tw wrote:

"Steven Douglas" <dsteven@flashmail.com> wrote in message

Al Qaeda terrorists crossed international borders to

attack United

States embassies in two African nations, and a United States Navy
warship in Yemen.

How does that make it an "act of war"?

First of all, as I posted for you at your request, bin Laden
declared war on the US in 1996.

Those attacks were acts of war.

2) What nation you are at war with.

Any nation would that knowingly aid and harbor terrorists

who have

attacked the United States.

I think you'll find that doesn't stand up to any internationally
recognised definition of being at war, you know. By that

token, the UK

would have been at war with teh US when you refused to

extradite that

Republican terrorist who had murdered a British policeman.

Courts are tricky sometimes. Courts do things we don't all agree with.

Please give more details on the case you're referring to --

So, were the IRA attacks on UK barracks and personnel

in Germany

international acts of war?

Apparently so,

According to what internationally recognisd treaty or definition?

Sheesh, if some organized group attacks my military, I
consider it an act of war.

Are you getting these definitions from an

internationally ratified

document or just making them up?

When US embassies and a navy warship are attacked, I don't really
care about any internationally ratified documents.

Ah, so you're just making this up. Thanks for admitting it..
Itä sinteresting taht you regard an attack on a warship or embassy
abroad as an act of war, but an actual attack on your

homeland (Murray

building) as a criminal matter. Presumably you regard 11/9

as a criminal matter too?

If it had been determined the OKC attack was committed by a
foreign terrorist group, I'd consider it an act of war. As it
was determined to have been committed by some homegrown
kooks, it was a law enforcement problem. And once again, I am
finding myself engaged in a pointless debate with you.

The President responded
to the embassy bombings militarily, and it was the

correct response

--

According to who? The crazy, made-up world of Stevie D or some
objective measure?

Uh, I didn't make that up -- it actually happened, you know.

Clinton used a military response for the embassy bombings,
and it was the correct response.

though it should have gone on to a further extent.

How so?

Wow, can't you find something more productive to do during
the day than ask me questions like that? This is getting
tedious. How so? In hindsight, I wish he had taken it to the
extent we did after 9/11. We had no problem bombing Kosovo to
remove Milosevic from power, and he had never attacked a US
Embassy or Navy warship (and I agreed with removing Milsevic
from power, by the way).

What would the targets for those missiles have been

in New York,

Boston, and Dublin?

Supporters of terror, IRA safe houses, training

centers, headquarters..

you know, the sort of thing the US bomb in Iraq etc

I see. And if the United States government had been complicit in
that bombing, and knowingly aided and harbored the terrorists who
perpetrated the bombing, a military reponse on those

targets might

have been appropriate.

You once refused to extraiet a Republicn terrorist who had

murdered a

British policeman. That sounds an awful lot liek the US

govt knowingly

harbouring and aiding a terrorist to me. perhaps you have

some way of

weaselling your definitions around so it doesn't count? I'll look
forward to reading it.

You keep bringing that up with no specifics, but I certainly
do not believe that was a US govt policy decision made by an
administration's Department of State. I do believe it was a
judicial decision, and many of us here are routinely annoyed
by crazy judical decisions.

I'm sure nothing like that ever
happens in your native land. If you have specifics on that
case, I'd like to see it.

Ah yes.. "training camps". How would that have stopepd

e.g. 11/9

seeing

as

all those people were training in the US?

They did some of their early training outside the US,

Cite? What were they trained in?

What do you think those training camps were for?

In this case, the terrorists were trained in hand to hand combat, and
how to use weapons,

and how to overtake a flight crew, etc.

before coming
here to continue their mission by training in flight schools.

So how woudl it have stopped them? Seeing as the only training they
really needed was teh flight training,

Wrong.

which apparentl the AQ camps didn't offer on the syllabus..

And if the government hadn't actually STRENGTHENED the barrier of
information between law enforcement and intelligence agencies in
1995, maybe those guys training here could have been stopped.

And if your aunt had balls she's be your uncle, as they say.

You know, dreamwalker has told both you and Woods that you
are very good at negativity, but you're not very good at
providing positive alternative suggestions. That is a fact.

There should not have been an Al Qaeda training camp left
standing.

