Beginning of US Military Action?

Which, if he really said it, is the closest he's come so far to lucidity.

so what can the States do? Bombing seems untenable morally as a response to the wtc - except on a basic eye-for-an-eye level that I think fewer and fewer of the american people would embrace. Even militarily it seems useless as well - unless they want to smart-bomb bin Laden off the face of the earth (presuming they can find him) and make him a martyr and even more of a hero and inspiration to extremist muslims. A commando raid seems risky given the terrain and the experience of the Afghan fighters. Americans have been very wary of deploying troops on the ground since Somalia and this is a thousand times scarier. And any action at all might spark a uprising in Pakistan, thereby putting atomic weapons into the hands of the fundamentalists. So are the states actually in a situation where they will be forced to use diplomacy and negotiation? Nice luck to have George W in charge in a brains over brawn situation.

(Nick invented the second earlier today...)

Smart bombs = not invented yet...

Intro: "Psychological Operations or PSYOP are planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of organizations, groups, and individuals. Used in all aspects of war, it is a weapon whose effectiveness is limited only by the ingenuity of the commander using it. "

It more like "Speak big and stupidly to the big and stupid people, let the smarter people realize I'm just talkin' big and stupid, and carry a big stick."

I think Bill Maher pointed out wisely that JFK was a horrible public speaker, but seemed to handle the Cuban Missile Crisis. Not to compare JFK and Bushie jr. by any means, but I do get the sense that things are being handle better than they are being said.

1) forget the human cost and let's talk in cold military terms -- had Bush not given the word to cease fire after a few days of direct counterattack, the rest of the Iraqi forces would have been annihilated, not escaped back to Baghdad and helped support the regime against the revolts north and south and keep Hussein in power etc. etc.

2) as I understand it, bin Laden got specifically pissed when we put in troops in Saudi Arabia and kept them there because of the Gulf War, etc. etc.