Post by Darwinist on Mar 15, 2004 23:53:47 GMT -5
The Coalition is stronger than ever. Most are democracies. Naturally, as elections come and go, various nations may enter, leave or re-enter the Coalition. That’s natural and normal.
Yes, it is. So I guess that means if Kerry just happens to win in '04 and makes an executive decision to pull every American butt out of Iraq, that'd be "natural and normal" too.
Terrorists need to be very picky about who, what, where, when why and how, and this applies to every plan, each person, each piece of equipment, payment, pickup, delivery, communication, info drop, surveillance, codes, rehearsals etc; who, what, where, when why and how, a thousand times over. Many of their operations are canceled because one part doesn’t work out.
Well obviously, Rob. The idea, as Patton so famously put it, is not to 'die for your country, but make the other poor dumb b^stard die for HIS country!' So of course terrorists are willing to pull out of an operation that begins to smell sour. That's just plain old common sense. And that way they live to bomb another day. And then it's right back to the drawing board, planning the next strike on the next target of opportunity, in a world that bristles with opportunities.
I wasn’t aware of you knowing anything about me, but as to the terrorists – no, I only know as much as any civilian who knows what I know.
So then, you're guessing. Okay. I'm guessing too. But if I was in charge of a terrorist cell, with limited manpower, why on earth would I shoot myself - and my Cause - in the foot because someone failed? I need all the warm bodies I can get, so I can make oodles of cold bodies out of my Cause's enemies. Terrorists aren't stupid: in fact the good ones are as sharp as the best legitimate military minds you'll find. They know that in limited-manpower operations each man is vital because each probably wears several different hats.
...So Abdullah makes a wrong turn driving the getaway car and misses picking up Ali, who happens to be my best sharpshooter. Ali gets arrested. So I've already lost one man. Then Abdullah drags tail back to the cell, looking sheepish. I'm supposed to shoot him now? My crack explosives guy? ...Oh, didn't I mention he's the explosives guy? Well he is. There's only 7 of us in the cell, you know ...well, six now....
See? It makes no sense to shoot the guy. Even if there's - oh - 50 people in the cell, and I cap one because he picked his nose in the cafeteria line, I just blew away 2% of my available manpower. That's like losing 200 men out of an army of ten thousand.
I think you've been watching too many movies that show terrorist leaders as these ruthless bad guys who are always ready to ice one of their own at the first sign of incompetence or disobedience of an order. I suspect real terrorists are much more practical than that. I mean, at least get a replacement installed and trained before even thinking about snuffing Abdullah. Sheesh!
Oh. Why do I think terrorists are so practical? Because that's how I'd be as a terrorist, ruthless AND practical - makes for a very efficient and unpleasant combination.
A terrorist is standing in the city, waiting at the bus stop, with explosives strapped to her body. You would say that thousands of “targets” walk past her. Actually, none of these are targets. The target is in fact a bus, and it hasn’t arrived yet.
And if the bus breaks down, the terrorist strolls casually into a crowded restaurant nearby. BOOM. The terrorist walks down a flight of stairs, buys a token, and gets on a New Youk City subway, a car near the front please. BOOM. The terrorist walks into the cathedral on the corner: people there are celebrating Mass, the pews are packed because there's a play being presented up front by the children of the Catechism classes; the terrorist sits near the front-center. BOOM.
...Ten thousand people walk past the terrorist, and none of them are targets.
No. All of them targets.
Was he licking up grains of gunpowder to use in his next attack? If not, then he’s not one of the terrorists I was referring to.
I don't know. Maybe he'd did that earlier in the day. Maybe he planned on doing it later. Nor not at all, because he's not that kind of Arab. And even if you weren't talking specifically about him, what about people like Jasmine? If she had said what you did, she'd mean (and would SAY she meant) every Arab on the planet. And there are a LOT of people, Rob, who feel exactly the way Jasmine does. If you're not one of them, good for you! (I mean that!) But there are more than enough who feel the way Jasmine does that it makes Arabs like the guy I was playing last night profoundly uncomfortable and nervous, and very touchy. He even jumped on me at one point, because he'd gotten into a lost position in our first game and was taking forever to decide what to do. I asked him if he was considering falling on his sword. I meant the way Romans used to when they'd been defeated in battle and capture was imminent; he thought I meant that because he was an Arab he must be a sword-swinging barbarian. As soon as I explained that it was a comparative analogy he calmed down; but he was pre-primed to take offense. ...And he says that things in Canada are much calmer for him in that regard than the treatment he gets when he comes to the U.S. He was probably braced just because he could see the U.S. flag next to my screen-name.
