The second thing to note is that the US Government had asked the Taliban for Osama bin Laden on **THIRTY** previous occasions.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB97/index3.htm

(Jan 30, 2004)

Washington, DC - The U.S. government pressed the Taliban to expel Usama bin Laden over 30 times between 1996, when the Taliban took Kabul, and the summer of 2001, but the talks were always fruitless and only three of the approaches took place in the first year of the Bush administration, according to a newly declassified State Department summary posted on the Web today.

* As early as 1996, the U.S. warned the Taliban that harboring bin Laden and allowing him and his supporters to transit Afghan territory at will and to conduct uncontrolled activities greatly hurt prospects for Afghanistan rejoining the world community.

* UBL had murdered Americans and continued to plan attacks against Americans and others; The U.S. would hold the Taliban leadership accountable for any of these attacks.

* The U.S. had knowledge, since 1997, of the location of militant training camps in Afghanistan, and had planned, in accord with the Taliban, to visit these camps.

* The Taliban, in order to halt American concern over bin Laden, suggested, in October 1999, a trial by a panel of Islamic scholars or monitoring of "UBL Afghanistan" by the Organization of Islamic Conferences (OIC) or the United Nations (UN).

Note that in 1999, and 2000, the UN Security Council passed resolutions that bin Laden be expelled to a country where he would face trial. The Taliban paid no attention to the UN Security Council.

You can read about it here:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB97/tal40.pdf

In this case, Bush was exactly right in how he dealt with the Taliban, given the past experience of the US government.

I really hate it when someone is so far off that in the interest of the truth, I have to make statements defending Bush. The invasion of Afghanistan to take out OBL and the Taliban were entirely justified.

What was not justified was the half-hearted way in which it was done; OBL was not finished off when cornered, and the US permitted the Kunduz airlift in which many of the villains escaped to fight another day. Finally what happened in Pakistan in the last six months - restoration of civilian rule, should have happened six years ago; presumably after the US had the situation in Afghanistan in control with all the troops that were sent to Iraq instead.

That would have essentially ended any terrorist threat to the United States, six years ago.

OBL was also wanted for crimes other than 9/11. Something Shooter242 and Bill Owen seem to forget ("some sharp lawyer, etc.)

"The world had changed" - that is an American illusion that 9/11 somehow changed things. There is evidence that the American reaction - invading Afghanistan - caught OBL & co by surprise. They didn't think 9/11 changed the world.

This Falk

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Falk#Controversial_Positions_and_Statements

wrote this:

http://www.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/falk.htm

This may be of interest - from 1995!

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1334

from 2008 - Comcast

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3384

from 2001:

http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2001/01july-august/julyaug01interviewcohen.html

2004:

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1990

Flogging wrong forms of network neutrality is one tactic used to try to kill network neutrality.

What network neutrality should not mean:

Is that it has a tendency to quash the rollout of VoIP services, aka internet phones. The more enforced neutrality you have the worse it is for VoIP. Why? Because it becomes impossible to sell packet prioritization and VoIP is extremely sensitive to QoS (Quality of Service) isochronous packet priority ordering.

What network neutrality should mean - the telco is like the post office, offering standard rates for your packets, with various service options. The Post Office for instance offers various priority mail options for which you pay differently. The telco cannot offer a discount or charge more because your traffic is or is not with a specific business.

That is, given a service on the web and a consumer of that service on the web, the prioritization of the IP packets between the provider and consumer should be upto the consumer and the provider. E.g., if I want a high quality video feed from Disney, and Disney offers various quality of service options, what I pick is between me and Disney, and not upto the carrier. What I'm charged (or Disney is charged and then passes on to me) should be on the same terms for any other video vendor.

...that in ShooterWorld, there would be no World Wide Web, and no forums like these. We'd still be in the era of Frame Relay/ATM networks with no any-to-any connection, and the IP protocol would be a curiosity in the engineering laboratories of universities.

So consider having to listen to Shooter (and you don't really have to, you can ignore him entirely) is simply one side of the coin; the shadows that necessarily come with the light.

What the Internet provider should be selling you is a committed bandwidth rate - which is a guaranteed bandwidth, you will alway s have at least that much throughput - and a burstable rate, which is the maximum throughput you can have in ideal conditions. The 5Mbps that is hyped today is the burstable rate.

It is that simple. E.g., I buy from the provider a 5 Mpbs connection with say, 40% real time class of service, i.e, 2 Mbps. The provider charges me accordingly and also engineers its network based on the agregate of such connections purchased by people in my neighborhood. What I do with the 2 Mbps real time class of service is no concern of the provider's.