Art Bell’s Coast to Coast AM open lines debate on post-9/11 war explores conflicting views: callers like Michael and Tony argue U.S. aggression fuels hatred, while others—including Brad and Shirley—demand immediate retaliation against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, citing $50B military budgets and Bush’s hesitation. Conspiracy theories (e.g., Bush orchestrating attacks) clash with historical claims (Reagan calling bin Laden a "freedom fighter"), while veterans warn of Taliban threats to American captives. Bell frames inaction as risking WWIII or Armageddon, urging decisive action despite fears of eroding freedoms or escalating violence. [Automatically generated summary]
From the high desert and the great American Southwest out of you all.
Good evening, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you may be across the globe, all these time zones.
We cover them all one way or the other.
I'm Mark Bell, and this is Coast to Coast AM.
And I would like to welcome back officially the mighty KTRS in St. Louis, Missouri.
550 way down low on the dial.
5 kilowatts, and they just go all over the place.
So if you're in range of KTRS, that's perhaps where you want to go.
550 on the dial in St. Louis, Missouri.
All right, Warriors.
This should be an interesting night.
I'm going to be in open lines all night, but I am going to do a couple of things that I did years ago.
One of them is we're going to have a few little debates, mini debates, because it has come to my attention, as you will notice in a moment, that there are a few of you out there who obviously think going to war is not such a spiffy idea.
So we're going to give you a voice tonight and see what that sentiment really is like.
I will read you a couple of emails that I've received.
And of course, we had Osama bin Laden Jr. on the phone last night toward the end of the program.
And so we'll see what comes this night.
The Pentagon has ordered 2,000 more reservists to duty today, via Homeland Defense, I guess, as President Bush weighed putting yet more armed guards on airliners, strengthening cockpit doors against potential hijackers.
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said Americans are in for a long, brutal struggle for justice in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks.
It will be, he said, difficult and dangerous.
Though some of bin Laden's terrorist group warned of retaliation if Washington attacks, that's right.
If we attack, which we are probably, the president said, hours from doing, they will retaliate.
Attorney General John Ashcroft is warning today of possible terrorist attacks that could include, get this folks, trucks carrying hazardous chemicals.
In fact, it seems about 20 people have been charged with trying to obtain fraudulent licenses to drive tankers, officials said.
Oh, great.
Some of those arrested in connection with the hazardous tanker licenses may have connections to the hijackers.
Aye aye.
U.N. Secretary General Kofianan on Tuesday called for Afghanistan's neighbors to open their borders for humanitarian aid for millions of starving Afghan refugees locked in the country's harsh mountainous region.
He says, in accordance with international law, the borders must be opened to civilians seeking refuge.
So while we just try to get the borders closed up, if memory serves me, they just have Pakistan close borders with Afghanistan.
Now they want them opened for humanitarian reasons.
I heard tonight on CNN they are searching, randomly searching cars and trucks coming into Manhattan.
Now that would be a different kind of experience, wouldn't it, coming into Manhattan?
Whoa.
Army guy, perhaps, or a police fellow says, whoa, going to have to search you.
You want to get out?
Interesting.
Federal inspectors who uncovered lapses in airport security over the last decade proposed fines in just one quarter of the cases.
A record said, critics said underscores weaknesses in oversight of the system that protects the nation's air travelers.
And, you know, they keep taking box cutters and what have you on board planes to prove how weak security is.
Are you flying?
Nation's airlines are in big trouble.
We're going to bail them out with your money, my money, our money.
And I guess we have to because they're in danger of going belly up.
That wouldn't be good, would it?
Here's an email.
Monday night, Art, you read something from an author which said, this was Tom Clancy, we don't flaunt our strength.
We keep quiet.
Bull blank, blank, blank.
Mr. Bell, the reason that everyone in the world hates Americans, your government, really, is the bully-type stance that it projects.
I know there are mostly good people in America and the rest of the world, for that matter.
Americans are thought of as big mouths in Europe and elsewhere.
People don't like you guys.
Don't give out that patriotic bull.
It wasn't a brown-skinned foreigner who caused your family problems, was it?
Your country needs to back off.
Your country needs to help others for the right reasons.
You guys are doomed to repeat this crap over and over again.
And you pull all of us, other nationalities, you put all of us other nationalities in danger.
How dare you?
And of course, he doesn't sign that.
New evidence against Osama bin Laden not to be presented.
President Bush on Monday backed off the administration's pledge to quickly release evidence against Osama bin Laden, said doing so could, quote, make the war more difficult to win, end quote.
The entire case against Osama bin Laden rested on the claim that the identities of the hijackers were known.
The claim fell apart when even the U.S. admitted the hijackers had used phony identifications with the stolen identities of Mid-Eastern Arabs on them.
Moreover, the hijackers had made a conspicuous display of themselves in various locales to make sure the stolen identities would be remembered.
By the way, off topic, Arnt, with all the terrorism coverage, we can't forget what's going on in our solar system.
Sun activity at a new high for cycle 23.
True.
What's going on right now, on right now, is absolutely astounding.
Don't look at the sun, but if you have a way to do it without hurting your eyes, you know, the old pin in the box trick or whatever it is you use, the sun is virtually covered with sunspots.
It issued an X, I think it was an X6 flare.
That's a big one.
Coming right at Earth.
should begin to impact in the morning or during the day tomorrow, I would imagine, probably closing radio communications down.
There's more on the way, two M-class flares in the last several hours, pretty good ones, too.
So we're in for a ride from the sun.
Now, you see, NASA had been telling us that we had passed the peak, that the solar peak had been passed.
However, it looks like the numbers that are accumulating right now might argue with that fact.
So we'll just have to wait and see.
Oh, here's another beauty.
Hey, Art, have you learned nothing from all those spiritual and mystical folks who have frequented your show as guests?
Truth is, Art.
No one has yet presented any evidence of who did the deed.
That's because they can't.
The Bush regime did it.
This is one of those we did it to ourselves, guys.
Viewed from that angle, all that is transpiring makes sense.
The terrorist angle doesn't.
Oh, I know.
Your corporate sponsors must be making you go, gung-ho, America, bomb the dirty bastards.
Well, I'm sick of hearing it.
Wake up, Art.
Your country is under attack from within by your very own government, and they mean business, as we have already seen.
So, obviously, there are a large number of people who either believe that going to war is a mistake, that Osama bin Laden is not our guy, that al-Qaeda is not the group, that there is not enough proof, or that even if there is, retaliation is a mistake.
And tonight I intend to give those people a voice, along with you.
We will have a series, I think, of mini debates.
And so as we close into the bottom of this hour, I will request that certain phone lines be left open for people who actually and truly hold that point of view.
And if I find them, we will do a series of mini debates on that, that exact item.
So if you'll keep your radio right where it is and keep your telephone handy, if you're of a mind to chime in on this subject, we will sort of alternate between pure open lines, and I mean that, anything you want to talk about.
You need not necessarily limit yourself to 911.
If you have a mind to stray from that, you're welcome to.
But I will be looking for people who don't want war.
People who don't think that what we're about to do is a good idea at all for whatever reason.
Or, if you really think it, if you really think it, that we even did this to ourselves.
I wonder how many people really believe that.
That somewhere deep in the Bush administration or even beyond, there are a lot of people who think there's a beyond, right?
Someone cooked this up and we, in essence, did this to ourselves.
All right, I don't know if this is true, but somebody writes to me and says, hey, Art, the president of Mexico, Vincenti Fox, has a non-Spanish last name.
Fox is a non-Spanish last name.
However, Fox, this person says, Bill says, is Spanish, in Spanish, is Zorro.
This means the president of Mexico is Zorro.
I hadn't even thought about that.
Is that true?
Does Fox really mean Zorro in Spanish?
And if that is true, then we have Zorro as the president of Mexico, something worth thinking about.
All right, west of the Rockies, you're on the air.
So you're saying that if we were going to war to keep oil coming, that'd be all right.
But since we're not, it's not?
unidentified
Well, having read Mr. Bin Laden's papers and stuff and what have you on the net, he's pretty much pissed off at the Western world because we've got our feet on their ground over there.
And, you know, that aside, the reason we're there is that...
So, well, I think to some degree that was absolutely true, of course.
And almost every president we've ever had has said straight out we would go to war to protect the oil.
unidentified
Right.
