Oh, and blind retaliation would have left major chunks of the middle east as irradiated wastland.

But you didn't *say* "bombed the freedom and peace", which is a nonsense phrase, you said "blind revenge".

While I am no supporter of the Iraq fiasco, the logic for moving into Afghanistan in 2001 was - and remains to be - sound. As huge a debacle as that is turning into, the alternative is to basically say "go ahead and harbor terrorists who blow up our shit, we won't do diddly to you".

Of course, if you would like to share how you would have handled the situation had you been President of the United States, I await your wisdom with baited breath. You certainly have strong opinions about what happened, so obviously you have a well reasoned alternative you would have followed with the benefit of hindsight.... right?

@strat - I hope you aren't holding that baited breath waiting for a reasoned and logically presented answer from Miro the troll.

No, not really. But I am always curious about how those who raise issues with how others handle problems would solve the same problems themselves. I don't exactly 'put people on the spot' in my job, but asking people how *they* would solve a problem they think someone else has 'screwed up' is usually an excellent method for making them realize that they are perhaps not offering reasoned criticism.

It's a lot easier to bitch about how there is litter on the sidewalk then to get off your lazy ass and clean it up. After all, it's someone *else's* problem, right?

By the way, what did you use as the bait for your breath? The phrase is "bated breath" from "abated breath." Shakespeare shortened it once and it stuck as many a phrase of his hath bestuck itself upon the world.

Anyone can be a critic. Not everyone can make a movie (or lead a country).

@Draug - I've been drinking coffee most of the day, I'm fighting off some viral infection, and my sugar is wacked out which does *so* many pleasant things to my digestive tract. My breath could kill a Rhino at 500 yards. Thank God my wife is in the air and doesn't have to kiss me tonight

http://www.perthstreetbikes.com/forum/f20/massive-metal-deposits-found-afghanistan-potentially-worth-1-trillion-109410/

This is the real reason for the war in Afghanistan. "Well, while we were looking for Bin Laden we just happened to trip and fall over these things buried under the mountains." A quote of a simplified political excuse.

Please people, do you really think that a few hundred, maybe a thousand guys living in the caves of Afghanistan could not be caught after so long? Why should he be caught when he's such a great excuse to find and extract these valuable elements. After all, it's really only helping those poor people benefit from their natural wealth. Isn't it? It's not America's fought if they're the only ones able to fully obtain and extract these elements is it? And if this new wealth found at the cost of American's lives doesn't reach the people well the that's just freedom. After all, America isn't a land of Socialists is it?!!

@stratagos
I learned how terrible the world truly is, I encountered, at the tender age of 8, images this world should never know.

@Iceray - the world isn't terrible, but people and organizations *can be* terrible. There is also much beauty and good to be found in it, if you'll only look. But I can only imagine what that must have done to an 8 year old's mental and emotional mindset. Hell, I was 35 and some of the images still haunt me today. When I see an old movie or TV show that happens to take place in NYC, if a shot of the WTC comes up, I flashback to the images of that day.

@strat - They brought donuts in to celebrate today, so my sugar is *way* out of whack. I feel your pain, my friend.

@draugnar

"have nothign to fear so long as they don't hide and support the terrorist organizations I just mentioned. "

Oh man that´s ridiculous...thousands of afghans and tenthousands of Iraquies had been killed, wich had had nothing to do with terrorists...

@strat

"But you didn't *say* "bombed the freedom and peace", which is a nonsense phrase, you said "blind revenge"

I am not in the mood to explain that phrase to you, think about it...

