Hi tracy,

>Unless you read daily sitreps you can believe whatever the media wants you to believe. I can tell though from firsthand knowlege that we are indeed safer than pre-911.

Again, I see only your feeling that you're more safe. I don't see any rock solid statistics here, so there is no way you can say this on behalf of all americans. All I can say that since 911 the situation in europe is worse. I say this based on rock hard statistics and not from personal opinion.

> Are we safe enough though? Definitely not. At least weekly there is a very 'close-call' and daily there are instances that are stopped, traffickers that are apprehended, etc. It is absolutely frightening if you were to know about every incident or near-incident everyday. that is not just in the U.S. but worldwide. All it will take is for one single attempt to be successful and odds are that it will happen and not just once, but many times. With a country as open as ours, unless we close it down and take away human rights and individual freedoms, the risk will always be there and eventually someone somewhere will be successful.

Actually, this is exactly what is happening. Human rights are violated on massive scale by the US if you look at the prisoners taken from afganistan and iraq, inmediately violating the geneva convention.

>The public is definitely more aware of the threats today though and because of that everyone is more frightened.

So at least yo admit that most american 'feel' less safer. I agree that the question if america 'is' less safer is a different one. However anyone who pledge that it is, should come up with the facts. No-one seems to be able to get these facts, like no-one has a clue how the 75% of al-qaida's top was captured or killed was calculated.

>George Bush holds a Bachelors Degree from Yale University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Even if he was someone admitted solely based on the influence of his father, he achieved more than most by attaining his degrees. Not an easy task by a longshot. To say otherwise is to be ignorant of the requirements of those schools.
>http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html
>http://www.georgewbush.com/Bios/GeorgeWBush.aspx

If a powerfull father could admit his son to an ambitious University, he could make him beeing succesfull at this Universaty. The question is if he would be able to be successfull at this university without the influence of his father? I doubt.... so do many americans. To throw two links at me that even by its URL only indicates it contains biased information is not going to feed me with objective information, Sorry.

>Dick Cheney boycotted his classes at Yale in protest. He was the only cabinet member to be asked to leave school. He has a Bachelors and Masters in Political Science from the University of Wyoming. He is also the recipient of an American Policitical Science Association Congressional fellowship.
>http://www.whitehouse.org/administration/dick.asp

My comments are not aimed at dick cheney nor Colin powel nor the republican party. From the little I know from Dick he seems to be a far better capable president than Bush jr. though.

>The Hollywood naysayers:

>Alec Baldwin dropped out of college. Returned to achieve BFA (took 13 years).
>Sean Penn completed high school but never entered college.
>Cher dropped out of high school in the 9th grade.
>George Clooney dropped out of Northern Kentucky University.
>Michael Moore dropped out of his first year of college (University of Michigan).
>Martin Sheen failed to pass the entrance exam to the University of Dayton.
>Mike Farell dropped of UCLA
>Susan Sarandon graduated high school, never attended college.
>Ben Affleck dropped out of the Univ of Vermont after one semester and then Occidental College after 1 year.

Look, I'm not going to be after the Hollywood nahsayers biased arguments, but the facts I find. You can disagree with micheal moore all you want, but you can't deny he pulled up a huge amount of FACT that was not publically known by the US citizens.

>Many despise President Bush but believe that President John F Kennedy was a man of peace.
President Kennedy did not stop Soviet ships from unloading nuclear missiles in Cuba with peace promises or UN sanctions.

I know. He was a loved man, but if you look at the facts, he was not that peacefull and addicted to mdecine which made him about insane. Again, the facts draw a total different picture of a man.

>President Reagon did not end the cold war with peace conferences and UN sanctions. Rather he made it clear to Gorbachev (the real responsible party for the end of the Cold War) that the price for arms control agreements with the United States would be Soviet respect for human rights and the end of Soviet imperialism abroad. Gorbachev effectively ended the cold war with his reform agenda. Reagan's expensive defense buildup changed the equation between the U.S. and Soviet Union and gave Gorbachev the political pressure he needed to push forward his agenda.

Sometimes it neccesary to show your muscles, indeed. Kennedy, Roosevelt, Truman, Reagan and Bush sr did what they have to do. But also do not forget the major blunders the US made. Vietnam, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Can you tell me something positive about this, except from your 'believed' safety argument?

Another interesting viewpoint is that some leaders (e.g. India/Pakistan) do need outside conflicts to hide internal problems.

>Those that attack President Bush for using force were silent when President Clinton bombed a factory in Khartoum or when the U.S. bombed the Serbs. No peace rallys were held then.

I don't know about the factory in Karthoum (may that place is translated into something entirely different in dutch?), but comparing the bombing of strategic military targets in servia is entirely different than what happened in iraq. First of all, this war with the serbs was not initiated solely by the US (Holland actualy was involved as well). The goal of the operation was purely to get milosovic beeing the brains after the genocide of different entnicities like the muslim and albanian serbs. The accomplishment is clear. Milosovic is captured and an 10 year old war has ended.

>I do not agree entirely with any of the political parties. I despise some our country's political decisions in the past as well as military ones which I was forced to participate in myself. However, it is patently clear that George W. Bush did not become President of the United States based on his 'lack of' intelligence. His cabinet stacks up well to that of past Presidents as well. Whether you agree with him or hate him, he has earned his position. He was voted into office.

There is much to say about that. Many ague he stole his postion. More americans voted to al-gore. And if the blunder of the voting sheets in florida did not occur, we would have seen a total different president.

I hate the way the system works. The joe average is too easily manipulated by powerfull people. Joe average does not have a clue what a president is saying (hell he does not know himself either, because most of the time he twist his words anyways). The US elections is one big show consuming a lot of money where a lot of powerfull people trying to get more powerfull, often by using dirty tricks (RATS incident). I was in the US a week ago, and I really could not believe the mud throwing from one to another. It really made me sick. Another example was a commercial of a lawyer office calling for patient who had used a certain medicine to call and sue the manifacturer. The very agressive and extremely commercial way of attracting customer made me sick. Really if you call this civilisation, I think we better revert to communism.

I think you should look at a few other western countries and look how it works there. You'd be suprised how civilisation and democracy could work way better.

Walter,