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I'm weary of reading all the disinformation here about "the terrorists" and Average American's casual aside in his SocSec article is the final straw! All contrary views are welcomed. Supportive ones, too!
I'm a Leftie and proud of it. Yes, as Karl Rove accused me of doing after 9/11, I wanted to understand the enemy and his motives as a means to identifying an appropriate response to the attack. Here's some of what I've learned.
Osama's motive
Osama bin Laden directed Al Qaeda to strike on us on 9/11 because he wanted the U.S. military presence out of the Middle East, primarily Saudi Arabia. Anyone who says otherwise has misinterpreted a rather extensive record.
Osama bin Laden, Dead or Alive?
In his forthcoming book, the CIA operative who had Osama bin Laden "in his sights" at Tora Bora describes why he needed additional backup special forces before he took the killshot and how his request was denied by General Wally Franks.
Current faces of terrorism
Al Qaeda continues to seek to rid the Middle East of the U.S. military presence and to promote a fanatical fundamentalist form of Islam. The non-Al Qaeda insurgent factions in Iraq are either Iraqis involved in individual turf battles or are outside agitators seeking various political objectives.
Fight them there...
Yes, we could have taken out bin Laden and it might have ended there.
We didn't. Instead, we diverted our military might to taking out a dictator on false premises and got our troops stuck to a nation-building tarbaby. Militarily, the job in Iraq is finished and two-thirds of Iraqis want U.S. troops out of their country.
Why aren't the troops being redeployed as Rep. Murtha suggests? If you truly support the troops, you will be interested in the latest Army Times poll which shows a drop of 10% in the troops' support of Bush's War.
When will it end?
Obviously, it will end when the Bush Administration decides to declare victory.
However, we have built 14 permanent military bases in Iraq, a country equal in area to the state of Idaho so maybe you need to return to the top and reread why we were attacked in the first place.
I see that, unlike some authors at Voice of Arizona, you didn't give yourself a highest-of-all 10 rating. I'll give you one because this article is a breath of fresh air in a congested forum.
The average citizen needs objective information to evaluate the performance of government - period.
The Republican Noise Machine, rather than acting as an agent for the citizenry, has obscured the truth in an avalanche of self-serving sound bites and policies designed to make the concerned citizen dig for it.
Lazy citizens just internalize the party line papp - it's easier than researching a topic and reaching an independent conclusion - then attack the truthtellers with labels rather than rebuttal.
Thank you for setting the record straight!
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