Is it your assumption that we are primarily fighting “Radical Islamic Terrorists” in Iraq? Because the truth is quite different. About 90 percent of the attacks on our troops are coming from Sunni (and sometimes Shiite) insurgents – the former Baathists. You will recall that we supported the Baathists back in the Reagan-Bush I years precisely because they are NOT fundamentalists and we wanted them to counter the Islamic fundamentalist influence from Iran. Now that we have knocked them out of power, the Shiites who are closely aligned to Iran have taken charge. Only a small percentage of the people we are fighting are foreign fighters motivated by religion. Most see us as an invading army helping to prop up a government they are opposed to.
Here is an excellent article about al-Qaeda http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/07/opinion/edroy.php?page=1 that cuts through all the myths propigated by the Bush administration.

Finally, the FISA bill has been passed multiple times in the House only to be vetoed again and again by Bush because he’s desperately trying to cover up illegal activity by his good buddies in the telecom industry. So don’t tell me that Pelosi is not doing her job. Bush apparently thinks protecting the rear ends of his corporate contributors is more important than passing the bulk of the FISA bill.

As for what to do about the terrorist threat, we should start by extricating ourselves from the Iraqi quagmire as quickly as possible and then redirecting our attention to tracking down Osam bin Laden (remember him?)
Oh, yes. And stop torturing people.

OK, I understand that you don’t think we should not do anything. But, what actions do you advocate? Richard Clarke, a political enemy of the Bush Administration, did nothing but make a lot of accusations prior to the 2004 Election which were politically motivated. Why should I look to him rather than General Petraeus or the other Generals on the ground in the theater of operations?

As for Ron Suskind, do you ever read anything which isn’t written by an author who hates President Bush? What he describes may or may not have happened. He, like most other journalists, use “anonymous sources” for these stories, which means that there is no way to verify their veracity. However, if he used named sources for this, I would be interested in knowing who the sources were and if the sources were actually in the room when the interrogation took place.

Finally, I never said I assumed that all Muslim Fundamentalists were terrorists. I said RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISTS. These are the people who have perverted the Koran (sp?) into nothing more than a book of excuses to kill people they don’t like or who endanger their ability to do whatever they want to whomever they want. As for rounding them up, that isn’t needed. In the current War in Iraq, they are coming to us in Iraq. I’d rather fight them there than fight them in the middle of New York or Los Angeles.

As for the warrantless wiretaps, talk to your buddy Nancy Pelosi, who instead of working to pass the FISA bill after the Senate passed it, went off to tend personal matters rather than do her job. Is it really a mystery why conservatives have absolutely no trust whatsoever in liberals when it comes to National Defense?

They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety — against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, “thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each … target.” And so, Suskind writes, “the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.”

For a better take on how to deal with Al Qaeda, I would look to people like Richard Clarke whose book “Against All Enemies” is highly recommended, by the way.

One other point, while we are on the subject. You can’t assume that all Islamic fundamentalists would commit acts of terrorism. That’s like assuming that all hardline conservative Christians would go out and bomb an abortion clinic or gun down a doctor who does abortions. We are talking about a tiny segment of the population here. You can’t round up all the Islamic fundamentalists to prevent future acts of terror any more than you could round up all the Christian fundamentalists to keep the abortion clinics safe.

If you have reason to think that someone is going to commit a crime, then by all means keep an eye on them. Democrats are not opposed to wiretapping suspected terrorists. We simply want to maintain the safeguards in the form of judicial oversight (after the fact if necessary) to prevent the kinds of abuses that occurred in the past under J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon.

Seriously, what do you suggest as a way to eliminate the terrorist threat?

As to your article from the Washington Monthly site (yet another liberal site whose first sentence in it’s Mission Statement mentions the “imperial Bush White House”), for every article like that I can produce one like this.

Finally, as to the riots in France, there were many “causes” including lack of economic opportunity, however the root cause was failure to assimilate. Because the Muslims refused to adapt to the European culture, they found themselves unemployable, isolated, and unable to improve their position in European society. So, instead of adapting, they instead chose to riot and destroy property. Obviously assimilation takes time, but if you’re outright refusing to assimilate the problems it causes will be around forever.

