ex-idaho

They offered him up but Bush declined. It was after the assault had already begun and it was more politically expediant to take Afganastan.

Genghis Pwn

That is a complete lie. Source?

ex-idaho

Here you go. This is from the Houston Chronicle.

Bush rejects Taliban conditional offer on bin Laden

Genghis Pwn

Yeah, right, AFTER the war started. Bush gave them a clear chance to turn over bin Laden in his State of the Union address and through Pakistan. My point remains... in the end, Mullah Omar cared more about his religious fanaticism than about holding onto power. If you deny that you are a fool.

ex-idaho

What the hell are you talking about? He offered to hand over Bin Laden if he could remain in power and that proof of Bin Ladens involvement with the attacks. Bush rejected the offer because it did not serve his political interest. Which is exactly what I claimed. How does that show his willingness to die for his ideology?

RLV

Afaik, none of them was a ruling member of the Iranian government, were they?

My point is that suicidal fanatics don't hold high positions of power. It's people in the high positions of power in Iran the people who would be able to pass these bombs to terrorists, not just the average fanatic suicidal bomber.

I'm afraid your analysis of the situation in Afghanistan is not very precise. You assume that the Mullah Omar was able to safely detain Bin Laden and give him to the US. This is plainly not true. First, because Bin Laden had an army of his own quite able to defend him agaist the Taliban forces. Second, because had the Mullah Omar given the order to betray Bin Laden to the Great Satan, his life expectancy would have been counted in days, maybe hours. How would you think the Taliban would react to their leader giving one of their heroes to the Great Satan?

I think it's quite safe to say that the Mullah Omar was in a far greater risk to his personal safety by betraying Bin Laden than by facing the US.
Actually, this has been proven right. As far as I know, Omar is alive and kicking.

What, Pascal's wager coming from an infidel?

Of course I'm making wager with these millions. But it's a wager with a one-to-one thousand-millions chance to lose.

The wager you propose is to kill tends of thousands of people (as happened in Afghanistan and Iraq) only to *maybe* lower marginally the far-off chance of that nuclear attack happening. (*)

The 100% sure death of, say, 10.000 people vs. a 0,000001 % chance of the death of, say, 10 M. people. This is the wager. What's your bet?


(*) - And only if we believe two very dubious assumptions:
1- That the threat is real, which given Bush government's track record of lies, is something not ensured.
2- That attacking Iran is going to diminish the risk of a nculear terrorist attacks. You know, if there were WMD in Iraq, it is much more likely that these are now in the hands of terrrorists than before the attack. Likewise, to keep attacking islamic countries is unlikely to reduce the willingness of islamic fanatics to attack the US.


R.L.V.
~~#~~

Genghis Pwn

What part of "unconditional" don't you understand? That was a complete lie, anway, and an obvious one. The Pakistani ISI knew what the fuck was going on.

Optional

A. True. Well, they exist, I'm not so sure that 'plenty' would be an appropriate adjective, difficult to say. But that is stipulated. The question is, how likely are they to lay hands on a nuke?

B. They DID offer to turn bin Ladin over to a third party country. Twice. BushCo turned 'em down flat. Said the only acceptable people to turn him over to was us. Their problem was that bin Ladin had a very high level of support amongst the people AND all levels of government. They were already in the midst of a civil war with the northern alliance, if they had handed bin Ladin over to the US, they would have been overthrown by their own people within seconds. Politically speaking, we backed 'em into a corner. From their POV, the only valid course of action was to stand fast, hope that they could hold off the northern alliance and the US wouldn't get too involved, and in the mean time make detailed plans to bug out before the hammer fell. Which, if you'll remember, they mostly did.

Point being, people in power do what they can to stay in power. If Iran gets nukes, they won't send 'em off out of the country with some dodgy terrorist types, they'll keep them to defend their OWN selves from the US, the MORE the BETTER. Thing is, everybody understands very well that if any US city gets nuked in a terrorist attack, the US response will be swift and overwhelming. And, significantly, somewhat indiscriminate. The identity of the country that gets glassed will have more to do with which arab country (which has the ability to make nukes) we are currently the most pissed off at than any attempts at finding the real culprit. Any arab country that has a functioning nuke power plant would be suspect... Therefore, those leaders are just as eager that the US NOT get nuked as WE are.

Now, I'm not saying it's a GOOD idea that ANYBODY gets nukes, particularly countries like Iran. We should absolutely engage in aggressive diplomacy to try to prevent that. What I'm saying is that the risks involved do not warrent the severe and entirely predictable backlash that will hit us if we go around attacking anybody we don't like. Iran is not the only possible place that terrorists could get nukes... There are currently several countries that could concievably sell a nuke to a terrorist... And if I'm not mistaken, not all the nukes of the former USSR ever got accounted for.

The extra risk involved in Iran having nuke capability does not equal the extra risk involved in pissing off the entire world to a MUCH greater degree than we have even now when nukes are available through other markets.

-me

ex-idaho

Who said anyting about "unconditional"? I said that Omar offered him up and you called me a liar. When I provided proof that he was offered up you claimed that it somehow proved that Omar was willing to die for his fundy beliefs. Now I'm a liar again because I don't understand unconditional?

Dr Rick

Keep it cool and civil, please, or I will lock the thread.

Thanks