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Message started by Greens_Win on Dec 6th, 2010 at 11:34am

Title: The Afghanistan War
Post by Greens_Win on Dec 6th, 2010 at 11:34am
Saudi Arabia bankrolling terrorists: WikiLeaks

Saudi Arabia is the key source of funding for radical Islamist groups including Al Qaeda, the Taliban and Hamas, according to US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/12/06/3085634.htm?section=justin

So will Liberal and Labor invade Saudi Arabia to end this terrorist threat ... the terrorist threat Australian troops are dying to defeat in Afghanistan?


Come on warmongers, spin yourselves out of this one.  

Title: Re: The Afghanistan War
Post by skippy. on Dec 6th, 2010 at 11:43am

____ wrote on Dec 6th, 2010 at 11:34am:
Saudi Arabia bankrolling terrorists: WikiLeaks

Saudi Arabia is the key source of funding for radical Islamist groups including Al Qaeda, the Taliban and Hamas, according to US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/12/06/3085634.htm?section=justin

So will Liberal and Labor invade Saudi Arabia to end this terrorist threat ... the terrorist threat Australian troops are dying to defeat in Afghanistan?


Come on warmongers, spin yourselves out of this one.  

Its pretty obvious why the yanks are so pissed off about the leaks, each one is just showing up how they've lied to the world.
I expect the wiki leaks founder to be found dead, in " suspicious circumstances" CIA, Mossad, MI5 take your pick.

Title: Re: The Afghanistan War
Post by Greens_Win on Dec 6th, 2010 at 12:55pm

skippy. wrote on Dec 6th, 2010 at 11:43am:

____ wrote on Dec 6th, 2010 at 11:34am:
Saudi Arabia bankrolling terrorists: WikiLeaks

Saudi Arabia is the key source of funding for radical Islamist groups including Al Qaeda, the Taliban and Hamas, according to US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/12/06/3085634.htm?section=justin

So will Liberal and Labor invade Saudi Arabia to end this terrorist threat ... the terrorist threat Australian troops are dying to defeat in Afghanistan?


Come on warmongers, spin yourselves out of this one.  

Its pretty obvious why the yanks are so pissed off about the leaks, each one is just showing up how they've lied to the world.
I expect the wiki leaks founder to be found dead, in " suspicious circumstances" CIA, Mossad, MI5 take your pick.



Yep, and now they are calling him a terrorist.

Would any newspaper that prints leaks also become potential terrorists.


Meanwhile warmongers, don't rush to defend yourselves. We already know you have lost all credibility.

Title: Re: The Afghanistan War
Post by Soren on Dec 6th, 2010 at 1:12pm

____ wrote on Dec 6th, 2010 at 11:34am:
Saudi Arabia bankrolling terrorists: WikiLeaks

Saudi Arabia is the key source of funding for radical Islamist groups including Al Qaeda, the Taliban and Hamas, according to US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/12/06/3085634.htm?section=justin

So will Liberal and Labor invade Saudi Arabia to end this terrorist threat ... the terrorist threat Australian troops are dying to defeat in Afghanistan?


Come on warmongers, spin yourselves out of this one.  



As with all the rest of these Wikileaks - what's new?  This article appeared on cato.org on November 16, 2001.

The United States has assembled a superficially impressive international coalition against the threat of terrorism. Many countries in that coalition, however, contribute little of significance to the fight. Even worse, the willingness of some members of the coalition to actually combat terrorism is doubtful. Indeed, given their record, some of those countries appear to be part of the problem, not part of the solution. That concern is especially acute with respect to Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Chinawww.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3841


Title: Re: The Afghanistan War
Post by Verge on Dec 6th, 2010 at 11:55pm
The Afghanistan War was UN backed, you realise that dont you Woody.

Surely you understand the difference between the Afghan war and they Iraq invasion.

Everyone knows Saudi played a role, most of the terrorists involved in 9/11 were Saudi's, and a Saudi flight was the only one allowed out after the closure of all airports happened.

