Osama (allegedly) Claims More Attacks to Come

I've honestly got to say, it's not like the dirty punk is not planning/hoping for attacks when he doesn't say anything. The sh_t's on, if you will. Who cares what the creep says? The thing has taken on a life of its own because of Bush-league mistakes. Screw him. I'd like him to be raped by a camel, but a long, slow death of cancer will do...

Fear is the only way he wins. He's an insect. Treat him as such.

YOU READ YOUR HISTORY, ignorant. You call any mistake Bush made a partisan attack. That's fine, but has nothing to do with reality.

Blunder number 1). Failure to keep focussed on hunting him down in Afghanistan, becoming distracted by Iraq.
Bigger blunder 2). The unnecessary invasion of Iraq turned Al Qaeda from a small group of well-funded rich pricks who couldn't get a movement started, to a global name brand and inspiration for crazies everywhere. Before Iraq, Al Qaeda attacks were arranged by Osama. Afterward, they were spontaneously generated by groups with little or no contact with Al Qaeda. The rise in attacks after the invasion is well documented.

In fact the blunders are endless and well-documented. Bremmer disbanding the Iraqi Army, failing to collect their guns. Which resulted in putting 100,000 angry, armed, unemployed men on the streets.

Well, thank you for giving me so much credit but no, actually, it happens to be the consensus of opinion on the intel.

Wrong. The invasion of Iraq turned an isolated group of rich guys into a popular movement. There are basic differences between attacks before the invasion began and attacks after.

Before, an incident every one or two, even three years, arranged by Osama and his tiny band of nuts.
After: multiple incidents every year arranged by locals acting spontaneously in places all over the world in the name of the invasion of Iraq.

Iraq took Osama's elite movement and made it grassroots. Before Iraq we could have killed the elites and be done. We chose to do the equivalent of hitting the hive with the baseball bat however. But don't take MY word for it, this is well-worn territory:

Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat

>>"WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism..."

"The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe."

"National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative documents that the intelligence community produces on a specific national security issue, and are approved by John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence. Their conclusions are based on analysis of raw intelligence collected by all of the spy agencies."<<

And not only that, they were warned this would happen BEFORE the invasion:

"The estimate’s judgments confirm some predictions of a National Intelligence Council report completed in January 2003, two months before the Iraq invasion. That report stated that the approaching war had the potential to increase support for political Islam worldwide and could increase support for some terrorist objectives."

Bush-league blunder.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/world … error.html

Rhetoric

Rhetoric.

Not according to the National Intelligence Estimate which saw a massive rise in terrorism after the war and because of the war, and which predicted this exact effect before the war.

Never implied that they did. Those are examples of centrally organized attacks by a small group committed years apart, rather than the many attacks, spontaneously generated from the grassroots AFTER Iraq. Just like I said before. Again, not my conclusion, that of the NIE.

Like I said, this is old, old news.

You present no evidence of this, just your claims. The NIE points specifically to Iraq being the cause of unprecedented rise in grassroots, rather than centrally organized terror.

Sorry, in your ignorance about the matter you are confusing several things here, Chechnya was not a Qaeda project, in fact it is nationalist terrorism more than Islamic and goes back to the 19th Century. "Experts Doubt Chechnya-Qaeda" Link http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,131291,00.html

Sri Lanka is also a long nationalist fight, between the majority Buddhist Sinhalese and the minority Tamils which are both Muslim and Hindi. Both Hindu and Muslim Tamils use suicide bombers and Muslim Tamils contacts with other Arab nations has more to to with supplies than anything else.

Now, Bhutto's assassination? Bush's failure to keep the pressure on Afghanistan let the Taliban slip into Pakistan, our ally. And So the assassination.

None of this disputes the NIE conclusions that the best tool of recruitment for Al Qaeda has been Iraq. That blunder falls squarely at Bush's feet.

Rhetoric. I haven't ignored anything. There is a clear distinction between Al Qaeda before Iraq and Al Qaeda after. Iraq was a gift to them. That is not a position of politics but the consensus of the intelligence community. I'm sorry listening to the facts and paying attention to reality is "mad" to you, but that explains so much of your views. Bush's blunders made the problem way worse. Deal with it

The pressure should have been applied in Afghanistan and we wouldn't be talking about that war still to this day, now moved into our "ally" Pakistan. There were never enough troops, never enough commitment to win that war. Secure it with as many as were needed, then win the peace. We had the Taliban on the ropes, we allowed them to recover while the bulk of our forces went to Iraq. For years the reports were of the Taliban regenerating. They were ignored in the noise of defending Bush.

