Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:

ArbeitsSchu wrote:

Albatross wrote:So, basically you're just trying to crowbar your opinions on American foreign policy and treatment of detainees into a thread based around American triumphalist braggadocio? Did you see that ending WELL?


Clue: It hasn't ended well. This thread is farcical.

I comment on matters because I feel matters needed commenting on. I don't do it because I expect everyone to pat me on the back or suddenly change their minds en masse and admit they are wrong. "Ending Well" isn't my objective.

Far as I'm concerned, if my comments* make just one person think "Maybe its wrong for me to say I hope he shat himself to death and wish they had dragged him behind a truck" and actually consider things beyond bloodthirsty revenge, then its a win.

*anywhere, not just in this thread.

I don't think what I said is wrong. I'm the guy that (lets see if I can find what you said about me, ah, here we go)

ArbeitsSchu wrote:Another poster suggested torture (for a chocolate bar no less) would be appropriate, despite torture being provably noneffective as an information gathering tool and it being done for fun , And that's just on this forum

And I'm not some teenager with a war fetish. I am an adult working full time (thus I haven't been here the last 9 pages to defend myself) lost 2 family members in 9/11, live 20 minutes away from where the 4th plane crashed (amazing how many people around here don't remember that) and I lost a 3rd family member in Afghanistan. I would agree with what I would do to him is barbaric and uncivilized, but unlike you, and most likely a lot of the posters here, I have daily reminders of what has been taken from me and mine by the actions of this man. So you can sit there at your computer across the ocean and tell us what we feel is wrong. But we don't care


EDIT: grammar

I was assuming you were talking about when the Sudan had Osama and offered him to Clinton.

We tried getting them to hand him over and they refused. They tried imposing preconditions and delays. I'm mostly remembering from Clarke's book, Against All Enemies.

That big blue part belongs to President George W. Bush.

Great countries fall because their economies fail, our pal Ezra Klein writes today. Osama bin Laden set out to bankrupt America, betting that American leaders would spend trillions -- every last cent in the Treasury -- on trying to defeat him:

[I]t isn't quite right to say bin Laden cost us all that money. We decided to spend more than a trillion dollars on homeland security measures to prevent another attack. We decided to invade Iraq as part of a grand, post-9/11 strategy of Middle Eastern transformation. We decided to pass hundreds of billions of dollars in unpaid-for tax cuts and add an unpaid-for prescription drug benefit in Medicare while we were involved in two wars. And now, partially though not entirely because of these actions, we are deep in debt. Bin Laden didn't — couldn't — bankrupt us. He could only provoke us into bankrupting ourselves. And he came pretty close.

All told, we lost twice as many American troops in the two declared wars that followed 9-11 as we lost people on 9-11 itself. We've spent an approximately crazy amount on the wars themselves. To recover from this, Republicans now want to cut taxes for the wealthy and end Medicare as we know it. And that's where we are, year 10.

On the show: America after 9-11 (remember when your family could meet you at the airport gate?).

Albatross wrote:

ArbeitsSchu wrote:

Albatross wrote:So, basically you're just trying to crowbar your opinions on American foreign policy and treatment of detainees into a thread based around American triumphalist braggadocio? Did you see that ending WELL?


Clue: It hasn't ended well. This thread is farcical.

I comment on matters because I feel matters needed commenting on. I don't do it because I expect everyone to pat me on the back or suddenly change their minds en masse and admit they are wrong. "Ending Well" isn't my objective.

Far as I'm concerned, if my comments* make just one person think "Maybe its wrong for me to say I hope he shat himself to death and wish they had dragged him behind a truck" and actually consider things beyond bloodthirsty revenge, then its a win.

*anywhere, not just in this thread.

Yes, and I'm sure you think that's noble. It isn't. It just reads as inflammatory to pretty much everyone here, because this isn't a thread about about why America is considered The Great Satan. If you want to talk about that, start a thread on it - hell, I'll probably contribute to the discussion. But coming here and posting what you have posted just looks like you're trying to thumb your nose at the Americans here by pissing on their chips. Osama is dead. Good riddance. Let them be happy about it.

In fact, YOU should be happy about it, considering he killed so many of our countrymen. Yes, some of our Yank brethren are going a little over-the-top with the whole 'USA! USA! USA!' thing, but on the whole, I'm glad they capped him. Dude was prick who would have slit your throat on camera without a moments hesitation, lest we forget.

