Free Republic

The “Overseas Contingency Program” – more commonly known as the “war on terror” – is back at the center of the political world, thanks to the uncertain prosecution of the war in Afghanistan. As President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Congress and the generals in the field contemplate the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t consequences of Afghanistan, terror has reappeared in the American vernacular. “America is still a salient target and attractive target for terrorists,” said Paul Pillar, a former senior CIA counter-terrorism official. And while words like “Islamic terrorist,” “jihad” and “Muslim extremist” have been scrubbed from administration chatter, we remain...

There was considerable discussion of this thesis on the Atlanta shooting thread, Although we never reached a consensus, we did agree that the shooting thread wasn't the time or the place to debate this. Here's a place. Anyone got the time? Two camps, the correct one - mine- says that Words are far deadlier than gunpowder. This camp can site multiple examples, From the qu'ran to to the Communist Manifesto. Example: The Supremes wrote some words in 1963, that seeing a suspect in restraints prejudices a jury. These words are a direct root cause of the recent deaths in Atlanta....