Fucked up...

[prole]

I agree with the first part of your post, but you lost me at addressing their "beefs". For the most part, their beefs seem to be based simply on 'convert to Islam or die'

 

Sounds like you fell asleep watching the 700 Club again, Grandpa.

 

At least Christians seem content to leave the non-believer alone to face their fate in the afterlife...

 

Yeah, we wish...

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Rudy's post title was "Fucked up". What is happening in Mombay is. God forbid it come over here to our shores and to our loved ones.

 

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-493570/Gays-tortured-hanged-says-Iranian-minister-meeting-British-MPs.html

 

The Iranian PM's pronouncement was met with derision when he stated that Iran has no homosexuals while touring a US college campus a year ago.

 

Here's what they do to gays for just being homosexual:

 

2 gay teenagers.

 

 

Sorry Bill, WE are the true TERRORISTS! Get with the program!

 

 

[Braydon]

Something we as North Americans agree on, Pam Anderson should be encouraged to continue to dress, act and look like this.

 

 

 

Very nice, how much? Ahhhh, the laughs of Borat.

[Fairweather]

Yea, but don't you think she'd look way hotter in this?

 

[mkporwit]

 

at any rate, doesn't this discussion of terrorist motivations seem a bit one dimensional? there are no doubt many other motivations at work - nationalism, desire for power, resentment of power, etc. comparing indian terrorists to saudi terrorists to afghan terrorists misses the unique nature of each of their beefs, and the religion of islam is merely a tool used to achieve thier political desires, no? (just like every western terrorist organization makes appeals to christianity, such as the kkk or ira?)

 

I agree with the first part of your post, but you lost me at addressing their "beefs". For the most part, their beefs seem to be based simply on 'convert to Islam or die', their rage vented regularly upon atheist, Christian, Jew, and Hindu alike. At least Christians seem content to leave the non-believer alone to face their fate in the afterlife--Muslims seem intent on helping them get there sooner.

 

Nope FW, Ivan is spot on. For most of them "convert to Islam or die" is a convenient red herring to be used for recruiting purposes, to distract the media, muddy the waters and generally confuse the issue. These organizations have concrete political aims and goals, and the religion issue is just a cover, whether they be al Quaida or the IRA.

[Fairweather]

 

According to The Evergreen State College and Rachael Corrie's parents, the manufacturer of that crane is responsible.

 

Since I don't see a basket of any kind, its safe to assume they just lifted the poor guy into the air to strangle. Real nice folks, they.

[Bug]

 

According to The Evergreen State College and Rachael Corrie's parents, the manufacturer of that crane is responsible.

 

Since I don't see a basket of any kind, its safe to assume they just lifted the poor guy into the air to strangle. Real nice folks, they.

Yeah. They should have waterboarded him instead. So much more humane.

[Bug]

 

Your anger is sad.

I wish you well.

 

 

 

[Bug]

Yea, but don't you think she'd look way hotter in this?

 

 

I am sure the Christian right would support that given the power. Abstention IS the answer right?

Oh and if you do have sex and go to an abortion clinic, they will shoot you.

I'm so glad we aren't in Iran where they have religious fundamentalists running ammouck.

I mean, what if they got into our Supreme court? Well, they'd prolly stop at abortion right?

Or would they go after gays?

It is a sin you know. It even says so in the Bible (can you help me with which verse that was?).

And once they erradicate that sin, they will need another one to focus on.

Eventually, they will be knockin on Bill's door for posting prn on the internet.

Keep them guns handy Bill.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Yea, but don't you think she'd look way hotter in this?

 

 

I am sure the Christian right would support that given the power. Abstention IS the answer right?

Oh and if you do have sex and go to an abortion clinic, they will shoot you.

I'm so glad we aren't in Iran where they have religious fundamentalists running ammouck.

I mean, what if they got into our Supreme court? Well, they'd prolly stop at abortion right?

Or would they go after gays?

It is a sin you know. It even says so in the Bible (can you help me with which verse that was?).

And once they erradicate that sin, they will need another one to focus on.

Eventually, they will be knockin on Bill's door for posting prn on the internet.

Keep them guns handy Bill.

 

Your anger is sad.

I wish you well.

 

 

[Fairweather]

Yeah. They should have waterboarded him instead. So much more humane.

 

Um, actually, yes. Ya think? Hmmm, lemme see: Waterboarding with no lasting physical effects or...slowly strangled to death by a chord hung from a crane in front of a large cheering crowd...

