Mickey

Why would they have to recruit an American? We have a porous border, our record of failure in trying to curb illegal immigration is testament enough to that. We can't stop large amounts of drugs coming in either. Now, if we can't stop a Mexican laborer looking for work, how are we going to stop an AQ trained terrorist from crossing the border one night? Using Occam's Razor, I think the simplest explanation for AQ not attacking on US soil is that they don't want to for now for their own, no doubt nefarious, reasons.

If Matt Drudge can be quoted here as the gospel I see little reason to put on airs and claim that Kitty is too low, even for us.

First off, I have little interest in seeing Bush re-elected. I have been a consistent defender of Kerry here for a long time. Nothing I said should be extended or extrapolated to indicate that I think Bush should be re-elected. It is just that it is easy to paint any choice made with regard to Iraq as a bad one since all the choices were bad. Are you so sure that if we hadn't invaded Iraq we would be better off than we are now? Prior to 9/11 we ignored the threats of middle east dictators, islamists and terrorists who announced that they were going to destroy the Great Satan. We ignored them because their threats were idle, they were unable to make good on their threats. Saddam is one of those people who made no secret of the fact that he woujld like to kill lots and lots and lots of Americans. 9/11 showed that we were in fact vulnerable to those who want to destroy us or at the least, alter our policies in the region. Should we have ignored Saddam the way we ignored AQ prior to 9/11? He didn't have WMD's, so what? The 9/11 terrorists didn't need WMD's to do the unthinkable thing that they did. He wasn't in cahoots with AQ you say? So what. Would he need to be in cahoots with them to kill us? I think he could do it quite well on his own with no help from OBL. He had said publicly many times that he would destroy America, what we did was to stop ignoring his threat as idle and took him at his word. That is the message of the Iraq invasion. We are not going to wait for a verbal threat to become a real threat, we will take you out first. All in all, it may have been a mistake and I am not at all sure just what Bush's motivation was at the time. Bad choice to go in with insufficient allied support and before we were done in Afghanistan. Bad choice to do nothing and count on the good judgment of Saddam Hussein to refrain from terrorism after having been shown the way by AQ and incidentally, been upstaged by them. Bad choice to make propaganda by AQ easier in casting us as the enemy of Islam. Bad choice to hope that Saddam and after him, his miscreant sons, never obtain WMD's. One choice may have been less bad than the other, I won't argue that with you. I just don't think it is such an easy call to make. I have considered the idea that ultimately, the Islamists in the Middle East would have left us no choice but war & terrorism on the one hand or abandoning Israel and the most important resource in the world on the other. They are not going to melt away and they are not going to compromise. They want us out of the region in total so they can then concentrate on taking out the corrupt governments in the area and set up a new Caliphate across the Arab world. That means no support of Israel, no support of secular governments in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan. With us gone, will those governments be able to remain in power? They don't think so which is why they have allied themselves with us (and you thought is was our charm ). How would you like to have to buy our oil from OBL? In that context, taking out a loathsome dictator and hoping against hope to be able to establish some sort of stable, pro-western and oil rich state is not the worst idea I have ever heard. If Kerry wins, he is going to have to finish fighting this war. If he wins, he will "own it". Lets not shackle him from the start by defining success as getting Germany and France to send troops to Baghdad.

I don't see that happening. If the ship is really sinking, why would those who said it would from the start suddenly book passage? Can you imagine the political reaction in France or Germany if their governments suddenly decided to send some troops to Baghdad? There would be new elections and new governments voted in as fast as their laws allow. This war is widely viewed by our allies who have not participated as a moral and military failure. Why would they rush to sign up for that ride? I am afraid that Iraq is our problem regardless of the outcome in November. The only thing that might change that in the forseeable future is if things suddenly start looking up in Iraq. Allies will stumble forward if success appears to be imminent. Also, I guess if we suffered another horrific terrorist attack on our own soil, that could rally some sympathy. Kerry's credibility over Bush's could be of value in many other ways but it will not be a magic wand that will create allies in Iraq from bystanders.

Yes, it is true that we have ticked off most of the Islamic world but frankly, not ticking them off didn't work very well either. When every choice is a bad one, and sometimes that is the way of it, revealing the choice made as a bad one is not all that difficult. Besides, Kerry can't uninvade Iraq. Like it or not, we are there. As Powell said, "you own it".

I wonder if Putin will borrow Ashcroft's December 6, 2001 Senate testimony and tell Powell: "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve They give ammunition to Russia's enemies and pause to Russia's friends." Rather than telling them how to run their own country, why don't we try and see if they are more interested in supporting our efforts in the wake of the awful attacks they have suffered?

