[jlogajan]

Cronkite is right, but in an uninteresting way -- if we'd all been muslims this never would have happened -- first, jet planes would never have been invented -- second, materials science would still be building structures out of mud -- third, muslims would need to kill other muslims except for pleasure.

[pepsionice]

Cronkite misses the entire point. We got to this point, as a nation. We did not allow religion to get in the way of the operation of the government or the business world. All of these middle eastern countries...and to a lesser degree...European and Asian countries allowed religion to hinder their development. Even Colombus might have been halted if the Catholic church had been on the ball at the time. For some idiot to come up in 2002 and say that we owe the world something...why? We paid for our development and we suffered in our own fashion. We owe no one for our position.