What would be ideal act of civil dis in NH?

[Luke S]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but noone was waterboarded except for a few members of Al Qaeda. Just in case you've forgotten, Al Qaeda was responsible for the deaths of over 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001. Thus I have no problem with Al Qaeda being made to feel the pain that they made those Americans feel on 9/11, who died terrified amongst the smoldering, twisting metal, and the blazing heat and fire of the falling towers, either being incinerated, crushed, vaporized, or falling to their death.

Gladly.  I'll fix it for you.   "Correct me if I'm wrong, but no one was waterboarded except for a few alleged members of Al Qaeda, many of whom had been turned over by bounty hunters and were subsequently deemed harmless, some of whom were underage, and all of whom were denied any opportunity to defend themselves, face their accusers, and challenge the charges against them."

Alleged?? Underaged?? Denied an opportunity to defend themselves?? Caleb, Caleb, Caleb..... What I had always heard was that these were people who were members of Al Qaeda. And not underaged at all, but full-grown Al Qaeda members who were high up on the chain of command. And who were known to be such. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7229169.stm

What accounts for this discrepancy, Caleb?

[Free libertarian]

 So why didn't we attack Saudi Arabia after 9/11 Luke?

[Russell Kanning]

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but no one was waterboarded except for a few alleged members of Al Qaeda

no al qaeda were harmed in the making of this war ... they work for the government

[Russell Kanning]

So why didn't we attack Saudi Arabia after 9/11 Luke?

Why didn't the government attack them?

[highline]

Luke,

I just noticed that you have "pro-freedom" in your signature.

You need to remove it, as you clearly are not.

You want to put me in a jail cell and brand me a criminal if I choose to put things in my body. Therefore, you restrict my freedom.  You are not pro-freedom and that fact that you believe that you are again shows how your morals are in check.

[Caleb]

Alleged?? Underaged?? Denied an opportunity to defend themselves?? Caleb, Caleb, Caleb..... What I had always heard was that these were people who were members of Al Qaeda. And not underaged at all, but full-grown Al Qaeda members who were high up on the chain of command. And who were known to be such. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7229169.stm

What accounts for this discrepancy, Caleb?

We can't exactly say who has been waterboarded specifically, because the only thing we have to go on is the Bush Administration, which is, by definition, full of shit. But we can say that abuse of underage prisoners has gone on.

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Former_chaplain_at_Guantanamo_tells_about_abuse_and_underage_prisoners

We can also say that most of them are completely innocent of any sort of terrorism activities and have been denied any opportunity to defend themselves

http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/guantanamo/2007/myths.htm

[J’raxis 270145]

Personally, I wish there would have been a law like this in Michigan, because I used to go to a school with a bunch of rich kids where they were always getting all their new little "toys" for Christmas and their birthdays, and they sometimes got laser pointers, and then they would always act like "the cool kid on the block", which was fine, except as part of acting like "the cool kid on the block", they would take their laser pointer and shine it in people's eyes without any regard for whether or not people wanted it shined in their eyes or not. A law in Michigan like the law in NH could have gotten the laser pointers taken away from them, and would have saved me and a lot of other people from having laser pointers shined in our eyes all the time by all the "cool kids".

Did your eyes actually get damaged by this? Or do you just wish there oughtta be a law against these cool kids on the block annoying you?

[J’raxis 270145]

"Reasonable" public safety laws aren't something we're going after—yet, at least...

we're not doing what?

Well, the few ideas I've seen, like serving alcohol to minors and violating that new usury law, didn't seem to go over well, mostly due to reasons of public perception that these laws are "good laws." I'm all for getting rid of all of this nonsense, but not when it's going to cause a backlash.

[Luke S]

Personally, I wish there would have been a law like this in Michigan, because I used to go to a school with a bunch of rich kids where they were always getting all their new little "toys" for Christmas and their birthdays, and they sometimes got laser pointers, and then they would always act like "the cool kid on the block", which was fine, except as part of acting like "the cool kid on the block", they would take their laser pointer and shine it in people's eyes without any regard for whether or not people wanted it shined in their eyes or not. A law in Michigan like the law in NH could have gotten the laser pointers taken away from them, and would have saved me and a lot of other people from having laser pointers shined in our eyes all the time by all the "cool kids".

Did your eyes actually get damaged by this? Or do you just wish there oughtta be a law against these cool kids on the block annoying you?

Jraxis, that's like saying there shouldn't be a law against against assault and battery, so long as it it only just "annoyed the person", and didn't cause injury.

[Luke S]

So why didn't we attack Saudi Arabia after 9/11 Luke?

Why would we have attacked Saudi Arabia after 9/11, Free Libertarian? Was the Saudi Arabian gov't responsible for the attacks? No. Al Qaeda was.

[J’raxis 270145]

So why didn't we attack Saudi Arabia after 9/11 Luke?

Why would we have attacked Saudi Arabia after 9/11, Free Libertarian? Was the Saudi Arabian gov't responsible for the attacks? No. Al Qaeda was.

Except the U.S. didn't attack Al Qaeda, they attacked Afghanistan, whom they claimed were aiding Al Qaeda. And the same claim can be made for Saudi Arabia—there's a significant faction in their government that's supportive of Al Qaeda—yet the U.S. didn't attack them.