I dont think you realise what would have happened if war was also waged on Saudi Arabia.

I have no problem with what was SUPPOSED to be achieved in Afghanistan, and the only reason it has failed is because forces were moved to Iraq when we shouldnt have been there.

I also asked the question to "what about Saudi Arabia" but I already knew the answer.  They have so much money and power they would have been able to create havoc on the world.

If you have only just clicked to this woody welcome to October 2001 where the rest of us already knew this.

Title: Re: The Afghanistan War
Post by Andrei.Hicks on Dec 7th, 2010 at 9:20am
As far as I am concerned, we need to send in more troops and more weaponry.

I'll be damned if we should allow a rag-tag bunch of fuzzy-wuzzies to dictate to the British and American military.

If you don't fight them on their doorstep, pretty soon they come calling on ours.

Better for it to happen there than here.

Title: Re: The Afghanistan War
Post by skippy. on Dec 7th, 2010 at 11:08am

Quote:
If you don't fight them on their doorstep, pretty soon they come calling on ours.

Better for it to happen there than here.


How many aircraft carriers do Afghanistan and Iraq have?
How do you suppose they will get here, or there or wherever you are today? its a bit like playing where's wally with you.

Title: Re: The Afghanistan War
Post by Karnal on Dec 7th, 2010 at 11:28am

Andrei.Hicks wrote on Dec 7th, 2010 at 9:20am:
As far as I am concerned, we need to send in more troops and more weaponry.

I'll be damned if we should allow a rag-tag bunch of fuzzy-wuzzies to dictate to the British and American military.

If you don't fight them on their doorstep, pretty soon they come calling on ours.

Better for it to happen there than here.


Oh - so you think we should have gone in to a militant Islamic state like Saudi Arabia, a country the US arms and trains militarily - instead of, say, a secular state like Iraq?

Title: Re: The Afghanistan War
Post by Andrei.Hicks on Dec 7th, 2010 at 11:30am
Iraq.

A country which attacked both its neighbours, which gassed its own people in the north, which starved its own people in the south, which fired rockets into a third, neutral nation.

Yes this was a lovely quaint little place wasn't it before we went there.

Title: Re: The Afghanistan War
Post by Karnal on Dec 7th, 2010 at 12:47pm

Andrei.Hicks wrote on Dec 7th, 2010 at 11:30am:
Iraq.

A country which attacked both its neighbours, which gassed its own people in the north, which starved its own people in the south, which fired rockets into a third, neutral nation.

Yes this was a lovely quaint little place wasn't it before we went there.


So you must think we should go into Israel - a country that has attacked all three of its neighbours, fired rockets into them, occupied their territories since 1967, and refuses to adhere to UN resolutions that require it to give these territories back.

But Iraq was a quaint lovely place when it was trained by the US and at war with Iran, wasn't it?

Title: Re: The Afghanistan War
Post by Andrei.Hicks on Dec 7th, 2010 at 1:02pm
A typical skewed, idiotic anti-semitic post regarding Israel.

Israel has been ATTACKED three times in the last century.

Do you know who attacked who in 1967?

Israel has been subject to invasion from ALL THREE of its neighbours.

Then when Israel starts to turn the tide, Arabs revert to true to form and start to DEMAND back land to borders that they themselves crossed over and tried to grab more.

Israel, the only democracy in the region, surrounded by dictatorships in Jordan, Syria and Egypt has been fighting for its survival from Arab aggression since day one.

They deserve our support and they will continue to get it.

Title: Re: The Afghanistan War
Post by Dnarever on Dec 7th, 2010 at 1:10pm

skippy. wrote on Dec 7th, 2010 at 11:08am:
How many aircraft carriers do Afghanistan and Iraq have?
How do you suppose they will get here, or there or wherever you are today?



Qantas

Title: Re: The Afghanistan War
Post by bwood1946 on Dec 7th, 2010 at 1:12pm

Andrei.Hicks wrote on Dec 7th, 2010 at 1:02pm:
A typical skewed, idiotic anti-semitic post regarding Israel.

