How About a Nice Game of Global Thermonuclear War? 1859
Loconut1389 writes "According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon has a revised doctrine to be signed in the next few weeks would give the president the authority for a preemptive nuclear strike. I would hope that this is a move designed to say we mean business and then never use it, but the means is there for mutual assured destruction."
Mutual? (Score:1, Interesting)
Pre-emptive strikes... (Score:5, Interesting)
Once upon a time... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yippee kayay! (Score:5, Interesting)
Furthermore, if North Korea had any legitimate reason to be concerned about America's intentions before (well, Iraq probably didn't help), they're certainly going to be paranoid out of their tiny little minds now. The further we go down this path, the less North Korea is going to believe it has to lose by launching a pre-emptive strike of their own, to pre-empt the American pre-emptive strike.
If you assume Iran actually meant what it said about their own nuclear technology being for peaceful purposes, you can be absolutely rest-assured they'll have no intention of sticking to that now. The only hope Iran has of NOT being nuked is to be in a position of nuking the USA.
All in all, this is a bad day for the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but one hell of a siesta for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Apocalypse Soon (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:And in other news... (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you read anything by Michio Kaku?
He's a genius.. one of his theories is that all planets with intelligent beings on them can be categorized into a few distinct categories..
Category 0 = primitive, burn fossil fuels
Category 1 = Planetary, get energy from planet, can control the weather, usually formed a world government by then
Category 2 = Move on to using our local star as our source of energy.
Category 3 = Galactic civilization. Huge, impossible to kill off with 'natural' causes, highly advanced most likely.
He states that he believes most category 0 civilizations (Which we are) never make it to category 1 because of the rise of U235 and the inevitable invention of the nuclear weapon.
Doomsday (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:And in other news... (Score:5, Interesting)
His is a genius, as I said. And he puts things in a very eloquent... non-physicist sort of way.
His Homepage [mkaku.org]
And here's an article [mkaku.org] about the things I just talked about.
I'd also recommend his book Hyperspace.
Re:Bad idea (Score:2, Interesting)
The generic question is whether your survival depends more upon a rapid reaction free of committee-bog, or upon the carefully crafted wisdom of a consensus.
(Well, of course you'd rather have both. Who wouldn't?...)
Re:Times have changed (Score:2, Interesting)
"Nuclear proliferation will never be tolerated. If you sell those bombs on the black market, expect your nuclear reprocessing plants to be obliterated. And if you're lucky, we will spare your regime too."
Yeehaw! Way to tell 'em, buddy!
...Pakistan really dodged the bullet on that one, huh? Not only did we tolerate their proliferation and sale of nuclear systems and technical knowledge, but we spared their regime too.
BTW, what the fuck is a "nuclear reprocessing plant"? Can we please be minimally literate in the subject matter?
Basic (Score:2, Interesting)
What many people who giggle at the idea of the 'giant being killed by a thousand mosquito bites' forget is that asymmetric warfare [wikipedia.org] works both ways.
Re:Times have changed (Score:3, Interesting)
Fact. The US is the only nation that has actualy deployed a nuke against any other party. We have flexed our muscles, and have clearly showed our willingness to risk nuclear destruction during the cuban missle crisis.
Fact: Nuclear proliferation is tolerated. We have tolerated Israel for many years, with unknown capability, even though none of the neighboring countries has any capability. We offically do not know what these arms can do, though perhaps they could destroy the US.
Fact: Fissionable material is not enough. The enemy must have transportation and enough arms to do significant damage prior to destruction. This is why the US and the former USSR had so many missles. Suitecase nuclear bombs are not practicle.
In fact, the biggest part of this new proposal is the ability use nukes to preemptively strike against suspected biological arms. So, the US Government can now make up threats, as they did the WMDs in Iraq, and use such fabrications to deploy non-conventional arms.
The real danger of this is false security. We almost attacked Cuba during the missle crisis, and it lucky we didn't because we did not know there were a few dozen fully armed nuked ready to retaliate. To defend ourselves against the former USSR we spent massive amounts of money on arms, which we now know was unnecesary because the USSR was not nearly as strong as the CIA thought, and has resulted in the US becoming deeply indebted to the Saudis and the Chines. From the 9/11 attack we entered Afganastan, which was not totally unjusitified, but the mission was so ill planned we still do not have Saudi Osama. We use those resources instead to invade Iraq, on the basis of, again, bad intellegence, and now want to launch nukes against Iran on the basis on some of the same intellegence.
