not saying it's tit for tat; also don't believe that if we treat their prisoners well, that they will reply in kind. what i am saying is that we don't need to be breaking any of our own laws while fighting terrorism.

calling this a war is a misnomer. terrorism is a form of criminality-we aren't fighting a country, a standing army-the 21st century version of germany or north korea. the tactics that won us 2 world wars will not work here. i know you can't fight a fair war, i just happen to think this should be treated in a different way, and that our army, navy and air force aren't the tools to be used.
gang wars in l.a. aren't handled by the u.s. military, and terrorism shouldn't and can't be either.

going into afganistan with arms and armor to remove that regime of course is an army job. finding isolated groups of terrorists and those who support them monetarily is not.
we need to assist other countries with law enforcement and investigations, and of course get bank accounts frozen who fund these guys. one of the side effects of the world economy going down the toilet is that $$ getting funneled to these groups is on a rapid decline.

without a doubt?

1-no
2-no
3-we might not ever be bestest buddies, but news like that doesn't help
4-i don't think we should give anyone foreign aid with the hope we are getting something in return. i think we should offer future aid IF they meet certain criteria first, which is what i wrote to my senator., they don't meet the criteria, they don't get the money. i don't think u.s. citizens who believe in equal rights for all should be footing the bill for countries who think half the population is less than human, undeserving of education, and shouldn't leave the house unless completely covered with only their eyes showing. there's a cleric in iraq who wants even one of the eyeholes covered! it's ridiculous.

ie India?

thinking of pakistan in this instance, altho there are plenty of other countries who think women are on par with animals, or just another piece of property. and of course some areas of india still engage in pitching the widow on the funeral pyre of the dead husband, along with all his other 'goods'. pakistan announced a couple of days ago that an area of pakistan will be under islamic law-the newspaper called it a 'particularly harsh' version of islamic law-with women being pretty much stuck at home, girls unable to even go to school. they got tired of fighting militants in the area, so i guess the govt there feels this is the solution to the violence. no doubt it will only embolden those militants to try the same thing elsewhere in pakistan...if they play their cards just right, it will be islam as the law of the land country-wide.
and of course our enlightened ally, saudi arabia, still requires women to have a close male relative escort them any time they leave home-and they're not allowed to drive cars either. a cleric said a woman alone was on par with putting an open can of cat food out in the alley-that one would expect the cats in the neighborhood to immediately come and devour the food-it's their nature to act in that way. so, in his thinking, men can't help themselves either-if a woman there is raped, she's punished along with her attacker, as she must have been 'asking' for it. a man, like a cat, can't help his base nature.
but i digress....

Pakistan has nukes. We need to do a little more than hope they deal with the taliban.

These arent US citizens and it isnt US soil. If you didnt think the analogy fit why did you state it?

You are kidding right? You are comparing gang wars in LA and Iraq and Afganistan?

we need to assist other countries with law enforcement? What exactly are we doing?

Where do you get your info? The world economy is negatively effecting terror? So the heroin that they export isnt selling so well?

Wow.

#4 makes you a racist in the eyes of the left. Who are we to impose our ideals on sovereign nations they cry!! Of course we will be considered the the evil west if we cut funding to those poor downtrodden people (very few of which actually receive the intended aid, you know kinda like here)

you're right, which is why i don't understand their move to placate the taliban, and let them have what they wanted in the swat valley region.

no, i'm not equating gang wars with iraq and afganistan. i am however equating fighting a group of terrorists with a gang. fighting a war versus a country, where you can have embargos, take regions, essentially cut off vital supplies is how you win a war. but fighting individuals in various countries isn't fought the same way as a war. there are groups of these terrorists in virtually every country-are we going to invade, bomb, send marines and the navy to pakistan, syria, iran? here? we have people here who would wish to do us harm. fighting the taliban isn't the same as fighting japan in ww 2. you can't fight it the same way. just think, we have by far the biggest and best armed military in the world, but we're trying to fight a conventional war vs a very unconventional opponent. it's not even guerilla war...i would love to be wrong, but i just don't think we're fighting this 'war' quite the right way. just read that obama is sending another 17k troops to afganistan, which is necessary. we're losing there right now. but there is a difference between our invasions of afganistan/iraq and the rest of the 'war' on terror.
as for the world economy affecting terror, they were discussing the other day on the radio that money being funneled to terrorists groups has dropped dramatically. terrorists without funds can't buy their weapons or make bombs. they didn't say anything about heroin....

i've been called worse. and no, much of the funding doesn't go where it was intended. kind of like how the u.n. oil for food program worked out. not very well from what i remember...

and no, we don't have to impose our ideals...we don't have to send money either. i just think we ought to get more bang for our buck. there for a while, afganistan was our #1 recipient of foreign aid-the last few years before we invaded after 9-11.

fact check


$10.4 billion: Amount of aid the United States pledged for development in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2008. The United States provides a third of all development aid to Afghanistan.

