I predict Pauline Hanson will win…hahahah (that’s if she is out of jail…)
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Today the French are saying they feel they nearly got OBL within the last two weeks.
This may account for some of the change in AQ operational tempo. A cornered animal is at its most dangerous.
My analysis (guess!) is AQ does have a mission template in place for an operation in Athens, and that t has been in place for several years. As someone else mentioned in this thread (correctly so) security in Athens has been chronically mediocre. This, hoepfully, has been shored up.
Did you see the photos of the car bomb outside the U.S. consulate in Pakistan on A.P. this morning? Holy shit. It was huge. Like, 500 lbs of explosive in one of those little Daihatsu vans. The rear wheels were all smushed down under the weight of it. My buddy Charlie, just back from Baghdad, who did EOD over there said he though it would have made a crater six feet deep with a blast radius of 300 feet.
One way or another, you won’t see me in Athens. Too scary.
Very sad…
Sunday, March 14 was declared NATIONAL MOURNING DAY in Romania.
11 dead, 6 missing, 27 injured - all romanians, living/working in Spain - most of them in their 20s!
Basically, Spain’s populus capitulated to terrorism and ran like a scared dog to a corner waving a white, cowardly flag, giving basically a lude wink to the terrorists saying, “hey, we’ll leave you alone, you leave us alone.”
That’s bascially what that was. Am I suprised? Hell no. It’s Europe. It wasn’t a sad day for Western Civilization because, hell, it’s freaking Europe which has no clue, and I’m no George freaking Bush fan, like some of the conservative pundits have said. That’s just Europe going back to 1912. They are much more smarter and cosmopolitan and peaceful than us. Problem is, people with malicious desires take advantage of that psychology.
Another instance of that part of Europe running from a bully under the guise of some kind of wise, pacific intellectualism. One of these days, we are just going to sit here, for years, and let somebody just work them over. And not jump in to stop it.
Francois, waiting on your reply…give me a stinger!
Yep, she’s out of jail and very contrite. No sign of her getting back into politics though, which is a relief!
I wouldn’t be surprised if a couple of boatloads of asylum seekers showed up just at the right time to allow Howard to whip up the xenophobia again. Hopefully people will see through it this time.
Or maybe it was because the pundits were wrong. 90% of Spain did not agree with Spain sending troops to Iraq and the government has been under heaps of pressure since then.
A significant proportion of the European population does not equate fighting terriorism with the Iraq War. The problem is that the US government has been pushing the line that if you don’t support the US on Iraq you are soft on terrorism. That is not the case.
Europe has had to deal with terrorism for a lot longer than the US, and people in the two continents do see things differently. Having lived in both (and personally having a very strong connection to 9/11 - probably much stronger than most of you), I’m more aligned to the views of the Europeans in that I see that Iraq is a distraction rather than a necessary battle against terrorism.
Have a read of http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3512894.stm for a BBC analysis of the impact of the Madrid bombing.
dt.
Well.
Good luck. Not a George Bush fan, myself, but the American Public is about to the point of saying, go screw yourselves, Europe. When it hit home, you ran and blamed us instead of punching them in the nose.
You are dealing with pure dee evil.
Again.
And you capitulated.
Again.
It’s like a historical pattern.
Just don’t get me or my kids over there to save you, or fight for your lame ass, because you were peaceniks again, this time.
… bait for Francois… sniff…sniff… I think ya’ need better bait myself.
At any rate… in a way, your sorta’ right but for the wrong reasons.
First of all… terrorism (by definition) does make them a bully. And, it takes a meaner dog in the junk yard to place them into a position that humbles them. It is truely difficult for countries without the desire and resources to commit to fighting an adversary whose goal is to simply kill you because you are who you are… And, do this base on religious beliefs… This is a very big problem and not easily solved.
Fortunately, it seems that Al Q. has found it’s meaner dog in the junk yard - the US… and, I frankly don’t expect others who are either frightened or politically motivated to not stand their ground against an adversary such as Al Q. This is what makes terrorism - terrorism. They make countries cower.
