Just responding to individual posts, trying to illustrate how I feel on this issue :-/
7. Yes, jump for joy.. We have a bull-headed president that barely made it through College. Sure, he'll listen to the military: But is that really a good thing? As you said the terrorists knew this and went ahead reguardless, would they really do this without a reason? Maybe the terrorists want the US to retaliate to make the US look more aggresive/evil in the eyes of those living in the middle east (seems obvious to me..)? We don't want to piss off the people that control 90% of the world's oil reserves and thus control whether we get to continue our extravegant American lifestyle's.
Not only that but we don't know even know if it truely was an outside job (remember Oklahoma.) For all we know it was another group of militants trying to up-route the government from within.
10. When you think about it the threat of a nuclear attack isn't really that great, everyone knows we have enough nukes to literally destroy the world and that we will use them if pushed hard enough (well, at least we're the only nation to have used them in the past.) Provoking a nuclear confrontation is not the goal of anyone, there are always basic issues at stake (Palestine's displacement for one, the Iraqi no-fly zone being anouther, and the list goes on.)
15. What exactly is cowardly about this attack? They sacrificed their lives for a cause they believed in, and they did so in a very direct manner (I'm not sure how you could get any more direct, short of trench warfare.)
Dropping a missile out of the back of a plane that's going faster than the speed of sound, now THAT's cowardly and believe it or not we do it every other day somewhere in the Middle East (of course, this isn't news so you never hear about it.)
Also, you seem to be jumping the gun here. Arafat (sp?) is as stunned as anyone else, and more apologetic than most, Osama Bin Laden allegedly doesn't have the resources for a mission this large (despite his millions,) and Saddam would have been more direct/up front about why it was done etc...
In other words it doesn't fit any of the Mid East "Players" profiles so you really shouldn't go blaming the palestinians, iraqies, or any other middle eastern organization at this time. Right now the only people you can blame are the men and women that run the United States government, without them the middle east would not even be in this volitile situation and, if they are indeed responsible, this situation could have been easily avoided.... Hell, a year ago at this time we were on the verge of peace in the middle east.
16. A war may or may not be a possiblity depending on who is responsible (Dubya's comment, made this very night, about not distinguishing between the accused and those who shelter them does make it a very real possibility though, at least in my opinion..)
18. Ok Mike, picture this. A larger, more powerful, yet utterly alien country decides that the Islamic people are the rightful owners of the western sea board, the midwest, and Alaska (just cause..) and tells you that you can either adopt their culture, religion, and form of government or you can move. You can't possibly tell me that you would just sit back, change your religion, your diet, your dress-code, and everything else that makes you you, just because a larger and wealthier nation tells you to.. But, even if you do believe that can you say the same for every single person in all of the United States? There are already militant groups throughout the U.S. which are displeased with the current government, just think what they'd do under the Islamic government!
I pose these questions because this is exactly what we (the UN) did to Palestine (maybe you already knew this, maybe you didn't) after WW2. Now do you see why they're fighting?
22. If Osama Bin Laden is in fact responsible and we do try to sieze or assassinate him then it is very likely that Afghanistan will not relinquish control peacefully. Even if they protest a little I could see Dubya over reacting and sending the troops in (his comment about not distinguishing between the accused and those who shelter them comes into play once again.)
35. I really don't think this is going to end with a Nuke dropping (unless there are further situations), even Dubya isn't that stupid (hopefully.) The reasons I don't see any nuking in our near future are many:
-The West Bank is very small and very close to Isreal, the US's allies.
-Arafat himself likely had nothing to do with this, thus, nuking his country would be like executing a witness.
-No one even knows who carried out the plot, by the time this information is found heads are likely to have cooled off.
-Dubya would not be backed by enough of America to make it worth it (politically.)
-The International community would not support such an action.
There are more reasons, but these are some of (in my opinion) the biggies.
37. The US's missiles have missed: hit schools, hospitals and other such innocent buildings. This is known as collateral damage and is considered common place in most American air strikes, missile bombardments, and other military operations, who are the cowards now (we've even coined a phrase)?
38. Smuggling a weapon onto an airplane (especially within the USA) is a very difficult thing to do, then there's the fact that each plane hi-jacked was a coast to coast flight that never made it across the coast (thus having lots of extra fuel.) The planes arrived at the WTC within very close proximity (time wise) to one another. If the 2nd plane had taken off 5 minutes earlier I'm willing to bet that the 2 WTC buildings would have gone down much faster and the casualties would have been much higher, this deep a strategy reflects a fair amount of planning, especially if those involved were foreigners (getting into the US and with a weapon, or purchasing a weapon while not a legal resident is something that is fairly hard to do.) In my opinion, there was a great deal of planning that went into this operation. Not only that but they almost definately had to teach of their men to fly (in case there were casualties.)
39. If by "political leverage" you mean pissing people off, then you're correct. The United States already have military and economic advantages, it's not a country that's short of "political leverage." It's also not short of enemies, or people willing to become enemies if provoked. Todays situation is a wonderful example of what happens when we provoke a nation a little too far. How would a missile shield prevent this kind of situation? By making people madder? Intimidating them? <sarcasm>Great plan, reverse psychology has always worked flawlessly.</sarcasm>
What I'm trying to show to you is that the US cannot make itself invincibile, it just has to understand that it has to be nice. Being nice, giving people what they want, is not nearly as difficult at preventing that which cannot be prevented. What are we defending if we become a nation whos only goal is to become invincible?
40. Please don't pretend we haven't killed just as many innocent civilians as the next guy. The United States has killed more people than any other nation or organization, and all these people weren't soldiers (kyoto, nagasaki..)
42. Osama Bin Laden does not speak english, so why would he use the english alphabet to establish an incredibly vague reason to destroy the US's economic center? His name doesn't even have the same number of characters in his language as it does in ours.
46. Perhaps the only ones that knew of the plot were on the planes and no longer have the breath to take credit for their actions. The act was terrible, but they did accomplish their goal (whatever it may be.) My guess is that they wanted to stir up the US, get them to figure out who they were, what their cause was, and thus get the greatest amount of plubicity ever concieved of :-/ .
47. Listen to yourself, you have nothing on your mind but destroying all of palestine, reguardless of the loss of civilian casualties! You're no better than the men who destroyed the WTC, in fact, I think you're far worse as you try to justify your actions as retaliation (when in fact that is no doubt why the did what they did!)
---addressed the cowardly business enough---
67. And how would you go about killing them? They're already dead, we have no idea who there leaders are, where they came from or what they look like! Are we jsut going to carpet bomb the middle east and hope those responsible were killed? What if it was an attack from within our own borders? We must be patient and extract those involved individually rather than in massive, sloppy counter-attacks.
72. So it's ok for us to carpet bomb them, killing 100's of thousands of citizens, but one of their people decides we've done a great injustice against them and retaliates and suddenly they're a criminal. What's the difference between them and us if we just hit back?
Ok, I'm too tried to read more, but I think I've covered all my opinions on the major issues of this disaster. Please, don't misunderstand me and assume I have no feeling of saddness or loss towards those who lost their loved ones today. I do not believe that whoever was responsible did the right thing, I just think that this kind of act was innevitable and that we (the US) did nothing (especially in the last year) to try and calm/correct the situation, we deserved what we got because of our hands-off policy towards the middle east (at least when it came to peace talks, bombing is a different matter entirely..)
Well, these are my views...
I eat pasta!