Our presence isn't an indicator of how good or bad things are going in Iraq, we are simply a force multiplier with specific capabilities that they desired and got, releasing assets for other tasking.

As for Barry Cook, and missing E-6 pilots...I know of LCDR Speicher, and F/A-18 pilot that has been missing since '91. Refer your concers to JPAC. No E-6 crashes that I'm aware of...much less any MIA pilots. The first E-6 wasn't delivered until 91. Last crash my community had was in 1977, lost a crew of 14, EC-130.

Sorry I confused E-6 with the Intruder which is an A-6, right? Anyhow my point was, this whole thing has been, and still is to some extent, mismanaged from the get go by a bunch of rich boys in grownups jobs, who just thought it would be really neato to play war!!! As I am about to go on my 3rd field trip, 2nd in the last 5 years I reflect back often to the advice given to W and Co. about the amount of manpower needed to do the job properly. I suspect the current CDR of the ground forces still feels his hands are tied by the politicians and thus cant get the needed manpower either. I guess we wont know for sure until he retires and feels he can speek freely, of course by then it will be too late for lots of American soldiers and their familys.

Tactics aren't the issue. Nor, really, is strategy. Yes, we're very good at killing people. We've adapted to our situation to be even better at killing people. So what? The issue (and the thing that will defeat us) is a matter of policy. Our policy goals are just as ephemeral--and possibly even farther beyond our reach--as they ever were. And that makes our tactical and strategic success count for very little.

Learn how Spain, Germany and Italy do it. The NeoCon buttheads that consider Old Europe irrelevant will first have to be flushed away like the solid waste that they are.

Save me the leg work, just who do they "do it"? You seem proud of the job they're doing....brag on it.

OK The Spanish COPS got the commuter train bomber accomplices. There have been many news reports of German and Italian COPS that have broken up sleeper cells, made arrests and thwarted planned evil schemes. The Brits snagged retard Ter-ist wannabees with half-assed liquid explosives. I believe Dutch COPS have scored some goals against jihadist Noodniks,as well. I don't recall any French successes in these matters. Their Surete is so deeply invasive within French life that they may be nipping things well before they bud. They did have their hands full with the Muslim ghetto riot thing featuring amateurs,not pros,in the recent past. Water cannons and low frequency sonic sphincter releases got hauled out and dusted off to handle that action.

YOU do your own research for scholarly citations on specific events and occurrences. I'm recalling them anecdotally from retained memory of news reports from BBC and other not-servile-to-our-Ruling Pirate Gang sources like Reuters.

Don't care to consider the idea that Old Europe has a bigger problem than we do with radical Islamists....and it just makes sense that Old Europe's COPS are more active than COPS in our nation?

Muslim's tend to be a greater percentage of the middle class in the United States than they enjoy in Old Europe, and are therefore a little more averse to breaking out the suicide vests. And France appears to have a jail system where 80% of the inmates are Muslim, well above the percentage of Muslims in the general population...those numbers can be a bit difficult to ascertain due to French policy...but alarming none-the-less. Are you really sure you wish to do it like they do? Our COPS have enjoyed their own successes...but since it probably wasn't reported on the BBC, SKYnews, or the Australian Broadcasting Corporation....you may have to depend on Reuters, oh the shame.

As for doing my own research....YOU made the claim, YOU back it up. No need to shit on me because I asked you delve a bit further into your anecdotal evidence.

Ex-Fucking-Scuse ME, Mr. Sensitive.

I didn't shit on you. I thought I gave you what you asked for. I'm the one that offered that it was anecdotal and from memory. I admit that I don't have the time nor the inclination to wade through news service reports to cite specific instances. This is not a Masters Seminar. Also;What? I should only consume what Fox, CNN and The formerly "Big" Three dish out? I'm in no way advocating Euro-Socialist French style policing. The fact still remains that Terrorism is still the purvue of cops over there, not the military.

Yeah...I got sensitive, I even shed a tear over your assault.

Moving on...I agree, terrorism is a police function. So what is your solution when a police force is lacking? By lacking I mean, non-existant. If not the military, then whom?

And no, I didn't recommend that you limit your news sources...just you may have to consider more than just your favorites. You would be amazed at how much the US makes the news on the three networks I mentioned in my last post. Tornadoes in the mid-west is news on the BBC. Our political primaries are reported on regularly on those same channels. Pretty cool to see that most of the programming on the channels such as the BFBS are American sitcoms. Our culture and our news is widely disseminated.

