Haha. You're all wrong.

Okay so that's jumping the gun. But if this information the Iraqis are releasing is accurate, the war isn't the one sided shit that the cut-and-run-supporters say it is. It makes total sense given what's happening in Iraq so I don't doubt it.

Emphasis/comments mine..

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BAGHDAD, Iraq - A blueprint for trying to start a war between the United States and
Iranwas among a "huge treasure" of documents found in the hideout of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraqi officials said Thursday.

The document, purporting to reflect al-Qaida policy and its cooperation with groups loyal to ousted President Saddam Hussein, also appear to show that the insurgency in Iraq was weakening.

The al-Qaida in Iraq document was translated and released by Iraqi National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie. There was no way to independently confirm the authenticity of the information attributed to al-Qaida.

Although the office of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said the document was found in al-Zarqawi's hideout following a June 7 airstrike that killed him, U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said the document had in fact been found in a previous raid as part of an ongoing three-week operation to track al-Zarqawi.

"We can verify that this information did come off some kind of computer asset that was at a safe location," he said. "This was prior to the al-Zarqawi safe house."

The document also said al-Zarqawi planned to try to destroy the relationship between the United States and its Shiite allies in Iraq.

While the coalition was continuing to suffer human losses, "time is now beginning to be of service to the American forces and harmful to the resistance," the document said.

The document said the insurgency was being hurt by, among other things, the U.S. military's program to train Iraqi security forces, by massive arrests and seizures of weapons, by tightening the militants' financial outlets, and by creating divisions within its ranks.

"Generally speaking and despite the gloomy present situation, we find that the best solution in order to get out of this crisis is to involve the U.S. forces in waging a war against another country or any hostile groups," the document said, as quoted by al-Maliki's office.

According to the summary, insurgents were being weakened by operations against them and by their failure to attract recruits. To give new impetus to the insurgency, they would have to change tactics, it added.

"We mean specifically attempting to escalate the tension between America and Iran, and American and the Shiite in Iraq," it quoted the documents as saying, especially among moderate followers of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential Shiite cleric in Iraq.

"Creating disputes between America and them could hinder the U.S. cooperation with them, and subsequently weaken this kind of alliance between Shiites and the Americans," it said, adding that "the best solution is to get America involved in a war against another country and this would bring benefits."

They included "opening a new front" for the U.S. military and releasing some of the "pressure exerted on the resistance."

It pointed to clashes in 2004 between U.S. forces and followers of radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army militia as evidence of the benefits of such a strategy. Al-Sadr and his growing followers are among the fiercest advocates of a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

It said the "results obtained during the struggle between U.S. army and al-Mahdi army is an example of the benefits to be gained by such struggle."

Al-Maliki's office said the document provides "the broad guidelines of the program of the Saddamists and the takfiris inside al-Zarqawi's group."

"Takfiri" is a reference to an extremist ideology that urges Muslims to kill anyone they consider an infidel, even fellow Muslims. It is the ideology that many Iraqis, especially in the Shiite community, use to describe al-Zarqawi and his followers.

The language contained in the document was different from the vocabulary used by al-Qaida statements posted on the Web. For example, it does not refer to the Americans as "Crusaders" nor use the term "rejectionists" to allude to Shiites.

Troller/poster: Yeah, of course in private this is the case, because they know those terms are bullshit and the web postings are propaganda.

Much of what is in the statement from al-Rubaie echoes results that the U.S. military and the Iraqi government say they are seeking. It also appears to reinforce American and Iraqi arguments that al-Qaida in Iraq and its operatives are a group of imported extremists bent on killing innocent civilians.

Al-Qaida in Iraq has been blamed for thousands of deaths, hundreds of bombings, kidnappings and assassinations in the past three years. Al-Qaida in Iraq's own hatred of the Shiites is well-documented and al-Zarqawi has repeatedly called on Sunnis to rise up and kill them.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060615/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_terror_blueprint_3

Well, go ahead, let's hear about how it's not credible, fake, etc, and dismiss it... Just like how all the sketchy stuff that is critical of the president is dismissed because....oh wait.. never mind--it's not.

I always say don't ever discuss politics or religion with friends let alone strangers, it's a volatile subject, and those who don't agree w/ you will consider you not only stupid which would be fine...but evil as well.

That being said.....I think we are naive to think they, (our enemies) don't know just how to divide us and pit us against ourselves, they are hardly fools. We at times can be our own worst enemy. We stand for freedom and acceptance almost to a fault. We have grand ideas about how things SHOULD be...but it isn't that way.

There are people who hate and despise ALL Americans and their Allies, and consider it in THEIR God's plan to eradicate us all. You can't talk to these people, you can't reason w/ them, it is what it is.

So then what must we do? Live and let live? Sure I'm all for that, I really am....until they bring it to us......as they did on 9/11, (and multiple times before). Then we have to fight, because we have to draw a line in the sand and say NO MORE!

They WILL NOT STOP!