Well that makes me feel much better and much worse.

Again, it matters to us whether they were truly innocent or not but not to them. "The US kills innocent kids" that is the headline they will read, the story they will tell and the history they will believe. That will be the reality accepted among muslims and most Iraqi's. That is the reality that will motivate action against us. Maybe it will be expressed by increased recruits for terrorist groups or "insurgents". Maybe it will be expressed by increased donations of resources to our enemies. Maybe it will be expressed by a loss of support for our friends in Jordan or Saudi Arabia. What tactical advantage was gained in the killing of those "non-innocent" Children vs. what was lost in terms of propaganda? Did this event advance our cause or set it back?

I am afraid that it really doesn't matter all that much if our guys deliberately or accidentally killed civilian children in this incident. They are just as dead either way and we are just as hated because the Iraqi people are not going to ever believe or likely even care if it was deliberate or accidental. It matters to us what our troops do and why but over there, it only matters what they do.

Tom, here is a link to an interesting 2003 essay on suicide bombers which, in your obsessive erudition, you probably read long ago but on the impossibly remote chance that you haven't, here it is: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism One thing I found useful is the Appendix which has various tables and charts on suicidal terrorism going back to 1983 I believe. It includes AQ. Compare that to the list I ran last week taken from Imperial Hubris in terms of tactics. I think these guys are pretty flexible. I don't know what to hope for, that when they come after us here it will be with dozens of small, deadly and entirely unpredictable attacks or one large, just as deadly and just as unpredictable attack. Not good. Do you think they have not attacked us on our soil because they have been unable to, are not ready to or have, for the time being, decided not to?

Bib, drug dealers can smuggle drugs in by the boatload, how hard would it be for the enemy to do the same with explosives? They haven't done these kinds of attacks against us yet on our own soil but I don't believe it is because they can't, it is because, for whatever reason, they are holding off for now. Maybe they don't want to alienate potential recruits to their point of view now that we are on the moral defensive in so many places around the world as the result of the Iraq invasion. There is more sympathy for them and less for us now than anyone could have imagined so maybe they don't want to lose that with ugly attacks against innocents. Even France might change their tune if we were to get hit that bad. It is all guess work. There could be a million reasons why they have been quiet in terms of attacks on US soil and not so quiet elsewhere. What bothers me bib is that we seem to be fighting a war and yet, to me anyway, we don't seem to be acting like a nation at war. Drive down the street and look around, do we look like a society on a war footing? Take the issue of press leaks for example. Every time we capture a high profile target, it is in the papers within a day or two. Anything that might have been gained from keeping that knowledge from the enemy is lost. I don't blame the media, the media is as the media does as Mrs. Gump might have said. It is the leakers that drive me up a wall. In some cases it is the WH wanting the President to get credit for a win, in others I am sure, it is a democrat looking to some other agenda. I am not taking sides on that kind of thing. I don't think those leakers see themselves as traitors or are deliberately trying to help the enemy. In most cases they probably convince themselves that for some reason it doesn't matter. If, however, we were more on a war footing with the attitudes to match, I don't think those people would be so quick to leak nor the papers so eager to print the leaks. I am not unaware that this is a somewhat unfocused rant. I just don't feel that we are a society that has been rallied to a purpose, a goal, and dedicated all our resources to accomplishing that goal. Our enemies, in the past and even now, have thought of us as being soft, unable to sustain too much punishment. They have thought that the American public will not support for long a war that yields large casualties. I don't claim to have any idea as to whether they are right on that score. I think though that our leaders from both sides of the aisle agree with them. I wonder if maybe thay believe that we, as a people, can not endure much hardship, sacrifice or death and what we can endure, we will for only a short time. Consequently, any military struggle we embark upon must be short and involve as little pain as possible. Even if that means that we have to stop short of actual victory and leave our enemy time to regroup and fight again. We defeated Saddam but not totally and so 12 years later we had to go back and do it again. We have invaded Afghanistan but been content only to drive the enemy from the cities rather than to take them on in the mountains and perhaps suffer higher casualties. Now AQ and the Taliban are re-emerging in Afghanistan. Our leaders have not asked much sacrifice of us. We haven't been mobilized as a citizenry. We "endure" having to get to the airport earlier for a flight and running up a large deficit that we are apparently going to pass off to future generations. Military families have obviously been asked to sacrifice just about all there is to be sacrificed. Yellow ribbon stickers on our cars is about the extent of the average citizen's participation in this effort.

Exactly why I expressed my concern, a nonpartisan one I thought until Richio chimed in with his usual ability to entirely miss the point while sniffing his own crotch for any hint of anything other than gushing praise for all things Bush.

