Well, I must disagree, in detail.

Bin Laden's editorial commentary does not display deep study and understanding of the West. It shows a superficial familiarity with anti-war rhetoric and al-Jazeera TV.

It is not smart, in the least, for bin Laden to make ham-handed overtures of affection to Western leftists. They are studiously trying to pretend that his war against the West doesn't exist, and as he notes himself, their ability to restrain Western military action is thus far unsuccessful. This does not help them, or him.

Burch says he then pushes Christian religious buttons, which is completely mystifying. I don't know how reassuring it is supposed to be to Christians to know that OBL has not yet "incinerated" millions of Egyptian Copts. Anyone who thinks that complimenting Jesus will make Christians want to convert to Islam doesn't know many Christians.

Burch obviously believes that bin Laden is just making propaganda to fool gullible people that he intends to destroy. Granted, OBL drags out everything from mortgages to JFK conspiracy theory, but at bottom I am convinced that bin Laden really believes the things he is saying, and those beliefs are not the beliefs of a brilliant mind.

Take the Marxian rhetoric, for example. They say that OBL converted to Islam while studying economics, which I always thought was a little odd. What OBL would have studied at Jeddah in the 1970s was not "economics" as we understand it, but a lot of crap about colonialism and land-stealing Jews. It is not Marxism per se, but the toxic dreck of European Marxism found everywhere in the Third World. Mix that with Qutb and the Quran and you have what bin Laden really believes.

He also really believes that he can convince, or that Allah can compel, the West to abandon democracy and pluralism and adopt Islamist fascism. Granted, there are plenty of lackwits on our side that encourage that belief, but that does not make it a smart belief.

OBL brings up things like the alleged mortgage crisis not because he is trying to "push buttons", but because he really believes that these things are the work of Allah, preparing the final victory of Islam. How smart is that?

Finally, there is another thing that OBL learned at Jeddah, and that's the Islamist version of the Crusades. It's true that Eastern Christians enjoyed lower taxes under the Caliphate than they did under the Byzantine emperors, who were always raising taxes to pay for their wars. That was under moderate Hellenistic Muslim rulers, who have been utterly extinct for more than a thousand years thanks to people like bin Laden. Even so, the periodic repressions caused most Christians to flee to the West. Today the repression is more than periodic, and it isn't so easy to flee it. I don't think OBL really understands that, because OBL is a dumbass.

He isn't trying to deceive us into dropping our guard. When he tells us how great things will be, he is as sincere as any Bolshevik ever was. And when he turns around and kills, the contradiction doesn't bother him any more than it would any other stupid, murdering animal.

Partisian hackery notwitstanding("one of the main organs of leftist communication"), it's got a few good points, and misses others. Such as, "Marxist idealogy appeals to the world's downtrodden, since it might sound better to them than living on the edge of poverty or a crazy leader away from it". This isn't exactly original though - check out Slate's review of The Al Qaeda reader , from more than a month ago. Sadly, I've only read it for 5 minutes in a bookstore - maybe in October. And while we're on the topic of books, anyone read Scheuer's soon-to-be-bestselling book?

And really, any good commentary mentions how his writings/ramblings/pronouncements directly appeal to those who dislike America's policies - which is worldwide, and more than just Americans, and it's important to realize that more than just cast stones at political opposites. And that they lay out complaints more than their desires of conquest, or appeals to those who believe in Islam. Good commentary would also mention how, for more than 15 years, he has wanted the West to attack a Muslim state. Does he have to come out and say "please don't throw me in the Briar patch?"

As for OBL, this video means one thing to me, and one thing only - he is still alive, which is the biggest failure for our country in 25 years. This may be the only thing that most of this country could agree on.
"Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped,
your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains
will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man,
however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must
ensue."

I've let Greg know I crossposted this here; I hope he'll be able to check in, but he's a busy guy at the moment. Thanks for the responses so far.

Fake. But accurate. Made by a "partisan hack" .

I have the impression that if this was a fake, our NSA could tell that it was faked. And also, nobody but NSA could fake it without somebody else noticing.

Imagine a sort of ultimate false-flag operation. Bin Ladin dead in afghanistan along with his top guys. NSA communicating in his name with some of the associates they know how to contact. He mostly never meets anybody in person "for security reasons". Every time somebody new contacts him, NSA gets a new link. But they don't shut down everything they know about; the ones they know about are mostly not the problem. They just harvest selected individuals occasionally to verify their data.

If that were the case, how would this video fit in? Could it be designed in a way that subtly benefits the USA?

Could it be designed in a way that subtly benefits the Bush administration apart from the USA?

If not, that would imply that it's probably really a free bin Ladin and not a captured Bin Ladin or a fake.

Dave -- Marxist ideology does NOT appeal to the world's downtrodden.

The way to prosperity is clear: South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Coastal China, post-war Japan, etc. Rule of law, minimal corruption, property rights, some semblance of some sort of consensual government even if it's an oligarchy that sometimes listens.

This is well-known by everyone.

Marxist ideology appeals to wealthy or middle class ideologues who want to be rulers like Saddam, Castro, Morales, Chavez, etc. A means to rally the young lions to upset the old lions. That's it. Kingship by another name.

Of course we attacked Muslim states in Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan under Bush-Clinton, Afghanistan, Iraq under Bush 2. So Osama got his wish years ago.

Overall Osama thinks most Americans are like the Kos-DU websites he reads. He believes Americans are weak, frightened by casualties, easily cowed. For a man who made his success by killing people, including his mentor Abdullah Azzam (and sons, by carbomb) it's easy to see why he believes Americans will collapse into his rule if he just KILLS enough of us.

Most Muslims probably feel the same way: enough violence and intimidation and we will fall into Sharia law. Weakness and appeasement of violent and tribal people tends to encourage that.

The reason of course that OBL is alive is that he is in Pakistan and Dems and Reps alike fear war with nuclear Pakistan. We could kill OBL but it would cost around 3,000 US casualties, around 20,000 civilians, and lead to war with Pakistan (likely with an AQ/Taliban figure running the country and controlling the nukes). We could of course simply hit Pakistan with a surprise attack neutralizing it's nukes and use our own to carpet bomb Waziristan but that would kill millions.

Joe Biden famously asked his supporters a "hypothetical" about Osama being found in Waziristan, killable at the cost of several thousand US casualties and tens of thousands of dead Pakistanis. To a man they all said "don't do anything."

We know very well where Osama is. PC-Multiculturalism the gift of Dems and Libs as well as it's hand-maiden over-lawyering and "lawfare" have led to a failure of will to kill him.

Dems (aided by weak RINOs) would impeach GWB if he killed Osama. Because they aren't willing to do what needs be done: kill a lot of people, including innocents, and sacrifice the lives of our soldiers. They don't live in the real world, instead one where Superman and the Justice League can bring in Osama like Super-cops without killing anyone.

Osama is right about one thing: Dems don't live in the real world. Nearly 42% are Truthers. Sigh. We will continue to fight a PC war filled with lawfare until some AQ atrocity killing millions of Americans allows us to sweep Dems away from any power and do what needs doing.

#6 Jim Rockford: Unfortunately for the West as well as for Islam, in such a case "what needs doing" will become brutally simple: Kill them all. Leave a radioactive desert littered with glass-lined, smoking, glowing holes where the Dar al-Islam used to be.

Just about anything else is preferable to that, even if you are not a Moslem. Because doing such a thing would leave a scar in the soul of the West - the torch-bearers of civilisation and the only hope for the long-term survival of humanity - that will never heal.

Letting it get to that point may well lead to the extinction of humanity. Unfortunately again, there are no Western leaders of vision enough to prevent it.

Where is Jack Ryan when we need him?

"I have the impression that if this was a fake, our NSA could tell that it was faked. And also, nobody but NSA could fake it without somebody else noticing."

It's in nobody's interest for Bin Laden to be dead. The jihadists may love their martyrs, but they mostly love for them to be anonymous young men; what they need is a figure to rally around, someone they can say "this man is beating the Great Satan". The doves in the West need him to be alive to make your point J (which is queasily congruent with the Jihadists') that the United States has proven impotent to take out its greatest individual enemy. The hawks find it useful to have a single figure who exemplifies what the west is fighting against (which may be why this doppleganger's message is just so gosh-darn weasley; the jihadists aren't idiots, at least not the ones who convince other jihadis to make an early withdrawal on the 72 virgins account).

