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Re: Bin Laden dead
too true buzz 
... i'm a casual observer of religions and politics at best ... its all just my opinion ... whether my opinion is true or not is irrelevant, its just how i feel on the subject *shrugs*
I also feel that part of the USA's problem is that they have severely reduced the population of their middle class by going off shore for lots of productions and materials ... i'm pretty sure that was one thing that obama has tried to fix
the housing market is also fucked in the USA...if real estate holds no value then what does?
and i do agree that living beyond our means is something that is north america wide problem ... not just in the USA
but i whole heartedly disagree that the budget for the "war on terror" had little to no impact on the US economy
Re: Bin Laden dead
Neemo wrote:The cost of bin Laden: $3 trillion over 15 years
By National Journal – Fri May 6, 8:12 am ET
By Tim Fernholz and Jim Tankersley"...comparing the U.S. fight to the Afghan incursion that helped bankrupt the Soviet Union during the Cold War. "We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy," bin Laden said in a taped statement. Only the smallest sign of al-Qaida would "make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations." Considering that we've spent one-fifth of a year's gross domestic product—more than the entire 2008 budget of the United States government—responding to his 2001 attacks, he may have been onto something."
It DOES seem to be working... Sadly!
Reagan's policies is what led to the bankrupting of the Soviet Union. While that was a borderline proxy war, let's not start crediting that solely to their war in Afghanistan.
Not questioning his intelligence though. The only way to bring a superpower to its knees is economically and he knew that. You cant defeat a nation militarily that has thousands of nukes, a naval armada, and all sorts of secret weapons.
James Lofton wrote:Buzz is right
You left out a key word....BUT. I certainly don't think a trillion dollars is a "drop in the bucket". I was agreeing with his overall statement regarding the economy.
I'm just an unappreciative Canadian
Don't know if the discussion needs to go in that direction and once we veered a bit off topic, had a feeling either some Europe or Canadian feathers might get riled.
There's two allies the US can always count on in a crisis....Canada and Britain. I don't mean that as an insult to other nations as MANY have helped us in conflicts over the years. If a major crisis were to occur between the US and Russia or China, those two walk through the gates of hell with us without hesitation. Others would need to debate the issue or simply pick which power to side with as zero hour approaches.
edit: Had a brain fart....would also include Australia on that list.
I think NATO/EU is a paper tiger that could be fractured in an international crisis. Europe is much more dependent on Russia now than in previous decades and the "an attack against one is an attack against all" mantra is laughable in the 2010s and beyond. The US would of course honor the article 5 provision. I doubt others would. A few key Euro nations might but that is the weakness of the alliance in the 21st century. Once ONE doesn't(and its continued expansion increases those odds), the alliance is neutered immediately.
NATO needs to be disbanded even with a continued US presence.
I wasn't addressing that, I was talking about the idea that pulling out would be the same as surrendering.
Surely if there was a mission to kill Bin Laden, who is now dead, you'd pull out.
It's not saying that America should pull out of the places where there is still a legitimate mission.But pulling out, after you've achieved your objective, could hardly be considered surrender
I don't really think we're disagreeing. He said the US and other nations should pull out of all the "hot spots" around the globe. That would definitely be surrendering. A pullout in a region where we've "won" would be understandable.
Sometimes you have to take a step back and look at your own behavior over the years.
"Have we really behaved morally correct, like what is to be expected from the one and only remaining superpower in the world"?
It isn't easy being number one....
Being the "worlds policemen"(or whatever you want to call it) is a thankless job.
Look over there at Rwanda! Hundreds of thousands are being massacred. The world wants us to take action! We should do something quick.....BUT wait! Europe is in crisis and doesn't want to deal with it so we have to monitor that genocidal flash point for WWIII and decide when to take action, North Korea is saber rattling and we may have to go in there if they refuse UN inspections which could cost the US thousands of lives and a nuclear inferno in SK and Japan(maybe China), and that damn Saddam is acting up again flaunting that no fly zone and bombing the Kurds! Oh shit...the Israelis and Palestinians are bombing each other every hour on the hour! How dare we not "behave morally" while having several crisis on our hands at the same time!
I can use any decade and there be similar examples of the US having to pick and choose its battles.
Maybe we shouldn't have established those military bases in Saudi Arabia
Maybe Saudi Arabia shouldn't have begged us to enter and sit there indefinitely as a deterrent. 
Re: Bin Laden dead
No offense JL but you say that as though you've so much as let a bad fart in the military. Though Im sure you find the military affairs of the US an interesting topic of discussion, you're hardly qualified to make such bigoted "hard men of the world" comments.
And though I'm sure you'll return with "We did this that and the other" until you have actually spent time fighting for your country in a foreign land as I have your opinion is pretty much useless.
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: Bin Laden dead
Without wanting to get into the pros or cons of killing Bin Laden...I think it's interesting what we do as a global people - like human kind.
Think about ten years of time and 1.1 Trillion or whatever invested into some other issues.
Could you cure cancer with that? or spinal injury? Could you fly to mars? Could you urbanise unliviable areas? Could you provide housing for the homeless? How much would 1.1 trillion in research into renewable fuels buy?
I think the sad thing isn't that we spend these kinds of sums on war and bin laden and whatever, it's that no one would ever dream of spending that kind of money in other areas that could potentially drasticly improve the lives of far more people than our wars will save/kill.