Well, my point is, okay, we spent $50 billion on chasing a band of, you know, I'll give it a high estimate, a band of 5,000 individuals worldwide that are, you know, ramshackle in caves or hiding out in villages, what have you.
Let's spend 50 billion bucks on starting to get off oil.
And what I would say is that human nature is the same.
You know, we talk about the American spirit and how we rise up in times of trouble and meet the need.
Well, you know, people across the world do that too.
And I think that once we go in and we spend this tremendous amount of money chasing a shadow group, that you'll have a bunch of people on that side of the world that will just look at it and it will just, for every one of them we kill with this whatever we're going to do.
But we are going to get some people on here, like this gentleman and others, who don't think, and you can see there's a lot of them out there already, even not asked for, who think the war is not really a spiffy idea.
That's a growing number of people, and it's reflected in my emails and communication that I'm getting.
So we're going to put those people in a little bit of a debate with some of you.
The warriors out there.
The Mars people.
Mark Bell.
And this is Coast to Coast AF.
All right.
Where were we with this caller?
I think I was asking him, well, okay, then, what would you do?
What would you do, caller?
unidentified
Okay, so where I left it off with, basically, you know, if evil attacks, what does evil want?
You know, I think that's much more cunning than dropping $5 million bombs on three Taliban individuals.
And so that's one aspect of it.
But, you know, I really don't want to dissay what I really feel in terms of what should be done.
You know, I could go on and on and on, but basically to lay low, to wait, to watch, to be patient and play its same game as opposed to just this huge country with all these resources just going out and having a huge testosterone rush and blowing the crap out of, God knows what, little villages.
And it ranges from that to we did it to ourselves to all over.
The range is very wide indeed.
Amazing.
You know, it seems if you watch television, you watch the major media, that everybody is in lockstep behind this.
Never have we been so united.
And in fact, I think that is, as a generality, true, but there is a growing noise out there a little beneath the surface that you're hearing tonight that I knew was there because it was all over my email.
The presence of so many foreign soldiers, a whole lot more than are really highlighted on our soil, training for whatever they don't have enough room to train for in their countries, like the little tiny republics of Japan and, well, not Japan so much, although they have a huge Navy.
We have always had foreign military training with us.
I was in the Air Force, and we always had people from the Far East, people from the Middle East, people from South America.
unidentified
What are all these underground bases?
And what happens if they decide, well, when our soldiers are over there, who knows?
Maybe they get anthraxed and maybe the mass work and maybe they won't.
And they say, hey, we just happen to all be here training and we're all United Nations and we've kind of got United Nations legally kind of, through the Bretton Woods Agreement Act, has the final say on everything.
Anyway, but here's another thing.
About something that happened to me.
I was living with an Israeli Mossad officer for about seven years.
I can't say with absolute certainty, but it seemed as though A lot of people have been.
unidentified
Apparently, some kind of...
I don't know exactly everything behind it.
I just know that some people in some of these organizations like...
Well, I'm sure there is, but the reason is even too much for me to quite fathom.
It's way out there and yet apparently true, but I'm remiss to even say anything about that.
What I wanted to highlight is just this and let some of the more interesting callers call in, is that George Bush apparently gave, well, point in fact, George Bush did issue an order, his senior, to, again, and that kind of mystifies me even, to arrange, she said, for a mid-air jumbo jet collision between my jet and another jet when I was going to visit my mother at Christmastime.
Of course, I wouldn't want to get on a plane that didn't have a pilot and the co-pilot, but apparently, none of the panic buttons on any of those four jets was pushed, indicating that they were being hijacked.
That's a little peculiar.
But if that's not enough, all the black boxes were disconnected, apparently.
Or avenge a death, avenge an attack on our country?
When in the world, in the world's history, do you get a more clear act of war than when somebody comes onto your own land, hijacks your airliners, and plows them into two 110-story buildings and the Pentagon, the source of military power, the symbol of military power.
When would you ever get a more clear act of war than that?
I can't even imagine it.
If you were going to sit down with even fairly limited resources and try to think of anything you could do that would be more clearly an act of war than what was done, I cannot imagine what it would be.
It was nice to finally hear somebody that's actually a real American and is willing, sounded like from what they said, to fight and die for this country, which I certainly am.
And I agree with you.
I mean, I just don't see in our history when we've been so viciously attacked.
And to me, it's just so crystal clear what we need to do.
Yeah, if you want to know the truth, I'm still afraid we might lay low or that we might not do what we ought to do.
Now, it looks like, and certainly all the talk from the president has been wonderful, and it looks like we're going to do it, but I'm hoping we don't back away.
unidentified
Yeah, I'm totally in agreement with you.
One thing that kind of comes to mind, I don't know if you've ever saw the movie Fight Club.
There's a part in the movie when the main character goes and tells his, I don't know, acolytes to go out and try to pick a fight, somebody on the street.
And they're spraying water in these people's faces, hitting them on the butt with brooms and this type of thing.
And they literally could not get people to fight back.
And I'm just wondering if that's sort of the attitude of a lot of these people, these sort of pampered liberals that just aren't willing to fight and die for this country.
Do you think they're mainly liberals from a political philosophy point of view?
unidentified
No, I hate to put a label on it, but it's just, I think you just have a lot of people out there that are just, they've had it too good for too long, and they don't know what lengths they need to go to to maintain our freedoms.
And if you look at past history, what people have done so that we still have a country here, fought and died for us, we need to take that into consideration and rise.
I can detect a trend very quickly because, of course, I'm getting a couple thousand emails a day, and a disconcerting percentage of them contained this sort of thing.
I didn't by far bring to you all there were.
I just gave you sort of a little sampling of it.
Interesting, isn't it?
First time caller line, you're on the air.
unidentified
Okay, I think that what Osama bin Laden is pointing out to us in a very, very tragic way, and I still haven't gotten over the death of these people, and I'm sure it's hit all of us like that, is that we go into every country where we should not be, and we foment trouble, rebellion within that country.
If we don't like the people, we send them cluster bombs, we send over cruise missiles, and then we wonder why, when they see kids' ears blown off, as they do in Iraq, why they hate us.
Because it can happen here.
I mean, we can do that to other countries because of oil, but they dare not touch us.
And the only thing that happened at the end of that war, and he lost, by the way, I think because of that, he gave the Queen of England gave Schwarzkopf a button because he saved her Petro, her British Petro.
Well, let me stop you in the interest of brevity here and just ask you what you would do.
In other words, if you were president and thousands of Americans had just been killed, as is the case, and the buildings destroyed, the Pentagon, certainly hundreds, a couple hundred there at the Pentagon dead, what would you do as president?
unidentified
Obviously, we have to do something because of the fact that there's so many stupid Americans who don't know what we did there that they're going to be waiting for President Bush to do something.
So we'll have to go in and clean out the Taliban.
But when we go over and kill more Iraqis, and when we go into, if we have to kill any Pakistani on the border or the Afghans on the border who are innocent people, then it's going to show America for what it is.
And I think a lot of countries are going to turn the, it's going to turn 180 degrees against us because they are going to be able to do that.
You would withdraw U.S. forces from their positions around the globe?
unidentified
From every country, except at our borders of Mexico, and if it takes 2,500 men or 10,000 men to cover that border between us and Mexico, I would say that there was no Coast Guard to help them.
Our troops would be at that border.
And it would be only Americans because they took an oath to protect the Constitution of the United States, not of the world.
Don't you think that's almost exactly what Osama bin Laden wants?
unidentified
Osama bin Laden wants what I want.
I want a job for Americans, not Mexicans.
I don't want our government to have free trade, no tariffs coming across these borders by multinational corporations who don't write into the salary that they give these poor people in foreign countries.
They give them slave labor, and they don't write into product liability.
Before, American corporations used to hire a lot of people when we were a loved country, and they would write into the salary that they gave the worker, product liability, his health insurance, and everything.
It made him proud.
He was a loyal worker for his company, and he was proud to turn out a wonderful product.
Today, they have now, with health and every facet of our culture, we've changed everything now so that the cheapest bidder wins.
All right, but boiled down, your response is you would not go to war.
You would instead withdraw American presence in most every part of the world.
unidentified
Every part of the world, because it's only about businessmen, Wall Street, and they don't care about us.
