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09.11.11 - 7:45 PM
The Cost of War
Bin Laden said a key aim of Al Qaeda was "bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy." On many levels, he's come close. A look at the $1.2 trillion the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost us, and what could have been done with that money at home. If you can stand it, watch it tick up and up.
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Show All"Bin Laden said a key aim of Al Qaeda was "bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.""
Well, we walked right into that trap, didn't we?
So does this mean that all the people that were responsible for the Bush tax cuts were supporting Terrorism?
Yes.
Now the Tea Party has succeeded in carrying out Bin Laden's grand plan.
Obama believes the United States is stronger now than before 9/11 which is an incredibly stupid thing to say unless he means that the totalitarian state is stronger now which is certainly true.
Not sure which Osama bin Laden said that. There were so many of them, the left-handed one, the one with the Egyptian accent, the one with a forbidden-by-Islam wedding ring, the blue-eyed one, the one with the navel piercing, the short, fat one...
If the real bin Laden, who worked for the Bush/Cheney junta all along, said that, it was no doubt scripted by his Neo-con handlers to set the stage for their Economic New World.
G.W. Bush: "My fellow 'Merkans, it's the goal of Al Qaeda to destroy our economy, so to fight terrorism we have to keep our economy strong. We have to free our corporations from regulations and taxes, from all laws and oversight, we have to assure the economic growth of our wealthiest 'Merkans and free them from taxes and put them safely above the law. All of us must sacrifice everything we have, give our lives even, to assure all weath is kept safely in the fewest hands."
Hope that puts all the things all those Osama bin Ladens supposedly said in context.
LOL, GG. Maybe all the Bin Ladens said it together, in chorus.
"One dead American begets another dead American."
--David Halberstam
bin Laden didn't bleed us. Our "leaders" have chosen to do that for him. He couldn't ever have dreamed that we would have been quite this compliant.
3 buildings fell into their footprint that day and one wasn't even hit by a plane. Jet fuel can not burn hot enough to melt steel. Cave dwellers with box cutter wielding martyrs can't take down the most powerful country in the world....without help and many questions need to be answered about the relationship between GWB and O samas family that goes back decades. Cost of war, indeed; does that include the missing millions in cash that disappeared without a trace after landing in Iraq? Smoke and mirrors. The war is against us.
The steel does not have to melt, only soften. I have seen structure fires where ordinary burning wood and a good draft heated steel columns until they bent over double under their own weight. A razor utility knife is perfectly capable cutting a neck wide open to the carotid artery in one swipe.
I am a retired firefighter. Amongst our training was a lot on highrise fires. There had never been a case of the collapse of a steel structure due to a fire. I recall one skyscraper, I think it was in Spain, that burned like a torch for days. When it finally went out, the steel skeleton was standing intact. Only the contents burned.
I've also seen a number of buildings "pulled." Like building 7 and the towers, they dropped into their own footprint at virtually free fall speed.
The designers said the towers were designed to take the impact of a fully loaded 747 with only local damage. That huge fireball on the backside of the building was the jet fuel burning up, essentially in one big fireball.
Just like the "jet liner" that hit the Pentagon. I have sadly been at the scene of too many plane wrecks. The fuselage is usually burned up and often the wings (fuel tanks) but there was always the engines and usually some of the tail sitting in the debris field. There was none of that at the Pentagon, just a hole in the building, I believe smaller than the diameter of the fuselage. Had an airliner hit the Pentagon, there would have been recognizable parts of the engines either at the foot of the building, or imbedded in it. Titanium rotor blades do not melt or disintegrate in a fuel fed fire.
But, our Constitution was trashed, the surveillance state was greatly increased and, of course, the rich got richer, and the rest of us are being reduced to the status of serfs, which seems to be the sole idea for all of this carnage.
>>The fuselage is usually burned up and often the wings (fuel tanks) but there was always the engines and usually some of the tail sitting in the debris field. There was none of that at the Pentagon, <<
Nor was there any of that in Shenksville where supposedly an airliner crashed. No engines. No bodily remains. No scraps of luggage. It all disintegrated we were told. There WERE early reports of an aircraft engine found on the ground eight miles from the supposed impact site, but these reports ceased quickly. Very strange.