[Luke S]

Luke,

I just noticed that you have "pro-freedom" in your signature.

You need to remove it, as you clearly are not.

You want to put me in a jail cell and brand me a criminal if I choose to put things in my body. Therefore, you restrict my freedom.  You are not pro-freedom and that fact that you believe that you are again shows how your morals are in check.

I will admit that I am not pro-freedom according to the libertarian definition of freedom. The libertarian definition of freedom means free-for-all-do-whatever-you-want. And I will never be pro-free-for-all-do-whatever-you-want.

I am pro-freedom according to the conservative definition of freedom, which is the true definition of freedom. Which is that good, law abiding citizens deserve freedom. Druggies, criminals, and terrorists do not deserve freedom. And the good, law abiding citizens have the freedom to incarcerate the druggies, criminals, and terrorists. They may either do so by their own hand, or they may enlist police officers and/or the military to do it for them, or they may do a mixture of both. (In practice, a mixture of both is the best policy.)

[Luke S]

So why didn't we attack Saudi Arabia after 9/11 Luke?

Why would we have attacked Saudi Arabia after 9/11, Free Libertarian? Was the Saudi Arabian gov't responsible for the attacks? No. Al Qaeda was.

Except the U.S. didn't attack Al Qaeda, they attacked Afghanistan, whom they claimed were aiding Al Qaeda. And the same claim can be made for Saudi Arabia—there's a significant faction in their government that's supportive of Al Qaeda—yet the U.S. didn't attack them.

Waging war against Al Qaeda is different and a lot harder than waging war against a nation. This is because Al Qaeda, rather than being a fixed nation in a fixed location on Earth, is a terrorist group with agents all around the globe that constantly move to different locations all around the globe. Therefore the only way to attack Al Qaeda, besides hunting down individual Al Qaeda members, is to attack those who finance Al Qaeda, like the Taliban's old regime in Afghanistan, and Saddam Hussein's old regime in Iraq. If the Saudi gov't also financed Al Qaeda like the Taliban regime and Saddam's regime did, then Saudi Arabia might find themselves next, in fact, if what you say is true, and if I have anything to say about it, they will find themselves next. But as for why we aren't attacking them right now, if you haven't noticed, we're kinda busy in Afghanistan and Iraq right now. We'll get to them after we have the situations in Afghanistan and Iraq cleared up.

[NJLiberty]

I suspect we stayed out of Saudi Arabia more for political and economic reasons than because we believed they didn't have anything to do with 9/11.

Afghanistan was an easy target to choose. They were politically isolated, had little to offer economically except poppies, and were relatively weak militarily, with the added bonus of pretty publicly supporting terrorism. Pakistan quickly decided to change sides and became our "ally" in order to avoid the same fate.

In spite of the fact that Saddam had been on the USA payroll for decades, he had outlived his usefulness so he was the next to go. Again, it was politically safe since everyone knew what a horrible regime he ran, and gave us the opportunity to set up a new puppet state in the oil fields since the Saudis were feeling their oats and weren't willing to lay down as much as they had in the past. Iraq also borders on Iran which makes it a convenient base for operations there.

Saudi Arabia is an unattractive target for many reasons. One, we are very heavily tied to them politically. They have been as strong an ally as we have had over there through the years, and it would be much harder to paint them out to be the bad guys than it was Saddam. Two, Mecca and Medina are both in Saudi Arabia and unless we really want a full fledged holy war, those are two areas to avoid. Three, pure simple economics. Saudi Arabia invests a lot of money propping up this screwed up economy of ours. We are feeling a little bit of that right now since they are not being as cooperative as they have in the past. If they ever decided to really squeeze we would be in a world of hurt. We stand to gain very little by invading the Saudis. It makes no sense to go there.

If this war were really about Al-Qaeda then yes, we would have had to do something about it. The Saudis are certainly involved with that organization, as are many countries including us to some degree. Osama bin Laden was on the USA payroll too for a very long time. Hell, he still could be for all we know. But this war is about things much larger than Al-Qaeda. Do you all honestly think with the technology that we have and the money we have to throw around that in seven years we honestly couldn't find bin Laden? If we really wanted him we would have him already, but this war isn't about bin Laden, or Al-Qaeda, or even 9/11.

9/11 was simply the catalyst needed to launch a whole lot of programs domestically and internationally that the feds, and I suspect other groups, wanted to launch but couldn't without "provocation, just as Oklahoma City and Columbine were the catalysts for a whole lot of programs domestically. It is much easier to pass onerous laws and get public approval for policies when the people are scared. Why do you think you never hear much about gun control until there is a school shooting or other mass public shooting?

We won't go into Saudi Arabia because it is inexpedient for us. They could be entirely responsible for 9/11 and I don't think we would go there. It just doesn't make sense from the gov't point of view.

George

[Tom Sawyer]

Druggies... do not deserve freedom.

Bigot 

Try replacing the word druggies with some others.

Jews...  do not deserve freedom.
Niggers...  do not deserve freedom.
Fags...   do not deserve freedom.

I bet you are second generation "Just say no". The gooberment created an enviroment that made this kind of bigotry exceptable. It served the purpose to give ignorant people a group of people to blame our troubles on.

Dopers are stupid... well Carl Sagan smoked pot, you smarter than Carl Sagan?