'Plot Would Have Killed Thousands'

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: sirjonk

Originally posted by: Harvey

Originally posted by: sirjonk
Man, the democrats better change that talking point they have about "we're for terrorists taking flights with the rest of you." That could be embarassing.

(Fantasy?)
When interviewed, the terrorists yelled, "we did it because you are in Iraq! Get out of our country!" The President had no comment.
(/Fantasy?)

I searched Google for "we're for terrorists taking flights with the rest of you." It wasn't there so, unless you can document who said that and where, it would appear that the only "fantasy" is your bullsh8 finger pointing.

You're kidding right? You googled "we're for terrorists taking flights with the rest of you" to see if some democrat actually said it??? I thought I was being sarcastic enough...guess not.

And my 'fantasy' scenario was just to point out that it's not inconceivable that Iraq was motivation for terror attacks outside the country. I thought we were on the same idealogical side of things.

Harvey's meter is in the shop for repair. Hehe! sirjonk, ProfJohn, it's hard to keep you guys all straight.

 

[jonks]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam

Originally posted by: sirjonk

Originally posted by: Harvey

Originally posted by: sirjonk
Man, the democrats better change that talking point they have about "we're for terrorists taking flights with the rest of you." That could be embarassing.

(Fantasy?)
When interviewed, the terrorists yelled, "we did it because you are in Iraq! Get out of our country!" The President had no comment.
(/Fantasy?)

I searched Google for "we're for terrorists taking flights with the rest of you." It wasn't there so, unless you can document who said that and where, it would appear that the only "fantasy" is your bullsh8 finger pointing.

You're kidding right? You googled "we're for terrorists taking flights with the rest of you" to see if some democrat actually said it??? I thought I was being sarcastic enough...guess not.

And my 'fantasy' scenario was just to point out that it's not inconceivable that Iraq was motivation for terror attacks outside the country. I thought we were on the same idealogical side of things.

Harvey's meter is in the shop for repair. Hehe! sirjonk, ProfJohn, it's hard to keep you guys all straight.

Can't help it, it's all those cute firefighters.

 

[WHAMPOM]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Interesting details of the airline bombing plot from last year.
Also a video of one of these bombs being set off.

Thank god there is no war on terror or else we might have to be worried about stuff like this. :roll:
link

Terrorists who had planned to detonate gel-based explosives on U.S.-bound flights from London last August would have achieved mass devastation, according to new information from Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in an exclusive interview with ABC News.

"I think that the plot, in terms of its intent, was looking at devastation on a scale that would have rivaled 9/11," Chertoff told ABC's Pierre Thomas. "If they had succeeded in bringing liquid explosives on seven or eight aircraft, there could have been thousands of lives lost and an enormous economic impact with devastating consequences for international air travel."

Sources tell ABC News that after studying the plot, government officials have concluded that without the tip to British authorities, the suspects could have likely smuggled the bomb components onboard using sports drinks.

The components of that explosives mixture can be bought at any drugstore or supermarket; however, there is some question whether the potential terrorists would have had the skill to properly mix and detonate their explosive cocktails in-flight.

But they can work ? scientists at Sandia National Laboratory conducted a test using the formula, and when a small amount of liquid in a container was hit with a tiny burst of electrical current, a large explosion followed. (Click on the video player on the right side of this page to view the video.)

The test results were reviewed today by ABC terrorism consultant Richard Clarke, who said that while frequent travelers are upset by the current limits on liquids in carry-on baggage, "when they see this film, they ought to know it's worth going through those problems."

One official who briefed ABC News said explosives and security experts who examined the plot were "stunned at the extent that the suspects had gamed the system to exploit its weaknesses."

"There's no question that they had given a lot of thought to how they might smuggle containers with liquid explosives onto airplanes," Chertoff said. "Without getting into things that are still classified, they obviously paid attention to the ways in which they thought they might be able to disguise these explosives as very innocent types of everyday articles."

Tense Hours as Officials Learned of Plot

Chertoff speaks candidly about those moments when Homeland Security learned about the potential attack, and the terrorists had not yet been captured.

"This was very, very tightly held, because the British were concerned about any possibility of a leak getting out. Obviously, the intelligence folks knew, the senior intelligence folks, the president, senior leaders in the White House," he said. "Within my own department, only the deputy and I were initially told about this."