No, the sky isn’t falling. However, you still have a responsibility to watch the sky to see what is there, and to deal with it if it endangers your well-being. If a giant meteor is heading for Earth, do you simply ignore it because all of the other meteors didn’t hit the Earth? Of course not; you take preemptive action to remove the threat. Same thing with radical Islam; are you going to ignore the threat because not all Muslims are terrorists? Are you suggesting that we need to wait until terrorists kill innocent people before we do something about them?

I am not referring to all of them. I am referring to our enemy. I do know who they are. That’s one.

Mike Thomas wrote:
“I swear, y’all sound like the Nazis talking about the Jews. Or at least you sound like al-Qaeda fanatics talking about The Great Satan of the West.”

I resent the Nazi comparison. Besides, as Nick has already pointed out, it is not the same. Typical of you liberal types to go personal instead of sticking to the issue. That’s two.

Mike Thomas wrote:
“You know, what is really “insane” is allowing fear to transform you into a monster.”

A monster? The monsters are the ones who condone the use of young women as suicide bombers. The monsters are the ones who kill innocent men, women and children when they explode theirs bombs in crowed market squares, shopping centers, trains, train stations, etc. The monsters are the ones who flew three commercial jet aircraft into three buildings in this country killing over three thousand innocent people. That’s three.

Three incorrect assumptions you have made about me. You disappoint me.

As for the riots in France, I’m sure there were many factors that led up to them and not so simple as “their refusal to assimilate”. Heck, we have communities here in Texas where everybody still speaks Chzechoslovakian, and some of the older people don’t even know English. People aren’t just going to give up their culture and their lifestyle. Assimilation takes time, sometimes generations, and you just have to work with it.
As for the “honor killing” in Dallas, that only proves that we had a RRBP who also happened to be a Muslim. Did you hear about the Christian man who killed his entire family before turning the gun on himself? Yeah, which one? Too many to keep track of. That doesn’t mean that Christianity is a bad religion.
Did you hear about all the Muslim and Christian people who DID NOT kill their families? Quite of few of them I do believe.
The sky is not falling, Nick.

As for claims that useful information was obtained through torture being “baseless lies”, I direct you here. Maybe you should check your own sources, and read something other than propaganda from Human Rights Watch.

And by the way, absolutely no one has advocated for “torture or nothing.” Torture, if it is to be used at all, should always be used as a last resort in an attempt to obtain highly important information from a prisoner who has not responded to other methods of information extraction. I mean, come on, we’re talking about maybe two or three times a year at most, on people who would gladly kill innocent people for no reason whatsoever. I’m not loosing any sleep over this guy being water-boarded.

Finally, as the riots in France last year showed, a huge portion of the Muslims who are moving there are refusing to assimilate into the European culture. Instead, they follow their own religious law and customs. Hell, it’s even happening here. Did you read about the so-called “Honor killing” in Dallas earlier this year? A Muslim father killed his two daughters because he thought one of them was dating an American boy, and was therefore disgracing the family. He simply pulled a gun and shot them. At this point in time, we are not on the verge of being overtaken by the terrorists and converted to Islam. However, the way that Multiculturalists are bending over backward to accomodate their every request frightens me.

Furthermore, this notion that we are on the verge of being forced to abide by Sharia law is ridiculous nonsense. Nobody in Great Britain or anywhere in Europe is being forced to grow a beard or any of that crap. You really need to get some better sorces of information if you are falling for this nonsense. You are being manipulated by people who want to exploit your paranoia and fear for their own political purposes.

Also, I didn’t say that ALL of them were like this. I said the enemy was, which in this case is radical Islamic terrorists. They flat out tell us that they are going to destroy our civilization and convert the entire world to Islam. Will they actually have to do it before you realize that they are not kidding?

Frankly, I’m offended by the Nazi remark. Left wingers like yourself seem to start calling conservatives Nazis anytime they do or say something you don’t agree with. I am not now, nor have I ever been a Nazi, and nothing I have said even remotely resembles Nazi propaganda. The fact is that the Nazis were lying about the Jews when they spread their hate-filled propaganda. I am not lying about radical Islam; I am pointing out their actions and their own words.

Finally, maybe you won’t mind growing a beard, wearing a turban, or beating your wife once you’ve converted to radical Islam, but I sure as hell will. I am not prepared to sit back and allow these thugs the room to get a foothold in Western Society for the sole purpose of destroying it. I mean, all you have to do is look at Great Britain and France to see what will happen. The Muslims over there riot in the streets, beat their women, and ignore the law in favor of their own radical Islamic law.

I wonder, are you the President of the Neville Chamberlain Club?