I know that few peope care. As long as we can live in our big houses in the suburbs, and drive our big cars, and watch out big tvs, who gives a shit about how many dark people have to die. And, after all, if we use those missles, then the arms and drug dealers will have to hire more people, so the economy will improve! Yea! Drop out bubba will have a job.
Put your money where your mouth is. (Score:5, Interesting)
Be careful with that word "never". It may not mean what you think it means.
What is being discussed is a Contingency Plan (Score:2, Interesting)
We have lived with the Nuclear Genie out of the bottle in this country for 60+ years now. I would think that we are pretty safe from Dr. Stranglove.
Despite the idea that there are truthfully folks (read many third world countries by todays standards) who try to bury secrets, several hundred feet underground, with many entrances and exits, and multiply redundant power and communications, and nearby nuclear, or chemical plants who produce precursors for VX, or biological agennts (think: genetic engineering facilities). These facilities are completely impervious to even our smart bombs. They cannot be explained, nor do the boogie men who build, and run them for their little crews of mad scientists have any intent of explaining them. Now without giving away any secrets, suffice it to say that there are many ways to learn tidbits about these little bunkers. What would you advocate we do about this knowledge???? Let's examine this little chess puzzle?
1) We could ignore it (the facility and all that goes on).
2) We could demand the UN invoke sanctions unless the boogie men quit whatever we know they are doing, but that we cannot fess up to knowing about.
3) We could try and form a coalition of other boogie men who are making billions selling technology to the boogie men in the first place. Optionally we could enhance this scenario by demanding a UN Security Council Resolution (of course again knowing that all the folks who are making money from the illegal sales of technology (and dual use stuff) are voting members of the UN Sec Council). By this time we know full well that half the economy of boogieville is wrapped up in "defense", and particularly in Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical technologies which would in the hands of most sane individuals rid the entire world of bugs (SuperVX), or kill every primate on the planet (Howbout SuperAIDS), or possibly even throw a little Nuclear FOBS into orbit on short notice and then detonate the thing over a major metropolitan area leaving an EMP'ed Stonhenge. All this coupled with the problem that the pitifully poor third world country hates our guts because the government, or religious zealots have been pumped full of lies and half truths by our own press.
4) Or after quiet diplomacy, some arm twisting, let a very delicately worde plan leak to the press that if some psychotic would decide to try the scenario above... let him know in no uncertain terms, that a small NUDET (a few KT or less) will be more than enough to destructively penetrate to his 700 foot deep little hideaway, rendering it useless as a hidden laboratory, launch facility, etc. All the time ensuring that the proper literature is available to ensure that there is less risk of this underground NUDET becoming any more danger to the pitiful residents of ashcanistan than smoking one of the heroin laced cigarettes they have smoked for their whole lives. And that since the penetrator ensured that it was several hundred feet deep before it detonated, no appreciable fallout, no appreciable collateral damage (beyond a couple hundred yards), etc...
5) Or we could put a multi-megaton, multistaged, MARV warhead one each on all of the stupid countries who sold them the technology? Or if we were feeling particularly kind, just several air bursts, about 1-5 miles up. It would change hundreds of miles into an electronic wasteland. Read up on EMP sometime.
6) Maybe the leader of the World could come up with some options I have not listed. Maybe we could bribe boogie man? How bout assasination (hey Pat Roberts got fried for suggesting that assasination could be a tool of statesmanship)? Hey I'd love to hear somebody even
Re:Mutual? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Non-existent WMDs Baaaad! Real WMDs Gooood! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:That's a good boy... (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.ececs.uc.edu/~guptaa0/barry.mov [uc.edu]
Re:Times have changed (Score:4, Interesting)
maybe they only chant stuff like that because the US tried to inject puppets into their nation.
maybe stop inviting the CIA to overthrow their regime.
or running stories about how their nuclear power plant is a cover for a WMD station. a nation who lied about WMDs in iraq, forged the niger yellow cake "evidence" and can say with a straight face that iraq was connected with 9-11, even after saying otherwise, doesn't deserve to believed about anything.
a nation who has 50 thousand nuclear warheads telling another nation they cannot have weapons, is about as absurd and hypocritical as it gets, especially since it's also the only country that has used 2 nuclear bombs on civilian targets. an act of terrorism by any definition of the word.
and clearly, any country that doesn't have wmd, like iraq, gets invaded. it's about time every nation on earth starts stockpiling wmd.