ArbeitsSchu wrote:

Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:

ArbeitsSchu wrote:

Albatross wrote:So, basically you're just trying to crowbar your opinions on American foreign policy and treatment of detainees into a thread based around American triumphalist braggadocio? Did you see that ending WELL?


Clue: It hasn't ended well. This thread is farcical.

I comment on matters because I feel matters needed commenting on. I don't do it because I expect everyone to pat me on the back or suddenly change their minds en masse and admit they are wrong. "Ending Well" isn't my objective.

Far as I'm concerned, if my comments* make just one person think "Maybe its wrong for me to say I hope he shat himself to death and wish they had dragged him behind a truck" and actually consider things beyond bloodthirsty revenge, then its a win.

*anywhere, not just in this thread.

I don't think what I said is wrong. I'm the guy that (lets see if I can find what you said about me, ah, here we go)

ArbeitsSchu wrote:Another poster suggested torture (for a chocolate bar no less) would be appropriate, despite torture being provably noneffective as an information gathering tool and it being done for fun , And that's just on this forum

And I'm not some teenager with a war fetish. I am an adult working full time (thus I haven't been here the last 9 pages to defend myself) lost 2 family members in 9/11, live 20 minutes away from where the 4th plane crashed (amazing how many people around here don't remember that) and I lost a 3rd family member in Afghanistan. I would agree with what I would do to him is barbaric and uncivilized, but unlike you, and most likely a lot of the posters here, I have daily reminders of what has been taken from me and mine by the actions of this man. So you can sit there at your computer across the ocean and tell us what we feel is wrong. But we don't care


EDIT: grammar

Ahem. Firstly, it wasn't me that classified you as a teen wargaming nerd. I don't recall classifiying you as anything at all other than "another poster." And seeing as I didn't make any assumptions about your nature, it would serve you well to not make them about me, my situation or experiences, or the experiences of my friends, families, relatives and so forth, or the effects that this individual had on everyone, especially given that all you have to go on are my posts in here and my location. Please do try and remember that not only were we on the receiving end of terror attacks from "Al Quaeda", and subsequently deployed our armed forces in the same places as yours, we have also been on the receiving end of constant terror attacks for a substantially longer time than the US. We know all about terrorism and its effects.

You are helpfully supporting my point though. Because of the hurt you feel Osama caused to you and yours through a barbaric and unlawful attack, you feel that it is acceptable to engage in barbaric, unlawful or un-civilised behaviour towards Osama. Perfectly understandable (and indeed I never said it wasn't understandable) but that doesn't make it right.

Regardless of what they have done, all Americans expect certain basic things to happen..."due process". Indeed, any right-thinking person should expect that, no matter where they are from. To then just decide that someone doesn't deserve those rights just because they did something you don't agree with, or committed a crime, or are foreign, or of a different religion defeats the point of having them at all. And christ knows every one of you would complain to high heaven if your rights were not respected... And because people no doubt think I'm just being Anti-American, I'll point out there is a great deal of that attitude over here as well. Its not JUST an American thing, but it becomes an exercise in irony from the self-proclaimed Policemen of the Free World.

And yes, the dude was a prick who would have had my throat slit on camera without blinking...and doing that to people is wrong and criminal and bestial and barbaric. Unless you do it to Osama, and then its fine...

ArbeitsSchu wrote:Lord Bane, this:

"I would agree with what I would do to him is barbaric and uncivilized, but unlike you, and most likely a lot of the posters here, I have daily reminders of what has been taken from me and mine by the actions of this man."

The "unlike you" part of that sentence is the part I was responding to. I apologise if you weren't doing a "You don't know man, coz you weren't there" thing by saying that, but I read it as such.

dogma wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:
I read it. None of that is "suffering". That's common practice for prisons with inmates who pose a danger to themselves. It's not uncommon for mental hospitals either.

The two concepts are not exclusive, you know. Indeed, suffering is inflicted via common practice fairly often in much of the world.

BrassScorpion wrote:Bin Laden sought to bankrupt America (and nearly did)

http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/05/03/6576196-bin-laden-sought-to-bankrupt-america-and-nearly-did

ArbeitsSchu wrote:

Lusall wrote:

ArbeitsSchu wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

ArbeitsSchu wrote:
From a nation founded on such ideals as guerilla warfare and rebellion against a recognised state, its particularly ironic. Once upon a time the US wasn't "legitimate" either, until it became so through military action which earned it political recognition.

