--- Doug Pensinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Can you give me a good answer on why the part of the > 9/11 investigation > dealing with the Saudis has been kept secret by the > Bush administration? > > The 9/11 attacks were planed financed and carried > out mostly by Saudis. > Why haven't we made them accountable for their > atrocities?
I'm going to take these as one. The most important figure in the 9/11 attacks (other than Bin Laden) was Egyptian. I don't see you declaring that we attack Egypt. Zacarias Moussoui is German. Why arne't you calling for us to attack Germany? It is true that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. It is _not_ true that the Saudi government was involved. It was not. In fact, one of the _non_ redacted portions of the 9/11 report explicitly stated that the Saudi government was entirely uninvolved. Up until about a year ago, the Saudis could probably be best described as passive sponsors of terror. Their government did not sponsor terrorism, but did not do much to stop it either. Since the attacks on Saudi Arabia proper, the Saudi government has been actively participating in attacking Al Qaeda. This is something that is agreed on across the board. The best open source work on the subject has been done by Dan Byman at Georgetown University - if you want more details, I suggest you look at his work. The reason we haven't done anything to the Saudis is because we _need_ the Saudis. They're the only people who can police their own society. We can't do it. Demands for doing something to the Saudis are the most astonishingly facile thing in American politics today. What, exactly, is it we are supposed to do, other that what we are already doing, which is persuading them to crack down on terror and liberalize their society? We can't _force_ them to do it. > > The USGA estimates that the coastal plain of the > Arctic National Wildlife > Refuge would provide us with about 6 months worth of > oil. If we tapped > every possible oil resource in the U.S., drilling > wells in pristine > wilderness and defacing the coastal grandeur of the > Big Sur, how much oil > would that provide us with? I have no idea. Every little bit helps. I love the loaded language here, by the way. The Alaskan oil pipeline was such a catastrophe, after all. The predictions of the environmental movement on such things have been so conclusively wrong, time after time, that it's not like there's a lot of credibility left here. Nor, in fact, do I care. As I said, every little bit helps - every bit of oil we get domestically is oil we don't buy abroad. Isn't that what we're supposed to want? > > How do the people of Nevada feel about storing > nuclear waste? How do > people in general in this country feel about Nuclear > power? Considering > the cost of building Nuclear power plants and > managing its wastes and > factoring in the political opposition, is it really > an economically sound > alternative? Well, if the political opposition wasn't given strength by political scaremongers who are more interested in winning cheap short term votes than doing what's good for the country, it would be economically feasible. I don't think that such people, are, you know, laudable. As for what the people of Nevada want - Nevada is not an independent state. The question is - what is best for the United States. There is no real question that nuclear power would be very good for the US. It is entirely possible that President Bush might lose the election because of his (courageous) stance in favor of Yucca Mountain in Nevada. If he does so, he will lose because of something he did _right_, as the (Kerry-supporting) New Republic just pointed out. > > For years we were able to increase the efficiency of > the cars we drive by > requiring manufacturers to make more economical > cars. With the advent of > hybrid cars this is becoming more practical than > ever. Why then is the > Bush administration suing to keep California from > requiring the industry > to sell efficient vehicles there. In fact, > discouraging conservation and > alternative sources other than nuclear seems to be a > general policy of the > Bush administration. > > Doug Quoting from the Detroit News Auto Insider: "The Bush administration Thursday proposed the first increase in fuel economy requirements for light trucks since 1996, calling for SUVs and pickup trucks to average another 1.5 miles per gallon of gasoline by 2007." That was in 2002. Truly the Saudis must have been thrilled. As for the California thing - I have no idea about the legal issues, as I've never heard of the case you're alluding to. I would point out that such regulations by California raise significant federalist issues on the regulation of interstate commerce. I would also say that the record of "alternative" sources of power is very poor, and the record of nuclear power is _excellent_. So that is a defensible policy. It is certainly _not_ evidence that the President is being bribed or blackmailed. Tell me, Doug, is there anything that a Democrat could do that would bother you? We've already ascertained that when a Republican questions somebody's foreign policy judgment, you think that's unacceptably questioning their patriotism, but when a Democrat explicitly says that Republicans are unpatriotic or unamerican (Wes Clark, Teresa Heinz Kerry) that's okay. Is there any criticism of any Democrat that's ever justifiable, or should we just all shut up and follow the orders of you and Dr. Brin? Is there anything that a Democrat could do (say, claiming that we invaded Afghanistan to build an oil pipeline there) that would bother you at all, or is any tactic acceptable as long as your guys end up in power? ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com _______________________________ Do you Yahoo!? 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