You have to point out that Al Qaeda has very little support and would have WAY less if they weren't recruited by the Wars and actions of the United States. When 9/11 happened there was a ridiculous outpouring of support from the Muslim world even after we've terrorized them for decades.

Drones, Wars, Sanctions, and General Terrorism is what fuels Al Qaeda. There are legitimate grievances that we could address and it would basically destroy Al Qaedas support, but we don't because it's counter to what the people with the money want us to do.

Eisenhower asked the same question to his advisers in the 1950s, something like "Why is their a campaign of hatred against us in the Middle East." His advisers came back with the facts, they don't like us because we support horrible dictators that keep a boot to their neck constantly. The continued that it's correct, we should be doing this in order to control them.

There's facts but you can't talk about them much, people get really upset and call you a traitor. Like in this very comment section. Whatever the US does it's correct regardless of intention or outcome, Patriotism is stupid.

While "they hate us for a freedoms" is obviously ludicrous, I think you can't just blankly repeat Al Qaeda's statements without putting them in context.

Yes, US actions whether through military action, sanctions or otherwise have resulted in numerous deaths, however you can't state that without highlighting the overwhelming hypocrisy of Al Qaeda, who's terrorism overwhelmingly murders Muslims over the US or anyone else in the West for purported crimes such as a heresy and collaboration with the West.

Interference in Saudi Arabia, again in the context of Al Qaeda's intent, what they're really opposed to is military might that threatens their own insurgency or better equips the authoritarian government in Saudi Arabia to fight them with modern arms.

Benghazi is a scam because:

1. a rescue team was being assembled, but it was too late
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2222833/Emails-reveal-U-S-military-team-ready-rescue-mission-Benghazi--didnt-make-time.html
2. a local militia does not AL-QAEDA make, he called it an 'act of terror' that day and the he 'covered it up' for a whole three days...
3. the death of a State Department official in a dangerous and unstable country, while unfortunate, is not particularly surprising. Of course, if Republicans had not cut funding for embassy security, maybe it wouldn't have happened.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/10/jason-chaffetz-embassy_n_1954912.html
4. the released emails about the talking points show that the State Department didn't want to take all the blame and that the CIA actually edited out the strongest language
http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/15/read-newly-released-benghazi-emails/

As has been stated before, there are plenty of real scandals and real reasons to distrust/detest this president, but Benghazi ain't one of 'em.

Benghazi is a scandal because 1. no one approved any kind of rescue mission 2. Obama said Al-Qaeda was on it's heels and blamed it on a video because his election was imminent 3. an ambassador was killed 4. talking points were changed to make him look better


So Obama really was asleep when that 3am call came in, and stayed asleep...this makes the US look weak around the world, which encourages more terrorism

But since y'all love him so much...no big deal, 'death is a part of life'.

I'm sorry but you are simply wrong. America is rich largely because of it's slavery past which was cotton, which was textiles. It's why we grew so quickly and put ourselves in a place to overtake everyone after World War 2 when we literally had half the worlds wealth. There's plenty of economic history of this that you can research if you care to try.

The fear thing is pretty unique in America but not unique when you compare it to say a authoritarian society. Americans are a terrified people and it's easy to use it. You can look back at the first Gulf War when people were buying guys and camo and readying themselves in case Saddam came to attack the US. Which is insanity. In the Iraq War we were more terrified of Iraq than Kuwait and it's citizens were, and they had been attacked by them and were their closest neighbor. You can also see the fear today about taking peoples guns away, if we don't have guns we're all doomed, the government is coming or al qaeda is coming and we're all gonna die. Most of the rest of the world looks at us and laughs when we react all scared to nothing.

This cartoon pisses me off for one reason. It reminds me about the South Park guys bitching and moaning about how it was put in after Matts interview, so it looked to idiots like they had made it. Apparently that was enough for them to bitch and moan about it, I lost a lot of respect for Matt and Trea because of that.

