‘Our Country Is in Trouble’

Newsweek Web Exclusive

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  • Posted By: emc2000 @ 02/14/2008 11:08:37 AM

    Do you think Al Queda will stop killing westerners if the US will pull out from the middle east for good? What if they don't and what is the next plan?

  • Posted By: emc2000 @ 02/14/2008 11:08:12 AM

    Do you think Al Queda will stop killing westerners if the US will pull out from the middle east for good? What if they don't and what is the next plan?

  • Posted By: arkay @ 02/14/2008 11:01:04 AM

    Cheap oil?? We don't set the market price at the well. Oil exporting countires could have and did raise the price anytime they want by reducing oil output.
    al-Qaeda is smarter, in part, by the press's desire to exploit every success and how it was gained. Imagine if the press were as irresponsible during WWII and trumpeted the breaking of the Enigma or Japanses naval codes.

  • Posted By: pinkpanther87413 @ 02/14/2008 10:45:51 AM

    FOR 6 YEARS I WORKED IN THIS, AND EVERY DAY WE WORKED WITH AK-47S IN OUR BACKS, AND WE HERED DAILY " WHEN THE RUSSIANS ARE GONE YOUR NEXT" I ASKED WHY, AND HE STATED PLAINLY! YOU INTERFERE INTO OUR POLITICS, AND DON'T EVEN LIVE HERE! KEEP YOUR NOSE OUT OF OUR COUNTRIES BUISN! WE DID NOT. BUSH JR GOT TO EMPOY 2.5 MILLION AS REBUILDING THE WTC IS FAR MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE COUNTRY. DADDY GOT YELLED AT BY BHUTTO AND IS NOW DEAD HUSSAIN THREATENED DADDIES LIFE AND HE IS DEAD SO I SEE REVENGE NOT WORLD OR COUNTRY SAFETY BY BUSH JR! TOP IT OFF WITH DADDIES COMMENT WHEN ASKED WHY NOT TAKE BAGDAD IN 91? HE STATED PLAIN AND CLEAR "THE USA CANNOT NOW OR EVER AFFORD TO TAKE OUT BAGDAD",MMM GUESS HE WAS RIGHT. TO BAD SONNY DON'T LISTEN EITHER! OF COURSE WHEN YOUR NOT AFTER A TERRIBLE LEADER, HE WILL GET STRONGER-DU! SOME WOULD VOTE HIM RIGHT BACK IN, CAUSE THE SURGE [ROLLING JOKE] WORKED, BY WHOS STANDARDS I HAVE NOT A CLUE, BUT IT DID NOT, AND WILL NOT, WORK, EVER! WE SPEND 2 BILLION A DAY TO STAY, THEY SPEND-ZERO, SO WHO HAS THE UPPER HAND IN PATIENTS, WHICH THEY HAVE PLENTY OF, AFTER 3000 YEARS OF INVASIONS, AND THEY ARE STILL THERE!

  • Posted By: guntis @ 02/14/2008 7:51:25 AM

    Finally the people that seem to know what is going on and perhaps on 9-11 asked themselves the question of "What did we do to piss off somebody so bad that they are willing to die in seeking revenge?" But instead we keep saying God Bless America, and support the troops.

    Osama bin Laden may not have planned it, but the economic penelty that he has caused the USA to pay in reaction to 9-11 is what is killing us in public works being neglected, and education being paid lip service only.

    • Posted By: Naver @ 02/14/2008 10:26:24 AM

      Oh please, public works were in the crapper as well as the U.S. educational system before the towers fell. Not that it didnt cause economic hardships, but lets be a bit more truthful.

  • Posted By: 15R8 @ 02/14/2008 6:13:47 AM

    Clinton did not dismiss Osama he tried to kill Osama etiher your for the American middle class or your aginst the American middle class. That is why we need war not only aginst the terrorists with guns but the economic terrorists like Calderon of mexico ! The illegal alien may be good for the California economy those jobs going to citizens of the U.S. in reality those jobs in a national economy are shifted from somewhere else to the cutthroats.
    If you work at a J-Mart gas station in California and help illegal aliens you are every bit aginst America as Osama !

    • Posted By: Naver @ 02/14/2008 10:20:47 AM

      Just some info for you friend. Clinton had seven opportunities to kill Osama. The last time he had troops on the ground 30 minutes from Osama. He refused to give the order each and every time.

  • Posted By: nav-vet @ 02/14/2008 12:16:39 AM

    Because of this Presidents failure to finish the job in Afghanistan, we will suffer a massive blow some time in the near future. Why we are pinned down in Iraq, our enemys rebuild and plot. The drain on our economy
    gives victory to Bin Laden, George Bush has fulfilled his master plan of creating the economic caos the WTC
    destuction only hinted at. The Russians see it, they set it in China and they wait for it.