I think the approach of "Old" Europe is indeed better. They focus on police work to minimize terrorist attacks, which is a more difficult job than it is in the US because of the large immigrant populations from the Middle East (more chance for extremists to blend in) and the much closer and easier to traverse borders with Middle Eastern countries. They have a clearer understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian problem, and a more evenhanded approach as a consequence. They don't believe in handing their executive branch a blank check, trading their rights for security (they remember Franklin's quote, even it the GOP does not).

I'ld like to know why you say that muslims tend to be more middle class in the US than in Europe. Are there any statistics on that matter? It would make some sense, since there is a continual influx of poor, undereducated muslims into western European countries, whereas most muslims immigrant in the US are probably highly educated (doctors/engineers/...). But I don't have any data on this - do you?

I was also intrigued by your comment about the inmate population.

As far as I can tell, there are no data corroborating the assertion, but Muslim leaders do claim that about 60 to 70% of the French prison inmates are muslim. That would be 5 to 6 times as much as the rate in French society at large. Other countries in western Europe have similar high rates of muslims in jail, between 3 and 8 times that of the rate in the population at large. In some cases (especially at the lower end) it seems that these rates are more or less official.

So why does Europe prisons have 3 to 8 times as many muslims as you would expect?

One has to remember that European muslims are disproportionally African (usually black) and poor. The US prison population seems to have about 6 times as many blacks than in the general population. Perhaps this is more about race or economic circumstance than about religion? Hard to say. Surely it is hard to simply deduce that Europe jails muslims in order to fight terrorism.

But it gets stranger still. Not counting the US prisons in Guantanamo, Iraq, Afghanistan and god knows where else, muslims make up about 5 to 7% of the US prison population. That's low, but muslims make up only .5% of the US population. So, the US jails muslims disproportionally as well, even more so than France.

I'm not convinced that it's religious bias that causes the high rate of muslims in western prisons. In addition, the data show that the US has a higher discrepancy here than France. France's aggressive anti-terrorism policing does not seem to lead to a bigger bias against muslims than in the US, or at least it does not show in the prison population.

In addition, because the US simply jails many more people than France does, the incarceration rate of muslims in the US is much higher than in France. It would seem that France is a better place to be muslim, then.

So please, if there's anything backing up your comment on muslims being more middle class in the US, link it in. The stuff on the prison population doesn't help your point at all.

sources: adherents.com for US figures, CSmonitor article for the numbers in europe.

<link>

Above is a story about the radicalization of Old Europe's inmates...

Arabs in the US:

"According to a 2004 telephone survey of a sample of 1846 Muslims conducted by the polling organization Zogby, the respondents were more educated and affluent than the national average, with 59% of them holding at least an undergraduate college degree.[51] Citing the Zogby survey, a 2005 Wall Street Journal editorial by Bret Stephens and Joseph Rago expressed the tendency of American Muslims to report employment in professional fields, with one in three having an income over $75,000 a year.[52]"

"assault"? Sheesh !

I forgot to mention earlier; I don't accept your contention that there is no police force here to deal with terrorism. If the FBI would stop fucking around with piddly shit like religious cultists and whatever the Hell else it is that they do; their staff and budget could be turned to the task. Many State Police forces have detective divisions and intelligence networks and co-operative and/or secondary unofficial relationships with other jurisdictions. Same for many Metro jurisdictions.

We got PLENTY cops. Can you DIG IT, .....MAN !

I didn't even intend to suggest that our own nation was lacking a police force, with the largest prison population in the world...it's obvious we do some policing. And we have had several successes in finding terrorists and their supporters, and/or thwarting potential attacks. What I was pointing you towards was places such as Afghanistan, Somalia, and Iraq which really don't have a police force to combat terrorism. So in those situations, what are your alternatives to catching terrorists?

International co-operation via structures in place but under-utilized like The Arab League,The African Union and, yes, The UN to identify,isolate and render ineffectual The Bad Guys even if it means blockading the affected states so that the Noodniks don't get out while they're being tracked down and no help for them gets in. The "Trackers" should know that they're going in as cops and detectives, rather than as soldiers.

Wouldn't some real international co-operation be nice, for a change?