With friends like these...

[Panther]

(Previous quote)New proof has come to the surface that Bush and his croonies had a plan to take out Saddam eight months before the Towers were hit.

Could you cite your "proof" of this?

While, as you already pointed out, there were some errors in previous posts thus far...

The plans to attack Iraq months before has been well reported and documented.

In fact, an entire chapter with sources, cites, and proof from government documents prior to 9/11 was devoted to this very fact in a book called Crossing the Rubicon by Michael Ruppert.

[Kevin Mackie]

The same book I just pulled this gem from an on-line review?

In Ruppert's highly controversial new book "Crossing the Rubicon" he names Vice President Dick Cheney as the prime suspect in the mass murders of 9/11 and with copious footnotes works to prove that not only was Cheney a planner in the attacks but also that on the day of the attacks he was running a completely separate command, control and communications system which was superseding any orders being issued by the FAA, the Pentagon, or the White House Situation Room.

Yikes! Tin foil hat time.

Come on...

[Bill Glasheen]

Plans are made for just about every possible and probable scenario. That doesn't mean we have any likelihood of doing it. It just means we are prepared for quick action given a crisis scenario.

Want to take out Saddam? Dust the old plans off, made months in advance (at least).

- Bill

[Panther]

Yikes! Tin foil hat time.

Come on...

My first thoughts as well... Then I was given a copy of the book. Ruppert is a former detective, decorated, with an exemplary career... and he documents everything. Just because I didn't want to believe some of what I was reading, I went through a whole bunch of the footnoted sources and cites. His documentation for his position and claims is very, very thorough. Before you "poo-poo" it... look at the documentation. Rather astounding. (And I was a "Cheney-man" who thought it was a bunch of BS)

[Akil Todd Harvey]

9/11 opened up the floodgates to a whole bunch of "stuff." I knew once it happened that the world would not like our reaction. I knew when it happend that many in our country would not like our reaction.

so when are we gonna stop reacting and start actin proactive instead of just creating more and more blowback into our own faces......?!?!?!?!?




we have to react to get back at those who killed 6thousand of our people indisciminantly, well do it by killing thousands of their people indiscriminately, right?

I realize that many would argue that we are not killing randomly, but few of you realize that much of the Muslim world thinks that we are killing pretty randomly much of the time, if not most. Sort of like the percentage of americans who thought Sadman had WMD.

that that is there perception does not make it real.....

and our perceptions of reality do not make it real, just cuz we percieve it as such......

reality, is in fact, somewhere in between theirs and ours....we are both right and wrong and they are both wrong and right.......

now, how do we minimze what we are doing wrong, while encouraging them to do what is right?

at times i think the war is as much among ourselves (and them among themselves) as anything else.

the moderates on both sides are working as hard as they can to keep the wackos on both sides in check.

the wackos on bopth sides are bust saying, "they cant be trusted, they are animlas, they are heathens, they are backward, they have no values"

but the real danger of the wackos on both sides is that they encourage fighting as the only solution.

yeah, the only solutiuon in which we all end up blind, crippled, handicapped, and dead...eye for and eye leave us all blind and toothless.......

we have wackos on our side just as they do.....

tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, afghanis, etc have paid the ulitmate price to exact our revenge on those 6 thousand americans killed (or I mean, 5 thousand, or 4 thousand, or 3 thousand).......

so while we are every year lowering our estimate of how many of ours died, they are every year revising upward the number who die in our "reaction"

[MikeK]

I've never seen the 6,000 number that you are using. Can you give a source that uses it past say October 1, 2001?

[RACastanet]

Mike's correct. The number continuued to decline after 10/01 as reports were compared and many duplicate listings were discovered. There were apparently even a few who were 'dead' but were really using the opportunity to disappear.

Rich

[MikeK]

I do remember for a few hours up to 50,000 dead being tossed around, but that was the news weenies using the occupancy numbers for the WTC and not an actual head count.

I realize that many would argue that we are not killing randomly, but few of you realize that much of the Muslim world thinks that we are killing pretty randomly much of the time, if not most. Sort of like the percentage of americans who thought Sadman had WMD.

Inaccurate news reporting is something that plagues to Muslim world even worse that here in the states, and not much we can do about it except take away the state run news agencies and aljazeera. Also the percentage of Iraqi's who thought Saddam still had WMD was pretty high too since injectors to combat the effects of chemical and biological weapons were found on many Iraqi soldiers. And I guess those Iranians, Shia and Kurds were just a bunch of hypocondriacs who just thought that they were gassed.

[Akil Todd Harvey]

keep thinking inside the box my friends, and we will come up with no new solutions.....War will always be the choice of first resort (just like we claim they do), and Peace will always be the thing that happens rarely, if ever.....

Only savages would act that way. No Christian or Jew believes that they would be justified in killing someone for Bible or Talmud desecration

Anyone who gets inraged and calls for holy war over a desecrated koran needs to be taken out of the gene pool anyway

Americans call for revenge over flag burnings, but that makes it ok since we dont call it a holy war......?!@?!??!?!?!

Inaccurate news reporting is something that plagues to Muslim world even worse that here in the states, and not much we can do about it except take away the state run news agencies and aljazeera.

The quality of our reporting is on the decline, my friends, and has been for the past two decades.......but i guess our response should be to just throw our hands up in the air and say, "NOT much we can do about it".

talkabout a defetist attitude......and what is his only solution?

