20 Comments

1. Lem:

“I ain’t got a fever got a permanent disease… Gonna take more than a shot to get this poison out of me.” Jon Von Jovi

One thing these doctors make painfully obvious is that if we had not invaded Iraq we would have imported some really, really bad medicine.

One report said that the car bombs found in London bear the signatures of car bombs in Iraq. Someone should ask Harry Reed and Nancy Pelosi if this is what they have in mind when they say that Iraq has made us less safe.

BTW. The official site for Roger Moore’s Sicko calls the movie “The explosive new film from the Academy Award winning director”.

It appears that Mr. Moore has been holding out on us.

Jul 2, 2007 - 11:33 am 2. dclydew:

I thought all the terrorists went’ to Iraq “to fight us there”. I must have been confused.

I don’t think the war in Iraq is going to do much to stem this sort of madness. Further, I’d like to point out that none of the security measures that Britain has put in place stopped this. Apparently poor bomb making (and whatever the hell they thought they were doing when they set themselves on fire) plus alert intelligent people who reported the cars saved the day here.

Doesn’t change the fact that these bastards need to die, but it does call into question some views on terror and our current military engagement.

Jul 2, 2007 - 11:57 am 3. Anthony (Los Angeles):

And the major culprit is the Islamic belief system – the idea that anyone who is not Islamic is less than human. This is not a religion.

If only our leaders would put it this clearly.

(Though I note Tony Blair has been much more blunt since leaving office.)

Jul 2, 2007 - 12:21 pm 4. Lem:

“I thought all the terrorists went to Iraq “to fight us there”. I must have been confused.”

No further attacks on American soil five years on sinse 9/11?

I say our presence in Iraq has plenty to do with that!

I take it you want to chance that this is not the case.

Jul 2, 2007 - 12:38 pm 5. Lem:

Put it this way.

What are the chances that if we were NOT in Iraq we would still NOT been attacked the same way we have NOT been attacked since 9/11?

Success seems like a hard pill to swallow.

Jul 2, 2007 - 1:07 pm 6. dclydew:

So Lem,

Tunisia, Indonesia, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Turkey, Spain, Russia, Egypt, Britain and multiple attempts in the US (averted by good Police/Intelligence work)… All of those are locations where Muslim Terrorist attacks have been since 2001. Most since 2003 post-Iraq.

If it hadn’t been for luck, the Space Needle would likely look like Ground Zero. Luck and a thoughtful Border Guard, NOT Iraq saved us.

You can believe what you want about our presence in Iraq, but you seem to be missing out on a lot of contradictory evidence.

Jul 2, 2007 - 1:11 pm 7. Lem:

“Tunisia, Indonesia, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Turkey, Spain, Russia, Egypt, Britain…”

Notice how your list does not include Iraq. Is Alcaida in Iraq just a mirage?

I’m going by the assumption that you can only recruit so many suicide bombers (given the peacefulness of the religion, and the mathematical impossibility of a suicide do over) and that an organization called Alcaida in Iraq (you might have heard of them) has attracted a bunch of said suicide bombers that may have otherwise gone elsewhere. Call it the allocation of resources.

A lot to assume I know, but I rather think our efforts are more successful than our luck.

Jul 2, 2007 - 2:19 pm 8. WorkinStiff:

dclydew: The alert border guard incident at Port Angeles WA occured in 2000? prior to both 9/11 and our invasion of Iraq…And the intended target was , I believe, LAX, not the spaceneedle……

Jul 2, 2007 - 5:18 pm 9. jedrury:

The Brits tracked some of the cars used in
the London attempts as coming from Scotland by “number-plate recognition technology mounted in cameras along the M6.” I find it remarkable the level of technology in play in England.

Jul 2, 2007 - 6:02 pm 10. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

I wonder if anyone is checking for extra deaths at the hospitals where these doctors worked. Did they perhaps kill a few before they made their obvious attack?

Jul 2, 2007 - 8:20 pm 11. Captain Hate:

“I don’t think the war in Iraq is going to do much to stem this sort of madness.”

I don’t think any amount of evidence would lead you to believe otherwise.

Jul 2, 2007 - 9:09 pm 12. Barrett:

“[T]he major culprit is the Islamic belief system – the idea that anyone who is not Islamic is less than human. This is not a religion. This is – to carry forth the medical analogy – a virus, destroying everything in its path.”