What are you saying, idiot, that there are no targets in the United States? Just curious. The question has to do with the vulnerability to suicide bombers on foot or in vehicles. We can't stop them in Iraq even against obvious, expected targets. Those attacks were not surprising, sneak attacks that could not be anticipated. Quite the contrary. Yet we could not stop them. How are we going to stop the same type of attacks against targets that can't be predicted here in the US? Hence the question/suggestion that this is all headed our way. Is America ready for this? Are we ready to wake up one morning to find that the local elementary school was just leveled? My oldest daughter started school this year and my youngest just started nursery school. The Russians just lost hundreds in an attack on a school. It has me worried and thinking that maybe we are not safer as I am so often told and even more often, have hoped. It is not a partisan issue, it is a frank identification of our vulnerabilities.

Suicide bombers, on foot and in cars, have been concentrating on police recruiting facilities in Iraq: In February they killed 47 in Baghdad at a recruiting center. A few days later, another 53 killed just south of Baghdad. In June, they killed 35 waiting to join the Iraqi military. On July 28, they killed 68 at a police recruiting center in Baqouba. They killed 20 at a police training facility in Kirkuk earlier this month. Another 47 killed yesterday in Baghdad waiting to sign up with the Police. That is 270 people we couldn't protect even at known, obvious targets like police and army recruiting centers. I am no expert on anti-suicide bomber tactics so I am not suggesting that there is some way to prevent these. Quite the contrary. How long is it before we start seeing these kinds of attacks here in the US? Do we really think that the reason we haven't so far is due to our vigilance rather than a decision by AQ to not use them here....yet? Are we ready for life like this? Amended, 9/14/04 10:09 pm: 12 killed in police van (11 officers and 1 civilian)in Baqouba, attacked by gunmen. Oil pipeline junction was blown up today in Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad. Make that 282 dead. Amended 9/18/04: 20 people waiting in line to join the Iraqi Nat. Guard were in Kirkuk were killed by a suicide car bomber today. Meanwhile, 2 Americans and 1 Brit were recently kidnapped were shown on a video clip by Al-Jazeera. Captors say they will be killed in 48 hours if female Iraqi prisoners are not released. Make that 302 dead.

He didn't type? I guess secretaries hadn't been invented yet.

Why is it when a democrat takes a position on a so-called "moral issue" that attracts support from the democratic base, he is accused of "pandering for votes" but when Bush takes a position on such an issue that reflects and attracts his base, he is showing the "strength of his moral convictions?" Bush gives them the fire and brim stone they want when he is raising cash in front of a crowd of the faithful and then gives up the "compassionate conservative" stuff when he is front of a mixed crowd. Kerry is not much different. Gore is getting at something far deeper than a particular position on stem cell research. What we fear on the left when it comes to fundamentalists is the impossibility and futility of debate. If you take a postion that we should have a stop sign at a given intersection and I take the opposite view, I can debate the issue with you using traffic studies and empirical data. You can do the same and presumably, the best evidence and argument will win and the community benefits. In such a debate, there would be little or nothing to be gained by attacking eachother personally or on a moral level. That makes it easy for us to share a beer afterwards or to stand shoulder to shoulder and stuff sandbags to stave off a flood or join together in some other fashion to face a threat to our community. If, however, you drag God in to the debate then the whole character of resolving community issues changes. You don't need empirical studies because God has willied it. You don't need a traffic study, it is God's will. In disagreeing with you, I am defying God's will. Now I am much more than a mere political opponent on an obscure issue. Now I am someting much worse. Suddenly, my morality and character are at issue because if I am not morally clean enough, who can trust my words as to the wisdom of a stop sign? Isn't any attack against me justified because I have an "atheist" agenda? The debate becomes impossible in that it can't conclude in a consensus decision. Even if I win, your adherents can't ever accept something that is contrary to God's will so you must continue the fight long after the vote is taken. It becomes a perpetual dispute that is never settled. How can we join for the common good after such a fight? How can I work with someone who has cast me as some imagined demon, assailed my character and pitted me against God? How can I stand shoulder to shoulder with someone who has, in the public square, denounced me as a baby-killing, cowardly homosexual pederast traitor? What response can I have but to attack your own morality to show you to be a hypocrite? If you disprove my argument with a good traffic study, my belief system is not put under assault. I can be wrong and actually survive. If you put God on the line, you can't afford to lose, you can't admit being wrong. The divine is never wrong. Piety has its place.

Yeah, he is a jerk. Lest invade.