Two big differences between Iraq and Afghanistan:

1) Afghanis are not Arab, so not a big concern in the ME. Oh, sure, they sent their crazies there during the fight against the Soviets. But did we see Muslims all over the world suicide bombing Soviet territories or embassies? No. Afghanistan was just a place to dump their crazies.
2) Iraq didn't start a fight with us, the rulers of Afghanistan essentially did. The ME understands retribution. They have big buildings too. Let America take care of it, their crazies over there. They knew themselves that Al Qaida was just a group of rich insane elites. Osama's own family had already disowned him long before 9/11. The leaders of the ME just wanted to do business. Iraq enraged their populations, their fellow Arabs, as an unjust attack against them all. Now their leaders were forced to figure out how to keep themselves from being overthrown and had at least to pretend they wanted out of any connection with America. Turned the whole thing global and grassroots.

So there it was, we had a small group of elite crazies trapped in a non-arab shithole, everyone waiting for us to get rid of them, and then we attacked Iraq and blew the whole thing up. VERY STUPID. A Bush-league blunder. Anyone who had ever paid any attention to that part of the world could see that train coming from miles away, but you guys were too busy defending your god to avoid stepping on that track.

What did the NIE say? They had no time to say anything. The war in Afghanistan began too quickly. It had to. They had time to analyze what wuld happen with Iraq and proved correct. That war that did not need to be fought was a gift to Al Qaida and it keeps on giving.

Like Lincoln said: "One war at a time, gentlemen, one war at a time."

Last edited by cybert (2010-01-26 11:53:20)

Not on this point: the invasion of Iraq turned a limited group of crazies into a global grassroots problem. Making the problem worse is a done deal.

It is silent because there was no time to prepare it beforehand. Still doesn't change the fact that Iraq increased and srengthened Al Qaida. They said it would before Iraq, and it did. I gave the reasons why. You choose to ignore them because of your partisan devotion to Bush.

No "we" don't, that is your opinion supported only by your opinion.

As I said before, the Soviet invasion did not lead to the global rise of radical Islam, it led radicals to go there and fight the Soviets. The rise of Mullah Omar came out of the civil war in Afghanistan that began after the Soviet invasion. Osama bin Laden had no rise until the build-up to Iraq. He had money and a small group of elites. He was in Afghanistan for years, plotting and executing his attacks, yet the global movement he desired never materialized until Iraq.

I see no evidence of that and the NIE before and after pointed to a global movement arising out of Iraq, not Afghanistan. We've been over this.

The only intellectual dishonesty here is to ignore the evidence for a political defense of a President whose mistakes are well-documented at this point.

Actually, no, in 1993 he was still in Saudi Arabia. He had been angry since the Saudi Government decided to allow US troops on Saudi soil and had rejected him as a leader of an "Arab" defense force, of which he had little. He was thrown out of Saudi and stripped of his citizenship in 1994 for continually attacking the Saudi King. He set up his new base of operations in Sudan. He found the core of Al Qaida in a group called Egyptian Islamic Jihad, whose goal was the overthrow of the Egyptian government. An assassination attempt on the President of Egypt failed and bin Laden was ejected from Sudan in 1996. The only place left to go was a broke, non-Arab international pariah called Afghanistan. Still, he had nothing approaching a global movement. The embassy bombings were executed by members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, not Osama sympathizers in the countries attacked. That same year, Libya, yes Libya, issued an arrest warrant for him.

And do you know how loyal the Taliban was to him? After the US began its bombing, they offered to turn him over to a third-party country for arrest. The Bush Administration refused.

But here:

"The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al Qaeda, according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dy … -2002Apr16

Another outside source makes my point about Bush's failure. I warned you, this is well-worn territory...

We're talking about Iraq making Al Qaida a global movement, not local problems concerning local crazies.

What you need to deal with is that these are not my opinions, but the best facts we have to date. Your arguments are just your personal partisan need to defend a failed President. You desperately want everyone to believe I am blaming all terrorism in history on Bush. No, I am blaming the grassroots globalization of Al Qaida on Iraq. I have presented evidence OUTSIDE of myself from legitimate sources, while you have just gotten angry, made claims, and did a lot of sneering. Sorry, no good.

It has not only contributed but made Al Qaeda a global brand. Your blizzard of words argues nothing that disagrees with, or changes that. Before Iraq, bin Laden was the leader of a small group with big money. After Iraq, a grassroots movement with a life of it's own. Iraq was a war of choice, not necessary, therefore ANY increase in terror due to it is still Bush's fault, Bush made that choice and masses of other mistakes. The responsibility still lies with him. You can huff and puff all you want, that doesn't change.

In other words you are arguing with yourself. You are arguing about global terrorism, I am arguing the global popularization of Al Qaeda due to Bush's Iraq blunder. Two different things.

Yes, he was not a grassroots hero, he was a Saudi brat with a limited following and lots of money. Siting the 90's attacks he bought and paid for, only supports this.