Re:Uh? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Mutual? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, the only nation other than the United States with anything close to a MAD deterence capability is Russia. China, UK, France and DPRK have limited capabilities compared to the US/Russia.
Umm. I'm not usually one to rise to the defense of Europe but I would point out that France and the UK have modern SSBNs. The Brits even have our D-5 missile. That's a pretty good deterrence force right there.
I'll grant you that China's nuclear force is a joke as far as the US or Russia are concerned. Of course that will probably change because some champ got the bright idea of walking away from the ABM treaty and giving them an excuse to start an arms race.
Re:Method of living for the socially challenged: W (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Mutual? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is really just a logical extention of his pre-emptive war doctrine. He simply reserves the right to attack anybody whenever he wants, for whatever reason he wants, using whatever weapons he wants.
Sept. 11, 2005 (Score:1, Interesting)
It would have been almost impossible to imagine, during the days and weeks that followed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that we might someday look back on that depressing time with a tinge of nostalgia. For Americans, and especially for those of us who live in New York City, those autumn memories are filled with rage and horror, fire and smoke, loss and death; but they are also filled with a spirit of courage, community and real patriotism. United we stood, even behind a government of dubious legitimacy, because we knew that there was no other way to defend what we valued.
In a strange way, Sept. 11 -- despite all the instantaneous proclamations that things would never be the same -- represented a final moment of innocence.
Now catastrophe has befallen another American city, with horrors and losses that may surpass the toppling of the twin towers. And while many people in New Orleans have shown themselves to be brave, generous and decent, this season's disaster has instilled more dread than pride, more anger than unity. Why is the mood so different now? At every level, the vacuum of leadership was appalling, but especially among the national leaders to whom all Americans look at a time of catastrophic peril. As rising waters sank the city, summer vacations in Texas and Wyoming, and shoe-shopping on Madison Avenue, appeared to take priority over the suffering on the Gulf Coast.
Four years after 9/11, we know much more than we knew then about the arrogance, dishonesty, recklessness and incompetence of a national government that was never worthy of its power.
We saw how the White House squandered, all too quickly, the uplifting national response to 9/11. Within a few months, Karl Rove was heard telling the Republican National Committee exactly how he planned to betray the Democrats who had unanimously lined up behind President Bush in the aftermath of the attack by using the "war on terror" as a domestic political weapon.
Rove replayed his cynical maneuver at the GOP convention last year, when New York served as the backdrop for more patriotic posturing -- while the Republicans in the White House and Congress refused to provide adequate funding to protect New York from another, possibly even more devastating attack. Disproportionate millions went from the Department of Homeland Security to rural towns that will never be threatened, while city and state officials continue to lack the money and manpower to protect ports, power stations and chemical plants. The same neglectful and perverse priorities withdrew funding from the levees protecting New Orleans.
We learned how the Bush administration misled the nation into invading Iraq to suppress a nonexistent threat from "weapons of mass destruction," while assuring us that the war would be cheap, easy, and almost bloodless. The administration's predictions have proved uniformly false and its prescriptions entirely useless, costing thousands of Iraqi and American casualties and hundreds of billions of dollars. The resulting damage to our national prestige, among both allies and enemies, may well be irreparable. And after all the sorrow and destruction, Iraq may end up as a hellhole of warring ethnic and religious groups, a haven for Islamist terrorists, and an instrument of the mullah regime in Iran.
We found out why the president, the vice president, and their aides wanted no investigation of the circumstances leading to the 9/11 attacks. For nine months they'd ignored the warnings of danger, first from the former officials of the Clinton administration, then from White House national security officials, and finally from the CIA itself in the notorious presidential daily briefing of Aug. 6, 2001.
More recently, we have discovered how they failed to act on an ominous report from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, just weeks before 9/11, that pointed to the grave likelihood of a terrorist attack on New York City -- and of a deadly hurricane destroying New Orleans.