Technically no, though I can understand your thinking so. Their budget and the tight security we have put in place, make it a target-poor world for them. They have only a few precious chances and a few targets to go with them. Also, they’re being killed off, in case you haven’t noticed. With less and less conscripts, and more deaths, their ranks are dwindling. Many otherwise potential conscripts are today turning to the safe life offered by the Coalition.
First of all, terrorists don't use "conscripts": you can't draft someone to be a terrorist, they're all volunteers. Especially the "suicide" variety.
Still, you might be right. But only time will tell. There is a great deal of smoldering anger toward the U.S. in the Muslim world; our actions in Iraq caused a lot of fence-sitters to fall off to the anti-American side, and not just the religious fanatics: I've been told that by the Arabs I've spoken with over chess games. (I make it a point to converse with them because I WANT to know what they think - I believe it's vital to know.)
This is exactly why we took action against Saddam and Osama. If we hadn’t, your vision may well have transpired. We have made it a thousand times more difficult for the terrorists to do this today.
No we haven't at all. Not for something like that. Ebola has an incubation period that ranges up to a couple of weeks, with a bare minimum of about a week. That's, call it, 10 days without symptoms. The symptoms appear and worsen over the course of the next 5 to 8 days, at first looking like the flu: the entire time the symptoms are present the victim is contagious, and he's got at least 3 or 4 days to walk around with nothing worse than a bad headache, pain in the joints, sweats, and a cough. After that the first of the bleed-outs begins, and it begins to become obvious that he's got more than the flu. So that means 3 or 4 days, 16 hours or more each day, of spreading Ebola through our most densely populated cities. ...Good night, Irene.
Yes, it is. So I guess that means if Kerry just happens to win in '04 and makes an executive decision to pull every American butt out of Iraq, that'd be "natural and normal" too.
Terrorists need to be very picky about who, what, where, when why and how, and this applies to every plan, each person, each piece of equipment, payment, pickup, delivery, communication, info drop, surveillance, codes, rehearsals etc; who, what, where, when why and how, a thousand times over. Many of their operations are canceled because one part doesn’t work out.
Well obviously, Rob. The idea, as Patton so famously put it, is not to 'die for your country, but make the other poor dumb b^stard die for HIS country!' So of course terrorists are willing to pull out of an operation that begins to smell sour. That's just plain old common sense. And that way they live to bomb another day. And then it's right back to the drawing board, planning the next strike on the next target of opportunity, in a world that bristles with opportunities.
I wasn’t aware of you knowing anything about me, but as to the terrorists – no, I only know as much as any civilian who knows what I know.
So then, you're guessing. Okay. I'm guessing too. But if I was in charge of a terrorist cell, with limited manpower, why on earth would I shoot myself - and my Cause - in the foot because someone failed? I need all the warm bodies I can get, so I can make oodles of cold bodies out of my Cause's enemies. Terrorists aren't stupid: in fact the good ones are as sharp as the best legitimate military minds you'll find. They know that in limited-manpower operations each man is vital because each probably wears several different hats.
...So Abdullah makes a wrong turn driving the getaway car and misses picking up Ali, who happens to be my best sharpshooter. Ali gets arrested. So I've already lost one man. Then Abdullah drags tail back to the cell, looking sheepish. I'm supposed to shoot him now? My crack explosives guy? ...Oh, didn't I mention he's the explosives guy? Well he is. There's only 7 of us in the cell, you know ...well, six now....
See? It makes no sense to shoot the guy. Even if there's - oh - 50 people in the cell, and I cap one because he picked his nose in the cafeteria line, I just blew away 2% of my available manpower. That's like losing 200 men out of an army of ten thousand.
