Re: glassing the guilty
   by Margaret Shemo
 
I don't take seriously any huffing and puffing about nukes.  We'll need
spelunkers, not fighter pilots, to get Osama bin Laden.  Yes, we could bomb
every cave in Afghanistan -- but how would we know whether or not we'd
killed him?  By reading the obituaries in the Kabul Gobble?

It is possible to "glass the terrorists" if you're making an action movie.
Sure, I want the happy ending, too, where the good guys blow up the bad
guys.  This kind of war effort will require skillful camera work -- we won't
have bin Laden's body to put on display, so we'll need to tape the explosion
that reduces him to cinders.  No doubt, some people will think it's all a hoax,
like actors pretending to be astronauts walking on the moon.  (I'm also in favor
of retrieving all needles from haystacks, and making omelets without breaking eggs.
Why are we arguing about something that won't happen?)
 

One of my suggestions has been to pressure Kabul into producing him.
The idiots have admitted they have the power to deliver him.
That was such a fatal mistake.
They could've played Abdul Dimwit and said "We don't know where he is,"
but instead, they said, "We won't give him over to you."
I foresee a government glassing.
 

While we're wasting time over action-flick scenarios, John Ashcroft is
asking for new powers to combat terrorists here in the land of the free --
expanded search authority, expanded surveillance.  I monitor the "Dr. Laura"
show, and she continues to crawl (on her belly, like a reptile) past appeals
to patriotism and advice on talking to children about the attacks, towards
criticism of defenders of civil liberties.  Today -- to follow up on her
claim last week that she was embarrassed because the ACLU was mostly secular
Jews -- Laura said that the ACLU is the "least American" organization.  (She
also spoke in favor of prayer in school today, after unambiguously speaking
against it last week.  She must have gotten new orders over the weekend.)
It seems the liberals have prevented the FBI and the CIA from doing their
jobs, by pointing out that pesky fourth amendment.  (Last week Laura moaned
about how nowadays our schools are not teaching students about those "two
documents," the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.)
 

I've gotten a lot of mail saying the Bush Family Evil Empire planned this.
That's crazy talk, but I do think they're playing the cards they were dealt.
Sure, they want to erase the constitution, and we need to stop them.
 

To answer BartCop's question:  "Would you avenge a murdered child?"
Yes.  But to me, to avenge a crime means to bring the perpetrator to justice.
Of course, I (or police acting for me) would look for the murderer.
If I confronted him, and we both had guns, I'd try to kill him before he killed me.
If no suspect was in sight, I wouldn't start shooting at everybody nearby, in frustration.
If the murderer ran away, I might shoot him to prevent his escape, but I wouldn't fire into
a crowd, killing or wounding bystanders just so I could be sure that I stopped the murderer.
If I ran to the murderer's house, and only his family was there, I would not
shoot the murderer's child to avenge the murdered child.  I would control
myself, before and after the murderer was taken into custody, because I'm
not a murderer, and I think that the innocent should not suffer -- yes, even
if the guilty person escapes.  Even if you demand "an eye for an eye," it
must matter to you whose eye gets taken.  If you don't care how the eye gets
taken, either, why don't you volunteer to work for John Ashcroft?
 

To answer BartCop's next question:  "Would you fight to save New York?"
I assume that by "fight," you mean "kill."  If by "save" you mean "prevent
another attack on," then, yes -- but only if "fighting" will get that job done.
"Fighting" people at random won't, so why do it?  The perpetrators are already
dead; we have to find their accomplices before we can "fight" them.
Killing civilians and/or the armed forces of another country wouldn't
"avenge" or "save" New York.  Those people had nothing to do with the attack
on New York, and they have no intention of attacking New York.  Our killing
innocent people -- making them martyrs -- won't deter bin Laden, and their
survivors might be willing to help bin Laden or his successors to "avenge"
their murdered children, and to "save" their homes.
 

The Taliban is not innocent.
The minute they said, "We won't hand him over" they became legit targets.

If they agreed to hand him over, then did just that, other terrorists would know they would
also be handed over, and that might (can't tell with religio-crazies) be a deterrent to them.

Miss Cleo says The Taliban is about to have a bad day.
 
 
 

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