Two Al Qaeda Leaders Waterboarded 266 Times

[akuma587]

Rpruett said:

akuma587 said:

Rpruett said:

Well let's see here ...  One is accidental deaths (Which is pretty impossible to prevent).  The other is an angry murderer generally who seeks out innocent people to kill and property to destroy.  How much money did the acts of 9/11 cost this country?  In terms of lost business, clean up, payment to victims families, etc?   

 

By the nature of accidents you can't prevent them.  You can prevent terrorism though.

 

That's just plain false that car accidents aren't preventable.  Over 30-40% of them are due to driver inadvertence alone and are caused by people who probably shouldn't be on the road in the first place.  You could easily reduce the number of car accident fatalities by imposing stricter tests on people to get and keep their licenses, take away people's licenses easier, and make older people take driving tests more frequently. 

Are you really telling me that 3000 of those 42,000 deaths are in no way shape or form preventable?  It would also be cheaper to prevent those deaths than to spend trillions of dollars abroad on a war that many people believe has made us less safe.

 

Hey, we could save 42,000 + lives a year if we allowed no one to drive.     What about accidents don't you get?  You could be a wonderful driver, pass tons of tests and be too tired driving home one night and veer off into mini-van filled with 6 people and kill them all.   Happens all the time.   

Without significantly removing/limiting freedom of our citizens you aren't going to stop accidents from occurring. Humans all make mistakes.  Even still you will have people who drive despite regulations or stricter testing.

 

Regardless,  you are still avoiding the initial point that the nature of death is the cause for concern.  Accidents happen. People crash into trees while skiing or driving.  People cut their hands off working in machine shops.  People lose eyeballs.   People die.  Accidents happen.  

Allowing Terrorists to come into this country and just bomb buildings and innocent people for no reason is not the same thing.  No matter how you try and slice it.

It's not about the pure numbers of lives lost.  It's about the assault on our lifestyle, our ideals and the general way our country is run that makes terrorism even worse.  I'm sorry but I don't want to live like Israel does.  Always under threat of some new terrorist attack. 

 

Sure it would be cheaper to sit back and store all of our money in the bank and not spend a dime too.  The fact is,  America feels like it has an obligation to sticking it's nose into where it does or doesn't belong.  (I'll leave that argument for another time).   Iraq wasn't exactly stable.  Neither is Iran and several other nations around there.  By gaining more of a presence in the Middle East we are more likely to have a stable Middle East and possibly reduce the breeding grounds for terrorism and the hatred for anything and everything Western.

 

So you are telling me that suspending constitutional rights is not a greater assault on our lifestyle than making people take more strict driving tests?  The government has negatively infringed upon our way of life as well, not just terrorists.  Is that not significant?  Is the government changing our way of life not relevant at all?  I know a lot of my friends are more cautious about what they put online and even what they say on their cell phones sometimes because of the intensive invasions of privacy that have occurred within the last few years.

Are you really saying that 42,000 lives a year are not worth imposing slightly more restrictive rules on driving that would cost little or nothing to the taxpayer but spending trillions of dollars on wars abroad against countries that may or may not pose a threat all the while invoking the wrath of the rest of the world is worth it?  One life is more precious than another?

Allowing terrorists to affect us and change our behavior is what they want.  They are happy that we reacted like a drunken baboon and barged into the Middle East thinking we could accomplish anything.  They are scared that we have a leader like Obama now who has lived in a Muslim nation and doesn't solve problems like a drunken cowboy would. 

The War on Terror has acheived questionable results at best while wasting trillions of dollars.  And Obama has already kept the country safer than Bush while maintaining civil liberties. 

Terrorist attacks under Bush's watch: 1 - 3000 lives lost.  Civil liberties sacrificed under Bush's watch - substantial.  Damage to America's reputation done under Bush's watch - substantial.

Terrorist attacks under Obama's watch: 0 - 0 lives lost.  Civil liberties sacrificed under Obama's watch - some, but significant improvement over Bush.  Benefit to America's reputation under Obama's watch - substantial.

So by Bush's ultimate measure of his success as a President (I didn't allow any terrorist attack to happen - well...except for 9/11), Obama is winning.