And we can have n
STOP THE INSANITY! (Score:4, Interesting)
Lets use a WMD in a pre-emptive strike against groups that MAY have WMD's!
How proud would you as an American be if you had nuked Iraq
Bush and his cohorts are the problem, not the answer. They are the terrorists bent on destabilizing the world's security. He is a firm believer in the book of Revelations and Armeggedon
IRAN is the new target.
Within 5 years Iran plans to have the bomb.
Iran is too big for Dubyafucker to invade in a conventional manner, without massive conscription.
Iran will be pre-emptively nuked by the time they are ready to test their first bomb. Hopefully it won't result in the immediate retaliatory destruction of the USA by the nations of the world whom this attack will anger.
The preparations are happening, this is not a troll, this is not flamebait.
Go ahead and ask your local representative why your airforce just ordered new flight simulators programmed specificaly for the topography of Iran.
lets see (Score:1, Interesting)
Hello Irak ! You don't seem to have weapons of mass destruction right now...
Don't move, we send you some !
***
"Hans M. Kristensen, a consultant to the Natural Resources Defense Council, who discovered the document on the Pentagon Web site, said yesterday that it "emphasizes the need for a robust nuclear arsenal ready to strike on short notice including new missions."
Message to the world : You bad people stop playing with that dangerous stuff! We need it all for our own experiments !!!
***
And last, but not least, I would like to remind people of a few things about a thing called "succession"
There is this theory that some laws, made especially to serve some particularly strong leaders, can be quite abused by the successors of the strong man.
So the two problems I see are :
how can you garantee your future leaders won't abuse that power ("We had a terrorist attack in city XXX"-"bye bye Syria !")?
How could you consider Bush Junior (the man who almost died on a bretzel AND LET IT BE KNOWN) a strong man...?
No... (Score:3, Interesting)
France is not saying they will only strike in retaliation - they may hit first if they think someone is about to hit them. The US is not saying they will hit without provocation - but that they may hit to stop an incoming attack before it gets started.
The problem is that the US is forsaking 60 years of carefully built credibility over the WMD issue - as though the war in Iraq wasn't bad enough. This measure (the new policy) does NOT increase American security. Nation-states already weren't going to attack us because we'd reduce them to smouldering rubble. Terrorists will not be deterred because we will never see it coming, and there is no place to productively bomb in response to a first strike.
There is a bare chance that this will make a pre-emptive strike against N. Korea legal if the President feels an attack is imminent. But it doesn't seem likely to make any meaningful difference to the other stakeholders in the N. Korea question. If the US bombs N. Korea with nukes to stop an attack, Seoul will still be gone in the morning. Is this a sign that the US does not believe that a diplomatic solution to the N. Korean WMD issue will be found?
Re:You are entirely correct (Score:3, Interesting)
Uhm, I thought (Great) Britain does not have a "written" constitution. Its a flexible unwritten constitution in that it isn't comprised of a single document (versus the U.S. Constitution) but made up of all laws still on the books as well as historical documents such as Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights. In that aspect, it could be called a "common law constitution" although the term has never been coined to my knowledge.
Its actually admirable, the unwritten British constitution. At least it leaves Parliament flexible in passing laws instead of yielding to an appointed court-for-life pretending to "interpret" the meaning of a document written over 200 years prior under the guise of "adapting" it to the modern world.
And as for the various "Rights of Englishmen" earned through English history, your own right to trial by jury is under fire from various "reforms" Prime Minister Blair and his allies have proposed. Not to mention the prohibition against "double jeopardy." So perhaps you might want to stick to ensuring your rights as an Englishman from your own representatives instead of critiquing what's going on in our Colonies currently...
ps. If you want to address the subject of tyranny from the English throne, what about Charles I? Surely he was far more a tyrant than John ever was. And unlike Robin Hood, Oliver Cromwell existed...
An overview of developments (Score:2, Interesting)
China attempts to buy US oil company and is rebuffed.
US having problems in Iraq, perhaps Russia/China see possible takeover bid (maybe with UN approval), or perhaps they are posturing over Iran.
China refers to Taiwan as "terrorists", Chinese general recently threatened to "N-word" the US over Taiwan. Chinese officials back down. (Perhaps this document is our version of this sort of posturing.)