What good would that have done? How many people who have
attacke the US woudl have been unable to if those "training
camps" had all been

destroyed?

SINCE 9/11, much Al Qaeda leadership and facilities have been
removed from action, and (whether you want to admit it or

not) that

has had a deleterious effect on their operations.

Try not to tell that to people in London, Madrid, Bali,

Egypt etc etc..

As you're very well aware, London was not an Al Qaeda attack.

It was conducted by homegrown terrorists whose actions were
encouraged by foreign born rabble rousers.

What might have been the effect
on Al Qaeda operations if the destruction of their facilities and
removal of leadership had begun in 1998? Can you say

without a doubt

that the 9/11 (or 11/9) attack would have happened

exactly as it did?

Pretty firmly yes. Certainly with rather more evidence and

reason than

you could say it wouldn't. Like the UK bombers, I doubt they were
instructed from a James-Bond style cave hideout in

Afghanistan to go

and do what they did. It seems to me these "training camps"

can be set

up anywhere in the world - they're mostly to do with

indoctrination,

how to handle hostages etc etc. That can just as easily be

done in an

apartment in Berlin as a field in Afghanistan, as the PLO

proved. Now

then, hijacking aplane is fairly easy, and has been done

several times

by fairly dull people - the difference in this case was

that they had

a degree of knowledge of how to fly aircraft, which they

picked up in

a US flightschool, not an Afghan/Sudanese training camp.

So apparently your solution would have been to leave those
training camps intact.

The decimation of the training camps SINCE 9/11 has

hindered the

terrorists from mounting another large scale attack.

Try not to repeat that *****, unsupporterd assertion

in London,

Bali or Madrid, Steven - they didn't seem very hindered there

I HATE what happened in London, and Bali, and Madrid.

Then please don't try and claim that the post 11/9 actinos have
hindered the terrorists.

So your solution would have been to do nothing then. Okay.

Those were horrible, viscious attacks, perpetrated by cowardly
bombers -- but as horrible as those bombings were, they

were not on

the scale of the 9/11 (11/9) attack.

Actually from the terrorist point of view, logistically

they were. Now

ask yourself a question:

Do you believe that the tactics used on 11/9 haven't been repeated
because
1) George done bombed all their training camps

2) Any passenger, on any flight, is going to FIGHT the

hijackers and

tear them to tiny pieces if they try and hold the aircraft

up with box cutters.

THe rules have changed - used to be you'd fly to Cuba then go home,
but nowadays the crazy bastards will fly you into a building. Hell,
I'll risk a few deep cuts off a carpet knife if it will

save my life.

Besides, the cockpot door is 1/2" steel.

Be honest now...that was AQs big show, the perpertrators KNEW they
could never get away with that again, which is why they haven't.

So you don't think they planned to carry out other major
attacks (on the scale of thousands of deaths in one attack)
between 2001 and now?

You think leaving bin Laden and his followers alone would
have been preferable?

(and of course, in the case of the British bombers,

none of them

had been anywhere near an AQ training camp)'

A suicide bomber (or the planting of bombs with timers) does not
require much training.

So bombing training camps is worthless then.

What is your solution? Come up with some positive suggestion
for change, will you?

A really good defense against those homegrown
bombers is to discourage foreign rabble rousers from instigating such
bombings -- by encouraging such rabble rousers to leave the country.

Nice attempt at diversion. You appear to accept that bombing training

is worthless because as you say, they don't train bombers or people who

planes into buildings there, so they would not have prevented the NY.
London, Madrid, Bali, etc etc attacks.

No, you're confusing suicide bombers with an intricate, well planned
attack that took years to formulate.

It's the old "waving the arms to keep the elephants away" theory isn't

it?

it? Every night, when I lock my door, I wave my arms to keep the

elephants away. I haven't see any, so it must be working. Except the
elephants HAVE been turning up in London, Madrid, Bali, Afghanistan,
Egypt, Turkey, Iraq etc etc etc...

Yes, we seem to be up against an enemy bent on destroying us, if they
can. It will take a combination of law enforcement and military
intelligence to defeat this enemy.

I think that last point sailed over your head a little...
You don't agree it will take a combination of law enforcement and
military intelligence to defeat this enemy?

What's your solution?