We're expendable.
They have a lot of things.
Even you talk about, I listen to you quite often, and you talk about the comtrails and all this.
I don't trust our government.
I think that people who write secret legislation, such as they just did, so that a person who blows the whistle on anything in the government gets three years penitentiary.
However, there is a caveat here, and that is that as you go around the world and examine many governments and live in many countries, you're never going to find one as good as this one, albeit not a perfect one, but you're never going to find one as good.
unidentified
never I hear the drums echo in tonight.
She is only whispers of some quiet conversation.
She's coming in 1235.
The moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide its horse outdation.
Yeah, I just think with our track record, even if that was we were just going to hunt down Osama's al-Qaeda network, we got a poor track record next, you know, like Panama and Vietnam, different police actions or invasions.
We don't have a good track record of getting anything.
In a way, you know, this is like a police action, more than a war in some ways.
It's more like a police action.
I mean, we're going after a criminal in a way.
So it's kind of like a police action.
You think that's a bad idea?
What would you do?
unidentified
It's very difficult because Afghanistan's not like a normal country.
I hear a lot of people talking about the Taliban giving Osama up, and I suppose they could, but the regular Afghani people revolting isn't really an option.
I think that if somebody, you know, as long as I'm a live and let-live kind of guy, and I don't much take up the causes that a lot of people take up to hate this person and hate that person.
I just don't do that.
I leave people alone, and I expect them to leave me alone.
On the other hand, if they don't, then I go and get them.
And for all it's worth.
And I've always been that way, and I will always be that way.
So I'm kind of into vengeance.
And I think the people who died in those towers, in the Pentagon, in those planes, they deserve to be avenged.
He said he's a freedom fighter that we should all strive to emulate.
And it's kind of funny how we supported Osama against the communists, and now we're supporting the Northern Alliance, which is nothing but leftover communists, against Osama.
Because I'm, frankly, tired of sitting here and turning on the news and hearing everybody calling us the great white Satan or whatever it is they call us now.
I think the lives of all those people in New York need to be avenged.
unidentified
I do think to a point that I'm only 19, so I really can't say I've lived long enough to get completely bloodthirsty, but I will go ahead and tell you that a couple weeks ago I was all for just going and, well.
I don't think avenging wrongful deaths necessarily equates to bloodthirsty.
I suppose some people might Think so, but I don't know.
unidentified
The main thing I called in, though, I wanted to say that because I really think they need to figure out what it is they're arguing against, and that's just been really bothering me the whole time I've been here, sitting here and listening.
And nowhere does Nostradamus say in the ninth month, on the 11th day, the steel birds are going to crash.
It doesn't say that.
I know.
But it talks in the Bible about the Great Babylon falling and everybody standing offshore and weeping, the merchants, which I think probably resembles the stock exchange and our dollar losing its value.
But I was just wanting people to think about all these wartime, so-called wartime necessities, the new policies that could be included like giving up certain freedoms.
You know, you don't know what you're getting into when you roll the war dice.
You don't know.
unidentified
Yeah, but we don't have a choice.
We cannot let this stand.
We have to go and get these guys if for no other reason.
You know, Grenada and the Falklands, those were sending the message that, you know, the world has gotten to be the kind of place where we cannot tolerate aggression with a direct slap in the face to be able to do that.
I myself felt very grateful that when I graduated from high school in 1975, I was just on the cusp of the Vietnam draft, and Nixon put a halt to it before I had to go, and I've been forever grateful.
However, events have taken such a turn, I'm also older and wiser now, that if I were called, I would have to go.
Yes, sir.
So you are all, you want this violence?
I don't see where we have a choice.
I kind of throw my hands up and say, you know, it's bigger than all of us.
We didn't ask for this to happen.
Well, do you see their point of view?
I mean, do you understand?
I don't.
There's no justification whatsoever for taking out innocent people.
What was their justification for the Crusades, which is kind of where this all started?
Boy, you're going back too far for me.
Well, let's say in the 20th century at least.
Okay, well, in the 20th century, look at the creation of the State of Israel.
I've been looking at that strongly lately.
And that's kind of where I see we made a real big mistake.
Well, was that our mistake?
It was England that set them up, right?
Well, our mistake in our support of Israel, and that bruise the anti-U.S.
sentiment, I think that's the fundamental, you know, one of the basic causes for the anti-U.S.
sentiment around the world.
And we promote terrorism by supplying Israel with weapons and allowing them to subjugate the Palestinians.
Well, we are helping them to survive in a hotbed of terrorism.
Why should we be helping them to survive?
I mean, they have the same land as the others do.
I mean, I wish that the world were such that they could get along peacefully over there and that none of this were possible.
But should we be promoting our point of view across the world?
Is that our responsibility as Americans to promote our point of view?
Americans never really wanted to promote their point of view other than to say that freedom is a basic human right that everyone is entitled to across the board.
And come to our country and enjoy our freedom.
I'm sorry, come again?
And you're welcome to come to our country and enjoy our freedom.
Well, no, that was we kind of bit off more than we can chew when we opened the floodgates to the melting pot, and the chickens are coming home to roost there.
But if we're going to uphold the standards of freedom, that's the price we have to pay.
And I think it's a worthwhile fight.
Okay, so you think it's okay for us to support Israel?
Sure, I do.
I think the Palestinians are getting a raw deal, too, and I'm kind of ignorant as to what they're...
I mean, in essence, we're Rome.
We're playing the role of conquerors.
We were called upon, let's go to World War I, we were called upon to be the world's policemen.
How is that our responsibility?
How on earth, where in our Constitution does because we have the resources, because we do it.
We created an oasis for freedom here.
Right, but it's what we did, and it's the best we can hope for in this case.
And to not be isolationist about it, Tony.
We can't just close up the borders as that other caller would do.
No, I invite everybody to come in here and enjoy our freedom.
Right, but we can't fit the whole world in the US of A either.
Pardon me, sir?
We can't fit the whole world in the US of A. And immigration is bound to get more restrictive now that what's happened has happened.
Okay, well, okay.
So what is the war going to gain?
What is it going to gain?
Let me just...
You know, we're in a catch-22 because we're damned if we do and damned if we don't.
Well, and we're damned in a really big way because that part of the world, like I said, they've got 800 to 1,000 years of anti-Western sentiment brewing there.
We go in there and we stir up, I mean, you cannot fight a perfect war.
And if we go in there and it's not going to be long before we make a wrong move, then the whole world can jump in there on that.
And I expect that it may come to that.
But the alternative is to turn the other cheek and embolden these.
And you know what?
Our president quotes the Bible, yet he will not follow the Christian tenet of turning the other cheek.
I'm sorry.
How hypocritical is that?
I missed the quote.
Well, in his speech to the country, he quoted a psalm, though I walked through the valley of death.
Right, that was a pretty innocuous one, I think.
Well, but yet he puts himself, you know, he even used the word crusade in his speech.
I'm just really, really afraid of the, you know, the potential.
Now, we've got to look for solutions.
We are afraid of the potential.
Yes, but you're speaking as a reasonable person sitting in the lap of freedom.
Yes.
I was born in 72.
I probably lived longer with this freedom than most.
These guys are not operating off the same wavelength as you and I. Absolutely.
They will not reason with us.
They're not.
Come again.
We're talking over each other.
Let me hear what you had to say.
We can't reason with these guys.
They are fanatical.
The only thing we can do is something we should do.
You know, America is a microcosm.
It's something that we've been debating here, too, getting tough on crime.
You've agreed with me that if we go there, that there's the potential that this could cascade into World War III.
There sure is.
And I think that we're inviting all...
Okay, okay, but now given that...
We need to find a way not to make this World War III.
I mean, I'm struggling for the peaceful solution.
Right.
I want to find...
Pardon me.
You are, they are not.
They don't want to be able to do that.
They believe that if we backed out of Israel and the people who are not.
They want to get to the next life as fast as they can possibly make it.
Pardon me?
They want to get to the next life as fast as they can possibly make it.
They are not interested in saving the world.
They are not interested in avoiding World War II.
Islam was once a real beautiful culture on this world, and a lot of our modern conveniences stem from the sharing of research.
If you look at the history books that Islam provided, they...
I don't mean Islam.
Well, okay, they, but they're not...
There's fanatics everywhere.