The Bush administration has pushed policies that blur the line between nuclear and conventional war-- i.e. tactical nukes to be used "in theater". This document may be referring to those nukes as well.
China's military spending found to be much higher than previously thought. Rumsfeld muses publicly (i'm paraphrasing) "one wonders why they spend so much when they have no enemies."
There's the issue of Peak Oil (if you believe it to be an issue.) People used to fight wars over salt...
There's also the argument of the "Old Guard". i.e. the Chinese Old Guard is overreacting. (The same argument holds for GWB/GOP versus liberal American youngsters. Gay marriage is a done deal in twenty years folks.)
There's also issues with currency, world economy, and America's out-of-wack personal debt and federal deficit. A lot of that debt goes back to China and Japan.
I suspect all will be well as long as there's no total economic collapse. As long as everybody who's got a finger on the button is feeding from the same trough a war will be counterproductive. Hopefully all the Old Guard will die of Old Age before they can destroy this young man's world.
...so where does the Rapture fit in?... (Score:4, Interesting)
[Jer 30:2-7] : 'For, behold, days are coming,' declares the Lord, 'when I will restore the fortunes of My people Israel and Judah.' The Lord says, 'I will also bring them back to the land that I gave to their forefathers, and they shall possess it.'
And in Ezekiel [37:21]: "This is what the sovereign Lord says: I will take the Israelites out of the nations where they have gone. I will gather them from all around and bring them back into their own land."
Re:Uh? (Score:2, Interesting)
Living in San Diego, I am within 100 miles of Camp Pendelton, Miramar Air Station, Point Loma, and Navy Pier. It is a major target, because there are a lot of nukes around here-- the Point Loma Naval Base is where the 'boomers' come to dock. The nuclear subs that can take out most the world by launching all their missiles? When that North Korean nuke comes down at Point Loma to get rid of those subs, I sure as hell will remember you-- because it is, "only one or two nukes."
Re:I believe you meant... (Score:2, Interesting)
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=nuclear [reference.com]
(I changed the dicionary symbols to regular chars)
I guess that explains why people say it that way.
Re:You think this is some sort of game?! (Score:5, Interesting)
A challenge (Score:3, Interesting)
2: Cite some specific examples of whom you are referring to.
3: Cite some specific quotes by these people backing up your childish, absurd claims about them.
4: Demonstrate that these particular fools have both the power and will to execute their idiotic claims.
5: Demonstrate that the public support for such people is great enough that their words are likely to result in actions by others.
Until you can do this, your absurd cries of "moral equivalence" are meaningless. Note that all of these unquestionably apply for Osama, if you substitute "neocon" with "Muslim Terrorist".
Re:Pre-emptive strikes... (Score:2, Interesting)
Now if states actually try to succeed...that might be a different story. But then you can kiss this country goodbye if they actually manage to win.
Re:Mutual? (Score:3, Interesting)
True -- and three weeks ago, the US public wasn't in an uproar about the destruction of a single city by hurricane and flooding, either. Nobody pays much attention to potential disasters until they happen -- especially "new" types of disasters that they haven't experienced before. That doesn't mean there won't be hell to pay when they do. (Would you want to be known as "the President who let San Diego get nuked"?)
Re:You're not reading the WHOLE of the article (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm willing to admit I could be wrong, but I don't think it very likely. Even so, I'm willing. Would YOU be willing to admit YOU are wrong, if documentary evidence did turn up that Japan had already surrendered by the time of the atom bomb attacks?
Oh, and I don't think the Native Americans that your ancestors massacred with Smallpox were much of a threat, either. Not very likely to overthrow the US Government, so what was with the biological weapons? No, Americans HAVE carried out acts of murder and genocide for reasons that have nothing to do with self-preservation and a lot to do with xenophobia.
Other cultures aren't immune to this, either! The Zulus regarded the British as noble enemies, worthy of honor. Wish they had been - the British carried out some unbelievable butchery and savagery. The English have carried out massacres against the Scots, I don't think the Red and White Russians have ever had much good to say about each other, and about the only good thing I can say about Ghengis Khan is that - unlike all the others I've listed - he didn't bother trying to think up justifications.
The Logic of Suicide Terrorism (Score:3, Interesting)
> their weapons and live a peacefull life, or we hunt them down in their neighborhood.
