[mikegi]

Wrong! Our most serious threat in the long term is China. China and Russia have the ability to destroy us as a nation. AQ does not.

No, the fault for 9/11 lays completely in the Clinton administrations lack of response to the terrorist threat that emerged in the 1990s. They never responded effectively to the numerous AQ attacks on us. It made no difference who was elected in 2000. The die was already set.

I'm also ticked by the Clintonoids claiming credit for stopping the Millenium bombing. It was an alert border guard in WA that stopped it, not Clinton.

[Desdemona]

Our most serious threat in the long term is China. China and Russia have the ability to destroy us as a nation. AQ does not.

Very true. And, if memory serves, at some point in the first 100 days of the Bush Administration wasn't an American military plane disabled by Chinese pilots in the air, landed on Chinese soil and wasn't the crew treated very badly by the Chinese? I seem to remember that thoughts of China being a significant threat were prevailant at the time.

[Poohbah]

Wrong! Our most serious threat in the long term is China. China and Russia have the ability to destroy us as a nation. AQ does not.

Actually, only Russia can physically destroy much of this country. But even a "limited" nuclear attack by a state or sub-state actor can destroy or severely undermine our national ethos...and replace it with something else that we probably would not like. (My guess: we go on a war of extermination.)