Cuban to produce anti-American film

[usafreedom3]

You forgot to mention Tora Bora and weapons of mass destruction lib

[dude1394]

Originally Posted by alexamenos

and when the terrorists killed 240 marines in Beirut....Reagan showed'em then, didn't he?

reagan said f' this shit, let's pack our bags and come home....

yeah....he cowboy'd up there.

and oh yeah, there was that little "arms for hostages" thing where Reagan rewarded terrorist groups for taking hostages by sending goodie packages to Iran.

and he was wrong in leaving lebanon imo as well as the other.

Can't recall the "arms for hostages", I'll have to look that one up, but in general when we do bidness with bad guys I have to look at the options, not isolate them.

[mcsluggo]

Originally Posted by usafreedom3

Been a few days, and I have really enjoyed your arguments. There are many brave men and women overseas fighting to protect our rights to say these things freely, without Government persecution.

I will make this long (which I suppose will make some of you unhappy), but the one part that was discussed that struck me is the debate about emboldening our enemies.

We all have our points of view, but I think world events prove things better than anything and I will point to three of them involving Iran.

1) The original 444 day hostage taking in 1979. We appeared weak and impotent under Jimmy Carter, and they were testing our resolve to see what consequences there would be , if any. Our hostages stayed there for 444 days under Jimmy Carter, and do you rememeber the day they were realeased? Inauguration day for Ronald WIlson Reagan. Coincidence? HMMMMMM I feel very certain that the rhetoric coming from Reagan as he was campaigning compelled them to release our people as they did not want to mess with him. This taught them something about us, and about us under certain leaders, and this was really the beginning of terrorism in the modern day form we see today. They saw us as weak under Carter, and it emboldened them.

I am sorry, but what a steaming load. You are correct that the inaguration date for release was no coincidence, but it was a middle finger salute to the outgoing advesary, not a quaking in their boots response to the incoming candidate.

2) September 1987 when the Iranians were attempting to lay mines to blow up our naval ships. Instead of jacking around with UN type diplomacy (sometimes diplomacy is the right method), Reagan went on the offensive and attacked the mine laying ships. Message sent and crisis averted.

Yes, true. But you seem to have conveniently misplaced the muscular US response to the bombings of our marines in Beiruit by Iranian backed hezbollah, between 1978 and 1987. Was there EVER a move that emboldened the Iranians more than that?

3) This recent capture of British folks is a direct result of the enemy being emboldened. They are emboldened by a lot of the political and media rhetoric here and in Britain (and in Europe), and they perceive Bush and Blair as politically weakened (weakened from within). One needs to look no further than the "retreat and surrender act of 2007" that was just passed by a Democratic controlled congress as one of the main examples of our innate weakness under certain types of leadership.

I basically agree that they see the US and Britain as being in a weakened position to respond, however I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on WHY the US is in a weakened position... specifically I think we are weakened because we are currently in a state of suspended animation due to our largely no-win positioning in Iraq. We are clearly using ALOT of "political capital" (for lack of a better term) to just stand still there, we don't have much effort or influence (or for that matter, resources) left over to engage in another large operation right now. The cat is pretty much fully occupied right now, giving the OTHER mice alot of room to mess around as they please.

[qoute]
Bottom line is talking and negotiating is all well and good, but these regimes and the terrorists they support are flat out "evil" and the ONLY THING they respect is power. This may be a simplification for some of you that analyze these things, but it is the truth (in my opinion). It is tiem the world community stand up to terrorism now or we will be dealing with this for many, many years.

Oh yeah, there was a question to me that went something like "how many terrorists do we have to kill"? The simple and complex answer is "as many as it takes". There are many children who are being brain-washed and indoctrinated in the Madrassas to hate Jews and Americans, and thinking Jihad leads them to paradise. We need to put a stop to this, but in the meantime we can make a big dent on terrorism by killing them , staying on the offensive, and not relenting to their evil. We need to show the type of backbone we had under Reagan, and under GW, and not let the left in this country degrade our will to fight.

God bless our troops and the USA and please pray for the safe release of the British sailrs and Marines[/QUOTE]

and here once again we sort of agree and disagree as well. I agree that we need to stand firm and not bow down to terrorists in general. ANd frankly I think there is a LOT of cause for the Britts to approach the Iraninans under the table (ie out of the glare of the spotlights/media) and say we have had enough: you have 72 hours to release our soldiers or we will announce IN the spotlight of the media that they view these actions as an act of war, and are willing to begin to respond in a manner commenserate with an act of war. However it is important for that type of posturing to be initially behind closed doors, to give the Iranians a CHANCE to accept it somewhat on their terms vis-a-vis their OWN media and elctorate. It would feel good to publicly draw a line in the sand and then stare down the little punk, but it would also GREATLY reduce the liklihood of success... which is, after all, the actual objective.

also the question "how many terrorists do we have to kill"? has a HUGE endogenous component. The world was not just endowed with X number of terrorists... how many terrorists there are left out there depends not just on how many we mange to wipe out, but the rate of generation of terrorists, which we ALSO have an effect on. I think it is hard to argue that there are fewer islamic individuals who harbor enough ill-will against the US (and/or the west in general) to take the terrorist route than there were on September 10, 2001. On the other hand I think it would have been EASY to make that argument in March 2002, after we had invaded Afghanistan (with broad international support), but before we had invaded Iraq (with contrived international "support", with the exception of the UK).