You know, I mean, what benefits...
I don't want World War III.
Neither do I. Okay.
What I'm saying is if we go fight this war, I think it's real hard for that not to be a realistic potential.
I agree with you, but I don't know if you're not going to be able to do it.
No, no, no, no, that makes it a no-brainer not to go to war.
No, because you're ignoring the other side is every terrorist with a fanatical vision is going to look at us as a cakewalk if we don't take action.
I think Bush is handling this exactly.
You know, and I do see that point of view, that you do not want to let terrorism impact our foreign policy.
But they were wrong.
Not just foreign policy.
It's gotten to be a domestic issue, too.
I mean, this thing can blow up all over the United States if we're not careful.
And if we do go to war, I think the potential for more terrorist action in the United States times 100.
Well, that's why I'm not.
I mean, the negatives of action are just so overwhelm.
I mean, we've got to find a way to do this without bullets.
I had quoted the lesson of Hitler in World War II, and the other lesson in the 20th century is Vietnam.
And our problem with Vietnam Sir, American life.
Yeah, well...
It is.
But our problem with Vietnam was we were not committed.
We were not committed to victory.
I'm certainly not committed to this.
If America is committed to victory, what are we winning?
Personally, I think it's just talk you're hearing.
I don't think there's going to be a national ID card.
Other countries have it.
Germany has it.
Even France has one.
I don't think we're going to have one.
They're talking about it, but I don't believe it will occur.
I think we cherish our freedoms too much.
However, I don't know how far we can be pushed.
And as the danger begins to overwhelm our ability to deal with it, maybe they will go to that sort of thing.
I don't know.
unidentified
Well, it makes me very nervous.
And I think there are a lot of Christians out there that are saying also, you know, a lot of these Muslim beliefs, what if they start targeting Christians because of their beliefs also?
I thought there was almost universal backing of what we obviously, in my mind anyway, have got to go do.
We have got to remove these people from life with prejudice so they cannot do this to us again.
To me, that seems so basic and so clear.
And what was done is so clearly an act of war.
And if you do not go to war over something like this, or at the very least, remove and extract from life those who have done this to us, then we will face much more of it.
To say that if we go and rattle their cages now, understatement, there will be more of it, and they will kill 100 for every one we kill of them and so forth and so on, is a position of, I don't know, it's giving up, in my opinion.
It's saying, we've got it good, we've got it cozy, I don't want that to change.
I don't want to contemplate the possibility of World War III.
Nobody does.
You'd have to be insane to want to contemplate the possibility of another world war.
And that is not probable, but possible.
It could spread.
It could become something that would get out of control.
But to not do anything, how can you possibly countenance not doing anything?
Well, the president has, the administration has laid out this Al-Qaeda network that seems like it's an organization, and I've seen the charts, which is dedicated to killing us.
They apparently want us dead.
They don't want us all that much to change our policy.
They want us dead.
unidentified
Right.
Well, another problem is, you know, those 19 men that were on those planes that died are not the only ones that are in this country.
And, you know, listening to your show last night about biological warfare and about anthrax and how it could be released, that, I mean, I couldn't sleep at all last night because it just got in my mind that what's next?
So rather than reaching out and finding some of these thugs wherever they are in Afghanistan, we should tighten our borders, close up, withdraw, and protect ourselves.
unidentified
well not entirely i agree that we should go and find out who did this was behind it all but And, well, that's the thing.
See, I don't know how much the government really knows.
All I know is what I, you know, see on TV and hear on the radio.
I'm astounded at what I've heard over the last couple of hours.
We'd have to worry about who we upset.
Boy, I'll tell you, something radically changed in our psyche.
I knew this was going to occur given enough time.
In other words, immediately following the event, there was a great rush of patriotism and outrage, and people were ready to go and do what had to be done.
But given a little time, and maybe the president should be taking notice, and the administration should be taking notice of what I'm hearing this morning and you're hearing, the window of opportunity to actually do something may be a short one.
And you may beginning to see the window close right now.
And the reason is, is after, you see, the Ottoman Empire, you know the Ottoman Empire.
They believe that we are occupying Arabia.
They believe that the Saudi king, the Saudi royal family, is a puppet of America, England, and France, respectively, and that their holy land, Mecca, and all that they hold dear is under control of heathens.
You say you can do whatever you want, but don't park your car in a rush hour or we're going to tow your car.
No matter what you're dreaming about, your car is going to get towed because we have those laws that benefit the society as a whole.
So if we believe in those principles and we stand on those principles, true, strong, and proud, and we're courageous, then we would say, you know, there should be no attacks against innocent civilians in any nation, not just in America.
I believe that peace itself is, or world peace would be garnered through justice, and the only thing that stops that is our fear of knowledge.
But here's an example.
Two, you have Arafat who says he doesn't support killing innocent civilians.
Well, Erlosharon does routinely, and it's often police officers, and he calls it retaliation.
But under a rule of law, with all people being equal, an innocent person dying and being advocated by the leader of the nation, being funded by American taxpayers, is a crime against humanity.
And the only thing that stops that argument is censorship.
And it's difficult because it affects our egos, eh?
Wait a minute, there is collateral damage that occurs during war.
We don't target civilians, but some inevitably will.
unidentified
Right, so what would you say to the argument that you would go against the perpetrator who's committing a crime against innocent civilians and the nation which harbors them, and that would be corporate America afraid of easily obtainable knowledge that's freely available to anybody on the internet?
He's got so many metaphors, car parking violations and free information.
Functionally, what we're talking about is the basic, simple thing.
There is an act of war, and his argument is inherently flawed because he's talking about justice.
Like, you know, if you ride a ticket, you got a car park.
This is an act of war.
There isn't any rule of law and, you know, we're going to go to court and all this stuff.
They basically declared war on us.
They bombed our people, our citizens.
I mean, some of my friends have lived through World War II, and they are telling me that this is worse than Pearl Harbor was in any way.
I don't see how anyone can compare this to, I don't know, any type of little type of argument about car parking violations.
I mean, this is totally out of the realm of possibility.
It's the function of law is what I was getting at.
Nobody should kill an innocent civilian, no matter what.
Well, that's too late.
It's done.
They already did it.
No, I'm saying, yeah, so if you stand strong and proud on that principle, justice should be served, then aren't you suggesting that certain Republicans who fund Ariel Sharon would be convictable on accessories to first-degree murders repeatedly?
Police officers, like these, they go after police officers.
I mean, that's pretty evil, no?
How do you defend that?
Yeah, you know what?
You're right.
There are some bad things that happened all over the world in the last 20, 30 years.
So we shouldn't defend ourselves.
We shouldn't stand up for ourselves.
We should just let them come.
Actually, you know what we should do is we should send a shipment of lollipops to all of them and say, hey, we're not that bad.
Here's some lollipops.
Maybe you won't terrorize us anymore.
Well, if you believe in justice.
I'm just really surprised that no one wants to do anything.
So if you believe in justice and you're not lying to yourself, you would say that giving Ariel Sharon money to murder innocent civilians would be wrong.
Unless he can defend it.
You can't.
And that's what I'm saying.
That's clearly a concern.
I don't think this has anything to do with that.
Yes, there are a lot of things that went on before this happened.
And yes, a lot of it can be pointed to our domestic policy and our foreign policy.
But that's apples and oranges.
That's about we've had an act of war committed upon us.
Now we have to take care of it.
And get what you're doing with foreign policy.
But I mean, I just think that it's too late for that now.
It's way too late for that now.
Are you familiar at all with Algeria?
In Algeria, what your foreign policy, these people you want to keep hidden in the darkness, you know, light and truth will prevail, I'm sure.
But these people who hide in the darkness in the corridors of Congress, I mean, they took out a democratically elected leader.
I mean, you can't defend it, and that's the problem.
Yeah, you're right.
America is inherently evil.
Not inherently evil.
I guess I'm going to have to go along with that one.
We should have defended ourselves.
No, no, no.
There's criminals in any nation.
If you have one person in government who's a criminal and you don't address that one individual, if you have a person in the Pentagon, one guy, who's biochemical warfare weapons over American populated cities, and you don't stand up proud, strong, and true, and say, we demand justice.
We want this guy at the Pentagon to go into prison for life for attacking innocent American citizens.
If you don't do that, you know, you're not protecting freedom.
