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I respect your opinion, but disagree totally. In any war, even one in which the odds appear to be overwhelmingly against you, you can defeat your enemy by making him lose his will to fight.

In this war, there is only one way to do that - we must treat the terrorists to a vision of horror that exceeds anything they can omagine or perpetrate. If we start worrying about our western more's any taking innocent lives, we might as well pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan now, and start getting on our knees 5 times a day to sing about "Allah akhbar".

Our beliefs in compassion, civility and humanity are the very weapons that the terrorists are employing against us. They know that we will get wrapped up in hand wringing over whether this Muslim is good and that Muslim is bad. Let's look at the bigger picture - how many in the "arab street" are expressing their outrage over these acts of savagery and barbarism in the name of Islam?

That's the same number of "moderate" Muslims there are in the world. I don't like climbing into the gutter with these vermin any more than the next person, but that is what they understand. They are rooted in 13th Century barbarism and lack the ability to comprehend our compassion and desire to spare innocent lives. As long as we are unable or unwilling to truly shock and awe these barbarians into abandoning their "religion" of murder, slavery, oppression, hate and barbarism, all we are doing is, literally, throwing Christians to the lions. It's time to take off the gloves and stop pretending.

Dusty,

I agree that you can defeat your enemy by making them lose their will to fight - the point I was trying to make was the complexities of guerilla war where you are never sure who the enemy really is make this tactic difficult to execute.

We are not at war with the state of Iraq. We've been there, done that, broke their will, and crushed them. War won.

We are now at war with a hotch potch of small groups of terrorists, some co-ordinated, some not, some religious nutters, some ba'athist reminants, some plain old gangsters, who live amongst a population who we are NOT at war with.

The test of who wins a guerilla war is in who the population feels affinity with more. If we bomb fallujah those not currently involved with the insurgents who loose family members will hate you and I, as much as you and I hated islamic radicalism every day since 9/11.

Cool heads. Target the leadership, the cells. Show patience and pride in restraint. Show moral authority, but never show weakness in resolve. This thing can be won, but there is no quick way to get there. Unlike the overthrow of Saddams state, this second war against the terrorist elements is one for special forces and intelligence, not for conventional armour and air power.