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

To: KLP who wrote (31435)	2/25/2004 6:28:57 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793656

One would want to believe that the majority of Americans would believe that eradication of terrorist organizations would be the #1 top priority.....It must be easier to be a silly ostrich. I think that's a false dichotomy. Surely we want to deal with terrorist organizations, not be an ostrich. There is a big difference between not recognizing or ignoring a problem and making it the number one priority. Reasonable people, non-ostriches, can disagree on the appropriate priority level. Personally, I think our scare level has rationalized at last to somewhere near the appropriate level, wary and attentive, but not scared.

To: KLP who wrote (31435)	2/25/2004 8:26:59 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 793656

You don't have to be an ostrich to have other priorities. Terrorism has not yet claimed that many victims in the US- many other ills claim thousands more lives. If you do a calculation of a mortality basis, getting non-ostrich like about societal violence might make sense- since approx 20, 000 people a year die from it- and most of them are young people. You might want to get non-ostrich like about the 30,000 children who suffer disabilities due to child abuse. An estimated 200,000 youths in America may be in gangs- that could well seem a pressing issue to people, much more pressing than terrorism- since people who live in gang infested neighborhoods are much more likely to be injured by a gang, or have their children injured by a gang, than by a terrorist. There are a lot of ways to be an ostrich. One way to be one is to ignore the sheer numbers of Americans who die of things other than terrorism. Terrorism is one threat, but to be concerned about other threats, that might be seen as creating more havoc in America than terrorism, is hardly being an ostrich. It is simply having a different opinion from someone who sees terrorism as the main threat- even though kill numbers really don't justify that. some numbers: taft.cc.ca.us