First, I have to agree with Roger that Islam is a mental illness and not a religion. The more I learn about Islam and Mohammed, the more I find Islam to be a questioned. It seems to me that Mohammed borrowed freely from other religions – namely Judaism and Christianity. My sense is that he was really interested in establishing himself politically and used Islam and his role as the prophet to accomplish it. Much of Islam is about this world and dominating it. Google Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Har to start. “Virtues” like lying are okay to advance Islam (http://www.answering-islam.de/Main/Index/L/lying.html). The subjugation of others by force is very political and of this world and unlike the other major world religions. Unlike other historic “holy” men, Mohammed was very interested in sex, lots of wives and in particular young wives – some that can only be described as girls (~9 to 13). He was a pedophile with outsized political ambitions who used religion as an elixer on followers. Note that the fear of death is used to keep “believers” from leaving the faith (and even today, most Islamic countries have laws where conversion away from Islam is punishable by death – once again, Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Har). Islam celebrates death. Now that is disease. Of course, I have more to learn.

The second part of the thread appears to be along the lines of are we more or less safe by going into Iraq. This is a historical “if” and therefore a moot question. I believe that we (i.e. Western Civilization) will be under attack for a long time. Iraq is the primary front against the infidels according to Osama. The fight is strategic because a loss sows the seed of the Caliphate the Islamists crave. It is also strategic from an economic perspective – oil. This is not something that will pass soon. Islamic violence is coming of age because they have the means to attack the infidel West, which is something that Islam has historically lacked except for during the Ottoman Empire.

As Anthony LA points out, a little more clear talk from our leaders would go a long way to getting the general public to understand the nature of the enemy and what they would do to us. Clearly, many do not understand it or don’t want to understand it.

Jul 2, 2007 - 10:42 pm 13. TomTom:

My first-blush comments, as a doc.

A big part of the problem is the U.K. letting these folks in to work for the NHS. A 25 yr-old graduate of the medschool in Baghdad?? A 26 yr-old MidEasterner described by the Independent(U.K.) as “a brilliant neurologist”?? Here, there are no 26 year-old neurologists, because they are all still in training at that age.

We in the US are doing the same thing, importing docs, because we aren’t producing enough ourselves, and many of the now >50% of domestic med students are women, a large fraction of whom will practice part-time for mothering reasons.

There is no reason to think, Roger, that Iraqi and other non-Western medical establishments recognize Hippocrates and the moral guides that compose the Oath, as in “First, do no harm”. Projecting our cultural and moral values onto them is simply delusional in the extreme, but that’s the good old Multicultural for you–purely delusional.

Jul 2, 2007 - 10:55 pm 14. heather:

soooo what if…. what IF Our Friend Saddam were still in power … and well on his way to making a bomb (we would have stopped the sanctions long ago), just like Iran… and with a long standing record of using chemical warfare; and regular, open financing of suicide bombers’ families and aggression against ALL of his neighbours … I guess I for one am not nostalgic for the good ol’ days of Stable Saddamized Iraq/Mesopotamia.

Also, the Bush/USA strategy is to do something never done before, something completely magnificent: bring the Middle East into the modern world. The tactics have had to change, and now (according to Yon, etc) are coming to fruition… and we have been in Iraq for FIVE years! A blink of an eye in human history.

You see, we are not worried about Zimbabwe, are we? And Darfur makes a nice little harmless hobby for such as George Clooney. And we have never had much to say about France and the Rwandan Genocide..

Why? Think about that question, as you put gas in your car.

The smart people (who mostly are in the Armed Forces, not a good harbinger for American long term) think this “war” will last for at least a generation. So, I guess we just can’t get bored and take up some other hobby, and ‘get out of Iraq’, and thus bring peace and love to our world, can we???

Jul 2, 2007 - 10:59 pm 15. Steve M:

And the major culprit is the Islamic belief system – the idea that anyone who is not Islamic is less than human.

The people who have caught this virus are so sick that I don’t think they even care whether their victims are Islamic or not. The sickness is the thing, as in this report of an al Qaeda massacre in an Iraqi village – They shoot donkeys, don’t they?

