Re: Bush administration takes a positive step
 

My entire point was that we shouldn't be focused on just Osama. My entire point is that getting rid of him solves nothing. If it were just about Osama then it wouldn't be a war it would be a police action.

Currently the middle east is led by despots and religous nuts. Its people are often illiterate, uneducated, and have no hope for advancement.

Solve the problems driving terrorism: broken states, dictators, economic dependence on oil, and religous intolerance. Once you do that we will not only have an easier time against Osama, someone won't just replace him after we capture him.

That is what the war on terror is about, at least the way I understand it.

Re: Bush administration takes a positive step
 

Well apparently the Administration is taking the step, but their leader refuses.

President Bush "publicly overruled some of his top advisers on Wednesday in a debate about what to call the conflict with Islamic extremists," the New York Times reports. Some top officials had started using the phrase "global struggle against violent extremism" to describe what Bush had once called the "global war on terror."

"It is not clear whether the new language embraced by other administration officials was adopted without Mr. Bush's approval or whether he reversed himself after the change was made. Either way, he planted himself on Wednesday firmly on the side of framing the conflict primarily in military terms and appeared intent on emphasizing that there had been no change in American policy."

Said the president: "Make no mistake about it, we are at war."

However, the AP notes Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld still isn't listening and refers to the conflict as a "struggle between civilization and extremists."

http://www.dentonrc.com/sharedconten...D8BNUDQG1.html

Re: Bush administration takes a positive step
 

[ QUOTE ]
Its people are often illiterate, uneducated, and have no hope for advancement.

Solve the problems driving terrorism: broken states, dictators, economic dependence on oil, and religous intolerance. Once you do that we will not only have an easier time against Osama, someone won't just replace him after we capture him.


[/ QUOTE ]

This is absolutely and completely correct.

Osama should have been a police action. He's a criminal, round him up and throw him in a dark hole for the rest of his life and then some. Have our senators vote $50 billion to this posse job, I don't care, it'd be worth it.

Then take the other $150 billion we spent on a brutal, ineffective, deceptive and poorly planned war and use it instead for economic relief in the middle east, education and literacy programs, research and development in energy, and political incentive programs.

If there's a bastard in the Middle East we don't like, he doesn't get any of our money. But maybe next time we'll avoid killing a hundred thousand people to throw this other, cruel but basically irrelevant dirtbag in prison.

Re: Bush administration takes a positive step
 

[ QUOTE ]
Osama should have been a police action.

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If you know anything about the 9/11 commission report this was the problem, the Clinton administration treated him as a criminal. Clinton didn't consider him a terrorist and only a criminal.

Re: Bush administration takes a positive step
 

If we cant figure out how to get the Dept of Defense to agree with the president on what activity is underway, any wonder we make no progress in Iraq or in getting at the real culprits on 9/11.

I suspect that W likes the idea of calling it a war so he can play commander in chief and maybe has a shot at another topgun act on carrier. "Really Dick, it was a sooooo fun!"

These guys are totally incompetent.