So I guess the world is not safer with Saddam gone.

[Toots]

This takes out one of the right's biggest points. No new attacks since we attacked Iraq. I am in no way trying to say Iraq had anything to do with the London attacks but so much for the no new attack meme. The world is not safer and it is time we owned up to that fact. The only way to make the world a safer place is to use concerted police (FBI, CIA, NSA,etc.) combined with the rest of the worlds Police and treat this as the criminal acts they are. No country did this, at least I doubt any will take responsibility so this is an act by individuals so the military should not be involved. This is not a war any more than fighting the Mafia is a war. We as a nation need to come back to reality and start to truly work on this crime problem.

[dmkinsey]

1. I heard the ex-CIA guy on Diane Rheam saying

this is a WAR and only military force can resolve it.
Also said "we've been pretending this is a police issue, playing cops & robbers for the past 15 years" (He really said that)

Couldn't believe it. He had the last comment on that topic and no one was given an opportunity to dispute his statement. No one tried later either.

[PATRICK]

3. Whether he believes that or not

it is of the greatest convenience for the greater geopolitical and economic aims of the Bush/PNAC people. Into the robust "cure" of removing all safe harbors was inserted a mere manipulation of the SAME OLD GAME.

Ideal scenario one: tough nations get tough on rogues and dictators and end the games by force and installing democracy. Bush has ruined this into a failed travesty. Both a failure and a hypocritical lie which becomes the colonial rerun that created most of these "problems" out of whole cloth in the first place. By subverting the real power of international coalitions Bush has made the US army into a Keystone Cops caricature. We still absurdly support our most dangerous undemocratic foes as "allies" of the Bush scheme, as nukes proliferate with encouragement and peace treaties are discouraged and broken.

Ideal scenario two. Yes it is a crime problem of small number of real international criminals. Law enforcement cooperating truly can squash the romance of these wannabe political movements. But that takes at first equally good will and good intentions and a belief in internationalism. It is BUSH not the terrorists who is having a deliberately tough time cooperating with ANYONE, especially HONEST nations and law enforcement.

What Bush is doing is unimaginable as any kind of solution to terrorism.
People who stupidly(yes stupidly, Mr. Brilliant CIA Impatient Guy) cannot fathom that our government has been twisted away totally from the national interest in every sense to the aggrandizement of Bush and his own agenda are making all theories and causes into pre-doomed laughingstocks.

It does matter who is in charge. Imagine if Adolph or say Alexander were running things. Whatever they said or anyone believed do you think
their top priority would be ridding the world of terrorists. Such small timers, such gnats are just means to an end for people above democracy, sociopaths devoid of the concept of true national service. Arguing one way or the other with this devoted public servant(CIA guy) is way pasty the point of relevance. Bush himself made the pursuit of Bin Laden irrelevant, Afghanistan irrelevant as he went about opening up terrorist schools in Iraq with most of our soldiers untrained in "police" tactics at all. One from my area who was trained is dead.

With instinctual reach for the big guns with Bushco in charge you might as well ram a hot nuke up your *$$ and end the pitiful pontificating.

[Kurt Remarque]

2. he may be sending psychic messages to terrorists