@Jeremy,

Now you are just rambling like a chicken with its head cut off. What claims are you now making, and what claims are you rebutting? You are all over the place. I will address your arguments backed with FACTS and DATA, since everything else is totally irrelevant balling over debunked arguments:

OCCUPATION PROMOTES TERRORISM: SADDAM’S ATTACK ON HIS PEOPLE AS YOUR REBUTTAL

You brought up a link to Saddam slaughtering his own people. Yes, this is one incident where the international community should have stepped in to stop it if they had the chance, just like they did in the Arab Spring (primarily in Libya) but not with any boots on the ground occupying the country. It was a critically missed opportunity, since the people were rising up against Saddam in revolt, which is exactly the prerequisite trigger to watch out for in terms of when and how to support a nascent democracy. Yes, the methodology is critical, since the research is overwhelming in showing that occupation promotes terrorism and does not build a real democracy. Intervention to stop persecution and oppression by a government of its people when they are rising up to form their own democracy is a good thing, which the U.S. completely failed to do. They went for the boots on the ground option instead, with dire consequences. Once again, your fact actually supports my argument and destroys yours. How embarrassing.

OCCUPATION DOES NOT BUILD DEMOCRACIES: GERMANY AND JAPAN AS YOUR REBUTTAL

Your next two facts were Wikipedia links to post-war occupation of Germany and Japan. You are trying to rebut my claim that boots on the ground did not rebuild the country. I am still waiting on what facts from these links support your rebuttal. The way I read these links is that the German and Japanese bureaucrats (which remained in place, unlike the Baath party bureaucrats in Iraq) rebuilt their own countries IN SPITE OF THE U.S. OCCUPATION. For example, in Germany, we have the example of East Germany (extended occupation by the Russians) vs. West Germany (much more limited and brief occupation presence). So which one was more successful? Moreover, here is an even more compelling fact from your sources proving exactly this point, that occupation boots on the ground (i.e., military) did not rebuild much of anything:

“MacArthur at no time established in Japan what could be correctly described as Military government. He continued to use the Japanese government to control the country, but teams of military personnel, afterward replaced to quite a considerable extent by civilians, were placed throughout the Japanese prefectures as a check on the extent to which the prefectures were carrying out the directives issued by MacArthur’s headquarters or the orders from the central government…. The normal duties of a military government organisation, the most important of which are law and order and a legal system, were never needed in Japan since the Japanese government’s normal legal system still functioned with regard to all Japanese nationals … The so-called military government in Japan was therefore neither military nor government.”

Although some rebuilding ideas of value were shared, which could have been done without boots on the ground, the occupation was a major negative in many respects – again, according to your own sources. Some of these negative outcomes include the following: blatant injustices in the occupation legal system, systematic rapes by occupation forces, occupation-sponsored and controlled censorship against free speech, unjust expulsions of citizens in the hundreds of thousands, thousands of bastard children, cultural destruction, and even occupation-sanctioned prostitution of the native population such that nearly 50,000 Japanese women had to serve as official whores for 300,000 U.S. troops. Not only that, some occupying troops continued military operations long after the Japanese surrender, “causing large scale civilian casualties”. Isn’t occupation wonderful? Embarrassed by your own facts once again.

WAR POWERS RESOLUTION AND IRAQ WAR RESOLUTION

The Iraq War Resolution was already debunked in other posts above as being both unconstitutional and bogus. Don’t you recognize how all the points in your original post are just a copy and past from the contents of this resolution? Recycling the same facts does not a new fact make.

As for the War Powers Resolution Act, yes, this has been interpreted to give the President aggressive, invasive military powers by some political hawks, even though it states that the President can only do so in self-defense of the nation to repel attacks. Such arguments are made on completely flimsy grounds, again using such logic as “pre-emptive self-defense” and making absurd claims that “commencing war” (with “shock and awe”, no less!) is not equivalent to “declaring war.” Yah, right. As a result, any such aggressive interpretation of this resolution is simply unconstitutional, as I have been saying all along. And I am not alone in coming to this conclusion. As your own source article states, “All presidents since 1973 have declared their belief that the act is unconstitutional.” How embarrassing for you once again. Do you even know what the difference is between the Constitution, which the Founding Fathers created, and subsequent laws, which are all potential violations of it. Just because a law is enacted does not mean it has the Constitutional stamp of approval. All of my arguments were based on the soundness of what the Founding Fathers left for us as an example to follow, not on the Orwellian, terrorist-promoting machinations of power hungry individuals trying to violate the Constitution without being blamed for doing so.

