Stupid is as stupid does.

Obviously. You're living proof. It's just more tragically compounded by your laziness. :)

It's the fear of doubt, Eris....

Yes. In which case you grab a stylized fact/factoid or truism, and you cling to it. And, you repeat it, over and over. No matter what the question is, or from which intellectual domain it comes, the answer is precisely the same. Sort of like, 42.

Needless to say, you're not going to make any progress in debate with that sort...

Which is exactly why I say it warrants nothing more than mockery. ;)

Just look at this quote Heru took straight from Wikipedia...

NBC News reported in May 2002 that a formal National Security Presidential Directive submitted two days before September 11, 2001 had outlined essentially the same war plan that the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon put into action after the Sept. 11 attacks. The plan dealt with all aspects of a war against al-Qaida, ranging from diplomatic initiatives to military operations in Afghanistan, including outlines to persuade Afghanistan’s Taliban government to turn al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden over to the United States, with provisions to use military force if it refused.

Does he really think no one's going to look it up? Here's the original NBC article, which details a plan that could only make the Bush administration look good in the face of criticism that it was completely unaware of Al Qaeda's intent to attack the US:

The plan dealt with all aspects of a war against al-Qaida, ranging from diplomatic initiatives to military operations in Afghanistan, the sources said on condition of anonymity.

...

In another striking parallel to the war plan adopted after Sept. 11, the security directive included efforts to persuade Afghanistan’s Taliban government to turn al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden over to the United States, with provisions to use military force if it refused.

....

Plan was ready to go

Officials did not believe that Bush had had the opportunity to closely review the document in the two days between its submission and the Sept. 11 attacks. But it had been submitted to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, and the officials said Bush knew about it and had been expected to sign it.

The couching of the plans as a formal security directive is significant, Miklaszewski reported, because it indicates that the United States intended a full-scale assault on al-Qaida even if the Sept. 11 attacks had not occurred.

Such directives are top-secret documents that are formally drafted only after they have been approved at the highest levels of the White House, and represent decisions that are to be implemented imminently.

Such a directive would normally be approved with the president’s knowledge by his Principals Committee, which in Bush’s White House includes Rice, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and CIA Director George Tenet, among other senior administration officials.

Both of you are just blowing smoke and engaging in fantasies. Fine if it makes you feel better, but it is erroneous.

If you want to know why there always seems to be two sides and the same folks seem line up on the same side of a laundry list of items then read a bit by scholars on that issue. It has been said by many that the best treatment of the issue may well be the book A Conflict of Visions by Sowell.

He starts with the two different outlooks on human nature an builds form there. I recommend it to those interested in truth --- not for those of you afraid of it.

Proof? Or just more name calling?

Either way, I see that you are on the "kill them for their own good" side. Make you feel like a man, does it?

I said I didn't think the military should run this, I don't see what your video has to do with what I have favored? I wouldn't care if the air attacks stopped yesterday, in fact they should have long before. You chunk people into 'warmonger' categories for wanting humanitarian intervention, because you equate the two, an extreme position to say the least. Then you yammer at them about stopping the bombings they favor, when they didn't favor them.

One interesting note about the suicide bombers. Carlotta Gall documented that suicide bombing recruiting for bombings in Afghanistan where Afghans will die are essentially done by ISI in Pakistan. In Pakistan, suicide bombing is overwhelmingly the province of al Qaeda, in training, except for Taliban under Baitullah Mehsud. But your film, without information, attributed it to retaliation for U.S. bombing. It may be that in some cases, but you need more information, I think. Like how someone doing the Afghan equivalent of 'khoon ka badla khoon' decides to blow up Indian military charges d'affaires for instance, which happened a couple of months ago.

That Afghans from Afghan villages that had been bombed would join the Taliban or any other insurgency in retaliation for U.S. bombings is logical and happens in some numbers. Suicide bombings, not so much. Those people come from training camps down in Pakistan, and were recruited or threatened into it down there. I have a lot of respect for RAWA, but on this one, there is a fair amount of evidence from the border regions.

Both of you are just blowing smoke and engaging in fantasies.

No. You're just apathetic and stupid. Not my fault so get over it or, if you can salvage the energy, do something about it. :)

I know, I went to college instead of going off to murder, although I was given the opportunity. Neither of you obviously couldn't say the same.

Huh? Is it time for your Ritalin?

If you really had studied Afghanistan in all the detail you said, you'd have known which general I was talking about. It's about as fundamental as saying tell me about Pakistan, start with Mohammed Ali Jinnah.

Of course it is from wiki, and that is a crime now? I plainly wrote that I did not have time for a better source.

Everything you quoted is exactly the case --- we were ready for crushing Afghanistan from the get-go. You think your "find" says otherwise?

Hell, I remember the talks at work way before 9-11 that we were going to do something to Afghanistan. Every day, it seemed, was another demonetization of the Taliban.

So let us count it up. If you are non-interventionist you are stupid, lazy, afraid, and ... oh hell, I forget the rest.

Fine, but I am not the mindless baby killing war-monger, now am I?