It is? Says who? Personally I think we should take care of the problem we have without creating more.

On the topic at hand, what really gets me is that Gates can go on MTP and essentially say the same thing Obama did, and noone raises an eyebrow.

Why? Gates is a (insert adjective) warmongering Bush (insert noun), while Obama is ostensibly a non-warmongering type of guy. But apparently not. Casual Observer puts it very well...

Nowhere here do I see working with the UN to justify, and make legal, such a military action. Nowhere do I see Obama will come to the Congress. And why is that. I believe it is because Obama needs to look tough. So he borrows a page from the Neocon book, with some window-dressing from a Harvard Professor. Who, by the sounds of it, appears as a frightening mirror-image of Condi Rice. And the very concept of "highly targeted force" on tribal villages--for those villages are surely where Taliban and al Qaeda live among the people--is absurd.

The really amusing part about all this is that Obama's position is a reflection of what Clinton did to Iraq in 1998. Clinton declared war, bombed the Iraqis without any warning or consultation, and spun it so well 78% of respondents thought Saddam did 9/11 when questioned about it two days after on 9/13. It seems that everything old is new again.

I’m worried, though, that if the individuals aren’t held accountable for their crimes that their “actions” won’t be either, at least in the public mind. So my question about plausible legal remedies still stands.--Zack

Sorry people, but you have nothing to charge anyone with. The best you've been able to do is catch a staffer in a perjury trap. There are no crimes. It's just fantasy to whip up the electorate for Democrats.

They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire – the “mighty engine of profit” to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved – and they did so both willingly and knowingly. Recourse to “ignorance” – a derivative, after all, of the word “ignore” – counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in – and in many cases excelling at – it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I’d really be interested in hearing about it.--Ward Churchill

Similar styles of writing don't you think? We have comparisons to villainous characters, graphic language, dripping contempt. All the right stuff to bash people with. The subjects are certainly guilty, the only difference is that the technocrats in the twin towers got their just desserts, while the Bushies haven't. Drat.

The Goverment is relying too heavily on the interception of communications using various "high tech" means and methods. For example I don't think terrorist A is going to contact terrorist B using email, cell phone, pots, computer, shortwave, or any other electomegnetic communication device....
...A determined well trained enemy is not going to use any type of electomagnetic communication device in the US period. Too much importance is being place on this small area of communication interception and eavesdropping. -- rabbitcore

If they weren't wary before, they certainly are now. And we owe it all to the fine folks leaking from the CIA and the publishers of said leaks to the entire world. Congratulations.

In addition, now you understand why Bush won't trust Congress with secrets. Like Sen. Schumer says, even a child of two knows that you don't tell people that can't keep secrets, anything important.

So.... is there some reason why you didn't make any distinctions between Mugabe's scope of operations and Bush's, or was it just better to leave an impression they were identical? Perhaps you'd like to fill us in on other ways they share a bond?

On the other hand I'm concerned that analogizing Bush with current dictators just isn't hard-hitting enough. How about bringing in Pol Pot, or Stalin? You know, real mass murderer kind of stuff.

Yet for all that chest thumping, it's too bad the best and brightest (self-proclaimed) here, can't come up with a strategy any better than let's leave Iraq, let them kill each other, and God will sort them out. Tsk.