Since so many people need a living OBL, he exists. Sort of like Santa Claus.

Except Santa isn't in actuality organic detritus spicing up some Afghan geological anomaly.

The way to prosperity, and the use or property right to get there, is quite clear - that doesn't mean that people believe that, or that "everyone" knows that. I hope that Andrew Mwenda(among others) become more listened to. If the Socialist tells you they'll give you 10 hours of electricity, clean water, feed your children and give you an education, and the Capitalist tells you if you work hard you may or may not get those things - what will happen to the uninformed? Sadly, our consumption of Oil fuels these successful South American socialists. That doesn't explain the popularity in India, Europe, South Africa, much of South Asia and the rest of Africa. Libya still calls itself an Islamic Socialist state, I believe. The Socialists I met in India(to call out one country) almost fully came from the poorer sides- not your middle class proposition. And yes, I do equate Socialists and the original article's Marxian statement.

bin Laden is a suspect in Azzam's death - and others believe rivan Afghans, Mossad, Pakistan or (pre al Queda) Egyption Jihad. Crazies include the CIA and a vengeful Soviet Union. I don't believe this has ever been proved anywhere - you have proof?

Here's Biden last statement about killing civilians to take out bin Laden. And, while this generally tends to be the "how big of a bomb would you drop on him" question, it goes against what you said. In fact, you are substantially misrepresenting his statement, which calls out "a small faction" - and doesn't at all mention Pakistanis, and in fact - says they had no answer, and did not say don't do it. I can find a small faction of Republicans who believe that every Muslim in the US should be locked up. Should I attribute this to all, or to prominent politicians?

And as to the 42% of Progressive/Liberals statement? If you read through the survey, you'll see 20% of Conservative/Very Conservative believe similar(about 80/400). But please, let's base all of our knowledge on a poll pushed by a organization that wants people to believe this very thing, and one that asked much less then a thousand people.

Please continue making up hypothetical and totally unsubstantiated "Dems would impeach" statements, dems live in a fantasy world - it can only move the conversation forward, and not at all bring about opposition for opposition's sake.

Mark at #9
The jihadists may love their martyrs, but they mostly love for them to be anonymous young men; what they need is a figure to rally around, someone they can say "this man is beating the Great Satan"

I found a link after the video came out (can't remember it now) that both said this is partially the work of Gadahn, and the imagery is very specific. The younger, stronger beard, no rifle to indicate a lack of worries, same background to represent no change.

I don't think this is Bin Laden.

Apart from the fake-looking beard and a guy who looks much like Bin Laden but his nose is too wide, he doesn't talk like Bin Laden.

I always thought that Bin Laden sounded more like Jesus in many of the "difficult", "problem", or apocalypitc parts of the Gospels. In my belief system, Bin Laden is not Christ or even Christ-like, but he is an anti-Christ or false prophet that the Bible warns about.

So I kind of expect Bin Laden's pronouncements to have a similar quality to the "Sayings Gospels" or the pronouncements from the canonic Gospels or other sources attributed to Jesus. At the very least, Bin Laden and Jesus are Middle Eastern religious teachers, for which there are probably centuries-old traditions even predating Jesus. Beyond that minimum of comparison, Bin Laden may have delusions of being a Messiah and as such may be trying to imitate stylistic aspects of Jesus as best he can.

So let's understand, when I say that Bin Laden is channeling Jesus, I don't mean to disrespect Christ or elevate Bin Laden as the Bible states that there will be many false prophets pretending to be Jesus.

In the recent Bin Laden video, Bin Laden is not channeling Jesus. Would Jesus ever adopt the talking points of the Democratic Congressional Caucus? No, Jesus would never talk that way but instead would use all manner of metaphorical language mixed with apocalyptic imagary. That "strong horse-weak horse" thing was channeling Jesus. Complaining that the Democrats are even too weak to surrender might be snarky U.S. domestic politics, but Jesus never used snark as is fashionable in punditry and Web commentary these days, and I don't think the real Bin Laden ever talked that way either.

I find it interesting that every release of a bin Laden video is accompanied by (desperate, lame) efforts by the Right wing in the US to link his alleged ideology with those of their political opponents.

Certainly opens a window into the mindset of such individuals.

Alan, interestingly every release of a Bin Laden video contains lame attempts by Bin Laden to link his ideology with those same political opponents.

Catholic Father Jonathan Morris, on Fox News this morning, said the West is reading bin Laden's speech wrong. We are reading it in a political way and he says there is nothing political about it.

According to Father Morris, the speech is 100% religious. Comparing other religions, specifically Christianity, to Islam and touting the superiority of Islam. And the one sentence summation of the speech is "convert to Islam, or die."

According to Father Morris, the speech is 100% religious. Comparing other religions, specifically Christianity, to Islam and touting the superiority of Islam. And the one sentence summation of the speech is "convert to Islam, or die."

He sums it up correctly. It is 100% religious, but it is a religion that intends to impose an Islamic ruling class over the entire world, by force if necessary. So it is 100% political as well - to bin Laden there is no difference.

Bin Laden is like the Marxists of the 1920s who believed that the entire world was going to become Communist, not in some far future, but within 5-10 years. They did not regard this as a threat, of course. To them this was a good thing and an inevitable thing, and therefore anyone who opposed it must inevitably perish. Bin Laden is telling us the same thing.

The Marxists who believed this were not all stupid people. But they were people who had a dismally poor understanding of the world outside of their parochial socialist circles, where everyone they knew believed the same things they did. There you have bin Laden as well.

Greg Burch responds to Glen Wishard (#1). Excerpt:

I don't disagree with the tenor of this -- that bin Laden really believes the things he's saying. Indeed, I think he does. Initially, my post was intended to simply call attention to the nature of the rhetoric he's using. Instead of straight-forward, warlike calls to jihad....

....he and Adam Gadahn (who I think is probably chiefly responsible for the substance of this message) are picking and choosing from the elements of their doctrinal foundation to appeal to those in the West who will support withdrawal from the anti-jihad struggle.

(Direct link to the whole thing)

Greg's point appears to be that the bin Ladin-Gadahn message machine is doing its best to effectively propagandize to the non-Ummah, and this most recent one is the slickest yet.

I think that's a valid point, and it is distinct from some others' past imputations that Dems/Libs/the Left were using talking points from, or indirectly driven by, al Qaida.

I think ObL's trying to come on "kinder, gentler" myself. This is rife with true irony, not the least of which is touched on by Glen in #1 above.

And when he turns around and kills, the contradiction doesn't bother him any more than it would any other stupid, murdering animal.

Or any far-gone fanatical manic-depressive with delusional psychosis, for that matter. "I tried to warn you! I really tried! It's just God's Will!..."

Addendum.

I think Glen is right, and it's ham-handed if you actually pay attention to AQ's history and drives. OTOH, if you are looking at the kind of snap judgments some distracted or hopeful person might make, gosh, it sounds like the old guy is mellowing. Greg, I think, is conscious of the former but remarking on the latter. Gee, the bottle doesn't say "poison" on it any more... ObL as "good hesbah-cop" is indeed darkly comical.

I don't disagree with Burch's reply, except to say that we are still focusing on the idea that bin Laden is trying to spin a message tailored for our ears. To some extent that is true, but it is less important than understanding the genuine beliefs that bin Laden is articulating.

To most people in the West, the mixture of Marxism and medieval jihad seems strange. Western prejudice declares that religion and atheism are two opposite things, which have opposite causes and opposite effects, and therefore cannot be reconciled.

That's dead wrong, and bin Laden is living proof. The conglomeration of Marxism and Islam is not at all strange in his world, it has been freely mixing there for almost a century. Soviet political influence was powerful in the region, of course, and so was the influence of the European "anti-colonial" left. Nazism and Italian fascism were thrown into the mix as well, without breeding any fatal contradiction. Muslim countries (Egypt, Syria, Iraq) adopted the political principles of socialism and/or fascism without having it imposed on them by the Soviets, and without displacing Islam.

There's nothing mysterious about it. Marx took revolutionary Hegelian mysticism and re-worded it as an atheistic science of history. It's even easier to re-write it again as apocalyptic Islamism. You can call it Weltgeist, Dialectical Materialism, or Allah; the mechanism is the same.

This is why bin Laden is smiling. The smile is genuine - as genuine as the intention to kill, kill, kill.