Israel has been ATTACKED three times in the last century.

Do you know who attacked who in 1967?

Israel has been subject to invasion from ALL THREE of its neighbours.

Then when Israel starts to turn the tide, Arabs revert to true to form and start to DEMAND back land to borders that they themselves crossed over and tried to grab more.

Israel, the only democracy in the region, surrounded by dictatorships in Jordan, Syria and Egypt has been fighting for its survival from Arab aggression since day one.

They deserve our support and they will continue to get it.

And Israel kicked their  ARAB   A R S ES

Poor AHABS

:D :D :D :D :D

Title: Re: The Afghanistan War
Post by Dnarever on Dec 7th, 2010 at 1:15pm

Andrei.Hicks wrote on Dec 7th, 2010 at 11:30am:
Iraq.

A country which attacked both its neighbours, which gassed its own people in the north, which starved its own people in the south, which fired rockets into a third, neutral nation.

Yes this was a lovely quaint little place wasn't it before we went there.



Didnt that all happen over a decade before we illegally invaded the country looking for something they did not have.


Title: Re: The Afghanistan War
Post by Karnal on Dec 7th, 2010 at 3:06pm

Andrei.Hicks wrote on Dec 7th, 2010 at 1:02pm:
A typical skewed, idiotic anti-semitic post regarding Israel.

Israel has been ATTACKED three times in the last century.

Do you know who attacked who in 1967?

Israel has been subject to invasion from ALL THREE of its neighbours.

Then when Israel starts to turn the tide, Arabs revert to true to form and start to DEMAND back land to borders that they themselves crossed over and tried to grab more.

Israel, the only democracy in the region, surrounded by dictatorships in Jordan, Syria and Egypt has been fighting for its survival from Arab aggression since day one.

They deserve our support and they will continue to get it.


Anti-Semitic? Oh, my poor, poor boy.

Iraq was attacked too. By Iran. Did they deserve our support?

Sure, why not? And we gave it to them. So much so that when Saddam raised the issue of the invasion of Kuwait with the senior US diplomat of Iraq, he was given the green light.

Saddam was told by his then US ally: "Iraq's borders are a matter for Iraq."

And they were, until the Kuwaiti Royals started shaking their oil reserves at the US.

We're all aware of Israel, A.H, and most of us support it. But when it goes against UN resolutions - like Saddam, you'd think the US would have something to say.

And they do: they veto them every time.


Title: Re: The Afghanistan War
Post by Karnal on Dec 7th, 2010 at 3:06pm

Dnarever wrote on Dec 7th, 2010 at 1:15pm:

Andrei.Hicks wrote on Dec 7th, 2010 at 11:30am:
Iraq.

A country which attacked both its neighbours, which gassed its own people in the north, which starved its own people in the south, which fired rockets into a third, neutral nation.

Yes this was a lovely quaint little place wasn't it before we went there.



Didnt that all happen over a decade before we illegally invaded the country looking for something they did not have.


Sure did. But they were on our side then.

Title: Re: The Afghanistan War
Post by Greens_Win on Dec 10th, 2010 at 4:12am
Afghanistan: our secret fears


AUSTRALIA is deeply pessimistic about its engagement in Afghanistan, and senior officials have described as hopeless the key task of training the Afghan national police.

Despite repeated public assurances by the federal government that gains are being made and that long-term success is possible, secret United States embassy cables reveal that some of our top diplomats and officials hold grave concerns about the nine-year war that has claimed the lives of 21 Australian soldiers.

The cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and made available exclusively to The Age, also include more embarrassing revelations about the conduct of Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd.
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Mr Rudd derides the contribution of France and Germany to the fight against the Taliban as ''organising folk dancing festivals'' and confides that the outlook in Afghanistan ''scares the hell'' out of him.

