does that not diminish this "infection?"

One can only hope

What if a terrorist group denounces any religious symbolism and makes their case strictly political? Say, to free Palestine of apartheid policies? Do they still need to be attacked under this "war on terror" or are they no longer an Islamofascist threat?

Depends on their actions, rhetoric, who's supporting them, and if they do or don't condemn actual militant Islam as the means to all and everything Allah

What if, by bombing and using other methods to attack these groups, you are only driving more individuals to this cause by causing "collateral damage?"

That is a legitimate "what if" concern, unlike Tee's asanine attempt.  A) we're not targeting and attacking innocent civilians as they do.  B) If we don't kill as many of them now, they grow in #'s regardless.  C) the more we take the battle to them there, and the more we kill them there, the less we have to deal with them here, on our own soil.

26913
Posted by: sirs 
Insert Quote
You missed the best part of the quote..."Maybe you should remember that there was also intelligence saying Iraq didn't have WMDs, but that was pretty much ignored - it didn't bolster the case for war".

Didn't miss it at all.  The fact is the vast preponderance of intel said otherwise however.  I agreed with the NIE & produced it along with a plethora of other sources to back up the decisions made by Bush, in going to war.  Now perhaps, you can demonstrate where anyone claimed that when their (NIE) conclusions point to something unfavorable to the administration, they then can't be trusted

 


Ummm, H.  Did you miss this the last go around?

26914
3DHS / Re: Shaping the Topic: the NIE memo
« on: September 26, 2006, 11:24:38 AM »
Tells me that certain things are classified for certain reasons.  No more no less.  Ususally because of national security issues.  Trying to read minds, I'll leave up to you.

26915
3DHS / Re: Dealing with some of those terms: Islamofascism
« on: September 26, 2006, 11:21:52 AM »
I could write a good reply and discuss why the National Review's piece is using a completely incoherent and trite definition of fascism, but why?   You'd refuse to actually read it with any objectivity.

Well, you'd be wrong.  And I could add to that precisely the same proclaimation, so probably best that you didn't.  But again, I appreciate that you actually took the time to read the piece

26916
3DHS / Re: Is it torture if you only burn the soles of their feet?
« on: September 26, 2006, 11:18:18 AM »
And I'd say as ususal, your credibility means nothing to you, as you imply I (and the President) are liars based on your apparent ability to read minds, as you have yet to provide any "evidence to the contrary", merely your accusatory innuendo based on nothing more than speculations.  Whatever makes you feel superior, Tee     ::)

26917
3DHS / Shaping the Topic: the NIE memo
« on: September 26, 2006, 02:34:39 AM »
Putting aside for the moment the likely illegal leaking of this latest classified information, here's the WSJ's suggestion in dealing with it.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Declassify the Terrorism NIE
How to defeat selective politically motivated leaks.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006


As media scoops go, those based on "classified" information seem to have a special cachet. But judging from the latest, selective intelligence leak about terrorism, we wonder if anyone would bother to read this stuff if it didn't have the word "secret" slapped on it.

That's our reaction to Sunday's New York Times report claiming that a 2006 national intelligence estimate, or NIE, concludes that "the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse," according to one of the unidentified "intelligence officials" cited in the article. This is supposedly because the war has provoked radical Islamists to hate America even more than they already did before they hijacked airplanes and flew them into buildings. If this is the kind of insight we pay our spooks to generate, we're in more trouble than we thought.

It's impossible to know how true this report is, of course, since the NIE itself hasn't been leaked. The reports are based on what sources claim the NIE says, but we don't know who those sources are and what motivations they might have. Since their spin coincides rather conveniently with the argument made by Democratic critics of the war, and since this leak has also conveniently sprung in high campaign season, wise readers will be skeptical.

The White House responded yesterday by saying the full NIE on "Trends in Global Terrorism" is far more nuanced and complex than the press reports claim. Spokesman Tony Snow added that one "thing the reports do not say is that war in Iraq has made terrorism worse." So here's our suggestion for President Bush: Declassify the entire NIE.

