I have read the above posts up to a point and need to get to some Personal Business soon, so I hope that no one is offended or annoyed if what I write now has already been covered:

At some time in the future someone will detonate a nuclear device, probably in one of the USA or Britain's costal cities. It will be a snall device, probably very dirty and it will be a "one shot" action. None of THAT will matter to those who will suffer from the act, of course.

I don't know if Iraq will play a role or not. There is no certainty that any of us will know from what country such an attack will come.

There was a chilling remark, spoken by a character in the series The West Wing. He is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He said, with a great deal of sadness in his voice; "I no longer know when we are at war and when we are at peace. We used to judge a military operation as a success by the number of innocent lives spared. Our enemies seem to judge their success by the number of innocent lives taken. I simply do not understand it." (That is not an accurate quote, but it conveys the sentiment well enough). There have been many actions taken by dissidents against established regeimes(sp) over the many years. Even though all such "targets" consider such actions as acts of terrorists, quite often they are not and are legitimate responses to a untenable political condition. Implicit in our Declaration of Independence and in our Constitution is the right to remove an unjust and illegal government by force if necessary. We vote instead. It works. In many of the world's countries the peaceful means simply don't work. But WE have ABSOLUTELY NO right to act against the governments or leaders in those countries.

As I wrote I don't know WHERE such an attack will come from but I DO know that should we act against Iraq as Bush wishes, we will increase the possibility of such an attack. Do we do nothing? No, of course not. What we DO, however, must be sure and clean (if that is possible) and SOON. Does Saddam need (NEED?) to be killed? If there is specific evidence that he is capable of causing or supporting such an attack, YES! but all of this must be done as carefully as possible and only with intelligence which is pure gold!

Fundamentalist Islam? There will ALWAYS be those who invoke their culture's religious credos to justify their dirty work. The Loyalists "protestants" of the North of Ireland, The "Right to Life" activists on picket duty outside of Planned Parenthood clinics, all those hatemongers who distort and pervert religion in order to claim legitimacy for their causes. No that doesn't make all adherants to those religions evil. But evil they are and the sects and churches and congregations that activly support them are our enemies! Make NO mistake about that!

CB