Bin Laden is not telling us that we have a choice between our religions and his, or between our secular pluralism and his world-caliphate. He is not even telling that our views are wrong, precisely. He is telling us that our way of life is obsolete and that we will be liberated by a new way of life. Islam, the Third Revelation of God, will replace Christianity as Christianity replaced Judaism. (This being the Islamist version of the historical progression from Feudalism to Capitalism to Socialism.)

Like the Marxist, bin Laden believes that this world-historical process can be opposed, but not defeated. It is not a choice, but an inevitable process. It will be imposed by human hands with all necessary violence, but its real agent is Allah. Many of us will die - Allah is Merciful, but not to be sneezed at - and those of us who survive will be living in a better, happier world. This is good news, by his lights, and that's why he's so happy to be telling us about it.

Finally, is bin Laden a delusional psychotic? Maybe, but not necessarily. Not all the people who believe this are insane, any more than all Marxists and Nazis were insane. He's a product of his environment, and of politicism, which is a self-inflicted insanity.

I've always wondered, when one of these comes out...

...even assuming it's genuine, why aren't we publicly doubting its authenticity? "That's not Bin Laden! It's just some guy that looks a little like him, with some makeup. Look, they even had to dye his beard 'cause he's nowhere old enough."

Deprecating the authenticity of the tape would do two things - reduce his support by making it seem like AQ was trying to prop up his image as a figurehead, and/or prompt Bin Laden to do something more concrete to assert his continued survival... which would also increase the chances of him doing something that would make it possible to catch (or bomb) him.

So, seriously, why is this not happening? Sure, doubtless he'd make a video saying "lol, they're saying I'm dead now, but I'm not," but assuming that you eventually flushed him out with this tactic, you could always crow afterwards. "Look, we lured him out with our cunning plan!"

Avatar, I believe Mark Poling said it pretty well. Everybody who wants to play off what bin Ladin says -- republicans who want to say he's a democrat, democrats who want to say Bush should have killed him and didn't, the Bush administration who wants to scare people with him, the jihadists themselves, etc -- all these people want to accept that he's alive the way kids want to believe in Santa Claus.

So whether he's real or not, why should they doubt him? If they believe in him, then it's just like he's real whether he's actually alive or not. Like Tinker Belle.

If AQ has replaced him, it doesn't really matter which faceless terrorist is doing that job. The only way Bin Ladin really matters is as a media figure, and for that purpose a fake is just as good as the real thing.

It's that way pretty much throughout the media world. If Jimmy Carter got replaced with an actor who in every case tried to do just what Carter would have done, would it make any difference?

If Reagan had been replaced by some actor who did just what Reagan would have done, who besides Nancy would have cared?

Text transcript at
http://counterterrorismblog.org/2007/09/obl_transcript.php

"I find it interesting that every release of a bin Laden video is accompanied by (desperate, lame) efforts by the Right wing in the US to link his alleged ideology with those of their political opponents"

"I don't disagree with Burch's reply, except to say that we are still focusing on the idea that bin Laden is trying to spin a message tailored for our ears. To some extent that is true, but it is less important than understanding the genuine beliefs that bin Laden is articulating."

That's my point exactly. This is not Bin Laden but some understudy ready copy written by a committee that wants to be a "wedge" in the American political debate. The real Bin Laden would not be identifiable with American political talking points.

Is it a right-wing defamation of the postion of many Democrats that "the American people are tired of the War in Iraq, the War was started under questionable pretext and is being waged to no good purpose, it is time to formulate an exit strategy and leave." The alleged Bin Laden is doing a "Tokyo Rose", i.e. speaking with an American idiom and appealing to reasonable sentiments that a person doesn't want to end up dead fighting a war to which some question the purpose.

Is it offensive to say that Bin Laden is saying "hey American people, listen to what the Democratic Party has to say; hey Democrats, live up to your promise to end the war." If it is offensive that Bin Laden is agreeing with you, then restate the position of where a proper Democrat stands on this.

But my point is that this is not the real Bin Laden. The real Bin Laden would say something to the effect that "the American people are weak because they are tiring of the war and we will defeat America." The fake Bin Laden is saying that coming to the realization that the war is futile and American soldiers should come home is a good thing.

How likely is it that "Bin Ladin" will release a video shortly before the November election urging americans to vote for the Democrat?

By aping leftist sentiments, he tries to discredit them.

AQ wants to keep US troops bogged down in iraq. The original plan was to get us bogged down in aghanistan and beat us the same way they beat the russians. When we split our forces and concentrated on iraq instead we played into their hands. Now the GOP and AQ have a de facto alliance -- they both want to keep our army in iraq for the indefinite future. This is AQ's contribution to that alliance.

It doesn't really matter whether this video is put out by AQ or put out by NSA for Bush. The effect is the same.

Bin Laden the person hasn't been relevant for years - bin Laden is a label, a trademark, representing a certain point of view.

And with this latest video, the OBL brand just jumped the shark. The Muslim world's reaction to it is WTF? The media isn't giving OBL the top of the fold today. He's not even on the NYTimes' front page.

After 9/11, some in the press were comparing OBL to Jesus. In 2001, Time magazine wanted to make him Man of the Year. Now he's being bumped off CNN's front page by a missing child story and the news that Americans are getting fat.

Osama isn't saying what the press wants to hear, and they're wondering, 'what's up with the bad dye job?' The Global warming and the Kyoto treaty stuff are downright funny. Instead of splashing his image on every surface and quoting him relentlessly (as they used to do) the press is embarrassed by him.

We've been wondering how to deal with the symbiotic link between the press and terrorism. Whoever made this video has (probably unintentionally) shown us the way. Destroy the press' faith in (and love of) the brand.

Without the love and adoration of the press, OBL ™ will go where all the failed brands go - to the remainder bins of Africa, to be sold to the poor. Back where it started.

Now the GOP and AQ have a de facto alliance -- they both want to keep our army in iraq for the indefinite future.

Well, you're right that they both have the same objective. They both want to win, and they both want the other guy to quit.

Nobody wants to fight indefinitely in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's absurd.

Read the article and I disagree. The author makes the same mistake Bin Laden makes. Both assume anyone on the left gives 2 cents what he says.

The left does not support the war in Iraq because they disagree with the right on the nature and magnitude of the threat. The right sees Iraq as a lynch pin in the effort to avert a coming clash of civilizations driven by fundamentalist Islamic terrorism and fueled by the despotic regimes of the region (or whatever variant on this you hold, not important to my point). The left sees it as colossal overkill, a 14 lane suspension bridge over a puddle, doing more harm than good.

In other words they disagree with the right because to them Bin Laden is not a harbinger of the future but simply the head of the worlds nastiest criminal gang. And who cares what one of those has to say exactly?

The left does what it does because of it's internal domestic political logic. He's whistling into a windstorm here.

If he were a smart SOB, he'd know that his words aren't worth the paper they're printed on unless he comes up with some kind of action to make himself relevant again. And here's where he comes up lacking, there doesn't seem to be anything to his strategy other than sit around and hope the Americans go home.

He tried to deploy his field forces against the American troops in Iraq only to find out that troops really do fight as they are trained. He trained his troops to slaughter civilians, so slaughter civilians is what they did. Now he's alienated every other faction in Iraq.

Meanwhile, since other than these little missives, he's never seen or heard of and he's made no other international actions attributable to him, he's had his lunch eaten by Ahmadinejad, who's stolen the spotlight as 'Biggest anti-Western Muslim'.

The US has succeeded in shredding his financial network, most of his senior officers have been killed, and his networks been recently quite impotent.

This is nothing more than a rather pathetic attempt to attempt to position himself to take credit for an American pullout. And ironically I don't think it would succeed, I suspect it's Ahmadinejad who will take credit for forcing the US out, and he'll likely be believed.

He's made the mistake of pissing away the initiative and now he's trying to figure out how to get himself out of the hole he's dug himself into (pun intended). Prettily worded desperation, but I definitely here desperation there.

here, hear...argh, mind says one thing, fingers type another...bad fingers...

Glen, for a de facto alliance they don't have to agree about anything. They just have to cooperate.

AQ wants our troops pinned down like the russians were, spending more than we can afford until our economy collapses. From a mujahedin-centric view they naturally think the collapse of the USSR was all about them, and they want to do it again, this time to us. They want us to keep fighting an incredibly-expensive occupation until our economy collapses, and there's no telling how long that would take. So that means they want to keep us there indefinitely.