So I just say, like, it's being brave and strong and true to protect the principles inside of America itself.
Most Americans are beautiful people.
You know, just like the people all over the world are beautiful.
Most people don't want to die.
You know, don't want to be murdered.
Most people want to, you know, try to find a way to have a good time with their lives, you know.
But it's, you know, if we don't address reality and protect freedom and justice for everyone, justice for all, you know, in all countries, and look at them as our brothers, if we don't address that honestly and face our fears, I mean, this continuous cycle of mindless violence will continue.
And who will die?
You know, just like you say, you go and attack Afghanistan.
A whole bunch of innocent people are going to die.
Somebody's brother's going to go, what did I do to America?
You know, I didn't do nothing to America.
And all of a sudden, you've blown up my house.
You've spread toxic waste all around the countryside.
I can't farm no more.
And you've got to look at those kind of issues.
Often America will say, well, we're just going to hit some chemical factories and some drug factories.
I'm from Texas, and I'm just amazed at the people that's gone in tonight.
People don't seem to realize the big picture here, and the big picture is that this is the first time that this has ever happened in the history of the world.
That something like this, the terrorist act, has been taken upon a nation by not another nation, but by a group of people.
And all the rules change.
What is the word war?
the rules have changed.
It is not necessarily war.
It is about seeking justice on those people that did this crime.
Well, I think when you use the war, the word war in this case, you're essentially saying that we are going to go and kill the people that have done this to us.
You're not going to haul them back and have a trial, I don't think.
You're probably going to go kill them.
unidentified
Exactly.
And you had a lady call in, calling Americans stupid, which just killed me.
It takes her out of the loop right there because she's putting down other people.
And it's just closing down the borders of the U.S. That's not, we are all live in one world, and eventually, if we evolve the way we should, we will all be one group living peacefully together.
And in order to obtain that, we have to go through these hardships.
And they have bestowed this hardship on us, and we must seek justice.
And that's just plain and simple.
It's not about backing Israel or some Republican that gives the President of Israel money to do whatever.
I mean, saying they're a criminal, that's ludicrous because they don't give them money to say, okay, go kill a Palestinian police officer.
I mean, how many times have we seen bombs go off in the middle of shopping areas in Israel and people bloody and in pieces getting hauled away?
unidentified
Exactly.
And now it's moving closer to home, and people are freaking out, and they can't understand the big concept here.
There's so many different things, the ways to look at it, different examples to use.
You know, and I'm not putting down anybody here.
I'm American.
I'm very patriotic.
I believe in freedom.
I believe in justice.
I believe everybody has a right to their own spirituality.
I believe everybody has a right to make their own way in the world.
And, you know, with that in mind, we all need to learn to, you know, live in this world, this one world that we have, you know, without seeing these borders.
And in order to do that, we have to live and learn.
And in order, you know, to get there, we have to go over there and seek justice on these people.
Well, and I have to ask myself, I'm handicapped, but if I was able to, would I go and die for my country right now?
And everybody, I think there's a lot of people asking themselves, you know, how much I can understand the anti-sentimism.
You look back to the fact that we kept a president in office who just cheated on his vows before God, cheated on his wife and his daughter, and we kept him in office.
I never, that was a shock to me back then.
And I don't know if anyone's aware of it, but as of a little past 10 o'clock Sunday night, the big name in the news before we, this happened, the September 11th, was Gary Condant now.
Very Republican because this country was founded as a republic, not as a democracy.
Democracy resides in the 10 square miles of Washington, D.C. Arsenals, dockyards, military installations, and territories such as Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and such not.
You know, yes, I agree that it is a tragedy that the World Trade Centers came down.
All those people lost their lives.
That is a very real tragedy, and I sympathize with that.
But, you know, on the back side of it, you know, nobody's crying about the tragedy of babies being sucked out of their mother's wombs and their brains being sucked out.
Nobody's crying about that tragedy.
There's more than 5,000 babies every day being forwarded.
All right, so are you against our retaliating for this?
unidentified
Who are you going to retaliate against as a nation, as a country?
You haven't got an absolute military strike force.
You've got a guerrilla warfare going on, okay?
If you're going to go into a situation like that, you're going to have to handle it as a guerrilla warfare.
You're going to have to seek out guerrilla groups that have got a bitch with the U.S. I think that's what they have in mind, isn't it?
Okay.
But excuse me, how much has the U.S. been screwing around with other people's governments, countries, black ops, toppling, putting in power who we want for democracy's sake?
You've got all these globalists running around trying to bring everything into a one-world subjection and one-world order.
I mean, crying out loud.
You look at the back of a Federal Reserve death note, and it tells you that.
You're speaking with Dirk, who's in a truck somewhere, Texas.
unidentified
Okay, well, Dirk, my first response to you, Dirk, would be, so what?
So what about if everything you've said is true, so what?
The fact of the matter is...
The fact of the matter is, sir, that the United States on September 11th was attacked by people who were sponsored, probably, by foreign governments.
The United States had an act of war perpetrated upon itself.
Now, what are we supposed to do about that?
Sit there and cry about abortions?
Sit there and cry about everything else that's wrong?
Well, neither attack is perpetrated against us?
Not exactly.
You know, people are missing the point to a point here.
You know, you're crying about 5,000 people, Dick.
Eric, I'm crying about the fact that there was an act of war perpetrated on the United States, and that if one of these people who want us dead, and that's all they want, gets a hold of a nuclear weapon and figures out a way to deliver it upon the United States city, that's going to make the World Trade Center look like nothing.
And there's going to be all these strikes.
What about the act of war that the American government has perpetrated on the American people for the last time?
What does that have to do with the crisis here in Kabul?
Dirk, stick to the point.
What's going to be happening?
What are you going to be saying when you're in your second day of radiation sickness, vomiting and diarrhea, getting weaker and getting ready to die?
Are you still going to be worried about abortion?
Are you still going to be worried about all this irrelevant and extraneous material that you're talking about?
You know, I think you guys really missed the point on all of this.
I think you really do.
Answer my question, Dirk.
You're not answering my question.
I'd like an answer to that question.
When you're in your second day of radiation sickness and you're going to die because the terrorists have dropped a nuclear bomb because we didn't do anything about it, are you still going to be worried about abortion?
Are you still going to be worried about all the wrongs of the United States government and all this stuff?
Or are you going to be wishing that we had done something when we had the opportunity to do it?
Well, here again, who exactly, your diarrhea is getting worse, now your hair is falling out.
Are you still worried about all this?
Who are you going after as a military target?
I believe what the president has.
I believe what the president has stated.
You asked me a question.
Would you like me to answer it?
I believe what the president has stated is that we're going after Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect, the al-Qaeda network, and those who harbor, house, feed, and finance them.
To answer your question.
Well, I guess you're going to go out there and go wipe out the whole Middle East because they're all pissed off at us.
I mean, is that how you would interpret my last question?
Is that Hussein?
Who else was that?
I'd still like to know, Dirk.
I never got a satisfactory.
I don't believe they will use a nuclear weapon.
Oh, so it's just not going to happen.
We don't have to worry about it.
That would be your answer.
Well, I think you're stretching the point too far.
I think you're overreaching the boundaries there.
I'm overreaching the boundaries by suggesting...
I think a lot of people are overreaching the boundaries.
Okay, do you say I'm overstating the boundaries by suggesting what several other people, including a commission about six months to a year ago, Suggested that the United States could be subject to a terrorist nuclear attack.
How about, okay, Dirk, well, I'll even withdraw that nuclear question.
Let's say there's a biological attack on the United States, and let's say you're dying of anthrax.
Are you still going to be worrying about abortion, Dirk?
That's still going to be the thing that's topmost on your mind there?
No, I don't suppose at that point, it probably would be.
So why do we need to wait to get away with that?
Put your question flat out, but I don't think your question actually holds water too much.
Okay?
Yeah, they perpetrate all this, you know, anthraxis, nuclear this, you know, yeah, they want the people to be all bugged up in fear.
Do you believe, you know, do you believe in cannibalism, Dirk?
Cannibalism?
Yeah, the Donner Party did it.
Would you advocate human sacrifice, Dirk?
They do that every day, Bubba.
Okay.
Well, the fact of the matter is, Dirk, that things like cannibalism and human sacrifice are not condoned in modern society, and jihad cannot be condoned either, Dirk.
