Letters to the Editor
Bill Owen
Published Letters: 560 Editor's Choice: 6
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@ MacGupta
[Read the article: David Broder: Embodiment of Beltway values]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Naive I am not. Say what you like about how sincere they were, there is a large amount of evidence to indicate that they were. The Pakistanis were negotiating this with them at the time, they were thinking about it, after all they knew the consequences. Now we will never know now if their offer was sincere since the idiot war criminal turned it down flat.
The Taleban regularly made/make agreements and honor them. Trading prisoners is an old and honorable tradition there, as is switching sides. Tribal societies place a very high value on honor and the value of their word.
What harm would there have been in stopping the bombing for a few days, and taking him up on his offer? None. The problem of course, was that Bush had no evidence, hence Powell's backtracking on his promise to produce a dossier. Blair also offered to produce evidence but never did. He broke his word too.
We could have had Bin Laden but then there would have been no Emmanuel Goldstein for buhs to use. There is good evidence that Bin Laden was allowed to escape at Tora Bora, rather than sending in as many troops as conceivable, buhs sent in, at most a couple of hundred special forces types. The border with Pakistan, and Bin Laden, presumably with his dialysis machine in tow, escaped to Pakistan.
Not that buhs cares anymore...
So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you. I'm more worried about making sure that our soldiers are well-supplied; that the strategy is clear; that the coalition is strong; that when we find enemy bunched up like we did in Shahikot Mountains, that the military has all the support it needs to go in and do the job, which they did.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/03/20020313-8.html
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@ shooter
[Read the article: David Broder: Embodiment of Beltway values]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Please Jesus, don't lay that on on me! I don't represent the left! I guess you don't read my posts....
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@ McGupta, Defender of Buhs
[Read the article: David Broder: Embodiment of Beltway values]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My point, my only point, was that if someone has hostages in a bank and they offer to surrender, the correct response, the smart response, the moral response, is NOT to start shooting right away. What's the hurry?
Honestly I believe they might have done so. How can you be so sure that they would not? The fact that America had tried 30 times before does not matter so much as times had changed. It was obvious to the world that sans handing over Bin Laden they were going to get attacked and they were going to lose.
Mullah Omar and his ragtag government knew that, handing over Bin Laden could have saved them. Despite all the propaganda, the vast majority of Muslims are not lining up to become shaheeds.
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@ Shooter -- the left , and invasions
[Read the article: David Broder: Embodiment of Beltway values]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I recall prior to the whole 911 paradigm shift there were quite a few people, on the left, as you would say who would have supported going into the Afghan to liberate the women and to end some of the more bizarre excesses of their government. It would have been a bad idea then, just as it was a bad idea in 2001.
I was not among them then, although I felt the impulse. Killing people wholesale rarely improves anything.
In the end it was the neocon junta, themselves "leftists" (if a Trotskyite can be called a "leftest"), who went in to deliver the people of Afghanistan from evil and to bring them democracy.
No, I don't advocate invading countries on the basis of rescuing them from a mad leaders bizarre excesses, and to liberate the women. America has too many nuclear weapons to make that feasible anyway.
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@ Iokannan - fable and fact
[Read the article: David Broder: Embodiment of Beltway values]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When I was in high school we took a class trip to the local courthouse to watch justice in action. The first case was a guy brought in some pictures that he took of a car accident he was in. The judge asked him if there was any evidence corroborating those pictures, (such as someone testifying that he was there when they were taken) that sort of thing. When he was told that it was just the pictures, he did not allow them as evidence.
Evidence is a legal term. The mere existence of a tape that "sounds like" Bin Laden is not evidence, not even close. Even if it was downloaded from an "al qaeda" site by code name "Mrs. Gali" who is apparently some housewife in the Midwest.
When Seeing and Hearing Isn't Believing
Bill Arkin
By William M. Arkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, Feb. 1, 1999
"Gentlemen! We have called you together to inform you that we are going to overthrow the United States government." So begins a statement being delivered by Gen. Carl W. Steiner, former Commander-in-chief, U.S. Special Operations Command.
At least the voice sounds amazingly like him.
But it is not Steiner. It is the result of voice "morphing" technology developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
By taking just a 10-minute digital recording of Steiner's voice, scientist George Papcun is able, in near real time, to clone speech patterns and develop an accurate facsimile. Steiner was so impressed, he asked for a copy of the tape.
Steiner was hardly the first or last victim to be spoofed by Papcun's team members. To refine their method, they took various high quality recordings of generals and experimented with creating fake statements. One of the most memorable is Colin Powell stating "I am being treated well by my captors."
"They chose to have him say something he would never otherwise have said," chuckled one of Papcun's colleagues....
"Hello, I'm Binny Laden and I say vote for Obama." -- We can expect that one anytime soon... LOL
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voice morphing link
[Read the article: David Broder: Embodiment of Beltway values]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sorry forgot the link to the article on voice morphing technology....
http://www.public-action.com/911/voice-simulation/index.html