GOP wants our troops to stay in iraq until they win, on the assumption that if we stay long enough we will win. There's no telling how long that will take so they want to keep us there indefinitely.

AQ pretends they're the enemy we have to beat so we'll be persuaded to keep fighting in iraq. GOP pretends like AQ is the enemy we have to beat so we'll be persuaded to keep fighting in iraq. Both of them want us to continue until some distant event that neither of them can predict.

AQ tries to keep GOP in power so GOP will keep us in iraq until the economy collapses. GOP tries to keep AQ looking important for the same reasons.

De facto alliance.

I'm sorry, OBL wants us to attack Afghanistan?

Dave --

No one believes that Hugo or Fidel or Robert or Evo have any intention WHATSOEVER of doing anything but stealing as much money as possible from the entire nation. To distribute to their own nobility. They are thugs indistinguishable from Somoza or Pinochet. None of them build roads, sewers, houses, clean water supplies, electricity.

A look at Cuba shows no change in the housing stock since 1958.

No one has any illusions -- they simply want a new "king" for which they may be part of his court. Nothing new. [You'll note that Morales, Chavez, and the like have consipicously NOT pledged clean water, electricity, decent housing -- only various bread/circus handouts and more militias, etc.]

Ahmadinejad is alleged by Iranian exiles to have personally conducted executions; his captives from the Embassy remember him well as a brutal torturer. Osama is the main suspect in Azzam's death and regardless has made his career killing people (why would the CIA of Joe Wilson even be CAPABLE of killing Azzam much less want to)? Saddam made a career out of killing people, up close and personal, for pleasure as well as politics.

There is no "deal" to be made with those people. You can't bargain with them the way you can say, the thoroughly bourgeois Prime Minister of Spain. This is why Dems are not serious, adult people. They think someone like Zapatero is indistinguishable from Osama. [Terry Waite wants "dialogue" with Osama.]

I'm sorry I don't have the link -- but Biden's supporters to a man said they didn't want to deal with killing Pakistanis or US casualties to get bin Laden. Kucinich in the link says no killing at all (fetishized weakness for "peace" aka surrender). Biden says "it depends how many" (though his supporters said projected deaths would nix it).

No wonder bin Laden and Dem talking points appear the same. BOTH bin Laden and Dems hate the idea of America -- that the average man is free to live his own life (and see this as the source of all evil -- Global Warming to "oppression of Muslims"). BOTH want to destroy the idea of America and the reality. Both have convicted America of various crimes: support for Israel, Global Warming, un-PC behavior, etc. Both long for America to lose it's power, and quote Chomsky and Michael Moore. Both bin Laden and Dems want America to be defeated in Iraq AND Afghanistan.

Dems live in a fantasy world, one where we can "magically" get bin Laden (even though most Dems blame Bush for 9/11) without killing people and US casualties. They complain about Torah Bora but have no alternatives -- we know Bin Laden is in Pakistan and Dems are not wanting to do anything to kill him.

[Dog that didn't bark: NOT A SINGLE DEM has called for increasing the military.]

#27 from J Thomas: "AQ tries to keep GOP in power so GOP will keep us in iraq until the economy collapses. GOP tries to keep AQ looking important for the same reasons.

De facto alliance."

Sheer genius.

This must also connect somehow to your grand vision of America as the new Nazis, indirectly bringing about a better world by forcing everyone else to unite to defeat it.

-

Back on topic, I don't think Osama bin Laden makes jihad terror popular because he is so charismatic, rather I think he is an easy sell to Muslims because jihad terror is culturally suitable for them. His wits are irrelevant, it's the system that channels legitimacy in his direction that's the problem.

I must give him credit for his superior timing. Every time we get another love letter from Osama, people have been saying he must be dead by now. He's fighting his war at his pace, which is slower than our pace, and we have not become adjusted to that.

He's allowing ample time for his people to bring off some major jihad operations between his announcements, such as the "Bojinka II" Transatlantic Airline Plot.

There's an endless supply of would be jihad killers.

They just aren't performing very well, not even the highly educated and privileged ones, such as doctors.

J Thomas,

You've got a number of big problems with your analysis. First, pinning down your opponents forces only works if you can then exploit another front. Something AQ has not done. Indeed they've been pissing away their personnel, capital, and credibility in Iraq for no gain anywhere at all.

Second, you assume AQ operates in a vacuum. While they're busy making themselves irrelevant in Iraq, their Shi'ite competition in Iran is busily winning support throughout the Middle East by thumbing their nose at the West without having to make speeches from undisclosed crevices. Not to mention doing a far more credible job of mucking things up in Iraq for us.

Third, I don't know where you get the idea we can't economically sustain the war? Frankly we're barely even breathing hard. Go look at the government budget numbers. Look at defense spending. Then go look at entitlements. Baby boomers retiring are a million times the threat to the economy than Iraq.

For the record, we're still in Germany, Japan, and South Korea. The economy hasn't collapsed yet. Of course, as I'm sure you'd point out we aren't spending as much there as we are in Iraq. Which is my point, we once spent far more in those places than we ever have in Iraq. The costs need not stay permanently high.

Are you proposing he's waiting for Social Security to finally kick the can?

AQ pretends they're the enemy we have to beat so we'll be persuaded to keep fighting in iraq. GOP pretends like AQ is the enemy we have to beat so we'll be persuaded to keep fighting in iraq.

So AQ is pretending to fight in Iraq? So are you claiming they are not in Iraq? Or are you claiming we're not fighting AQ in Iraq but pretending we are? Are they there or not? If they only have a token force in Iraq, where is AQ then? They haven't been heard of outside of Iraq or Afghanistan now for some time.

Besides, if you read the Mil press releases, they are pretty clear that AQI is only one faction, and at this point one of the smaller. The Shi'ite militias sponsored by Iran seem to be the much larger threat at this point.

AQ tries to keep GOP in power so GOP will keep us in iraq until the economy collapses. GOP tries to keep AQ looking important for the same reasons.

The GOP is trying to keep us in Iraq until the economy collapses? Damn, Rove leaves and already GOP strategy is a mess...

From a mujahedin-centric view they naturally think the collapse of the USSR was all about them, and they want to do it again, this time to us.

Yes, that seemed to be the strategy. Unfortunately for them, we're not the USSR. Our military is good for more than just all out army size maneuvers in Central Europe. And our economy isn't the same either. In the Soviet Union they stood in lines for bread. We stand in line for IPhones. Clearly an improvement.

We beat the Taliban in Afghanistan by turning the locals, something the Soviets never could (didn't even try really). Now we're doing the same thing in Iraq (finally).

Which is the biggest whole in your argument, if AQ was shooting for an infinite war instead of trying to force the US out, isn't car bombing random factions and turning everyone against them counterproductive? If they were in for the long haul that strategy really doesn't make sense, as their increasing marginalization proves?

We beat the Taliban in Afghanistan by turning the locals, something the Soviets never could (didn't even try really). Now we're doing the same thing in Iraq (finally).

We've turned Saddam's cousins and uncles against "Al Qaeda in Iraq", one of the smaller teams in Iraq War Multiplayer Version. Big whoop. We haven't really undone the centrifugal force of the long-term Afghan Civil War, and Iraq may be worse.

I'm not sure we'll ever understand why the Iraq War really started, or even if deep-down somewhere there was any unified strategy (even a fantastic, impossible one) for what to do after the trivial defeat of the regular Iraq Armed Forces. I suppose the large bases and an embassy larger than Vatican City could be a clue that we intended some sort of status like Poland's under the Warsaw Pact.

Treefrog, I see I didn't explain clearly enough.

First, pinning down your opponents forces only works if you can then exploit another front. Something AQ has not done.

They didn't do that fighting the russians in afghanistan, but they eventually won.

I don't know where you get the idea we can't economically sustain the war?

I personally don't know whether we can or not. But my point is that this is AQ's strategy, the strategy they think worked against russia.

So AQ is pretending to fight in Iraq? So are you claiming they are not in Iraq?

They have a franchise in iraq, run by something that was possibly a splinter group or possibly something completely independent which they allowed to use the AQM name. No particular evidence of AQ money or people going into iraq.

