DSK wrote:
Can Hillary do a better job?

Don't know. It would be hard to do worse.


Joe wrote:
Maybe...maybe not...the proff to me is we have not been attacked again,
and if you think they are not trying then you are blind.


How about the PROOF that we had not been attacked for the 8
years before Sept 11th, 2001? That indicates to me that
Clinton was doing a much better job.

Guess the sailors on the USS Cole don't count in your opinion?
The Embassy's in Africxa....non-issues right?



According to various official agencies that study such
things, there are approx 10X more terrorist attacks around
the world now than there were before the Iraq invasion. The
U.S. State Dept was ordered by the Bush Administration to
stop publishing their report on terrorism because the
results made the administration look bad.

In other words, they are doing a crappy job fighting
terrorists, unless the goal is simply to kill ragheads. And
if that is the method, they're not doing a good enough job
of it to convince the others to quit.

Maybe they are doing a better job recruiting and fighting a war.

Think Kerry could have done better?

Undoubtedly. For one thing, if Senator Kerry were President
he would not regard the war in Iraq as a just a convenient
means of funneling money to his cronies.


Did M. Moore give you that line to use?


No. Why? Do Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove tell you what to say?

No why? Are you reading Dixie Chicks lyrics?

It is obvious when the various Cheney-aligned businesses
have overcharged & defrauded the gov't & the military out of
more than $500 million, and that's only what we know to
have been found by military and gov't auditors. This is on
top of the large profit they are making from the war.

Vice President Cheney's answer? Fire the auditors.

Unfortunately I'm not joking, that is how this
administration does business.

However, making kevlar body armor & arming the Humvees is
not profitable enough (to the right people) to pay for that.
How many U.S. soldiers would still be alive... or not left
maimed... if the Bush Administration had done so? That would
be fighting terrorism, wouldn't it, giving our soldiers a
better chance of winning a firefight against them once they
come out of hiding?



We need to actually *fight* the terrorists, and what's more
we need to stop their recruiting/training pipeline that is
ramping up every day.


And how do we do that? pass out cash, appeasement, cut and run?
Shackle and muzzle the intell servies?


I have never suggested any such thing. Why do you insist
that these are the only alternatives? Maybe because Karl
Rove is making you say that?

As for "cut & run" why insist on fighting a war against the
wrong people? Iraq had NOTHING to do with Sept 11th and no
Al-Queda connections before we invaded. According to
President Bush himself we've killed 25,000 of them (most
figures suggest a much higher number). What has that
accomplished other than to inspire a whole generation of
Muslims & Arabs to hate us and to agree with the jihadists?

You can't win a war by fighting it in the wrong country.
What if President Roosevelt had invaded Brazil? After all
Brazil is much closer than Japan or Germany and would have
been an easier and more profitable war.



Terrorist like the 14 the CIA questioned? Or just the ones found
guilty after 3 yr trials that cost taxpayers millions?


Unless you give serious investigation to the facts, how do
you know they're terrorists? Unless the results are public,
then torturing & killing them is not justice in anybody's
eyes, it's merely state-sponsored murder.

Secret trials & tribunals, strangling suspects in the
alleyway behind the courthouse, those are methods of the
banana dictatorship, not a free & democratic nation (or
republic, if you prefer).

The only people who FEAR justice is those who do evil.
Apparently that is who you want to be governed by.



I would say that brains beat brawn, we are supposed to be
the hi-tech super-capable modern force, not the dumbo-macho
grab-a-big-hammer guys.



Super high tech like listening to telephone calls between terrorist
planners!!!


With a warrant, sure.
BTW before you start whining about "muzzling" the intel
community, let me state that no warrant has ever been denied
and the special warrant issuing courts have the capability
to issue legal wiretapping warrants for national security
within 24 hours.... in fact they say that rush jobs take a
couple hours.

So why bypass the LEGAL means of justly pursuing evil?
It doesn't give any advantage whatever to our foes, it just
makes our hunters into vigilantes & thugs instead legally
constituted military/intel agents.



Good lord...that would be illegal and not playing fair, the loss of
personal privacy is to important according to some.


It just happens to be a Constitutional right of U.S.
citizens. You want to throw out the Constitution, don't you Joe?

Not for American citizens...


Can you explain Global Jihad, and the goal of our enemy?


We have many enemies and they have many different goals.
Fortunately the terrorists are disorganized and illogical,
but we are not using that to our advantage other than just
by luck.


Luck or hard work? I have faith in the man on the ground and think
they are making the difference, not the politicians.


There is a lot of hard work going on, and I agree that it is
the boots on the ground that make the difference.
Unfortunately, the Bush Administration seems to be giving a
very low priority to actually putting more boots on teh
ground in the war on terror.

There is a huge backlog of intel documents & recordings to
translate, but they are actually recruiting fewer Arabic
language speakers than before Sept 11th, 2001. They are
constantly insisting that more men are not needed in Iraq
despite the direct contradiction of militayr commanders.

If they were serious about fighting terrorism, wouldn't they
be saying, "OK Marines in Fallujah, you say you need two
divisions to take & control that town, we'll give you
seven." Isn't one of the big criticism of Clinton (or Carter
for that matter) that they committed too small a military
force to get the job done? Yet the Bush Administration not
only committed too small a force, they actually fired
generals for saying they needed more.






This is the first place to get a little smarter:
Know your enemy... and I'd take the next step of actually
fighting the enemy, not merely killing large numbers of
random guys who look like they might be the enemy. Or if
that turns out to be the only practical way, killing very
very much larger numbers of them.


Ossama's Fatwa said the duty of all muslims is to kill all Americans.


Are you sure? Do you speak/read Arabic or Farsi? All you
know about it is what Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove tell you
about it, the same guys who blame Clinton six years later.


Simple tactic's and goals. All out war. Who's making them fight fair?


There is no such thing as "fair" in war. However there is
legal & illegal... the jihadists have no legal authority for
warring on the U.S. which is what makes them terrorists (or
irregulars & guerillas when they attack military forces). We
must either have legal standing for our actions or we are
terrorists too. There is no 3rd option.

If you are worried about fatwahs against the U.S. and
American, wouldn't it make sense to go after the clerics who
issue them, and maybe blow up their schools where they teach
radical jihadist Islam? Gee, that would actually be fighting
the enemy wouldn't it?

DSK