"I got a call telling me that it looked as if the focus had turned on an attack on the United States, specifically an attack on airliners leaving from Britain, traveling to American cities," Chertoff said. "It also became evident, within 24 hours, that the time frame within which the attack was going to take place, would not be a matter of months but ? a matter of weeks or even days."

Airports in the United States and the United Kingdom were put on red alert ? meaning a potential attack could be imminent ? and liquids were banned from carry-on luggage as suspects were picked up, including 24 British-born Muslims and seven Pakistanis.

"We had to start about 9, 10 o'clock in the evening, when the arrests began to go down in Pakistan, and when we were first given the ability to tell other people about the plot," Chertoff said. "And we had to turn the entire process around by 6 a.m. the following morning, before people started to board airplanes.

"You had to change literally thousands of people's behavior in the course of about 12 hours. We had to train them. We had to get everybody to understand what the new rules were going to be. And you had to communicate to the public in a very short period of time.

"And so, we spent literally the entire night bringing in not only the TSA senior leadership, but also talking on the phone to the airline leadership, so that everybody would understand what needed to happen at 6 a.m. the following day," he said.

For Chertoff, the concern remained that an attack would have been carried out if they'd missed a critical detail. "There's an enormous sense of working against time, giving the analysts as much time as you possibly can, but always recognizing at the end that the benefit of the doubt has to be in favor of saving lives."

Assessing Current Risks

Since last August, the failed plot has had an enormous impact on U.S. airports, which have remained on orange ? or high ? alert, for nearly a year.

After authorities tested the explosive liquids, the government determined what quantity of liquid explosives could pose a risk if smuggled onboard flights, leading to the 3-ounce limit for carry-on bags.

Passengers are still restricted when bringing liquids onboard, and those rules may remain in place forever.

At the moment, Chertoff believes there is a "heightened risk" of an attack.

"We have seen that in some areas of Pakistan, the enemy has been able to reconstitute itself and get a breathing space, so to speak, where they can plan and do some recruiting and some training. We've seen increased effort to develop terrorist operatives in Europe.

"And, of course, the concern we have, because of the visa waiver program, has been Europeans either carrying out attacks against Americans on the European continent, or even coming to the United States," Chertoff said.

"When you add these things together, they don't move into a mathematical certainty we're going to have an attack, but they do suggest that there is a heightened threat, a bit more capability than there was, and, therefore, all the more reason for us to continue to raise the level of our security and our defenses," he said.

That progress was aided after the arrests last year that provided Homeland Security with information about terrorist capabilities.

"Clearly, the effort to put explosives in sports bottles was a reaction to what we had done with respect to other kinds of explosives, and ? we're going to be back and forth with terrorists on this kind of cat-and-mouse process for years to come," Chertoff said.

And while he is confronted by pieces of data daily as Homeland Security tries to assess credible threats and piece together information, Chertoff said he remains continually struck by the nature of the enemy.

"You know, we go about our business during the summer, other times of the year. People are going to ballgames or watching their children graduate from high school," he said, "and it chills me sometimes to think there are people a half a world away who are spending the same period of time in a cave, trying to figure out how to kill us."

A Ten for British security, too bad they would have walked through US security without a blip. Can you say sophistry, Poofyjohn? NO! Keep trying then, gotta get your quota in.

 

[ayabe]

Originally posted by: JD50

Originally posted by: ayabe

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: ayabe

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Thank god there is no war on terror or else we might have to be worried about stuff like this. :roll:

I fly at least once a month and I'm not worried.

Good thing they issued you a case of incontinent briefs after your orientation at RNC HQ.

Sooner or later these terrorists will succeed in pulling off some kind of attack against us.
Hopefully it will be similar to the failed attack against the Glasgow airport.

But as they say, we have to be right 100% of the time; they have to be right only once.

BTW I am not scared at all; I don?t go about my daily life worrying about some attack. The second we stop taking these threats seriously is when we will find ourselves being attacked.

The only reason they even release this information is to keep the sheep from complaining about our governments wanton disregard for privacy laws, due process, etc and to inflate the fear level.

This of course leads to TSA pulling 85 year old ladies aside and asking them if they know OBL because they have two blocks of cheese in their carry-on.

It's a joke, if someone wanted to blow up a plane, they could and there's very little we could do to stop them. We can be attacked at any time anywhere, tonight I could get a blood clot in my brain and die. Strangely I don't ever think about either scenario for the same reasons that I don't fantasize about winning the lottery.