@eric3579, here is a transcript. So you can get the info without the annoying delivery:


And finally, New Rule: there are scandals, and then there are scandals. And perspective is important. Yes, to explain Benghazi, Susan Rice used talking points. But at least she didn't have to read them off her hand! [graphic of Palin looking into her palm]

Now this week, someone was taken off a cross-country flight in handcuffs for singing "I Will Always Love You" for three straight hours. And that's still fewer times has said "Benghazi". I've seen this woman [Megyn Kelly] say Benghazi on my TV so many times, I don't know if it's a problem with the set, or I'm in an Asian horror movie, and there's a monster named Benghazi.

Congressman and friend of Real Time Darrell Issa is the Chairman of the Oversight Committee, and as most Californians know, he made his fortune in car alarms. And now, ironically, has become a loud, repetitive, but ultimately pointless device that you wish to God someone would shut off so you could get some sleep. (audience applause)

But here's the difference between Darrell Issa and a car alarm. Sometimes when a car alarm goes off, there's an actual crime. I keep looking for the crime here, I feel like Reese Witherspoon arguing with the cop. Why are you arresting me? Susan Rice said "mob" instead of "al-Qaeda"? Obama said "act of terror" instead of "terrorist act"?

Republicans are constantly coming up with these never before stated secret rules, that they only tell you about once you've broken them.

"You don't make important speeches from a teleprompter!"

OK.

"No golfing until we have a budget!"

All right.

"Thou shalt not criticize the President when he's on foreign soil, unless he's a Democrat, of course, then it's OK."

Congressman Peter King thundered that the President was almost four minutes into his first Benghazi statement before he mentioned an act of terror! Ah yes, the four-minute rule. Fuck, how could I forget?!

'Scuse me, Nixon ran a burglary ring out of the Oval Office. Reagan traded arms with terrorists. Bush ginned up a war where thousands died by sending Colin Powell to lie to the UN with props, remember that? He turned an American hero into General Carrot Top! But I let it go. I said this is the business we've chosen.

But please, don't tell me that freedom died because Susan Rice broke the scared bond between citizens and talk shows. In a poll this week, 4 in 10 Republicans said Benghazi is the worst scandal in American history. Second worst? Kanye West snatching the mic from Taylor Swift.

If you think Benghazi is worse than slavery, the Trail of Tears, Japanese internment, Tuskegee, purposefully injecting Guatemalan mental patients with syphilis, lying about WMDs, and the fact that banks today are still foreclosing on mortgages they don't own, then your hard-on for Obama has lasted more than four hours, and you need to call a doctor. (wild audience cheering and applause)

And while the press has been occupied with scandal, the biggest scandal, and the most important story of the century so far, happened last week. Scientists reported that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has passed the long-feared milestone of 400 parts per million. And unless you're a chimney sweep, that's bad news. Because humans have never lived through it.

You think Susan Rice gave bogus talking points about Benghazi? What about the bullshit talking points the entire Republican Party has been spewing on climate change since the 90s? (audience applause)

I wanna see the e-mails to find out who came up with the talking points that global warming is just a theory, and that it needs more study, and climate change is a hoax. The Obama administration isn't dirty, the air is.

@hpqp The point is that there is no such thing as "plain old religious fanaticism" - it's always tied up in whatever economic and political circumstances are shaping the region and family and the person committing the act. Sure - religious people would like to think that their religion is separate from their worldly circumstances, but if you don't give credence to any supernatural dimension of religion, it also becomes impossible to separate religion from the other socio-cultural-economic-historic factors that also drive conflict.

I work regularly with Muslims who each are rich enough to buy my worldly belongings a couple of times over, and violence is the farthest thing from their minds. Exploiting migrant workers and suppressing equality and freedom of speech is quite familiar to them, but violence - despite their Muslim faith - is very foreign to most of them. Which of course is why Al Qaeda considers them traitors to Islam - they have too much in common with their supposed enemies the Israelis or Americans, and almost no common points of reference with a radical Muslim Chechen or Afghan.

Islam today is the most violent religion only in its overlap with regions that are good breeding grounds for violent extremism anyway - there's no reason to believe that in a country with the material preconditions the US has that fundamentalist Muslims wouldn't be more like the Westboro Baptists. By trying to indicate that Islam is in itself a greater driver of violence than Christianity, Maher conflates extremely disparate cultures and regions and obscures the real issues.

