Find some relatively uninhabited land area that people won't mind losing; say some large, deserted island, or perhaps a forgotten quarter of Siberia, preferrably someplace close enough to the sea to be accessible in times of war. Buy it, and form a Taliban-like face government there to attract the terrorists, but have it all secretly run by British Intelligence as a gigantic sting operation.-- RayfordSteele, Jun 22 2002 A Well Ploughed Furrow http://www.halfbake...ression=AfghanistanPlease, please, please can we find some way of not discussing Western Foreign policy every time the word 'Afghanistan' is mentioned? Please? [DrBob]Suicide Bomber Scanner http://www.msnbc.co...23.asp?0bl=-0&cp1=1A new way to catch suicide bombers, provided you can build enough scanners. [Vernon]Trader thought nailbomb was joke http://news.bbc.co....d_779000/779697.stm... but he soon worked it out. [DrBob, Jun 25 2002, last modified Oct 21 2004] Suicide Bomber Scanner http://www.msnbc.co...23.asp?0bl=-0&cp1=1A new way to catch suicide bombers, provided you can build enough scanners. [Vernon, Jun 25 2002, last modified Oct 05 2004] Trader thought nailbomb was joke http://news.bbc.co....d_779000/779697.stm... but he soon worked it out. [Aristotle, Jun 27 2002, last modified Oct 05 2004] Nailbomber: 'It was my destiny' http://news.bbc.co....d_780000/780056.stmMore details on how the public dealt with the situation in a brave and almost coordinated manner. [Aristotle, Jun 27 2002, last modified Oct 21 2004] Hindu Kush http://www.well.com...letext.html#warzoneThis would serve, maybe? [smendler, Nov 08 2005] RayfordSteele: "secretly run by British Intelligence" ...
ROFLOL. They couldn't run a bath, let a lone a fake country ....but it's a neat idea. We would suggest the actual running of the country is subbed out to a more devious and unprincipled race, like the french. They do this sort of thing really well. Have a bun ...-- 8th of 7, Jun 22 2002 Call me an idealist,but rather than spending all that money and effort on trapping these "terrorists", perhaps if Dubya and his allies, spent that money and time on trying to get on with the dispossesed, landless, hungry, hopeless peoples of the world, they would be a bit less inclined to go around blowing themselves and everyone else up. A human being who is looking forward to life and enjoying it is a lot less likely to strap Semtex around their waist in an effort to maim a restaurant full of people having lunch. Desperate people do desperate stuff. At the end of the day the vast majority of folk just want to raise a family, go to work, play a game of footy on a weekend. the amount of cash spent on demolishing Afghanistan, could surely have been better spent......-- dijit, Jun 22 2002 How do you know Afghanistan wasn't really setup this way to start with? Taliban did come out of nowhere and they didn't seem to intend to run a government that could last longer than it was.-- bing, Jun 22 2002 I thinkthey already did that in Beirut, but then it all got out of hand.-- DrCurry, Jun 22 2002 With the demonstrated bungling around in both the CIA and the FBI, I couldn't very well suggest we use *them.* And sorry to say it, but I just don't feel safe handing over the reigns of the intelligence world to the French. Perhaps Israeli intelligence could manage the show.
[dijit], most of those dispossesed, landless, hungry, hopeless peoples of the world are created by bad governments, criminal activity, and differences in ideals. In order to be effective, the US would have to engage precisely in more of the 'proactive foreign interference policy' that certain few peoples hate us for in the first place. You can't have both.-- RayfordSteele, Jun 22 2002 AIUI, most terrorists are terrorists for their country (or religion or whatever they associate strongly with). They're not terrorists first. They don't wake up and say, "Gee... today I feel like killing and maiming people in the most horriffic way possible! I wonder where I could find a charismatic leader to point me at a target?"
I think a terrorist honeypot would attract a few psychos and serial killers and mercenaries, but the terrorists would stay home.
(What I thought this idea was going to be about was a honeypot *target* country. Every time the US did something unpopular, it would be blamed on this fake country. Economically destabilizing trade, socially disruptive media, exploitive companies: all come from this fake country, which would be a Potemkin village of big, soft civilian targets, and no actual people...)-- wiml, Jun 22 2002 Osama: So why are you here?Sadam: Well its sudden emergence from no where as a country that would be willing to let me produce weapons of mass destruction, and plot the downfall of my foes really cinched the thing for me. You?-- kaz, Jun 22 2002 NB: I was tired and hungry when writing the above statment, please don;t worry if it isn't as funny as it was intended to be.-- kaz, Jun 22 2002 Osama: "I'm here because I hear it's run by the Amish Consulting Agency..."-- RayfordSteele, Jun 22 2002 got it. [dijit] is Cherie Blair's new username.-- sappho, Jun 23 2002 all that concern over the poor put upon peasants of afghanistan has nothing to do with central asian oil fields, pipelines and the god given right of us lot in the West to drive around in 4litre suvs' perchance? I wonder if we would be chasing the "alleged" perpertrators of the 9/11 attacks all over afghanistan if the Georgians were sitting on one of the worlds largest reserves of woven straw donkeys. I think not. As wiml says -terrorists ar'n't born, they are created. I eagerly await the abuse that is sure to follow.....-- dijit, Jun 24 2002 dijit, note that before 911, we didn't care that much about what was happening over there.
Terrorists create themselves as much as they are created. They can choose how they wish to respond, and nothing we will ever do can take that choice away from them. Even in prison, you can reject your own guilt and blame the world for making you that way or accept it.
