Repubs and warmongers, read and learn

[gymnpoppa]

Gymnppoppa:

I actually have quite the idea of what's going on in the intel community. We had great humint and sigint capabilities, during the Reagan years. Unfirtunately, they were all in Russia Section. We ignored most other threats.

The Clinton administration completely dismanteled the inner workings and the budgets of these agencies, leaving us with our pants down when the shit hit the fan.

CF

No, you're mistaken, we had operatives in the M East, they just weren't entrenched in terrorist organizations....terrorism was only beginning (23 years ago)........at the same time we were downsizing the agencies. And because it takes years to actually infiltrate ANY organization/state, we had nothing. A big part of the reason we have never caught the first terrorist.

 

[spongebob]

my town is the best place to live.

 

[HansNZ]

I never said everyone wants to BE an American. They just want to come to our great country and enjoy the freedom to decide their own futures; to think and say whatever they want--even if it is in opposition to the government that gives them the opportunity to do so

Actually the Europeans I have met who do want to immigrate usually want to go to Australia, not the USA.

Europeans don't have the freedom to decide their own futures? In fact Europeans probably have more chance to do this because their opportunities are not tied so closely to how much money you have as is the case in the US.

To think and say whatever they want? I don't see the US offering these freedoms any more than other developed nations. Your media is such a plutocratic monopoly that I actually doubt that Americans enjoy as much freedom to think and say whatever. Other Western nations are much more politically diverse societies. The US two-party system locks people out from representation who aren't part of the establishment. In fact your country has actively crushed political opposition it doesn't like - i.e. communists. You've lost a great many basic freedoms under the Bush administration.

to educate their children as they choose; to obtain state-of-the-art healthcare; to have the chance to work toward personal wealth and security; and even to have the freedom to try to change this country into their own vision of what it should be.

You are deluded if you think that ordinary Americans can change the system. An American can only impact on the system once they become part of your society's establishment with support from special interest groups.

How is it that Americans somehow can choose their type of education more than others??? Other nations have public or private, religious or secular education. You name it, it is there. In fact money is what determines American educational choices more than any other factor.

State-of-the-art healthcare??? You must be joking. There are 20 million people in your country with no healthcare cover. Point out any other Western nation that has any segment of its population without healthcare cover! There isn't one!

Quality of healthcare in the USA is directly determined by how much money you have. In fact healthcare costs are so out of control in the USA that state-of-the-art medicine is less accessible to ordinary Americans than it is to Europeans.

What's that you say? Europeans have all the same freedoms and opportunites? Of course they do. They were purchased with the blood of Americans. Not once, but twice and who knows how many more times in the future.

I don't quite know what the twice is that you are refering to. I assume the first time is WW1 when the US joined in right at the very end, only engaging in conflict in any real way during the last Anglo-French push into Germany - a Germany which was already collapsing. The USA's influence was only a morale boost - nothing decisive.

As for WW2, I assume you must have learned your history from American movies. It was actually the Russians who defeated Germany. They fought them alone for years and were rolling them back across Europe for 18 months before DDay happened. Have you ever heard of the Battle of Stalingrad? All DDay did was speed up Germany's defeat.

You also forget that the British fought the Germans ALONE while Germany was at the height of its power. The British were the ones who prevented the Germans from conquering their country, not the self-flattering, self-important Americans.

In fact it can be argued that the British and Russians saved YOU! Do you think that if Germany had defeated Great Britain, thereby controlling the greatest navy in the world and all of the industrial might of Western Europe, that the USA would have been safe? Your country was so unprepared for war that a German invasion would have crushed you like a fly. Even if you'd won you'd probably have lost 28 million people like the Russians did when they (not the USA) defeated Germany.

You've also forgotten that other non-european countries fought decisively in WW2, including my own country, which lost war more people in proportion to its population in both wars than the USA did.

You are a typical arrogant American, typically brainwashed by propaganda designed to manipulate you for the benefit of those who ACTUALLY rule your society. Americans would rank up at the top of the list in terms of its levels of false consciousness among ordinary citizens.

 

[HansNZ]

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.

And no one is more adept at manipulating statistics than right wing conservatives.

These statistics are quite straight forward. They are collected the same way across all countries and are quite devoid of the factors that often complicate social statistics for instance. The US government is not challenging the validity of these statistics. It is in fact the US government that provides them.

If you deny the truth of a statistic you have to show why that statistic is false. Simply denying it because you don't like what it shows you is hardly valid.

 

[HansNZ]

Well, there is the first problem. The United Nations is an organization of nations united in hating America. My suggestion would be that they move their headquarters to the Hague that you all love so much.

Actually the UN is an organisation controlled and manipulated by the US. Because it challenges even just a fraction of the false notions that Americans have about themselves, Americans think it is anti-USA when it is more like an American Lap dog.


An analogy would be to a restaurant you are dining in. You complain that it is mistreating you by forgetting to salt your soup, and give you the right cutlery. You complain even more about your mistreatment because you didn't get the correct wine you ordered.

Yet all this time you haven't bothered to look around and see that the other people in the restaurant are only eating porridge, gruel, and water. Some are even having their cutlery taken away from them so that you can have the right spoon which this dispicable "anti-you" restaurant has denied you.

 

[Hangfire]

HansNZ,
I love reading your posts--you are, obviously, an astute, educated person who has studied history and has a grasp of the facts as you understand them.