A criminal could murder you anytime, should we just get rid of the police? Someone could run a red light and T-bone you, should we just get rid of traffic lights? You could die of a heart attack before you could even get to the hospital, should we get rid of hospitals?

They can't win with you guys can they? You blame them for 9-11 because you (not you specifically) think that they didn't release enough info beforehand. Now they are upfront with stuff thats going on and you accuse them of fearmongering, blah blah blah...

I'm going to ignore the strawmen, you're way off base there. Nearly all of the security measures they've enacted for airline travel are completely unnecessary and are a direct result of fear mongering. The risk is still the same as it was before, now with 100
% more fear and travel delays. We are not safer, we will never be "safe" so stop worrying about it.

For the bolded part, "You blame them for 9-11 because you (not you specifically) think that they didn't release enough info beforehand. "

I have never heard of this argument ever by anyone. Now if you said that people blame them for 9-11 because they ignored blatant warnings to spend time on ranch and flex their "down to earth" bona fides I would say you are getting pretty close to the REAL problem people have.

 

[Harvey]

Originally posted by: sirjonk
You're kidding right? You googled "we're for terrorists taking flights with the rest of you" to see if some democrat actually said it??? I thought I was being sarcastic enough...guess not.

Guess not. Sorry I missed the sarcasm.

And my 'fantasy' scenario was just to point out that it's not inconceivable that Iraq was motivation for terror attacks outside the country. I thought we were on the same idealogical side of things.

Now that I understand what you were saying, I think we still are.

 

[WHAMPOM]

Originally posted by: JD50

Originally posted by: Harvey

Originally posted by: sirjonk
Man, the democrats better change that talking point they have about "we're for terrorists taking flights with the rest of you." That could be embarassing.

(Fantasy?)
When interviewed, the terrorists yelled, "we did it because you are in Iraq! Get out of our country!" The President had no comment.
(/Fantasy?)

I searched Google for "we're for terrorists taking flights with the rest of you." It wasn't there so, unless you can document who said that and where, it would appear that the only "fantasy" is your bullsh8 finger pointing.

I searched google for Bush saying "saddam is responsible for 9-11". It wasn't there, but that doesn't stop you from your insane rants, constant personal attacks, and absolute bullshit you spread throughout this forum every single day. When it comes to bullshit finger pointing, you are the one driving that bus.

Nah. "Saddam supported terrorists responsible for 911" and "will give them Atomic weapons" You know the Bush mushroom cloud speech. Cheney did the other direct quote.

 

[JD50]

Originally posted by: ayabe

Originally posted by: JD50

Originally posted by: ayabe

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: ayabe

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Thank god there is no war on terror or else we might have to be worried about stuff like this. :roll:

I fly at least once a month and I'm not worried.

Good thing they issued you a case of incontinent briefs after your orientation at RNC HQ.

Sooner or later these terrorists will succeed in pulling off some kind of attack against us.
Hopefully it will be similar to the failed attack against the Glasgow airport.

But as they say, we have to be right 100% of the time; they have to be right only once.

BTW I am not scared at all; I don?t go about my daily life worrying about some attack. The second we stop taking these threats seriously is when we will find ourselves being attacked.

The only reason they even release this information is to keep the sheep from complaining about our governments wanton disregard for privacy laws, due process, etc and to inflate the fear level.

This of course leads to TSA pulling 85 year old ladies aside and asking them if they know OBL because they have two blocks of cheese in their carry-on.

It's a joke, if someone wanted to blow up a plane, they could and there's very little we could do to stop them. We can be attacked at any time anywhere, tonight I could get a blood clot in my brain and die. Strangely I don't ever think about either scenario for the same reasons that I don't fantasize about winning the lottery.

A criminal could murder you anytime, should we just get rid of the police? Someone could run a red light and T-bone you, should we just get rid of traffic lights? You could die of a heart attack before you could even get to the hospital, should we get rid of hospitals?

They can't win with you guys can they? You blame them for 9-11 because you (not you specifically) think that they didn't release enough info beforehand. Now they are upfront with stuff thats going on and you accuse them of fearmongering, blah blah blah...

I'm going to ignore the strawmen, you're way off base there. Nearly all of the security measures they've enacted for airline travel are completely unnecessary and are a direct result of fear mongering. The risk is still the same as it was before, now with 100
% more fear and travel delays. We are not safer, we will never be "safe" so stop worrying about it.

