I'm coming to you today from somewhere in the Pacific Northwest... Whenever I'm on a long drive, my mind uses the time to sort through complex issues, finding patterns, putting pieces together into the bigger picture. Not sure I can tell you precisely what I'm thinking because there are so many pieces. But the message is that I've seen this before on a smaller scale. Intelligent people need to step back and think whenever the drums of war reach such a deafening crescendo. The lemmings have already started marching toward the sea, and predictably they will drown. Only a handful of people on alternative media are asking the tough questions and have a memory for what has been going on in the world. We created these monsters that have come back to bite us. Osama was created by the CIA to fight the Russians. Saddam was tricked by us into invasion of Kuwait after we essentially gave him the green light to attack both there and initially in Iran where we gave him money and arms to do with as he wished, human rights be damned. Our actions in Iran and Israel go without saying. We created the Iranian revolution by bringing the Shah to power in the first place when it was evident that as a free democracy they planned to elect a Marxist. Our indifference towards those who once were peaceful citizens of the (British Commonwealth) nation of Palestine is despicable. We're seeing the consequences of those actions. Now to embark on new actions without a detailed roadmap and at least a short list of possible consequences is ludicrous. We would be blessed at this point if the acts of last week were state sponsored. In fact if I were in the government, and found that they weren't; I'd strongly consider planting evidence that they were. That is the only possible path which can be steered from long-term planetary flagrations. Ground troops in Afghanistan? Nuke Islamabad? You're fucking nuts. Technically there's one other way out. If we reach out to those in the world hostile to us and allow them to enumerate the reasons behind their hatred. Then take steps to eliminate those sources of perceived anger in a rational discussion which admits our own mistakes and takes concrete steps to reverse the long-term damage which we brought about - destroying countless lives in the process (in the millions). That of course is a political impossibility at this time. If we make one of the wrong moves, it will still happen, but 100 or more years from now when the survivors finally have the courage to stop this thing.