So instead of me arguing the points of this article that we will probably will not agree on, what do you all propose we do with the events of 9/11? Meaning, it is 9/12, we are looking at news feed of 2 downed buildings. What do we do?

To take it a step further, how do you deal with someone that has called for the extermination of an entire race of people (ie, IRAN)? The destruction to a nation that supports those people?

Citing these two things together in one paragraph doesn’t actually mean there’s any connection. We’ve already heard Cheney et al do the same with 9/11 and Saddam Hussein. It’s meaningless — like saying bananas and sunrise.

What we had to do was determine who attacked us on 9/11. From what I’ve heard it took about 30 seconds for our administration to “know” it was al Qaeda and that we had to attack Afghanistan. How they knew so quickly isn’t clear and how certain they were is far from clear. Why they began to talk about Iraq in the next minute is also unclear except that George W. Bush had talked about attacking Iraq for years.

Clearly there is more secret information about al Qaeda we the public just haven’t heard.

Still, after all this time, the fact we haven’t yet tracked down and captured or killed our arch-enemy Osama bin Laden indicates we really don’t want to catch him and THAT indicates maybe it wasn’t al Qaeda who was the real culprit behind 9/11.

Even if there were Muslims involved on 9/11 it doesn’t necessarily mean al Qaeda ordered them into that position. Even if al Qaeda people were there doesn’t mean our people didn’t know it and manipulate events around the attack.

Until the public knows a lot more of what happened we will be held at the mercy of Bushies, Neocons and anyone else who claim everything is National Security. It was used during the Cold War and is being used again (see Sibel Edmonds).

We have to break that evil spell. We have to let the sunlight in and dare to look at all the facts. Simple as that.

Ah yes…..shades of the Ford Pinto case logic.

larry birnbaum @ 83

… So I’m not sure what you’re arguing here: That we should never put ourselves in a position like this? That we’re doing it stupidly? That we should be willing to accept more US casualties in exchange for fewer civilian casualties?

How about applying the same rules of engagement in Afghanistan that our law enforcement authorities would apply (and justify to our courts) if this were happening to US citizens in a US city. Then you’re last question, which implies that humans wearing US uniforms are intrinsically more valuable than humans who happen to be Afghanis does not enter into the “calculation.” And yes, those who would commit us to “war” should think through these calculations before they take us to war.

I think you’re overly optimistic about what would be deemed legal and appropriate government action in the case of, say, a domestic insurrection. Certainly we’d hope that it wouldn’t include wholesale destruction on the model of Russia’s actions in Chechnya. But look at what happened at Waco. It’s true that afterwards there were a lot of recriminations. But I don’t believe anyone was held legally accountable.

http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/face_102807.pdf

“SCHIEFFER: I want to ask you quickly about the chances of Mr. Mukasey, the administration’s
nominee to be attorney general. It looked like he was off to a pretty good start with the Judiciary Committee, but he ran into a little bit of a roadblock this week over whether or not he believes waterboarding is torture.

Sen. GRAHAM: Right.

SCHIEFFER: What’s going to happen on that, Senator? Can you continue to support him,
Senator Graham?

Sen. GRAHAM: Well, I’m on the committee. I thought he did a good job explaining himself,
generally speaking. But he was asked a specific question about an interrogation technique called waterboarding. I am convinced, as an individual senator, as a military lawyer for 25 years, that waterboarding, the technique that was described to Judge Mukasey does violate the Geneva Convention, does violate our war crimes statute and is clearly illegal under domestic and international law, and I think it would serve the attorney general nominee well to embrace that concept. He’s talked around it. But you know, I want to win this war. And the way we win this war is to adhere to our values, don’t adopt the enemies’ values. The rule of law is something…

SCHIEFFER: Well…

Sen. GRAHAM: …that we embrace, and so I hope he will give a direct answer to that question.

SCHIEFFER: Well, would you vote against him if he doesn’t?

Sen. GRAHAM: I am urging him that he needs to come forward. If he does not believe that
waterboarding is illegal, then that would really put doubts in my own mind because I don’t think you have to be very–have a lot of knowledge about the law to understand this technique violates Geneva Convention Common Article III, the war crimes statute, and many other statutes that are in place.

SCHIEFFER: All right.

Sen. GRAHAM: So I do hope he will embrace that. “

I think that’s a positive sign that there are members of Judiciary on both sides of the aisle, that are uncomfortable with Mukasey’s answers and that they’re ready to hold his feet to the fire on this one.

Quite simply, we never learned the limits of the Pentagon’s tolerance for loss of innocent life. Every “high fatality” missions was approved. Every “high value target” raid was approved as well, despite the utter futility of the program – ZERO for fifty.

Why is she not listened to?

She would blow it all up? All the lies and coverups… she knows it and they don’t want her pulling the curtain up and making them ALL look like a bunch of kabuki players, ALL of them.

How about applying the same rules of engagement in Afghanistan that our law enforcement authorities would apply (and justify to our courts) if this were happening to US citizens in a US city.

amen!

cinnamonape @ 58

Any responsible military would be collecting and evaluating such information. So I simply find it ludicrous that the Pentagon DOESN’T keep such figures.

yep.

either they’re lying to us when they say that they are working hard to minimize civilian casualites (how can one do that without counting them?)

… or they’re lying to us that they aren’t counting.

I think it’s both. They have statisticians collecting every bit of data they can obtain…it’s an information war as well.

I’d like to find some of the troops who do follow up and count corpses. I bet 100 to 1 that they send data on the age, sex, proximity of weapons, etc. Remember those guys charged with murdering that civilian in Baquba. They had to make up something about the guy having a weapon before they put him in the hole and shot him. So of course they are reporting this information.

I also bet they know just how many civilians flow through the hospitals…after all, they sometimes “raid” these and get “militants” being treted in them. So how do they know those militants are there. They access the hospital databases and records. It’s not perfect data-collection, by any means, the miloitary is always complaining about the fact that the Iraqis are still relying on paper record keeping…which makes it a lot morelaborious to quickly access and tabulate the data in ways they want. But that just impresses upon us that they ARE doing it!