Acting classes have a long waiting list and so they can afford to be very prissy about every rule.

I have no problem with me having the right to weapons of all kinds, its the rest or you boneheads that worry me.

The whole forgery argument has been pretty effectively debunked and in fact, the expert originally quoted as the source for proving they were forgeries has recanted his opinion (Expert Recants): Philip D. Bouffard, a forensic document examiner in Ohio who has analyzed typewritten samples for 30 years, had expressed suspicions about the documents in an interview with the New York Times published Thursday, one in a wave of similar media reports. But Bouffard told the Globe yesterday that after further study, he now believes the documents could have been prepared on an IBM Selectric Composer typewriter available at the time. Analysts who have examined the documents focus on several facets of their typography, among them the use of a curved apostrophe, a raised, or superscript, ''th," and the proportional spacing between the characters -- spacing which varies with the width of the letters. In older typewriters, each letter was alloted the same space. Those who doubt the documents say those typographical elements would not have been commonly available at the time of Bush's service. But such characters were common features on electric typewriters of that era, the Globe determined through interviews with specialists and examination of documents from the period. In fact, one such raised ''th," used to describe a Guard unit, the 187th, appears in a document in Bush's official record that the White House made public earlier this year. Bouffard, the Ohio document specialist, said that he had dismissed the Bush documents in an interview with The New York Times because the letters and formatting of the Bush memos did not match any of the 4,000 samples in his database. But Bouffard yesterday said that he had not considered one of the machines whose type is not logged in his database: the IBM Selectric Composer. Once he compared the Bush memos to Selectric Composer samples obtained from Interpol, the international police agency, Bouffard said his view shifted. In the Times interview, Bouffard had also questioned whether the military would have used the Composer, a large machine. But Bouffard yesterday provided a document indicating that as early as April 1969 -- three years before the dates of the CBS memos -- the Air Force had completed service testing for the Composer, possibly in preparation for purchasing the typewriters. As for the raised ''th" that appears in the Bush memos -- to refer, for example, to units such as the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron -- Bouffard said that custom characters on the Composer's metal typehead ball were available in the 1970s, and that the military could have ordered such custom balls from IBM. For a pretty detailed analysis, with links galore, of the forgery romp see: Forgery Follies Part I Forgery Follies Part II I can only hope there will not be a Forgery Follies Part III. I am not optimistic.

It was a totally blown coverage. Moulds went in motion from right to left and at the snap ran a shallow pattern in the flat running towards the sideline. The other reciever on that side ran a pattern to the middle and two defenders went with him. Moulds than turned up field running along the sideline. Drew immediately saw the screw up and sent a nice, easy floater to him right on the money for an easy catch. You could see Drew almost jump out of his pads before he let the ball go he was so excited that he had a guy that open.

Actually, the screen you are talking about happened early in the second quarter and he lost 5 yards not 8. Also, the Bills were able to get a first down after that so it didn't kill the drive. The other play was our first poss. in the third quarter. It was 2 and 7 and there was no hole. It didn't help that drive but the lack of a hole on first down and Lee Evans' pattern being a few yards shy of the markers also hurt.

I disagree on the line. That line couldn't punch it in from the 3, why should we assume they would have gone on to score a TD had Moulds not fumbled? Had he not fumbled, it would have been 3rd and 2 from the 7. Villarial also had a false start penalty. We lost 7 on a reverse to Reed that killed our first poss. and we lost 5 on a simple off tackle play that killed our second poss. Henry had just lost two yards up the gut on the play before we threw that ill fated lateral pass to Moulds. The holding call on Villarial was a killer. So was the inability to punch it in from the 3. The game plan put very little pressure on the O-line as it used only very short throws. All in all, the O-line wasn't blindingly bad but when they had to assert themselves, they didn't. Better than last year? Doesn't matter, same result=no points.

Here are a few of the lessons learned from the first game: As it turns out, if you have a lousy line and throw a lot, you don't score and if you have a lousy line and run a lot, you still don't score. Chris V. knows how to hold just as well as Ruben Brown. Maybe, just maybe we should have kept Steve Christie or paid Mike Hollis the money he was asking for because having a reliable kicker matters which is something the Bills, of all the teams in the NFL, should know. You have to go long every once in awhile. Even if when the play shouldn't work, on occasion it does like when a DB tries to pick it when he should just bat it away or when you get an interference call. A defense that proves through an entire year that it can't stop people when the game is on the line will likely do the same thing the following year.

That is generally my belief as well but I am worried that it is wishful thinking. The muslim world has not exactly risen in anger to remove the jihadists from their midst like a cancer. Quite the contrary.