I've read and seen many videos on how extremely bad N. Korea is.

What is the world waiting for?

Obviously no government is doing jack about this.

If Al-Qaeda can be a nation-less killing group can't we bond together and be a Drone freedom group or such?

Can't we support a free Korea movement by funding and flying home made drones, dropping pamphlets, money and small items of food on a large scale?

Inform its people that they are being shitted on by the worst oppressive government and give them hope that the world is a good place and that their rulers are dicks.

Heck if green peace can fund ships to stop fishing can't this be done?

Absolutely, if we could target only those responsible for such atrocities as attacks on Afghan and Pakistani school girls, that would improve the world. My point is that the willfully negligent killing of children from "collateral damage" is every bit as reprehensible as the deliberate targeting of children. The Taliban and Al Qaeda deserve all the criticism in the world. But lets not add to the problem.

>> ^chingalera:

If this was done today the perpetrators would be kissing their airline privileges goodbye, among other privies....THANK YOU CIA, FOR CREATING AL QAEDA!


Totally. Read that article link I mentioned.

If this was done today the perpetrators would be kissing their airline privileges goodbye, among other privies....THANK YOU CIA, FOR CREATING AL QAEDA!

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

These are tough lose-lose decisions. Yemen will not allow the US to capture Al Qaeda on the ground, but gives consent to drone strikes. This leaves two options, 1) Attack Al Qaeda with drone strikes that kill innocents along with military targets, or 2) allow Al Qaeda to continue with their own violent operations unfettered. Are there better options?


Maybe they won't let them because of how we handled Afghanistan. We told them we were going to bomb them into oblivion unless they did whatever we said. We also refused to provide any evidence Bin Laden had done anything, even 9 months after the war started we still had nothing.

What this is about is we think we own the world and can do whatever we want. These aren't tough lose-lose situation, you are responsible for the shit you create. There are diplomatic ways of doing things, we refuse to do any of those, we just kill people.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

These are tough lose-lose decisions. Yemen will not allow the US to capture Al Qaeda on the ground, but gives consent to drone strikes. This leaves two options, 1) Attack Al Qaeda with drone strikes that kill innocents along with military targets, or 2) allow Al Qaeda to continue with their own violent operations unfettered. Are there better options?


Better intelligence, better targeting, a better decision making process.
Stop the fucking Double-Tap shit. It's purely designed to terrorize the populace.

These are tough lose-lose decisions. Yemen will not allow the US to capture Al Qaeda on the ground, but gives consent to drone strikes. This leaves two options, 1) Attack Al Qaeda with drone strikes that kill innocents along with military targets, or 2) allow Al Qaeda to continue with their own violent operations unfettered. Are there better options?

>> ^alcom:

Excellent point. Drone use, according to the video, began in 2004. It doesn't matter who's in power, drones are here to stay until reporting of civilian casualties breaks into mainstream media.
>> ^Hive13:
Honestly, saying they are living under "Obama's" drones is a bit trite don't you think?



I think you are a very blind if you think civilian casualties are being under reported when it comes to drone strikes. Admittedly, I spend more time on Al Jazeera than most, but still. How many civilian casualties in tribal Pakistan from Taliban and extremists militants make the news here? Maybe 1 per year? How many civilian casualties due to drone strikes make the news here? Probably monthly?

Here is the reality though. For every single person killed in Pakistan by drone strikes, almost 100 people in Pakistan are killed by the Taliban and religious extremists. That's some pretty unbalanced and poor reporting out west don't you think? And it doesn't even take into account the painstaking hours and effort made by America to target Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders with their strikes, while the Taliban proudly and publicly declare that women and student civilians are among their intended and preferred targets for killing.

Sure, using Drones to kill people is bad. Unfortunately we live in a bad world, and the alternatives are a ground war against the Taliban(more deaths) or ignoring them(more deaths). The choice is between bad and worse, and so yes a 'bad' choice has been accepted.