I think you've been watching too many movies that show terrorist leaders as these ruthless bad guys who are always ready to ice one of their own at the first sign of incompetence or disobedience of an order. I suspect real terrorists are much more practical than that. I mean, at least get a replacement installed and trained before even thinking about snuffing Abdullah. Sheesh!
Oh. Why do I think terrorists are so practical? Because that's how I'd be as a terrorist, ruthless AND practical - makes for a very efficient and unpleasant combination.
A terrorist is standing in the city, waiting at the bus stop, with explosives strapped to her body. You would say that thousands of “targets” walk past her. Actually, none of these are targets. The target is in fact a bus, and it hasn’t arrived yet.
And if the bus breaks down, the terrorist strolls casually into a crowded restaurant nearby. BOOM. The terrorist walks down a flight of stairs, buys a token, and gets on a New Youk City subway, a car near the front please. BOOM. The terrorist walks into the cathedral on the corner: people there are celebrating Mass, the pews are packed because there's a play being presented up front by the children of the Catechism classes; the terrorist sits near the front-center. BOOM.
...Ten thousand people walk past the terrorist, and none of them are targets.
No. All of them targets.
Was he licking up grains of gunpowder to use in his next attack? If not, then he’s not one of the terrorists I was referring to.
I don't know. Maybe he'd did that earlier in the day. Maybe he planned on doing it later. Nor not at all, because he's not that kind of Arab. And even if you weren't talking specifically about him, what about people like Jasmine? If she had said what you did, she'd mean (and would SAY she meant) every Arab on the planet. And there are a LOT of people, Rob, who feel exactly the way Jasmine does. If you're not one of them, good for you! (I mean that!) But there are more than enough who feel the way Jasmine does that it makes Arabs like the guy I was playing last night profoundly uncomfortable and nervous, and very touchy. He even jumped on me at one point, because he'd gotten into a lost position in our first game and was taking forever to decide what to do. I asked him if he was considering falling on his sword. I meant the way Romans used to when they'd been defeated in battle and capture was imminent; he thought I meant that because he was an Arab he must be a sword-swinging barbarian. As soon as I explained that it was a comparative analogy he calmed down; but he was pre-primed to take offense. ...And he says that things in Canada are much calmer for him in that regard than the treatment he gets when he comes to the U.S. He was probably braced just because he could see the U.S. flag next to my screen-name.
Technically no, though I can understand your thinking so. Their budget and the tight security we have put in place, make it a target-poor world for them. They have only a few precious chances and a few targets to go with them. Also, they’re being killed off, in case you haven’t noticed. With less and less conscripts, and more deaths, their ranks are dwindling. Many otherwise potential conscripts are today turning to the safe life offered by the Coalition.
First of all, terrorists don't use "conscripts": you can't draft someone to be a terrorist, they're all volunteers. Especially the "suicide" variety.
Still, you might be right. But only time will tell. There is a great deal of smoldering anger toward the U.S. in the Muslim world; our actions in Iraq caused a lot of fence-sitters to fall off to the anti-American side, and not just the religious fanatics: I've been told that by the Arabs I've spoken with over chess games. (I make it a point to converse with them because I WANT to know what they think - I believe it's vital to know.)
This is exactly why we took action against Saddam and Osama. If we hadn’t, your vision may well have transpired. We have made it a thousand times more difficult for the terrorists to do this today.
No we haven't at all. Not for something like that. Ebola has an incubation period that ranges up to a couple of weeks, with a bare minimum of about a week. That's, call it, 10 days without symptoms. The symptoms appear and worsen over the course of the next 5 to 8 days, at first looking like the flu: the entire time the symptoms are present the victim is contagious, and he's got at least 3 or 4 days to walk around with nothing worse than a bad headache, pain in the joints, sweats, and a cough. After that the first of the bleed-outs begins, and it begins to become obvious that he's got more than the flu. So that means 3 or 4 days, 16 hours or more each day, of spreading Ebola through our most densely populated cities. ...Good night, Irene.
