Mike the Usurper wrote:

The White House initially would not give details of the 10 plots that Bush mentioned in his morning speech before the National Endowment for Democracy, saying some information remained classified. But in the evening, the White House released a fact sheet with a brief, and vague, description of each.

No. This is not credible in any way shape or form.

What is your point of view?
A. There really aren't any terrorists and its all a big conspiracy. There is no war on terror and thousands of people in the federal government including the whole law enforcement establishment are in on it.
B. There are terrorists, but every time they try to attack they are successful. The U.S. Government has not foiled any attacks because the FBI and Intelligence agencies are totally incompetent and the terrorists are flawless.
C. The U.S. Government has actually foiled some attacks, but not these specific 10. They foiled some other, different list of a handful of attacks worldwide.

If your answer is C, please explain to me why they would list this handful of attacks instead of the actual handful of attacks they really foiled, and what difference that makes.

Decius wrote:

Mike the Usurper wrote:

The White House initially would not give details of the 10 plots that Bush mentioned in his morning speech before the National Endowment for Democracy, saying some information remained classified. But in the evening, the White House released a fact sheet with a brief, and vague, description of each.

No. This is not credible in any way shape or form.

What is your point of view?
A. There really aren't any terrorists and its all a big conspiracy. There is no war on terror and thousands of people in the federal government including the whole law enforcement establishment are in on it.
B. There are terrorists, but every time they try to attack they are successful. The U.S. Government has not foiled any attacks because the FBI and Intelligence agencies are totally incompetent and the terrorists are flawless.
C. The U.S. Government has actually foiled some attacks, but not these specific 10. They foiled some other, different list of a handful of attacks worldwide.

If your answer is C, please explain to me why they would list this handful of attacks instead of the actual handful of attacks they really foiled, and what difference that makes.

My point of view is, the White House is lying. They say they have this list of cases, but they give absolutley no specifics. They tell groups in different areas, "Oh look out!" and say we've caught people, but never say where, so people in New York think maybe its Oregon they're talking about, the people in Oregon think they've caught someone in Florida, but it's all a smokescreen. It's Joe McCarthy's "I have a list of..." on a different scale.

As I noted, everyone has acknowledged that the terrorist groups are operating under cell systems, and AlQ is more like a club these days than an organization. What that means is, you catch these guys, you foil their plan, you parade them up and down Pennsylvania Avenue and then you stick them in a cement box for the rest of the lives. You don't say "well we have done a lot but we can't say anything about it." There is no security purpose in NOT publicizing the wins.

And you don't need everyone in on it, you just need to keep telling them "wrong shell."

Mike the Usurper wrote:
As I noted, everyone has acknowledged that the terrorist groups are operating under cell systems, and AlQ is more like a club these days than an organization. What that means is, you catch these guys, you foil their plan, you parade them up and down Pennsylvania Avenue and then you stick them in a cement box for the rest of the lives. You don't say "well we have done a lot but we can't say anything about it." There is no security purpose in NOT publicizing the wins.

Of course there is.

1. You are assuming that "foiled" and "arrested" are synonymous. They aren't. You've heard about everyone whose been arrested in the US because there are major consitutional battles going on about whether or not they can by held as enemy combatants or if they have to be tried in the normal court system. Other groups have either been disrupted in some way or they have been killed. They don't trot bodies down Pennsylvania Avenue, and if they disrupted a group but didn't shut them down they obviously still have a threat to contend with.
2. The fact that they are a cell doesn't mean they don't know anything valuable or they haven't had any contact with anyone else in the organization. These guys have often trained together in Afghanistan, and they have handlers who they interacted with before being deployed. Furthermore, the organization has standard training and techniques, and our intelligence groups take advantage of weaknesses in those techniques to foil attacks. Giving the enemy lots of information about what we know and what we did allows them to adapt their tactics.

I've got to round this back to the question I originally asked, which you didn't answer. Bush is listing terrorist attacks that were foiled in order to explain that there are real threats and that the U.S. Government is doing something about those threats. If you don't beleive this, then there are only two possibilities: Is it your contention that the threats aren't real, or that the U.S. Government hasn't responded to the threats?

Decius wrote:

Of course there is.

1. You are assuming that "foiled" and "arrested" are synonymous. They aren't. You've heard about everyone whose been arrested in the US because there are major consitutional battles going on about whether or not they can by held as enemy combatants or if they have to be tried in the normal court system. Other groups have either been disrupted in some way or they have been killed. They don't trot bodies down Pennsylvania Avenue, and if they disrupted a group but didn't shut them down they obviously still have a threat to contend with.
2. The fact that they are a cell doesn't mean they don't know anything valuable or they haven't had any contact with anyone else in the organization. These guys have often trained together in Afghanistan, and they have handlers who they interacted with before being deployed. Furthermore, the organization has standard training and techniques, and our intelligence groups take advantage of weaknesses in those techniques to foil attacks. Giving the enemy lots of information about what we know and what we did allows them to adapt their tactics.

I've got to round this back to the question I originally asked, which you didn't answer. Bush is listing terrorist attacks that were foiled in order to explain that there are real threats and that the U.S. Government is doing something about those threats. If you don't beleive this, then there are only two possibilities: Is it your contention that the threats aren't real, or that the U.S. Government hasn't responded to the threats?

My contention is that there is a real threat, but it is not the one Bush is presenting. I look at this as exactly like McCarthy. There is a threat out there, and every so often to make people believe in him and keep his spotlight, he'd go out and scream "I have a list of X names, that are known members of the communist party!" Were there communists? Yes. Was there anything like he descibed? No.

Are there terrorists out there? Yes, but I don't buy his list anymore than McCarthy's, and what's worse, Bush's war, far from making us safer, has swelled their numbers and made us even more of a target. He's waving his list with one hand to scare us into supporting him, and throwing rocks with the other to ensure that the threat is real.

I'll give you #1, but as far as #2 goes, assuming we have caught someone (like Padilla) we try the guy. He's been sitting in a cell as a citizen, for almost four years. If they actually have any evidence that he did anything, they should be able to find a way that satifies both security and right to trial.

The same holds true with what we have done at X-Ray and Abu Gharib. We've been holding people uncharged and untried for years. Doing so demeans out society. If the terrorists win by making us change, then they've won. That is the exact kind of thing that they point to and say we're the "Great Satan."

In the letter al-Zawahri urges Zarqawi — who has declared war on Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority — to avoid bombing mosques and slaughtering hostages to avoid alienating the masses, Whitman said. He also said that al-Zawahri asked Zarqawi for some financial support.

Zawahiri is asking *Zarqawi* for money? Interesting.

It make sense.. al-Qaida is a franchise operation after all.. He is using the name, he should pay the owners. :)