I suppose the elimination of Newsweek would be similarly appropo?!?!?!


You know, you are so right, since media of ours and theirs is so bad, we should eliminate all of them (newspapers and magazines that are found to report unfairly or with fault, should be banned).....and we should just act on our ignorance all the time, instead of just most of the time.....


just as we need to restrain the wackos on both sides, we each need to restrain the inner wacko in all of us....the wounded hurt ego that feels the only response is to inflict hurt on the enemy as the solution to my pain.......

many years ago i learned (via senseis mattson, Canna, Rabesa, Bethony, Campbell, Baptista, aceto, Vinny) that causing pain & inflicting bodily injury on others is easy. Making war is oh so easy.....Making peace, on the other hand, is much much harder.....

learning to hurt effectively is easy to do and learning to inflict lots of damage is similarly easy, but it doesnt leave you with a long term in the gut warm feeling..........

learning to heal, i learned, is harder, much harder. but it leaves a much better feeling.......

some martial arts supposedly required its practitioners to learn how to heal first, and only later were they taught to harm.......

destruction is easy-see how good a job we are doing over there, destroying everything and everyone (emphasis added)

rebuilding is harder-compare how good a job we are doing at destroying with our ability to rebuild (no emphasis needed).

but dont worry, i am certain that after you spin it, we will be perfect little soldiers without any flaws or imperfections and they will be the devils, the heathens and the lowlifes.......we blame everthing that went wrong on them, and everything that goes right is entirely because of us????

[MikeK]

The quality of our reporting is on the decline, my friends, and has been for the past two decades.....

Nah, it's always been bad. Goes back at least a hundred+ years. It's the nature of the beast.

Americans call for revenge over flag burnings, but that makes it ok since we dont call it a holy war......?!@?!??!?!?!

Burning flags is old hat to us and it's been over done so we don't get too worked up over it. Somewhere in the third world someone is making a killing on selling those Old Glory Easy Burn flags.

destruction is easy-see how good a job we are doing over there, destroying everything and everyone (emphasis added)

Sure is and we're darn good at it. But if our intention was to "destroying everything and everyone" we wouldn't be wasting our time and risking our lives in Afghanistan and Iraq trying to establish order.

rebuilding is harder-compare how good a job we are doing at destroying with our ability to rebuild (no emphasis needed).

It'd be a lot easier without a bunch of terrorists blowing people up and sabotaging things.

we blame everthing that went wrong on them, and everything that goes right is entirely because of us????

Who is this them you talk about? I'm guessing the "us" is the USA. Please get more specific when referring to events.

[Bill Glasheen]

The quality of our reporting is on the decline, my friends, and has been for the past two decades.....

Some time when you get a chance, read The Great Influenza. It's a wonderful, well-documented read that plots the history of the birth of evidence-based medicine, how influenza lives and kills, and how wars typically were fought before the advent of modern medicine and the modern media.

Back in wars past, the U.S. government often controlled the media with tight reigns to maintain public support of war campaigns. They did it to a fault, as the book I mentioned will show. (It cost the lives of perhaps millions of people during the last great influenza epidemic.) Since Vietnam, the media has had every opportunity to report whatever they want. From the standpoint of the press being free, nobody has anything to complain about.

How individuals use or abuse that privilege is another story altogether.

{John Barry's} indictment of the public authorities for their dishonesty and deliberate minimization of the damage and dangers is particularly chilling in today's climate of bioterrorism, in the midst of a war whose damages and dangers have been similarly minimized.

- Karen Brudney, M.D.

Interesting indictment of "The Media" past and present, no?

- Bill

[IJ]

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8146881/

Back to Newsweek for a second. Seems like they weren't totally out of left field.

[Panther]

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8146881/

Back to Newsweek for a second. Seems like they weren't totally out of left field.

Regardless of disputes over accuracy in reporting, one thing is true...

Newsweek and MSNBC both come directly from LEFT field!



Also... I notice ATH is back. I'm OK with that as long as the rules of this forum are followed.

[Bill Glasheen]

If Newsweek had gotten the full story, this is what would have been reported:

* Confirmed number of Korans absued by Gitmo prison guards - 5

* Confirmed number of Korans abused by Gitmo prisoners - 15

That tells a very different story than what they wanted told (which was false, by the way), don't you think?

The problem we have here is differing opinions and selective reporting. Got a point of view? Hate the other side? Just report what makes the other side look bad and call it a crisis. And if some people die halfway across the world because of your irresponsible journalism, well hey - they're just whackos!

- Bill

[cxt]

Bill

I seriously doub that Newsweek would have reported the prisoners abusing the Koran themselves.
Did not fit the preconception of the story.

Dwight D. Eisenhower mentioned a similar situation concerning detainees in his book, Crusade in Europe.

To quote:

"But because perfection could not be achived some so-called investigators saw a golden chance for personal publicity."

Perfection can NEVER be achived, and as long as we are being held to an irrationally high standard we will keep getting bashed.

Some of the folks at Gitmo, thier own nations have refused to take them back, some of the folks at Gitmo have had their OWN family plead with the USA NOT to release them--mainly because the way prisoners are treated in their nation is MUCH hasher than anything we could dream up.

I also find it interesting that the same Left that supports fileing lawsuits over the use of a christain cross on 150 year old city seal is so angered at the possible abuse of book.