OBL “RELIGIOUS TALK” AS YOUR SUPPORT FOR A RELIGIOUS MOTIVE

You are copying and pasting quotes like you are totally oblivious to what you are doing. You include 4-5 quotes that have absolutely nothing to do with religious justification, let alone explicit motivation to commit terrorism. None of these quotes have anything remotely to do with terrorism. I know using actual facts is a new thing for you, but this is ridiculous. Using logic also appears to be a new thing for you. Based on your logic, because OBL quoted some “religious talk”, that means religion was his motivation for terrorism. Brilliant.

You also questioned where “OBL stated that they would still fought the West even if they were following the religion of their pagan ancestors.” I already answered that in a previous post: around 4:50 into the video. This definitively proves that Islam was just a tool of justification for him, not in any way a motive of any consequence, let alone a primary motive. His motives were based on his perception of injustice and the need to act in self-defense against Western occupation, which are entirely universal ethical motives, not religious motives.

YOUR HISSY-FIT RESPONSE TO MY CHALLENGE

You say, “I find your comments racist and offensive. If Osama says the Quran tells him to kill infidels or whatever, then he is correct. If you tell me that the Quran tells you never to harm a fly, then you are correct.”

Is this how you respond to a challenge – have a hissy-fit? I challenge you once again, and this time feel free to bring in anyone from Al Qaeda or any mullah on a payroll that you like on planet earth to your assistance to help you with the necessary facts and logic to make a cogent argument. Copy and paste if you like, but my only demand is that you stand behind the arguments as if they were your own, and as if your reputation is on the line given how strongly you feel I am wrong. I can start with verse 9:5 that OBL quoted, as well as the so-called “hadith” giving what looks like a blanket kill order (per your post to llisha). However, before you begin, let me warn you about two points you must overcome first:

1) There is no record of that hadith as far as I can tell. I have been unable to find it anywhere to validate it, and I can do electronic text searches, which covers all the reputable hadiths. If you can find it, and it is a reputable hadith, then it becomes a potential fact up for discussion about what Islam says. Until then, it is just manufactured propaganda.
2) Verse 9:5 (the famous “verse of the sword”) has absolutely nothing to do with Jews or Christians, whom the Declaration of War is addressing. It is addressed solely to polytheist pagans (al Mushrikeen), and only to those pagans who are guilty of treason in breaking a treaty with Muslims and attacking Muslims first.

So sorry – please do try again. The challenge remains open. If you accept the challenge, I will give you 4-5 chances to beat me (i.e., 4-5 sets of contiguous verses) to demonstrate the elusive kill order in the Quran, where fighting is not done to protect the state or to stop persecution and oppression. I don’t have time to waste by indulging you indefinitely in this challenge. I think 4-5 chances is fair, and it ensures that you invest the time to pick the verses that you most believe support your rebuttal. Now bring it. Or are you going to continue to cry and whine “racism” when someone gives you an in-your-face challenge to your own grossly unfounded bigoted beliefs?

YOU ARE STILL WOEFULLY IGNORANT OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

You say, “It is a hypothesis, not a theory. for it to be a theory it would have to have stood up under rigorous testing against various competing ideas and hypothesis.” Wrong. Read your own source again. Here are the very first words:

“A scientific theory is “a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment.”[1][2] Scientists create scientific theories from hypotheses that have been corroborated through the scientific method, then gather evidence to test their accuracy. As with all forms of scientific knowledge, scientific theories are inductive in nature and do not make apodictic propositions; instead, they aim for predictive and explanatory force.”