But the point is, they play boogeyman to keep us fighting, in the hope that we'll collapse from wasting our strength. The maximum estimate of AQM guys in iraq is something like 5000, right? So we outnumber them a good 30 to 1, with massively more equipment and money spent, and troops far more expensively trained. If the 850 estimate is right we outnumber them more than 150 to 1. "We're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here."

If they only have a token force in Iraq, where is AQ then? They haven't been heard of outside of Iraq or Afghanistan now for some time.

I dunno. We hear about minor franchise operations every now and then. Maybe that's all that's left. Maybe there's a professional AQ surviving that's planning something big that hasn't happened yet. Maybe AQ is completely gone except for amateur groups that take on the name because there's nobody to stop them from using the brandname, and the AQ tapes are all forged by somebody who knows they can get away with forging them. I dunno.

We beat the Taliban in Afghanistan by turning the locals, something the Soviets never could (didn't even try really).

They did, they had a bunch of locals on their side. Basicly the same ones who're on our side now. But the russians tried to push the muj guys right out of the country, and they used a whole lot of men to do it and got ground down -- partly because we gave the mujahedin advanced weapons. We let the taliban do what they want in the south and the east, but we keep bribing people to say they're on our side. It's pretty effective. "All you have to do is say you aren't Taliban and you're against Taliban and we'll give you money." We get a lot of allies that way, at least while the money flows. And it isn't all that expensive.

Now we're doing the same thing in Iraq (finally).

Yes. "All you have to do is say you aren't insurgents and you're against insurgents, and we'll give you money, weapons, and training!" We're turning the locals! All we have to do to get them on our side is give them what they want and not fight them! Who'd have thought it?

Which is the biggest whole in your argument, if AQ was shooting for an infinite war instead of trying to force the US out, isn't car bombing random factions and turning everyone against them counterproductive?

We have documents from AQ to AQM that make that exact point. They told the AQM franchise guys to stop that stuff and the AQM didn't stop. Assuming those documents weren't forgeries, this says that AQ agrees with you and AQM is out of their control.

So, why hasn't AQ done anything significant since 9/11? Maybe they can't. Or maybe they don't want to make Bush look bad. "Never distract your enemy while he is making a mistake." While Bush does exactly what they want him to, why should they do another important terrorist attack?

Why does Bush keep hyping AQ when they've done nothing significant for 6 years and he might know they're essentially defunct? (I don't know that, but Bush might know that if it's true.) Because they're a useful boogeyman. They make tapes taunting the USA, that have the result of strengthening our resolve to keep doing the same old things, the things AQ wants us to do.

Bush does what they want. They do what Bush wants. De facto alliance.

Bush does what they want. They do what Bush wants. De facto alliance.

Okay, but where does the giant psychic squid come in?

Okay, but where does the giant psychic squid come in?

It took me a moment to figure out what you were talking about. It isn't just a giant psychic squid, it's a giant psychic flying squid. They call it the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Devotees say the FSM created the world, and they mention something about "his noodly appendages".

I first heard about them looking at evolution stuff -- they say their religion deserves equal time in classrooms and should be taught in biology classes in contrast to evolution. They say that global warming is caused by a lack of pirates, and plot the rise of global warming against the fall of pirates as evidence. I think their scholarship is weak. Also I'm not sure how deeply they believe in their doctrines, they look like they're having a lot of fun and people who're having fun tend not to be very devout.

I don't see any direct connection between the FSM and Bin Laden but when I googled "flying spaghetti monster bin laden" I got 271,000 hits.

J, my point was that no one with a heavy pre-packaged agenda has a good reason to want Osama dead. Not that any of them have "de facto alliances" with any other.

By your logic the peaceniks in teh west are "de facto" allies of the warmongers.

But keep banging those rocks together.

Jim Rockford at #29
A look at Cuba shows no change in the housing stock since 1958.
Here's a harvard study from a few years ago
This says that is has, quite a bit in fact . Then again, Castro doesn't let you sell it, so what's the point, and blames the 60% needing some repairs on hurricanes, not lack of private enterprise. And - they could use quite a bit more.
They don't have to build things - just promise, and blame others(us) when it doesn't come around.

I've already brought up the hypothetical question that the 2008 candidates answered about attacking bin Laden, but you have your internal monologue, so I'm moving on.
Dog that didn't bark: NOT A SINGLE DEM has called for increasing the military.
Here was Kerry in 2004
More in 2005
Ike Skelton in 2006
More in 2007
Here's more Salary and Benefits
Which, as we know, went nowhere this year.

It took longer to paste those links here than to find them.

Azzam was killed in 89, during which point Webster(Joe Wilson?) was CIA director, and former CIA chief President Bush was in charge. Also after the USSR had been beaten in Afghanistan, the CIA had spent 8 years training him (among others), and after we had seen the damage Islamic Jihad could to (Iran, Afghanistan, Lebanon, etc.). I don't believe the CIA did (EIJ for me), but having no reason or ability is a bit much - if for no other reason than he opposed overthrowing Muslim-lead nations that supported the US.

Mark Poling, I believe that's just what I pointed out you said. I didn't attribute "de facto alliance" to you.

I'm not sure we'll ever understand why the Iraq War really started, or even if deep-down somewhere there was any unified strategy (even a fantastic, impossible one) for what to do after the trivial defeat of the regular Iraq Armed Forces.

And this attitude is exactly why we end up with so many idiotic conspiracy theories coming out of the left.

What do you mean you'll never understand? Which of the bazillion speeches the administration gave don't you understand? What about all the position papers and strategy write-ups by those dreaded neo-con think tanks? The various arguments for the war on the blogosphere, etc, etc, etc.

The left differs from the right on Iraq because they reject the fundamental assertions/assumptions the right is basing the necessity of the war on. Duh.

The problem is that the left refuses to grant the right the sincerity of their beliefs. They reject the assumptions the right bases the war on, and then, because of that, reject the rights entire argument. In other words because they don't believe our arguments for the war, ergo THE RIGHT MUST NOT BELIEVE THEM EITHER.

Thus begins the ridiculous hunt for the right's REAL motives. After all, we can't simply take us at our word, can we?

Treefrog....I'd say it was an idiotic conspiracy theory from the Right that got us into the Iraq mess to begin with, promoted by the most senior members of our "elected" officials. So while you may criticize those from the left (which can also be kooky, although I don't see any advanced above by anyone) you must acknowledge their more humble origin and far greater innocuousness.

"The problem is that the left refuses to grant the right the sincerity of their beliefs."

Is it that simple? I don't think so. You can be absolutely certain and sincere in your beliefs while at the same time absolutely wrong.  Furthermore, I'd offer that many on the right evince little inclination to be challenged on their beliefs (blind conviction, after all, being a virtue routinely promoted by fundamental Church and President (Bush) alike) when shown mountains of evidence calling their validity or relation to reality into question.

I also find it difficult to understand blind Faith and what motivates many on the Right to accept, unquestioningly, the pronouncements of their authority figures; and therefore the quest to understand "real" motives always continues for those of us who think differently.

(Interesting recent article in Nature Neuroscience bears on this: "Exploring the neurobiology of politics, scientists have found that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work.")

I suppose really that your point can be taken as a warning to those seeking rational explanations for irrational thoughts.

I would caution you, therefore, about the impudent and incredulous tone of your above comments, lest you see fit to demonstrate my points further.

I personally don't know whether we can or not. But my point is that this is AQ's strategy, the strategy they think worked against russia.

Ok, we're arguing past each other here. I agree, that does seem to have been their strategy. Didn't work though, if you think we're pushing a failed strat, take a look at it from their side...

I dunno. We hear about minor franchise operations every now and then. Maybe that's all that's left.

This kind of goes to the heart of Bush's argument for invading Iraq. In his belief (and mine for that matter, although we vary on interpretation), AQs primary danger wasn't their actual capabilities (which were dangerous) but in their ability to spawn copycats. AQ was a harbinger of things to come.

Even if we destroyed AQ, more terrorist groups would form. The root cause of terrorism was identified (if this is correct or not is another argument) as the despotic regimes of the area, and so the decision was made that rather than swat mosquitoes forever, it would be better to simply drain the swamp. (Plus replacing despotic regimes with democracies has a number of pluses right there - the usual arguments: eliminating horrific human rights abuses, eliminating potential sources of WMD, etc).

What actually seems to have happened is somewhere in the middle. AQs early successes did spawn a lot of imitators, but they haven't been as dangerous as anticipated, yet at least.

