When somebody stumbles in from the pub tonight and reads this thread…

…I hope they don’t think you have some Hornets stored in your shed behind your Spitfire and next to your Canberra cockpit! :diablo:

Europe is lucky that nothing on an equal scale has happened there. Perhaps if it does, the tone of your comments may change.

The tone of who’s comments, mine? The tone of which comments bother you exactly?

Remember what happened on 9-11 was nothing less than an act of war…aimed primarily at civilian targets. You can understand that many Americans were a bit miffed about that.

Well it wasn’t really an act of conventional war was it, although shocking, a terrorist attack by such a small group cannot really be an act of war. I think the perpetrators hoped they might start some sort of delusional holy-war and in that I think they partially succeeded.

And I can perfectly understand how outraged the US public must have felt about the attack but I think the problem that the US administration was left with was twofold. Firstly the perpetrators were beyond justice; they were dead, well most of them anyway and those that weren’t couldn’t be found. Secondly as the world’s only remaining superpower with an astonishing global capability there wasn’t a conventional enemy (like Japan or Germany) to go to war against…..and smite, as such a superpower surely would.

And the US administration had to act, as I’m sure that public outrage demanded it, and if the current administration didn’t act they could kiss any thoughts of re-election goodbye.

So, what to do? Well there was the half-finished business in Iraq that somehow could be linked to 9/11 and the certainty that Iraq was developing WMD.

Of course that’s just my opinion. I don’t think it makes me anti-American, but it does mean that I disagree strongly with many aspects of US foreign-policy in the wake of 9/11. Mind you not nearly as p^ssed as I am about British foreign-policy post-9/11!

And no, I don’t think for a second that any of the victims of 9/11 (whatever their nationality) ‘deserved or asked for it’, nor do I feel that about the victims of any other terrorist attack on US or other western targets.

But I do think that if the rational behind 9/11 was to stir up anti-American feeling in the Moslem world then that aim was achieved better than they could have possibly hoped, and what is more, most of that aim was achieved by the US reaction to 9/11…

…maybe that’s what the terrorists planned all along?

Point of order, yer honour, the French have flogged the Foch to Brazil.

Yes, (didn’t realise it was as long ago as 2000 though) but…

…if it pleases the court…..the aircraft on deck are clearly Super Étendard…..so this has to be a photo of Foch! :p

Surprising there’s never been a re-make with the inevitable Leonardo Dicaprio in the lead role.

But wasn’t Charles Lindbergh a man? :confused: :diablo:

Sao Paulo
Sea Wolf
Courier font

So, so, close! 🙂 Only your aircraft-carrier recognition skills have let you down! 😉

Since when is an LGB aimed at “Any” people. We can hit within a metre from 40,000 feet. I call that very selective.

The US bombed the wrong people, but very accurately.

Precisely my point when you claimed ‘we should have done more from the air. A bomb-truck with a shedful of LGBs is a far better method than walking sand.’

It doesn’t matter how accurately you can drop a LGB the ‘good guys’ have got to hit the right people and the ‘bad guys’ know that and so are unlikely to want to get very far from the civilian population; and that is the reason we are fighting the war (or rather insurgency) we are fighting in Afghanistan.

So British soldiers will still be ‘walking sand’ and will still be taking casualties no matter how accurately we can drop our bombs.

Mistakes will always happen, it’s the info and intel where the mistakes are made.

It doesn’t really matter whether mistakes were made, or where they were made, if civilians die it will not be difficult for religious extremists who are trying to start a holy-war to rally followers to carry out acts of terror as British citizens have been doing against British (or American/International) targets. And that’s your problem.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not arguing for the sake of it (it does seem to be ‘open season’ on Old Shape! :o) but we must be realistic about what can be achieved and what should (or should not) be attempted.

Personally I don’t think there is much danger of a global holy-war, despite what some extremists (on all sides) would want, as there are enough intelligent people (just) to realise some of the glaring problems with that theory (or aim).

For starters the continuing violence in Iraq seems mainly to be Muslim against Muslim. Now I know there is the argument that the violence has only been possible since the west removed Saddam Hussein from power but that doesn’t really work does it?

‘Yes your honour; I had to rape her…..she was vulnerable!’ :rolleyes:

Also one of the British terrorists who attacked Glasgow Airport had worked as a doctor in Iraq under Saddam Hussein and had apparently been influenced by the suffering and death of thousands of Iraqi civilians due to the UN embargo…

…but since the UN never embargoed food or medicine what exactly were they dying of? :confused:

You’re assuming the people whi carry out terror attacks think rationally.

Don’t they?

Saudi-born terrorists launch the 9/11 attacks…..so the US-led coalition attacks Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

As a response to these invasions British citizens plan or carry out terrorist attacks in Britain.

Who is being more rational, the US/UK governments or the terrorists?

I don’t think the world…and bad guys…are that simple.
Besides, I don’t think it’s “British citizens” who you have to worry about.

Unfortunately it is British citizens that we have to worry about.

Three of the London bombers were born in Britain, and one in Jamaica and none of them had significant criminal records before the attacks. They all grew-up in this country (although one was only 19 years old and another 18 years old) and were educated here.

According to the bombers themselves the attacks were a response to the perceived persecution of Muslims by British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And what about the recent convictions of the ‘2006 transatlantic aircraft plot’ in London? Certainly two of the bombers (probably all four) were born in Britain and the leader of the plot stated in his suicide video that the terrorist attacks were an attempt to ‘to tackle what he believed was the root cause, Western foreign policy.’

What about the Glasgow Airport attack or the car-bombs attempted by the same group. One of the attackers was a British born doctor (of Iraqi extraction) the other was Indian born.

I for one do not underestimate the intelligence of any of these suicide bombers; the fact that the leaders of the groups are Doctors, PhD students, degree qualified engineers would support the theory that they are of above average intelligence.

…but I’ll remind the viewers that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11…

Exactly, but politicians, particularly US politicians continually mentioned 9/11 and Iraq in the same sentences until it lodged in the public consciousness so if you asked the average US (or UK) citizen what the invasion of Iraq was about, most would say simply ‘9/11’!

This isn’t meant to be anti-American but there seems to be an assumption in the West and in the UK in particular that all the terrorists and extremists, or any of the population of Iraq or Afghanistan for that matter are stupid.

Just because somebody doesn’t wear fashionable clothes, have an iPhone or a HD TV doesn’t mean they are a retard. In fact quite the opposite.

Western democracy tried very hard to convince us (well actually they didn’t have to try that hard) that the invasion of Iraq was to remove the threat of WMD or ‘something to do with 9/11’ and that the invasion of Afghanistan was ‘something to do with terrorism, the Taliban, drugs or 9/11’ but seems not to have noticed that the real terror threat to the UK comes from our own citizens who are trying to ‘avenge’ UK/US foreign policy.

A bomb-truck with a shedful of LGB’s is a far better method than walking sand.

A far better way of doing what exactly…..killing people, any people?

That’s pretty close to ‘kill them all and let god sort them out!’ and probably pretty close to what the planners of 9/11 were thinking.

How exactly are you going to make sure that you are only dropping bombs on the enemy combatants? Yes, a LGB is very accurate but I seem to remember that the US dropped a LGB on a wedding in Afghanistan a year or so ago.

All you would achieve is totally alienating everybody in Afghanistan and giving more reason for British citizens to carry out suicide attacks in Britain.