h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"The story details how an unmanned, radio-controlled aircraft fired a missile into a car killing all the occupants."

So we got robots killing people now!

How can you blame the US, this is clearly the fault of the machines, there taking over, I blame Bill Gates.

C'mon. Do you really think that MS would be behind something that actually works and hit it's target. Blame sun microsystems. But gates is the root of evil.

Two-bit "The al-Qaeda is targeting Americans, as well as people from other nations."

Could I have some figures to back that up please? Some definite instances where Al Quaeda can definitely be proven to have commited an outrage? Not being pernickety, I just hear a lot of 'Al Quaeda did this' and 'Al Quaeda did that' and 'Al Quaeda will do this if we don't invade the Middle-East' talk, but have yet to see much proof of the 'Al Quaeda' entity having had much impact as a terrorist force. As far as body-count goes the IRA are well ahead, including the Twin Towers attrocity. So, to re-iterate, could you point to a definite source of evidence for your allegations that the West is under sufficient threat from this organisation for suspects to be executed without trial?

You mean like Osama bin Laden discussing it on a video? Would that be evidence enough for you?

Well, no, not really. Do you speak the language? Do you know what was being said? The quality was fairly piss-poor. If that's the only evidence (is it?) then it ain't much. And anyway, if someone walked into your station and admitted to being such and such a murderer, would you automatically believe them, or would you run proper checks?

Following his logic, he'd shoot him. But then again americans are entitled to process.

So because of a bad quality video then anyone who is (A) aribic looking and (B) a suspect is is subject to summary execution.

Very tidy

ApparÏtÏon, by the same argument against labeling all Muslims or Arabs as terrorists, we cannot label all Americans as supporting violent actions of their government abroad.

Here's a link to a buch of Americans who oppose their government on a number of fronts:

http://www.geocities.com/johnwentling/

Even though I expected to read this here, I still feel a bit of disappointment....

The problem is 'suspects'. A word that has most of you hot and bothered.

Suspects=people that are members or are in some way tied to terrorists groups intent upon the destruction the U.S. but about whom we cannot reveal the identies and or how we know of there involvement/intentions to the general public without causing the exposure of our own intelligence sources without causeing loss of life of our agents or the loss of the source(electronic intelligence) altogether.

And lest you forget we are at war with terrorists and more specifically Al Qaeda. The main exhibit that we know in the public is the video admission. The rest of the proof is not made public....again for the aforementioned reasons but it was enough to convince the Brit's Tony Blair for one.

I'm confused as to what the world would like us to do. Perhaps we should just forget the whole thing ever happened. Wouldn't that be great? We could just spread our legs and wait to be raped again.

Or hey, how about we let someone else make the decision about what to do for us? Wouldn't that be cool? We could let Paraguay decide for us. It's not like we have the right to defend ourselves from our enemies or anything.

What's it going to take for you guys to see that they tried to kill us? they failed? and now they will be punished? There's no due process in war.

And yeah, don't forget we didn't start a war....Al Qaeda did. And while you may think that they had their reasons-which maybe they do, none of it justified killing innocents at the Twin Towers.

Have you all forgotten. They blew up a building where people went to work every day. Come on people!

Have a political problem....try to negotiate like a civilized human. If that fails, attack a military target. I could understand steps like this, but those people didn't need to die.


You know folks, I'm not going to argue with you about why these terrorists are p**sed at us, because you're probably right, we're involved in places we shouldn't be. I agree. We should be just like the Japanese and take over a countries economy from the inside because indigenous populations are a pain to govern from foriegn soil. We should just make money off of your economies and let you run your own piece of real estate. Who needs land when you can have money and prosperity?

I think generally speaking our intentions are good. We were sucked into Vietnam because we were trying to aid our allies the French. Anyone will tell you what a mistake that turned out to be.

But that doesn't change the fact that we're in a position now where a militant group has been very clear about wanting to destroy us. I for one would like to see the threat erased. I didn't even bat an eye at the car bomb explosion in Yemen.


And now that I've got everyone all frothed up I just want to make one more commment. I've been very careful to say terrorist and not muslim. Islam is a shield and a tool that these people are using. They no more follow the true intent of Islam than the Christians did in the Crusades. The entire concept of jihad-a holy war is a joke. Talk about a contradiction, there is NOTHING holy about war.

Someone was making a comment about how a lot of the America's most wanted are Arabs and I just had to make the point that the conviction that goes behind the faith in Islam is what is binding so many Arabs into a group that is truly *lost*. There is no surrender in war, and Islam means surrender.....not kill your enemies in the name of god. But faith is a powerful emotion, and that is why I say it's become a tool in the hands of these terrorists.

Moslems aren't evil.
The terrorists are.

And have you forgotten that we have lived with thirty years of terrorism from the Republican factions in Northern ireland, much of sponsored by NorAid, an organization sponsored by US citizens?

Get off the high horse. Stop pretending you are the only ones to ever suffer terrorist atrocities. Stop pretending you are the only ones that think you know how to, or have a right to, deal with this problem.

Oh, and your definition of 'Suspects' is flawed as well.

Suspect-one who is *suspected* (geddit?) of being a member of an organization.

