Stopping terrorism?

[billvon 2,998]

Isn't that the excuse-of-the-day for the war in Iraq?

A few news stories:

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CIA: Iraq fertile ground for terrorists
June 22, 2005

WASHINGTON — A new, classified assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency says Iraq may prove to be an even more effective training ground for Islamic extremists than Afghanistan was in al-Qaida's early days, because it is serving as a real-world laboratory for militants to improve their skills in urban combat.

The intelligence assessment, completed last month and circulated among government agencies, was described in recent days by several congressional and intelligence officials. The officials said it made clear the view that the war in Iraq was likely to produce a dangerous legacy, by dispersing to other countries Iraqi and foreign combatants more adept and better organized than they were before the conflict.
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Top Commander Says Insurgency Still Strong
AP - 1 hour, 58 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The top American military commander in the Persian Gulf disputed a contention by Vice President Dick Cheney that the Iraqi insurgency was in its "last throes" and told Congress on Thursday its strength was basically undiminished from six months ago. Furthermore, Gen. John Abizaid told the Senate Armed Services Committee, "I believe there are more foreign fighters coming into Iraq than there were six months ago."
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(and an older one)
More Iraqis killed by U.S. than by terror

Civilian deaths are undermining efforts to win over people
September 25, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Operations by U.S. and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis -- most of them civilians -- as attacks by insurgents are, according to statistics compiled by the Iraqi Ministry of Health.
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So - we're training new terrorists, and not stopping the old ones. And Bin Laden and Al-Zarqaui are still free. And Al Qaeda is growing in power. And we're still killing innocent people in Iraq. And we're about to hit the next milestone - 2000 US troops dead in Iraq.

Great idea, this war. At least the GOP has a reason to wave the flag and claim everyone else hates the US.

[genoyamamoto 0]

Yeah this all sucks but at least these guys (CIA, military) seem to understand reality.
What course of action do you suggest?

Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me
Feel the hate...
Photos here

[ViperPilot 0]

The insurgents are getting practice? Yeah, they're getting practice dying. There are a very small number of insurgents that actually will live through tough urban conflict and use that skill in future conflicts. Won't happen, we will kill them before they get the chance to use this "experience" in other flashpoints. So no, the US occupation is not giving terrorists practice, it's giving them the option to get their ass kicked.

Don't believe everything you read in the news. We are NOT killing twice as many, it's the other way around. Much of the time the Iraqi Health Ministry will say civilians were killed by the US when in fact they weren't. Want an example? Here: We get intel that a particular house is a terrorist "hideout". So, we task an F-16 to drop a JDAM on it. The F-16 does so and demolishes the house with the blast range going only a few feet out. However, unbeknownst to us, the house is filled with hundreds of RPGs, bombs, etc. The explosion sets off these RPGs flying indiscriminately into other houses, people in the street, etc. The civilian death is caused by those insurgent bombs, RPGs, not by our bomb. I've seen a house explode from a JDAM only 50 ft from a woman walking on the street. She was completely unharmed. Lucky for her there wasn't an insurgent weapons cache in that one.

So before you start calling my buddies and I murderers because of what some trash reporter says, get the real facts and know what REALLY happens.

Cheney was wrong to say the insurgency was in its last throws. Those guys keep pumping more fighters into the country. However, more fighters keep dying. It's really just a stalemate. They send more, we kill more. That's how it works, that's why Gen Abizaid said it's about the same.

[StreetScooby 5]

Thanks for serving our country!

We are all engines of karma

[SpeedRacer 1]

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Stopping terrorism? - NEW Quote | Reply
------------------------------------------------------------------------Isn't that the excuse-of-the-day for the war in Iraq?

The way I see it is: They will attack our soldiers & contractors (& Iraqi civilians) in Iraq, instead of coming to the United States & attacking us here.

So I guess the point of the war is to suck all the terrorists into Iraq.

Speed Racer
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[rwieder 0]

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Great idea, this war. At least the GOP has a reason to wave the flag and claim everyone else hates the US.

