posted on June 2, 2002 07:31:04 AM new
>>Above you asked, what is the difference between terrorists having nukes, and Mexico having nukes? Are you being argumentative, or do you really need an answer to that question?<<
I never asked that question.
My post was reflective. It's a personal quality I like in myself.
posted on June 2, 2002 08:46:14 AM new
stusi, you are quite right. Bill has swung the gammut from Liberal to Centrist to somewhat Right of Center. I remember him from his days as the host of Hard Copy - the Enquirer-like "news" show. He was hired by FoxNews and had a very Left-leaning show. He quickly became the Token Liberal when FoxNews went Full-Hard-Right and then eventually he became "The Liberal"; that is, he was to imitate what a Liberal would say to a given situation at very Serious-looking Republicans who easily demolished all Liberal complaints with their Supreme Wise Knowledge, Experience, and Superoir Moral Position. For a time there, Bill was allowed to fight back and give almost as good as he got. The last time that I bothered to watch his show, it was clearly staged from a script where the others on the show clearly had read such script and had their answers well prepared. Propaganda. I've seen Bill since and the Far-Right-Wing influence is rubbing off of him or at least he's doing what he has to in order to stay employed. Once Bill stopped being Liberal at all, there went all pretense of "Fair and Balanced Reporting". You can watch his show if you like, but it's staged baloney, just like most interviews on FoxNews. Me, I preferred the show when it was still Hard Copy.
posted on June 2, 2002 09:02:55 AM new
Borillar- I do now vaguely remember that I was surprised at his rightwing "positions" after not seeing him for several years. I really can't stand him as he has become quite pompous. I suspect that he truly is conservative and that his early positions were phony. I think the real reason for Phil Donahue's return is that there are very few shows with the Liberal point of view despite the accusation of a Liberal media.
posted on June 2, 2002 09:58:46 AM new"When New York is hit with a nuclear holocaust, perhaps you can console yourself with the knowlege that you helped protect civil rights."
Tell you what, twinsoft: why don't you go renounce all of YOUR civil rights in order to feel safer and leave OURS alone?
posted on June 3, 2002 12:56:11 PM new
auroranorth, then you and twinsoft can go live in a police state without any rights in order to feel safe. The rest of us will keep pushing for MORE rights in order to feel safe! Which is right? You have only to look at any of the neumorous 20th Century examples around the world to find out. In EVERY CASE, giving up your rights to live in a police state NEVER made anyone safer from outside threats. Instead, they quickly realized that the threat was from INSIDE. But, by then, it's just too late to go get your rights back! Yup! Once you've given up your rights - that's it! You don't get them back without a lot of bloodshed - probably your own! Go L@@K for yourself!
posted on June 3, 2002 02:02:17 PM new
Jeez I meant that I agree that that moslem population should not be allowed to emigrate here under the present circumstances, In no way do I wish to give up any rights that we are supposed to have. practically I dont feel as though I have any rights unless I can afford a schmuck of some kind to enforce them in a court.
Of other interesting things on the media-watch website: "A Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) study of ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News in the year 2001 shows that 92 percent of all U.S. sources interviewed were white, 85 percent were male and, where party affiliation was identifiable, 75 percent were Republican."
And that doesn't even cover the *hugely* biased cable news networks like MSNBC, CNN, and especially FoxNews. Is it any wonder that Republican voters sound like a broken record of sound bites from the GOP Blather Machine Hype?
posted on June 28, 2002 09:05:44 AM new
It depends on who you mean by "they".
If it is a country like Iran or Iraq, they would not attack the continental US because it would mean the total destruction of their country.
However, they could obstruct the US having large amounts of troops or a fleet in the Persian Gulf. The US would have to weigh the risks of having a large military contingent in the region if these countries have nukes, because they could be used to wipe out the US force in seconds.
If you mean by "they" terrorist organizations, then I would agree that as soon as they gain access to these weapons and a means to deliver them, they will use them on US soil.
The reason terrorists can do this is because the US will have no country to destroy if we suffer a terrorist nuke. The terrorists know this, and it is a tactical strength of terrorism. A country like Iraq or North Korea could also provide the terrorists with the weapons provided they coundn't easily or quickly be traced back to the country - plausible deniability. The US coundn't trace the weapons back to these countries fast enough to use nukes in retaliation - as time passed in gathering evidence to retaliate, the international community would degrade evidence, the target country would deny and confuse the issues, and international community would stand against retalitory nuke attacks for environmental and humanitarian reasons.