I don't want to drag the thread off topic into an argument about the efficacy of the US strategy, but I needed to bring this up to view the situation from Bin Laden's point of view.

His original goal was clearly to kick off an Islam versus the West war, while simultaneously taking so much street cred for taking the fight to the infidels that he'd be able to knock over the various despotic regimes and replace them with an Islamic Caliphate. With either his own butt, or some chosen successors butt on the throne.

And that's been a total and complete failure. The war didn't kick off, his early street cred didn't result in successful islamist revolts anywhere (largely because the US forced him into hiding early, I think, hard to lead successful revolts while hiding in a cave in the middle of nowhere). He lost his one nation that was under his belt almost immediately. His finances took a heavy blow. And as I've said before, the Iranians have upstaged his limelight.

Worst of all, what successful attacks have been made since, many seem to have been not so much AQ controlled as AQ inspired. Those imitators and 'franchises' have run away with the game (on the Sunni side).

He's lost initiative, lost control, and he's desperate. His dreams of leading a united Islamic Caliphate against the world have gone down the tubes and his rhetoric has a distinct odor of grasping as straws to it.

Is it that simple? I don't think so. You can be absolutely certain and sincere in your beliefs while at the same time absolutely wrong.

You are missing my point. There is nothing in the above I disagree with. Someone can be absolutely certain and sincere and be wrong. Of course. But they still believe it and act on it.

What AJL said, and what I see so often, in his exact words 'I'm not sure we'll ever understand why the Iraq War really started'.

It's in black and white. It's in speeches given many times. In papers. In blog arguments. The only way you can NOT know why the administration pushed the war is if you simply do not believe what the administration and it's supporters say.

You can certainly argue we're absolutely wrong. You can argue the premises for the positions are based on bad data. That's fine, but why toss out clearly stated positions and beliefs? Why is it unthinkable that we actually believe what we say we do, and therefore act on it? Why the search for 'real' motives?

I also find it difficult to understand blind Faith and what motivates many on the Right to accept, unquestioningly, the pronouncements of their authority figures; and therefore the quest to understand "real" motives always continues for those of us who think differently.

How's the air up there? We can pass you some oxygen if you need it?

Oh and I love the reversion to the conservatism as mental disease meme. Fits my point like a glove.

You can't give us the credit of sincerely held beliefs, and accept that it's simply differences in the weighting of assumptions, goals etc that leads to differing beliefs and positions.

Instead it must be because we're slaves to our cult leaders. Or blinded by religious fervor. Or brain-damaged. All three of which you advance as potentials.

As I said, idiot conspiracy theories because you can't grant us the simple courtesy of acknowledging the sincerity of our ideas.

I also find it difficult to understand blind Faith and what motivates many on the Right to accept, unquestioningly, the pronouncements of their authority figures; and therefore the quest to understand "real" motives always continues for those of us who think differently.

Well, let me explain. What you are doing is assuming that those who disagree with you only do so because they are in blind obedience to some authority figure. This allows you to demean their credibility without disposing of their arguments.

In turn, you pretend to merely be questioning this blind strawman faith that you've posited, as any reasonable person would, which gives a false justification to your own views.

I think this is called the Eric Cartman fallacy. Or is it a syndrome?

No, Glen, I said "many" on the Right, not even "most" or "all". Twice.

And regarding straw-men, I think Treefrog provides a nice example by suggesting that I'm claiming that the right wing "mindset" is a mental disorder. Don't see this anywhere in what I wrote, or in the study that I mentioned.

Treefrog, I agree almost completely with your #41. That reminds me of a story from a book about negotiating. A man went from academics into politics, he was going to be an aide to a politician, and the politician explained to him the first big adjustment he'd have to make. "You guys, when you agree about things 99% and you disagree 1%, you focus in on that 1% disagreement and argue it out at length. But here, we look for common ground. If somebody disagrees with you 90% and there's a 10% area of agreement, you focus on that 10%. Because that's the part we can use. Arguing about where we disagree just gets us enemies, but wherever we can agree we can work together." Those aren't the exact words, but it was something like that.

So we're saying almost exactly the same thing, and I'm focusing on the 1% disagreement. I ought to quit doing that. My sense is that Bin Ladin and Bush both had delusional ideas, and neither has worked out. Bin Ladin probably didn't care so much about personally landing on top as about sunni islam winning, and an organization that grew like crabgrass was probably workable for his needs. He didn't need much top-down control. (And I figure it's quite possible that 9/11 happened without his orders, that the plan was set up with the intention of being used someday, and then a little corner of it got triggered unexpectedly. They planned to hijack 60+ planes and only enough terrorists got the message for 4 planes. Probably just as well.)

AQ looks like it's mostly harmless now but Bush keeps hyping them because it's a lying message that works for him.

The arab despots that Bin Ladin wanted to knock over are all still there except for Saddam. The arab despots that Bush wanted to knock over are all still there except for Saddam. I think they both had delusional plans.

AQ was never more than a small part of Taliban and AQM was only a small part of sunni iraq resistance. It's foreigners coming to help out, kind of like americans who went to fight in the spanish civil war -- americans who fought for or against Franco didn't expect they'd end up running spain, they just wanted to do their part.

I don't know how to tell how well Bush's plan against AQ is working. All we hear about are incompetent franchise operations. If there are competent groups that are doing extremely careful plans for something major, they're still hidden.

I don't know how to tell how well Bin Ladin's plan against the USA is working. If our economy can handle all challenges including the iraq war (a trillion dollars lost over 5 years isn't chump change even to a robust economy) then I'll figure he failed. Afghanistan may not have been central to the USSR collapsing and if we collapse iraq may not be central to it.

I wouldn't be too surprised if both plans sort of work. The sunni despots lose and get replaced by governments that arabs like better but that isn't anything like what Bin Ladin or Bush wanted. AQ loses influence. The USA becomes a regional power that lacks the resources to do another occupation like iraq.

Treefrog, I'm familiar with any number of speeches about why we started the Iraq War. I'm also familiar with some of the speeches the contemporary politicians gave about why World Wars One and Two started, and to a considerable extent none of these speeches really explain what happened adequately, except at a quite trivial level.

For example, Colin Powell gave a presentation at the UN about why we needed to make war on Iraq. But AFAIK every single specific point he made has turned out untrue, and more to the point there was reason to believe at the time that many of them were untrue or at least totally unproven. The Administration implied repeatedly that Iraq was on the verge of being able to annihilate parts of the USA with nuclear weapons. VP Cheney had a special penchant for insinuating that the Iraq Government actively colluded with the 9/11 attacks, which is not true. Rather than answering my question by referring these speeches, try to answer (1) WHY were the politicians making these speeches, especially to the extend that they were factually unfounded, and (2) WHAT did these officials envision as the subsequent picture of the Middle East and did that contribute to their warmaking decision in ways they did not reveal, at least not clearly, in their public discourse.

I think the answer to at least the second question is most definitely Yes. There's evidence on the ground that we saw post-war Iraq as a base for projecting force elsewhere (e.g., Iran and Syria) in cooperation with a local government that was closely aligned with the USA. How many of the responsible (in the decision-making sense) officials were drinking the Chalabi Kool-aid of a pro-America pro-Israel (!) Iraq?

(1) WHY were the politicians making these speeches, especially to the extend that they were factually unfounded.

Because U.S. goverment analysists, including some from the Clinton administration, many UNSCOM inspectors, and foreign governments did not doubt that Iraq had WMD. What We Thought We Knew

(2) WHAT did these officials envision as the subsequent picture of the Middle East and did that contribute to their warmaking decision in ways they did not reveal, at least not clearly, in their public discourse.

I disagree with the notion that the secret purpose of the invasion was to launch subsequent invasions on neighbors. I do believe that a modern, pluralistic Iraq ruled by a government accountable to its people was seen as inherently destabilizing to neighboring autocratic regimes. Had Iraq been merely step one in pax Americana, more troops would have been sent.

I think Treefrog provides a nice example by suggesting that I'm claiming that the right wing "mindset" is a mental disorder.

Hmm, let's scroll up and look shall we?

(Interesting recent article in Nature Neuroscience bears on this: "Exploring the neurobiology of politics, scientists have found that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work.")

I suppose really that your point can be taken as a warning to those seeking rational explanations for irrational thoughts.

Let's see, point one where you feel the need to drag in a completely off topic (and discredited but I'll leave that aside) study touting how liberals are clearly superior in dealing with 'ambiguity and conflict'. If liberals are superior than clearly conservatives are inferior.

