Harry, you are SO right my friend… I too had my head filled with these same people blaming Bush for another attack getting through… “Why didn’t you do enough to stop this? You were too focused on Iraq! Blah Blah Blah!”

I’ve got a lot of friends and co-workers in Israel who deal with these issues daily, and I don’t think the US has the stomach for it – look how childish we are when someone is trying to protect us for cryin’ out loud!

God willing we won’t have to find out…

I too have been getting a bit sick and tired of hearing unfounded accusations tossed around over this.

The thing that gets me is the people that are pretending this is about ‘losing personal freedoms’ when it’s really about them “getting Bush, at ALL costs.” At least I wish people would be honest about their motivations.

I don’t blindly trust law enforcement and/or government agencies (personally I have very little trust for the later) but I somehow doubt anyone really is looking to tap my phones willy-nilly just for S’s & giggles. Just a hunch.

However, were my name and number in a captured al Qaeda operative’s possession? Heck, I’d wanna know myself what the heck it was doing there.

Yet I can ALREADY hear these same busy-bodies whine when a terrorist group manages to slip through the radar and set off bombs on crowded transit trains (ask the Brits and the Spanish about that), or blow up a crowded nightclub (ask the Aussies or Israelis) crash another bunch of planes, or pull off a major chem bio attack, etc…

Then it’ll be “WHY DIDN’T ANYONE STOP THEM!??! WAHH!” They’ll be pointing out whatever Bush was doing at the moment the attack happened, and then making up conspiracies that he did it.

They’ll also want hearings into why the government didn’t use MORE power to stop whatever attack occurred that will actually have been caused by a lack of power and information provided to law enforcement to have prevented it!

Information like, oh… I dunno… keeping tabs on whoever the heck al Qaeda et al have operating inside the US!

And talk about loss of freedoms.

Imagine someday when none of us can go to the mall, or take our kids to the park, or do much of anything without fearing that a terrorist bomb will go off.

Imagine being searched EVERYWHERE we go before entering public places, the same way we’ve already gotten used to being searched before entering an airport.

Imagine the loss of freedom when every big city has to impose nightly curfews to curtail terrorist activities.

Imagine the loss of freedom when no one is allowed to carry a backpack, briefcase, luggage or even a ladies’ pocketbook onto public transit, or into public places for the possibility of suicide bombers. (Ask the Israelis how many freedoms they’ve had to give up for these kinds of considerations EVERY DAY.)

Imagine the loss of freedoms when our stock markets crash due to uncertainty due to attacks being more and more frequent, and our whole way of life goes down the tubes. (Anyone remember the hit our economy took after 9/11? Tens of thousands lost their jobs and even since have had less and less job security.)

The people acting like they are really sooooo worried about their phones being tapped, and almost always arguing against law enforcement using the type of surveillance tools they WILL need to prevent every possible future terrorist attack, will guaranteed be the ones whining longest and loudest when it comes down to REAL freedoms being given up in an America where terrorists have weakened our system enough to pull off regular attacks.

I only hope we never get to such an era, but sometimes I have a baaaaad feeling. Much of the rest of the world is already there.

But hey, if such a nightmare ever visits us, I’m sure it’ll all be Bush’s fault. Even 20+ years after he’s out of office and somehow *gasp!* terrorists STILL want to pull nasty sneak attacks, it’ll still all be Bush’s fault.