I support the War
I support Bush
I support the Patriot Act
I support any inconvenience I have to suffer to make my world a better place

Freedom is NOT and never has been Free

all I have to say is, "bout fucking time"

You are right. Freedom cost a $1.05

Briana Dawson

funny, cuz everyone that says that, ends up talking about politics and religion - of the 'entrenched, protect the status-quo' type. nope, can't talk about anything else, 'cuz... that'd be talking politics and religion. we don't do that. (but...) stop it!! we don't talk about it 'round here.

911, 911, 911... god bless america. g'night.

Well politics and religion are the two most agonizing subjects for conversation ever dreamed up, after all. That's why most people need to take breaks from this crap all the time. Unless you're wierd.

Sure, but sometimes it seems like "one half of ourselves" feels that our enemies are impossible to defeat, with an endless supply of mindless suicide bombers, a bottomless pit of funding, an unflinching morale that makes it impossible to discourage them, and with a massive availability of brilliant and charismatic (in a twisted form) leaders that can instantly fill each others places and keep a large low-tech force coordinated and organized.

You know, if I was in some kind of armed force and I was told to go and set up traps, and then run away and HIDE from the enemy.... my morale wouldn't be all that good. I mean, who wouldn't believe that things were going pretty well if that was your plan???

I cannot say this as eloquently as Nyx has above, but she has hit the nail on the head. It would be wonderful if everything in the world could be solved with reasoned discussion, but we don't live in that world. We have learned that weak response to an attack upon the U.S. results in stronger attacks (i.e. sending a few tomahawks at training camps after the USS Cole was bombed). This was viewed as cowardly and impotant by the religious extremists aligned against us. Pulling out of Somalia when our nose was bloodied also taught them that we were a paper tiger. The old adage that "the best defense is a good offense" holds very true!

I support the war on terror.

I support taking the fight to the middle east to find our enemies on THEIR turf.

I support the patriot act (and strengthening it).

I support federal identity cards.

I support allowing federal troops to control our borders.

Aren't we all citizens of a state first? The federal government isn't suppose to be big brother and tagging us with an ID card, that's up to our states and they do it quite well with state I.D. and driver licensing.

Briana Dawson

All that sounds VERY expensive!

Actually that's pretty hit and miss. Do you know who makes the very best fake I.D.'s? Each state's department of transportation...... Show up with a birth certificate, fishing license, and social security card (some states don't even require this many "identifying documents" then tell them you lost your driver's license. They'll make you a new one for less than ten dollars. Funny thing is, you can show up with someone elses papers and they'll give you a shiny new driver's license with your picture, but not your information, upon it. These places are premised on customer service, not proper identification. Each state has it's own driver's license design, standards for obtaining one (or a replacement), and expectations of the counter personnel issuing them. So basically the "good job" done by the states is at the mercy of the weakest link in that chain. Some of those links are pretty weak.

I find this really hilarious. Every statistic you look at shows that civilian deaths, incididents of sectarian violence, and insurgent violence are all way up over last year, which was way up over the year before that. Now they find this piece of paper and all those statistics are suddenly forgotten. Whoo hoo, we're winning! We've got a golden ticket! Let us know how the wonderful future of the middle east turned out when you get back from your trip to wonkaville.

Losing your civil rights is not an inconvenience.

I'd rather die in a terrorist attack than live in a police state. Freedom is not free, and if I have to sacrifice my life to be free, so be it.

"Give me freedom or give me death!" Patrick Henry

Wow, mine was $2.79 a gallon last time I filled up.

Of course those numbers are up. They've switched more and more to attacking soft targets because the tougher ones can kill them. Coalition casualties are down. And that only tells half the story anyway.. actually, less than half.

I hope it's all true. I'll wait to feel optimistic until things actually start getting better. The whole thing just seems fishy to me.

I'm also hoping that there's something to the theory that things are a bigger mess during the process of cleaning up than they were before or after.

Wow, what a load of propaganda! So all these people who hate AND despise us just all of a sudden started attacking us? Out of the blue? For no real reason? They just hate us? And they won't stop? Ever?

It's thinking like that, that will keep us bogged down in Iraq forever. Our enemies aren't emotional four year olds. They don't just hate for hate's sake. They believe that they have legitimate grievances against the US and our allies. We may disagree, but to ignore those grievances is to prolong the war in Iraq and the "war on terror". Summing the whole dispute up with "they just hate us" is juvenile. The way to fight terror is to delegitimize the terrorists' arguments for their war while using legal and military tactics to combat the terrorists themselves. In Iraq we have to do the same.

That being said, you can never stand for freedom "to a fault". Your willingness to throw out the liberty that thousands of American servicemen and women died for over the last two centuries spits in the face of their sacrifice. If you want to exchange your liberty for safety, fine, go live somewhere else. In America we've fought for a couple of hundred years for the rights and freedoms we have now, and I for one am not going to let a bunch of politicians dismantle my country's liberty for an empty promise of security. I'm not going to lay down and give up the freedom that thousands of us have died for so the people who brought us the Hurricane Katrina response can promise us safety.

Americans aren't the cowards that you think we are. If the Bill of Rights makes me a little less safe, I'm willing to live with that. Other Americans have sacrificed their lives to make sure that I live in freedom and I'm not going to dishonor their memory by giving it up because I'm scared.