Well, stupidity and fear can't be condoned either.
And that's exactly what kind of campaign the government's running is a stupidity and fear campaign, okay?
It sounds to me, Dirk, like you're the one who is living in fear at this moment.
No.
Because you're not willing to stand up to these people.
You're going to wait until you have anthrax.
You might think of it all.
I'm not in fear at all.
I don't have to fear.
My God has not given me a spirit of fear, but of peace, love, and a sound mind.
And peace and love and sound mind, is that going to protect us from a biological or nuclear attack from Osama bin Laden?
You guys don't really understand, do you?
Do you recall in the open?
He is not the absolute, only one.
Dirk, what kind of spirit did God give Moses when he killed 3,000 people when he found them all partying and disobeying God's laws when he came down from Mount Sinai?
Well, Moses didn't kill him.
Oh, he didn't?
I think you haven't read your Bible.
I think you need to read.
The ground opened up and swallowed them up.
Dirk, that was core.
I think you need to get a little more familiar with your Bible, Dirk.
And by the way, for both of you, these people who love us in Kabul, demonstrators in Kabul at this hour, according to CNN, angered by prospects of a U.S. attack, have just set fire to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.
unidentified
Okay, Dirk, so now what are you going to do?
I heard about that already.
Yeah, so that doesn't bother you at all.
That doesn't bother you at all?
No, I'm not surprised.
So what should we do, Dirk?
Tat, tit for tat, tit for tet.
Where's it going to end?
Well, Dirk, I think it's going to end with us having more freedom and more security and the ability to live our lives because we want to.
My goodness, they're already, you know, walk up and search you.
Like war on drugs.
Excuse me?
CIA goes out and pumps all the drugs.
What does that have to do with the price of tea and carbohydrates?
I'm trying to explain it to you, okay?
If you'll back off and listen for a second, you got this war on drugs, okay?
CIA goes out and pumps all the drugs and buys all the drugs and sends it into the country.
The DEA is supposed to have a job of trying to keep it out.
I've talked to too many military people to be flying back in on their C-130s and their military aircraft transport and a damn mule flying along right beside them.
Somebody saying, hey, see, oh, look at there, man.
There's a drug meal.
No, you can't say anything about that.
Dirk, what's your point?
Oh, wait a minute.
War on drugs?
War on drugs?
Let me tell you about war on drugs.
No, tell me what your point is, Dirk.
We only have a few minutes here.
I don't agree, Dirk.
I'm trying to make a point here.
Please.
War on drugs?
Okay, you got a woman that saves $1,200 to take her children to the mouse house in Florida.
She's driving along 95 in Georgia.
She may be going three miles over the limit.
State Trooper pulls her over, openly searches her, doesn't have a warrant, searches her, searches her car, finds $1,200 cash.
She tells them they're going to the mouse house for their vacation.
The children say, yeah, yeah, we're going to see Mickey.
The cop takes her money, leaves her and the children standing on the side of the road and confiscates her car.
Yes, I would, first of all, I would hope that in the long run that that would turn out not to be true.
I believe that we can prosecute this war without losing a lot of our civil liberties and a lot of our freedoms if we act in a sensible way and a united way.
And again, I just don't think we're going to be really worrying about that if we're dying of radiation sickness or breathing anthrax.
Yeah, that's what Reuters News said, and so they're not going to use the word terrorist anymore.
I found that remarkable.
unidentified
Yeah, I think we should reframe them as criminals and go after criminals rather Than terrorists because terrorism has a political, cultural, theological dimension that I really think that that just muddles the whole thing.
It's like they're sort of beginning to maybe move a little in reverse.
And, you know, there may be a number of reasons for it.
I mean, they may not have all their ducks in a row.
They may not know for absolutely certain that it's Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.
There may be some evidence they thought they had that they don't quite have.
I'm speculating.
I really don't know.
But listening to my callers and listening to these folks tonight has got to be something of a wake-up call for anybody out there concerned about the window of opportunity to do something.
unidentified
Right.
Because, you know, and when Bush signed that executive order on freezing assets on the al-Qaeda organization, why didn't he do it with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islam Jihad?
Yeah, I understand that they're uncovering links to Hezbollah.
unidentified
Yeah, and obviously Saddam Hussein has to have a hand in this, and we should go after him and take him out.
And forget what the rest of the world says, you know.
We saved all these other countries during World War II and World War I, you know, and we're trying to protect our freedoms over here without all these other countries trying to, you know, say, oh, America should do this.
We are in the middle of putting together the world against Afghanistan, against the Taliban, against Osama bin Laden and his organization.
It's like we're trying to get every single last country.
I think there's now only Pakistan that continues to have any relationship at all with that.
unidentified
We're trying to keep that window of opportunity open from having at least a link to the Afghanistan government in case they do try to bring some of the terrorists over, which I don't think they're going to do.
Well, what I wanted to ask you was, do you think that we should have acted quickly and unilaterally, or at least as quickly as we had some evidence?
Should we have acted unilaterally and not worried about the rest of the world?
unidentified
Yeah, well, yeah, I think we should have done a symbolic strike back, hit some of the terrorist organizations, hit some of the military camps, because I'm sure all those camps and those terrorist camps and everything, they're deserted.
They're gone.
Those guys are hiding in the mountains of Afghanistan.
They blended in with the public.
We're not going to find these guys.
They're just going to blend in with the regular military on the Afghanistan side or, you know, just blend in as, you know, the refugees or whatever.
Tim, look, you know, all this anti-war sentiment is a moot point because it's all going to disappear after they hit us another eight or nine more times.
Oh, I disagree with you there 100%.
When our casualty rates hit 300 or 400,000 people, when it threatens you specifically, see, as far as you're concerned, New Yorkers got hit.
When it comes to your hometown and you are under physical threat day and night, your anti-war sentiment is going to change and you're going to say, go, George Bush, let's get those bastards.
Well, first of all, you're assuming a lot of what I think here, and second of all, I disagree 100%.
I think this anti-war sentiment, or actually I would prefer to call it pro-peace, and you guys can be anti-peace if you want to.
But this has been, you know, in existence for as long as I can recall, and it's going to stay.
And I think ultimately it's more powerful.
What city do you live in?
Oh, Kansas City.
Okay, so you're in a fairly big city, probably one of the top 20 in the country.
You would be a prime target for these clowns.
Oh, yeah, I'm sure that I couldn't be a prime target here.
So when a crop duster comes flying over Kansas City and they take out, oh, let's say 100,000 people, you're going to be still waving the peace flag saying, well, we'll just sit back and love these guys and they'll eventually leave us alone.
You have to stop.
And so when we go over there and find out whoever we're going to attack, whoever that could be, and attack them, you think that's going to stop these people who are already here in this country?
It probably won't stop them.
But if we could curtail 90% of their activities, we're going to be far better off.
How?
They're already here in our country right now.
Well, that's how you're going to stop them.
You've got to start clamping down on these guys.
But they knew the consequences before.
They knew we were going to bomb the hell out of them if they did this.
But they did it anyway.
They don't care.
All you can do is try to stop.
If your reasoning worked, we would sit there and say, we don't need police on our streets.
We'll just let the streets roam free and they will handle themselves.
Peace will eventually win out.
It's not going to work.
We have to stop them.
We have to be there to put people in their way to prevent them.
Okay, one or two are going to slip through, but it's better than 20 or 30 slipping through.
They're always going to slip through unless you can wip out problems.
Yeah, but I'd rather have one or two slip through than 20 or 30.
Well, it doesn't have to be 20 or 30.
It doesn't have to be any of them.
That's why they're out there.
You've got to be one or two of them.
That's why they're not.
And wiping them out is not part of the question.
You have to stop them.
They only got 8,000 people in the World Trade Center.
What happens when they get a stadium of 50 or 60,000 football fans?
Exactly.
What happens then, huh?
Well, but you've got to stop them, pal.
Tell me how.
How do you stop that one guy from going into the stadium and setting off a bomb?
You monitor everything that the president is proposing.
You tell them you cut off their funding.
You try to catch them before they do it.
How much do you think?
How did the FBI set off a bomb somewhere, huh?
How did the FBI stop the Italian mafia?
They put a severe crimp in them by cracking down on them, by monitoring phone calls, by following them, by checking them out.
