[quote]Originally posted by Barry the Sprout:
Quote:
I wasn't suggesting that we should personally have evidence ourselves before the strike, but has some sort of court ever seen the evidence? Will any sort of court ever see the evidence? Even if the evidence is analysed afterwards it would help as the military would be unable to carry out this sort of strike in the future - they would know they had to have evidence against the people they were killing.
The point of my post was simply to respond to Ziroc's theory that we were naive if we thought we should see the evidence. In my view the idea that nobody should see the evidence and that we should trust our soldiers is the naive one. But I never said that I personally wanted to see the evidence before the strike. I said they should prove that they had evidence, either before or after, to some kind of court. Preferably an impartial one.
And my final point is against the argument that this is "war" and that we therefore have to kill our enemy. Well, what is the objective of this war - ultimately it is peace. The objective of this war is to end the war, i.e. make it a safe world to live in. All I'm saying is that in order to acheive that objective this war cannot be fought in a conventional way. You can't go around bombing your enemies and then expect them to roll over and give in. It won't happen and we will never win. This is not a normal war and we have no hope in hell of winning it in the normal way.
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If you look at the psychology of the situation I think you'll get the evidence you're interested in. Think of it this way... this attack was a major slap in the face to Al Queda... it weakens them in the eyes of their rabid brethren. If it starts to look like the only thing their organization can do is die then the funds will stop flowing - bad for them. SO - IF we didn't hit the guys the government claims we hit, I'll personally GUARANTEE that you see video of them parading around alive and well to prove how inept the US is. (within a week I'd guess)
(that guarantee and a buck will get you a cup of cheap coffee [img]smile.gif[/img] )
In any event this is a blow to their network... it means that if they have operations in countries where we have an active intelligence network (which is just about EVERYWHERE) then they're vulnerable to attack.
[ 11-07-2002, 09:00 AM: Message edited by: Thoran ]