Posted on 06/24/2004 2:36:01 PM PDT by My Favorite Headache
And I agree with you, too, re: dems and confirmation circus.
Was in your neck of the woods last week - have a friend who lives in Larchmont and spent a night with them. How are things in Bill Clinton's neighborhood?
I'd like to see this reported by a reliable news agency before celebrating too much.
LOL
CNN gets the 'prize'......again?
;-)
I wouldn't blame tenet or the CIA's leadership for the terror problem.
This problem has been there since the early 90's long before tenet even took office.
The CIA's problems date back to the early 80's, when they recruited the likes of osama bin laden in their efforts against the soviets..
Your terror problem of today has its roots in that war. It continues to linger on, because western intelligence cadres from pakistan, afghanistan and saudi arabia again have their roots in the same war and sympathies with their former pan islamic comrades.
they recruited muslims, who shared nothing with america in terms of values, practices or way of life and were then surprised, when these muslims turned their guns on us.
These muslims weren't our allies, they were pan islamic supremacists, hoping to take all non islamic nations down to pave the way to islamic glory.
The shiite cadres in iraq were again khomeini loyalists. didn't you see them switch loyalties, when they realized that iran might be next on our list of countries.
the muslims are bunch of crooks. You can tell this by just listening to their rhetoric.
They want us to love the islamic world. They cry racism, each time we speak against the islamic world, yet all they do is ask us to hate other americans.
If you sum up the rhetoric of these muslims, you'd see them dividing america from within by pitting the liberals against conservatives, blacks against whites etc, while they forcefully clamp down on all opposition to islam as racism. They are also busy looting american wealth and channelizing it into the islamic world.
their loyalties are no secret.
I agree..you're correct that arming the mujahaddin in Afghanistan is the root of many of the problems we face today..in that it showed them that they could defeat a superpower...but the Red Army's defeat in Afghanistan showed it was a paper tiger to an extent, and probably helped push over the house of cards that was the old USSR..Fundamentalist terrorism confronting us was inevitable..we probably accelerated the timetable by 50 years or so...which may not have been a bad thing..because we got a chancee to stop them before them obtain operational WMDs..
If people have reservations against lott, then rumsfeld would be the man for the job, A genius who just reorganized the military, and turned it into one fine fighting machine.
Not alone, they didn't. We supplied them.
Reagan's SDI and our military buildup, was what defeated the soviet union.
They couldn't keep up with the spending and you've seen our new smart weapons turn the theatre of war into a video game for our troops and hell for the enemy.
It was technology and our military buildup that took the soviets down. The afghan war was too small to have played a major role there.
Of course...but they were willing to die for there cause...and 15 years later..we "supplied" them with other weaponry..civilian airliners..
thank reagan and our military industrial complex, our military will never see another vietnam.
we can debate the degrees of input, and I'm not tryign to argue with you for the sake of discussion...because I agree with practically all of your comments...but I do believe that the defeat of the Red Army in Sfghanistan sent shock waves through the Kremlin. Here was this fearsomwe militay machine..poised to head west throught NATO Europe to the Channel...and they couldn't take out a pissant country....which we did, in a few months, 15 years later..historians have yet, IMHO, to explore the archives of the old Soviet military, to understand their thoughts..
....thoughts.............ah, oil, gas,...$$$$$$$$$$$
(Tear that 'wall' down!)
/sarcasmmmmmmmmm
Not so fast...
On News/Activism 06/03/2004 8:02:08 AM PDT #260 of 1,032
the next Director will be Rep. Porter Goss (R-FL)
Ah..so it was announced that early that day...ok...you got me.
Our greatest virtue is that we are an honest nation.
We accept our mistakes and it is because of this acceptance that we never make those mistakes again.
Vietnam only made us better, by showing us both our strengths and weaknesses.
We replaced an unmotivated conscript army with a highly trained and motivated volunteer force.
we also realized that we could never outnumber the soviet bloc, that technology was the only thing that could give us superiority over them. So we spent most of our defense budget on new research. Some called it a gamble back then, but if you look at our combat casualties in afghanistan and iraq, it was more than worth it.
If the CIA had been honest like the military and had instead chosen to look at itself and correct it's mistakes instead of blaming it on insufficient funding or regulatory measures from congress, it would have been transformed into a leaner and much more effective machine..
It wasn't a bold call by either one of us. Given his background, he was an obvious choice. A very solid pick who has alot of challenges ahead of him, but few understand those challenges as well as he does. Best of luck to him.
i don't think afghanistan played a role in the fall of the soviet union, they had been embroiled along with the cubans in angola and other places as well.
The soviets had contributed just 100,000 troops out of a military that numbered 3.5 million. I doubt if they ever took the effort seriously.It was more like a testing ground for their new hardware in my opinion.
Afghanistan didn't have much strategic value for the soviets either. I mean they were there in iraq, libya, syria, right in the middle of all the oil.
Afghanistan gave them just 13,000 dead, while more than 20 million dead in the second world war had only strengthened their resolve against the germans.
The communist bloc never cared about human life, i doubt if 13,000 dead would have brought the soviet union down.
It was reagan's SDI and our smart weapons that scared them.
They didn't have the technology and they didnt have the money to pour into their military. They had been buying most of their wheat from argentina and the US.
It was a rotting economy, made uncompetitive by our technology transfers restrictions that contributed to the main thrust served by the SDI
He has my vote . . .
You're right. It was a pretty obvious one really.
i was very impressed with reagan's handling of terror as well.
he cared deeply about american lives.
he withdrew from lebanon,got all the american hostages back, and then went on rampage against these terrorists.
He minimized american casualties and always went for the source of terror.
he used iraq, another islamic nation to confront iran, directing the energies of both america haters away from america towards other muslims.
he withdrew from lebanon, but confronted iran directly by engaging their patrol boats in the gulf and that iranian airliner finally sent a message to the iranians, that unless they could be facing a US led war, unless they stopped support to terror.
he also bombed the hell out of libya and syria as well.
he saved american lives, but gave the terrorists hell afterwards.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.