Administration to double troop numbers for Vietman- I mean Afghanistan

[archibaldcrane]

I just wanna say that I'm as anti-Bush as you can be, but the idea that 9/11 was an inside job or that "obvious signs were ignored" is an utter joke.

I'm with you here.

Nothing anyone could have done would have prevented it even if you went back in time and told people what was going to happen.

Now you lost me.

Nothing? Anyone? Even allowing for time travel? C'mon son.

[Cephius]

I'm with you here. Now you lost me.

Nothing? Anyone? Even allowing for time travel? C'mon son.

Okay well... I guess if you went back and murdered the hijackers while they slept that might do the trick. But I was mostly going for the idea that even if you told people exactly where and how the attack was going to happen, no one would have believed you.

[Cephius]

"We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a ---- service in 1998 saying that Bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists.

Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York."

The very least that could have been done is improving airport or airplane security. This step would have been neither extraordinary or overreactive. It was not taken.

Holocaust Denier? Really?

Also, the idea that nothing could have been done to prevent at least part of the attacks in light of the inexcusable gaps in security which have been exposed in the time since then is just silly.

Do you really think more airport security could have prevented it from happening? The terrorists didn't smuggle AK47s onboard, they took the planes over by brute force or with razors/box cutters. Post 9/11 security screening couldn't even stop fake bombs from getting past them, what makes you think that beefed up security that day could have done anything?

[archibaldcrane]

I would be surprised if in my entire life I will ever be in a situation where I couldn't board an airplane with a ceramic knife taped to my inner thigh.

We can only get so safe.

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

I'm not saying it would have, just that it's the very least that could have been done and wasn't. If you want to single that out as the one thing that would have made a difference that day, go ahead. The fact is that there were, as I stated and even detailed earlier, 12 instances of intelligence and security failure which allowed the hijackers to carry out the attack unimpeded. It's not that we didn't stop them, it's that we didn't even make it particularly difficult for them.

So you increase airport security and do what? The knives they took on board were legal at the time.

[Leif]

I vote for profiling, but liberals are unwilling to admit that being Muslim means there's a higher chance you're going to blow up the plane than an 84-year-old Great Aunt Bertha, promptly rejecting any suggestions of a trusted traveler program, forcing the security screeners to treat everyone as if they were terrorists.

[Dimmauk]

Ever heard of Tim Mcveigh and Oklahoma city. White people should profiled like Muslims right?

[Plow]

Of course. And we can't just be letting all these negroes and mexicanos strut onto our planes unchecked, for obvious reasons.

[Leif]

Ever heard of Tim Mcveigh and Oklahoma city. White people should profiled like Muslims right?

Yeah. And the background check would have excluded him. Timmy has to go through the security scanner.

Pretending that anti-government extremists present even a hundredth of the threat the Muslim extremists do is laughable. At least the American extremists were raised as more than savages.

[archibaldcrane]

Pretty sure Bin Laden's rich as fuck family didn't raise him as a "savage".

[Kuya]

An interesting consideration brought up here, Juan Coles quotes Jeffrey Sachs:

Afghanistan is an economic basket case. The blurb says correctly:


' The poverty in Afghanistan is almost beyond imagining. Thirty Afghans die from TB every day; life expectancy is 43 years; per capita income is $426; only 13% have access to sanitary drinking water; fewer than one in four are literate; access to electricity is among the lowest in the world. Conditions for women are brutal. If Obama plans to address these issues, he's pretty much keeping it secret, points out world poverty expert Jeffrey Sachs. '


To be fair, Obama is calling for much more civilian development, and budgeting money for it. But the real surge that is needed isn't troops, it is Grameen Bank specialists and peace corps volunteers (in the north where they'd be safe).

That kind of social development, however, would require vast investments, perhaps even more than the investment on troops, and lots of time. And i get the feeling that the Pentagon and Congress aren't as willing to give money for social development in a foreign country as they are willing to give money for war on foreign countries.

[Kuya]

From the site quoted in the link:

Afghanistan is the fifth least developed country in the world – 174th out of 178 –according to a November 2007 United Nations “National Human Development Report (NHDR). The U.N. global human development index, which ranks countries on individual income, life expectancy and literacy rate, placed Afghanistan ahead of only the African nations of Burkina Faso, Mali, Sierra Leone and Niger. (The next such report will be published in March 2010.)