Yeah, i guess we could blame all of this on the "Freedom Thingy?" I bet there are some here that would say it's their right to do what ever they want to?

-Richard-
"You're Holding The Rope And I'm Taking The Fall"

[billvon 2,998]

>Won't happen, we will kill them before they get the chance to use
>this "experience" in other flashpoints.

I remember the pro-war people saying this two years ago. I can imagine what your post in 2008 will say - "Yeah, we've lost 12,000 US troops, but we've killed over 250,000 insurgents - we're winning now! We'll get em all yet!"

>Don't believe everything you read in the news.

You figure the new Iraqi government is lying? I think their opinion on how their citizens are dying carries some weight.

>Here: We get intel that a particular house is a terrorist "hideout".
>So, we task an F-16 to drop a JDAM on it. . . .

. . . and the secondary explosions kill civilians. Yes, that would be us killing people. Anyone who drops bombs on people and doesn't realize innocent people can also die isn't thinking straight. We have to stop making excuses worthy of Saddam and own up to our actions. When we go to war, innocent people die. This will continue.

>So before you start calling my buddies and I murderers because
>of what some trash reporter says, get the real facts and know what
> REALLY happens.

Didn't call any of your buddies murderers. You're doing your jobs. It's the people who start the wars who are to blame. Blaming the military for war is like blaming a gun for killing someone. It's the person who pulls the trigger in both cases who is to blame.

>It's really just a stalemate.

I can remember when the war was supposed to take six days, or six weeks - certainly not six months. Yet here we are, two years later, with losses mounting, terrorism increasing, at a stalemate. I just hope we don't lose too many more US soldiers fighting a stalemate (and training terrorists.)

[IanHarrop 42]

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Thanks for serving our country!

I like to add my voice to those that are saying Thank You.

I know its an impossible task but my wish is for everyone to come home safe.

"Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

[ViperPilot 0]

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I remember the pro-war people saying this two years ago. I can imagine what your post in 2008 will say - "Yeah, we've lost 12,000 US troops, but we've killed over 250,000 insurgents - we're winning now! We'll get em all yet!"

I'd say were very close to the 250,000 mark for insurgents' deaths. Secondly, our death tole will not increase more than 10,000 in only 2.5 years. Let's use gross estimates here...we've been in Iraq 2 years. Lets say the death toll of American soldiers is 2000. So, that's 1000/yr, 83.3/mo, 2.6-2.7 soldiers/day. Now I wish that number was 0, I don't want that number to include me, my friends, or any other American. However, based on that rate, you could argue we're safer in Iraq then driving a car on a highway in the states. So as morbid as it is, we are not doing that badly. And this is coming from a guy who has lost friends.

[ViperPilot 0]

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I remember the pro-war people saying this two years ago. I can imagine what your post in 2008 will say - "Yeah, we've lost 12,000 US troops, but we've killed over 250,000 insurgents - we're winning now! We'll get em all yet!"

I'd say were very close to the 250,000 mark for insurgents' deaths. Secondly, our death tole will not increase more than 10,000 in only 2.5 years. Let's use gross estimates here...we've been in Iraq 2 years. Lets say the death toll of American soldiers is 2000. So, that's 1000/yr, 83.3/mo, 2.6-2.7 soldiers/day. Now I wish that number was 0, I don't want that number to include me, my friends, or any other American. However, based on that rate, you could argue we're safer in Iraq then driving a car on a highway in the states. So as morbid as it is, we are not doing that badly. And this is coming from a guy who has lost friends.

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...and the secondary explosion kills civilians. yes, that would be us killing people.

So it's our fault that these insurgents have weapons stored all over the place...houses, mosques, hospitals, ambulances? If a person is killed by an exploding RPG, it is the enemy's weapon that killed the person, not ours.

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Anyone who drops bombs on people and doesn't realize innocent people can also die isn't thinking straight.

