Obama Says That The Policies Of George Bush Have Not Made Us Safer....
Here are some of the notable terrorist attacks against Americans on US soil and against Americans and American interests abroad....
1988Golly gee, it appears to me as if the list above does not really support the contention that we are less safe or even evenly safe. It appears to me as if we are safer.
February: Marine Corps Lt. Colonel Higgens, Chief of the U.N. Truce Force, was kidnapped and murdered by Hezbollah.
December: Pan Am flight 103 from London to New York was blown up over Scotland, killing 270 people, including 35 from Syracuse University and a number of American military personnel.
1991
November: American University in Beirut bombed.
1993
January: A Pakistani terrorist opened fire outside CIA headquarters, killing two agents and wounding three.
February: World Trade Center bombed, killing six and injuring more than 1,000.
1995
January: Operation Bojinka, Osama bin Laden's plan to blow up 12 airliners over the Pacific Ocean, discovered.
November: Five Americans killed in attack on a U.S. Army office in Saudi Arabia.
1996
June: Truck bomb at Khobar Towers kills 19 American servicemen and injures 240.
June: Terrorist opens fire at top of Empire State Building, killing one.
1997
February: Palestinian opens fire at top of Empire State Building, killing one and wounding more than a dozen.
November: Terrorists murder four American oil company employees in Pakistan.
1998
January: U.S. Embassy in Peru bombed.
August: Simultaneous bomb attacks on U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed more than 300 people and injured over 5,000.
1999
October: Egypt Air flight 990 crashed off the coast of Massachusetts, killing 100 Americans among the more than 200 on board; the pilot yelled "Allahu Akbar!" as he steered the airplane into the ocean.
2000
October: A suicide boat exploded next to the U.S.S. Cole, killing 17 American sailors and injuring 39.
2001
September: Terrorists with four hijacked airplanes kill around 3,000 Americans in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
December: Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber," tries to blow up a transatlantic flight, but is stopped by passengers.
The September 11 attack was a propaganda triumph for al Qaeda, celebrated by a dismaying number of Muslims around the world. Everyone expected that it would draw more Muslims to bin Laden's cause and that more such attacks would follow. In fact, though, what happened was quite different: the pace of successful jihadist attacks against the United States slowed, decelerated further after the onset of the Iraq war, and has now dwindled to essentially zero. Here is the record:
2002
October: Diplomat Laurence Foley murdered in Jordan, in an operation planned, directed and financed by Zarqawi in Iraq, perhaps with the complicity of Saddam's government.
2003
May: Suicide bombers killed 10 Americans, and killed and wounded many others, at housing compounds for westerners in Saudi Arabia.
October: More bombings of United States housing compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia killed 26 and injured 160.
2004
There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.
2005
There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.
2006
There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.
2007
There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.
2008
So far, there have been no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.
Why is this? Maybe due to Bush policies....
1. Invasion of Afghanistan- eliminated a safe place for al Qaeda to train and operate from.
2. Waterboarding- the capturing and waterboarding of several select al Qaeda operatives completely disrupted plans and the exposed the some of the operational aspects of the organization.
3. Invasion of Iraq- created the perfect storm for al Qaeda, where they were forced to come to defend themselves within their own 'territory' and eliminated. Its a derivative of Chairman Mao Zedong's "100 Flowers Campaign" where he sought to "entice snakes out of their lairs." Bush has enticed al Qaeda and its financiers out of their 'lairs' into the open where they can be exposed and defeated.
4. Using technology and data mining to generate leads that then can be legally follow up upon to find risk within the Islamic extremist community.
5. In Iraq, exposing al Qaeda to the world to what it really is- these people are not freedom fighters but frothing at the mouth crazy fanatics that are just as willing to kill anyone including innocent Muslim civilians as they are to attack the targets such as the West or the Great Satan, the US. Normal humans and stable communities do not want these zealots operating around them since they could either kill them or their families arbitrarily or these people risk their lives upon the inevitable response to kill these al Qaeda zealots.
posted by glenzo @ 5/27/2008 10:23:00 AM
2 Comments:
Obviously the 4000+ US army personnel who died violently and the 30,000+ maimed whilst occupying Iraq don't count in your estimations.
What is obvious? I do not understand your comment. Obama says that the policies of GWB Bush have not made us safer and I have cited evidence that bears that out that we are safer. It would be very very different if he were saying that the cost of making us safer was not worth the cost. But that is not what he daid and that is not the argument that I am making. He made the statement and I cited evidence that sheds light on the the reality of that statement. I do not have to them have to inject costs into the arguement, its not what is being discussed.
But Democrats cannot admit that we are safer. So they have to continue to drone on that we are less safe now than we were before and liberals heads can nod in submission to that silliness like those little plastic dogs that ones sees on car dashboards. so, are we more or less safe? If you are arguing thaqt we are less dafe, then what is your evidence to support that?
Besides, one of the functions of the military is to protect civilians from attack. Sometimes the cost of that protection is military lives. Are you trying to say that there is some limit of military/civilian deaths where we cannot accept those military deaths and are willing to accept some level of civilian deaths? What is that number?
Post a Comment
<< Home