OK, I'm back. And while this thread has been quiet and I hate to restart a discussion folks have lost interest in, I did promise a reply. I'll give it...and not mourn if the thread stays dead.
Jseal, if it's ok by you I'll keep things organized the way we had it before. Makes it simple.
1) Is Terror showing any signs of decreasing...thanks for digging up the info, but I'm starting to think they render the graphs we were talking about damned near useless. They're collapsing across all sorts of terrorist groups and incidents, and while the administration is horribly myopic about Terror (they usually mean terrorist acts of Muslim extremists) I'm not sure it's a good idea to look at overgeneralized data. Specifically, I think it's hurtful to your cause more than mine. You might lose a real decrease in the noise of all the different clashes, if you follow me. So I think we may well be back at square one. The graphs on page 5 of the Understanding Terrorism Database _are_ interesting, but they're just a snapshot from 6 months in 2001 (before the current WOT could be considered to have much of an impact). I think they may well bear on a discussion of why people become terrorists, but don't have much to do with this question. Still, it's finally resolved in my mind how such international/domestic distinctions are made in Israel.
2)
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let take as given that the Hussein/bin Laden story was a transparent fall back position once the WMD position became untenable. I’m confident that you’ll be able to trace its birthday back to the funeral pyre of the WMD. Bush and Blair felt confident that the WMDs would be found. They weren’t.
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Respectfully, I think I can trace its birthday back to well before the WMDs weren't found...I can trace it back to before we invaded (unless you count Blix's work as failure to find WMD...the administration doesn't, I kind of do). And I really don't feel the presentation of this as a transparant fallback in any way dismisses Iraq from the discussion of the WOT. That very attitude (theirs I mean, not yours) IS part of the problem.
Because the Iraqi invasion was justified by the WOT, Bush's WOT is now contaminated in the eyes of the world. The sins we commit in Iraq not only make the WOT harder for us to win, or even progress in...they make it impossible for this president to be taken seriously when he stands in front of the UN and suggests we all work together. They can't be seperated, just not for the reasons that the administration would have had us believe.
Yeah, I saw that. You know....if I hadn't been listening to experts jump up and down screaming that the administration was wrong before we invaded, I'd be a lot more impressed with their aw shucks routine now. I'm not surprised they found nothing, and after all their assertions and "we know stuff you don't know, so trust us to make the right decisions" nonsense...their attitude now just seems disingenuous. IF we went to war over WMDs, and were wrong, we owe a serious appology. IF we went to war over terrorist connections in Iraq, and we're wrong (and you and I agree we are, at least), then we owe a serious appology. IF those weren't the reasons we went to war...what the hell are we doing over there?
2.5
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Sorry about those 30 minutes, I can’t proofread either. The verification of Iraqi compliance with their commitments was the responsibility of the Iraqi government. Iraqi obstruction and duplicity is well documented, and occurred over an extended period. The Iraqi government could have ensured that they were completed promptly and did not do so. A straightforward miscalculation.
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Iraq screwed up. They hid the nonexistent so they didn't look like the weakest country in the region. It was a painfully stupid thing to do. But I don't think you answered the question. There WAS evidence that they were hiding a whole lot of nothing. Blix said that the inspections were progressing at the time the UN was forced to withdraw its inspectors to get them out of the way of American bombs. Were we justified in ignoring that evidence?
3. Afghanistan.
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The Taliban Afghan government was overthrown by the Afghans of the Northern Alliance. The United States and Great Britain provided crucial air power. Between The end of October and the end of November 2001 the Northern Alliance had captured 60% of the country. Kandahar, in the south of the country fell to the NA on December 6, 2001. The American bombing campaign then focused on the Al-Qaeda training camps and headquarters in the Tora Bora area in the east of Afghanistan. The ground war was fought and won by Afghans.
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OK, I'm puzzled. I know you're not suggesting that General Franks had nothing to do with organizing the attacks of the Northern Alliance. And I know you're not suggesting that our bombing campaign (which, by the way, dropped a hell of a lot of bad news on places other than the Tora Bora caves) was in no way responsible for the ousting of the Taliban. And I'm sure you're not suggesting that 1000 US ground troops were necessary for the final taking of Khandahar, or that we don't still have troops on the ground in Afghanistan. But what I'm not sure of is what this had to do with my inital question. Were our actions in Afghanistan an effective way to promulgate the War on Terror? I don't think you're suggesting that the invasion of Afghanistan, like that of Iraq, had nothing to do with the War on Terror...but if by some chance I'm wrong here...what on earth does count as part of the WOT?
Like I said above...I'm not trying to drag this back into the light of day if folks have had enough of it. But Jseal went to a hell of a lot of work on my behalf, and I wanted to make sure he knew I appreciated the effort and wasn't abandoning it. Feel free to ignore this entirely, or pm me if you want to keep it going away from prying eyes
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G