You immediately follow that with a warning against expecting rationality for the inherently irrational. This section was immediately preceded by a section disclaiming the right as marching in brain-washed lock step with our revered leaders, awash in religious fervor and incapable of rational thought.

So we start with the assertion that conservatives are sheeplike entities, blindly following either faith, our cultish leaders, or both, incapable of rational thought.

You end by interpreting my point as a warning against arguing with the irrational.

How else am I supposed to read the middle except as an attempted explanation? It makes absolutely no sense to read it as anything except as the proposed cause of conservatives being god and bush obsessed sheep. Why are conservatives incapable of rational thought, well, because their poor brains are wired that way.

How is inability to discourse in a rational manner not a mental disorder (although the phrase I used was brain damaged to be precise)?

If this is a strawman, perhaps you'd like to rephrase in such a fashion so that this sheep can discourse concerning your posts, in a rational fashion without de facto attacking strawmen?

AJL

You're still dancing on the blades edge here. You're stopping barely short of accusing the Administration and everyone who supported the war of lying about the whole mess and demanding that we share our 'real motivations'.

You seem constitutionally incapable of accepting that they genuinely believed what they were saying at the time. I agree that they discarded contradictory data they should not have. They absolutely were overconfident about the results.

But what does that have to do with their reasons? Glossing over potential problems and obstacles doesn't indicate a cover up with some nefarious motivations hiding underneath, it indicates overconfidence.

You are, I'm assuming, an adult. I assume you are capable of understanding that there were multiple reasons for supporting the war. That some supported the war more for one reason than for others. That no one speech is likely to cover all the reasons for the war, but taken in totality they cover it nicely.

The state of the union speeches in particular cover the bases fairly well.

Why is it so freakin' hard to accept that the administration genuinely thought pushing over Hussein and installing a democratic Iraq was a good idea in and of itself? What else do you expect beyond that?

Had Iraq been merely step one in pax Americana, more troops would have been sent.

We sent more than enough troops to defeat Saddam's demoralised armies.

We didn't have enough troops to occupy iraq if the natives were restless.

Whatever the administration's intentions, they had to assume that there would not be a significant insurgency. Because they weren't prepared to deal with one.

Did they think the iraqis would welcome a democracy? (One that Bremer intended to set up someday, 7 or more years later.) Did they think the iraqis would welcome a puppet government, perhaps one that was much easier on the population than Saddam and one that shared oil wealth more with the public?

Did they think the iraqis would be so overawed by our military that they wouldn't try to revolt?

Whatever they thought they assumed there would be no insurgency, because they made no preparation for one and ignored the one they got until they couldn't keep ignoring it.

We can only reverse-engineer their assumptions so far. If they had done everything right we could suppose they knew what they were doing and look at what they did. But since they were delusional we can't tell in detail about what they assumed would happen -- many different delusions could produce similar results.

To reason backward to what they were trying to accomplish from what they actually did, we would have to assume they were competent. And they were not.

JT

So we're saying almost exactly the same thing, and I'm focusing on the 1% disagreement. I ought to quit doing that.

Conflict is the root of all entertainment. Which is why hippies went out of style, they're boring.

AQ was never more than a small part of Taliban and AQM was only a small part of sunni iraq resistance.

Except that Bin Laden is very clear that he wants to reestablish the Caliphate and is equally clear that he does not support any Arab leader who does not support him. Drawing a line from A to B indicates that he only sees himself or someone he chooses as the only appropriate choice to run the Ummah.

I don't know how to tell how well Bush's plan against AQ is working. All we hear about are incompetent franchise operations. If there are competent groups that are doing extremely careful plans for something major, they're still hidden.

I'd say that's a good sign all things considered. If they are sitting around still planning something, than Bin Laden was an idiot. If he wanted to accomplish his goals he needed to strike again while the iron was hot. He's missed his window otherwise.

I wouldn't be too surprised if both plans sort of work. The sunni despots lose and get replaced by governments that arabs like better but that isn't anything like what Bin Ladin or Bush wanted. AQ loses influence. The USA becomes a regional power that lacks the resources to do another occupation like iraq.

Iran is the wildcard here, but if they are contained successfully than I think you're mostly right here. I suspect we'll see some kind of quasi-democratic nations built around tribal alliances (where tribes get votes as opposed to full fledged democracies with people voting). Probably fits the area better.

I do doubt the US will become simply a regional power any time soon. At least until Medicare and Social Security hit the wall, and then we'll undoubtedly be reenacting Mad Max, but till then...

We can only reverse-engineer their assumptions so far.

Heh, I intended to throw this pop can I just finished into the trash can. Since I missed and it took an odd bounce, it ended up in the hallway and whacked some guy from Distribution.

So, working backwards, clearly I intended to hit him, the only question is as to why. I knew he was walking by, and I THREW THE CAN ANYWAY. What are my real intentions? Am I a lack-witted thrall of my manager? Am I trying to route money to the cleaning company? Am I part of a grand Zionist conspiracy against Business Management types?

Intelligent minds want to know the truth!

It's impossible to make a man understand something when his livelihood depends on him not understanding it.  —Upton Sinclair

Members of the Administration were prepared to believe these stories, even in the teeth of the 2002–03 UN Inspections because… well, because what? Cheney sent Feith to hype every terrifying rumor about Saddam that they could find. There's probably some sense of the word "believe" in which this was true, but only in the sense of all the other conspiracy theorists' beliefs.

Even your own comment shows some of the vagueness that infected the Administration's thinking. First, Al Qaeda isn't even mentioned, nor any basis in international law for this sort of war. (The USSR had ideas like this about the Eastern European States, but we can distinguish the cases because overthrowing the Dubcek regime was done by bad people and overthrowing the Saddam regime was done by good people.) Next, you simply presumed that we could create a "democratic" Iraq. It's worth mentioning, indeed, it's absolutely critical to mention, that we've long since given up on the Dream Iraq. Now we're just trying for a stable Iraq that won't be too obvious a failure, nor too close to either Iran or transnational terrorist groups. It's hard to see our new-found affection for the Sunnis of Anbar Province as part of "democracy". (The status of secular Iraqis, Christian Iraqis, and female Iraqis is ruined for generations no matter how the civil war plays out.)

World War One was started by politicians who sincerely believed at least some of their own nonsense, but the Communists who called it the Great Imperialist War were a lot closer to understanding why it happened than anyone who just looks at the assassination in Sarajevo.

AJL

So you do know what the administration's motives are. You think they're wrong and that they should have known they were wrong, but you still know.

So why did you write then that you didn't know?

Let's see, random Tonkin gulf allusion...more conspiracy theorizing...Cheney as evil mastermind...US as USSR allusion...Iraq is DOOMED... sorry, how is any of that relevant to the discussion at hand? Iraq could be the greatest boondoggle in known history and it doesn't change my point at all.

Anyways, where was I...ah here we go

World War One was started by politicians who sincerely believed at least some of their own nonsense, but the Communists who called it the Great Imperialist War were a lot closer to understanding why it happened than anyone who just looks at the assassination in Sarajevo.

So really, when you want to know why the administration started the war, you're looking for the historical dialectic that created Bush? The historical root causes?

You're stopping barely short of accusing the Administration and everyone who supported the war of lying about the whole mess and demanding that we share our 'real motivations'.

I wouldn't accuse everybody who supported the war of lying.

I do say the administration was being at best very very disingenuous.

It doesn't matter what the "supporters" thought. They were being lied to, and they were ready for a war. They'd probably have accepted anything that sounded like a good excuse to try out the new gadgets. They could be as sincere as they wanted, and it didn't make any difference except in their effect on congress.

It doesn't exactly make sense to talk about "the goal" for any large group of people. We could have had some important people in the administration whose primary goal was to eliminate a threat to israel. We could have had some who wanted to control the oil. (Not take the money, but control who gets to buy it, or what the market price will be.) Some who wanted the oil for their preferred companies to sell. Some who wanted to get that bad guy Saddam. Some who wanted to get all the secular arab dictators. Some who wanted to turn iraq into a failed state that would be no threat to anybody. Some who wanted to show the world we were serious about nonproliferation. Some who wanted bases to attack iran from. Some who interpreted scripture to say it would speed the Second Coming. Some who really really wanted to try out the new weapons. Some may have thought a war would give Bush a popularity boost, as it did.

