Ted, Do you really believe that Bush has all the bases covered?
I trust that Bush has all the bases covered. I'd prefer to see more decisive reforms within our military and our intelligence agencies, but what the heck do I know?
You've got to stop trusting, Ten. The Spaniards trusted Aznar and he was trying to screw them. Bush and Aznar are cut from the same cloth.
By the way, I'm wondering these days whether the standby argument, "better intelligence and better law enforcement," is an exercise in intellectual laziness. God knows I've made the same arguments before, but now I have to wonder exactly what that means. Does "better intelligence" include Big Brother security measures and prisoner torture? Does "better law enforcement" mean taking steps toward a police state?
Better intel means catching terrorists before they blow something up.
If not, then what else do we do? I see two other alternatives: (a) Just accept the fact that terrorism is a part of our lives (the John Fowler argument, which also pointed out that the chances of dying in a terrorism attack is still low) or (b) Take the fight to the terrorist's home turf and start fixing the source of the problems (the "neo-conservative experiment" that zofsilence pointed out). Of course, there is a third alternative, which is to appease the terrorists and give them what they want, but I doubt most Americans want to go that route.
No one including the Europeans accepts the third choice. I suspect we will have to learn to live with number one [the JF choice], and at some point, when we get an enlightened president into power, do some of the stuff Z [choice number two] is talking about without the neocon's penchant for war. If we do the latter [Z's choice], the fears from number one should begin to ameliorate.
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