And they pretty much shut them down.
Well, this is a little bit different than organized crime here.
It's just a religion that is based on thousands of years, okay?
They have followers going back thousands of years, and they're not going to just stop because there's a little bit of pressure.
Organized crime right now is the biggest, and they attack us anyway.
Organized crime and terrorists are the same thing.
Same kind of network, same kind of underground shenanigans.
You've got to get in there and you've got to fight them.
One war at a time.
You take one guy down, then another, then another.
You get a cell here, you get a cell there, and you start cracking down on them.
And then we lost it.
How many of our kids are we going to kill in this effort, huh?
Whatever it takes to protect.
How many civilians will we lose in the bombings of this effort, huh?
Whatever it takes to protect them.
Whatever it takes.
It don't matter to you as long as we get these guys in the end.
We're the good guys, huh?
It's not going to work that way.
It's a question of protecting our soil, our sovereignty.
If we relax and let them come in and have their way in this country, how long are people going to tolerate that?
You realize if they hit us six or seven more times, you're going to have former Marines jumping on pleasure crap with their rifles, headed for the Middle East?
People will take this into their own hands if the government does nothing about it.
People are not going to take it.
I don't see anybody getting on their boats and going overseas.
You wait until they hit us three or four more times.
You know what?
They haven't hit us since the bombing.
I think they're waiting to see what we do, and they're expecting us to bomb us.
And as soon as we do, or they're expecting us to bomb them, and as soon as we do, they're going to retaliate.
It's only been a couple of weeks.
There's all kinds of reports in the news.
There are cells all over the place.
They're trying to learn crop-dusting techniques.
Yeah, they want us to know that we're still around.
Yeah, and they plan to make further attacks.
You're only two weeks out of the initial attack.
Yeah, but war is not going to stop those attacks.
War is just going to make them happen faster, make them happen more.
Would you propose that we just sit back and let them hit us as many times as they want until they get tired of it?
No.
I say we prep our defenses a little, but we got to start initiating some peace talks.
We got to start initially.
Peace talks with who?
Nobody's even taking responsibility for this.
Well, then who the hell are we going to bomb?
You can't put in peace talks with people that don't even acknowledge that they've done this.
Well, there's people behind it, and if they want to talk about it, we should give them the opportunity.
Look, all we can do to protect this country is do exactly what the president is doing.
Let them do their investigation.
They were able to track down the Libyan terrorists and all these other, the people that shot down that plane over Lockerbie, Scotland.
They were able to eventually track these guys down.
There's still more.
Hey, look, we're going to track these guys down.
There's still going to be more.
Oh, man, it's going to be endless, okay?
We're never going to get them all.
Right, but we've got to at least try to stop them before they move a different way instead of aggravating it more.
Why don't we try to make peace instead of making more war?
It's possible.
They don't understand peace.
They do.
They're perfectly intelligent people to come up with these huge plans.
They have to have some kind of intelligence.
They are not intelligent when they live in the hills and come once a week.
Oh, that's BS.
It is.
They're intelligent people.
Look, you live in a liberal fog.
You have all these ideological, intellectual concepts in your head, and you think it's all going to work.
Look, socialism on paper is a great idea, but it doesn't work because men are greedy and men lust for power.
That's a pretty fatalist view.
Huh?
That's a pretty fatalist view.
It's a realistic view.
Aren't we all human?
Don't we all have capable of, you know, better than that?
These intellectual, ideological ideas just do not hold up.
Tim, if you became convinced that their only interest was in killing us, in seeing us dead, you know, gone, really dead, and that's all they really wanted from us.
They're not making demands.
They haven't made any.
They haven't even taken credit for it.
And if that's all they want is they want us dead, what kind of dialogue would you propose with these people?
unidentified
Well, first of all, I think that's very highly unlikely that they would really just want us dead or even be conceivable that it could attain that goal.
uh...
but um...
i would just You can ask a million if statements, and you can talk about it as much as you can.
Look, when it becomes personal and they hit your family, your friends, your tune is going to change.
It's going to be personal.
It's already my family and friends.
Because, look, when you go to run, you're not going to be able to run to Canada because they're going to be after Canada too.
I'm not worried about that, my friend.
I'm not worried.
You know, Alaska might be your last option.
I'm not going to run away from anything, okay?
Because it'll come home.
If you don't do anything to stop it now, it's going to come home to your front door.
To your front door.
Why are you at my front door?
With my neighbor's door.
When you walk out to go to work in the morning, you're going to be thinking, what do I have to look out for today?
When it hits that point, you're going to change your tune real quick.
No, I'm sorry.
It doesn't matter what that might be.
You already agreed with me.
You said we're going to have to beef up security here in this country.
Okay, well, fine.
Well, they've already done that.
But to beef up security and not to go after them to slow them down, that's crazy.
Well, it's not going to slow them down.
It's going to speed them up.
Bombing them is the only thing that's going to aggravate them.
If we don't bomb them, they're going to sit back and wonder what the hell's going on.
They are aggravated already.
Okay, yeah.
Do you realize that if Israel did not defend itself, that they would have been bombed back into the Stone Age a long time ago?
Oh, yeah, probably.
Okay.
So we have a prototype in the world of what we need to follow.
If we sit back and do nothing, we know what will happen.
So you have to sit there and go after them.
They're not the only ones who are a prototype.
Like I mentioned, Gandhi.
He was a great example.
Okay, but Gandhi is one guy.
We have 6,000 years of history in this world where wars have settled disputes across the world.
No, they have never settled disputes.
That's why there's still wars.
If all those disputes, that is totally a this issue.
That's your war has ideological nonsense again.
It doesn't hold up in a realistic problem.
Name one problem that war has solved.
Well, it killed Hitler.
They didn't solve a problem.
They put a band-aid on a problem.
Well, no, I mean, look, had we not stopped Hitler, who knows what the world would look like today?
Well, we didn't know what Hitler was doing until he marched into Germany, did we?
I mean, look, Gandhi is a very poor thing to hold on to.
I mean, one guy, and he really didn't accomplish a whole lot in India to begin with.
Just freeing his country, yeah.
I mean, when you think about it, over 6,000 years, war has settled disputes between men because men have a tendency toward greed and a lust for power.
That's what men understand, and that's how you have to fight them in their terms.
You can't sit there and intellectualize everything and say, well, peace, give peace a chance.
John Lennon bit the bullet.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
I'm a man too, you know, and I think peace is a great idea.
I don't care for war.
It's great as far as, you know, this fantasy out there, but it's not going to work.
Why does it have to be a fantasy?
Why can't we?
The world has never seen peace.
So?
Okay, so to sit there and hold out this, you know, friendship ring and say, well, here, let's give it a chance now.
It's not going to work.
It never has.
How do you know?
He's never tried.
Oh, please.
People have had peace talks left and right.
North and South Korea, they've been talking peace for 20 years and they're still at each other's throats.
You have to get it beyond that.
You have to take a stand.
Stand against these guys and do your best to keep them out of the country and to fight them where they live.
And that will do that.
And all that's going to work.
That will do what?
That's all that men understand.
That's BS.
I understand more than that.
I think I'm a man.
I think any man would understand more than that.
Well, I'll tell you, you and Ted Kennedy and Diane Feinstein, you all fly over to the Middle East and you try to straighten it out with them, you will all come home in body bags.
They don't want to hear your liberal ideological nonsense.
And this is the first time I ever called a radio program, so forgive me if I'm a little nervous.
I wanted to kind of share with your audience a couple of things that I know.
Some of the jobs that I've had in the past couple of years have brought me close to the special operations community in San Diego and with the Navy and the Marine Corps.
That's where a lot of the debate that people are having coming out of, they're talking about we're going to go bomb this and bomb that.
When the special operations people go in, you're not going to hear a damn thing.
I mean, these people are going to wake up dead.
In fact, I'm sure that there are people that have already died over this at the hands of our special operations people and probably will continue to do so for quite a few years to come.
And it's never going to be something that you're going to see on CNN.
And the reason is because with special operations, you have what's called operational security.
That is in place to protect all of the operators that are out there.
If somebody shows this stuff on CNN, something they just did, that's going to directly threaten their lives.