Another cable sent to Washington last November by the US embassy in Canberra records Australia's special representative on Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ric Smith - a former secretary of the Defence Department - delivering a bleak assessment of the international community's Afghan strategy.

"Smith had just returned from a visit to Oruzgan and described the … mission in Afghanistan and Afghan government presence as a 'wobbly three-legged stool'," the cable says.

Referring to Australia's plan to increase funds for training Afghan police - a task currently undertaken by more than two dozen AFP officers - Mr Smith warned it might involve "putting good money into a bad situation".

Another cable, from December last year, says ''Smith questioned what the AFP would be able to accomplish given the 'train wreck' that they had to be given to work with in the Afghan National Police".

The cables give a stark insight into the private views of Australian and American officials on the war, including frustration about Canberra stalling on promises to boost Australia's civilian contribution beyond the 1550 troops deployed.

An October 2008 cable, which records what Mr Rudd told a group of visiting US congressmen, says he ''concluded by noting that the national security establishment in Australia was very pessimistic about the long-term prognosis for Afghanistan".

Mr Rudd also told US politicians that "he supported the Afghan war 'from day one' but confided that 'Afghanistan scares the hell out of me'."

Mr Rudd is also critical of Australia's European allies, accusing them of having "no common strategy for winning the war or winning the peace".

"In the south-east, the US, Canada, British, Australia and Dutch were doing the 'hard stuff', while in the relatively peaceful north-west, the Germans and French were organising folk dancing festivals,'' Mr Rudd was reported as saying.

That same month, Mr Rudd publicly praised France and Germany for boosting their military commitment to Afghanistan.

Other cables detail repeated criticism from officials about Australia's plan to boost its non-military contribution in Afghanistan by sending federal police to train Afghan police and by providing greater aid assistance.

The civilian boost was announced by Mr Rudd in late 2009, around the time US President Barrack Obama released his revised Afghan strategy.

A December 2009 cable says: "Rudd, who is loath to increase troop levels, had hoped to offer the increased civilian effort to the United States as a substitute. The Australians began preparing for the president's announcement months in advance and the lack of progress is surprising.

"Coupled with [Ric] Smith's increasingly pessimistic attitude, this may be a sign of friction within the government over the proper role for civilians in Afghanistan."

Another cable describes how the internal government debate over the civilian strategy had "dragged on much longer than anyone predicted".

The cables reveal that the head of the AFP's International Deployment Group, Assistant Commissioner Frank Prendergast, had also raised concerns about what federal police officers could feasibly achieve in Afghanistan. "Even Prendergast, who was generally optimistic about AFP efforts in Afghanistan, noted that the odds were stacked against success,'' it says.

''Current training programs are hampered by illiteracy, corruption, drug addiction and insurgent penetration within the pool of trainees … He believes that a successful police training program will take 20 years to be effective in Afghanistan."

Prime Minister Julia Gillard said last month that Australia's Afghan efforts may last for a decade.

Other Australian officials who briefed the US embassy expressed frustration "at the slow pace" of the civilian boost and "hinted" at clashes between bureaucrats and ministers over its "apparent lack of progress".

The cables also detail tensions between Holland and Australia over their respective roles in Afghanistan's south before the Dutch withdrew this year.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/afghanistan-our-secret-fears-20101209-18rej.html#poll

Title: Re: The Afghanistan War
Post by pansi1951 on Dec 10th, 2010 at 5:52am
<<''Current training programs are hampered by illiteracy, corruption, drug addiction and insurgent penetration within the pool of trainees …>>
........................................................................

They're into the dregs now, what next? amnesty for prisoners who wish to put their life on the line for an un-winnable war.

Title: Re: The Afghanistan War
Post by Greens_Win on Dec 15th, 2010 at 5:22am
Terror groups 'broken'


A SECRET Australian intelligence assessment has declared the al-Qaeda terrorist network a failure and claims its regional offshoot, Jemaah Islamiyah, has been broken in Indonesia.

