Do you have any idea as to what a war is? Do you have any idea as to the difference between the amount of damage Osama bin Laden could cause and Adolf Hitler did?

Is it beyond your capacity to understand the difference between what can be done with religious fanatics with no navy, air force or ground army and, say, the Battle of Britain?

How about what the Japanese did in China. Do you believe OBL could inflict anything close to that damage? That was war.

Why leave India, for example, out of the "civilized world"? Do you not regard the world's largest democracy "civilized"? Has OBL declared war on them?

Do you realize April Glaspe, the US Ambassador to Iraq at the time, told Saddam the US didn't care if he invaded Kuwait? It may have been inadvertent, but was taken as permission. Saddam is a lot of bad things, crazy he's not. (As far as that goes, Marshall left South Korea out of the declared US area of interest, kind of inviting the invasion.)

Are you aware the US had good relations with Saddam, and were supplying him with satellite data, when he gassed the Kurds? And that our good relations lasted for several years after that, seriously tainting the US excuse for an invasion that he's a bad guy willing to use WMD?

What happened to WTC is tragic, inexcusable, and what has happened afterward is worse. The US is running scared. Heck, airports close down when someone leaves a metal detector unplugged.

And, no one with any maturity will elevate OBL to the status of someone who can truly declare an effective war. A war is what went on between Iraq and Iran, in Vietnam (despite the lack of declaration), in Korea, etc.

If you're in the middle of it, it's tragic and seems like a war. In the larger view, OBL is a flea who could no more declare war on your civilized world than the flea could the dog. He can "declare" mischief, he needs to be dealt with, he cannot be tolerated, but for some juvenile to say "he declared war upon the entire civilized world" is silly.

Get a grip, get a perspective, don't believe all they tell you.

Arf