 

Ok, I've decided now. I'll take the waterboarding please!

 

[Doug]

Gotta say, this is some of the most disturbing shit I've read on cc.com in some time, even more disturbing than some of the crap I've posted.

 

Dudes & dudettes, we got it pretty fucking good right now. We're free to spray on the interwebs all we want, that's more than we can say about some of our brothers and sisters around the world. And if their fucked up governments whether driven by religion or other forms of ideology don't let them, or won't let them corn hole eachother, or let their women drive, that's too bad but it's not our problem!!!

 

Jeebus, to debate whether waterboarding is more humane than hanging someone....why do you even need to be right about that?!?!? We got enough shit in this country to worry about! Anybody go out and do something humane for one of your neighbors today or lately?

[billcoe]

Dudes & dudettes, we got it pretty fucking good right now. We're free to spray on the interwebs all we want, that's more than we can say about some of our brothers and sisters around the world. And if their fucked up governments whether driven by religion or other forms of ideology don't let them, or won't let them corn hole eachother, or let their women drive, that's too bad but it's not our problem!!!

 

Well I would have said it that way if I hadn't been drinkin"

 

I don't know about all of it now that I'm thinking about it Doug. Maybe the last 4 words could be re-considered. I have a flight into Bangkok in a few days to remind me of that last point...the airport is closed now due to political protesters who are getting hosed by the asswipes running the country and they want freedom. So I guess I would have said it your way except for the 2nd part of your post. Because it is our problem sometimes. Had it been your family, it would then have been your problem, and I guess I could have looked over and said, well, it sucks to be you: but that's not my problem. Had you, your parents or your children been in Mumbai you might have left out the last part of your post too. OR, perhaps we can just sit here and wait till it comes to us and then cross out the last part. It will come to us if we ignore it, and it will not be because we Americans are assholes, but because that's just the way it is. The solution to that is to forward project and correct it where we can and try to change our own countries often boorish overseas behavior. We can and do encourage governments to not fund Madrasah, Mosques and other religious schools that have a violent agenda (like recently in Saudi Arabia). We encourage these to be closed if they don't (like in Jordon), and if you have too, you kill those who are at war with you and would kill you (insert lots of examples in lots of countries here-maybe not Denmark with the islamic cartoons or the Netherlands though). So I think we pick and chose to deal with things which may forward project into our life and our country's life and be a threat to any or all of us in the future. Had someone stepped up and offed Hitler in 1938 instead of pandering, perhaps 20 million more lives would have been spared. When do we choose to be pro-active or just walk away? I can't say, every case is different. Those responsible for these decisions have difficult choices. It is much easier to second guess it when it doesn't work out. We helped overthrow the Iranian government in the 50's and they hate us for it. Now we are facing an Iranian gov't which hates us for what we stand for and what we have done to them in the past and in the not to distant (Iraqi-Iranian war) past.

 

Then when it's over and the deal has gone down: when we are all safe, sound and what we believe to be untouchable, like now, we (or some of these guys on this site) can all sit and bitch about those of our brothers who are risking it all so we can be safe. They can bitch about how evil we in the US are: at no personal cost to themselves. But yet as much bitching ad self-loathing as these folks do, this shit still remains hanging over our heads like the Sword of Damocles, and rears it's ugly head like on this occasion.

 

 

Take care all

[billcoe]

Background intel report on this subject, and a reminder again that India has been facing this crap for quite some time.

 

"Monday, August 4, 2008

 

And now, as if the world had forgotten, Indian terrorism

 

Now that Washington and the world’s attention is shifting from an ameliorating situation in Iraq to Afghanistan-Pakistan, out of the fog of war lumbers the huge hulk of India.

 

The most recent terrorist attacks in two Indian cities have dramatized some realities long camouflaged by more dramatic headlines elsewhere. If the Indian authorities know who actually perpetrated these deadly horrors, they have confused the media thoroughly. But two salient features do quickly come forward:

 

The usual accusations, however valid they may have sometimes been in the past, of all acts of Indian Muslim terror being directly instigated and operated by Pakistan have not been made this time. These brutish but rather amateurish efforts have been acknowledged to have been homegrown. And they are growing evidence that the infection of Islamofascism is an increasing phenomenon among India’s more than 150 million Muslims. That despite New Delhi lulling itself into false optimism that its nominally secular society and its very huge diversity including a variegated Muslim community would spare it. But it is now obvious that various Muslim international and local terror groups are quickly spreading their venom inside the Indian Muslim community.

