Iraq or N. Korea? Or neither?

Who should America strike first, Iraq, N. Korea, or niether?

  • Iraq

    Votes: 16 32.0%

  • North Korea

    Votes: 7 14.0%

  • Neither

    Votes: 12 24.0%

  • Other

    Votes: 3 6.0%

  • Who cares? They'll just end up bombing Canadians again anyway.

    Votes: 12 24.0%
  • Total voters
    50
I know what you mean. The media can probably be attributed to some of the gun jumping that's been going on. Even if the Taliban were flooding the drug markets then there's a lot less damage they can do now than they could eighteen months ago, isn't there?
 
Surely not everyone. But I agree with you that they have caused enough damage, if not from their drug running then certainly from September 11. And I don't mean physical damage either. It's started a war. Like it or not we're at war. I certainly don't, tensions are certain to be high. But we, as a human race, will make it through it. We've survived countless wars, we can survive this one.
 
Originally posted by steampunk
And Happy, the US has been supporting a lot of people by way of the CIA. Quite a few schemes have ended up back firing.
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well first off, no shit, i needent be lectured about the CIA. secondly, the ones that backfired were compromised primarily by presidential intervention by canceling the op., leaving the people we were supporting flapping in the wind. u only hear about the failed ones, but what about the successful ones?
 
Maybe the military is embarressed these days at heroes such as Richard Marcinko. I know he embarressed many by shattering their defences during his days in Red Cell. Or maybe the sucessful missions are meant to be hidden so the enemy doesn't know what's going on. Or maybe the failures we hear about are a smoke screen, intended to make us look weak. There's an old Chinease proverb bu Sub Tzu that says "Sow confusion. When well armed, appear disarmed." I don't really know, but I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.
 
Originally posted by Happy
well first off, no shit, i needent be lectured about the CIA.
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Guess that you have a son-father-uncle-cousin-grandfather in the CIA-FBI-NSA-CTU or you have a son-father-uncle-cousin-grandfather who wrote/will write a book about the CIA-FBI-NSA-CTU
 
Originally posted by steampunk
Actaully didn't the CIA have a hand in arming the Taliban?
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well, we did give weapons to the rebels that were fighting the soviets during their invasion of afghanistan, and some of those rebels in turn joined or founded the taliban (i'm not sure which), so yes, in an indirect way, the US helped arm the taliban

I'm not sure but I don't think there are drug cartels in Afghanistan.
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Phillips right, the taliban did sell opium to help fund themselves.
 
The Taliban themselves didn't get involved in the fighting against the Soviets, afaik. After the Soviets left, the country disintegrated into numerous factions. It was only after a couple of years of this that the Taliban made a play for power. IIRC, they received wide-spread support in the west because it appeared that they would finally bring stability to the nation. I don't recall if any western governments actually provided them with arms, however.
 
Originally posted by Ghost
Guess that you have a son-father-uncle-cousin-grandfather in the CIA-FBI-NSA-CTU or you have a son-father-uncle-cousin-grandfather who wrote/will write a book about the CIA-FBI-NSA-CTU
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no i live in the US, not Argentina, and i don't have to explain anything i know about said agencies either
 
CTU???

Oh and Happy's right... just living in the US you learn about the blunders of its *special* services teams.... but i think it would have to suck to be in one of our agencies... you get blamed for the mistakes... and a *super secret* pat on the back for a job well done.

Oh and someone said something about us funding/helping the Taliban (sp?... actually i dont care) and your answer is yes... back when Russia was the hated/feared USSR we funded the taliban to fight them... you know to give the USSR hell... while saying it was an effort to stop the movement of communism into coutries that cant defend themselves.... this was all discussed earlier if you look back.....it maybe like *way* back there in one of those 17 pages...(17... i am good :D)
 
CTU - Counter Terrorist Unit popular recently after `24 hours` TV series; There were no Talibans in times of USSR. Afghans who fought Soviets were Mujahedeens (they created Northern Alliance later ). Talibans appeared later when Mujahedeens ruled Afghanistan after USSR retreat, they removed them from power. Talibans earlier were Mujahedeens - but they didn`t like them becoming bandits and warlords struggling for power.
 