What is apparent, though, is that the majority of your argument against the US has to do with your preference for socialism and the elimination of the distinction between the poor and the wealthy. That is not how it works here. In America, the poor are provided the basic needs of food, shelter, medicine, education. But they are not provided the same level of benefits as someone who pays his own way, and that is as it should be. I realize that philosphy flies in the face of what you, and the precious U.N., are all about.

If you are looking for a society that is devoid of any economic strata, social pecking order, or whatever you want to call it, look in the history books because that is the only place you will find it. The social irony in America is that the plight of the poor is the work product of the people who claim to want to eliminate poverty. Those are the political leaders who share your social philosophy and have been in power here for the last 40 years--the Democratic party. Your restaurant analogy, while presented in the most intentionally harsh manner, is basically correct. Those who can afford to eat soup, do so. Those who cannot afford it eat gruel, but everybody eats. Perhaps a daily diet of porridge, gruel and water is enough incentive to make the personal changes necessary to be able to afford soup. In America, the opportunity to make those changes exists for everyone.

There are 20 million people in this country of 280 million who do not have healthcare coverage. That is correct---they do not have a healthcare insurance policy with a card that they can present to a physician or hospital. Here is a secret--they still receive medical treatment and that level of treatment is what is appropriate to the condition. The U.S. taxpayers also pay for medical treatment for illegal immigrants, and for their education and their childrens' education. Pregnant Mexican immigrants enter the U.S. illegally just so their children can be born on American soil. What a terrible place to live this must be!

Regarding our freedom here, you always seem to frame the debate in term of politics. I argue that Americans enjoy the utmost individual freedom, and I cannot grasp your comment about our losing a great many freedoms under the Bush administration. Then again, the argument from your side was never about the individual. I suspect that the disgruntled expatriate Americans that you encounter share your mindset and validate your opinions. The vast majority of Americans do not want America to be Europe.

Finally, as you try to marginalize the U.S. involvement in the two world wars, consider that the U.S. was never in danger of being overrrun by Germany---the rest of Europe was. Whether you think their contribution was worthy or not, please do not stoop to sweeping aside the American lives that were lost in stopping European occupation.

Regards.

 

[clusterfoxtrot]

Gym:

We are probably arguing about roughly the same thing here. Mid-East terrorism started much longer than 23 years ago. It started as soon as the UN gave Israel it's independence. From day 1, settlers had to deal with Palestinians attacking settlements and kibbutzes.

The bulk of our Mid-East HumInt assets were not US, but rather Israeli assets. For reasons of physical appearances, it is very difficult to even operate in a capacity which allows to convert operatives on the ground as double agents, much less planting our own assets.

Until the fall of the Berlin wall, greater than 75-80% of all of our intelligence gathering capabilities were devoted to Cyrillic and Baltic language derivatives. Russia section was so big, I knew husbands and wives who both worked in the same "departments" for 20 years and never knew the other worked there as well.

Our biggest problem is that we can snatch any type of Elint or SigInt out of the ether, but we don't have the language specialists to interpret the data. The intelligence community has been warning every administration since Carter about this. Reagan spent much of the budget building offensive capabilities. The Clinton administration spent much of its energies dismantling offensive, defensive, and intelligence gathering capabilities.

The fault of much of this mess lies with the American public, who believes in its invulnerability and wretches at the thought of 1st amendment infrgingements and other privacy invasions that ultimately would be able to avert terrorist attacks. We have to give up some of the rights for the freedom and safety in the long run.

CF

 

[HansNZ]

Well hangfire, I think we will have to agree to disagree, hehe.

I don't want to berate you further for your opinions or engage in any more American bashing. Generally speaking I get on very well with Americans. The USA has many admirable characteristics, but when you meet someone who walks around saying "i'm the best, i'm the greatest, everyone wants to be me, everyone wants me" then you tend to want to give them a reality check.

I also feel that you have misunderstood some of my arguments and my analogies, but never mind. I also feel that your arguments probably make sense from a perspective so prevalent among many Americans. This perspective is grounded in some rather ideologically debatable definitions of freedom or equality or whatever, and some interesting assumptions about how the world works, which people outside the US frequently find somewhat quirky.

You might be surprised to hear that I am not a socialist or a liberal. In fact the ideas that so many Americans apply the label "liberal" to are rather curious. Your arguments are an adaption of essentially liberal assumptions, but you probably wouldn't be labelled a liberal in your country.

In any case we could go on forever. There is another person on here - ttlpkg - who would share most of your opinions. We regularly get into debates, but both of us decide to let things slide once we reach a certain point. We know we'll end up going around in circles. If, however, you want to keep going, we can do so, LOL.

Hans.

 

[HansNZ]

clusterfoxtrot.

Your post is interesting. I remember seeing a news article saying that were little or no people in the intelligence organs before 9/11 able to translate information from Afghanistan. People familiar with Afghan languages were also hard to come by.

So apparently it wasn't necessarily a failure of intelligence gathering or the intelligence system, but a simple lack of reliable interpreters to handle the information.

 

[big4rt]

After earning both my undergad and graduate degrees in politics, both american and international, I have learned that politics is so easily argued AFTER THE FACT. Almost everybody has an ARGUABLE point here. Even if you make a prediction about what is to come you can take all the facts you want and force them to fit your theory or prediction.

The bottom line is this. You all have opinions and are using inductive reasoning to prove your point--maybe not the best way to argue your point. I'm not saying anybody here is right or wrong. I'm saying NOBODY HERE IS OMINISCIENT. Nice arguments in any event. This is interesting.