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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (15305)	11/5/2003 6:46:00 PM
From: Original Mad Dog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793647

Good analogy.

To: LindyBill who wrote (15305)	11/5/2003 7:17:03 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793647

I just feel frustrated when I can't get a point across that seems so clear to me I can relate to that. Trust me. With the head in the Middle East and tentacles all over the world. If we retreat to our borders and cut off tentacles, we will never have a chance of stopping this terror. You are saying, "Why don't we stop them at our borders instead of going into the mid-east?" Because an offense is a better way to go than a defense. We do both, but the only chance we have to wipe them out is to hit them where they are. I agree that we do both. I'm not suggesting we not do both. Yes, there are tentacles all over the place, in at least a dozen countries. Of those dozen countries, we picked Iraq, not near the top of the list in terrorists per capita, but politically doable. So we're spending several billion dollars in Iraq while we have terrorists drinking margaritas in eleven other countries. Yes, some of them may be more hesitant to hit us after they've seen what we've done to Iraq. OTOH, they may be more belligerent and more motivated. Hard to say. Meanwhile they're more or less free to cause us problems since they operate pretty freely there and we've done little to stop them from coming here with their bag of tricks. We've spent several billion and we've barely made a dent in the terrorist population which is running around everywhere including our own country. I'm sorry, Bill, but that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. With several billion dollars, OTOH, we could secure our borders and keep all twelve countries worth of terrorists out. Meanwhile we zap strategic targets in several/many/all of the twelve and take as many out as we can. That slows them down at home and keeps them out of our home. And keeping them out of our home leaves us relatively safe while this overseas process plays out. If I had nests of varmints in my neighborhood and the critters were getting into my house, I'd seal all the openings to my house to keep them out, then systematically go about tracking downs their lairs and eliminating them. Yes, while I was doing that, they would be breeding and becoming more prolific. But makes no sense to me to blow my whole pest control budget on destroying the nest a block east of me while my front door is wide open and there are critter staging areas to the south and west and north. The fact that the nest a block east is has easier access is not a good reason for starting there. Sealing the openings to the house nice and tight is the salient step. and he was winning it. By his terms, anyway. 'Fess up. He made you mad and you wanted to smack him down. The rest is mainly rationalization. <g>