    • Posted By: Naver @ 02/14/2008 10:09:07 AM

      Mmmm no not really. We are not pinned down in Iraq, and the loonies are pushed up into the hinterlands in Afgan And Pakistan. You have to take into account that these people have for generations been told about how evil the U.S. is and that they are just stealing their oil, they forget to mention the massive amount of money the governments have been getting. So of course there was a massive resistance at first, changing a collective opinion does not happy quickly anywhere, but now more and more the people are turning against the loonies.

      And incase you have not notice everyone elses economy, big and small, is tied to the U.S. When their economy goes south so does ours and everyone elses. We feel it worse though because your economy goes south because you stop buying things, our economy goes south because we loos the jobs that made the stuff that you stopped buying.

  • Posted By: calliesanders @ 02/14/2008 10:03:41 AM

    See Ron Paul (despite all the BS articles on here about how he is so wrong) If all his ideas are so far off why is Newsweek publishing this article which is exactly what he has been saying all along!!

    Ron Paul 2008

  • Posted By: Kathy from PA @ 02/14/2008 7:03:43 AM

    You say this isn't being talked about in our primary cycle. I beg to differ. Dr. Ron Paul has brought this up time and time again at every stump, every speech, every debate. The other candidates have either A. laughed, or B. Attacked (Guiliani). RP is the ONLY one who understands this. Whenever it's mentioned, he is accused of "blaming Americans for 911" or some other such nonsense.

    • Posted By: calliesanders @ 02/14/2008 10:00:58 AM

      Absolutely - I cannot believe the biased anti-Paul articles published by Newsweek but then they publish this - this article is exactly what Ron Paul has been talking about the whole election season!!!!

  • Posted By: calliesanders @ 02/14/2008 9:59:07 AM

    This is exactly what Ron Paul has been saying in EVERY SINGLE debate. Newsweek has printed several pieces on 'Wong Paul" and "Ron Paul's Fantasies" but nowhere do you give him credit for the completely dead-on ideas, identical to those expressed in this article, that he has been so vocal about during this election. My mom calls your magazine "Hillary Weekly" as a result of your often biased slant on the news. After reading your slanted coverage of Ron Paul (while publishing articles by other people with similar philosophies) I now regard you in the same light as Fox News and other biased, politically driven publications. Subscription canceled.

  • Posted By: timcollins00 @ 02/14/2008 9:52:01 AM

    To falconer2: I only have an MBA, but I would agree you are a putz if for no other reason that there is no such word "ineducation" in the English language that I am aware of. Stay home, don't vote and PLEASE, stay off the Internet!

  • Posted By: falconer2 @ 02/14/2008 9:32:12 AM

    Ahhh I just realized how you were so confused ...Read the message i sent before the one you replied to ...It's two meesages before that. Maybe that will explain things for you ...I refer to the fact that Obama was as a child a practicing Muslim and since he no linger is (He's Christian now) He has broken Islamic law and thus having left the 'faith" is condemned

  • Posted By: falconer2 @ 02/14/2008 9:25:21 AM

    Wow did you miss the point or what????
    I won't defend your attacks on my education ...except to say I have a PhD. You are however showing your ineducation in what you say. Read it again ...I'm far from a bigot I tried to show both sides and possibilities in an educated and exact form

  • Posted By: falconer2 @ 02/14/2008 8:13:02 AM

    Don't forget you are dealing with fundamentalists here and a Fatwah against a world leader would be a formidable wall to get over. Also the general Muslim world is overwhelmingly uneducated. so they believe and follow their Clerics. If a Fatwah is issued against Obama... the Islamic leaders will cartainly have a problem, ignoring it. The last thing we would want is a country sympathetic to the US being ravaged with cilvil war because we put a "fallen" Muslim in the presidency.
    It may be true that the "concept" is illuminating to us, but to a world of uneducated "followers" would it ever get far enough to make a difference?
    Don't think in terms of your education and America's (this is one of our biggest faults) Think in terms of theirs.

  • Posted By: Grudi @ 02/14/2008 8:06:35 AM

    Mr. Scheuer is selling a book, and make no mistake about it, he's going to paint the picture he does to help sell it. I do agree on the reasons he lists regarding bin Laden's hatred for Western political influence. That being said, in a civilized world - one that Osama lives and all of us - murder and terrorism has no place. If you have a dispute with your next-door neighbor, or someone across town, you don't drive your car into their house, nor do you fly a plane into buildings. Scheuer talks of Al Qaeda's leaders and being smarter. Smarter how? In different methods to murder? No I, like Mr. Scheuer, don???t have a PhD in Arab world studies, but I'm sure that's not a pillar of Islam.
    Complicating this issue is that bin Laden doesn't represent a country, but and ideology. And he is the self-proclaimed spokesman for it. If Osama believes that he is right in his actions, then why hide in a cave or otherwise? Bottom line his methods and thinking have no place in the world. Well, maybe in his demented world they do.

  • Posted By: kongdewei @ 02/14/2008 7:27:54 AM

    So, let's get real, Mr. Scheuer. How do we win this war then? Do we just stop our support for Israel; pull out of the Arabian peninsula, take our military out of other Islamic countries, fracture our relations with foreign states that Osama believes oppress Muslims, stop trying to keep oil prices low (and et gas be $10 a gallon), and shut ourselves off from the rest of the world so we can pacify Osama and the rest of the smart, heinous, murderous Muslims? Give me break. These guys may be sophisticated and may not be total idiots, but make no mistake - they are out-of-their-mind fanatics who cannot be reasoned with and need to be killed. Period.

