July 20, 2005

• I am shocked -- shocked -- to find gambling going on here...
• Round up the usual suspects...
• Shocker. Hey look over here, I'm nominating someone for the supreme court!
• You think that O'Conner, at the behest of Bush, resigned to draw the media's attention away from the Iraqi conflict?
• It's all part of one vast conspiracy. The clues are on the back of the dollar bill.
• Just sayin'. 2 billion per day, no WMD, plans to invade before election, no exit strategy, a decade of foot-in-tar-baby, etc. Great idea, this invading Iraq. Ne c'est pas?
• This came to me while watching War of the Worlds: imagined those humongous, terrifying tripods to be the latest military hardware, and the ones running on the ground, people in Iraq or some other underdeveopled country. This really set down the fear, the despair, the frustration to a tangible level. And should one folllow this wretched analogy further, the acts of Cruise's character under such a light give just another view to the real situation: he became a fighter, he killed for the safety of his children, he became a terrorist (or was it a 'freedom fighter'?). Not that I'm 'advocating terrhur' and such, but I can imagine what an extreme situation can lead anyone to do. /puts flame suit on
• No no no, Flagpole you've got it all wrong. You welcome the tripods as liberators.
• Take your pick really... There's more than one thing going on presently that I'm sure βuS╞╡ would be more than happy to have attention diverted from. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Iraq is being doubly-triply buttock-raped. What did they expect? If you fuck the horse, expect reciprocation!
• In Fascist Bushland, horse fucks you!
• Actually... I think it's Oregon where the horse fucks you...
• You think that O'Conner, at the behest of Bush, resigned to draw the media's attention away from the Iraqi conflict? No, I'm suggesting that this story will not get as much attention as it deserves because the media will be focusing on the SC nomination. Nice straw man though, sorry to ruin the fun.
• How many total foreign fighters are there? Are we talking tens of thousands?
• how many suicide bombers does it take to blow up a light bulb?
• Iraq war *creating* new terrorists? YOU DON'T SAY?? Well I never. We were ONLY SAYING THIS OVER AND OVER BEFORE THE CUNTS INVADED. Grrrrrr.
• Foreign Islamic fighters swarmed into Afghanistan in the '80s, Bosnia and Chechnya in the '90s, and now Iraq in the '00s. Yes, people were saying it before the cunts invaded, because people have been saying it, and seeing it, for the last 25 years or so, and probably a lot longer before that. You don't have to be Jeanne Dixon to have suspected this may occur. That propoganda demonizing (rightly or wrongly or bothly) an invasion of a land that shares a religion (or whatever) can cause an increase in those from other places willing to go there and fight is not a hugely new idea. Nor is it wildly eye-opening that the majority of those influenced tend to be young men with little prior military experience (older men with military experience know how much is sucks and stay home). That the CIA suspects that these people might receive training and technical skills upon arrival may have come from a report issued earlier by Duh Magazine.
• Another example: Franco's Spain pre-WWII. Lots of non-Spanish fighters there.
• Mission accomplished my ass.
• Though I have supported the war, I agree with you Argh that *that* particular moment was idiotic.
• I will join Fes in agreeing that was a dumbass moment.
• Monkeyfilter: A report issued earlier by Duh Magazine.
• Hey, look what I found on the back of a dollar bill: Bush accelerated his search for a Supreme Court nominee in part because of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's name, according to Republicans familiar with administration strategy. Bush originally had planned to announce a replacement for retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on July 26 or 27, just before his planned July 28 departure for a month-long vacation at his Crawford, Texas, ranch, said two administration officials, who spoke on the condition they not be named. The officials said those plans changed because Rove has become a focus of Fitzgerald's interest and of news accounts about the matter. I wouldn't call a conspiracy (at least not this nomination part) and it didn't require the cooperation of O'Conner. It did however cover up a news story that was harmful to the administration. Shocker.
• *Inserts "it" after "call" and throws a bunch of commas at the post, hoping they land in the right spots.*
• >>That the CIA suspects that these people might receive training and technical skills upon arrival may have come from a report issued earlier by Duh Magazine. Actually, The CIA's National Intelligence Council concluded in a report earlier this year that ''Iraq and other possible conflicts in the future could provide recruitment, training grounds, technical skills, and language proficiency for a new class of terrorists who are 'professionalized' and for whom political violence becomes an end in itself." (last paragraph) Duh magazine indeed. Military Intelligence / Two words combined that can't make sense
• whoops The Iraq war is over, and the winner is... Iran The two governments went into a tizzy of wheeling and dealing of a sort not seen since Texas oil millionaires found out about Saudi Arabia. Oil pipelines, port access, pilgrimage, trade, security, military assistance, were all on the table in Tehran. All the sorts of contracts and deals that U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney had imagined for Halliburton, and that the Pentagon neoconservatives had hoped for Israel, were heading instead due east.
• pwnd.
• I still don't see how that's substantively different from, as an example, the influx of Islamic fighters that flooded into Afghanistan when the Afghans were at war with the Soviets during the 80s. The recruitment aspect was the war itself and the Afghan call for aid, and the muj and their supporters (the US, primarily) provided training and technical skills. Admittedly, I know nothing about their language skills. Anyway, these fighters, in many cases, eventually became to the Taliban, and their involvement in terror is well known. I'm not sure why the CIA now declares these traits able to render fighters "professionalized," but poltical violence is by definition not an end in itself, as it is in furtherance of a political aim, even if that aim is simplistic. Violence as an end product is just... violence.