Sorry, when did the American Revolution send ships packed with explosives into the Thames? I must have dozed off during that part of my history courses.

You're equating what was, at best, armed rebellion against an occupying army with an international group who really only targeted civilians.

If the Revolution had, perhaps, snuck groups of people into Britain and ran around butchering the families of the British soldiers in the country you might have a point.

But they didn't and you don't.

Only targeted civilians? And the soldiers in Afghanistan just fall over dead of their own accord do they? Or are those responsible for terror attacks against western troops in Afghanistan not connected to "The Axis of Evil" and Al Quaeda any more? The impression given is certainly that Al Quaeda et al are one huge homogenous terrorist body with tendrils in every organisation, whether they be Afgan "freedom fighters" or Libyan Anti-Gaddafi rebels.

You're looking too much into the details of the example and not enough on the general point.. that once upon a time the USA was an un-recognised and illegitimate force engaged in combat of one form or another with the legitimate government of the area. The manner of that combat is not really relevant, simply the status of the combatants.

Once again, you show an astounding amount of ignorance with regards to the reasons why the American Revolution was fought, how it was executed, and the outcome of the conflict. Trying to link the American revolution with the war on terror is like comparing apples to tomatoes. There are similarities, like there are similarities between just about every conflict in history. So now you've made your point...what have you proven?

Once again, someone appears to have missed various points I have raised..probably due to me having to respond to so many posts at once, a greater number of which gleefully misrepresent what I am saying, or are just plain insulting. You clearly haven't understood the comparison between the powerful state machine/Imperial regime, and the efforts of lesser "illegitimate" forces to oppose that regime. A very very very truncated and short summation of a conflict into a couple of sentences is not "ignorance". A comparison of the sort of arguments that happen with American citizens around the Fourth of July would demonstrate my point quite succinctly, as they engage in plenty of Anti-British/Anti-Monarchist Braveheart-style "Freedom from oppression" rhetoric. Is your reaction actually based on imagined historical inaccuracy in my statement, or a desire to demonstrate that the Revolution was fought on "higher" principles because it is unimaginable that the USA could be linked with "terror"?

biccat wrote:

BrassScorpion wrote:Bin Laden sought to bankrupt America (and nearly did)

http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/05/03/6576196-bin-laden-sought-to-bankrupt-america-and-nearly-did

Ah, the always counter-factual Maddow makes an appearance.

In 8 years, Bush added 4.9t to the national debt. In less than 2 years, Obama added 3t.

In the chart shown on that page, Bush's contribution to the debt is shown as 3x Obama's.

filbert wrote:According to the US ambassador to the UK who was interviewed on the BBC the other day, the SEAL team were sent in with explicit orders not to take him alive.

Further reports coming out in the UK tabloids today seem to suggest that Bin Laden was cowering behind one of his wives when shot.

Lusall wrote:

ArbeitsSchu wrote:

Lusall wrote:

ArbeitsSchu wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

ArbeitsSchu wrote:
From a nation founded on such ideals as guerilla warfare and rebellion against a recognised state, its particularly ironic. Once upon a time the US wasn't "legitimate" either, until it became so through military action which earned it political recognition.

Sorry, when did the American Revolution send ships packed with explosives into the Thames? I must have dozed off during that part of my history courses.

You're equating what was, at best, armed rebellion against an occupying army with an international group who really only targeted civilians.

If the Revolution had, perhaps, snuck groups of people into Britain and ran around butchering the families of the British soldiers in the country you might have a point.

But they didn't and you don't.

Only targeted civilians? And the soldiers in Afghanistan just fall over dead of their own accord do they? Or are those responsible for terror attacks against western troops in Afghanistan not connected to "The Axis of Evil" and Al Quaeda any more? The impression given is certainly that Al Quaeda et al are one huge homogenous terrorist body with tendrils in every organisation, whether they be Afgan "freedom fighters" or Libyan Anti-Gaddafi rebels.

You're looking too much into the details of the example and not enough on the general point.. that once upon a time the USA was an un-recognised and illegitimate force engaged in combat of one form or another with the legitimate government of the area. The manner of that combat is not really relevant, simply the status of the combatants.