Jul 3, 2007 - 5:01 am 16. john.cunningham:

Unfortunately, Roger is correct in describing Islam as a disease. Very few Westerners are ready to face it, but eventually we are going to have to DESTROY Islam as a system, including many millions of its believers. I think it will take several more huge attacks in this country to bring the mass of opinion around to realizing that this is a war to the death, kill or be killed.
The problem is that Muslims can go along as civilized people for years or decades, and then go into SIJS–Sudden Islamic Jihadi Syndrome. We cannot tolerate such people in our midst. They have to be either killed or put on reservations.

Jul 3, 2007 - 7:09 am 17. Lem:

“..but eventually we are going to have to DESTROY Islam as a system, including many millions of its believers.”

Hold it!

Please, lets not get carried away!

Ann Coulter got canned from the National Review for less stark but similar comments following 9/11.

Jul 3, 2007 - 8:31 am 18. dclydew:

I think John Cunningham brings up a good point… one my darling and I were discussing last night, in fact. How far do we go to preserve “our way of life” and what is that way of life?

Our way of life, here in the States, has been defined through our behavior as a nation of people. Even while the CIA may have been plotting who knows what in our name, the People had a level of faith in ‘the way of life’, the concepts of freedom, tolerance, etc.

Perhaps a war in Iraq, if it works, isn’t bad. Some compromise of our values, some problems with ethics… but overall it’s not an extensive change to who we as a nation are (even if we include things like GitMo which does, at least, tiptoe around the edges of what Americans believe in). However, if this continues… if more attacks happen and these attacks are carried out by individuals that appear to be normal, sane, productive members of society… how far can we stretch our values before we fundamentally break who we are as a nation?

Obviously, interment camps could return, but are we ready to put people into camps based solely on their religion? The Supreme Court and Justices on the Court have weighed in on Lincoln’s suspension of HC and on the WWII Japanese American camps. In both cases, they determined that these actions were unconstitutional. Yet, if a subset of a subculture within our society continues to attack us, how far do we go?

If attacks continue, could we end up at war with an entire subculture? If so, will it fundamentally change who we as Americans are? Rome went through something similar, but in the end, it seems to have destroyed their democracy as much as protected their citizens. Where do we draw the line, security at any cost, or security as far as our basic principles will allow?

Right now, we debate GitMo and ‘torture’ but these are dealing with specific individuals who appear likely to be involved. If we must face off against millions of Muslims, can we retain our identity while shoveling women and children into a work camp?

I don’t know the answers, but I do think that we have to repair our internal ruptures before we could hope to face such a challenge.

Jul 3, 2007 - 11:58 am 19. Barrett:

Lem,

Your reaction is understandable. The idea of “destroying Islam as a system” is shocking to our Western sensibilities. However, what do you do when you are attacked? How far do you go?

There are about 8 million Muslims in the US today. Can you imagine what could happen if they all got the jihadi syndrome? The blood on the streets would be almost unimaginable.

There was an article on American Thinker about a study done on the perceptions of Muslims in America. If I recall correctly, about 64% (2/3rds) of Muslims concurred with the use of force and jihadi tactics to advance the cause of Islam.

Islam is showing itself to be a depraved “religion” – an evil cult. It is a death cult. These people kill the unarmed, women, children, animals…. They even use children as decoys in trucks to avoid detection and then blow the kids up with the trucks.

My fear is all of this is closer than you think.

There will be many hard choices to be made in the future. Some will challenge our core beliefs – including freedom of religion and democracy.

As dclydew asks, “Where do we draw the line, security at any cost, or security as far as our basic principles will allow?”

I would what is the cost of each alternative.

I always think of what Israel is going through when these discussions arise.

Meanwhile, I wish you all a safe July 4 and I pray that America will continue to be the beacon of light in dark world as it has so often in it’s short history.

Jul 3, 2007 - 2:43 pm 20. Barrett:

Here is the link to the article om American Thinker.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/06/new_study_political_islam_corr.html

I was incorrect in my assertion that about 64% (2/3rds) of Muslims in America concurred with the use of force and jihadi tactics to advance the cause of Islam.

The article talks about the views of Muslims in 14 major Muslim countries.

I apologize for the error.

Jul 3, 2007 - 3:04 pm

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