The terrorists won the war on terror even before it started.

[Rabrrrrrr]

In fact, the real win for the terrorists was the day we started the war on terror: as soon as we gave them enough creedance to take them seriously, instead of just ignoring them and treating them as the trivial, onconsequential pieces of shit they are, they won.

And now they've really won - people willingly giving up their liquids, chapstick, toothpaste, going through multiple body searches, and all the time saying, "If this is what it takes to be safe, then that's fine". Yep. We'll give up every one of our freedoms to ensure our safety, because we believe in freedom.

Yep - the terrorists won.

Shit, they don't even have to blow anything up any more - all they have to do is caught "planning" to blow something up, which will then make the news, and as long as they keep that up, they win.

And, of course, the republicans could never stay in power unless they ensure that terrorists exist anyway, so in that way, the terrorists win as well.

And lastly of course, the sad thing is, we can't even tell the difference between reality and fiction any more - this whole new terror alert could be entirely false. I certainly don't trust the US or British governments enough to accept what they say at face value. The timing is way too convenient, and the plot was so totally exposed... it just doesn't add up. All they have to do is haul 21 guys out of prison, tell them that if they admit to plotting something their families get a few hundred thousand bucks, call them terrorists, and put 'em back in jail, and turn the world into code red.

I give up.

The only chance for the world is to get rid of the republican "leadership" in America in every capacity, get rid of the republican-lites like Lieberman, and do the same in Japan and Britain and Germany. And I mean that in all seriousness.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

1. I agree

I posted this last week in a thread as a response and it seems apropos again.

They got it wrong the moment they declared a War on Terror as a military exercise against nation states. While it may be true that some nation states support some specific form of terrorism, most do not. Most terrorism is (or at any rate used to be before Bush popularized and publicized the tactic)insurgencies and uprisings within a specific country against the powers that be, like the Basque separatists or the Chechen's or whomever. When it did go outside, it was more hit and run annoyances, like the Achilles Lauri.(and no, I am not downplaying the importance of ANY death in any terrorist incident or even the overall general importance of any incident)It used to be their (the terrorists) DESIRE to be seen as armies, hence their always grandiloquent names, many of which utilized the word "ARMY". When Bush declared this a military issue, he actually ELEVATED these groups from their former status as criminals, hoodlums or gangsters. He is personally responsible in my opinion for being their major recruiter. Osama who used to be analogous to a Sacco or Vanzetti, (admittedly more powerful damage-wise because he has more powerful instruments at his disposal) is now more analogous to a Simon Bolivar. It's much better to denigrate them as criminals and subject them to civil penalities even though that would involve (gasp!) courts and justice.

The Republicans even made a talking point about this which the Dems were completely ineffective in countering. Remember when they sneered "John Kerry would ARREST Osama".

[The2ndWheel]

2. Get rid of them how?

Even if you did, why would that stop anything? No doubt that the Western world brings quite a bit of this onto itself by its manipulation of that part of the world in both the past and present, but just as we have our people that want to dominate the planet, people in that part of the world also have the same issues. I just can't bring myself to think that we'll all live in one giant world of gummybears and peace if we get rid of republican leadership, here or anywhere. Not with the current set up of the world, which has been in place, at some scale, for thousands of years.

[Beetwasher]

3. Yep

We're all pretty fucked. They'll bust like this every few weeks through Nov.