Chuck,
Are you suggesting that the government should have kept the reason for 911
secret from it's citizens?

Those most directly responsible for 9-11 died with their victims. That is a
provable truth. They have co-conspirators who lived, and those co-conspirators
need to be brought to justice.

It is as rational to argue that it was a deranged act of criminal extremists as
it is to argue that we needed to completely revamp our foreign policy to
include first strike preemption throughout the world as a result of the
tragedy. We have used 9-11 to take out Afghanistan. In the last few days before
the actual invasion, Bush beat the 9-11 drum over Iraq. How many more wars and
invasions will we be able to justify over 9-11?

If it were up to me, we would have hunted down Osama Bin Ladin as an
individual, international, criminal terrorist *******. We would have not rested
until he was brought to justice, (rather than after we secured the pipeline
right of way from the Caspain Sea). We practically have the capacity to count
the hair on a man's head from outer space. How hard can it be to find an entire
human being, provided we are truly dedicated to look for him?

*People* can be criminals, not countries or cultures. We destroy countries,
dismantle governments, damage cultures, and yet the friggin ciminals (OBL, SH,
etc) keep on truckin. At what point do we consider that if we keep on doing
what we've been doing so far, we'll just keep on getting what we've
already got? A handful of air. No WMD, no OBL, no SH. :-(

Bring the *criminals* to justice. Few on the left would disagree with such a
program, IMO. Anybody who would use the hunt for the criminals as cover for
other purposes is less than forthright, to put it kindly.

If our leaders are so incompetant that they cannot locate people so high
profile as OBL and SH, they should be replaced. If they are so devious that
they deprioritize locating these criminals, they should be replaced.

Maybe it boils down to "which" lie is told to the American people. And neither
is really acceptable. If we continue to knock off a string of governments and
occupy mid east countries without catching the head of the snake, our problems
will become larger and larger.

IMO, we should bring the criminals to justice and that would solve more than
occupying Iraq and Afghanistan.