For the bolded part, "You blame them for 9-11 because you (not you specifically) think that they didn't release enough info beforehand. "

I have never heard of this argument ever by anyone. Now if you said that people blame them for 9-11 because they ignored blatant warnings to spend time on ranch and flex their "down to earth" bona fides I would say you are getting pretty close to the REAL problem people have.

Well I see that you've resorted to the good old "its all GWBs fault" crap. That stupid crap gets old, have fun, I'm done with this one.

 

[heyheybooboo]

Originally posted by: WHAMPOM
A Ten for British security, too bad they would have walked through US security without a blip. Can you say sophistry, Poofyjohn? NO! Keep trying then, gotta get your quota in.

We need an acronym for all the 'Johnnys' who post on every forum/blog on the 'internets'.

F earmongering
R epublicans
E ngaging in
A crimonious
K ookery

 

[TheAdvocate]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Interesting details of the airline bombing plot from last year.

Good thing we carpet bombed Iraq so things like this won't happen anymo...errr..

We should probably go bomb them again. MOAB!!!

 

[ayabe]

Originally posted by: JD50

Originally posted by: ayabe

Originally posted by: JD50

Originally posted by: ayabe

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: ayabe

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Thank god there is no war on terror or else we might have to be worried about stuff like this. :roll:

I fly at least once a month and I'm not worried.

Good thing they issued you a case of incontinent briefs after your orientation at RNC HQ.

Sooner or later these terrorists will succeed in pulling off some kind of attack against us.
Hopefully it will be similar to the failed attack against the Glasgow airport.

But as they say, we have to be right 100% of the time; they have to be right only once.

BTW I am not scared at all; I don?t go about my daily life worrying about some attack. The second we stop taking these threats seriously is when we will find ourselves being attacked.

The only reason they even release this information is to keep the sheep from complaining about our governments wanton disregard for privacy laws, due process, etc and to inflate the fear level.

This of course leads to TSA pulling 85 year old ladies aside and asking them if they know OBL because they have two blocks of cheese in their carry-on.

It's a joke, if someone wanted to blow up a plane, they could and there's very little we could do to stop them. We can be attacked at any time anywhere, tonight I could get a blood clot in my brain and die. Strangely I don't ever think about either scenario for the same reasons that I don't fantasize about winning the lottery.

A criminal could murder you anytime, should we just get rid of the police? Someone could run a red light and T-bone you, should we just get rid of traffic lights? You could die of a heart attack before you could even get to the hospital, should we get rid of hospitals?

They can't win with you guys can they? You blame them for 9-11 because you (not you specifically) think that they didn't release enough info beforehand. Now they are upfront with stuff thats going on and you accuse them of fearmongering, blah blah blah...

I'm going to ignore the strawmen, you're way off base there. Nearly all of the security measures they've enacted for airline travel are completely unnecessary and are a direct result of fear mongering. The risk is still the same as it was before, now with 100
% more fear and travel delays. We are not safer, we will never be "safe" so stop worrying about it.

For the bolded part, "You blame them for 9-11 because you (not you specifically) think that they didn't release enough info beforehand. "

I have never heard of this argument ever by anyone. Now if you said that people blame them for 9-11 because they ignored blatant warnings to spend time on ranch and flex their "down to earth" bona fides I would say you are getting pretty close to the REAL problem people have.

Well I see that you've resorted to the good old "its all GWBs fault" crap. That stupid crap gets old, have fun, I'm done with this one.

No I haven't, I was offering a position that some people do actually hold rather than your invented hypothesis which hasn't been offered by anyone. There were many reasons why 9/11 happened and none of them have to do with lack of fear laced security warnings or that you could bring lighters and baby formula on flights.

If they had a gone public with the August PBD and warned people about possible terrorist attacks would 9/11 have been prevented? The answer is no, people might have been a little more afraid to fly but it still would have happened. The government had all the pieces they needed to prevent it from happening they just couldn't put the bigger picture together.

 

[JD50]

Originally posted by: TheAdvocate

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Interesting details of the airline bombing plot from last year.

Good thing we carpet bombed Iraq so things like this won't happen anymo...errr..

We should probably go bomb them again. MOAB!!!

When did we carpet bomb Iraq?