Funny - that's not the conclusion people who've actually studied suicide terrorism have come to. From The American Conservative [amconmag.com]:
RP: The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign--over 95 percent of all the incidents--has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.
TAC: That would seem to run contrary to a view that one heard during the American election campaign, put forth by people who favor Bush's policy. That is, we need to fight the terrorists over there, so we don't have to fight them here.
RP: Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us.
According to someone who's studied the problem, the "other methods" include such things as removing our troops from unfriendly foreign soil and our military backing from autocratic foreign regimes. Basically, stop stomping around in other people's backyards and maybe they'll stop telling us to leave.
Will it work? I dunno. But even the CIA [bbc.co.uk] says [csmonitor.com] our current approach is failing, and is making the threat of terrorism worse:
The insurgency in Iraq is creating a new type of Islamic militant who could go on to destabilise other countries, a leaked CIA report says.
The classified document says Iraqi and foreign fighters are developing a broad range of skills, from car bombings and assassinations to co-ordinated attacks.
It says these skills may make them more dangerous than fighters from Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s.
Re:Mutual? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Mutual? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not that nuclear blasts will kill everyone. It's that 'developed' countries, especially large metropolian areas, are extremely dependant on others for their survival. Once the infrastructure is gone and panic ensues, there will be no electricity water or food. The economy will be reduced to a barter economy since faith in the monetary system is gone.
Hell, even a miniature-by-comparison disaster like New Orleans / Katrina showed signs of anarchy for a while, imagine the hell-on-earth that will erupt if not one, but several major cities are flattened.
P.S. I'm serious, get ahold of and watch Threads, it's a great movie.
Why would N Korea attack the US (Score:2, Interesting)
What if there would have been no sanctions, and N Korea would be as prosperous as the USSR, or China (their closest relatives in vision). That would not make them a superpower: They are just to small. But would it give them any reason to launch an attack on the US? Not really. They might try to intimidate S Korea, but with more to loose, most likely nothing will happen anyway (look at China vs Taiwan: Lots of threats, and not even one shot fired).
Yes, N Korea has a dictatorship which tries to build certain weapons.
To be afraid of that: No, they will probably not succeed anytime soon, and to use such a weapon is not a good idea anyway.
There actually is only one danger left with this: Hard cash: Sell the bomb which you create to some extremist group, let them play with it.
Somehow I think however that even extremist groups are not that crazy. They have seen by know what 2 airplanes can cause in counter actions: The leaders are not taken, but two countries have lost their goverments, and taking out a third or a fourth is no serious problem for the US. The US goverment has also shown that they will not obey human rights anymore in such a situation. The step to a complete masacre has become a lot smaller. A second holocaust could be the result of an extremist organization using a nuclear bomb.
Looking in general at countries with a dictator or similar goverment: They do attack their neighbours, bot only if they think they will gain something from it.
Looking at wealthy democratic countries: They do attack countries all over the world if they think they can gain something from it.
Re:Mutual? (Score:2, Interesting)
You sound ripe for Gore Vidal, particularly "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace"
You know, I have a theory that even the Bush-bashers don't have the balls to voice in public: al Qaida works for Bush. He signs their paychecks personally. And the 9/11 attacks were his idea.
I mean, come on, without all that, you have to say Bush/Cheney,inc. just got fantastically, unusually, cosmicly, freakishly lucky. Nobody in History is *that* lucky: To have the exact shadowy enemy that you can use to freak the people to give up their liberties. To do the exact heinous crime you can shock and rally everyone with, at the exact right time of a year after the beginning of your new administration, when you've had ample time to seat yourself at the reins and will still have years guaranteed in which to milk the opportunity. From the appropriately Middle-Eastern country, close to the oil you need. From the appropriately demonizable religion. With perfect timing for idiots to still be shaken when election time rolls around again, but not so soon after that they remmember the facts and blame you.
Nobody could possibly get that lucky in a billion, trillion years. They BOUGHT!
Re:Doesn't anybody remember the W.O.P.R. (Score:4, Interesting)
The preemptive strike on Iraq has been a disaster. If I didn't like the president I think now at his lowest hour would be the right time to try and push something through like this.
