11echo40,

With all due respect, I hardly think that 19 deranged and misguided Muslims are representive of the Islamic world.

John R...

Well, 11Echo40, look at it this way - Bush bought into Cheney and Rumsfeld's silly-assed notion of how to fight a "war on terror" and in doing so went a very long way to giving Osama Bin Laden exactly what he wanted.

Don't you really think that it would have been better if we had recognized that our true enemy was the folks who planned and carried out the attack against us - a relatively small group of thugs with their own motives - and if we had then simply hunted their asses down and put Bin Ladin's head on a pike about 6 years ago?

Instead, too many people bought into the mind-numbingly stupid idea that we needed to make war on millions of people who don't give a flying **** about us and who are no true threat at all.

I saw Bush on TV recently saying how after 9/11 he gave the Taliban two choices - either give up Al-Queda or share Al-Queda's fate. The Taliban chose the 2nd option and it worked out very well for them. They - and the leadership of Al-Queda - have spent the years since 9/11 living comfortably on the Pakistan-Afghan border. So much for Bush's "You can run but you can't hide" rhetoric, eh?

During that same period, we have been breaking our military and our treasury killing Iraqis - none of whom had participated in the attack on the U.S. That absolutely has to be one of the most stupid responses to aggression that any nation have ever made - let the people who attacked you sit fat and happy where they can continue planning future attacks while wasting resources getting bogged down in a country with no connection to the original attack.