"a new war on terrorism"

>>>>> "main" == main office <B> writes:

  main> Kendall, I agree with your concern. I believe we must respond
  main> with extreme malice against any terrorist act. However it does
  main> not need to be today. Time is on our side.

That's not my position, at least insofar as responding with "extreme
malice" implies responding neither with due regard to proportionality
and necessity, nor responding within the framework of international
law.

My suggestion wasn't that we take our time in responding militarily
but that Congress not acquiesce to Bush's demand that they engage in
Speed Legislation, which they did unfortunately. Laws are funny
things, sorta like brain surgeries: you rarely get good ones by trying
to make them as *fast as humanly possible*.

Further, it's becoming clear that Bush is playing directly into bin
Laden's hands -- assuming bin Laden is behind all of this, which at
this point seems pretty likely -- by escalating what was, despite his
illogical and ill-founded protestations of war, essentially a criminal
(however monstrous) act into some kind of global "crusade", as he so
stupidly put it this week, by which he means to "rid the world of
evil".

When anyone with as much power as Bush has -- or even as little power,
relative to Bush, as bin Laden has -- starts talking about declaring
war on things like "terrorism" or "evil" or "drugs" or "civilization",
I get very nervous. The witness of modern history suggests such
ill-defined, vainglorious crusades always end in lots of avoidable
human misery and pain.

Kendall