We have a lot of freedom in the US. At $1.05 per freedom, take a look here to see just how much freedom we each have.

Of course they'll stop.... once their ability/will to wage war upon us has been destroyed.



The argument of capitulation... If we would only compromise our values, beliefs, and needs..... why then the sky would be a little more blue... the grass a little more green.... and the religious zealots would love us! This is a foolish ideal. The zealots need us to hate. Demonizing us is the best way to keep their jihad alive. We need to support stable governments that are not ruled by (or held hostage by) theocrats. As far as military tactics go, we need to destroy their networks of support. We need to do this as decisively and effectively as possible.



This is a straw argument during wartime. We have restricted movement, freedom of information, and freedom of speech during wartime in the past. If we stomped our feet demanding all of this in say 1941, we may not have been able to defeat our enemies. Our biggest problem is that our country has very little sense of itself. We align ourselves within factions, but not as a nation. This has been, and continues to be, our greatest shortcoming. We view oursleves as Americans in a very general sense, but consider our political beliefs far quicker than we consider our fellow countrymen. After all, conservatives (or liberals depending upon which side of the fence you have deposited yourself) are evil. We need to find a common ground that we, as Americans, can agree that we are one. This has mostly been the fault of our political parties. They preach divisiveness and we gobble up each golden morsel....



Preserving the country they fought to create and preserve is hardly dishonoring their memory. Defeating our enemies, securing our borders, having a method of identifying who is actually supposed to be here would hardly dishonor the memory of those who made sacrifices for their flag, country, and fellow Americans.

The more civil liberty that is taken away... the more likely there will eventually be civil unrest in the United States.

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." -- Benjamin Franklin

This isn't a war in the conventional sense. Anybody with a little effort can build a bomb and blow up a school bus. You can't destroy their ability to use terrorist tactics. You can only change the conditions that lead people to commit acts of terrorism.





I'm not arguing for capitulation. I'm not arguing for compromising our values. I don't want the religious zealots, Muslim or Christian, to love me. The White House is for those things, I'm not. Capitulation is when we give up our liberty, whether we give it up to foreigners or politicians in Washington. Compromising our values? Liberty is our core value. No liberty means no America. We've had a half century of supporting "stable" governments in the Middle East, and it's one of the things that's gotten us into this mess. All to often "stable" has meant authoritarian and repressive. We've supported dictators and monarchs for too long. In one of the richest regions of the world we've helped create one of the most backward places to grow up. "Abdul" doesn't hate us for our freedom. "Abdul" is probably pretty pissed off at his own government and our foreign and economic policies. So when the recruiter for Al-Qaeda comes along, "Abdul" is willing to listen. Bombing "Abdul's" house might temporarily "destroy their networks of support", but it will also make his family and neighbors more sympathetic to that same Al-Qaeda recruiter. And that is exactly what has happened in Iraq.





We have restricted liberties when the nation has been in danger of being conquered. This is not 1941. We are not facing the threat of Nazi domination of Europe and Japanese domination of Asia. The "war" on terror isn't a conventional war. Comparing it to World War II isn't useful. A better comparison is to the Cold War. This is a struggle of ideas, and cannot be won solely by military action. During the Cold War we saw a huge expansion of civil liberties in this country. Did that hurt us? If anything it helped convince millions of people held prisoner in the Communist world that America was the model to follow. It was the idea of liberty that defeated global communism. If you turn the struggle against terrorism into a nationalist fight we will lose. It isn't about American power versus the power of the Muslim fundamentalists. It's about ideas. We'll win if we can show them that they can be free, Muslim, democratic and modern. If it becomes a nationalist war, we might as well withdraw from the Middle East right now. You can't effectively fight suicide bombers with tanks. You have to change the conditions that create suicide bombers. Military action may be needed to help create security, but it cannot be relied on by itself. And having our President tell the world "They hate us for our freedom" is counterproductive. That mindset won't win the war of ideas. That mindset won't win the "war" on terror.





In America our soldiers take an oath to defend the Constitution. Our elected officials do the same. What would it matter if our enemies were defeated and our borders secured if we sacrificed our liberty to do so? Do you seriously think the politicians who are busy dismantling our freedom are going to give it back when we ask? During World War II certain liberties were restricted "for the duration of the hostilities." And those hostilities ended when Germany and Japan signed peace treaties. The "war" on terror won't end like that. The "war" on terror will end when the politicians who are stealing our liberty tell us it has ended, and they've made it pretty clear that won't happen anytime soon.

Generations of American military men have fought and died to preserve our liberty. They risked everything. Too many of us are ready to sacrifice everything they fought for so we don't have to take any risks ourselves. "We have to listen in on your phone calls to protect you from terrorists" is already becoming "...to protect you from criminals." It won't be long before it will be "...to protect you from yourselves."

all yall talk about changing what makes them hate us, they don't just hate us for our foreign policy, they hate us for our civilization. to them we are "infidels" who must be converted or eradicated. Are you willing to convert to Islam?