The bottom line is that the wrong countries getting nukes will impose limits on using conventional forces in many regions, and provide the opportunity to pass these weapons to terrorists.
Any country using nuclear weapons only invites it's own destruction. All countries know this probably with better understanding than the one in which we live.
Nuclear accidents or nuclear terrorists will probably end this world. In the case of the 9/11 terrorist attack, we wasted no time identifying Afghanistan as the country to counter attack. When the next attack happens, Iraq and North Korea are probably next in line. So why do you think that Iraq would give terrorists nuclear power?
With international diplomacy, we should not have to worry about nuclear war. But the sad case is that in the White House we do not have a diplomat or a man of peace. I think that he will use faster fire power than even you can imagine.
posted on June 28, 2002 11:53:51 AM new
"With international diplomacy, we should not have to worry about nuclear war."
Similiar statement have been made since the beginning of time. So far they have only been a preamble to getting a lot of people killed, because the people who make them abhor the possibiliy that some people are just downright evil.
They used years of diplomacy and tens of thousands of lives talking to Hitler. In the end it came down to his gambling he could grab just one more piece.
An Iranian minister has already called for a nuclear program for the sole purpose of destroying Israel while at the same time being able to sustain the losses Israel inflicts.
Hussein used poison gas against villagers in retaliation for their support of Kurdish rebels.
Just because they say they will do it, we shouldn't believe them. Nahhh. And just because Hitler spelled out his plan in Mein Kampf didn't mean anything because it was to sell books.
These people are on a mission to secure their destiny at the end of which their highest aspiration is to die and go to a princely realm. They would never do anything so icky as detonate nukes.
posted on June 28, 2002 12:32:05 PM new
Mutual Assured Destruction is what may keep a country from using nukes, but it will not deter terrorists. Many would have argued that destroying the WTC, attacking the Pentagon, and killing thousands on American soil would assure your destruction, but it didn't deter the terrorists.
"We wasted not time" identifying Afghanistan as the country where some of the terrorists were were temporarily housed with a sympathetic govt. Many have since located elsewhere.
The tactics of terrorism are far different than conventional confrontations, and their rational for the use of weapons such as nukes are far different. Terrorists seek to continuosly sap what they can not immediately destroy.
There will be no showering of nuke missles showing up on NORAD screens. There will be a single large city hit. And we will scramble to figure out who did it and how to retaliate.
If the terrorists had used a nuclear weapon on 9-11 instead of planes, would the US then nuke Afghanistan ? Who would we destroy for this attack ?
We would be in the same situation we now find ourselves in. Unable or unwilling to identify the enemy, and unwilling to take action.
al Qaeda still exists, as well as a host of other organizations that will use nukes if they get their hands on them.
posted on June 28, 2002 12:39:50 PM new"People dressed this child up as a suicide bomber just as in people in Britain might dress a child in their favorite soccer team's strip," said Palestinian Labour Minister Ghassan al-Khatib.
How can you reason with people who have this mentality? A BABY for heaven's sake!
posted on June 28, 2002 01:04:50 PM new
How do you deal with societies that have no regard for life, innocent or otherwise ?
You deal with them in the same manner we dealt with Germany and Japan. Reduce them to rubble.
The only problem is that the West lacks the political will to unleash the hounds of hell. It may take a nuclear detonation in a major US city before we realize that we are fighting a culture, not a band of terrorists, that doesn't have the ideals that the West embraces.
There is nothing wrong with different cultures or ideals, except when one issists and has the goal of the violent destruction of all others. Tolleration is still alive and well in the West, more so than any other culture in history. But that very tolleration is what dictates that we exercise restraint until enough of us are killed.
I hope my conclusions are wrong. I hope that the whole 9-11 attack was a one-time event carried out by a small band of nut cases living in the Afghan wilderness.
posted on June 28, 2002 05:03:13 PM new
Since the terrorists threatening the US are Moslim centered and all the important holy places of that faith are in Arabia I don't see anty chance of successfully acting against them until the US is ready to write off Arabia as an ally.
They should be told that the next major attack on the US will result in the vaporization of their holy shrines starting with Mecca. That there will only be a fused glassy plain about 6 miles across where it used to be - too radioactive to live there for centuries.
Tell them that if their faith is so strong Allah can protect the sites.