Once again, you show an astounding amount of ignorance with regards to the reasons why the American Revolution was fought, how it was executed, and the outcome of the conflict. Trying to link the American revolution with the war on terror is like comparing apples to tomatoes. There are similarities, like there are similarities between just about every conflict in history. So now you've made your point...what have you proven?

Once again, someone appears to have missed various points I have raised..probably due to me having to respond to so many posts at once, a greater number of which gleefully misrepresent what I am saying, or are just plain insulting. You clearly haven't understood the comparison between the powerful state machine/Imperial regime, and the efforts of lesser "illegitimate" forces to oppose that regime. A very very very truncated and short summation of a conflict into a couple of sentences is not "ignorance". A comparison of the sort of arguments that happen with American citizens around the Fourth of July would demonstrate my point quite succinctly, as they engage in plenty of Anti-British/Anti-Monarchist Braveheart-style "Freedom from oppression" rhetoric. Is your reaction actually based on imagined historical inaccuracy in my statement, or a desire to demonstrate that the Revolution was fought on "higher" principles because it is unimaginable that the USA could be linked with "terror"?

So the cusp of your argument is that the US fought the Revolution because it wanted to cause terror? I must be missing something.

Back to the main point that you made, which is...what? There are similarities between what's happening in Afghanistan and Iraq and the Revolution? Yes, I read what you said and I fully understand it. My issue is that the argument you're making stops at about there. Yes, we could be seen as the evil Imperial power and the terrorist as the poor freedom fighters. The difference is, they attack and kill innocent civilians. The Colonial militia did no such thing. They targeted military forces and instillation.

But if your main point is that we could be compared to the British Empire then...well yes. I guess you're right. I'll concede the point. But leaving it at that is willfully ignorant.

Lusall wrote:

biccat wrote:

BrassScorpion wrote:Bin Laden sought to bankrupt America (and nearly did)

http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/05/03/6576196-bin-laden-sought-to-bankrupt-america-and-nearly-did

Ah, the always counter-factual Maddow makes an appearance.

In 8 years, Bush added 4.9t to the national debt. In less than 2 years, Obama added 3t.

In the chart shown on that page, Bush's contribution to the debt is shown as 3x Obama's.

The counter-factual Maddow? You're kidding me...As apposed to Bill O'Reilly? He's a truth hound, no doubts there...

Most of the debt that Obama has "burdened" the US with can actually be traced directly back to Bush. Defense spending, slowed tax cuts, gross benefits to oil and gas companies...you know, the good things.

ArbeitsSchu wrote:

filbert wrote:According to the US ambassador to the UK who was interviewed on the BBC the other day, the SEAL team were sent in with explicit orders not to take him alive.

Further reports coming out in the UK tabloids today seem to suggest that Bin Laden was cowering behind one of his wives when shot.

Did Osama bin Laden win? No. Did he succeed? Well, America is still standing, and he isn’t. So why, when I called Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a counterterrorism expert who specializes in al-Qaeda, did he tell me that “bin Laden has been enormously successful”? There’s no caliphate. There’s no sweeping sharia law. Didn’t we win this one in a clean knockout?

Apparently not. Bin Laden, according to Gartenstein-Ross, had a strategy that we never bothered to understand, and thus that we never bothered to defend against. What he really wanted to do — and, more to the point, what he thought he could do — was bankrupt the United States of America. After all, he’d done the bankrupt-a-superpower thing before. And though it didn’t quite work out this time, it worked a lot better than most of us, in this exultant moment, are willing to admit.

Bin Laden’s transition from scion of a wealthy family to terrorist mastermind came in the 1980s, when the Soviet Union was trying to conquer Afghanistan. Bin Laden was part of the resistance, and the resistance was successful — not only in repelling the Soviet invasion, but in contributing to the communist super-state’s collapse a few years later. “We, alongside the mujaheddin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt,” he later explained.

The campaign taught bin Laden a lot. For one thing, superpowers fall because their economies crumble, not because they’re beaten on the battlefield. For another, superpowers are so allergic to losing that they’ll bankrupt themselves trying to conquer a mass of rocks and sand. This was bin Laden’s plan for the United States, too.