Originally posted by Maniac II
Oh and someone said something about us funding/helping the Taliban (sp?... actually i dont care) and your answer is yes... back when Russia was the hated/feared USSR we funded the taliban to fight them... you know to give the USSR hell... while saying it was an effort to stop the movement of communism into coutries that cant defend themselves.... this was all discussed earlier if you look back.....it maybe like *way* back there in one of those 17 pages...(17... i am good :D)
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Er...
No.
The Taliban were NOT involved in the fighting against the Soviets. While many other Afghani factions were involved in the fighting, and most of them (not all) were funded and supplied by the US, the Taliban had nothing whatsoever to do with the fighting. The collective name for the Afghani resistance groups were the Mujahedeen.
For all I know, they didn't even exist as an organized group at the time.
They didn't enter the scene until a couple of years after the Soviets left.
 
I didn't know about the opium thing.

As for CIA successes, I wouldn't know about that, their blunders seem to have been massive enough that they were reduced to an intelligence agency. Where as before they had their own special forces of sorts to do their dirty work. I hear that the current director or whatever you call him is currently resurrecting their spec ops teams.

Of course I wouldn't think you'd ever find out about the thing they did right. Because, well, they did it right ...
 
i hate to break it to you, but the CIA has always been an intelligence agency. that's why it's called the Central Intelligence Agency. just cause they had their own spec ops teams doesn't mean that they were anything but an intelligence agency
 
I'm not exactly sure about this - but I think when the CIA was created, it had a lot more power and freedom than it does now. While it was always an Inteligence Agency, it was created under the National Securities Act, when we were all freaking out about communism. It was designed as a way to protect the US, and make the peopel think they're safe. It's basically where the ideas of governments spying, running assasinations, and all that came from. Its powers were extremely strong at first, but became limited over the years. For example, after the JKF assasination, I believe the CIA was no longer allowed to conduct assasinations. So, while it was always an inteligence agency, it used to in reality do a lot more than just gather inteligence.
 
Originally posted by Aries
i hate to break it to you, but the CIA has always been an intelligence agency. that's why it's called the Central Intelligence Agency. just cause they had their own spec ops teams doesn't mean that they were anything but an intelligence agency
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Um, well it might interest you to know that the specwar slang for it is Christians in Action. :)
 
Originally posted by Aries
i hate to break it to you, but the CIA has always been an intelligence agency. that's why it's called the Central Intelligence Agency. just cause they had their own spec ops teams doesn't mean that they were anything but an intelligence agency
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i hate to break it to you bu the CIA was formed from the Office of Coordinator of Information (COI) and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). both of which were of military origins.
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/bookrev/troy.html
it has been the unspoken truth that the CIA was active in vietnam, iraq, iran, afganistan, and other places. everyone say they are forbidden to carry weapons, but that only applies to intelligence gathering in the US, if u look back to the tet offencive, u can see that members of the CIA helped regain the US embassy.

u don't have to believe me, but i have a feeling u won't.
 
Originally posted by Aries
i hate to break it to you, but the CIA has always been an intelligence agency. that's why it's called the Central Intelligence Agency. just cause they had their own spec ops teams doesn't mean that they were anything but an intelligence agency
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There is an article that recently appeared in Time I believe that nicely out lines all the things the CIA got up to other than Intelligence Gathering. Despite their name they did not just gather intelligence.
 
Originally posted by Phillip Tanaka
Maybe the military is embarressed these days at heroes such as Richard Marcinko. I know he embarressed many by shattering their defences during his days in Red Cell.
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Maybe they're not embarrassed. Maybe, they're just sick of hearing about him at every turn... I know I'm rapidly approaching the state where I must suppress the urge to kill when I see his name :p.
 
Originally posted by Happy
i hate to break it to you bu the CIA was formed from the Office of Coordinator of Information (COI) and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). both of which were of military origins.
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i knew that. but despite the fact that it has a military background and has done work that is traditionally military work, the CIA is, and has always been an intelligence agency

Originally posted by steampunk
There is an article that recently appeared in Time I believe that nicely out lines all the things the CIA got up to other than Intelligence Gathering. Despite their name they did not just gather intelligence.
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i never said all they did was collect intelligence. all i said was that the CIA was never reduced to being an intelligence agency, because they had always been an intelligence agency, despite the fact that they did stuff other than collect intelligence
 
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