Ted, Better intel means catching terrorists before they blow something up.
How exactly do we do that? People are quick to associate the Madrid bombings with the Iraq war, but that answer dodges the more fundamental question of how we could have caught the bombers before the bombs went off. (Not only that, but that answer also led to Spain pulling out of Iraq, which most people agree is a victory for terrorism.)
The Germans and the Israelis catch people all the time before they do things. You have to be good at it. We aren't.
No one including the Europeans accepts the third choice.
Actually, Spain just did.
Of course, they don't and you know that as well as I do. Zapatero made clear that was not acceptable. Why ape the sour grapes of the right? There is a lesson to be learn in this mess that the right refuses to learn.
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.
Learning to live with terrorism is not an easy thing to do. The chances of dying in an attack may be low, but the psychological impact is too real to ignore or deny, and the cost of cleaning up and rebuilding is substantial.
Then why are you not more outraged by the things that our gov't does to encourage attacks against us? And please don't tell me you think we are innocent; that the rest of the world is evil and we are the good little boys and girls.
OBL's goal has been to rid SA of its princes, not blow up the US. But no, we have to have bases all throughout the ME plus aircraft carriers plus God knows what else there.
Why couldn't we be happy with our bases in Turkey, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar? Why did we have to have two more in SA? Dang! How many bases do we need in the ME to protect our interests?
Why don't you ever question how screwed up and paranoid our gov't is instead of blaming the terrorists and Bush detractors for all our problems in the world?
Why is it not possible that Germany and France and now Spain know about what the hell they are talking? God knows they have had a lot more experience with the Islamic world than we have.
After all, it wasn't just the 3,000 lives who died in the WTC, but also the billions of dollars in cleanup, lost business, and general disruption due to the red alert and the grounding of all flights. And that's not even counting the billions of dollars spent in Afghanistan, Iraq, "homeland security," etc.
Yup, that's what our paranoia has wrought. When are you going to realize that at least some of it was a needless waste of money.....if not all of it?
ted |