 

[palehorse]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

South Carolina Police Charge 2 Students With Having Several Pipe Bombs Near Navy Base
Two men found with several pipe bombs in their car near a Navy base were charged Monday with possession of an explosive device, authorities said.

A joint state-federal investigation was under way to see whether there was any terrorism connection but no link had been found yet, said FBI spokeswoman Denise Taiste. The Navy base is the site of a brig where enemy combatants have been held.

Ahmed Abda Sherf Mohamed, 24, and Yousef Samir Megahed, 21, both students at the University of South Florida in Tampa, were driving through the area on Saturday to vacation at a North Carolina beach for Mohamed's birthday, their defense attorney said.

"They admitted to having what they said were fireworks. Based on the officer's judgment at hand, based on what he had seen, we judged it to be other than fireworks," Berkeley County Sheriff Wayne DeWitt said.

Mohamed, 24, said he made pipe bombs from items he bought at Wal-Mart, according to an affidavit with his arrest warrant.

Defense attorney, Dennis Rhoad, said the men have a reason for having the devices and it would become clear in later court hearings.

"The defendants deny the allegations the state and the sheriff have made against them," Rhoad said.

Prosecutor Scarlett Wilson asked for high bond, which was set at $500,000 for Mohamed and $300,000 for Megahed, because she said the men were dangerous and a risk to flee.

Mohamed is a native of Kuwait and Megahed is Egyptian, the sheriff said. Both are in the country legally.

Ahmed Bedier, the executive director of a civil rights organization for Muslims in Tampa, criticized the arrest as racial profiling, an accusation South Carolina police refuted.

It's not clear if the item found in the vehicle is actually a bomb, said Bedier, of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

"If it's clearly a pipe bomb that's a different story. Then there is cause for concern," Bedier said. "However, we have not seen consistent evidence that it is a pipe bomb. There is a lot of contradiction out there."

Megahed lives with his family and they voluntarily allowed the FBI to search their home in Tampa Monday, Bedier said.

"They're so confident that they don't have anything in their home that they gave the keys to some agents. The father voluntarily allowed them to go search the home unsupervised," Bedier said.

Mohamed and Megahed were stopped for speeding Saturday night on U.S. Highway 176 near Goose Creek, which is the site of the Naval Weapons Station and houses the U.S. Naval Consolidated Brig, a military prison where enemy combatants have been held.

They were heading west, away from Goose Creek, when they were pulled over about seven miles from the sprawling Navy facility, police said.

Officers became suspicious because the men quickly put away a laptop computer and couldn't immediately say what they were doing in the area or where they were going, DeWitt said.

A deputy then found what he thought were explosives in the 2000 Toyota Camry and called the bomb squad. Technicians confirmed the devices were pipe bombs and destroyed them, according to sworn statements in the arrest warrants.

Authorities closed a mile-long stretch of the highway Saturday night and didn't reopen it until about 4 a.m. Sunday.

University spokesman Ken Gullette said Mohamed is a civil engineering graduate student who came to the school in January. He earned his undergraduate degree in Cairo and was in the country on a student visa.

Megahed, who has permanent resident status in the United States, is an undergraduate and has been at the university since 2004, but has not declared a major, Gullette said.

Neither has ever been arrested by campus police or disciplined by the university, Gullette said. Both were enrolled in classes this summer. Gullette said the university is cooperating with authorities.

If convicted of the felony charge, the men would face from two to 15 years in prison.

Goose Creek, with a population of about 30,000, is about 20 miles north of Charleston.

But...But.. wait a second! Do you mean to tell me that those two guys are going through the normal legal process, rather than getting sent straight to Gitmo in the dead of night!?? whooaaaa. hold on man... somebody needs to remind the FBI and arresting officers that Americans have been stripped of all of their rights and freedoms - I know this because people on anandtech.com told me so - and those two need to be sent into a secret torture prison for life!!!!!!

oh wait...

/sarcasm off

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

I don't understand the point here. Certainly there are terrorists which hope to attack the US. That has nothing to do with the emotional and overused "war" on terror. No war is necessary nor is the word even applicable. It's just like a war on poverty or drugs. We bombed poor people? Hardly. What we need (and indeed what has been productive) is an intensive law enforcement policy and action which respects the Constitutional restraints on government. The war in Iraq has no bearing on terrorism in the US whatsoever. If the OP hoped to connect the actual war to demonstrable terrorist plots, he has failed. Quite the opposite, it shows the "they'll follow us home" is nonsense. As I and many have contended ad infinitum, there is no reason that resources needed to attack us here must be tied up in Iraq. Iraq is simply a pile of poop the politicians and their supporters stepped into whole heartedly, and now must find reasons to justify. Terrorists attacks is not one that they can realistically use.