It's not as if NIEs usually contain sensitive raw intelligence. They're more like Council on Foreign Relations reports, full of consensus analysis and glorified by the mere fact of being "secret." To the extent that any passages might compromise sources and methods, those parts could be redacted or summarized. Meanwhile, disclosure would give the American public a valuable window into the thinking that goes on at places like the CIA. Since some of our spooks are leaking selectively to make the President look bad, Mr. Bush should return the favor by letting the public inspect the quality of analysis that their tax dollars are buying.
Releasing the NIE would also show that the White House has learned something since 2003, which is when the last pre-election bout of selective intelligence leaks began. That leak du jour claimed that an October 2002 NIE had contradicted Mr. Bush's claims in his [RANDO]State of the Union address about Iraq seeking uranium in Africa. We happened to gain access to the complete NIE, however, and reported on July 17, 2003, that the leaked accounts were incomplete and misleading. The Senate Intelligence Committee vindicated our account a year later, but the Bush Administration could have reduced the political damage by declassifying that 2002 NIE immediately.

As for the substance of the 2006 NIE's alleged claims, does anyone doubt that many jihadis are rallying against the American presence in Iraq? The newspapers tell us that much every day. Whether the war in Iraq has produced more terrorist hatred than would otherwise exist, however, is a matter of opinion and strategic judgment.

We recall, for example, that one of Osama bin Laden's justifications for declaring war against the U.S. was American enforcement of sanctions and a no-fly zone against Iraq before the 2003 invasion. Bin Laden didn't need the war to hate us. More broadly, the liberation of Iraq and Afghanistan has deprived the jihadis of two safe havens and sources of funds. So while there are still many al Qaeda-type terror cells out there, there's no reason to believe they are any more dangerous now than before April 2003. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, one of the terrorists who was harbored in Iraq before the war, certainly isn't any more dangerous; he's dead.
The real issue at stake here is a political and policy fight over the future of Iraq.

The Democrats claim that Iraq is a "distraction" from the war on terror and so a rapid U.S. withdrawal would leave the U.S. with more resources to fight elsewhere.

Mr. Bush says Iraq is now the central front in the war on terror, and that withdrawing would create a vacuum that the Islamists would fill and give them a potential new state-supported base of operations.

That's the choice voters really ought to be thinking about as they go to the polls in November, and if the NIE has something useful to say about that debate, Mr. Bush should disarm the selective leakers in his bureaucracy by making it public.


http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008998

26918
3DHS / Re: the UNcredible
« on: September 26, 2006, 02:04:59 AM »

26919
3DHS / Re: What if?
« on: September 26, 2006, 01:27:51 AM »
The discussion is useless and pointless.

As was your original post to this thread.  Get some sleep, Tee

26920
3DHS / Re: I wish some of you would get your terms right
« on: September 26, 2006, 01:09:41 AM »
it's more of that "absence of smoking gun" is NOT proof of innocence" thing combined with "nobody could possibly have missed seeing things as often as the "President" claims to have missed seeing them."

Naaa, more accurately it's the same tired lack of proof is supposed proof crap again.  Good idea about that sleep.  It's pretty apparent how transparently weaker your arguements keep getting

26921
3DHS / Re: Is it torture if you only burn the soles of their feet?
« on: September 26, 2006, 01:06:22 AM »
I'd say you support it by (a) denying it happens till it can't be denied any more (2) trivializing the issue by framing it as often as you can get away with it in terms of playing loud music and similar examples of harassment falling short of torture (3) trivializing it in terms of frequency

And I'd say you're wrong, based on the fact I've made it clear that I DON'T

26922
3DHS / Re: I wish some of you would get your terms right
« on: September 26, 2006, 12:48:43 AM »
So, no memo, no proof, no nothing of any kind indicating that the President of the U.S, passed on his permission & support to some abhorent Green Berets to do what they wanted to some prisoners. 

Yep, more of that lack of proof is supposed proof crap again

26923
3DHS / Re: Is it torture if you only burn the soles of their feet?
« on: September 26, 2006, 12:42:20 AM »
Next question, obviously, is how can you continue to support this shit?

Did you miss the part where I said I don't support the burning of feet??    ???     Now, care to show me how this an Adminstrative supported practice, so that I can then actually not support the Administration???

26924
3DHS / Re: I wish some of you would get your terms right
« on: September 26, 2006, 12:39:03 AM »
How about the Army covering up for three years that its Green Berets tortured prisoners to death in Afghanistan

Excellent,  If it's so easy, you can produce the memo from Bush authorizing the cover-up, right?  Oh wait, this is going to be more of that lack of a memo actually proves the allegation, right?

26925
3DHS / Re: I wish some of you would get your terms right
« on: September 26, 2006, 12:33:43 AM »
STILL not answering the question, sirs?

Well, I had along tome ago, just apparently not to your satisfaction, despite making it crystal clear of my position.  

do you wish to God that they'd burn the soles of American prisoners' feet?

No.  I condemned that one already as well.  Care to keep batting .000?

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