 

As important, even the semi-government Indian websites which monitor terrorism throughout the region are now admitting the obvious: the country’s security apparatus is totally incapable of meeting this new terrorist challenge. New Delhi officials make the required pronouncements about the high priority the issue takes. But the kinds of inadequacies that have been exposed in the police forces in the U.S. and Western Europe since 9/11 are even more dramatic in India. And what is even more shocking is that with its Maoist insurgencies blossoming in a dozen areas for more than two decades, those techniques have never been developed.

 

But the problem is not just India’s.

 

Contrary to the wishful thinking which has plagued the State Department for almost a decade now in its puerile effort for a shortcut to policy in the Subcontinent, this Indian problem is part and parcel of any effort to achieve progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In a flash of self-delusion during the Clinton years, the U.S. diplomatic establishment had convinced itself it could arbitrarily separate American bilateral relations with each of the bitter players in what used to be called the Indo-Pakistan Subcontinent. The U.S., it was said, would defy the intensity of a conflict which has dictated the foreign and much of the domestic policy of both countries since their inception in 1947 and through two and a half largely unresolved wars.

 

But the obvious truth is that any U.S. policy directed toward Pakistan must take into account its effect on India and the reverse. For example, to help the Pakistani military enhance its capabilities, the U.S. has extended $10 billion in military aid since President Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s about-turn after 9/11 and withdrawal of support from the Taliban government in Kabul. This American benefice – and the continuing support Pakistan received from what it calls its “all weather” ally, China — has helped drive the Indians into a vast expansion of their own forces in its effort to exert hegemony over the Indian Ocean region.

 

Even Sen. Obama, after his photo ops visit to the region, discovered the relationship of the Indo-Pakistan confrontation to the problem of rooting out the terrorists in the Afghanistan-Pakistan tribal areas. He blithely suggested that Washington would have to turn its attention to it. One doesn’t know whether this was simply the normal campaign oratory or whether, indeed, he does not know how much the U.S. – and so many others – have invested in the problem of Indo-Pakistan enmity over the last six decades. Nor for anyone who has had any exposure to the issues, is the knowledge of how difficult is any settlement of the major issue, Kashmir, the contested state that not only lies between India and Pakistan, but also abuts China in Tibet and neighbors Afghanistan. And, unfortunately, “Kashmir” trials and tribulations are intimately bound up with the border issues among all the parties.

 

Furthermore, India’s internal Islamicist terrorist threat grows at a time of a number of other intertwined and equally complex issues.

 

New Delhi has launched a massive armaments program involving doubling to more than $30 billion by 2012 as the country’s military seeks to modernize and replace its largely Soviet military hardware. By 2022 spending is expected to reach $80 billion in purchases of the latest planes, ships, tanks, and other equipment. Although both sides emphatically deny it, strategists in both Washington and New Delhi see a tacit Indian-American alliance as a counterweight to China’s increasingly formidable armament program about which Beijing reveals nothing.

 

That proposed alliance has just played a role in a crisis for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government. An agreement negotiated by him and the Bush Administration to open up transfer of U.S. nuclear technology for power generation was opposed by his Communist partners whose votes sustained his fragile coalition government. Although contributing little to India’s energy hunger, the business community saw the agreement as the door opening a vast transfer of technology for its growing export trade with the U.S. It was also seen as a necessary part of Singh’s program to liberalize the Indian economy. India’s abandonment — if halting — of Soviet-style planning in the past decade has brought the Indians double digit growth. And its trading relationship with the U.S., including the ultra hi tech offshore information technology software industry, has brought new hope for breaking out of the world’s worst poverty for millions of Indians.

 

But, just as in China, the problem of the great bulk of India’s 1.3 billion people – soon to surpass China as the world’s largest population – still is held back by a primitive rural sector. [Protecting this subsistence agriculture dictated India’s blocking – along with China — the latest proposed round of tariff reductions at negotiations in Geneva in late July.] Their flight to the cities, as in China, threatens to engulf the progressive urban areas. And even the green revolution – new plant varieties and agricultural methods for the wealthier landlords — which ended endemic famine in the country has not solved this basic problem. Electoral politics, in fact, has aggravated it by the temptation for Singh’s party to go back to rural social programs that proved failures over the long period of post-independence stagnation – a flight of fancy, for example, into a program for guaranteed rural income through subsidies. At the moment, with energy and food prices rising worldwide, India is facing a threat of inflation.