 

[Jaskalas]

Originally posted by: umbrella39

Originally posted by: ayabe

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Thank god there is no war on terror or else we might have to be worried about stuff like this. :roll:

Good thing they issued you a case of incontinent briefs after your orientation at RNC HQ.

sig worthy. :thumbsup:

Pst to the dolt RNC hacks here, our romp in Iraq has ZERO to do with preventing attacks on our soil. If this kind of thing was such a big deal to our administration and your repug heroes, homeland security and first responders would not be so underfunded like it is. Wake up and while you are at it, grow up.

Underfunded? Higher taxes and throwing cash at the Islamists is going to secure us from them? Maybe if you owed up to whom the threat is, can you even say Islamist or is the RECOGNITION of our enemy too far fetched for you?

Now let us find some common ground. You clearly want out of Iraq, let the savages kill each other in a lovely little genocide, am I right? We both want a secured homeland. Do we both want the border sealed so they cannot continue to stream across it freely? Do we both want to deal the ones already here?

If you think they?re all peaceful and you?re blind to their profile how are you ever going to deal with the Islamists properly?

 

[heyheybooboo]

?We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.?

?If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.?

?May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.?

?I do not believe that any political campaign justifies the declaration of a moratorium on ordinary common sense.?

?I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.?

?When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing.?

?Dollars and guns are no substitutes for brains and will power.?

?There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.?

"Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.?

?Every gun that's made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms...is spending the genius of its scientists, the sweat of its laborers.?

"[the result of a military-industrial complex is] a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the people of this earth."

"[life under a military-industrial complex is] not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

and these quotes are from . . . . . . . . ???

 

[jpeyton]

Orange alert!

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Originally posted by: heyheybooboo

?We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.?

?If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.?

?May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.?

?I do not believe that any political campaign justifies the declaration of a moratorium on ordinary common sense.?

?I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.?

?When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing.?

?Dollars and guns are no substitutes for brains and will power.?

?There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.?

"Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.?

?Every gun that's made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms...is spending the genius of its scientists, the sweat of its laborers.?

"[the result of a military-industrial complex is] a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the people of this earth."

"[life under a military-industrial complex is] not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

and these quotes are from . . . . . . . . ???

That would be the (probably) last great U.S. president, Dwight D. "Ike" Eisenhower. While he had inevitable shortcomings, he was also a man one could respect regardless of difference in opinions.

Sadly enough, he seems to be forgotten these days.

I was at home on September 11, 2001, and I turned on my TV shortly after the first plane hit the WTC... and upon seeing what's happening, I started to record all the news channels, and made a VCD labeled "September 11, 2001 - The Day America Changed".

Sadly enough, I was right. They say a pessimist is a well-informed optimist, but still...

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: Jaskalas

Originally posted by: umbrella39

Originally posted by: ayabe

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Thank god there is no war on terror or else we might have to be worried about stuff like this. :roll:

Good thing they issued you a case of incontinent briefs after your orientation at RNC HQ.

sig worthy. :thumbsup:

Pst to the dolt RNC hacks here, our romp in Iraq has ZERO to do with preventing attacks on our soil. If this kind of thing was such a big deal to our administration and your repug heroes, homeland security and first responders would not be so underfunded like it is. Wake up and while you are at it, grow up.

Underfunded? Higher taxes and throwing cash at the Islamists is going to secure us from them? Maybe if you owed up to whom the threat is, can you even say Islamist or is the RECOGNITION of our enemy too far fetched for you?

Now let us find some common ground. You clearly want out of Iraq, let the savages kill each other in a lovely little genocide, am I right? We both want a secured homeland. Do we both want the border sealed so they cannot continue to stream across it freely? Do we both want to deal the ones already here?

If you think they?re all peaceful and you?re blind to their profile how are you ever going to deal with the Islamists properly?

We're going to send them flowers of course.

 

[yllus]

Good article, but horrible commentary by the OP.