I prefer not to blame Europe for acting the way they are (that’s too easy)… instead, I prefer to blame failure on poor disposal of resources by the meanest dog in the junk yard - the US. HOWEVER, I think that will change soon. And, the ultimate victor will be the one with the greatest resouces. IMHO, we simply need to apply our resources in a more prudent fashion. In time that will happen… we will learn from our mistakes… it’s only a question of how many lives will be lost in the process. And, how many lives will be lost will be dependent upon the weapon(s) that the terrorists obtain and how effectively they are used by terrorists.
Am I surpised by your feelings toward Europe? …Hell no. It’s America. As for Europe… Pfttt… there just the root cause for most of our genetic make up. What do(es) we/us/they know?
FWIW Joe Moya
Hi Booth,
Firstly, I’m not European. I simply said that I have lived in both places. One of the great things about travel is that it broadens your mind and I have had the priviledge of living in 4 countries on 4 continents. Being a person whose first question is almost always “Why?” is also part of that.
The American Public is at the point of saying whatever the media tells them to say. Don’t get me wrong, most people in any country are like that, however I have found that the Americans that I have contact with have a much smaller input of information from other countries that others do from America. Yes, it’s all available on the Internet or in foreign newspapers, but Americans don’t seem to seek it out. I find frequently I am able to tell my well-educated American friends information about the US that they hadn’t heard themselves.
And what’s with the attempted insults? I’m trying to foster a rational argument here. It’s not that people were peaceniks, but that they did not see (and still do not see) that deposing Saddam (and no one is denying that it is better that he is out of power) was helping the goal of fighting terror. There was no link between al-Qaeda and Iraq before the War, but there sure is now.
dt.
“The rear wheels were all smushed down under the weight of it.”
Yep, I noticed that on the news here as well. Reading all those Tom Clancy novels paid off 
this is so low level psychology and denotes such a lack of knowledge of European history that I really don’t feel the need nor do I have the desire to start discussing this with you. It also shows that you have not followed the elections in Spain (the polls showed the PSOE taking over PP on wednesday before the attacks) and you also have little knowledge of polls anyway (a 3 pt difference basically means nothing)…
And an other little detail: the Spanish people didn’t capitulate to terrorism…heck they know much more than you or any other american…they have been fighting ETA for decades…they got rid of Aznar because they couldn’t trust him…maybe it’s a message…
F.
“I prefer to blame failure on poor disposal of resources by the meanest dog in the junk yard - the US. HOWEVER, I think that will change soon.”
Go deeper. Disposal of resources?
Jeez boothrand - such frothing at the mouth, chest thumping America right or wrong is, as Francois pointed out, way too base to respond to. In any case…
Former PM Aznar, against overwhelming public opposition (like 90%), decided to support the US invasion of Iraq. Seems to me a democratically elected leader’s charge is to carry out the will of the people and when they lose the consent of the governed they lose their power. Aznar’s fateful decision puts the blood of 200+ innocents on his and the Popular Party’s hands. That’s why they lost the election.
Europe does support the fight against terrorism (see recent headlines re: French troops almost capture Bin Laden) but rightly views the invasion of Iraq as being carried out under false pretenses. Or, for ajfranke’s benefit - US lies and deceit.
Art - if you’re going to weigh in please try something other than the ‘criticism of Bush/US is hate speech’ refrain. That’s tired and lame.
This is a bit of a digression from the current stream, but I was reading an interesting article today that was saying that if the purveyors of the Madrid attacks(presumably al Qaeda) perceive the shift in voter support as caused by the bombings(regardless of what you think the actual cause of the vote results was), then you will likely see attacks in other countries, particularly the US, as the election nears.
It will be interesting to see whether this fear will cause people to sway towards Bush, who would likely continue to use force aggressively against whomever he perceives as a threat to US security, or Kerry, who has moved around on the topic quite a bit, but gives the impression that he would end the war on terror, such as it is. I know a lot of people who think that Bush is a buffoon, but who support him solely because they think a change in administration would guarantee withdrawal from Iraq, along with the inevitable chaos that would ensue.
