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Also, ask yourself this: what happens if Bin Laden and Omar pop up in a non-Iraqi, non-Pakistan country in the next few months? Would we want to be in the middle of an Iran/Iraq blitz when that happens...

It wont matter. The simple unannounced fact is, without Iraq, Bin laden, is not the threat he is made out to be

To fully comprehend that statement, you need to look closely at the historical view of terrorism, in the last say, 20 years.

Prior to 1993 (1st WTC Bombing) ALL terrorism was known to be State sponsored. ALL.

What made 1993 different, the nature of the terrorism, or, the Administration, wanting to have it's cake and eat it too? TO wit: Announcing a loose band of confederates, so that when some were caught they could be tried, and jailed, and the Administration would look good, without having to pursue the state sponsorship, that inevitably necessitates war. Why do you think between 1993, and 2000, we averaged about one extraordinary incident per year ?

And every one of them has Iraqi Fingerprints on it. EVERY.

That is why if you pay close attention to President Bush's rhetoric, he is reversing the Individualist B.S. and equating Terrorism, with State Sponsored action.Yes, they still Babble about Bin Laden, But they have no viable alternative, yet while they chase around these AlQueda A*holes, the real objective is to go after the States that make such terrorism possible. (These Desert dwellers DO NOT HAVE the Intelligence, Scientific, Acquisition, or Delivery systems in place to perpetrate the Huge acts that have been taking place. This can only come form State Resources.

"Prior to 1993 (1st WTC Bombing) ALL terrorism was known to be State sponsored. ALL." - hobbes1

Don't quit your day job.

SLA members blew up police cars in 1975, allegedly a plan to avenge the shooting of SLA members. The SLA gained notoriety after kidnapping the then-19-year-old newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, now a 48-year-old mother of three.

The Red Brigades, a left-wing terrorist group, carried out a wave of bloody attacks in the 1970s, including the notorious murder of Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978.

Some, especially the PFLP and DFLP, established connections with guerrilla organizations throughout the world, including the Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany, Action Directe of France, the Italian Red Brigades, the Japanese Red Army and the less well known guerrillas of the Turkish Liberation Army and Colombian, Nicaraguan and Armenian groups. Regardless of origin, sponsorship, political direction or connection with larger independent terror groups, these particular terrorist organizations (including Black September) operated under the umbrella of the PLO.

In November 1968 the PFLP, operating under the direction of George Habbash’s associate Dr Wadi’ Haddad, better known to Palestinians as ‘The Master’, carried out the first of many spectacular plane hijackings: an El Al plane flying from Rome to Tel Aviv was directed to Algeria. A month later the PFLP attacked an Israeli aircraft at Athens airport.

Slightly after your deadline we saw the AUM Shinrikyo cult perpetrate a Sarin gas attack on a Tokyo subway in March, 1995.

Banker Alfred Herrhausen fell victim to a deadly terrorist bomb activated by the Baader-Meinhof gang near his home in Bad Homberg (Germany) on the 30th of November 1989.

Historically, organized crime and the Barbary Pirates (in fact, lots of various pirates), have been responsible for numerous non-state-sponsored acts of terrorism over the centuries.

Even today we've still got Al Qaeda terrorists, ETA separatists in Spain using terrorism, drug-lord terrorists in Columbia, Shining Path terrorists, enviro-terrorists such as Earth First! (notorious for "spiking" trees about to be harvested, causing often fatal injuries to loggers in America's rural areas), animal-terrorists at PETA, anti-abortion terrorists, and a host of lesser-known, non-state-sponsored organizations.

So do you still want to claim that "All" terrorism was state sponsored before 1993?!

Get thee to a library!