"the alternative is to basically say "go ahead and harbor terrorists who blow up our shit, we won't do diddly to you".

and

"Of course, if you would like to share how you would have handled the situation had you been President of the United States, I await your wisdom with baited breath. "

First i wouldn´t have attacked Afghanistan or Iraque, both lead to a great disaster and many people mentioned that before the war.
The terrorists and the financial support for the attacks came out of SaudiArabia and the Jemen, they organized their cell in Hamburg and were trained in the USA. As long as the US Government keeps kissing the Saudis asses, America will be threatened by terrorists.
Only a combined attacked by Intellegence Agencies(of all allied countries), poltical pressure on the financers and making friends in the arabic world (who also were victims of terroristic groups) would have a chance to destroy terroristic networks.
Instead Bush came up with his stupid "wether you are for me or against me" foreign policies.
America loses more and more influence, because of the costs of two wars. Giving a only a small amount of that money to build a network that can effectively catch terrorists, the world would be much safer, Al Quaida destroyed.

@draugnar

"@strat - I hope you aren't holding that baited breath waiting for a reasoned and logically presented answer from Miro the troll. "

Draugnar you have know brain, you only believe what the propaganda tolds either you are a soldier or just stupid by nature...

No brain*

"Why do you think i was almost crying that day? You even quoted me on that, read it again brainiac..."

Damn, really?

"After a while i regonized tears in my eyes and said somehow automatically:"The americans will take revenge on the terrorists, but instead they will kill thousand of innocent people.""

Your tears are, in your own words, linked not to the thousands of Americans that died but the thousands of innocents that big bad evil empire America would kill in retaliation. It's so clear what your intention was that even acting as if it wasn't what we've all seen you say is disingenuous beyond belief.

@Eden

"Your tears are, in your own words, linked not to the thousands of Americans that died but the thousands of innocents that big bad evil empire America would kill in retaliation."

Are you stupid? There is a word, it is called AND... if i had linked it to something else i had made it a BECAUSE...

You are so paranoid about the date you even made shit up like this and insult feelings about that day...

Technically speaking, the word "and" is often used to link the ideas of two independant clauses as well as the clauses themselves, especially if the two ideas lend themselves to it (tears and people killed by America). It's quite natural to read it the way they did.

^that, and I'm really not sure your explanation holds water, Miro, the really obvious explanation is what I said, you sound like you're saving face in typical Miro fashion

And who's paranoid about numbers?

Miro --

So going to Afghanistan, to take out the enemy government that was shielding and protecting Al Qaida, and that had terrorized its own people for much longer than that, that's a bad thing? Learn something for once, and look up the Northern Alliance and Ahmed Shah Massoud. These were Afghanis who were actively fighting a war of liberation against the Taliban, and who were actively fighting against Al Qaeda elements. Massoud himself had taken out several Al Qaeda training institutions. Now, of course, Massoud was killed one day before the World Trade Center attacks, so that the Northern Alliance would be incapacitated at the same time as the United States.

Why do I bring this up? To show you that you're an indoctrinated piece of European peacenik trash. This is the one issue that 99.9% of Americans agree on. I find myself disagreeing with almost all of what Draug and strat say, but we are in agreement on this.

Now why is that? It's quite simple. Afghanistan as a STATE harbored Al Qaeda. Afghanistan was the physical headquarters of Al Qaeda. True, several Saudi and Yemeni individuals were the financial backers of Al Qaeda, but which would you do first -- cut off the financial backing, or completely obliterate the physical headquarters?

You are showing your ignorance, because you clearly don't remember that Al Qaeda-connected assets and accounts were permanently frozen by the Saudi Government shortly after 9/11. Now, the only way that group can obtain funding is through money laundering of donations given to Islamic relief charities.

Now, another question I have to ask you, warum kannst du dieses Thema nicht ergreifen? War es schon lange her als Europaer dieses Thema aus eigener Ehrfahrung kannten. Sollte der Rest des freien Erdkreis warten, auf Hitler eine selbst-Richtigstellung zu machen?

@miro

I am going to put the whole Iraq think to the side because - despite the efforts of some on the right to link them - they are seperate issues. I will note, however, that the primary reason (besides ego) that was used to justify the Iraq invasion was intelligence that Saddam had WMDs.

In other words, the solution you seem to be proposing - a massive increase in intelligence spending and a reliance on the intelligence agencies instead of other methods - is a primary *cause* of the Iraq war.

