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You know you list all those attacks and what did we do? Pretty much nothing. It wasn’t the patriot act that would save us. When Bin Laden declared war on us in 1996 we should have sent Jack Sparrow the Jihad hunter after him at a minimum.

“It wasn’t the patriot act that would save us.”

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/12/17/81913.shtml

Coulda, woulda, shoulda. The point is that we were attacked repeatedly culminating with 9/11, an attack that inflicted more casualties than Pearl Harbor. The question is what do we do now. The Patriot Act is part of that response and yet Ron Paul seems to be in a state of denial. He votes against the Patriot Act despite 9/11. What’s wrong with this guy?

When Bin Laden declared war on us in 1996 we should have sent Jack Sparrow the Jihad hunter after him at a minimum.

We should have invaded Afghanistan in 1996. Private hit squads like you seem to be suggesting have their uses, but they're extremely limited in what they can accomplish.

This is pretty much what we did in Nicaragua, Angola, and countless other places, with very mixed results. Even if they managed to kill bin Laden, it would have done little or nothing to prevent September 11 because there is nothing they could have done to shut down Afghanistan as a sanctuary, training ground, and base of operations for terrorists.

Unfortunately, we lacked the political will to do what needed to be done in Afghanistan until after we were attacked. Saddam Hussein, like bin Laden, also made numerous threats against the United States, and he had access to infinitely greater resources with which to make good on those threats. We are fortunate that we have a President with the moral courage not to do what we did with Afghanistan and wait until after he made good on those threats to do something about it.

There is no quick, clean, cheap way to fight a war, and I'm tired of politicians like Ron Paul, Tommy Thompson, Sam Brownback, other Republicans and all the Democrats who supposedly think they have what it takes to lead the country trying to tell us there is. They're simply trying to manipulate an understandably war-weary public by telling them what they want to hear, rather than telling them the hard truth that we face a tough, resourceful, determined enemy hell-bent on destroying our country and way of life, and that there is a lot more blood to be spilt, money to be spent, and reversals to be suffered and endured if we're to achieve victory over that enemy.

Unfortunately, it's a rare politician these days who would rather lead than pander. Our republic is the poorer for it.