And the president, and I just want to, my hat's off to the guy because this is one of the first presidents that I've ever seen in my lifetime that has really stood up and said that he's not going to compromise operational security and flat told the news media not even ask questions about it.
And it's something that we have to do.
I mean, when you look at this group, you got the first time with the WTC.
That's pretty bold when the first time they bombed the WTC.
Then they got the embassies, okay?
Or then, yeah, they went after the embassies, then they go after the Cole.
Now they've come back again.
Every single time that every single one of these actions that they've been behind, they step up in boldness level.
So you don't think a Gandhi-like response to this?
unidentified
You go Gandhi with these people, and they're going to cut you down where you stand.
And not only that, but I think that the next thing that we're going to be looking at, when you look at the WTC, when you look at the buildup and the boldness and the sophistication of these people, the next thing, if these people get their way, the next thing we're going to be seeing is some kind of an NBC attack.
I mean, flat out.
I mean, where do you go up from the World Trade Center?
Okay, so when all of these people that are out there, give peace a chance, give this a chance, look at your kids, look at your wife, look at your husband, okay, because it's going to be them that is going to die if we don't go after these people and we put them in their grave.
And when you look at how Germany, Germany went through this problem in the 70s, and they had a reaction to it.
It's called GSG-9.
You look at the list of the terrorists that the GSG-9 went after, and you know what?
They're dead.
There's X's over every one of their faces on their wanted posters.
And you know what?
They don't really have a terrorism problem anymore.
You want to know why?
Because there's no terrorists left.
It's not a war that's going to be won overnight.
These people that did this, if this is prosecuted in the way that other countries that have successfully dealt with terrorism, these people that did this are going to die.
And anybody else that knows that they're going to try something like this, they know they're going to die.
Well, after listening tonight, are you now confident that we have the resolve to be in this for the long term, not two weeks, but two years, ten years?
unidentified
Yo, we're going to have to be in this for probably, I would say, at least 10 years.
And I mean fullborn.
People are going to have to be behind the president no matter who it is.
And you're going to have to back this.
Because like I said, if you don't look at your wives, look at your wife, look at your husband, look at your kids, look at your best friend, they're going to be the people that die.
Now, any person, I heard this one guy, this last guy that they just had on that was saying, give peace a chance.
Any person that would not stand up to defend their neighbor under this kind of attack is just a flat coward.
Well, You know, I was just almost absolutely convinced that for once we were really one as a nation.
I didn't even suspect there was this much underlying whatever it is you want to call it.
unidentified
Maybe galvanized as a nation, but there's all these different, people have these different points of views, and a lot of it is a semantic.
I find myself, you know, myself and my wife, we raise our voices discussing the thing because she goes, I, we, did this, referring to maybe some bad things the country did at times, and I'm going, wait a minute, don't include me in that.
I didn't do that.
I didn't massacre the Indians.
Those were my forefathers.
And maybe they weren't even my forefathers.
You know, I come here from a line of immigrants, too, somewhere down the line.
I don't think Osama's worried about the Native American.
Not that what we did is anything to be proud of, of course, but I don't think that's the issue somehow.
unidentified
Right, and I don't really see a connection with people bringing up Israel.
And I'm not sure that Osama's all that concerned about the Palestinians.
Anybody he can recruit for his cause and his interest, great.
I think that's his point of view.
The Islamic people worship in so many varied ways.
And if you put a bunch of them in a room, they'd have varied opinions.
I've heard several of them over the last week or so, even on your show.
And most of them in America don't approve at all of what he's doing, but they all have different points of view on other things, as varied as everybody else.
The idea about war and going to war isn't the same as a lot of wars in the past, and we're, in a sense, defending ourselves.
I'm not a warmonger, but I'm not going to just stand there and let somebody beat me up.
Well, it seems to me, and I was in Vietnam, it seems to me that there were arguments that could be made sort of esoterically about why we shouldn't be, for example, involved in somebody's civil war.
Although I understand the larger picture, I understand why we're in Vietnam, and I supported it.
I was there.
But in this case, my God, it's our own shores.
It's our biggest city.
It's thousands of American innocent civilian lives that were taken.
I just, you know, it's like it's a no-brainer to me.
unidentified
Yeah, it's reprehensible.
I couldn't understand if the government wanted, our government wanted more people to support the central American conflicts and our involvement there.
Well, not to make any kind of comparison in terms of what's going on now, but the type of when I was young, people would lie about their age to get into the military to go fight in Vietnam because they really felt there was some patriotic thing going.
And there really wasn't that for the Central American Wars.
And here, there is a lot of patriotism in terms of the country being somewhat galvanized about the atrocities against us.
And we'd feel the same way if it happened in another country, really, but maybe not as intense.
But the idea of going to war scares people.
And the idea of third world, you know, World War III scares people.
And the idea that these people are going to retaliate.
Well, you know, it's funny because I've, for 30 years, expected this kind of stuff to go on in the world, the quickening, the end of the world.
And, you know, I'm like, you know, going, gee, Lake finally got here.
You know, it's a, and they say seven out of ten people are depressed.
Well, you know, I guess, well, that's why I've been depressed all my life because I've been expecting all these things to happen.
You know, I'm kind of like, well, gee, you know, okay, I told you so.
I'm going to do it.
I expected it to happen.
And, you know, it's time to do the things we need to do to protect ourselves, defend ourselves.
The idea of the concept of a war, these people, if they're going to do this, whether it's Osama, bin Laden, or any other group, if they're going to terrorize civilian populations, they need to be rooted out to this country, all over the world.
And it'll probably be something that goes on until, you know, I don't know, the second coming of Christ.
I wonder if we are going to, because we have formed this grand coalition of countries, almost the whole world, whether we are going to allow this coalition to dictate some lesser path to us than we otherwise might have taken.
unidentified
Well, quite frankly, I don't think we can succeed without the coalition because several factors.
One, I saw Baitline tonight, and they had someone on who had been part of the training back when they were fighting against the Russians, and he explained how he said it's amazing that they go out to fight with very little because they know where in the country they have water supplies hidden, buried, and food.
And our kind of war, we don't know that kind of war.
And the other sad factor took place where on our own local television show, they had followed some recruiters who went on campus area and to ask the young people, the young men, a few of them, what they thought about it.
And their final analysis was, after talking to several of them, that the young people of today, the me generation, would prefer to have mommy and daddy give them a nice new car for graduation and to have a very expensive job that would give them all the luxuries that they think are so important in life rather than go into the service and protect their country.
You know, you know, actually, we have to consider that as a possibility.
Have any of you really looked at the pictures on my website?
Photographs on my website without any question whatsoever.
The photographs on my website have got to be considered.
Now, what am I talking about?
I'm talking about the devil, the evil in the smoke during the explosions in the World Trade Center, without any manipulation of any kind of photograph.
We've got raw photographs on my website that, without question, without having to use your imagination, without anything else, show evil.
There is no question about it in my mind.
They show evil.
Pure evil.
Now, I suppose you could be one who would say, well, you can see anything in anything, but to me, it's clear.
Take a look.
If you haven't seen them yet, the phases in the smoke that emanate from that explosion, without question, are pure evil.
It's all on my website at artbell.com.
Take a look for yourself.
Speaking of pure evil, East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Well, no matter which side you listen to my callers on, the anti-war side, the pro-war side, or the pro-let's do something about it side, both sides admit that this could lead into something awful.
It could lead into Armageddon.
It could lead into World War III.
You've always got to imagine that when you go into combat, that could occur.
And so there's a lot of fear out there, and I think that's what we're hearing tonight, is fear.
unidentified
But I think they can lose their fear if they go and see this movie.
When I was in high school, you know, right before I got out, I signed up and I joined the United States Navy.
You know, not because I wanted to go to war, not because, you know, I wanted to die, but because, you know, everybody in this country that has, you know, done whatever they could do, you know, fire department, police, doctors, you know, they're giving a little bit of themselves to, it may be in the hopes that, you know, it would make, you know, more opportunities and give more privileges to the people that are going to come past them.
You know, I wanted to give of myself, you know, what I could back.
Okay.
You know, to, you know, kind of like being grateful for what I have and my opportunities.
You know, like the opportunity that everybody has to call on this radio station and voice their opinions and tell how they feel about things.
You know, some countries, if, you know, to get up and speak like this, you know, they'd have your head blown off before you got a chance to hang the phone up.