With current info so sketchy, I move we postpone the "Should the U.S. strike back?" debate. Otherwise, we run the risk of profitless divisiveness at this tragic time.

In the meantime, devote your energy to prayer and/or healing.

LemonsAreIcky, you ask if we should respond and if this won't make things worse. Well, it all depends who we are dealing with. I think it goes without saying that we are not dealing with a nation. There are other conclusions we can arrive at which I won't mention here, but I do believe we will find out who committed this and why. If we choose not to do anything about this, then I am afraid this will signal an open season on the United States, for that is the kind of mentality the other side (for lack of a better term) has. I believe we must act swift, and with full force. These people only understand violence, only respect strenght, they do not commit to deplomacy, to dialogue, (at least so it seems thus far). They and others must understand that if anyone repeats such a horrible act to this nation, that the people of the United States will not stand for it and will respond in a matter that won't make it profilable for these terrosist to even consider such acts in the future.

One last comment: During the time leading up to the American involvement in WW II, many had complaint about a Japanese thread and even more many had warned about Hitler's extermination experiment in Germany. Had we responded sooner, perhaps many lives would have been saved. There simply comes a time where one has to forgoe dialogue and turn to violence, especially if that is the kind of resolve the other side will only respond to. It is sad. It is scary. Yet, it is a fact, human history teaches this.

Whatever happnes from here on, may we all simply be able to live in piece and harmony. Let's also think about the children. They are going through a terrible time right now. Today a part of their childhood may have been forever destroyed through these events; Together with the lives lost and the one's touched, this is the real tragedy.

Like I've mentioned in another thread just now, these events do not mean war. There is no war happening between American and Arab nations. These terrorist attacks at the precision work of a very, very small band of terrorists acting on behalf of themselves. The "children" you see celebrating in the streets of Palestine are exactly that - only children. Palestinian adults, as has been reported, are not celebrating. Humanity has been delivered a severe blow the world over as a result of this.

It's important to rally behind our leader and support all action required to punish the perpetrators. It is also important to listen to the words of the Arab leaders, who've called every one to listen to the words of our spiritual leaders: suicidal missions such as these are against the gospels, whether Christian, Islam, Jewish, you name it.

If it's, say, Bin Laden, we need to send a strong message short of invading sovereign nations. Killing innocent Arabs in retaliation will do NOTHING to bring back the dead. All it does is create more retaliations. I have been to some of the news sites and their bulletin boards. The yahoos are out in force. I have never seen so much bigotry in my life posted in those places.

I am glad we are all talking this through...

My hope is that this works itself out, Israel and the PLO can start to talk seriously again and we find and try the cowards responsible for this crap.

quote:

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Originally posted by PeterK:
Palestinian adults, as has been reported, are not celebrating.

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Well, the footage I saw on the news of the celebrating Palestinians showed me otherwise. (Unless you know children with grey hair and beards. Typical, surrounding themselves with children....)

Also, seems like in Egypt , adults are celebrating.

Still, a few fanatics celebrating a tragedy don't necessarily mean there isn't any remorse in the Palestinian community. But you don't hear about THAT, interestingly enough.

Dan

But I'm sure some of them do it simply becuase they have been brought up to think of the US as the enemy, and therefore they don't know any better.

quote:

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Originally posted by Camillu:
But I'm sure some of them do it simply becuase they have been brought up to think of the US as the enemy, and therefore they don't know any better.

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That's probably the correct guess. Something like that happened during the cold war, between the US and the USSR. Seems like while our leaders were trying really hard to kill each other with MAD, the scientists, civilians, and others had no problem with one another.

Chuck Yeager said once that when he was over there, the Soviet pilots were more interested in his past exploits and comparing notes on test pilot stuff to worry about who "hated" each other.

And, a friend of mine who works for NASA said that when he was over there for some work in the 1970's, he had a ball with the other scientists. He said that even though they wouldn't talk about it out loud and in public like we do, they thgouht their leaders were idiots. They wanted free exchange of a lot of things.