As someone who rides the train to work every day, I can tell you that many of the people I talk to have been worrying about an attack such as the one in Madrid since 9/11. Given that, it amazes me how little news coverage the media have given the bombings, and how little interest people seem to show in it.
“it amazes me how little news coverage the media have given the bombings, and how little interest people seem to show in it.”
It’s quite simple. No american casualties.
"Another instance of that part of Europe running from a bully under the guise of some kind of wise, pacific intellectualism. One of these days, we are just going to sit here, for years, and let somebody just work them over. And not jump in to stop it. "
You mean like the US did in WWII? Granted it was the US that tipped the scales in the right direction but how many lives could have been saved if the US had gotten involved earlier? Or come running like they did in Kuwait? Oh wait Europe doesn’t have any oil.
Excuse my cynicism, but I get sick of the US preaching all holy. The US may appear to be proactive today but history shows that until the US is directly threatened (physically of economically i.e. Kuwait) it doesn’t do anything. Without September 11 and the embassy bombings in Africa - the US would have done nothing about OBL - let him continue bombing Saudis etc. who cares. The current political regime in a number of African nations is arguably worse than Iraq was (assuming no WMD). Mogabe (sp?) is left to strip his country bare and perpetuate the poverty while building an estimated multi billion dollar personal fortune. The US ignores this. Why? No direct impact on the US.
Spain has done the opposite. They weren’t directly targeted until after they tried to take action. They went in to try and getting hit in the end. I think their response, although I disagree with it, is perfectly logical. The thought process: We were safe before we went after these guys. They got us now. Maybe if we back off they won’t hurt us.
Get off your high horse and stop painting yourselves as the saviours of the world. You are the most powerful right now and fortunately for us are not overly abusing that power. But be careful, every empire has ultimately fallen no matter how strong at its peak. Rome, Britain etc.
I wasn’t going t weigh in, but I guess I have to. I have never made such a hate speech argument. Send back the full quote where I do. I have commented on hatred, but as a commentary on those that hate. As I said before, the hatred speaks volumes about the haters, but little or nothing about those that they hate.
If the hated group were to go away, it would be replaced by another. After the Nazi wiped out the Jews, they went on to the trade union leaders.
If you ignore oil production, the 22 Arab countries have a total GDP less than the 5,000,000 people of Finland. As a group, the countries are failures. It was not always so. Roll back the last 1,000 years of civilization and the numbers would be reversed. Islamic nations were the world power militarily, economically and culturally. The current terrorists want to do exactly that, destroy 1,000 years of civilization. If you think appeasement or negotiation orlawyers or understanding their point of view is going to protect you, I wish you well.
You can’t placate evil. You have to defeat it. Roosevelt didn’t compromise with Japan and Germany in WWII. We defeated them.
The US can’t solve all the problems and we certainly let national interests set our priorities. You are right on target about Mugabe (?). He is a thug that is destroying his country. Oh yeah, he just got back from a state welcome in France.
I have to admit I never heard the argument that America should be blamed for not intervening soon enough in WWII. I will have to think that one over. We have made our isolationist errors too. Time will tell if we learn from them or repeat them.
You are right about UBL as well. We could have had him for the asking in the 90’s, but we didn’t want him. Big mistake that we won’t repeat.
Excuse my cynicism, but I get sick of the US preaching all holy. I dont think we can do that until we completely dominate triathlon!! People seem to forget the zillions of dollars of aid the US gives to other countries all over the world whether or not they have oil. If the US doesnt take action, who will? Certainly not the UN or EU. I just hope we dont let terroists dictate or elections.
You are apparently an unhappy person judging by the way you hate and think the worst of people that you don’t even know. You should let go of the hatred and the venom filled diatribes that flow from it. Hatred only makes you less than you would otherwise be.
Art - Here you go. Want some more? I disagree with the Bush regime and you accuse me of hate speech - more than once in this thread. I know that’s the current dittohead Limbaugh (drug fiend) line of attack but come on my friend.