- mickronson
- Rep: 118
Re: Bin Laden dead
Al Qaeda confirms bin Laden is dead, vows revenge
By Augustine Anthony | Reuters – Fri, 6 May,
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Al Qaeda confirmed on Friday that Osama bin Laden was dead, dispelling doubts by some Muslims the group's leader had really been killed by U.S. forces, and vowed to mount more attacks on the West.
The announcement by the Islamist militant organization, which promised to publish a taped message from bin Laden soon, appeared intended to show its adherents around the globe the group had survived as a functioning network.
In a statement online, it said the blood of bin Laden, shot to death by a U.S. commando team in a raid on Monday on his hide-out in a Pakistani town, "is more precious to us and to every Muslim than to be wasted in vain.
"It will remain, with permission from Allah the Almighty, a curse that hunts the Americans and their collaborators and chases them inside and outside their country."
Al Qaeda urged Pakistanis to rise up against their government to "cleanse" the country of what it called the shame brought on it by bin Laden's shooting and of the "filth of the Americans who spread corruption in it."
The statement also warned Americans not to harm bin Laden's corpse and to hand it and those of others killed to their families, although U.S. officials say bin Laden's body has been buried at sea and no others were taken from the compound.
Some in the Muslim world have been skeptical of bin Laden's death. One survey conducted in Pakistan this week by the British-based YouGov polling organization found that 66 percent of over 1,000 respondents did not think the person killed by U.S. Navy SEALs was bin Laden.
Before Friday prayers at a mosque in Paris, one man who declined to give his name said: "This whole story is a myth. They invented it to distract Americans from real problems over there, like the economy and gas prices."
But U.S. President Barack Obama continued to bask in public approval for the killing of bin Laden. He flew to a military base at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, on Friday to thank special forces involved in the raid.
"This has been an extraordinary week for our nation," Obama told a jubilant audience of troops. "The terrorist leader who struck our nation on September 11 will never threaten our nation again." But he warned that "this continues to be a very tough fight."
Anger and suspicion between Washington and Islamabad over the raid in Abbottabad, 30 miles from the Pakistani capital, showed no sign of abating.
A U.S. drone killed 17 suspected militants in northwest Pakistan, despite warnings from the Pakistani military against the mounting of attacks within its borders.
About 1,500 Islamists rallied in the southwestern city of Quetta to vow revenge for bin Laden's death and there were small protests elsewhere. Afghan Taliban and Islamist Indonesian youths made similar threats.
A Taliban spokesman said the group "believes the martyrdom of Sheikh Osama bin Laden will give a new impetus to the current jihad against the invaders." Bin Laden lived for years in Afghanistan and is thought to have plotted the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States from there.
One of bin Laden's wives, Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah, told Pakistani interrogators the al Qaeda leader had been living for five years in the compound where he was killed, a Pakistani security official told Reuters.
The disclosure appeared sure to heighten U.S. suspicions that Pakistani authorities had been either grossly incompetent or playing a double game in the hunt for bin Laden and the two countries' supposed partnership against violent Islamists.
Pakistani security forces took 15 or 16 people into custody from the Abbottabad compound after U.S. forces removed bin Laden's body, said the security official. They included bin Laden's three wives and several children.
In Washington, a U.S. official said U.S. intelligence had established on-the-ground surveillance in Abbottabad in advance of the raid.
U.S. officials also said among materials found at bin Laden's hide-out was evidence indicating al Qaeda at one point considered attacking the U.S. rail system on the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks later this year.
Officials said evidence analyzed so far indicated bin Laden was still involved in directing al Qaeda's activities, even though he had largely avoided the public spotlight for years.
The fact that bin Laden was found in a garrison town -- his compound was not far from a military academy -- has embarrassed Pakistan and the covert raid has angered its military.
Pressure is building in the U.S. Congress to suspend or at least review U.S. aid to Pakistan.
The Pakistan army, for its part, threatened on Thursday to halt counterterrorism cooperation with the United States if it conducted any more similar raids.
It was unclear if such attacks included drone strikes the U.S. military conducts regularly against militants along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.
Pakistani security officials have charged that U.S. troops, after landing by helicopter, shot the unarmed al Qaeda leader in cold blood rather than in a firefight, as U.S. officials first suggested.
Amid differing accounts this week of how much hostile fire the SEALs encountered in the compound, one Pakistani security official said on Friday that U.S. forces should release video footage he said they "must have" of the operation.
U.N. human rights investigators called on the United States to disclose the full facts "to allow an assessment in terms of international human rights law standards.
The Pakistani military also said on Thursday it had decided to reduce the U.S. military presence in the country.
In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Colonel David Lapan said the Defense Department had not received notice from Islamabad about any decision to change the size of the U.S. military contingent in Pakistan. He said there were a little under 300 U.S. military personnel in Pakistan, many of them trainers.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the relationship was "complex" but pointed to Pakistan's effort against the Taliban and al Qaeda in its own tribal areas and the use of its territory as a U.S. supply route.
"At the same time, there's no question they hedge their bets," said Gates, fielding questions from service members at an Air Force base in North Carolina. "Their view is that we have abandoned them four times in the last 45 years. And they're not sure we're going to stay in the region."
"So we just have to keep working at it, on both sides," he added