So, while I think we need to get "medieval on their butts," we must first find out who did it.

When I got up, all I saw on the TV was "America Under Attack" and I thought it was literally war.

It certainly does make your stomach sink just a little bit though.

Please, don't respond by saying that I don't believe the guy, for I do and I really dont' think he had anything to do with this.

quote:

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Originally posted by PeterK:
Dan, I am sorry you fail to understand me.

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I'm not debating this one Peter. You're not worth the energy.

why?

becuase of the constant Anti-Israel and Anti-American propoganda that they are taught all the time. It's not right, I agree, but just giving a little perspective to this issue.

As far as Yassar Arafat is concerned, I believe publicly he said the right things, but he is still the leader of the PLO and I have no doubt that privately he might be rejoicing just a smidgen.

This hit home a bit for me today. My sis works at a military installation in Maryland, pretty darned close to all the **** .

Know what's also scary?

Two Ryder trucks were stolen from McCarran Airport here in Las Vegas this morning.

My apartment is right under the flight path to McCarran.
The silence is deafening. Though nowhere near what I imagine NYC to be right now....

This is some scary **** folks.

I don't want to lay blame, but policy changes enacted under the last administration have not allowed US intelligence forces to do the work necessary to protect citizens. Gerald Ford also signed into law a bill that disallowed the assassination of foreign heads of state, even they are known to be threats.

Whomever did this -- and it's gotta be that raghead in Afghanistan -- needs to be bombed to hell and back. Send in a shitload of B2s and wipe Afghanistan off the face of the Earth. The Russians, Pakistanis, and Indians all should be willing to grant us air space.

It worked when Reagan bombed Libya and killed Khaddafi's son in 1986. Shut him up for quite a long time.

A quick and decisive strike is what is needed; not legal wrangling.

quote:

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Originally posted by Scott:
Ehm...while I certainly believe Arafat to have been geniune in his speech, he does suffer from a disease that effects the nervous system. Forgot which one.

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quote:

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Originally posted by JJH:
Send in a shitload of B2s and wipe Afghanistan off the face of the Earth.

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So all Afghanians (?) are *******s? I fail to see how killing civilians in Afghanistan is any better than what happened today. Actually, it's worse, because as tragic as todays events were, there are far more civilians in Afghanistan than there were fatalaties today.

quote:

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A quick and decisive strike is what is needed; not legal wrangling.

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The movie ARLINGTON ROAD just refuses to get out of my mind everytime I see the scenes from the accident. Too damm accuracy to be just a palestine's extremists act...

Doesn't it look like an internal job? I mean, how can someone drop an airplane into the Pentagon more than 30 minutes after the first plane crashed the World Trade Center tower and no one does nothing to prevent it??

I have my doubts...

Please, make sure your alcoholic-cocaine-user president realy investigate the case before start droping bombs everywhere.
This will only atract more violence, particulary now that all the terrorist know how easy it is to strike the USA...

quote:

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Originally posted by JJH:

becuase of the constant Anti-Israel and Anti-American propoganda that they are taught all the time. It's not right, I agree, but just giving a little perspective to this issue.

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Oh man... JJH lives his life according to what he learn watching movies like TRUE LIES or RAMBO III.

That's scary!

quote:

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Originally posted by JJH:
Gerald Ford also signed into law a bill that disallowed the assassination of foreign heads of state, even they are known to be threats.

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An order that should be quickly reversed. (I thought that it basically was an executive order preventing the US from "declaring war" on a PERSON, instead of a country..... if removed, it will allow us to declare war on whomever is resposible for this cowardly attack.)

quote:

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A quick and decisive strike is what is needed; not legal wrangling.

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Amen.

Dan

But it's easier to blame all the arabes for everything that goes wrong in USA. "Lets just kill them all and everything will be back to normal".

Yeah, right...

PEOPLE DIED FOR GOD SAKES!!!