“He has compared the United States to the Soviet Union on numerous occasions — and these comparisons have been explicitly economic,” Gartenstein-Ross argues in a Foreign Policy article. “For example, in October 2004 bin Laden said that just as the Arab fighters and Afghan mujaheddin had destroyed Russia economically, al Qaeda was now doing the same to the United States, ‘continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.’ ”

For bin Laden, in other words, success was not to be measured in body counts. It was to be measured in deficits, in borrowing costs, in investments we weren’t able to make in our country’s continued economic strength. And by those measures, bin Laden landed a lot of blows.

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz estimates that the price tag on the Iraq War alone will surpass $3 trillion. Afghanistan likely amounts to another trillion or two. Add in the build-up in homeland security spending since 9/11 and you’re looking at yet another trillion. And don’t forget the indirect costs of all this turmoil: The Federal Reserve, worried about a fear-induced recession, slashed interest rates after the attack on the World Trade Center, and then kept them low to combat skyrocketing oil prices, a byproduct of the war in Iraq. That decade of loose monetary policy may well have contributed to the credit bubble that crashed the economy in 2007 and 2008.

Then there’s the post-9/11 slowdown in the economy, the time wasted in airports, the foregone returns on investments we didn’t make, the rise in oil prices as a result of the Iraq War, the cost of rebuilding Ground Zero, health care for the first responders and much, much more.

But it isn’t quite right to say bin Laden cost us all that money. We decided to spend more than a trillion dollars on homeland security measures to prevent another attack. We decided to invade Iraq as part of a grand, post-9/11 strategy of Middle Eastern transformation. We decided to pass hundreds of billions of dollars in unpaid-for tax cuts and add an unpaid-for prescription drug benefit in Medicare while we were involved in two wars. And now, partially though not entirely because of these actions, we are deep in debt. Bin Laden didn’t — couldn’t — bankrupt us. He could only provoke us into bankrupting ourselves. And he came pretty close.

It’s a smart play against a superpower. We didn’t need to respond to 9/11 by trying to reshape the entire Middle East, but we’re a superpower, and we think on that scale. We didn’t need to respond to failed attempts to smuggle bombs onto airplanes through shoes and shampoo bottles by screening all footwear and banning large shampoo bottles, but we’re a superpower, and our tolerance for risk is extremely low. His greatest achievement was getting our psychology at least somewhat right.

In the end, of course, bin Laden was just another bag of meat and bones, hiding in a walled compound in Pakistan, so deeply afraid of death that he tried to use his wife as a shield when the special forces came for him. But he understood the mind of the superpower well enough to use our capabilities against us. He may not have won, but he did succeed, at least partially.

But then, we can learn from our mistakes. He can’t.

By Ezra Klein | 08:56 AM ET, 05/03/2011

ArbeitsSchu wrote:

filbert wrote:According to the US ambassador to the UK who was interviewed on the BBC the other day, the SEAL team were sent in with explicit orders not to take him alive.

Further reports coming out in the UK tabloids today seem to suggest that Bin Laden was cowering behind one of his wives when shot.

Just spotted a newsflash a moment ago which states he was unarmed as well.

ArbeitsSchu wrote:So it seems that the early report I saw about "Kill not capture" may well have been entirely accurate, and that he was unarmed. I'll stick with my "execution" position.

Panetta only learned that the President had been convinced by his arguments on Friday, when Obama said he was authorizing the helicopter mission and made his order official in a signed letter. After he received the order, Panetta told McRaven of the President’s decision and instructed him to launch. He told him the mission was “to go in there [and] get bin Laden, and if bin Laden isn’t there, get the hell out!”

ArbeitsSchu wrote:So it seems that the early report I saw about "Kill not capture" may well have been entirely accurate, and that he was unarmed. I'll stick with my "execution" position.

ChrisWWII wrote:

ArbeitsSchu wrote:So it seems that the early report I saw about "Kill not capture" may well have been entirely accurate, and that he was unarmed. I'll stick with my "execution" position.

It said he was resisting,not that American forces lined him up against a wall and shot him. It's not even an execution style murder, as he was actively resisting. I personally believe capturing would have been better, but I'm still not too bummed he's dead. To be honest, having him in custody would likely be even more dangerous.

BrassScorpion wrote:Hilarious.

The Colbert Report
‎"His million dollar compound was less than 40 miles from Pakistan's captial. That's like escaping Washington D.C. by hiding out in Baltimore, except that Abbottabad is much less dangerous than Baltimore." -- Stephen Colbert