Interesting how as soon as someone starts running for president, you start hearing about how hideously evil they are.
It could be because we suddenly care about things that didn't matter before. It could also be because there are huge political machines that go into scorched-earth mode as soon as someone starts running.
I never thought of Giuliani as presidential material, but I do wish he had been made Attorney General instead of Gonzalez, for the simple reason that he was Attorney General of New York before he was Mayor, and had a lot of experience taking down organized crime, which is all terrorists are, right? It might have helped his Presidential chances. But that's Bush's fault for going with someone else instead, I guess.
Also, my favorite celebrity Mii is Jack Black.
There's basically two ways of looking at terrorists: organized crime, or foreign army without the banner of a sovereign nation. That's not to say they aren't being supported by one or more sovereign nations, but they don't fly a flag, anyway. If you look at a lot of the political disagreements people have about how to treat captured terrorists, and how to deal with the threat in general, you can generally figure out which side thinks of them criminals that need to be policed, and which side thinks of them as a foreign army that needs to be treated and fought as such.
European nations have generally gone the police route; France didn't send the army to Syria to pick up Carlos the Jackal, they sent the gendarmes. On the same note, we used our federal police against known domestic terrorists like McVeigh and gang, the greater-DC-area sniper, and the Unabomber. But it's evident, I hope, that "international terror" (which Bush smartly qualified so that America doesn't have to declare war on ETA, or any aggressive IRA splinter faction that pops up) is not merely a police issue. We use elements of our federal cops to investigate, but we prosecute as necessary on foreign soil with the armed forces.
I might agree that "international terrorism" is somewhere between criminals and armies, but I feel that it's much closer to crime than true acts of war. And that the balance should be closer to a police response.
The reasons for that view are so obvious there are cliches... the parallels with the never-ending War on Drugs, the way that there isn't a single authority to surrender in a meaningful way, the way the buggers don't even wear uniforms so we know who to shoot at, etc etc.
I admit that there might be some military like tactics and action that might be called for, because it is somewhere between the two exteremes, as I said. But hoping we can shoot our way out of this is just ridiculous as we far farther and farther behind the battle for hearts and minds.
There's a big of a jurisdictional problem though-- we can just barely use the FBI overseas, and only at the behest of a foreign government. With the armed forces, we need not ask for permission to protect our nation.
And anyway my original point was that there's plenty of room for disagreement on the issue.