I'd agree that terrorists are evil. But the thing that have driven them to terrorism is often America's awful treatment of other countries. So a "kill the terrorist" approach may not be as effective as a "we'll stop supporting Israel's murder of Palestinians" approach.

Gnomon, you put me to shame because I got angry and you didn't.

And you're right.

And you say you are at war with them.

So why are the Afghani prisoners still being held at Camp X-ray not as prisoners of war or as civilian prisoners?

"but it was enough to convince the Brit's Tony Blair for one."

Blair just parrots Washington. We have no idea if he believes the evidence or not.

I agree with you to some extent about the sensitivity of revealing suspects etc. Although people are quick to link al-Quaida to any terrorist attack, much in the same way the police in this country treat any shooting as "drugs (ie gang warfare) related" as it has about an 80% chance of being correct.

"Get off the high horse. Stop pretending you are the only ones to ever suffer terrorist atrocities. Stop pretending you are the only ones that think you know how to, or have a right to, deal with this problem."

Crickey, once again Blues Shark is spot-on.

Do any Americans realise how offensive Bush was when he came over here and said that "Europeans" needed to "wake-up" to terrorism?

We've had terrorism on this continent since WWII, whether IRA/Loyalist forces in Ireland and Britain, Red Army Faction and Bayder Meinhoff in Germany, Red Brigades in Italy, ETA in Spain, Algerian militants in France, not to mention sporadic neo-nazi violence all over the continent.

As Blues pointed out, some of this action was sponsored by US citizens. The US government did little to stop it. If Bush has dealt with this then good, but it should have been nipped in the bud a lot sooner.

I've been familiar with where terrorism has been occuring in the world. One thing that Americans have not done is mustered up the long term resolve to fight terrorism. Even though President Hussein promised waves of terroism before the Gulf War, we forgot about it. After the attack on the WTC in 1993, we forgot about it. After Oklahoma City, we've forgotten about it as a nation. All much to my chagrin.

We have failed to recognize much of the threat that exists inside our country and from abroad. I don't know if most people realize it, but we've had extremists groups taking action in the United States for decades. We're not really all that new to the game.

I think we should have taken action earlier to kill those who've conspired to attack us. The United States is, and probably continues to be a major source of funds for terrorists, and I think we should have acted to stop them much sooner. I think we should try to extend an unintrusive hand of friendship to people who are oppressed in the muslim world, where pverty unrelated to the United States is turned into a propaganda tool against us.

Now we're in a mess. In the next month or two, we'll probably face another major attack by al-Qaeda.

We've tried weak pathtic responses. I'm not sure how we're suppposed to negotiate with terrorists (although I understand that they do have a press office opperating in the UK). We can either wait for the next attack, or we can take action.

As for the prisoners being held in Guantanmo, some have been released. The military is prepapring to hold the tribunals required by the Law of War (which seems a bit late in the game). I think we're far too early in the game to start releasing them wholesale.

No one's asking you to negotiate with terroristts.
Try negotiating with some of the others. Instead of supporting Israel in Palestine, try telling the Israeli's to pack it in.
Try taking away the reason for the anger that the Muslim world feels against the west. Isolate the terrorists within their own communities.

That might be a start for a better world for *everybody*, not just those of us that have the 'might is white is right is strong' ethic.

Surely in this situation to paraphrase Churchill

"Jaw-Jaw is better than war war."

The west ,via the UN?, needs to encourage mutilateral dialogues in areas of conflict, such as Israel/Palestine, and should be using its undoubted clout, particularly economic (G8/G7 anyone?!) to persuade the agressors to come to the table for talks and to stick to what they agreed to do.

Until we are seen to be mindful of the position and needs of the underdog/oppressed these selfsame groups will hate and distrust us.

Oh and f*c*ing sabre rattling really doesn't help, its about as much use in finding real solutions to global or regional problems as a trying to see who can pi** highest up the wall.

"I'm not sure how we're suppposed to negotiate with terrorists (although I understand that they do have a press office opperating in the UK). We can either wait for the next attack, or we can take action"

Terrorists are generally not easy to negotiate with. For a start, states hate to be seen as doing it (although they usually will). Over here, negotiation with the IRA through Sinn Feinn has been slow, to say the least, and hasn't achieved any lasting peace.

Generally, the best way of preventing terrorism is to sap it's support. Terrorists will always exist because extremism will always exist. There have been neo-nazi terror attacks in the UK, but support for fascism in Britain is very small. If support was widespread, these attacks would be hundredfold.

At the end of the day, the West has to stop making the muslim world feel victimised and that will take some steps, not all of them likely to be appealing. Sorting out the Iraq situation would be a good first step. I've been reading a book by Anthony Loyd called "My War Gone By, I Miss It So". At one point he was in Chechnya reporting on the war there. The Russians had a massive superiority over the Chechens and attacked their cities by obliterating them street-by-street. The Chechens still didn't lay down their arms. They even pushed the Russians back. The point being that you will not defeat determined people by threatening them with violence. You have to find another way.

Oh and regarding the terrorist press-office in the UK, I'm not happy about it. Does anyone know whether the government has any plans to do anything about people preaching terrorist violence?