Second: the Arab nations' leaders drive much larger and more elaborate vehicles than we do. I don't see *them* sharing the wealth with their own people that much. Instead, they chose to raise their kids to be hate-mongers. If you read your history, Mohammad himself wasn't much better.-- RayfordSteele, Jun 24 2002 Check your history. the american public may not have cared that much about what was going on over there, but perhaps a little more general awareness to foreign policy, not just the USAs', could have avoided a 9\11. But the fellas in charge knew very well. i cant help but recall certain events culminating in a soviet invasion of the area resulting in the rise and rise of the self same warlords who are now fighting over the remains. None of this helped the afghanis, but was that ever the plan? I think not. But as I am sure someone is about to point out, I digress......-- dijit, Jun 24 2002 [sappho] beat me to it.-- stupop, Jun 24 2002 I think that America ought to work with Russia to decomission Cold War battlegrounds (such as Afganistan) and cold war combattents (such as Osama) before they turn against the forces that used and/or trained them in the first place. With the benefit of hindsight the Cold War should have been followed immediately by the Warm Reconstruction.
This would probably be a lot more effective than any attempt to capture "terrorists".-- Aristotle, Jun 24 2002 Aristotle: You are correct. However, given the choice between cashing in the Peace Dividend checks to purchase public polularity for no effort, and the hard choice of solving problems that only affect poor, uneducated, sick NON-VOTERS in small, hot far away countries, our elected leaders chose to follow "the will of the people" ...... We elect the leaders. They make these choices on our behalf. What's wrong with this picture ?-- 8th of 7, Jun 24 2002 The similarity between "terrorist" and "tourist" in the title of this idea was worth a pretty good chuckle. I also acquired my own misinterpretation of what the idea might be about. How about simply arming all the citizens of any country targeted by terrorists, so that however the terrorists might get in, they won't get out? After all, if those "soldiers of terror" want to claim that the enemy is every single citizen of the target country, then logically the terrorists are de-facto declaring all those citizens to be soldiers of a kind. (To treat the citizens as victims is to actually demote them from "enemy" status.) So, equally logically, the citizens should make themselves prepared to be assaulted by the terrorists, which means becoming armed and trained, just like the soldiers that they are claimed to be the equivalent of, by the terrorists.
Remember, folks, all through history helpless people have always been rip-off targets. In the United States, the right to bear arms is how the citizens can ultimately control and keep from being ripped off by the government. But that same right is also a form of immunization against other criminals, including terrorists.-- Vernon, Jun 25 2002 Was Vernon the first one to catch the pun?-- RayfordSteele, Jun 25 2002 Is the lack of a right to bare arms common to all countries with a high level of religious fundamentalism? Is that why Americans invented T-shirts?-- sappho, Jun 25 2002 Vernon: A sufficient way to deal with terrorism is to have citizens learn to live with the potential threat. No guns, bare arms or armed bears are needed. For example in the UK a nail bomber was thwarted when someone spotted the bomb, identified it and put it in his car, therefore reducing the effect of the bomb. He lost his car but he saved the day. Observation and courage, rather than firepower, worked wonders.-- Aristotle, Jun 27 2002 Aristotle: What a very good idea. Sadly, this means it will never be implemented.
Can you provide a reference to the nail bomb incident ? We don't recall it and we follow this stuff quite closely. We have done EOD work, and we are not brave enough to go and pick up a nail bomb. Mind you we've never been asked to do it. Courage is spot on - hope the guy got a medal.
As for armed bears, have you ever met any members of the Parachute Regiment ?-- 8th of 7, Jun 27 2002 In the UK practise has shown that it is implemented. Us Brits tend to have a better perspective on collective safety due to terrorist threats because many of us have lived with this kind of constant threat for years. America will adapt, in time.-- Aristotle, Jun 27 2002 [Aristotle] Having citizens learn to live with terrorism is the way to go? C'mon.-- dag, Jun 27 2002 I hope it doesn't take a distributed control systems attack on an electrical power net or a dam, or worse yet a radiological bomb, another WTC, or bio/chem attack for the U.S. to realize you can't become accustomed to terror.
So let's say the bad guys, take out Roosevelt dam? Oh well. Then Radiological bomb in downtown Los Angeles, Oh darn. DCS cyber attack takes out eastern seaboard gas and power, Learn to live with it?
I can see it now, bickering on why we didn't know before hand and prevent the attacks. If you don't take a pre-emptive posture it WILL happen, and even if you do it still might, but you have to try.
As far as the original idea, just clone the leaders of Iraq, Iran, Syria and replace them with their kinder, gentler twins.-- dag, Jun 27 2002 Ah yes, flew home last week. Interesting how different the security is between airports. One ravaged my belongings and one whooshed them on board without hesitation.-- dag, Jun 27 2002 some of the "links" are not links anymore. So now the question is How many links can the links link to, if the links do not link to a link?
Decoy countries. sigh. I thought I thought of this idea.-- pashute, Feb 03 2016 Brilliant.
Which is why it could never happen. I get the idea that the people in charge of our defense feel it's "un-sportsmanlike" to lie to the enemy. Hell, invasions now practically have pre-game countdowns like the Superbowl.
Hell, in this political climate it's probably not even acceptable to call them the enemy. Might be deemed a "micro-aggression".
Bun anyway. [+]-- doctorremulac3, Feb 03 2016 // Brilliant // // Which is why it could never happen //
But then again, when was it ISIS moved into Iraq & Syria..
Do you think someone from the intelligence community might have read this somewhere between 2002 & then?-- Skewed, Dec 03 2017 No. They might have had it read to them by their mother, or their nurse, but mostly they just look at the pictures, and point.-- 8th of 7, Dec 03 2017 Sounds a lot like Scotland.-- xenzag, Dec 03 2017 random, halfbakery