Quote from maxpi:
Obama will load up the Judiciary with guys that will be screwing with us for the next 6 decades... that alone is enough for me to not consider voting for him without laughing out loud...
Quote from Mercor:
Look what Obama has done to this tread. Imagine him as our Great Leader.
Quote from AAAintheBeltway:
Obama also frightens me. No experience or seasoning, terrible judgment in past associations, radical marxist/far left agenda, wife clearly carrying decades of racial anger. About the best that can be said of Obama is that he is a highly skilled manipulator.
Quote from Mercor:
IF you think the US markets have problems, look at the value of al Qaeda shares throughout the Muslim world: A high-flying political equity just a few years ago, its stock has tanked. It made the wrong strategic investments and squandered its moral capital.
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Osama bin Laden was the darling of the Arab street, seen as the most successful Muslim in centuries. The Saudi royal family paid him protection money, while individual princes handed over cash willingly: Al Qaeda seemed like the greatest thing since the right to abuse multiple wives.
Osama appeared on T-shirts and his taped utterances were awaited with fervent excitement. Recruits flocked to al Qaeda not because of "American aggression," but because, after countless failures, it looked like the Arabs had finally produced a winner.
What a difference a war makes.
Yes, al Qaeda had little or no connection to Saddam Hussein's Iraq - but the terrorists chose to declare that country the main front in their struggle with the Great Satan. Bad investment: Their behavior there was so breathtakingly brutal that they alienated their fellow Muslims in record time.
Fighting enthusiastically beside the once-hated Americans, Iraq's Sunni Muslims turned on the terrorists with a vengeance. Al Qaeda's response? It kept on butchering innocent Muslims, Sunni and Shia alike. Iraq exposed al Qaeda as a fraud.
Where do Osama & Co. stand today? They're not welcome in a single Arab country. The Saudi royals not only cut off their funding, but cracked down hard within the kingdom. A few countries, such as Yemen, tolerate radicals out in the boonies - but they won't let al Qaeda in. Osama's reps couldn't even get extended-stay rooms in Somalia, beyond the borders of the Arab world.
And the Arab in the (dirty) street is chastened. Instead of delivering a triumph, al Qaeda brought disaster, killing far more Arabs through violence and strife than Israel has killed in all its wars. Nobody in the Arab world's buying al Qaeda shares at yesterday's premium - and only a last few suckers are buying at all.
Guess what? We won.
The partisan hacks who insisted that Iraq was a distraction from fighting al Qaeda have missed the situation's irony: Things are getting worse in Afghanistan and Pakistan not because our attention was elsewhere, but because al Qaeda has been driven from the Arab world, with nowhere else to go.
Al Qaeda isn't fighting to revive the Caliphate these days. It's fighting for its life.
Unwelcome even in Sudan or Syria, the Islamist fanatics have retreated to remote mountain villages and compounds on the Pakistani side of the Afghan border. That means Afghanistan's going to remain a difficult challenge for years to come - not a mission-impossible, but an aggravating one.
But we all need to stand back and consider how much we've achieved: A terrorist organization that less than a decade ago had global appeal and reach has been discredited in the eyes of most of the world's billion-plus Muslims.
No one of consequence in the Arab world sees al Qaeda as a winner anymore. Even fundamentalist clerics denounce it. For all of our missteps, Iraq's been worth it.
How is it that the media missed this stunning victory? Will they start to admit it after Nov. 4?
Yes, al Qaeda remains dangerous. It's a wounded hog still grunting down in the canebrake: More innocent people will be gored - and it's going to take a lot of pig-sticking to finish it off.
But I'm proud of one call I made last year: The prediction that the "Sunni flip" in Iraq's Anbar Province marked the high-water mark for al Qaeda. Increasingly, that call looks correct.
Democrats make a great fuss over the Bush administration's failure to capture Osama (although they themselves have no idea how to do so). But it now looks like the judgment of history - after the political rancor has settled into the graves of today's demagogues - will be that the administration of George W. Bush defeated al Qaeda.
There's plenty of work still to be done. Al Qaeda will behave viciously in its death throes. Other terrorist groups await their turn to appall the world.
But the second-greatest irony of our time is that, fumbling all the way, the Bush administration did what it set out to do after 9/11: It exacted vengeance on those who attacked us and toppled their towers - al Qaeda's fantastic dreams of global jihad.
So what's the greatest irony? The president's oft-mocked declaration of "Mission Accomplished" wasn't wrong, after all - just premature.
Quote from Cutten:
But the object of invading Iraq wasn't to attack and weaken Al Queda. It was to find and destroy Saddam's WMD capability (which turned out not to exist).
Al Queda was already being fought and beaten in Afghanistan, over a year before the Iraq invasion took place. If Iraq had not been invaded, the US would have had massively more resources to devote to destroying Al Queda in Afghanistan and the Pakistan borders. The terrorist group would probably have been wiped out by now, if not for the Iraq war which gave them temporary refuge, a new theatre of conflict, and backing from Iran and Syria.
Iraq if anything prolonged Al Queda's survival.
Also, what are these claims that "we won" as if it is any surprise? Anyone with a brain knew Al Queda was toast as soon as 9/11 happened. The notion that a rag-tag of terrorists can seriously take on the world's sole superpower by a *direct attack on its soil* is and always was ludicrous. Terrorists can persuade politicians and electorates to leave peripheral areas they have little conviction in defending. They cannot win when they are trying to *actually defeat* the state they oppose. A terrorist group could get the US to leave Lebanon. A 3rd world army could get the US to abandon Vietnam. Even the combined military forces of Russia, China, and the EU combined cannot get the US to convert to Islam and become part of a global caliphate. Al Queda was always going to be squashed like a bug, after 9/11 happened. This article is extremely disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
Quote from acronym:
His policies kinda suck, but nothing new there, they are all dodgy. He would probably make a great president, given that role is a stage managed actor position.
But on that basis, Arnie would be better, if only he could run.
Quote from Pa(b)st Prime:
How did Russia do in Afghanistan? The notion that the U.S. need only "turn it's attention" to places outside Iraq is naive. Iraq was important because it's in the mainstream. Baghdad is closer to NYC than is Dubai. Iraq borders EU member Turkey. Iraq funded Hamas. By comparison Afghanistan and Pakistan are isolated outposts. Like North Korea. Out of the loop.
I know you're not as stupid as many of the non-profitable libs who post here but a "war" that cost only about a thoudand more lives than 9/11 and yet eliminated BOTH Saddam and Al Qaeda from a rebuilt Iraq is a VERY positive development.
Obama would like to punish Pakistan for having a pourous border with Afghanistan. Just like we have with Mexico, lol.