Presidential Debate

[Armin]

Al Qaeda operates in more than 60 nations, including some in Central and Eastern Europe.

Another major dent in the credibility of the Bush administration: There's not really any doubt about which country is the most important one on that list. Al Quaeda is ideologically steered, funded and recruites most of it's followers (15 of the 19 suicide bombers of 9/11 for instance) in a single country: Saudi Arabia.

But for some nebulous (or maybe...not?) reason, Saudi Arabia is rarely, if ever, mentioned in the speeches. As long as Bush and the folks that pull his strings don't elaborate on that contradiction, they'll not exactly gain credit in one of those *other* countries...

Oh, and by the way: the image that American propaganda conjures up about Al Quaeda is pretty way off beat, too. It's not the wordwide syndicate with a strong organization, closely knit network and firm hierarchy that seems to have jumped right out of a 1960's Bond movie...
It's a loose association between political radicals that share little apart from a pretty vague hatred of "the West" and the US in general. It's like a large Mc Donalds-like franchise chain where everyone who blows something up and then claims responsibility in the name of some fromer Al Quaeda celeb is allowed to invoke the name, thats pretty much it.

Something like that is nigh impossible to fight militarily.

The idea that you can force or frighten terrorists into submission is... absurd.

Terrorism is the means of the desperate and the weapon of the weak. You cannot BREAK weakness. The sheer idea is silly.

Yet America wants to fight terrorism by invading Terroristan (whererever that may lie, but how many Americans can locate Afghanistan or the Iraq on a map?)...

I really, really hope that you won't have to wake up to the catastrophic consequences of those last 2 years one day. Because today, there's a few million MORE Arabs who hate the US than in September 0f 2001.