I do realize innocent people can die. But because we drop a bomb and some damn IED goes off killing a child is not our fault. It's a terrible thing, but maybe the insurgent bastard who made that IED shouldn't have done it in the first place. So, isn't his fault?

[billvon 2,998]

>I'd say were very close to the 250,000 mark for insurgents' deaths.
>Secondly, our death tole will not increase more than 10,000 in only
>2.5 years. Let's use gross estimates here...we've been in Iraq 2
>years. Lets say the death toll of American soldiers is 2000. So, that's
> 1000/yr, 83.3/mo, 2.6-2.7 soldiers/day. Now I wish that number was 0.

On that we can agree! But the only way that could have happened was to have made a different decision 2.5 years ago. Now we're stuck with the consequences of a bad decision, in a quagmire with no easy exits.

>So it's our fault that these insurgents have weapons stored all over
>the place...houses, mosques, hospitals, ambulances?

No. But when you drop bombs on hospitals and hidden weapons explode, then it's reasonable to expect that people are going to die.

Take a local case. Cops surround a meth lab in a crowded neighborhood. The guys won't come out. So they open fire and fire 200 rounds into the building, hoping to kill the people inside. The meth lab finally explodes, killing two cops and ten neighbors.

Now, the guys who put together the meth lab are certainly evil people; perhaps they deserve to die anyway. But would you say the cops had nothing to do with the ten innocent deaths?

[diverborg 0]

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When we go to war, innocent people die. This will continue.

Ahhh, this is true. I think instead of going to war, we should buy the bad guys a puppy and see if they will be nicer to everyone. There is always another solution besides war, right?

[billvon 2,998]

>I think instead of going to war, we should buy the bad guys a
>puppy and see if they will be nicer to everyone.

Right, because those are the only two options. Good thing we had World War III to defeat the evil USSR, eh? There was certainly no other option.

[diverborg 0]

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Right, because those are the only two options. Good thing we had World War III to defeat the evil USSR, eh? There was certainly no other option.

I was only trying to be humorous, and I realize the silliness of what I said. I usually try to avoid these war arguments because I honestly don't know if Iraq was a good idea or not. The problem is that we only see the negative effects of our actions and not the negative effects of our inactions(until its too late). We may never know if Iraq was truly worth the sacrifice because we will never know the consequences if we didn't invade. However, trying to place all the blame on Bush and saying that his lies are what convinced everyone to go to war is just ridiculous. Like the other threads have discussed, there was a lot of leftwingers that supported the war too and believed the intel. Bush didn't create this intel, and a lot of it didn't even come from the US, but the UN itself.

[kelpdiver 2]

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WASHINGTON — A new, classified assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency says Iraq may prove to be an even more effective training ground for Islamic extremists than Afghanistan was in al-Qaida's early days, because it is serving as a real-world laboratory for militants to improve their skills in urban combat.

That concern seems a bit overstated. They'll go through that evolutionary process somewhere, sometime...isn't it better there than here? And by keeping them constantly on the move, we deny them the ability to plan or train beyond the now.

It's more about the number of their ranks. Kill enough of them and you have a handful of top soldiers remaining, with no army to lead. In these sorts of wars, one side eventually finds the costs too high. That could be them, or could be us. Our level of loss acceptance is quite a bit lower than their's.

[billvon 2,998]

>They'll go through that evolutionary process somewhere,
>sometime...

If we weren't in Iraq, where would they get experience outfoxing a US military patrol hunting for them? It takes no skill to load a car with ANFO and drive it into a building. But it does take some skill to launch mortars at a building by remote control and then escape the resulting counterattack. And they _are_ getting lots of practice at that.

>And by keeping them constantly on the move, we deny them
>the ability to plan or train beyond the now.

They killed 40 people yesterday in a coordinated attack. They apparently can plan and train enough for such attacks. And they're getting better at it.

>It's more about the number of their ranks. Kill enough of them and
>you have a handful of top soldiers remaining, with no army to lead.

You seem to think that there are a fixed number of insurgents. But every time we kill a kid (accidentally, of course) you've created another few insurgents. Killing people until no one hates us makes about as much sense as torturing someone until they like you.

