wrote in message
...
On Thu, 7 Oct 2010 13:13:28 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:


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.

... so we are going to kill men, women and children until they do.

No wonder they hate us there.

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.

It is not clear Islamabad has any more influence in those mountains
than we do. They are shaky enough that they could lose that fight. If
they do, we all lose.




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


There are plenty of Democrats who feel the same way.
Nobody really has a better idea about what to do with the detainees.
Maybe they should load them all up on a surplus C5A and take them back
to Afghanistan. Then they could have a problem in the air, the plane
crashes and the crew were the only ones with parachutes. ;-)

Even the innocent ones? How do we know who's actually a terrorist?