Well said. "official" explanation borders on the irrational.
OBL and his gang "won" a lot more than folks realize. Just watch them willingly surrender many of their rights (the ones that are supposedly hated so much by the criminals of terror) in the name of national security or security. How long before americans live in prison like environments?? Gated/ guarded communities and increased isolation and paranoia have become the order of the day.
that is not a "free" society. It is tragic to watch..
Like a sniper correcting for windspeed and distance, bin Laden corrected for stupidity and venality in our leaders and delivered a devastating kill-shot to this nation. Like hitting a rhino with a .22 round and the whole thing explodes in a shower of meat and bone. You almost have to admire the skill of the marksman, even as your country falls apart around you.
'Correcting for windspeed and distance', Very true marlow, like that U.S. helicopter that was hit with a lucky shot over Afghanistan last month.
A Nation of Sheep, seems to me. Let's review the stage play. The USS Maine blows up in Havana, and we declare war on Spain. Turns out the Maine came into harbor with a fire in the coal bunker which was right next to the magazine. Although the Navy was trying hard to remove the explosives, not fast enough. The Gulf of Tonkin incident never happened, but that "horrid attack on a US ship" was enough to go to war with VietNam. So, exactly what happened on 9/11. We killed the "criminal" who planned the attack. Did he? How many times can we be fooled? The scam is this. There is NO money. So, we need a manufactured emergency (SHOCK and AWE—can you say terrorist?) and we borrow trillions. Now that money is transferred to the rich. They make an airplane for 100 million and "sell" it to the Department of Nonsense for 200 million. Real cash shows up—those borrowed dollars can be made real. So, the profits are for the private sector, but the debt is for the suckers. Like my kids. This is the game. It is all about privatization of the commons. (Used to me yours, now it is mine.) Are we safer? Seems like living is just plain dangerous. Don't we all die? However, the important thing is to live before you die. But please don't think that killing a kid in Purplestan or some place will ever make you more safe. Kill a kid, grow an enemy. And, never trust a government which has a long, well proven history of lying. Especially, about why wars began. All of us should be very suspicious about every 9/11 "fact", including exactly who drove planes into buildings in NY.
If they wanted to speak the truth, Mr BinLaden would have been taken to a court, and be openly questioned. He would told us he was a CIA asset, for he was. It seems highly unlikely that you could get a camel jockey to fly a wide body at high speed directly into the middle of a high rise. That obviously takes some onboard computing, stuff which has some challenges. Seems like a course well past the usual Afghanistan college level.
bravo!! ( vanderborgh) very well said and intelligently assessed. Of course OBL was a CIA "asset" and the truths that would have come out in a proper court of international law , had to be prevented. (as if the US image is not bad enough now) Just like SH was a US friendly dictator until the US decided he wanted to make independant decisions (go with the Euro for one) that the US did not approve of , plus some childish grudge Bush had against him......and suddenly he was public enemy of invasion and regime change caliber..
The US hypocricy has been well documented through it's short history.
A nation of sheeple, Indeed. When that happens, the gov't gets away with more and more actions that ordinarily would never be tolerated. It is also a progressive "disease " as the culture itself changes form , character and gradually deteriorates. giving the gov't even more excuses to take firmer "control" of the population..
What we have seen in the last decade is very concerning ....as both the US population and the rest of the world deserves better than what is happening. But the "fear" that "terrorism" renders works too well in keeping the population in line so the gov't can follow up on an agenda that is unspoken but rather obvious. Of course the other factor that comes into play is that even questioning the gov't ....is percieved by some die hards as "un patriotic". There are few adjectives that yeild such a vicseral response as being called unpatriotic or doing something that the "patriots" percieve as being "nationally threatening". Paranoia has been a factor in the US culture for some time. It has just been reinforced with fear mongering.
This can no longer be reversed. So how it progresses from now on....is anyone's guess.