[kelpdiver 2]

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You seem to think that there are a fixed number of insurgents.

No, I'm saying that is the question of concern, not that we're somehow are making them stronger by killing them. There is not an inexhaustable supply of Muslims that don't fear death.

[billvon 2,998]

>No, I'm saying that is the question of concern, not that we're
>somehow are making them stronger by killing them.

Unfortunately, we're killing only the ones that are easy to kill. The ones that survive are the smart ones. So we're concentrating the smart ones.

>There is not an inexhaustable supply of Muslims that don't fear death.

If there are ten million people in an area we're in, that means that ~160,000 are born every year. That may not be inexhaustible, but it's also not a limited supply.

[Air-Addict 0]

Well, there does seem to be an inexhaustable supply of patience from the American public. With every breaking story, US citizens become more and more jaded to the whole thing. This is not unexpected however. Quite the contrary. It is a recognizable tactic of the oil-soaked media. Believe it or not, we are expected to just forget anything is going on. Any time "new" news is given to us about the war, it is bascially a new shot of novacane.

[livendive 8]

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So it's our fault that these insurgents have weapons stored all over the place...houses, mosques, hospitals, ambulances? If a person is killed by an exploding RPG, it is the enemy's weapon that killed the person, not ours.

If I shoot your gun at someone and kill them, it's me that killed them, regardless of whose gun it was. If we detonate those RPGs and kill people with them, it's us who killed those people, not the owners of those RPGs.

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I do realize innocent people can die. But because we drop a bomb and some damn IED goes off killing a child is not our fault. It's a terrible thing, but maybe the insurgent bastard who made that IED shouldn't have done it in the first place. So, isn't his fault?

If someone shoots down one of our helicoptors and it explodes on impact in the middle of town, killing a bunch of civilians, is it our fault because it was our helicoptor?

Blues,
Dave

"I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!"
(drink Mountain Dew)

[SpeedRacer 1]

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It is a recognizable tactic of the oil-soaked media.

"oil-soaked media??" You shouldn't leave your newspaper under the car.

Speed Racer
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[kelpdiver 2]

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If I shoot your gun at someone and kill them, it's me that killed them, regardless of whose gun it was. If we detonate those RPGs and kill people with them, it's us who killed those people, not the owners of those RPGs.

But on the other hand, if you choose to store a large and flammable cache of explosives right next to your people in a warzone, aren't you the one subjected them to extra risk when they already have enough? Is there any defense for storing them in a mosque?

[Trent 0]

Aside from the usual problems I have with issues like this...

What I'm wondering is why some fucking journalist and his source aren't in prison right now for treason!

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WASHINGTON — A new, classified assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency says Iraq may prove to be an even more...

Either someone is talking shit and making something up, or someone is selling out what should be a secret. I'd hope that if the latter were true, that someone is being questioned right now.

EDIT- Just another example of the leeches in the media putting their "scoop" before the interests of their country. Despicable.

Oh, hello again!

[livendive 8]

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Aside from the usual problems I have with issues like this...

What I'm wondering is why some fucking journalist and his source aren't in prison right now for treason!

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WASHINGTON — A new, classified assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency says Iraq may prove to be an even more...

Either someone is talking shit and making something up, or someone is selling out what should be a secret. I'd hope that if the latter were true, that someone is being questioned right now.

EDIT- Just another example of the leeches in the media putting their "scoop" before the interests of their country. Despicable.

You did catch this part, right?

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The intelligence assessment, completed last month and circulated among government agencies, was described in recent days by several congressional and intelligence officials.

Blues,
Dave

"I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!"
(drink Mountain Dew)

[tr027 0]

Thanks for fighting the good fight, and happy hunting. Hopefully they will run out of people to send and things will quiet down until the next generation grows up. But who knows, with how long they have been killing each other over there anyways, it could be a while to wait.

"The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it. " -John Galt from Atlas Shrugged, 1957