Re:_Great_ analogy (Score:3, Interesting)
Along with killing the genuine "evil men", we should be really should be sure to kill their families, since they all almost certainly share their ideologies.
The same goes for their neighborhood, and maybe even the whole damn city. Even if the whole city, neighborhood or relatives are not guilty/evil, people really shouldn't complain because it's all for the cause of:
1) Fighting Terrorism
2) Preserving the American Way if Life
3) Making the World Safe for Democracy
4) Stopping Religious Extremism
5) Keeping that oil flowing so we can still drive our SUV's in the face of rising gas prices and global temperatrures (some say this bears a close simililarity to #2, but they're just pinko hippie communists)
6) Deposing those evil/misguided leaders who we either put into power in the first place, or aided, so that they could fight another evil/misguided leader.
So what if killing one evil man, and maybe his wife/family/brother/cousin, causes three or more to take up arms against us! So what if they aren't actually the ones who attacked us in the first place! God and morality are on OUR side! Our religious and government leaders say so!
So you can see there is no room for (intelligent) diplomacy, compromise or alternatives!
DIE! DIE! DIE! YOU EVILDOERS!
(cough cough)
ahem.
We know return to our regularly schduled broadcast of the 700 club.
Re:I think I speak for a lot of people when I say. (Score:1, Interesting)
It's still amazing to me that y'all thought Bush, given his first 4 years, was worse than anything the DNC could provide. Bush was a loser from the beginning, and we asked for more! I guess we really do deserve what we get.
Re:Mutual? (Score:2, Interesting)
Has anyone noticed that we've gone several years without a terrorist attack on US soil even though many significant attacks would be easy to accomplish even without suicide? Set off a cheap bomb in a bus somewhere in Kentucky and the media will stir up a nationwide panic. In addition, Katrina shows us that we aren't even prepared to deal with larger attacks.
Given the resentment aroused by recent US foreign policy, the motivation for attacks and their frequency should be increasing. Also given the glaring ineptitude evident in other federal agencies and the challenges involved in restructuring agencies built for the Cold War, I doubt that it's the magnificent accomplishments of behind-the-scenes CIA and FBI operations that are protecting us.
Maybe there just aren't that many people out to get us and we're spending a lot of money on defense trying to prevent disasters that are better prevented with more thoughtful foreign policy (like nonproliferation efforts)? Maybe we're not spending enough money to protect ourselves from dangers that are more likely to affect more of us like levee failure and electrical grid malfunctions? Maybe the evil genius of terrorism is that it causes the victim to seek safety from the terrorists at the expense of protection from more realistically harmful dangers?
Maybe we're letting the terrorists win?
Rattling of sabers for a paper tiger? (Score:3, Interesting)
Osama Bin Forgotten, um... Bin Laden, is still at large despite a very firm, clear
I can't help but have the intuition that all of this cold war era recycled talk of big missile nuclear is the rattling of sabers so that the US doesn't feel like a paper tiger.
In under 6 years we went from the most powerful, prosperous, and confident nation in the world to a country that can not ( or will not ) catch a grown up spoiled child in the middle east, to a country with red/yellow/whatever alerts, and to a country that gets offered foreign aide ( and needs it ) after a natural disaster.
Maybe we need a new administration( republican or democrat ) instead of a new nuclear war doctrine.
The cost of submitting to their demands (Score:3, Interesting)
We already did.
Should we cave into their other demands? Let's list what they want us to do:
(1) Become dhimmis. That means that we can't testify in court against any muslim. If we refuse to worship Islam, then we must pay an annual dhimmi tax.
(2) Stop charging interest. Stop receiving interest.
(3) Stop giving equal rights to women. Women must cover their heads and must be subservient to their husband. If they don't have a husband they are worthless.
(4) Kill all gays and adulterers and pornographers. Bill Clinton is one of the people that Osama bin Laden frequently mentions as being morally reprehensible and eligible for execution.
(5) Adopt Shari'a law in our land. This is far worse than anything you read in the Bible.
(6) Submit to a global caliphate. That would be a world government administered by Islam imams. Think Iran but on a global scale. No, think Spanish Inquisition replacing the blue-helmetted UN.
So we'll just cave into the demans. You're not an adulterer ot homosexual are you? Why don't you just commit suicide and make our job easier in submitting to Osama's demands.