Qaeda's New Links Increase Threats From Global Sites

There are a finite number of grapes in a bunch.

Are there? Christian historians have often commented on how martyrdom has increased the growth of the church. Similar views are expressed by proponents of political liberty (citing Nathan Hale for example). I read today that Bollywood is releasing 3 movies nearly simultaneously based on the life of a 24 year old "martyr" of Indian independence who was executed by the Britsh for having murdered a British police officer.

Shall distaste for the jihadist worldview lead us to discount the possibility that their martyrs may engender more martyrs? In fact, isn't this dynamic already at work in Israel?

*Index Bump

My take on it is, if you have an Arabic-sounding name, you are the enemy.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck. Kill it.

In the muslim mind Israeli responses have been tentative and weak, encouraging further attacks. If you want to see how eager fundamentalist muslims really are to sacrifice their lives in the name of Allah, look at how a secular Iraqi regime easily keeps them in line.

The terrorist handbooks state you should be in physical shape, a good marksman, and good at martial arts. I think this is good advice for every American as well.

I could take out his eyes and break his arms and legs before he could say "Jihad" -- 14 years in the "arts". If not close enough for that, a few CorBon400 rounds from my Glock23 should do the trick. Although I might prefer to use my TDE180 44 AutoMag, or maybe a few 000 magnums from my Savage short-barrel pumper. But I would probably more enjoy hacking him to pieces with a sword or machete. Bring it on, a**holes.

"Good, now we know the dimensions of the problem.
There are a finite number of grapes in a bunch."

Time to:
....trample out the vintage
where the grapes of wrath are stored,
He has loosed the fateful lightening
of His terrible swift sword

Shall distaste for the jihadist worldview lead us to discount the possibility that
their martyrs may engender more martyrs?

Yes, this is a factor that must be taken into consideration.
However, as Fermi said about the speculated extraterrestrials, "Where are they?".
If Al-Quida or a sympathetic group had even had just a dirty nuclear bomb,
why didn't they set it off last year as Kandahar was being pummeled?

My amateur guess is that Osama and Co. simply underestimated the likelihood that
the USA (and friends) would dare to project power as far away as Afghanistan and risk
casualties.
That would explain why (as one British newspaper reported late last year)
construction was still on-going at Osama's mansion-cum-terrorist convention center
in Kandahar even as the 9-11 attacks were unfolding.

Osama bet on his Messiah-like vision that he'd end up ruling Afghanistan and a substantial
chunk of adjoining lands.
He (if he is still alive) has found out that might be a difficult job.

In fact, isn't this dynamic already at work in Israel?

Yes and no.
The IDF invades Ramallah, isolates the duplicitous Arafat, breaks ups concentrations
of bombers in Jenin, etc....and the bombing goes on at least a bit of a hiatus.

The error of the Israeli is simply trying to run an open society...the sooner they say
"We're building a wall and killing every sumbitch who even comes within a mile of it",
the bombing will be reduced to a minor annoyance.

But...if an Palestinian leader with half-a-brain arises to replace Arafat and realizes
that living as a part of the prosperous country of Israel makes Palestinians richer than the
average citizens in most other Muslim countries...then there will be no need for a wall.

It's up to the Palestinians.
Sadly, they hardly ever "miss a chance to miss a chance".
They curse the leaders of other Arab countries (see "The Siege of Bethlehem;
on PBS FrontLine, aired this last Thursday) because they are simply their pawns.
The best deal the Palestinians will ever make is allying themselves with Israel.

Oh, and if Palestinians ever lost use of their cell-phones...game over.
In the FrontLine special, there was a great captured video clip of these brave
Palestinian terrorists...about 20 of them walking about the Church of the Nativity
all talking into their cell-phones. It looked like a bunch of Valley Girls calling
their friends to tell them about some great sale they'd just discovered at the mall.

Some were actually talking to the Israelis, negotiating their discrete escape from the church.
So much for the whole crowd wanting to be glorious martyrs in Holy Jihad.

...trample out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored,...

Yes, that verse did cross my mind as I was typing my post.

This contest will go on for a long time.
I simply pray that the American people (and our allies) will have the stomach to
keep it up as long as needed.

Like killing off an infection, it will require resolve to finish ALL the prescription of antibiotics.

Osama bet on his Messiah-like vision that he'd end up ruling Afghanistan and a substantial chunk of adjoining lands.

He figured that the Americans would just launch off a few more cruise missiles, I suppose.

He figured that the Americans would just launch off a few more cruise missiles, I suppose.

I'm sure that is basically the truth!

Well, when it was reported in the closing days of the biggest ground action in Afghanistan
that Mohammed Mullah Omar was puting out a bounty on the head of news correspondents
($15,000?),
I did have a small chuckle when a freeper speculated it was because Omar had been reading
American/Western media and presumed that Dubya was the stumbling dullard that was
portrayed in the media.

What got me was that it was only in an article from an English paper (Telegraph? Times of London?)
that somebody posted here that gave a really good insight into Dubya's thought processes
in the 24 hours after the 9-11 attacks.
The quote that stuck with me was that Dubya said:

"Whoever did this isn't going to like me being President."

After reading that I gave thanks that the Supreme Court made the right decision over
the November 2000 vote...

For example, Ahmed Ressam, the Algerian militant arrested in December 1999 trying to enter the United States from Canada to detonate a bomb at Los Angeles International Airport during the nation's millennium celebration, was seen by investigators as a freelancer who was part of this broader network from which Al Qaeda recruited. Though officials say he trained at a Qaeda camp in Pakistan and received some help in Canada from the group's operatives, they say he did not clear either his specific target or his plot with Al Qaeda's leadership.

I thought I had read Ressam cleared his plans with Abu Zubaydah, who was in charge of organizing all the Y2K plots, including the bombing in Jordan for which he was sentenced to death.

It is often asked by the public or even our more aggressive military types
"Why are these terrorists still alive?"

Because there likely is no way, really no bloody way, to root out every member and near-member of every group which is at war with us. This is not a typical "front" type of war.

Analogy:
You've got a tumor or cyst or pustule which is sending poison or cancer cells throughout the body. Through clumsy surgery that tumor or cyst or pustule is broken and not cleanly excised. Now you've got a worse problem than you had before. The cancer mestastizes or the infectious agents spread throughout the body.

Another analogy for shooters and hunters.
Instead of killing with a clean head or heart shot you gut shoot with a dozen 000 buckshot. This assumes there is one head or heart which, in the case of the Qaeda network and its associates, is not a good assumption.>br> Or
After the shooting, while field dressing the animal you slice through the bladder and all the intestines spreading nastiness throughout the animal.

Now do you get the picture?

That is why, as cooks, clerks, mechanics, and medics "behind" a very fluid "front" find out there is no "front" and everyone had better be packing a pistol or have a battle rifle at hand. The same applies to civilians in the United States, just as it applies to civilians in Israel.

This is war and there may be nearly nobody who is a "noncombatant". Everybody from restaurant wait staff to school teachers to busdrivers to powerplant floorsweepers may find themselves on the front line facing a "terrorist". The latter term is in quotes because these are not "terrorists" but saboteurs and sappers in a dispersed guerilla war.

Is our disarmed sheeple populace ready for this kind of war?

Our enemy knows we Americans are not prepared internally in every community, workplace, office, factory, airliner, bus, and home. That is why we are vulnerable.