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Politics : Ask Michael Burke

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To: Knighty Tin who wrote (107786)	5/30/2007 8:36:06 AM
From: Freedom Fighter	Read Replies (1) of 132070

I don't like being in the position of defending Bush/Cheney because I dislike both of them so much. I think this is a somewhat unique point in time though. These days most people spend some time weighing the risks of another terrorist attack on US soil. IMO, some may not weighing the risks properly and others are certainly not thinking about the risks properly. I know I don't have the answers, but I think I understand the questions a little better than most. What makes things different now is that usually only the risk of something happening is important for determining a response. That's not the case now. If there's a 1% chance of a dirty bomb going off on Wall St, that's a lot less acceptable to many people than a 25% chance of a suicide bomb going off in a small market. The same is true of biological weapons. We are in a situation where the risks are low, but the downsides of an error of omission are enormous. The people making these decisions (about personal freedoms at home and aggression overseas) believe the probabilities and downsides of inaction are high enough to warrant making sacrifices in our ideals in order to reduce one or both parts of that equation. That doesn't mean they are estimating anything properly or coming up with the proper response for reducing risk and downside. It just means that most of the people that are pissed right now don't even understand what their thought process is and what it should be because of the unique situation. They will just complain if something bad happens. This takes me to another issue. IMO, any immigration policy that increases the probability of hostile Muslims getting into the US is beyond insane no matter how bad some of the possible actions that would prevent that might look. How we got into this situation is another matter that we've discussed when the issue of Ron Paul came up.

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