• I see the difference being that we (or G.W. Bush & Co. rather) specifically caused it. We knew it would happen, didn't prevent it, and now there are hundreds of hornets gunning for us that weren't there before. My take on the "professionalized" description is that they are better organized than ever, more technologically sophisticated than ever, and willing to hold off until the right moment to attack whereas before it was a "go when ready" kind of mentality. "Al-Qaida,(sic) literally ’the database,’ was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians,"
• Well, we concentrated it and gave it clarity of purpose, certainly, but cause? The big terror orgs had not had much problems in the way of recruitment prior to the Iraq War. If we hadn't gone into Iraq, Afghanistan would have sufficed; if we hadn't gone into Afghanistan, the continued problems in Palestine would have sufficed; if we had cut off support for Israel, our presence in Saudi Arabia would have sufficed, etc ad infinitum. Poverty, restless youthful populations, political marginalization, virulent strains of Islamic thought, Israeli treatment of Palestinians, Chechnya and the like are in my opinion the real recruiting posters for Islamic terrorism - the US has just crystalized that into an enemy that can be readily identified. As for organization and technical sophistication, I don't know. For the former, while I'd agree that Hamas is practically a political organization (like Sinn Fein, for example), Al Qaeda has always sort of relied on it's disorganization as a strength - a sort of clearinghouse of anti-westernism comprised of dozens of small, independent cells that operate more or less without direct oversight and have tenuous connections at best to the bin Laden mothership in the Pakistani mountains. The people who set the bombs in London seem to exemplify this. As for the question of technical sophistication, while you do see them using technology - websites, satellite phones, what have you - the Iraqi insurgents rely primarily on a very nontechnical sort of weapon: the suicide bomber. Very old, simple and effective. Personally, I don't see any indication that al Qaeda attacks have any sense of timing per se, other than to, say, strike when there are many victims around. The London bombings, while coordinated between themselves - no more than a "synchronize your watches" level of sophistication - but I can't see any sense of greater purpose or sophistication than that. Morning is when trains are busy, so they struck in the morning. That's kind of a tin-foily link there, but the CIA did arm and train the mujahideen, that much is true.
• I guess I think of it being caused in the sense that if we hadn't invaded, there wouldn't be an influx of foreign fighters, and there wouldn't be the large numbers of them that there are. Afghanistan and Palestine etc., agreed they'd still be breeding grounds, but I think the article is making the point that it's been stepped up - ratcheted up specifically because of our (President's) actions. And therefore a greater threat to . . . non-terrorists. I don't know anything really about what kind of training or culture goes on for them so the 'better organized / better technology' is a guess. yeah, the link (if I had looked) was based on This Guardian article which has a bit more clout. Interesting to think that "Al Quaida" is a term given to the list of terrorists compiled by the CIA, and not one they themselves chose. Perhaps worthy of an FPP discussion by itself.
• That's kind of a tin-foily link there, gee ya think? Right off, I have only ever heard it translated as "the base," not "the database." I think the bottom line is we gave these people an enemy to fight right in their backyard. No matter how much they hated us, very few people in the Middle East or Asia have the means or motivation to physically come to the USA and attack... Iraq is a ready-made battleground for them. I dont think most of these people are a threat to those of us living in the US or overseas, simply b/c they are not part of an organization with the resources to attack the US or Europe. They're just individuals on the ground who are a threat to the people of Iraq and our troops on the ground, who should never have been there, which puts us back at square one...
• I have to conceed that's a good point - and yet, without 9/11? No invasion of either Afghanistan or Iraq would likely have taken place. If memory serves, the 9/11 attacks were about US presence in Saudi Arabia, which we are at the request of the Saudis. No invasion necessary. In fact,. Bush's critics help to make this case by asserting (rightly, in my opinion) that official dealings between al Qaeda and Hussein were next to nonexistent - bin Laden could give a rat's about Hussein five years ago - why so interested in Iraq now? Because it's a good clarifying factor, and it's a good way to strike at the US. Also, while the studies make the claim that the number of foreign fighters have risen, no one seems to have examined the numbers of foreign fighters who have been captured and/or killed. The gross number of terrorists being recruited may be up - but it could easily be, it seems, that the net number of terrorists have declined. That al Qaeda means the "database" fries me, if true.
• Yeah it's kinda creepy for sure. And I was ready to attack Afghanistan (or the Taliban, specifically) after they blasted apart the Bhuddist statues of antiquity. Sort of. But no argument in that theatre. The article on the rise in foreign fighters is just another good point for arguing that invading Iraq was at it's absolute best - completely premature. More probably absolutely wrongheaded, and certainly an enormous burden to place on America when it wasn't necessary. Lastly, killing terrorists breeds terrorists. A true war on terror would identify the causes and work through non-violent means to change them. This is a war started by Islamic extremists and carried to the Middle East by a very confused and hawkish administration. Now we're stuck spending 2 billion a week and no end in sight. I want schools well funded, water and air cleaned, and cancer cured. This isn't helping.
• who cares
• I'm not sure that being in Iraq is stopping cancer research. But your point is taken, pete.
• This NYT opinion piece argues that Bush still doesn't know Iraq is a quagmire that's made us less secure. A good recap with mention of London & Egyptian bombings.
• Last September was the crucial month. By then the US government had spent $60 billion on the US forces in Iraq, and $1 billion on the Iraqi security forces. The Americans knew that they were widely hated. ‘In the war of ideas or the struggle for hearts and minds . . . American efforts have not only failed, they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended’ was the principal finding of the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board. via
• Why I opposed the war by House Rep. Barbara Lee
• Former MI5 chief delivers damning verdict on Iraq invasion: Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller tells Chilcot that invasion increased terrorist threat and radicalised young British Muslims