1) Calling people "Ragheads" is stupid and serves no fair purpose.

2) Nuking, bombing and annihilating INNOCENT people is wrong. Let's bring Bin Laden (if found to be guilty...my hunch he is) to justice and try his sorry ass. No death penalty because THAT IS WHAT HE WOULD WANT AND HE WOULD BECOME A MARTYR IN HIS RELIGION. Put him into the general prison population in the nastiest prison in the U.S. and let the inmates go buckwild.

3) Do any of you realize what this will do to our freedoms in this country???

4) Oh, so let's turn our country into the scum that does this by repealing the law that keeps us from ASSASSINATIONS of heads of state. Nice move, y'all.

5) Too many hotheads...I donated blood today, did any of you??? If I could, I would be on a plane to NYC to help in any way I can/could. Since I can't I plan to send money, food, whatever needs to be sent to help as well as giving more blood in a couple more days.

I am not trying to incite anybody, just please listen to yourselves. We need to chill out, find the purps and THEN act decisively without stooping to these SCUMBAGS levels. We are way above this as a nation. WAY ABOVE.

[Message edited by Taylor on 09-11-2001]

Anyway, back to normal.
It was just my opinion - no one needs to agree with it. Arnd according to the news I just heard, more people are now considering this hypothesis.

quote:

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Originally posted by Taylor:

I am not trying to incite anybody, just please listen to yourselves. We need to chill out, find the purps and THEN act decisively without stooping to these SCUMBAGS levels. We are way above this as a nation. WAY ABOVE.

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Great words, Taylor. Indeed!

I am proud of my country, I am proud of my President, and I am proud of seeing Democrats and Republican members of Congress and such natural political enemies as Dick Armey and Maxine Waters holding arms together and singing "God Bless America" to show that today, all Americans are certainly not going to be intimidated by the hate-America crap of anyone, be it the terrorists who perpetrated this act, and certainly not the disgusting apologists for hate-America crap like Andre.

America will respond when it has to, and when it does, we will be a unified people, and all sane thinking peoples of the world will applaud the response we make against the perpetrators of one of the greatest atrocities of modern memory. And those who don't reveal what a bunch of sickos they are.

--Brian
Gryffindor Seeker

NP: Pearl Harbor

quote:

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Originally posted by Eric Paddon:
Indeed he does. And as someone who nearly lost a family member today in this catastrophe, I find Andre Lux's disgusting hate-America remarks to be beyond sick.

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Geez... next thing he will say I was the pilot of one of those jets!

Let me stay out of this.
I am not good while dealing with white-power redneck extremists.

These people are scary. And they are in charge of the world now.

Let us pray.

Maybe when you have to deal with the trauma of nearly losing a family member who had to spend an hour climbing out of that World Trade Center from the 82nd floor before it collapsed, as I did today, you'll learn to rediscover your so far non-existent humanity.

quote:

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Originally posted by Eric Paddon:

I am proud of my country, I am proud of my President, and I am proud of seeing Democrats and Republican members of Congress and such natural political...

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Pride.
Pride.
Pride.

I learn that Pride is not a good thing.
It's even one of the Seven Deadly Sins of Christianity...

BTW, my grandfather was tortured and killed by Military Gorillas during the dicatorial state that ruled over Brazil for more than 30 years, sponsored by Washington through CIA, whose agents were here personally to teach torture techniches to the gorillas.

But I don't hate the USA natives for that, since most of you don't even knew about what's going on around here...

bad form on my part.

One should never have an informed opinion.

Raghead is not a racial epithet.
He wears a rag on his head.

[b]16 These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him:
17 A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,
18 An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief,
19 A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.

As you can see Andre these are not deadly sins per se (after all any sin is deadly), they are simply what God hates and finds abominable; and there is a difference between pride for ones country and a proud look. Lastly, this is also part of the Jewish and Arab religions since they also adhere to the old testatment.

Scott