WWIII placeholder thread.

Then why are you asking how he has rewritten history when I've already pointed out how, and given the real version?

What radical claims have I made?

Your "real version" is bullshit, and unsubstantiated, so who is it that has re-written history?

How have I "rewritten history"? Don't be coy, quote exactly what I "rewrote," explain exactly how its "rewriting," how you know that it was deliberate on my part, and what significance it all has. If you're so certain of yourself, then you should be able to answer this before I even post this.

It is very well substansiated. You'd think that people who wish to discuss these topics would take the time to inform themselves.

September 13, 2001: Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia says it will consider requests for the extradition of terror suspect Osama bin Laden based on evidence from US investigators.

September 20, 2001: Taliban statement on BinLaden asking him to leave Afghanistan.

I don't think I can be any clearer as to how "exactly" your version is divorced from reality - but to explain that it didn't happen that way - and that it happened some other way.

Rewriting because it's writing the history of the events again in an alternate fashion from what transpired, calculated in the context of this debate to portray the US in a positive light next to Russia. Whether you did so deliberately or because you've been misinformed yourself I can't know, and leave to others. But you aren't helping your case for the more charitable interpretation by failing to admit any error.

Those statements were delaying tactics, nothing more. An earnest Taliban might have said "we lack the power to police this country, but would welcome your assistance in arresting this criminal." They had no interest in helping to capture Bin Laden, and for you to think that they did requires a very biased reading of events preceding the US invasion.

That's a reasonable interpretation. But they're still the statements that were made, rather than those Tuckerfan attributed.

I didn't say that they did.

So you think the Taliban only ever made two statements?

No, feel free to supply others with the alleged content.

Can we rename RickDeckard Mullah Rick Deckard or maybe Osama Bin Deckard?

Bullshit. Have you forgotten how the "war" unfolded initially? We sent in special forces to assist the Northern Alliance and tip the balance so they could overthrow the Taliban. If we'd been able to successfully get bin Ladin, as Karzai was elected we could have dragged out the "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banner, sent everyone home, and avoided the mess we're stuck in to this day.

Dayton (and apparently you) are the only people calling for "more space-battles."

You realize that "more space battles" applies primarily to Star Trek and even then made according to my preferences and standards? I could go into depth about what those standards and preferences are like if you wish...

Metaphor...

1. Wordforge is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a document of record, like say, The New York Times, so to be the same kind of pedantic little prick that you are, it is thus impossible for me to "rewrite history" because nothing I, or anyone else, writes here can be considered to be history in the first place. Period. Paragraph.

2.) The phrases "Their first response was, "We don't know nuttin' about him." Their second response after they realized we weren't kidding was, "We're gonna let him do whatever he wants!" " are, to anyone not suffering Daytonesqe levels of Aspergers, clearly intended as humor and thus could only be seen by the most pathetic of individuals as an attempt at rewriting history.

3.) No matter what I say here, the deaths of three thousand human beings (and I'm surprised you haven't gotten your panties in a bunch because I haven't taken pains to break down the various nationalities of the folks who died) as being the reason the US invaded Afghanistan trumps to any rational mind, the reasons given by the Soviets for invading Afghanistan, and Putin's reasons for invading Crimea. Your incessant demands that my actions here have any impact on those events are, to be blunt, at least as delusional, if not more so, than Dayton's plans to be POTUS. In fact, I'd go so far as to say they're more delusional, because you're trying to pretend that "somebody" has changed their mind based on what I've said. Are you going to try and pretend that until I made my comments you were "okay" with the US invasion of Afghanistan?

Upset at being called out on our bullshit, I see.

There are two subtly different issues here.

Firstly, whether the invasion of Afghanistan could have been justified in 2001. It probably could, after exhaustion of legal and diplomatic channels, in the face of an uncooperative regime sheltering a demonstrated mass murderer.

Secondly, whether the actual actions taken by the US to invade Afghanistan were justified. These were based on immediate resort to threats, ultimatums and an outright refusal to provide evidence.

Presented humorously or not, your attempt to represent the actuality as the first of these, and trivialise the reality of the superpower acting as a Mafia Don is a rewrite of history. It's the difference between a court convicting a killer (however guilty) following a trial, and a vigilante group going over to his place to break his legs. There are, I am sure, differences between Russian pretexts in Crimea and American pretexts in Afghanistan (the latter may even be more agreeable) but the Mafia principle is the same.

If you quibble with the phrase "rewrite of history" because Wordforge is not the New York Times, then pedantry is indeed your suit, not mine. And I'm going to ignore the red herrings about whether you have some impact on events (you don't) or whether somebody has changed their mind here (they haven't).
Although I'd hope that minds are changed occasionally on Wordforge, even if it takes a long time.

The only one covered in bullshit here is you.

If all a vigilante group did to a killer was "break his legs" then he should count himself lucky.

Which as a metaphor for the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan isn't all that bad.

When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan they littered the damned place with landmines. Killed and maimed over a million people.

How did the U.S. invade Afghanistan? We spent a bunch of air missions over the country dropping them FOOD!!

and regarding evidence Rick, IIRC pretty early in the whole game Osama Bin Laden in one of his messages took credit for the 9-11 attacks.

I don't know about Ireland Rick, but IIRC in the U.S. when a confession is made the case is over. More evidence not required.

Bin Laden did not admit culpability until years later. He issued denials in the immediate aftermath.

Which you no doubt believed.......

Whether I believed him (I didn't) is entirely irrelevant. Justice requires guilt to be demonstrated, however obvious it may seem.

Sorry, Rick, the only person spewing bullshit here is you.