All that I concluded from reading this thread is that the majority of you will take any opportunity possible to start up on the Iraq topic which is peripheral to this topic at best, and that Homeland Security does seem to get the job done once in a while.

 

[heyheybooboo]

Originally posted by: AnitaPeterson

Originally posted by: heyheybooboo

?We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.?

?If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.?

?May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.?

?I do not believe that any political campaign justifies the declaration of a moratorium on ordinary common sense.? .................... /

and these quotes are from . . . . . . . . ???

That would be the (probably) last great U.S. president, Dwight D. "Ike" Eisenhower. While he had inevitable shortcomings, he was also a man one could respect regardless of difference in opinions.

Sadly enough, he seems to be forgotten these days.

I was at home on September 11, 2001, and I turned on my TV shortly after the first plane hit the WTC... and upon seeing what's happening, I started to record all the news channels, and made a VCD labeled "September 11, 2001 - The Day America Changed".

Sadly enough, I was right. They say a pessimist is a well-informed optimist, but still...

You win a cookie . . .

And I've got my head in the sky ... but my feet firmly planted on the ground. It's not as much pessimist /optimist as it is realist.

And from the OP this is nothing but Orwellian *auto-erotica* (tooting their own horn )

 

[ericlp]

RED ALERT!!! Grab your ass and kiss it good bye!!! Duck under the tables.... Quick PJ, hide over there!!!! Noooooo! Not over there...over here!!!!

Be scared! BE VERY SCARED! We are going to show you a bomb that WOULD and COULD .... If had been placed on an airplane This MIGHT happen.... What? Did Bush make TSA tell a good bed time story for all the taxes we wasted and billions of water bottles thrown in the trash...

Not one bomb found... Not ONE SINGLE BOMB found....

John, you must remove your shoes before you can post on here ... don't let it happen again...

Be afraid people... Be very afraid ... But it's ok, we got you covered! We are preventing attacks that maybe might could if when well we don't know but keep paying us money for the illusion of feeling safe!

Wow, I feel safer already!!!

 

[Lemon law]

We have to understand that there is a big difference between a genuine threat and a bogus threat. Or to put it another way, between the competent and the incompetent person or group. And one of the competency tests is that the incompetent are caught easily with some half baked plot early on. And one must all add in the screw loose factor also. Its a known fact that after every big splashy crime is committed, the police will be deluged with nuts who confess to the crime. And in order to avaoid wasting precious time spinning their wheels, the police will withhold certain details about the crime to weed out the nuts who won't know those facts only the actual perp would know. And the notion that Al-Quida would trust jerks like Mousasaui, or Richard can't even light his shoes right Reed, or Hose Pedia is totally absurd.

But for a government bureaucracy, any government bureaucracy, its all good publicity. Showing they are on the job protecting you and me. And any actual threat will be greatly inflated in a worse case scenario reporting. And the real deal and a total nut case have equal publicity value.

But we still have to ask, why have we not been attacked again by Al-Quida? Is it because they now lack operational capacity and homeland security is on the job, or is it due to the fact Al-Quida chooses not to attack? Maybe because they already have us on a straight line path to jumping off a cliff already.

 

[ProfJohn]

How many of you watched the video on the link?

How many of you remember all the people making jokes about this plot when it first came to light?

Numerous posters on here denied or attempted to play down the possibility that this type of attack would really work. So watch the video of one of these home made bombs going off and see how real the threat was.

 

[SirStev0]

Originally posted by: Skoorb
Oh no the big bad terrorists were going to kill thousands. Ergo, irrefutable logical conclusion since it didn't happen, the current approach to the war on terror is beyond reproach and we should all bow down to the supremacy of the Commander in Chief's superior strategizing. Thank God a man of such calibre can withstand the dissenting crescendo of the idiots who don't see him for the intellectual gem he is.

BTW, I won't read another blurb by one of any million government officials who are fear mongering. I don't buy into it. You want to fear for your life? Look in the mirror. Pick up a pamphlet on heart disease or automobile accidents or cardiac arrest or cancer or diabetes, etc.

well said.

 

[Nebor]

Airports in the United States and the United Kingdom were put on red alert ? meaning a potential attack could be imminent ? and liquids were banned from carry-on luggage as suspects were picked up, including 24 British-born Muslims and seven Pakistanis.

I could think of something more effective to ban from airplanes, and the result would be less restrictions on what you can bring on planes, and fewer terrorism events.