[CatAtomic]

This is basically the retort I get from liberal acquaintences (cannot call them friends because this IS an election year!) They counter the fact that President Bush has mopped the floor with al-quaida and Saddam by saying that recruiting will be easier for them with GW in office.

[tet68]

Fanatics will recruit the disaffected, mentally challenged to their cause in any event, the important thing is to have someone willing to do what is needed to fight them.

Really it's like saying if only we had had a communist president the Soviets would have liked us. No they wouldn't have but they sure would have conquered us.

[pierrem15]

Many in the European intelligence community now agree: political violence in the Arab-Muslim world has entered a new phase. It has nothing to do with Islam as a whole. It has nothing to do with a common threat. It has nothing to do with a messianic project. But it has everything to do with unresolved, and strictly local, political, economical and social problems. That's the case in Iraq: a nationalist movement fighting foreign occupation, just like Palestinians fighting Ariel Sharon's Israel.

Great post-- the most perfect example of left-elite euro-babble head-in-the-sand BS I've seen.

Al-Qaeda is a "nuisance"? The euro-peons are such cowards that they think we should accept 3,000 dead as a part of normal politics.

[Sofa King]

You should remind them that Al-Queda is having trouble getting recruits in Iraq, and that they became the threat that they are under Clinton's watch.

This really just reduces down to the old "play nice and they won't hurt us" crap that 9-11 proved was folly.

[weegee]

If President Bush were not in office, would they need to recruit or would they be appeased by a Democrat?

[Recovering_Democrat]

As for a weakened, disabled al-Qaeda, it is definitely voting Bush next November. Al-Qaeda wants the Iraq occupation to be prolonged, with or without a puppet government: there could not be a better advertisement for rallying Muslims against the arrogance of the West. Al-Qaeda's and the Bush administration's future are interlocked anyway. European intelligence sources confirm that al-Qaeda has no capability of carrying out a major terrorist attack on US soil remotely similar to September 11.

Horse crap.

[battousai]

The attackers or suicide bombers may be radical Islamists, but they have nothing to do with Islam and don't even relate their actions to Islam.

Do leftists lie so much, that they even lie to themselves? It seems to ne if they are radical Islamists that whatever they do is FOR Islam? This author just contradicts himself in one sentance!

[FRgal4u]

This is how silly the dims has becoming! Ask Saddam if he will vote for Bush or Kerry. If Kerry is President, Saddam and his evil sons will still be in power. This is the simple fact the dims can't swallow. Klinton did nothing for eight years and we get 9/11. Bush wipe out the Taliban, the Saddam thugs - all these in a spat of two years. Maybe Kerry will want another four/eight years of doing nothing, but can we risk another 9/11 on our soil after a Kerry presidency??

[FairOpinion]

Sure, AQ is voting Bush, after all Bush chased them out of their sanctuary in Afghanistan, killed or captured two thirds of their leadership, prevented hundreds of attacks, yeah, sure AQ just loves Bush. (/sarcasm)

I guess liberals think we should have done nothing, and let them come and keep killing us, until they will start to "like us", because we are so passive?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Some background info is needed here:

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and

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[BenLurkin]

(This is 'Borrowed from a better FReeper than myself)

[GunRunner]

European intelligence sources confirm that al-Qaeda has no capability of carrying out a major terrorist attack on US soil remotely similar to September 11.

Oh, and Bush had nothing to do with this.

Jackass.

[Ronnie Radford]

There is so much B.S. in this article. It would be humorous except that so many fools actually believe it.

Bin Laden only existed by the interaction between his personality and the al-Qaeda capacity of being a nuisance.

First of all, Bin Laden is clearly more than a nuisance. Second, what does it mean to say that a person exists through the interaction of his personality and some other organization. This is the typical academic crap that many liberal repeat endlessly that says nothing.

what happens to bin Laden is now largely irrelevant.

Right, except for the massive psychological impact it would have

[The capture of Bin Laden] would also mean the end of the "war on terror", which is the Bushite passport for global intervention.

Liberal genius at its best. The War on Terror is just an excuse Bush uses towards his ultimate goal of conquering the world.