So all the people who have opinions try to influence the course. Shinseki said it would take more troops than we had to run the occupation. They got rid of him. All this influence washing around, and then the decision was made. This was, maybe, March 2001. Once the decision was made, then they scrambled to justify it. The stuff intended to get support from the public for the choice that was already made needn't have any resemblance to the goals held by any particular member of the administration. No two administration members needed to have the same or similar goals. I guess if we wanted the "real" reason we'd want Bush's reasons. I don't have any idea what Bush thought. He's a politician. Maybe Rove or Cheney told him it was a good idea and he believed them without any thought for details.

Talking about what a big group of people wants doesn't really make sense. You might as well talk about what the Senate wants, or what the Founding Fathers wanted. But we do it all the time. Sometimes I talk about what the sunnis want or what the kurds want or what the sadrists want. It can be a convenient shorthand but it isn't exactly real.

"AQ was never more than a small part of Taliban and AQM was only a small part of sunni iraq resistance."

Except that Bin Laden is very clear that he wants to reestablish the Caliphate and is equally clear that he does not support any Arab leader who does not support him.

Sure. But he's delusional. He has essentially no chance at that. And Bush still talks like he takes Bin Laden seriously, like AQ is the most important world development since the H-bomb. Bush is delusional too.

Or maybe Bush knows what he's doing. Maybe Bush thinks he's better off if you're delusional. Maybe he's still hyping AQ because the focus groups etc say it works.

I do say the administration was being at best very very disingenuous.

It doesn't matter what the "supporters" thought. They were being lied to, and they were ready for a war.

We've been upgraded from liars to mere gullible idiots! And they say you can't get ahead these days...

Well, at least it's possible to engage in rational discourse with someone who thinks you're an idiot (sorta). It's impossible to discourse with someone who's convinced you're a compulsive liar.

I still don't understand why it is so hard for the everyone to believe that maybe, just maybe, the administration wasn't lying or trying to mislead people. That they just had the rose-colored glasses on a little too firmly and believed exactly what they said.

Everything the administration did is so much more easily explained if you take them at their word, and just assign them gross overconfidence.

Not enough troops sent? Well, clearly they didn't think they'd have to police the place afterwards. No civil reconstruction plans, again, they thought the Iraqis would pick up the slack (too much time spent with the Kurds I think).

As for the WMD, well, Belmont had a good post a while back about the inspections as shell game. Short version, you can't win unless you knock over all the cups at the same time. And, considering that Saddam indisputably once had WMD and used them on his own people, is it really much of a stretch to believe he was hiding some away from the UN teams?

Sure they glossed over contradictory findings on that, but again, is questioning the competence of the UN that big a stretch?

So on and so forth. Bush is so much easier to understand if you just take him precisely at face value. Subtlety is not one of his strong suits. Everyone seems to know that, yet people keep looking for it anyway, quite odd.

I agree with the following sections about goals being a little nebulous due to conflations of differing opinions, although I posit that they are still relevant, as once they do conflate they tend to have a life of their own. But that's minutiae, and rather off topic.

And Bush still talks like he takes Bin Laden seriously, like AQ is the most important world development since the H-bomb.

Well, the Dems do keep hammering him on why we haven't caught the guy yet.

And frankly, I do think the rise of the violent, politically active, non-national group is extremely important. AQ may not precisely be the first of their kind, but it's certainly the most visible, has spawned many imitations, and is important not so much for itself but as a harbinger of things to come.

"I still don't understand why it is so hard for the everyone to believe that maybe, just maybe, the administration wasn't lying or trying to mislead people. "

I still can't believe people can think otherwise when we now know that 1) the Neocons/Bushies have been seeking to overthrow Saddam since Clinton pre-9/11 times, 2) the main reasons they gave to justify the specific timing of the invasion (iminent threat, etc) have not only proven to be pretty much completely false, but there's also very strong evidence and reason to believe that Bush et al. knew the information they were presenting was suspect and therefore needed to be "cooked" or cherry picked for public and media consumption. 3) the adminstration's sudden and inexplicable rejection of Blix/el Baradei's work and concommitant blockage of their further inspection efforts, which were stronly undermining #2, 4) the administrations long and consistent record of lying openly in public to the public (or maybe they're just the most prone administration in history to "mis-speak" at all the critical times...).

I do thank the internet for exposing me to people like you, Treefrog, who still seem to have problems understanding what to most should be obvious. So there's that anyway.

Alan: I still can't believe people can think otherwise when we now know that...

Oddly, Alan follows this with a list of debatable, subjective talking points. I can't believe he doesn't know that.

PD Shaw, his first three points are pretty well documented, aren't they? Some of his interpretations are debatable but the facts ought to be pretty clear.

Sure, neocons were trying to get Saddam overthrown during Clinton. Nothing debatable there.

The main reasons presented for the invasion have been proven false and there's various evidence that Bush etc knew they were false at the time. That last could be debated but the debate would be over the known evidence.

The administration did suddenly block the inspections, which were not finding anything at the sites the administration claimed their secret sources said would have WMD evidence.

Only the fourth point is subjective. Talking about which political speech is lies has a lot of subjectivity. And this administration's talk seems to almost always have a large political content.

JT, we're wandering off into a discussion of Iraq issues which, while interesting, isn't my original point, which was much simpler.

It's impossible to have a rational discourse with those who refuse to grant you the courtesy of the assumption that you are attempting to have a rational discourse.

Read the tone of Alan's posts. He's not debating anything, he's enlightening us poor fools who haven't seen the light. There is no point in discussing with us, because he's decided we're simply irrational.

He's just doling out alms of enlightenment to the beggars.

You are doing the same to me, Treefrog, in dismissing my criticism of your tactics as an indication that I've decided that you are irrational.

I replied to your statement in #57 with #59, mostly fact and some editorializing (as J Thomas points out). Instead, you ignore and PD Shaw dismisses the points that I made in reply. It's your apparent insistence that this is "rational discourse" which should be somehow accorded some special recognition or treatment that provokes the kind of skepticism I hold about your ability to carry one out with someone who thinks and sees things differently than you.

Seems to me you're simply trying to narrow the ground rules for discourse to a degree that benefits your desire to avoid confronting inconvenient facts and gaping holes in your thinking. So what's the point in attempting to debate with someone like this?

Treefrog, there's no debate possible. We are living in different universes, ones with different facts.

"You're entitled to your own opinions, and your own facts, and your own special world. But you aren't entitled to your own IRS."

We all believe whatever we believe, but we pay real costs.

In my world it isn't debatable that Bush & croneys tailored their justifications for war to fit what they thought their audience would approve. Probably politicians usually do this, though not to the utterly this utterly cynical degree. But to argue that we can tell what Bush et al were thinking by reading their old speeches -- you have to live in a different universe for that to make sense. A universe where you can tell what politicians think by what they say.

Alan, I'm ignoring 59 because it's irrelevant. Even if I grant every single one of your 4 points (which I don't, but lets save time) it doesn't do anything to my point.

Bush stated that he wanted to get rid of Saddam because he was a monster and a threat to the US and world peace.

Your points go to method not motivation. Grant all of them and it isn't in the least inconsistent with his stated motivations.

Worse, in post 40 you explicitly tarred everyone who supported the war. The right states that we support the War in Iraq for reasons A, B, C, and D. You come along and say, no you don't, you support the war in Iraq because you're blind religious nuts who've been brainwashed.

You cannot debate with someone who takes your stated positions and motivations, throws them out, and replaces them with his pet theories about what I believe and why.

You see the problem? I'm annoyed with the conspiracy theorizing from the left that seem singularly unable to separate motivation from result. You keep trying to work backwards from the current situation and keep trying to figure out why Bush wanted us in this situation, when the far more obvious route is simply that Bush meant what he said about just getting rid of Saddam and installing a democracy in Iraq and didn't predict the difficulty.

#63 from Alan: "Seems to me you're simply trying to narrow the ground rules for discourse to a degree that benefits your desire to avoid confronting inconvenient facts and gaping holes in your thinking. So what's the point in attempting to debate with someone like this?"

No point at all.

So how smart does Osama Bin Laden have to be, or more to the point how smart does the artificial intelligence of the jihadists' system have to be, to be smarter than us?

Yes, Treefrog, your reply makes "the problem" abundantly clear. Thanks.