If YOU were President when 9/11 happened, what would you have done?

If i were President, i would have targeted Al-Qaeda and kill them wherever they stand. If they are in Afghanistan, then we would go and kick ass there. If they are in Pakistan, then we would go and kick ass there. When i say wherever they stand, i mean wherever. This would do two things: 1. It would rid the world of Al-Qaeda and 2. It would show the world that if you sponsor terrorism, you will go down.

But no, Dubya had to go and invade Iraq which has turned into an Al-Qaeda recruiting field. Yes, we are still in Afghanistan, but we don't have the number of troops there as we do in Iraq. I want a global war against Al-Qaeda with the troop strength as we have in Iraq or more. Hunt them down and kill the bastards.

I am embarrassed by my reaction, and sure wish I and millions of others would not have acted like it.

We gave up our rights and ruined the country because of it.

I would not have gone to war.

The war(s) did nothing. Have accomplished nothing.

The 19 pilots (if it wasn't pre-planned and done by the Bush team as I really think now)but the 19 pilots are dead.

We have wasted billions and billions each week that we don't have, and have captured, what, a poor little rich boy John Walker from California and not much else.

I would not have done much more than Clinton did the first time.

In retrospect, it was not a big event. Look at Katrina- that is a big event.

Less than 3000 died 9-11 and most of those could have been saved had the proper stairwells not been blocked, and communication had been better

What a waste of life and money its all been

Bring them home now. We need the money to rebuild America

And Bush family has paid Osama off. They know what they did. And it wasnot an accident.

Better to use the money to mass produce a vaccine for the bird flu, something we really need to worry about

One thing John Kerry said that was right- one day terror is just going to be a thing that occassionally happens. you cannot wipe it out by having a war where no one involved is there.

I beg to differ. In retrospect, 9/11 will ALWAYS be a big event. It's not a matter of the number of people who died or the fact that fewer would have died had the stairways been clear. It's a matter of a group of thugs turning our own technology against us to commit an act of sensational murder right here in the heart of the city that many consider to be the capital of the U.S. as well as the capital of the world. If they had simply planted bombs within the trade towers and detonated them, it would not have been so horrific. But something about the unerasable image of those jets flying into those buildings makes 9/11 an event of such horrific proportions that we will never be able to consider it not that big an event. The U.S. isn't accustomed to being attacked from outside. Just look at Pearl Harbor. That still lives on as a "day of infamy," and that will never change. And that wasn't even on the U.S. mainland. Yes, Katrina was horrible, and the storm ruined the lives of thousands of people. But it was a natural disaster, which, while frightening, doesn't carry with it the emotional impact of a planned attack by outside terrorists.

And to answer the original question: We should have concentrated our efforts in Afghanistan and put ALL of our resources into catching bin Laden and his men. By going into Iraq, we have merely stirred up a hornets' nest, and I think the only way to quiet it back down is to get out and let them put their own house back in order again.

While what both of you said were very different, I partially agree with both of you.

Very good points. I believe it's ineffective to fight terrorism through favoritism. Bush attacked Afghanistan, but 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, General Mahmoud Ahmed of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) forwarded $200,000 to Mohammad Atta. But now Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan are 'some of our best allies in the war on terrorism' to paraphrase something said in an article in the Right-Wing rag known as NewsMax. And now we're selling F-16s to Pakistan. The country's government has been overthrown numerous times in the past century, if you get the wrong people in control of that government, then you'll have a country with illegal nukes and a fleet of our F-16s that wasnt to kill us. That doesn't seem very smart.

I think if we went about it the way Clinton did would be the most effective though, law enforcement, arresting the terrorists, etc. Afghanistan was an incident where putting troops on the ground - I think - was the absolute best choice to make, and I think like Fellow Dem said, a full troop force would be better (like 200,000 troops) instead of what was it, 11,000, 14,000? that we put in Afghanistan. I think we should deal with global terroism sternly, and get them wherever they are, however if we just invade every country by using brunt military force, blowback is inevitable. The families of the innocent civilians we kill we almost undoubtedly grow up to become terrosits, and do even worse things to our country.

I'm assuming you're talking about the Patriot Act. I agree with you mostly, except for one part of it that deals with internet ISPs being able to report suspicious or illegal activity without having to fear being sued or anything. That's a different issue, and if you want to discuss it just tell me and I'll go into more detail.