 

Singh – and his back-seat driver, Sonia Gandhi, widow and daughter-in-law of former Nehru prime ministers and inheritor of the Congress Party leadership – has now patched together a coalition of regional parties. But he will soon have to face an election where his principal opponent will be the Bharatiya Janta Party, a spokesman for India’s new rising entrepreneurial class but also with its tainted origins in Hindu chauvinism. Its complicity two years ago in the important state of Gujarat in a pogrom against Muslims, and the failure of the federal government and the courts to deal with it summarily, was one pretext for the recent terrorist bombings. Unfortunately, increasingly, India’s electoral system has become a victim of block voting by caste – including the attempt to seduce the Muslim voters.

 

Singh recently had to suspend local government in Kashmir after communal riots broke out over a local land issue. Keeping a lid on the increasingly rebellious Kashmiris demanding independence or adherence to Pakistan requires New Delhi to maintain more than half a million security forces, some of them aligned along the Line of Control [LOC] in the fragile armistice with Pakistan.

 

The tribals who pose the growing problem for U.S., NATO – and Pakistani – forces on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border have been intimately involved in the Kashmir struggle since it developed at independence. India charges, with a good deal of evidence, that Pakistan uses the tribal jihadists to keep the pot boiling in Kashmir. Despite continuing peace talks between New Delhi and Islamabad, the rate of incidents on the LOC have increased recently. The Pakistanis, of course, claim, probably justifiably, that India’s RAW [Research and Analysis Wing], contributes to its political and military problems in tribal areas, particularly in its huge western state of Baluchistan, bordering Afghanistan. And New Delhi has long claimed that Pakistan’s ISI [inter-Services Intelligence], which before 9/11 backed the Taliban in Afghanistan, is responsible for terror attacks against Indian targets – the most recent a bloody assault on the embassy in Kabul.

 

It remains to be seen, of course, whether – as a series of bombings in Mumbai [bombay] in 1993 which ended as suddenly as they began – India is now in for a continuing terror campaign. But the elements are all there – including a terrorist organizations among Indian Muslim students and professionals, the hallmark of sophisticated terror developments in the West. But should it come, it would add new elements of difficulty to the already devil’s brew that faces U.S. strategists in the region.

 

Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@cox.net), is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com and East-Asia-Intel.com."

 

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2008/s0390_8_01.asp

[prole]

 

This thread is a total fuckin' downer. Get in the holiday spirit and let's remember some of the good times...

 

[Doug]

Thoughtful reply Bill. Yes, I suppose at some point it does become our problem. For each of us individually that is up to us. Some of us on this board and others have been affected directly by events such as the terrorist attacks on Sept.11 2001, embassy bombings, and attacks in places such as Mumbai.

 

I'd love to see some of the energy spent on this forum and others like it be used to go after solutions, not just bitch about my dogma being superior to someone else's dogma.

 

Good luck on your trip to Thailand.

[Bug]

Yeah. They should have waterboarded him instead. So much more humane.

 

Um, actually, yes. Ya think? Hmmm, lemme see: Waterboarding with no lasting physical effects or...slowly strangled to death by a chord hung from a crane in front of a large cheering crowd...

 

Ok, I've decided now. I'll take the waterboarding please!

I didn't know you were gay.

Must have been hard to come out in this forum.

 

 

[Bug]

Sorry you weren't able to read the post were I made a few different points.

But that would explain why you post so many empty insults with no thought or counter point.

 

There just isn't anything to back up your points so why make them. Right?

I mean, you have been flaming anyone who did not totally agree with you and Bush/Cheney for years now. Now that it is clear that they were focused on getting richer off the backs of people like you, and didn't give a rat's ass about this country, it must be a hard pill to swallow.

All those years and you were just wrong.

Wrong about Bush/Cheney and wrong to be such a mean spirited person.

 

 

[mike1]

This is pointless. Go climb something and have some fun.

[mattp]

I don't know about all of it now that I'm thinking about it Doug.... Take care all

 

Nice post, billcoe. To be sure, foreign relations and military strategy are two complex areas and it is, as you note, nearly impossible to predict whether if we encourage one friend or foe to take some action at one point it may bite us later. In fact, you could argue that our entire foreign policy since the beginning is as much as anything else a history of unintended consequences. And I agree with you: that doesn't necessarily argue that we should retreat within our own borders and let the rest of the world do what they are going to do.

