wrote in message
...
On Thu, 7 Oct 2010 10:41:22 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:

The Taliban still holds big areas in southern Afghanistan and they
will be back in Kabul the day we leave. Right now they are across the
road in Pakistan and our ability to do much there is really limited.
We are killing about 50 innocents per terrorist we kill and that is
worse that the ratio of Nazi reprisals in WWII. The rest of the world
is waking up to that reality. We also risk losing Pakistan.
If we destabilize a nuclear power we have really set world safety
back 40 years. It won't be a Soviet missile that blows up a US city,
it will be a leaked Pakistani warhead delivered in a Ryder truck or a
small boat.

Right, but they don't harbor bin laden and there are negotiations underway
to bring them into the political framework (basically we get out, they
don't
harbor terrorists is the gist of it).

What? Bin Laden has been in Pakistan for bout 9 years. Somebody there
is harboring him. Islamabad has about as much control in that area as
Kabul. You really need a GPS to tell the difference between Pakistan
and Afghanistan down there anyway.

And your point? We went in to get bin laden. We would have settled this
without a war if the Taliban had turned him over. They didn't.

Pakistan could deal with it if they really wanted to, but they have their
own political problems. And, as you said, we don't want to destabilize that
gov't any more than necessary.

So, now with your false equivalency argument you're comparing the US to
the
Nazis????


Only the tactic. If we think killing thousands of innocent people to
get a few hundred Taliban we are not much better than the Nazis.
The same people who question the ethics of Gitmo are willing to ignore
the legal concept that we would rather "let a guilty person go free
than convict (or kill without trial) an innocent one".

There's no comparison. Sorry.

Gitmo should be closed. The Republicans and their fear-based diatribes are
holding that up too.