Doug, thank you for your reasoned reply. It is certainly easy to misread the tone or motivation for my statements. I will try to be more clear.

Peter


>>Please venture a guess as to how many we would have to kill. This is not a trivial question. I'm thinking that the assasination approach will require killing tens of thousands not 200. (And, of course, losing thousands of our own men in the process.) What are you thinking?
>
>I wouldn't have a clue. However, I do not care what the number is. If it's 50 then it's 50. If it's 10,000 then it's 10,000. The point here is that we draw a line in the sand. If I have an outbreak of cholera I go after all cases, not some pre-determined number of cases.

I think we could assassinate 50 terrorists overseas without starting a holy war. (Maybe.) If we send death squads into Muslim and Arab countries and kill 10,000, we will certainly have a real war on our hands.

50 or 10,000. It makes a difference.


>>Many specific skills are passed along and could be lost but the overall goal ("Hurt America") is so simple that nothing is lost even if all of the leaders are killed. Was it you that said you knew how to brew up a batch of Botulism that could kill 100,000? As you said, others know this too. That knowledge is not lost just because you kill the terrorist leaders.
>>
>>I was thinking about your question of delivery. Model airplanes could do the job, right?
>
>If you're being serious, yes. But, if we have wiped out their ability to manufacture the stuff then the issue of the model airplane goes away.

Oh, it's Jerry Kreps who knows how to make the Devil's brew (no disrepect to Jerry intended). Here is his posting:

>The worst, and easiest to sneak into the country, are the biological weapons. As a former biochemistry teacher I know how, for example, to create a 5 gallon mash of Clostridium Botulini, and from it extract 100 miligrams of botulin toxin, enough to kill 100,000 people. If I know that they know that. All we are talking about now is delivery.

I was perfectly serious about the possibility of delivering the botulin toxin by air via model airplane. Some kind of container slung beneath the plane with a remote control activation. A few passes over Wash, DC at about 1000 feet. I'm guessing that shooting down the plane would help but not a whole lot.

Aside to Jerry: I get the impression that this stuff if relatively easy to culture. Do you have to purchase a starter kit of Clostridium Botulini or can you find it in nature? It is possible to "wipe out their ability to manufacture the stuff"?


>>>Essentially we wear them down. They will not stop, whether we do anything or we do nothing. No matter what we [do] they will keep coming.
>>...
>>>It's not about eliminating everyone. It is about being so persistent and determined we win by the sheer force of not giving up.
>>
>>These statements seem to be contradictory to me. If they never stop coming how do we win (other than by eliminating everyone)?
>
>Well, it is contradictory only if you presume that 100% will value death over life. Is that your presumption? Mine is more optimistic. I actually think that the percentage of those willing to die is relatively small overall.

Certainly the 19 hijackers were exceptional rather than representive of all of OBL's followers. I do think it is possible to slowly find the terrorists and dismantle their organizations. BUT ONLY with the committed assistance of most Muslim and Arab countries. By that I mean Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the UAE, Yemen, Syria, Indonesia, Egypt, etc. It may require co-operation from Iraq also. We already know that we can depend on Jordan. If the terrorist cells could only operate in Afghanistan it would be hard for them to hit us.


>>>I think we are fooling ourselves if we think these folks want to co-exist with us. They want to destroy us.
>>>
>>>Do you understand this???
>>
>>Yes, I understand this. The Islamic radicals want to eliminate our way of life because it is offensive to them.
>
>So, because our way of life is offensive to them this is a justification for their actions? I hardly think you believe that. Additionally, their great offense at our existance is no justification for our not standing up for ourselves as a nation. Not that we have clean hands, mind you. But I see absolutely no possible justification for what these folks did. None.

I said nothing about justification. Why do you think they want to destroy us?


>>We are talking about 10,000 persons, more or less. No, we cannot negotiate with these 10,000. However, there are hundreds of millions of Muslims that we can reason with. These people are the key to eliminating the worst of the radicals. If we ally with them and show respect to them, they will help us. If we make war on them (and the NewsMax plan certainly does this) many of them will become radicals. Then we will have hundreds of thousands of Islamic terrorists to deal with.
>
>We cannot negotiate with 10,000 but we can with 100,000,000? With a megaphone from a tall hill? <g>

I am talking about negotiating with governments that have the support of their people because we are not humiliating them. Isn't this the standard approach for negotiation--government to government?



>Let me ask you a question, and I'm very serious here. Can you point me to one fundamemtalist Islamic nation that is not hostile towards the West or that hasn't expressed hostility towards the West? I think that there may be some but I'm hard pressed to name them. I get the very distinct impression that you somehow think that they are not serious when they declare they want to end our life as a nation. Is this so?

We should talk about specific countries. That's the only way I can think about this. And the question should be: is the government openly hostile towards the US at this time? I am only aware of two, Iraq and Afghanistan, and Iraq is proffering support for American victims of the attack.


>Remember, I want to go after individuals not states. Unless the state has sponsored the terrorism. Then IMO they are fair game.

>We need to live in a world of nations just as everyone else does. There are basic rules and when any group does what these folks have doen to us we have the obligation and right to respond.

Suppose that some vigilante group in the US attacks Pakistan in retaliation for the WTC attack. How would you feel about Pakistan sending special ops teams into the US to take out those folks? Do you think every country has the right to eliminate individual terrorists in other countries? Or only the US?


Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the UAE, Yemen, Syria, Indonesia, Egypt...

There is no way that we can dominate these countries or force them to our will. We cannot occupy them. We cannot set up puppet governments. Our only hope in fighting terrorists is to admit that we desperately need their assistance and approach them in a respectful way. After listening to Bush tonight I am not hopeful.

If we try do eliminate terrorists without the co-operation of these countries, we will create 10 Islamic racicals for everyone we kill.

I am not "wishing and hoping." I'm laying out the only possibility of success. Again I am not hopeful because I do not think we will take this approach. I think there is a significant possibility that 100,000 to 1,000,000 Americans will die in a terrorist attack by Islamic radicals within the next 20 years.

Thanks for reading this.

Peter