McFly,

Your apology is accepted.
I DO have the patience of Job, and life is too short to get all bent out of shape as many do here on this board.
No sense of humor! They take it all too seriously!

Some of the guys here have held me in contempt for years now from the subjects I posted back over at the MSNBC Space Science bbs (now defunct). They used to make fun of me there, and I went through a few of them, chewing and spitting. THEY don't forget, either......

I think of Garfield's saying......"You can't scare me, I have children!"
Teenagers actually, two of them.
The guys on this bbs are NOTHING compared to them!
(Hey, but at least they apologize once in a while, and I get flowers or a clean house, maybe even my car wil get washed!) However, I can excuse THEM, they're STILL growing up!
LOL

>"I guess I don't see Bush as throwing away diplomatic relations or international law...rather, he's reshaping them."

I guess only time will tell, he's a tough cookie. If he's really smart, he'll push hard first, and then reconsider when confronted by his allies. Most of it could be bluff, with a gun behind his back.
I can't really see him putting fear into the heart of a terrorist.....what it does is align more people to their cause. These people are EVERYWHERE....it will be impossible to rout them all out.

>"We live is such a dangerous world that simply waiting for a potential enemy to attack is to invite disaster. A pro-active approach, though it may be mistaken for "looking for trouble," might actually be the only way to avert a much larger catastrophe."

Yeah, I've looked at this too, and I know it's an inevitability.
How can this be done without bringing on more evil and more destruction?
It's the serpent eating it's tail.
Perhaps we are on an INEVITABLE TIME LINE, where the serpent needs to swallow it's tail, shed it's skin and re-emerge to a new state of awareness. By then, a good portion of the worlds population could be gone, our international trade, goods and food in a state of emergency, and everyone weary from war.
Not a pretty picture, is it?