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To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (41633)	9/14/2001 3:21:55 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 65232

<<have you ever been checked for bombs when entering a Seattle Mariner game?>> JW: That's not funny....I live within a 1 1/2 miles of the Cubs Wrigley Field and the fans would not be happy with intrusive security BUT they would deal with it (just like the travelers are). In our open society we become quite vulnerable...Think about how a driven and motivated fanatical terrorist cell could have folks blend in and become UPS or FedEx delivery people...all they would have to do is slide some extra pkgs onto their trucks at the right time....hmmm -- who checks packages that are bound for 2-3 different floors of the Sears Tower or the Hancock Tower in Boston? Most high rise buildings don't have scanners like The Federal Government or like Large Company installations. We don't ever open packages before they are delivered to their destination....I'm just thinking as I type and I SINCERELY HOPE THAT NONE OF THIS EVER HAPPENS. Yet, the mind can play games with you. We DO NOT have security like Israel in this country. Many of our large metropolitan areas seem quite vulnerable to me...Why would smart terrorists use a loaded plane as a weapon of destruction again? Why not change tactics and approach in a totally different way? I hope our U.S. Intelligence team and Law Enforcement team is working overtime. They need to understand who we have in our country -- working in different positions. Security in ALL commercial and Governmental locations needs to be revamped and dramatically UPgraded. These are just my views today....Life will go on....I will go in high rises again...I will travel on airlines again. Yet, the world changed on September 11th. Lets pull together in this country and do whatever needs to be done to really control terrorism. We may have to give up a few civil liberties. I am willing to do it. More background checks, more surveillance, etc...does not bother me. It needs to be done carefully though. Best Regards, Scott

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (41633)	9/14/2001 4:26:14 PM
From: bela_ghoulashi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 65232

Everything we are so familiar with and take so much for granted is in serious jeopardy now. Further, and even more horrible than that, it is all potentially the instrumental source of that jeopardy.

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (41633)	9/14/2001 5:38:21 PM
From: Mannie	Respond to of 65232

Yes, JimBob They have many reasons to hate us. But mostly they just hate, they will find a reason. They hate their own women. They hate schooling and education. They hate men that shave. They hate modern appliances and advancements. For some reason Bin Laden feels people should live in the stone age and not make use of modern invention...unless, of course, it is a weapon...that is mo bettah. But, remember these guys are a minute minority. Mean and tough and ruthless, yes. But they are the at the fringe, and there are few of them. We have elite commandos, seals, etc....and in concert with other nations, we can have quite force readied. It will take time, a very long time. But there is not much choice. scott

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (41633)	9/14/2001 5:49:10 PM
From: Mannie	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 65232

Fuzzy... Here is a piece that was emailed to me by a friend. I have a guy that works for me that was a Marine. He was on covert duty within Afghanistan in the mid80's.....his assessment is about the same as this author's. I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age." Ron Owens, on KGO Talk Radio today, allowed that this would mean killing innocent people, people who had nothing to do with this atrocity, but "we're at war, we have to accept collateral damage. What else can we do?" Minutes later I heard some TV pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be done." And I thought about the issues being raised especially hard because I am from Afghanistan, and even though I've lived here for 35 years I've never lost track of what's going on there. So I want to tell anyone who will listen how it all looks from where I'm standing. I speak as one who deeply hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. My hatred comes from first hand experience. There is no doubt in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in New York. I agree that something must be done about those monsters. But the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who took over Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a plan. When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden,think Hitler. And when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think "the Jews in the concentration camps." It's not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would exult if someone would come in there, take out the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their country. Some say, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban? The answer is, they're starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, suffering. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food. There are millions of widows. And the Taliban has been burying these widows alive in mass graves. The soil is littered with land mines, the farms were all destroyed by the Soviets. These are a few of the reasons why the Afghan people have not overthrown the Taliban. We come now to the question of "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age". Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already. Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals? Done. Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that. New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan, only the Taliban eat, only they have the means to move around. They'd slip away and hide. Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans, they don't move too fast, they don't even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs would not really be a strike against the criminals who did this horrific thing. Actually it would only be making common cause with the Taliban--by raping once again the people they've been raping all this time. So what else is there? What can be done, then? Let me now speak with true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. When people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be done" they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing innocent people. Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually on the table is Americans dying. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that folks. Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I'm going. We're flirting with a world war between Islam and the West. And guess what: that's Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants. That's why he did this. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there. He really believes Islam would beat the west. It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and the West, he's got a billion soldiers. If the west wreaks a holocaust in those lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose, that's even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably wrong, in the end the West would win, whatever that would mean, but the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for that? Unfortunately, Bin Laden does. Anyone else? In Peace, Tamim Ansary