Whistle Stop --

I read your comments with interest. It is nice to know that there are still people who are capable of disagreeing without becoming disagreeable. Well done.

With all due respect, however, I must continue to disagree. Consider, if you will, the covert operation scenario which I described earlier in somehat more detail.

It is unlikely, for example, that such an undertaking would merely have been done by the CIA and Interpol alone. It is probable that we would have had, at the very least, offers of help from every intelligence service cuurently in operation. Further, consider that the Arab nations would have greatly prefered such an undertaking over the bombing and would have been more than willing to help such an operation along. There is a proverb in that part of the world: "I against my brother. My brother and I against my cousin. My brother, my cousin and I against the world." In other words, it is one thing for them to be fighting amongst themselves but they consider it quite another for "outsiders" to come in aggressively. It puts them in the same awkward political position in which they found themselves during the Gulf War -- having to support military aggression from outside the region.

As far as the vast network of terrorist are concerned, doing things in a non-military fashion would have given us a better chance of covincing various Arab government to break up said networks on thier own. As it is we are only getting a promise and the "bum's rush".

Stephen