I've been trying to rationalize this out with a friend but it's not working. Ok. McCain is scared that if we leave Iraq then Al Qaeda will trumpet "victory" and without doubt come to attack the US. What exactly does Al Qaeda have to attack us with? Some IEDs or AK47s. I mean obviously they have no weapon vehicle to hit the US. The only attack they have made was by taking hostage an airplane that the GOVT was suppose to be protecting in the first place. Al Qaeda is essentially a gang. No army no navy no military. Yet McCain and others are so terrified of these people. I just don't get it.
After just over 7 years Al Qaeda still exists. If you cannot eliminate what essentially is a gang after 7 years, should you not be a skeptic for success? When touring a gang infested neighborhood, you can see a bunch of hoodlums. Of them, which one belongs to the gang you seek? When in Rome, right? Same thing with Al Qaeda, line up a thousand Muslims dressed the same. Of them you are looking for two Al Qaeda figures. Which of them all are the two you seek? Water boarding looking a little better now? Maybe, maybe not.
I doubt McCain is scared of Al Qaida. He's scared of another Vietnam, but it's too late to change that, Iraq is already a snowballing disaster. If elected, he must not make the mistake of Nixon and prolong the conflict another six years trying to achieve "Peace with Honor". We never achieved that and had to cut our losses and leave someone else's civil war in the hands of its own people to settle . . . years too late. You oversimplify. And you forget that Al Qaida also bombed two of our embassies in Africa, almost sank the USS Cole, executed train bombings in Spain and England, and almost pulled off the Millennium Bombings which would have been terror on a 9/11 scale. It is true that with their base in Afghanistan destroyed and their international funding disrupted and seized, Al Qaida is greatly weakened. Still if they are allowed to build new bases in Pakistan, eventually they will try another major attack in the US or Europe. Meanwhile they enjoy being given easy American targets in Iraq that they can actually get to and hurt with AK-47's, C-4, and RPG's. That's what we get for trying to fight their kind of fight on their turf instead of the airpower- and technology-heavy American Way of War, in which we are virtually invincible. Where do you get the notion that people are terrified of Al Qaida? These are the implacable enemies of the United States and we hate and loath them. Fear that we might be hurt again by these scum doesn't signify cowardice. We have been forced, at long last, to finally respect their capabilities and go after them with everything we have got. It will force us to make hard decisions regarding Pakistan, lest Al Qaida rebuild their bases and financial network there. But you are correct, Al Qaida is not a traditional, national enemy. It is a relatively small group of international criminals. They are best fought, not with armies, but with political action, economic warfare, police investigation, covert special forces assaults, and overt air strikes. Of course, if Pakistan continues to shelter them, a conventional and perhaps nuclear war may be needed to destroy them. I don't think this will happen because it would be national suicide for Pakistan. But it could. And our military and financial position is much weaker than it should be because of the Iraq debacle.
Well, that seems to be political talk to appeal to the conservative republican base which he still hasn't been able to win over. Remember that since WMD's were not found in Iraq, Bush's battlecry became that if we left Iraq then it would become a safehaven for terrorists...Even though there was no connection between Al-Qaeda and Sadamm Hussein, they really arrived in Iraq once we invaded/liberated and haven't left since.
:911: Apparently, you have. My personal strategy is to kill every one of those MFers including anyone within a 50 yard radius of an al qaeda soldier.
Apparently you forgot that they took hostage of 2 planes that your GOVT was suppose to be protecting.
Are you sure? The kill radius of the Small Diameter Bomb SDB (the hottest new weapon in the inventory and now being produced in huge numbers) is 200 yards. It comes in two flavors, a GPS-guided version for fixed targets and a new version for moving targets with a classified guidance system.
