XBOX 360 2669

snip

Well, I don't know what the word is either, being somewhat fanatical about spending most of my computing time with command-line text-mode tools. I have no idea whether my Linux computer(s) can deal with -- whatever it is. In my limited experience, there are a lot of computing things that seem to Just Work in Windowsland but are a pain to get going in Unixworld. The reverse, of course, is also true, but the things that Just Work in Unixworld seem to be things only a few people care about any more.

And that still doesn't solve the "lack of time" problem -- though you could suggest that if I spent less time writing messages like this, I'd have plenty of time for CSPAN.

Whatever. Back to the point, and apologies for the diversion.

No. Putting it too strongly at the present time, maybe, but the point I was trying to make is that the "war on terror" is somewhat ill-defined.

Right now the US military is doing something in Iraq and Afghanistan that seems to routinely result in getting shot at, and I guess that does count as being "at war". (It's tempting to make a snide reference to the "mission accomplished" claims of, what, 2003? but I suppose the "mission" could have been something other than a real cessation of hostilities.)

But the existence of a "war on terror", hm. I think most people would agree that there are, or at least were, people Out There who want to do the US harm. Are those people still around? Are they still capable of doing harm? Will there be a point at which we can safely say they're no longer a threat? I don't think those questions can be answered without information that most citizens aren't going to have, because the people who know it aren't telling, and what we do know is mostly being filtered through people who have given us skeptics good reason to doubt that they're telling us the truth, whether because they're lying or just mistaken.

Okay, time to admit that I was a little worked up when I composed the previous message, and I didn't take the time to set it aside and let it cool off a bit before sending it, so in a couple of places I put things more strongly than I should have.

I'm willing to believe that there are still people Out There who want to do harm to the US; there's probably enough evidence of that from a wide enough range of source to make it credible. So I shouldn't have said "existence". But "strength" -- that's what I think we regular people don't really know about, and can't know about, unless-until there's another major event. Which surely all decent people hope there won't be, of course.

Not if you interpret the question as I intended for it to be interpreted:

I'm not really asking you how you'd react to a President Gore asking to suspend the Consbreastution in order to fight Al Qaeda -- though if you want to talk about that hypothetical situation, that might be interesting too.

What I'm asking is that if a president you didn't particular trust or agree with proposed suspending the Consbreastution in order to go after an enemy *that you thought was a bit ill-defined* -- wouldn't you be suspicious?

My recollection is that when Clinton tried taking aggressive action against Bin Laden, some of his critics accused him of making up the threat to draw attention away from his domestic troubles. I think a similar accusation could be made about Bush, replacing the motive with "to keep his party in power."

The threat may be real, but there's a strong motive to overplay it, which makes some of us very suspicious.

I'm not making any such buttumption -- I don't keep up with every post in the newsgroup, but certainly I recall many, many references in your posts to books you're reading have read. I respect anyone who spends their leisure time trying to learn more about the world.

It just seems to me that you're much quicker to buttume the worst about the motives and values of one political party than the other. Maybe that's inaccurate or unfair. It's not meant to put down your smarts, though, but to question your objectivity.

snip

Somebody did a poll -- oh, I'm going to guess sometime in the last year, but I don't remember for sure and don't know how to find this with Google -- asking people in the US questions about possible connections between Saddam Hussein and 9-11. I don't remember what percentage thought there was a strong connection, but it was a two-digit number, I think at least 25 or 30 percent, perhaps more. A lot probably depends, as usual with polls, on exactly how the questions were phrased. But the story I hear over and over in the media is that a significant percentage of the US population thinks that there's a whole lot more of a connection than the evidence seems to support. Do you not remember hearing this reported? Do you not believe it? ?

As for where they got this idea -- you don't suppose it has anything to do with the Bush administration's frequent claims that regime change in Iraq was a way of advancing the "war on terror"? To a person with some critical-thinking skills, that's not the same as saying that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9-11, but I think it could easily create that impression in people who don't listen carefully and think through what's being said.

I almost invariably interpret that "Sigh!" as the exasperation of an "I don't suffer fools gladly" type trying to explain something simple to someone who appears too stupid or prejudiced to understand. The idea that some of the exasperation might be self-directed .... Hm! Have I been getting you wrong all these months-years ....

-- B. L. Mbuttingill ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.