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well, no. we're making erroneous presumptions about the middle-eastern mind -- the same mind that in 1993 was calling us losers because we left before obliterating saddam. in fact, we would have won this war on 11 september if, before the second tower hit the ground, we had had bombers in the air headed for iraq, under the buckley doctrine which specifies that taking out somebody who might have done it and who you're going to have to take out eventually anyway is a good idea, because it gets everybody's attention.

instead, we're coming across to the mideast as a bunch of milquetoasts, an allegation that at the moment is pretty difficult to refute. we befriend haq, and get haq offed. at the moment, we are losing this war, boys and girls. not because we can't win, but because we refuse to do the things necessary to win.

instead, we're foursquare in a morass of stupidity -- sucking up to pakistan is possibly the most ill-advised thing we possibly could have done. sucking up to mideastern nations is the second silliest thing we could have done. the sole meaningful tactic is to teach by illustration the lesson that terrorism against the united states is something so overwhelmingly expensive that no one can afford to do it. this has the effect of causing nations that have sponsored terrorism or have looked the other way when terrorists are in their midst to snappyfast rethink themselves and to police their subjects.

dep

Where I differ with you (and then only mildly) is that we cannot yet lash out, because we ar enot yet prepared to achieve our three goals -- our goals are three-fold (1) to ID and kill the perps of the attacks (2) to punish the nations states that support them so badly they will never do so again, and (3) 'eliminate' terrorism.

Obviously # 3 is the toughest.

If we were to lash out BEFORE knowing enough about the 'cells' and the factions etc etc, we run the risk of taking even worse hits before we are ready. Right now we are still pretty vulnerable to terrorism. I'm not interested in pi$$ing off the 'entire' (hyperbole) world just yet. Once we have the intle we need, the assets in place here and abroad, THEN I agree we should tunr all offenders into large and small pices of rubble and protoplasm. I really do not care who we 'offend' at that point.

Let's just not rush in. Prudence and preparation are not "Milquetoast".