I agree with your basic concept, I feel the same way about war - however I believe it's a bit inpractical. I would never want to make more people feel the fear that we felt on September 11th, and that's the kind of fear that's created in the countries we invade. However, as much as I'd hate to say it, there are a number of people out there who don't respond to anything other than military might. It's unrealistic to think that we can ward off terrosits if they don't have to fear repricussions. I hate saying that but it's the unfortunate and ugly truth - military might is a very messy way to suppress enemies through the use of fear. :/ And - there are some people out there, like Bin Laden, who just need to be captured or killed.

And here's a question - why can he infultrate Al Qaeda, but our covert ops can't?

You're making it sound like he didn't do much, the terrorists were arrested, and in fact, on Clinton's watch, at least two terrorist attacks were thwarted, Bojinka (aka Manilia Air) which was a plan to blow up 12 airplanes over the Pacific, and the Millenium Plot to blow up LAX. Also, Clinton said on the Randi Rhodes show (and probably elsewhere) that if he was President in February 2001, when the FBI and CIA agreed that Al Qaeda was responsible for the U.S.S. Cole, he would have invaded Afghanistan.

The two are similar in a way, but the attacks of September 11th had a much more wide spread affect emotionally. In a hurricane, you can see it coming, and it has to gather on weather screens before it hurts people. This terrorist attack took everyone by surprise, and no one knew if it would be a one-time thing, or whether there would be more attacks in different place. Everyone felt vulnerable.

I'm a little confused about your second point about lives that could have been saved if the stairwells hadn't been blocked, and if the radios worked. Whether their lives could have been saved or not, the effect was still the same. And about "less than 3,000" people being killed, it wasn't much less, 2,819 people - that's a lot of people to just think each one of those people had families, friends co-workers...

I would have transfered the billions of dollars we waste on our military to researching alternate fuel sources, such as fusion. And bomb the hell outa those sub-human scumbags who attacked us.

Wait a second here, you would take money from the military? Then bomb the scumbags with a military that you took money from? I'm not following you here.

The United States spends more money on its military than EVERY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD COMBINED. We would be able to handle to take out al Queda just fine if we cut our military funding. Researching alternate fuels is much more important than making weapons we'll never use.

Yeah, we do spend more but it's needed... especially with the wars of the present and the wars of the future. If we cut spending on the military, all that does is make things more expensive. It's kind of like the more you buy the cheaper things are... like when you buy in quantity. This in turn, would make it so we cannot buy the amount that is needed and in some cases, none at all. Because of the technology that everything has now a days, things are getting more and more expensive (Like Tanks, Bradleys, etc).

France, Germany, Italy, and Canada seem to be doing just fine and they don't spend a quarter of what we spend on the military. It's very ignorant to claim that we need to spend as much on our military as we do.

France, Germany, Italy, and Canada aren't in the same situation as we're in right now. We are fighting two wars far from our homeland bearing 90% of the burden. Not to mention that Al-Qaeda has declared war on us and are trying to attack us wherever they can. There is no need for a military cut back right now.

It doesn't matter that we're fighting wars! We don't need that much money spent, just the money re-prioritized. We need to stop wasting the money on bullshit like bunker busting missiles and star wars. If we were to do that, we'd have more than enough money and then some to buy armor for the troops.

Star wars yes, but bunker busters no. We are using bunker busters quite frequently in both wars.

I think you both make good points. We're in the middle of two wars right now, so it's a given that military spending should go up. The troops need the proper equipment whether it's defensive, like good body armor and good armor on the vehicles, or whether it's focused on things like better weapons. Beyond just military spending though, I think there needs to be focus on benefits for troops and better allocation of homeland security money (example: Wyoming, a state of 500,000 people and more mountains than cities gets upwards of $20 per capita in homeland security money, and New York gets $7.00 per capita).

There are some aspects of military spending that should be cut though. I think the kind of technology that makes weapons safer or more accurate are good technology (like laser-guided "smart"-bombs and other things that are meant to reduce civilian casualties, friendly-fire, etc.). Like greyfox, though I think we should cut spending for pet-projects that serve no use and are making things worse, like Bunker Busters that release radiological material in the air and ground (and usually don't quite make it into the bunkers), Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrators that Bush began development on in the 2003 Budget that ... pretty much is as ineffective as the bunker buster, and other unneccesary technology and pro-nuclear proliferation.

Also, I think Depleted Uranium should be taken out of the inventory, we shouldn't be subjecting our troops to the chemically toxic and possibly radiological affects of that weapon. We shouldn't be subjecting the civilians of the countries we attack to that kind of stuff either.