But it's just sad rubbish and Jerome's points against it are obviously valid to anyone who has really read a bit of informed writing on the subject. It's sad that someone evidently not totally stupid believes such junk and it helps explain to non-Americans why Bush got elected a SECOND time (wasn't the first time an obvious enough gross error?!).
Normally I'd try to back up such a dismissal with chapter and verse, but Jerome has aleady given some very good reasons - and I'm one of those recovering from the meet-up, and from having eaten and drunk too much at M's parents.
I suspect someone who writes stuff like this is already pretty far beyond the each of rational argument. But here are a few links anyway, with an informed rational approach (as usual) from Fisk and Chomsky:
http://www.zmag.org/fiskawecalam.htm
http://www.counterpunch.org/chomskyintv.html
http://www.zmag.org/terrorwar/nineeleven.htm
Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice. Blog - Nice Experience
"...So after three years and at least 150,000 Iraqi corpses, can those of us who supported the toppling of Saddam Hussein for the Iraqis' sake still claim it was worth it? (I am assuming the people who bought the obviously fictitious arguments about WMD are already hanging their heads in shame). George Packer, a recalcitrant Iraq-based journalist who tentatively supported the invasion, summarises the situation in the country today: "Most people aren't free to speak their minds, belong to a certain group, wear what they want, or even walk down the street without risking their lives." In many regions - including the British controlled South - power has been effectively ceded to fascist militias who "take over schools and hospitals, intimidate the staffs, assaulted unveiled women, set up kangaroo sharia courts that issue death sentences, repeatedly try to seize control of the holy shrines, run criminal gangs, firebomb liquor stores, and are often drunk themselves. Their tactics are those of fascist bullies." So when people ask if I think I was wrong, I think about the Iraqi friend - hiding, terrified, in his own house - who said to me this week, "Every day you delete another name from your mobile, because they've been killed. By the Americans or the jihadists or the militias - usually you never find out which." I think of the people trapped in the siege of a civilian city, Fallujah, where amidst homes and schools the Americans indiscriminately used a banned chemical weapon - white phosphorous - that burns through skin and bone. (The Americans say they told civilians to leave the city, so anybody left behind was a suspected jihadi - an evacuation procedure so successful they later used it in New Orleans.). I think of the raw numbers: on the largest estimate - from the Human Rights Centre in Khadimiya - Saddam was killing 70,000 people a year. The occupation and the jihadists have topped that, and the violence is getting worse. And I think - yes, I was wrong. Terribly wrong..." http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=831
So when people ask if I think I was wrong, I think about the Iraqi friend - hiding, terrified, in his own house - who said to me this week, "Every day you delete another name from your mobile, because they've been killed. By the Americans or the jihadists or the militias - usually you never find out which." I think of the people trapped in the siege of a civilian city, Fallujah, where amidst homes and schools the Americans indiscriminately used a banned chemical weapon - white phosphorous - that burns through skin and bone. (The Americans say they told civilians to leave the city, so anybody left behind was a suspected jihadi - an evacuation procedure so successful they later used it in New Orleans.). I think of the raw numbers: on the largest estimate - from the Human Rights Centre in Khadimiya - Saddam was killing 70,000 people a year. The occupation and the jihadists have topped that, and the violence is getting worse. And I think - yes, I was wrong. Terribly wrong..."
http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=831
I agree with your first two comments and said that we and the West are at fault for basically stupidity in that regard. On the third comment. NO and the Clinton administration knew it. They did not recognize the first WTC threat as an act of war but did after over seas attacks on U.S. interests. Clinton wanted to engage in a war but was held back bay his advisors and his lack of political capital at the time. He did not have the courage to kill bin Laden and take the heat for the deaths of innocents. That is a matter of record. As far as civil rights, you mentioned one in Gitmo. But you failed to mention a single normal American citizen who had their right violated as a result of any U.S. domestic terror fighting measures. I would certainly like to hear of anyone who had their rights violated.
On the third comment. NO and the Clinton administration knew it. They did not recognize the first WTC threat as an act of war but did after over seas attacks on U.S. interests. Clinton wanted to engage in a war but was held back bay his advisors and his lack of political capital at the time. He did not have the courage to kill bin Laden and take the heat for the deaths of innocents. That is a matter of record.
As far as civil rights, you mentioned one in Gitmo. But you failed to mention a single normal American citizen who had their right violated as a result of any U.S. domestic terror fighting measures. I would certainly like to hear of anyone who had their rights violated.
My own response:
One American cirizen who has been suffering from various violations of his rights is José Padilla.
But even breaches for non-Americans undermine the value you're fighting to defend.
private responds:
Padilla is connected to al qaeda and is currently a test case on the viability of this domestic policy. As far as most of us are concerned he has no rights other than what are afforded a traitor to the United States. I am interested in knowing about innocent, avergae Americans who have had their rights violated. An example is "me." During the Vietnam war protests, Nixon and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover collected information on all known war protestors - particularly college students like me. All I ever did was exercise my right to freedom of speech and protest. But a former president of my college sued the government to get those files released and there was mine. Scarey. Padilla is not in that category and I would be interested in knowing if the Patriot Act, the NSA intercept programs, or the Swift account tracking policies did affect an average American citizen.
I am interested in knowing about innocent, avergae Americans who have had their rights violated. An example is "me." During the Vietnam war protests, Nixon and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover collected information on all known war protestors - particularly college students like me. All I ever did was exercise my right to freedom of speech and protest. But a former president of my college sued the government to get those files released and there was mine. Scarey. Padilla is not in that category and I would be interested in knowing if the Patriot Act, the NSA intercept programs, or the Swift account tracking policies did affect an average American citizen.
That's the whole point of follow legal procedure: that there be no doubt that those convicted are guilty. It does not work perfectly in normal circumstances, but if you activley corrupt the process, there's no way of knowing.
And as to normal Americans, just look at all the homonyms that get stuck on the no-fly list and cannot get out of it, whetever their good faith. And what happens if you're unlucky to be the neighbor of someone who turns out to be a terrorist (or a designated terrorist, as we don't know), and had a barbecue with him, and are forever tainted as a terrorist associate because he was your neighbor and you were sociable? You think that doesn't happen? In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
