When you kill 3,000 innocent civilians, you've completely invalidated any possible motive you may of had. Period. No beef can justify this. Even if their "reasons" seem valid to you, it could never provide justification for the act....so why waste time with their reasons?
After all, isn't this a primary argument of the anti-war folks? Killing innocent Iraqi's simply doesn't justify the removal of a dictator?
----- Original Message -----
From: Kevin Graeme
To: CF-Community
Sent: Thursday, July 22, 2004 8:36 AM
Subject: Re: Report on Hard Ball last night on 911
I'm not absolving the agencies involved, but keep in mind that
hindsight is easy. Some thoughts on some of the points:
1. Malaysia meeting
Losing track of people is not that surprising when you consider just
how many people they get hits on as potential threats.
2. The calls
I'm not sure what the details are when they say the NSA was listening
to the calls to one of the hijackers from al-Qaida. The NSA "listens"
to all traffic through the major comm channels. Google Echelon for an
example of this.
3. The walk-in
Crackpots walk in to the FBI all the time with conspiracy stories.
4. The sighting
I've seen the video from the drone. It's impossible to tell exactly
who it is. And while we were aware of bin Laden as a threat, the US
has a policy to not just up and assassinate people. That would be
seen as an extremely dishonorable practice that wouldn't sit well with
the majority of Americans. Remember, the assasination of a minor
prince started WWI.
5. The Phoenix memo
How many memos are written each year? It's not an excuse, just a
reality of the context of the problem.
6. Moussaoui arrest
There were a number of things that bother me about this one, but the
criticism of "the FBI wouldn't allow agents to search his computer" is
an example of the FBI following the Constitution. The fourth
amendment. Yes it's horrible that we missed out on this evidence, but
it's one of the risks of the greater protections the Constitution
affords. Of course, the Bush administration wants to do away with the
Constitution.
I'll stop since the others are more of the same. It basically boils
down to the fact that it's hard to be vigilant against an unexpected
and unknown threat. And it's hard to know the real threats from the
vast majority of false ones.
The harsh truth of life is that we can never be completely safe.
Changing our laws to give the government greater powers won't change
that. It's entirely possible that giving them greater powers would
lead to actions which will anger more people and increase the
potential for more attacks.
To me, the greatest failing of the 9/11 report is that while it looked
at how it happened, it didn't look at the last 50 years or so of our
involvement in the middle east to try and determine WHY someone would
be so motivated to attack us.
-Kevin
<snip>
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