    • Posted By: al75 @ 02/14/2008 8:03:33 AM

      On the contrary: IMO Obama's election would strike a blow at terrorist recruiting and capacity to depict the US as Satan. Just as Guantanamo, Abu Graib, and inflammatory videos from the West Bank are used as propaganda by our enemies, a credible, charismatic and morally-grounded leader who is promoting international peace, would be great propaganda for us. Go read the account in the "Looming Tower" of how an arb FBI agent used the koran in an argument with an Al Queada suspect to prove that 9/11 was against the will of God. The suspect buckeled , and became an invaluable intelligence source. In fact, being on the right side morally works. The US got the enigma code in WWII precisely because czeck agents literally gave their lives to give intelligence to a power they thought was morally better than the Nazis. Likewise the US prevailed over Bolshevism because so many people recoiled at Stalin's evil. We abandon our own values at our peril.

  • Posted By: CFBeehner @ 02/14/2008 7:56:58 AM

    I agree with Mr. Scheuer that our country is in trouble but part paths with him on the reasoning why. He seems to be implying all we have to do is hike up our skirts, admit defeat, turn our backs on our ally Israel, withdraw from the Middle East, allow Bin Laden and his band of Wahabbis to recreate the Caliphiate, and everything will be ok for us Americans again. Give me a break! ! The reason we are losing the war in Afghanistan can be traced to the events of Tora Bora, where the geniuses Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld ignored repeated requests from our on site CIA commander in Afghanistan to air drop American troops along the Afghan-Pak border, and thereby denying the enemy escape to Pakistan and Waziristan. Allowing our enemies safe haven in Waziristan or anywhere else for the past 7 years is a reciple for defeat. Don't any of our elected officials remember Vietnam and the consequences of allowing the enemy safe haven in Laos and Cambodia??? Or ever read and study Sun Tzu and the Art of War? Obviously not. What we need to do is brutally simple. We need to find Bin Laden and al Zwahiri and kill them wherever they are without regard to "collaterl damage." And we need to do it as quietly as possible. Our government needs to stop wringing its hands over our "ally" Pakistan and its borders and deal with these people-permanently.

  • Posted By: 321jimbo @ 02/14/2008 6:57:11 AM

    We will never win the "war" against terrorism. We might as well wage war on the weather. We are spending gazillions of dollars in this war with no hope of any return and no increase in taxes to pay for it. There are bigger problems than terrorism. We are chasing the boogeyman, while all of our manufacturing is being outsourced to China, India, or wherever. No wonder the dollar is in the crapper.

  • Posted By: Kaelinda @ 02/14/2008 6:53:25 AM

    Osama Bin Laden has said his ultimate goal is to bankrupt America. Not to Conquer America. Not to convert Americans to Islam. To bankrupt America. With the help of presidents like Bush and the current congress, he's likely to do it, too.

  • Posted By: Watcher58 @ 02/13/2008 10:02:48 PM

    There in no simple solution, but the idiots who think along secular lines think that you can abandon or force Israel to become a dhimni nation to the overwhelmingly oil-rich and land rich Arab? Guess what, you non-believers, you are next.
    The Arabs have no intention of backing down or stopping their onslaught against freedom and liberty. Their mindset, no matted how educated they may be, is still living in the didstant past of Islamic dominance, and that only Islam will prevail as the religion of the world, and they intend to make you
    all their dhimnis.

    If you force Israel to give up their soveriegnity or divide Jerusalem to "appease" your Arab friends, then you can look forward to disasters upon this nation beyond anything you have yet seen. However you overly educated arrogant and ignorant upbringing has lent you to believe that there is no God.
    You all had better have a look at Psalm 2 and Zechariah 12:3 in the Old Testament and rethink your positions before you endorse making Israel a scapegoat or sacrificial lamb for your Arab Muslim hatemongers who hate her because they are jealous of her place as the heirs of Abraham. Your blood is now upon your own heads if you do think to harm or take away Israel's rights as a sovereign nation, as you have been warned against coercing, slicing up, or removing Israel from her statehood by violence and deceit. If you think that siding with the Islamic enemy or attempting to compromise with them will help you, you are DEAD WRONG. Neither they nor anyone else will ever destroy Israel again, and that's God's promise!

    • Posted By: Kevster54 @ 02/14/2008 1:21:06 AM

      The days of regarding Israel as the victim are gone

      • Posted By: al75 @ 02/14/2008 6:38:20 AM

        Watcher58 - your post is a specimen of the most frightening development: an obviously intelligent, probably well-educated person who has adopted a magical religious notion of world events. This is a sign of civilization in decay - and of Israel in decay. People who believe they have God's signature on an IOU obviously have no need to negotiate. Next stop: religious war.

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