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Definition of War / Evidence

Definition of War / Evidence

2001-09-26 by GAmoore@aol.com

>War is an armed conflict between nations -- i.e. political entities 
>each occupying a piece of land and each having its own government.
>Terrorism is any form of violent attack by a (often minority) group 
>on another group.  The group being attacked can be a nation, but as 
>soon as the attacker also is anation, it's called 'war'. 

By this definition, the Vietnam "war" might be called a terrorist 
operation since the Vietcong were indigenous people. Of course the NVA 
came into play too, but there were few WWII-style battles of armies.

This whole attempt to define war is likely to fail. The Palestinians feel 
they have a national identity, and are in a struggle for statehood, while 
the Israelis consider them terrorists. The Israelis in 1948 felt they had 
a national identity, and were in a struggle for statehood, while the 
British and Arabs considered them terrorists.

>Even when it's 
>not yet clear that this same bin Laden was behind it.  Sorry, but I 
>find that weird and somewhat inconsistent.
>Just suppose... what if the WTC-attack was carried out by a small 
>group of independent individuals, now all dead with their planes?  It 
>wasn't that hard to do, apparently, so the fuzz about "big 
>organisation & loads of money" is just crap.  Then what?
>Sure, still sufficient reason to want to catch bin Laden, but then it 
>has nothing to do with the WTC-attack...

The US government evidently has a lot of evidence. However why should 
they give away informers and their technological capaibilities, before 
the culprits are caught. 

Should the British have had to "prove" the Nazi's were bad before 
attacking Germany, and should they have had to reveal that they knew 
about certain things because they were decrypting the secret enigma 
machine code?

The US is providing details to the leaders of many countries. Trust your 
own Euro leaders. Now if Tony Blair says "Bush is full of crap, he's got 
nothing on Bin Laden" then I would agree with you.

Re: [L-OT] Definition of War / Evidence

2001-09-26 by Hendrik Jan Veenstra

Thoughts from the mind of GAmoore@..., 9/26/01:

>  >Even when it's
>>not yet clear that this same bin Laden was behind it.  Sorry, but I
>>find that weird and somewhat inconsistent.
>>Just suppose... what if the WTC-attack was carried out by a small
>>group of independent individuals, now all dead with their planes?  It
>>wasn't that hard to do, apparently, so the fuzz about "big
>>organisation & loads of money" is just crap.  Then what?
>>Sure, still sufficient reason to want to catch bin Laden, but then it
>>has nothing to do with the WTC-attack...
>
>The US government evidently has a lot of evidence. However why should
>they give away informers and their technological capaibilities, before
>the culprits are caught.

You completely miss the point, not for the first time.

>The US is providing details to the leaders of many countries. Trust your
>own Euro leaders. Now if Tony Blair says "Bush is full of crap, he's got
>nothing on Bin Laden" then I would agree with you.

I never denied the US may have strong evidence against bin Laden 
_now_.  However, we were talking about the state of things one week 
ago or so.  The first sentence quoted above "Even when it's..." was 
explicitly referring to a past state of affairs.  Of course quoting 
things out of context helps in making the muddy waters even muddier.

cheers,
HJ
-- 
     Hendrik Jan Veenstra
     email: mailto:h@...
     www:   http://www.ision.nl/users/h/index.html

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