[extropy-chat] Who thinks the Bush admin lied over Iraq? Onwhatbasis?

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Robert Lindauer <robgobblin at aol.com> wrote:
> >
> > Second, if war is the last resort then would you have pursued
> Islamic 
> > extremists in Afghanistan in a different way?
> 
> 
> I don't have enough information about Al quaeda and thier involvement
> in the 9/11 attacks to say what I would have done.
> 
> How can we extract ourselves from these messes in Iraq and
> Afganistan?  Now that's a question worth asking.
> 
> 1)  Impeach our president, admit we were wrong.

For what? 9/11?

> 2)  Reach out to the UN for assistance in rebuilding Iraq on THEIR
> terms - give it to them!

We are giving it to them, on the Iraqis terms, not the thug coddlers at
the UN.

> 3)  Extract our troops as quickly as is reasonably possible.
> 4)  Reach out to the current "insurgency" and let them know that
> they'll be getting their country back reasonably and peacefully
> as quickly as possible and that they're invited to join in the
> formation of the new government -and mean it-. Perhaps offer to
> make Iraq a shining example of a Libertarian utopia :)

Giving a blank invite to baathists will assure there is never anything
even remotely resembling anything libertarian, and basing your opinions
on nothing but stalinist manufactured propaganda does nothing to
improve your believability.

> 
> (as long as I'm at it...)
> 
> 5)  Rebuild our economy by financing a massive alternative energy 
> conversion on the same debt we were going to use to pay for the rest
> of the war obviating the percieved need for more exploratory missions
> to the middle east.

This has been dealt with numerous times in the past: 

a) fuelling the nation with biodiesel/cornohol will require cutting
fuel needs by two thirds, oh, and every american giving up eating,
cause fuel production will take up all the currently cultivated land
and supply only 1/3 of our fuel needs.

b) fuelling the nation with photovoltaic generated hydrogen will
require, at current technology levels, that 1/3 of the arable land in
the US be covered with photovoltaic cells.

c) there is no more exploitable hydropower

d) expanding windpower will require installation of wind plants in
locations that will piss off every tree hugger and oceanfront property
owner.

e) conversely, several dozen pebble bed thorium nuke plants will solve
the problem.

> 
> (and now to the soapbox version of attempting to answer your
> question, I'm sure you were looking forward to it)
> 
>  Hopefully I'd have been a better diplomat (yeah right!, me a 
> diplomat... I still piss off my wife's cat for fun) BEFORE 9/11 and 
> avoided the whole confounded incident.  But in the unimaginably
> unlikely 
> possible world where I found myself president on 9/12 looking for 
> something to do I'd probably have listened to my CIA/FBI advisors and
> gone in with the toothpick before using a hammer. 

Are you saying you'd have sent diplomats to go kow tow and kiss bin
ladens butt? Or were you not paying any attention during the entire
1990's? Clinton tried the whole diplomacy and "terrorism is a crime to
be prosecuted" feel-good BS for eight years with both bin Laden and
Saddam. 

> If I was
> interested in saving my political career (which would probably be
> the main reason such a world was so completely absurd) I would
> attempt to have a head or two rolling down the table within a few
> weeks and then some kind of back-office deal to appease the
> attackers and once again restore peace?  
> Hopefully the head will have been dead for years so nobody new would 
> have had to die...  Maybe...

Ah, the old appeasement word comes out. Not that it was unexpected. How
long do you think they would have waited before they made more demands?
Don't you know ANYTHING about dealing with terrorism?

> 
> No doubt the Taliban were upset by Unocal's insistence on pushing 
> through the afgan line -on their terms- and no doubt they could have 
> been sated had -someone- told Unocal just to play nice with the 
> natives.  But I don't know enough about Al Quaeda's involvement with
> the Taliban and the Saudi government to really have an understanding
> of who to talk to and how to talk with them. I'd LOVE to know, 
> though. 

it is evident by everything you've said. Are you naive enough to think
that the Saudis have a right to subsidize a terrorist guerilla movement
to block a non-OPEC oil pipeline being built that would compete with
their control of world oil prices? What gives them the right to do so,
but that we don't have the right to do the opposite? Why not have a war
over oil? We need oil, the Saudis don't want us to have more than they
are willing to sell us.

> I've 
> read Osama Bin Laden's statement but frankly without knowing in more 
> detail how Al Quaeda is organized and what their relationship is with
> their various supporting organizations, I don't have enough
> information to make an informed decision even in retrospect. 

Some of us have been paying detailed attention, and not just to left
wing stalinist propaganda outlets that is naively parroted by
chiliastic wing-nuts like rense.com, among others.

> It's possible that the 
> taliban was so closely aligned with Al Quaeda that 9/11 was
> essentially a first-shot act of war.

Actually, the original bombing of the WTC back in 1993 was the first
shot act of a war that bin Laden declared upon the US in a fatwa he
released in 1992. Clinton, of course, since his policy that terrorism
was a crime, not combat, ignored the declaration of war and refused to
answer in kind until he needed some cover for his predelictions. The
second shot of the war was a second plot to bomb the WTC, Wall Street,
and the George Washington Bridge organized by the so-called blind
shiek. The third shot of the war was the twin bombings of the US
embassies in Africa. But I understand that you haven't been paying
attention to the situation all through the 1990's, like most democrats,
other than blaming the US.

> If that was the case, I don't know what I'd
> have done, but it probably wouldn't have been greeted with glee by
> true pacifists - would have had to keep it hush-hush no doubt. It's
> equally 
> possible, from my point of view, that Bin Laden was hired by Bush's 
> people to stir things up and save his flailing presidency. In which 
> case, because I'd be such a good president there'd be no need to hire
> terrorists to give me something to do and so the whole event would
> have been avoided. But this possible-world day-dreaming is always so 
> ridiculous after the fact. The possibilities to explore are the ones
> moving forward.

What would you have done if foreign intelligence services knew about
the attack on the US on 9/11 but refused to provide details because
they were pissed that Bush was finally telling the global community
that we weren't going to clean their messes up anymore (a first since
the Roosevelt era). If I were into wild-assed unsupported conspiracy
theories as you seem to be, I'd say that the international community
let 9/11 happen to the US because Bush refused to get involved and was
pursing a neo-isolationist foreign policy, which would have resulted in
just the sort of world that all the America haters claim we were bombed
to achieve.

> 
> I know that the Taliban had terrible treatment of women and that
> might be grounds for war all by itself, but then the Taliban
> wouldn't be the first target if we were starting a war on sexism.

I don't recall you joining in the war on Bill Clinton.

>  Perhaps to solve that 
> problem I'd try something definitively diplomatic (lap dances all 
> around?  - just a joke, lighten up people!)  Anyway, for that we'd 
> probably have to start in India or Pakistan, "our allies".  So, 
> unfortunately, the sex issue gets swept under the floor as it has
> been  for the last 5000 years.

The GOP weren't the ones who bombed an african pharmaceutical plant to
deflect attention from the president's affairs.

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com