Afghanistan has a gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of $426 as of 2008, according to the World Bank, the lowest in Asia and the fifth lowest in the world after Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Liberia. (The CIA World Factbook puts the Afghanistan figure higher at $800 for 2008, which would be the 11th worst in the world.) An estimated 60-80 percent of the country’s population live on less than $1 a day.


Afghanistan is the seventh most unequal country in the world, according to the ‘Gini coefficient,’ a measure of the gap separating a country’s richest and poorest citizens. The higher the country’s number on a scale of one to one-hundred, the more unequal the society. In the most recent ratings, the most unequal societies were Namibia 70.2, Equatorial Guinea 65, Lesotho 63.2, Sierra Leone 62.9, Angola 62, Central African Republic 61.3, and Afghanistan and Gabon 60.


Life expectancy for Afghan citizens is 43 years, compared to 59 years for low-income countries worldwide, according to the World Bank. The 2007 U.N. NHD Report noted that life expectancy in the country has declined from 44.5 years in 2003.


In a population estimated at 28.4 million, one-fourth of all Afghans “do not meet their minimum food requirements, with 24 percent of households characterized by poor food consumption,” according to the U.N. NHD Report. Almost half of Afghan children under five are underweight.


More than 30 Afghans die from tuberculosis each day, according to the U.N. global human development index.


Afghans’ access to electricity is among the lowest in the world, according to the World Bank, and only 13 percent of Afghans have access to safe drinking water and 12 percent to adequate sanitation.


Afghanistan “has one of the lowest adult literacy rates among developing countries,” according to the U.N. NHD Report. Between 2003 and 2005 (the last cited figures), the report said, literacy rates for adults over 15 actually fell from 28.7 percent to 23.5 percent.


Some 80 percent of Afghan women are illiterate, 54 percent of girls under the age of 18 are married, and 68 percent of girls ages 7-13 are not enrolled in school, according to the advocacy organization Womankind Worldwide. Only half of the schools have buildings. Enrollment rates for women in the primary, secondary and tertiary levels are almost half that of men. Violence and sexual abuse against women is widespread.


Some 15,000 Afghan women die each year from pregnancy-related causes, and the maternal mortality rate is the second highest in the world. As bad as these figures are, the U.N. NHD Report cited Afghanistan’s “steady progress in improving its health services and reducing child and maternal mortality rates.” Mortality rates for children under five years old were down from 257 per 1,000 births in 2001 to a still-alarming 160 per 1,000 births in 2006, according to the World Bank. (The CIA World Factbook put the figure at 152 in 2008.)


Afghanistan’s agricultural production (not including the opium trade) fell by more than 30 percent in 2008, the World Bank reported. Agriculture makes up more than 30 percent of the country’s GDP, which grew overall by 2 to 3 percent in 2008-2009.


Afghanistan is the fifth most corrupt country in the world, according to Transparency International, a global anti-corruption watchdog organization.

[Plow]

An interesting consideration brought up here, Juan Coles quotes Jeffrey Sachs:

That kind of social development, however, would require vast investments, perhaps even more than the investment on troops, and lots of time. And i get the feeling that the Pentagon and Congress aren't as willing to give money for social development in a foreign country as they are willing to give money for war on foreign countries.

A sixty thousand strong contingent of what Barnett calls the "sys admin" forces could really work wonders-- unfortunately it doesn't exist with that kind of strength. In my opinion building that wing is the key to getting ourselves out of the middle east.

It's hard to tell at this point if he's actually going to make that kind of progress, which is why I'm still in a "don't know if approve" state atm.

[Rhinox]

http://features.csmonitor.com/politi...-30000-troops/


the Secretary is already asking for more troops.


lol

[Kuya]

A sixty thousand strong contingent of what Barnett calls the "sys admin" forces could really work wonders-- unfortunately it doesn't exist with that kind of strength. In my opinion building that wing is the key to getting ourselves out of the middle east.

It's hard to tell at this point if he's actually going to make that kind of progress, which is why I'm still in a "don't know if approve" state atm.