So the bulk of what is defined as "international terrorism" is now in fact linked to "the internal context of the country where the attacks take place, and nothing links them to al-Qaeda". The targets may be international, as in Iraq, but the motivation and the objectives are local: in the case of Iraq, the end of the occupation by any means necessary. The attackers or suicide bombers may be radical Islamists, but they have nothing to do with Islam and don't even relate their actions to Islam.

and

Many in the European intelligence community now agree: political violence in the Arab-Muslim world has entered a new phase. It has nothing to do with Islam as a whole. It has nothing to do with a common threat. It has nothing to do with a messianic project. But it has everything to do with unresolved, and strictly local, political, economical and social problems. That's the case in Iraq: a nationalist movement fighting foreign occupation, just like Palestinians fighting Ariel Sharon's Israel.

So, terrorist attacks are a)related to occupation and b) not linked to Islam. These have to be two of the most ignorant statement in an article full of ignorance. It's pretty clear that international terrorist, not local insurgents, are at the heart of the attacks in Iraq. In Israel it's pretty clear that the ultimate purpose behind the attacks are the destruciton of Israel, not the end of the "occupation."

Al-Qaeda may have given the neo-conservatives in the Bush administration the perfect motive for bombing Afghanistan and then invading Iraq.

Now we learn that the Bush administration planned to attack Afganistan and Iraq all along, and was just look for the right excuse. I guess you could argue that Bush wanted to invade Iraq from the start (an action that I would have wholeheartedly supported). But Afganistan? How does that compute? Notice also that the excuse given is al-Qaeda, not the slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians.

Finally, the article discusses how the goals of al-Qaeda and the Bush administration are intertwined since both sodes want the war to continue. This fits in with the "Bush wants to rule the world" theory. Utter nonsense.

[537 Votes]

But then the whole US intelligence matrix simply could not admit that the country had been struck by a small sect - and not by a sinister, global multinational with unlimited reach.

Let's review the facts.

There are no WMDs. Iraq was never a national security threat. Therefore, going to war against Iraq did not enhance US national security. Therefore, Bush has not made America safer.

Instead, he has wasted a quarter trillion dollars that could have been used to improve our civil and military intelligence apparatus to prevent real terrorism.

Bush is actually anti-national security and anti-American. The only way the pro-Bushies can refute this is to whine like liberals: "But he CARES!"

My ultimatum to George W. Bush: You've wasted two and a half years and a quarter trillion dollars. Either capture Osama bin Laden by November or I will be voting for John Kerry as the stronger candidate on national security.

[Imal]

Pretzel Logic

[Eva]

Funny, I saw an article yesterday that claimed that Osama and his Islamic brothers were backing Kerry. Kerry thinks that the US forces should only be deployed under the directio of the UN, so it would be a no brainer to vote for Kerry if you love terrorists and hate the US.

[sauropod]

read later

[WOSG]

Ah, and how do Liberals know 'for a fact' that GWB in office means more Al Qaeda recruits? You think maybe the arrets might warn some wannabes off rather than induce them to join? That kind of faith-based non-verifiable and non-refutable 'argument' is a good way to retort without being in any way close to the truth.

Underneath their arguments is the 'logic' that we dare not offend the terrorists or they will behave worse. This is surrendering to terrorism, not defeating it.

[He Rides A White Horse]

Their rap video called "The Dirty Infidels" has been sent by e-mail to the Arab-language newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat. The paper says the video - unlikely to end up on MTV - may have been produced in a London studio by young, radical Muslims, but mosque talk in London and northern England has attributed it to ... al-Qaeda. Sheikh Terror rap in favor of the "fight against the infidels", praise Osama bin Laden and ask for British Prime Minister Tony Blair to be "burned", while images switch from September 11 to shots of George W Bush, President General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and a Russian soldier executed by a Chechen guerrilla with a Kalashnikov.

Those troublesome western influences. I hate when that happens.

[Publius Maximus]

European intelligence sources confirm that al-Qaeda has no capability of carrying out a major terrorist attack on US soil remotely similar to September 11.

Oh, well, there you have it. The definitive word.

And of course (assuming the hypothesis), nothing GWB did had anything to do with that.

[DB]

Well all the 9-11 perps were recruited during the Clinton years. Clinton is the guy who did exactly what these people advocate.

Fact.

Your lib friends are not only wrong, they're idiots.