In the social sciences, repeated confirmation is obviously done almost exclusively through observation rather than experimentation, but data based on repeated observations is just as valid as experimental data. The only problem with observational data is when there are confounding variables to make the causation inferred from correlation uncertain. In this case, no confounding variables have been identified, so that is not a concern, and the data have dramatic predictive and explanatory force. Our conclusions are supported by literally thousands of data points on terrorist attacks repeatedly confirming the same conclusion, whereas your rebuttals are simply vacuous claims. So, I ask yet again, SHOW ME YOUR DATA.

You continue to be humiliated by your own referenced facts, yet again. How embarrassing.

SCOTT ATRAN VIDEO SUPPOSEDLY SUPPORTS YOUR CLAIM!

In another post, you are desperately trying to support your claim that Internet propaganda is responsible for terrorist activity. But it is not at all. Terrorists are not recruited on the Internet. In fact, not even a single such case has ever been documented, as Scott Atran points out. The Internet is just used increasingly by self-radicalized terrorists to find Al Qaeda, but the idea that terrorists are being created by Al Qaeda Internet propaganda is completely destroyed by the facts. Scott Atran has looked at EVERY single case to prove this claim as totally bogus. Here is the actual content of the slide you referenced on the video (closer to the 17 minute mark), with the “cyberspace” phrase as just a parenthetical comment:

“It’s not about Hierarchical Organization, Command and Control, Recruitment or Brainwashing: It’s about flat and fluid networks of friends, families, neighbors, schoolmates, workmates…. and soccer buddies, WHO SELF-RADICALIZE AND GO LOOKING FOR QAEDA (increasingly in cyberspace).” (my emphasis added)

Once again, totally humiliated by your own facts.

should say *it is not* rather than it not

They attack the US due to American foreign policies and the CIA has a word for it, it is called blowback

@Ilisha

I have read his fatwa and declarations against the US, and they are explicitly religious.

*(Q1) Why are we fighting and opposing you?
(a) Because you attacked us and continue to attack us.*

Who do you think the ‘us’ is in this sentence? Al Qaeda? or Muslims?

*(b) You attacked us in Palestine…*

Al qaeda to my knowledge has never been attacked in Palestine, so I am starting to think he is talking about Muslims.

*(c) You attacked us in Somalia…*

While Al qaeda supported the attacks of Aidid, I don’t know that they were actually fighting there, as opposed to just having trained the militia. So it appears once again, this is a religious claim.

*(d) Under your supervision, consent and orders, the governments of our countries which act as your agents, attack us on a daily basis…*

This could mean either, but i am still pretty sure when he says ‘us’ he is referring to ‘Muslims’, which makes this motivation religious.

*(e) You steal our wealth and oil at paltry prices…*

Now this certainly must mean Muslims, as I don’t believe any Jihadi groups produce oil.

*(f) Your forces occupy our countries…*

For him to even suggest that a country belongs to Muslims is absurd.

*(g) You have starved the Muslims of Iraq, where children die every day….*

Yet this was Saddams doing, but once again, he isn’t worried about the Christians in Iraq, only the Muslims. Once again, this supports my point about religious motivations.

*(h) You have supported the Jews in their idea that Jerusalem is their eternal capital…*

and thats a problem because……? Oh yeah, because of how Bin Laden views Islam.

I am astounded how you can make my case here and yet claim it means the opposite. OBL’s foreign policy goals are strictly because of the way he views Islam and Muslims. This is very straight forward. When he declares war it is in the name of Allah:

“”Praise be to God, who revealed the Book, controls the clouds, defeats factionalism, and says in His Book: “But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)”; and peace be upon our Prophet, Muhammad Bin-’Abdallah, who said: I have been sent with the sword between my hands to ensure that NO ONE BUT GOD IS WORSHIPPED, God who put my livelihood under the shadow of my spear and who inflicts humiliation and scorn on those who disobey my orders. “”

This is from Bin Ladens 1998 fatwa. once again, explicitly religious justification for war, using Islam to justify his actions. The Capitals are mine. Notably, this is the first paragraph of this Fatwa, which makes the entire case it seems.
This is how Bin laden sees the world, strictly through a religious lens.
Frankly, I am amazed that anyone could even try and argue against this, it is so plainly stated in his writings. we have every reason to believe he put careful thought into these writings and the wording he used. so it is certainly no mistake.