Tell me, Rick, if you're playing a game of chess and your opponent suddenly whips out a machete and chops your hand off, do you look at the judge and ask if that was a legal move on his part? No, of course not. Everybody plays a "game" when it comes to war and terrorism. Knock over a few pawns, and nobody gives a shit. People like it this way, since it allows them to keep playing. Chopping off your opponent's hand, as OBL did, fundamentally shifts things. You cannot simply allow the game to continue as before.

Going round after round of diplomatic niceties with the Taliban was possible up until the hijackers crashed the planes into the buildings, and it doesn't matter if they'd slammed those jetliners into buildings in NYC, London, Tokyo, or whatever the capital of Tuvalu is, OBL had overstepped the rules of the game and had to be stopped as quickly as possible. Additionally, while it was reasonable to assume at the time, that OBL had effectively shot his wad with 9/11, there was no way to be certain, and since that his motive for doing so was to provoke the US into a war with the Mid-East, the only thing one could be assured of was that his next attack was going to be an even larger one.

Cry me a river. We're talking about a regime which not only had demonstrated an appalling disrespect for human rights, but a willingness to destroy priceless artifacts because they interfered with their narrow minded interpretation of the ramblings of a pedophile. Do you honestly think that if I were to visit Ireland and Zimbabwe were to accuse me of being responsible for a terroristic attack that killed 3,000 Zimbabweans, that the Irish government would demand all kinds of evidence before handing me over or at least taking me into custody? Nope. The most they would do is check with the US consulate to see what they had to say, and were I the kind of individual who could mastermind the death of 3,000 civilians, my government would say, "Fuck 'em. Let the Zimbabweans have him. We don't care."

I bet you don't laugh at the Nazis Mel Brooks puts in his movies, do you? And you're probably bothered by the TV series Hogan's Heroes, aren't you?

So why make the claim of "rewriting"? Unless, you're either so deprived of attention IRL lhat you feel the need to get some kind of attention, even though any sane person would have to know in advance that they're only going to be met with abuse and scorn. Or are you going through some kind of messianic phase where you post such things and say, "Oh, poor me, I'm mocked by these horrid Americans, but I must stand and hold fast to my statements, otherwise they will continue to brutalize and oppress the world!"?

You're going about it the wrong way. Constantly poking someone with a stick isn't going to make them change their mind, its going to make them harden their position. Haven't you learned that from watching what happens with Dayton? Everybody does it, its just that most people don't start out with the kind of unreasoning stupidity that Dayton does.

Or, to put it another way, your incessant jabberings about the "evils" the US commits are as effective at changing the minds of people here as are our drone strikes at convincing the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan to stop supporting the Taliban.

Can you say specifically what the Taliban could have done beyond what they did?

I can think of only one thing, which would indeed have been to invite the US, their clear and explicit political and military enemy, to engage in a military policing action on their territory. Which would be ridiculous, and the US never even asked for it -- nor would there have been any reason to believe any US assurances that they would not use such access to oust the Taliban as well.

Note, I'm in no way in favour of the Taliban, and I have said at the time and continue to believe that the invasion of Afghanistan was justified. But it's worth remembering what actually happened, because the binary falsehoods being peddled instead are exactly what drove a justified campaign in Afghanistan into an unjustified campaign in Iraq and from there straight into the ground.

It's pretty clear that those phrases, as humorous as they might have been intended, are very much at odds with "The US asked them to give up bin Laden, and they did."

Really? The Soviets claimed a much higher death toll as their motive for invading Afghanistan, and if Putin would admit that he's invading Crimea, his reason would be that he's liberating Russians from foreign rule. The former outweighs the US' reason for invading Afghanistan by sheer numbers, and the latter is, if it were accurate, superior because it is the kind of problem that actually can be solved by toppling a government. Why exactly do you feel that US reasons for invasion outweigh either?

I never claimed that the Taliban gave up OBL.

I'm not seeing anything which says that the Afghans killed 3,000 Soviet civilians on Soviet soil. What I am seeing is that the USSR (along with the US) did a lot of mucking about in internal Afghanistan affairs and then the USSR decided to invade after key allies of theirs within the Afghan government were killed. That's a huge difference between the US invasion of Afghanistan. Remember, in general, the US' response to previous actions of Bin Laden was to lob a few cruise missiles in his general direction and move on. Instead of continuing to shuffle pawns about the board (i.e. attacking military personnel/killing a handful of civilians), he decided to lop a hand off, and at that point, the US must take action. If Bush (or Gore, had he won the election) not gone after Afghanistan with a full military operation, then not only would every tin pot dictator and whackjob on the planet gone after the US, but the US would most likely have collapsed into civil war within a year or two. (Yeah, failure to respond to large events does cause violent collapse of governments.)

As for comparisons between the US invasion of Afghanistan and what Putin's doing in Crimea, don't forget that Putin's denied that there's any Russian forces at all in the Crimea (the fact that they speak Russian, wear Russian uniforms, and use Russian made equipment is purely a coincidence). Secondly, AFAIK, what's been happening in Ukraine is a "purely internal matter," and there haven't been any attacks against Russian civilians on Russian soil by Ukrainian military forces to date.

The US actually did ask for that. And I can think of more than one thing. Because I'm not high on crack.

But you won't name them because...?

Exactly. That's the point.

So the difference is that deaths only count if they're countrymen?

I emphasized that. But you introduced the comparison, not me.

Military attacks, no. But there is a large Russian-speaking community in Ukraine, many of whom identify as Russians, and they are being disenfranchised -- massively so, according to Russian claims. I don't see how that is a lesser reason for military action: Oppressed people can become unoppressed by military action, whereas the dead can not be made to live again. (Not debating here whether the claims are true, just what their worth is if they are.)