The head of Australia's top intelligence agency, the Office of National Assessments, told American diplomats in October 2008 that al-Qaeda “ultimately has failed to achieve the strategic leadership role it sought within the Islamic world".

The assessment undercuts a key argument of the Gillard government to justify Australia's continued commitment to the war in Afghanistan — that al-Qaeda could return to use the country as a terrorist training ground.
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Australian intelligence officers instead blamed Taliban success in Afghanistan on the failings of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government and on the murky involvement of Pakistan's intelligence and security services.

Pressed by the US diplomats for an overall assessment of Islamist terrorist threats, then Office of National Assessments director-general Peter Varghese gave a strongly up-beat view. He told the visiting head of the US State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Randall Fort, that terrorism was “a good news story that is getting better, with the violent Islamist threat receding".

The US embassy in Canberra reported Mr Varghese “commented that in personal meetings and intelligence exchanges with ONA and other Australian services, Pakistani [defence chief] General [Ashfaq] Kayani continually comes across as ambivalent on the issues of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency, reiterating that India remains the core mission and priority of the Pakistan defence and intelligence establishment.

“ONA assesses that Pakistan's military and security elite view this as 'an American war', which, combined with a very hard sense of anti-Americanism, combines into a very dangerous cocktail," Mr Varghese was reported to have told his American colleagues.

Mr Varghese said developments were especially positive in Australia's region, where “the growth of Islamic extremism-based movements is constrained, thanks in part to ongoing successes in combined counter-terrorism efforts, but more because of societal factors in south-east Asia that reject the Middle Eastern jihadist model."

But the secret US embassy cable, leaked to WikiLeaks and provided exclusively to The Age, warned that the southern Philippines was emerging as a new terrorist haven.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard told Parliament on October 19, during the debate on Australia's military deployment, that it was a vital “to make sure that Afghanistan never again becomes a safe haven for al-Qaeda" and that Osama bin Laden's group remained “a resilient and persistent network".

Ms Gillard also warned of past links between al-Qaeda and extremists in Indonesia.

But the US record of the high-level intelligence exchange states: “Varghese and his analysts assessed that Indonesia Islam was 'returning to its main course following a detour' driven by personal linkages to the global jihad that were formed in Afghanistan in the 1980s."

“ONA analysts assess 'the tide has turned' on Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) in Indonesia, noting that its leadership has been devastated — with most seniors killed, captured, or on the run-and that it has lost its local support networks and funding," the US embassy reported to Washington. “ONA judged JI was shifting near-term goals to its local, vice global/anti-western interests while otherwise 'creeping back to the shadows' and focusing on survival."

Australian intelligence analysts proffered the view that JI could “endure and regenerate over the long term", but that it would be “a more localised terrorist threat", one cable said.

This latest disclosure comes after former JI leader Abu Bakar Bashir was yesterday committed for trial in Indonesia on terrorism charges

Bashir, convicted of conspiracy in the 2002 Bali bombing but acquitted on appeal, has been charged as the alleged inspiration of, and fund-raiser for, an Islamic militant training camp in Aceh that was broken up in February.

The leaked US cables also reveal that ONA considered Indonesia's counter-terrorism successes to be “a study in contrast” to “the ongoing downward slide in the Philippines, where the collapse of the peace process in the south threatened to make this area 'the new regional incubator of terrorist jihadis'."

The US embassy reported that “ONA terrorism specialists noted signals and human intelligence that JI 'structuralists' embedded with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front were rethinking plans to return to Indonesia, while JI 'freelancers' were becoming more active and better linked with Abu Sayyaf Group operatives."

According to the US diplomatic reporting, the Office of National Assessments believed the southern Philippines increasingly contained "all the ingredients" of al-Qaeda's "favoured tilling ground".


http://www.theage.com.au/national/terror-groups-broken-20101214-18x05.html

Title: Re: The Afghanistan War
Post by Andrei.Hicks on Dec 15th, 2010 at 8:46am
Shoot 'em all, let God sort 'em out.

Bumper sticker I read in Arizona last weekend.

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