Yes, Obama's call for social development has not at this point in time translated to an actual effort to reconstruct Afghanistan's urban social fabric, which is a necessity if the government is ever to become legitimate and therefore much stronger than the Taliban.

But of course, this means an emphasis on social development over military escalation, yet this is not what we're seeing.

[Kuya]

http://features.csmonitor.com/politi...-30000-troops/


the Secretary is already asking for more troops.


lol

And so the escalation cycle begins...

[Rhinox]

http://foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/...ora_Report.pdf

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/1..._n_372960.html

WASHINGTON — Osama bin Laden was unquestionably within reach of U.S. troops in the mountains of Tora Bora when American military leaders made the crucial and costly decision not to pursue the terrorist leader with massive force, a Senate report says.
The report asserts that the failure to kill or capture bin Laden at his most vulnerable in December 2001 has had lasting consequences beyond the fate of one man. Bin Laden's escape laid the foundation for today's reinvigorated Afghan insurgency and inflamed the internal strife now endangering Pakistan, it says.
Staff members for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Democratic majority prepared the report at the request of the chairman, Sen. John Kerry, as President Barack Obama prepares to boost U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
The Massachusetts senator and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate has long argued the Bush administration missed a chance to get the al-Qaida leader and top deputies when they were holed up in the forbidding mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan only three months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Although limited to a review of military operations eight years old, the report could also be read as a cautionary note for those resisting an increased troop presence there now.
More pointedly, it seeks to affix a measure of blame for the state of the war today on military leaders under former president George W. Bush, specifically Donald H. Rumsfeld as defense secretary and his top military commander, Tommy Franks.
"Removing the al-Qaida leader from the battlefield eight years ago would not have eliminated the worldwide extremist threat," the report says. "But the decisions that opened the door for his escape to Pakistan allowed bin Laden to emerge as a potent symbolic figure who continues to attract a steady flow of money and inspire fanatics worldwide. The failure to finish the job represents a lost opportunity that forever altered the course of the conflict in Afghanistan and the future of international terrorism."
The report states categorically that bin Laden was hiding in Tora Bora when the U.S. had the means to mount a rapid assault with several thousand troops at least. It says that a review of existing literature, unclassified government records and interviews with central participants "removes any lingering doubts and makes it clear that Osama bin Laden was within our grasp at Tora Bora."





On or about Dec. 16, 2001, bin Laden and bodyguards "walked unmolested out of Tora Bora and disappeared into Pakistan's unregulated tribal area," where he is still believed to be based, the report says.
Instead of a massive attack, fewer than 100 U.S. commandos, working with Afghan militias, tried to capitalize on air strikes and track down their prey.
"The vast array of American military power, from sniper teams to the most mobile divisions of the Marine Corps and the Army, was kept on the sidelines," the report said.
At the time, Rumsfeld expressed concern that a large U.S. troop presence might fuel a backlash and he and some others said the evidence was not conclusive about bin Laden's location.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk_ILm4Fkj8

Please excuse David shuster for being a poor excuse of a interviewer and Americas poor excuse of Journalism.

[Demosthenes11]

I fail to see how thats relevant at all lol
bush and rumsfeld bad at their jobs!? NO SIR

It's not like we are still in afghanistan to look for bin laden...

[Rhinox]

I fail to see how thats relevant at all lol
bush and rumsfeld bad at their jobs!? NO SIR

It's not like we are still in afghanistan to look for bin laden...

It would go totally over your head I guess.

Rumsfeld has been exposed as a war criminal and you don't see any relevance to the issue at hand. And the Corporate media totally ignores it and the Whitehouse wants it to go away.

Don't know which is worst your ignorance or your stupidity. Pick one

[Demosthenes11]

It would go totally over your head I guess.

Rumsfeld has been exposed as a war criminal and you don't see any relevance to the issue at hand. And the Corporate media totally ignores it and the Whitehouse wants it to go away.

Don't know which is worst your ignorance or your stupidity. Pick one

relevant IN THIS THREAD wow jesus fucking christ man.
Even when we are talking about a democrats decision and whether it's good or not you can't do anything but put blame on a republican for something else.
Is anyone even arguing with you?