 

When considering various responses to something like a war breaking out in the middle east or a terrorist movement that appears to be spreading there will always be a lot of difficult choices that must be made based on incomplete and in many cases inaccurate information. But are you suggesting that means we shouldn't second-guess our government?

 

Where Bug writes that the US is a terrorist nation some of you folks here really bristle but in viewing our actions in response to 911 I don't think he's far off. Maybe "rogue state" would be closer to the mark but however you label it, clearly we did the wrong thing. We should not have invaded a nation that did not attack us in the first place, against the wishes of our allies and without UN backing, based on lies. And then we bungled the invasion and the occupation so that Iraq is worse off now than it was before we went in. Iraq now poses a greater threat to us and to its neighbors than it did in 2001. Clearly, too, we did the wrong thing by having Dick Cheney announce that we were taking the gloves off now and then allowing our military and our intelligence services to torture prisoners and say to the world: we do not respect the Geneva Convention. I know many folks around here will cringe when I mention, too, that I think we've done the wrong thing by insisting that our soldiers can never be held accountable in courts of international law. It may be inconvenient or worse --many fear that such accountability will hamstring the heroic members of our armed forces -- but I think it is just plain wrong to undermine the concept of international law and human rights in that fashion. In the last seven years, the U.S. has said to the world: we believe might makes right and we're going to do what we're going to do without bothering to work with the rest of the world. I won't go as far as Bug and say we're the terrorists, but we are certainly a rogue state.

 

I understand that many people in this country feel that our backs are against the wall and we have no choice but to fight the enemy wherever we find them. But the war on terror is not like eliminating the Nazi's in WWII. That was much more of a black and white situation and we pretty much had "right" on our side. But here, in this war (the war on terror), we've left the moral high ground behind and it is not at all clear that we couldn't have made just as much progress in Iraq and Afghanistan without doing so. You are right to say that it is all very complicated and as we sit here at the computer we have no way to really know how it would have turned out had we not invaded Iraq or had we not tortured the bad guys we captured there or had we not held those enemy noncombatants at Guantanimo but can you really say it is wrong to criticize our government for it's conduct of this war? Do you dismiss it all as simply a mistake, starting with our overthrowing the government in next-door Iran in the 1950's? Is that an excuse?

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Sorry you weren't able to read the post were I made a few different points.

But that would explain why you post so many empty insults with no thought or counter point.

 

There just isn't anything to back up your points so why make them. Right?

I mean, you have been flaming anyone who did not totally agree with you and Bush/Cheney for years now. Now that it is clear that they were focused on getting richer off the backs of people like you, and didn't give a rat's ass about this country, it must be a hard pill to swallow.

All those years and you were just wrong.

Wrong about Bush/Cheney and wrong to be such a mean spirited person.

 

 

Your anger is sad.

I pity you.

[Bug]

Cheerio then!

[kevbone]

In an interview with Barbara Walters last night, Obama said that there are still al Quaida training camps in parts of Afganistan and Pakistan. He would focus on those and on finding Osama Bin Laden. It was not much more than a sound bite.

 

Fuck! I knew it. Obama is a terrorist! After all, the US is the REAL terrorist, and these ILLEGAL wars are really terrorist operations, and Obama is just going to continue them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Obviously, you were sleeping through that part of history as most good republicans did.

al Quaida attacked us on 9/11. Their leaders were in Afganistan.

Iraq did not attack us. al Quaida leaders were not in Iraq when we attacked.

 

Get it now?

 

Of course not. Because then you would have to admit that you fell for a big lie and were as wrong as you could be.

But you do not have the huevos to admit that.

 

We are occupying parts of Afghanistan, conducting military operations there, killing people, including innocents. Considering these activities, we are the REAL terrorists according to your previous statements. And Obama is supporting these operations, so he is a terrorist, and all you who voted for him are terrorist sympathizers.

 

 

What is worse.....the guy who "supports" or the ring leader himself Bush?

[pc313]

Paying taxes makes me a supporter of terrorist,weather i agree with the politics or not.

[Fairweather]

It looks like India has captured one of the gunmen alive. To what degree of discomfort, if any, should this terrorist be subjected? Seems to me it would be helpful to know who his benefactors are or if more attacks are in the works.