So the countries that most pissed of America were Japan and Germany, says Little Sergeant - managing again to forget Vietnam, even after my gentle reminder. Looks like a serious case of selective memory.

Amos said: "it would end instantly if the Taliban offered to provide all participants of the Quesadilla up to a court of acceptable jurisprudence." Acceptable to who? Maybe Amos will agree with me on this at least: the world is crying out for an international court. some 60 countries have signed up to one so far, including the UK. But not America.

"SOMETHING had to be done," is the hand-wringing, spluttering, refrain from Kim C and several others - all the justification they need, for carpet-bombing the very people the US should be working with to bring Afghanistan into the community of nations.

Well to the John Waynes who lack the imagination to think of anything but brute force, I would suggest that building up intelligence, improving security wherever practical, and forging constructive alliances in Afghanistan with more than the murderous gangsters of the Northern Alliance would all be good moves. (Had the US gone in with serious food aid rather than packets of strawberry jam cynically strewn among the bombs, this would have been a realistic option.)

Creating the conditions for Afghan democracy might take a while, but then there are those who boast that the "war" will take a while - a lifetime, according to some. Would it not have made sense to build up a consensus coalition in Afghanistan, ready to fill the vacuum, before starting to take out the Taliban?

And what price the mindless dash for vengeance? Not least, it has meant befriending, all over again, that rogue state and known nuclear power, Pakistan - a state which is totally hostile to America's only other ally in the region, the Northern Alliance. Would it be equally OK to team up with North Korea, if that helped score points against bin Laden?

Yet anyone who questions the slaughter, and the turmoil that is now being stirred up, will be accused by DougR of not having lost a loved one in the WTC - as though the WTC is the only atrocity on the world's conscience. Maybe if DougR had lost a loved one among the 5,000 children who die every day for want of clean water supplies, he'd see the WTC atrocity in better perspective. I'd ask him to think seriously about that for a minute.