$5 billion: Amount of aid the United States has actually dispersed.

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:...lnk&cd=1&gl=us


Meanwhile Isreal and Egypt both received

$16.76 billion and $11.44 billion respectively and that is only from 2001-2006(one year less)

http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/poli...oreign-aid.htm


http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7...362402,00.html

the "taliban" is a name we attach to a broad range of fundamentalist islamic fighter's in pakistan and afghanistan. many of which have conflicts with other groups we also identify as "taliban".

what the pakistani's are doing is actually (and finally) sort of subtle and smart. they're trying to split off the "taliban" in the swat from the other "taliban" in the northwest territory's.

this is after 15,000 pakistani troops managed to alienate most of the populace in the swat by random shelling of village's to combat about 3,000 "taliban".

we used to imagine a monolithic "communist" conspiracy and so fumbled any chance to exploit the obvious fracture's between russia and china.

we can repeat that error or actually learn from a prior mistake.

there is no "taliban" in the same sense there's a "pakistan". they're decentralized and exploiting that is what we want the pakistani's to do.

versus random shelling. which is what really stupid people would do.

well, i don't remember if it was the paper here or where it was that i read that back in the day...perhaps they meant per capita or something, i have no idea.

edit~i did a bit of googling....usaid, which is all humanitarian aid other than for health (they say that's a separate account, and AIDS aide to south african nations leads the way there) shows afganistan as the #1 recipient. so, perhaps when they break down how foreign aid is doled out (as i'm sure that we didn't send military aid to the taliban regime of afganistan) afganistan was larger...you know how that goes, if they slice the pie just the right way, they can show what they want you to see...or, perhaps whatever i read prefaced the remark that afghanistan was the #1 recipient with 'other than israel and egypt'. it's been too long. but i do remember reading about the amount of aid and thinking, wow we got some return on that investment!

Good.

But Pakistan's problem ought not be the US taxpayers financial burden.

We've proved our point and wasted enough money there. It's time to get out. It's time we get out of there and prop up some pile of dung warlords to keep the Taliban busy.

Obviously we're never going to have the slightest bit of social influence over there - and we sure as hell ain't taking over the country.

we need to send the crips the the bloods over to afghanistan and pakistan and fight gang violence with gang violence!! :D

who would want to? I think this may be evidence all people are not created equal.
Many visitors to Islamic Paradises are often taken aback when they observe the horrifying hygienic condition in these countries, either in public places, or in the privacy of its Islamic citizens. For example, in Islamic countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sudan, Nigeria, Mauritania…and so on, people often spit anywhere they like; urinate and defecate in public places, whenever opportunity permits, oblivious to the fact that human saliva and excrement are potential carriers of deadly germs and viruses. In many Islamic Paradises, public places, such as parks, recreation centres, sports facilities etc., are often littered with obnoxious objects including human faeces. The open sewers on both sides of the road, the raw sewage‑infested railway tracks, the dirt, and litter in uncultivated or unoccupied spaces often produce revulsion to any visitors who dare to experience such horrible unhygienic conditions in many Islamic Paradises

Not only that Muhammad had poor personal hygiene habits, he also recommended many of his followers to resort to extremely dirty, unhealthy, and repulsive acts.
A fasting person often develops terrible stench in his mouth. In Islam, it is considered quite a healthy habit to possess such a bad breath when a Muslim is fasting. A hadis is Sahih Bukhari (7.72.811) states that the smell of the mouth of a fasting person is better to Allah than the smell of musk. This means that a Muslim is not obliged to resort to good oral hygiene during the month of Ramadan. This also means that other people will get reward for smelling the bad odour of a fasting Muslim.

Another incredible hadis in Sunaan Abu Dawud (1.0067) states that water polluted by dead dogs, menstruating clothes and excrement of people is suitable for use for anything.

Now go enjoy breakfast!

Hey..I've been in elevators where I wish I was with a fasting Muslim than dealing with the cologne of others

You didn't go for a swim in the pond hopefully. Is Bllly Sr. Muslim? LOL