The CIA, NSA, FBI, and DIA all do impressive, vital work. They are not magic. You can throw as much money as you want at them - and note that their budgets are *much* larger than the were a decade ago - and that doesn't instantly solve problems. Case in point - Bin Laden is still hanging out in a cave somewhere.

You state we should have taken actions against Saudi Arabia - which was making efforts (admittedly half hearted and ineffectual) again Al Quaida - instead of the country that was actively hosting and shielding them. What actions should have been taken? A sharp scolding? Not buying their oil? Telling them to buy their tanks from the Russia instead of us? Nuke Mecca? What, precisely, should have been done, and what would the effect have been on an organization that had as one of it's goals the overthrow of the Saudi government?

Draugnar and everyone else who is arguing against Miro + 1

You guys are saving me a lot of time. Thanks.

I bet Miro Klose is such a eurotrash vagina that he's probably out at an all-male rave right now, partying on into the morning.

Miro, you've restored my faith in humanity--namely, that human beings are so often idiotic, cruel, nonsensical, rash, belligerent, illogical, pompous, erroneus...

Human beings are ALL of that and more--and yet you are one of those rarer specimens of Man that exhibits ALL of these qualities with an EXTRAORDINARY consistency with absolutely NO redeeming qualities in their mannerisms, stances or speech!

I really do thank, you, Miro!

My hope for a Peaceful Man or an Evolved Man or an Ubermensch may be pipe dreams...

But at least next to your own self, barren of Appolian Power or Dionysian Delight, or really any semblence of a compassionate or even rational mind and being, the rest of mankind looks all the better and brighter in comparison.



A rose is a rose, no matter how sweet...but it's scent is oh so sweeter still when placed alongside a pile of dog droppings...thank you very much for reminding us ALL of that, Miro!

http://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=38045

TMW, you're as bad as Miro is in your own way.

Namely, being irrational and convinced of his own righteousness.

That being said, I have always been of the mind that Iraq was a mistake, and Afghanistan was a missed opportunity to get at the real problem. But then again, this was the administration that completely ignored the JCS's troop estimates and figured we could do Iraq on the cheap-cheap.

And now we have to spend even more blood and treasure to accomplish what we should have been doing the entire time in Afghanistan.

ebay you idiot that report was false.

@Miro The Afghan War is hardly the wrong war as pointed out by others. The Iraq War was not the result of 9/11. If we have not tryed to avoid civilian casualities millions would be dead. NATO troops have often put their own lives on the line to avoid civilian deaths. Yes some have been killed because of error, fog of war, and a handful of individuals that have gone bad. Most of the civilian casulities have been caused by the tactics used by the Talibaun, Al Qaeda, and others. Firing from buildings occupied by civilians, basicly using unarmed civilians as human shields, tends to make that building a target.

@FriedOkra

My english is bad, i know. But your german hurts my eyes, please write in english your german sentence about Hitler makes no sence at all...

"I bet Miro Klose is such a eurotrash vagina that he's probably out at an all-male rave right now, partying on into the morning. "

When i read that i was so shocked and insulted, i nearly dropped my bible that helped me masturbating into my gun...

@strat

"What, precisely, should have been done"

I wrote it earlier...

@obiwan

"Miro, you've restored my faith in humanity-"

It is time for you and your american brothersand sisters to do so. After so much killing of other people i really hoped for a movement like in times of Vietnam. Sadly i knew from the start that the americans, especially the young generation, is to millitarized (does this word exist in english?) by the wars and the media, they will never demonstrate for peace, thankfully Obama almost ended the war on Iraque.
Your sarcastic and poor comments show your backround. An intimidated child, not able to understand world politics even frightend of it. Now you should have been grown out of it, but 9 years later you still come up with pathetic announcments, and your "generation" of traumatized kids followed into that thread and into that "hate speeches" about Europeans who are not bloodthirsty enough for the american, rightwing "warmongerlogic"...
Humanity is what your country needs the most, but sadly i see the USA divided on that...