We are killing 'em right now, but if we do it in a way that spurs the generation of more of them than we are killing, then we are running hard up the down escalator, and losing ground in spite of our efforts. To put it in other terms, yesterday Sunni death squads set bombs that killed about 100 Shiites... do you think that lessoned the overall level of anti-Sunni firepower centered in Shiite neighborhoods ?

[usafreedom3]

You actually make some decent counter-points, and I will consider your points. I agree that we should have had a better response in Lebanon, and I honestly don't know why we did not. ( I am going to research that)
Surely you would agree that their boldness and confidence grew 10 fold in the 90's when our only response was bombing an aspirin factory in the dead of night (not to bag on slick willie as he was busy banging stuff) after numerous attacks (the "paper tiger" comment from Usama)

One thing that I think we in the West cannot understand is that whether we fight them or not, they are taught to hate us from their birth, by their parents and religiuos leaders. This is why freedom and liberty are so important, and it pisses me off so much whenever people make fun of Bush for saying those words all the time. God gave us free will, and each person naturally aspires to be free, but many of these people are purposely kept down by the Imams and militants, thus reducing their chances for hope.

In order to win the long term war, we must not only win militarily, but also we must stop this indoctrination of hatred. We need moderate Muslims to speak out against radicalism, and we need to be vigilant in a lot of areas. It would help if we were united as a nation (and don's say we were before George Bush came along), but I seriously doubt if we will ever again be united. There are some hard core righties like me but the hate and vitriol of the far left is 50 times worse, and those people have hijacked the deomcratis party, and there ain't no going back. That is why Fred Thompson can pick off some "Thompson democrats", similar to Reagan democrats in the 80's.

You meant huge pile of steaming broccoli ior oatmeal instead of crap right?

[mcsluggo]

well, I think I might prefer a steaming load of crap to "broccoli oatmeal" <blech>

As far as the "unified front" goes, I wouldn't say that we as a country were unified before W, but I WOULD say we as a country were as unified as we've been in my lifetime (I am in my late 30s) BETWEEN 9/11/2001 and sometime in the build-up to the Iraq war (ie DURING the invasion and fighting in Afghanistan).

I also think that the Bush team IS responsible for the extent of the dissipation of that unity, it would've died down on its own eventually, but the COMPLETE POLARIZATION was neither a given nor neccesary. I believe that in many cases the Bush team callosly exploited that unity for spurious and selfish ends AND simultaneously pushed so hard on that button so damn many times and with such brutal "you are with me or you love terrorists" that it DEMANDED a backlash as the pendulum swung back in the other diriction to dissipate some of the undue pressure they had placed on the system.

[usafreedom3]

I say the responsibility lies some with the Bush administration, and they have made some mistakes along the way, especially in the aftermath of the initial victory in Iraq.

I would say that the relentless barrage and attack of the President and his adminsitration by the left, and the supposed main stream media has been most responsible for this. It has gotten to the point where seemingly the only aim of the left is to destroy his presidency, unintended consequences be damned.

This is where we disagree, but I would still eat a steaming pile of oatmeal broccoli.
I gotta run now as I am flying on Al Gore's private jet, eating some red meat, and flying to Indonesia to plant a tree. JUST KIDDING

[big_pth]

Originally Posted by usafreedom3

You forgot to mention Tora Bora and weapons of mass destruction lib

What weapons of mass destruction? To my knowledge there haven't been any found in Iraq.

[The Crippler]

Originally Posted by big_pth

What weapons of mass destruction? To my knowledge there haven't been any found in Iraq.

I'm not on either side of this war, but I love this quoted line....

So gassing thousands of Kurds is not mass destruction? That sounds exactly what a weapon of mass destruction is to me...

[usafreedom3]

Originally Posted by big_pth

What weapons of mass destruction? To my knowledge there haven't been any found in Iraq.

I was kidding with you and telling you that you forgot two favorite liberal lines about Usama escaping in Tora Bora (supposedly because Bush did not try hard enough to kill him or some BS like that- Don't even get me started on the 10 (yes TEN) times that Bill Clinton had a chance to take him out according to the head of the Bin Laden unit for the CIA who is definitely not a Republican, but Slick Willie was too much of a wussy to give the order)

I was also kidding about the other favorite liberal line about weapons of mass destruction.

First off, and I can send this to you or publish it if you want, every leading intelligence service in the world as well as every leading democrat thought they had stockpiles of weapons (I still think they did and they are in Syria or buried in the desert), and in fact all gave speeches about it attempting to appear hawkish for political gain

Here is where you tell me that the democrats thought this because Bush told them. BS!!!
It was in fact a policy of the Slick Willie admin to change the regime in Iraq, and part of it was due to weapons of mass destruction.

I was kidding in the beginning of this post, but my blood started to boil thinking of your retorts, and I thought I would give you a little bidness!

How many people have to get killed in a gas attack in the Kurdish north or in Iran to constitute WMD? I thought liberals were supposed to be compassionate and want us to stop the genocide in the Sudan. I am sure the 300,000 (we have found this many in mass graves so far) plus Iraqis that were tortured and killed by Saddam appreciate you saying there were no WMD's

Lay off the kool-aid bro. GO MAVS!