Aaaaargh, sorry but I can't let some of the comments here go unanswered.
If this isn't a war then I don't know what is. 4000+ died on Sept 11th, compared to 2,500 at Pearl Harbour. Of course its much more complicated this time because there are no easily identifiable culpable states - and that makes it more dangerous too - but it is undoubtedly a war.
We are faced by a crazed expansionist ideology that freely admits it wants to create a worldwide order - just as the Nazis declared in WW2 - and they've proved that they'll use any means to get it. They probably already have WMD - maybe nukes soon too. To those who say 'But we're alienating muslim countries' well b*ll*x!. The problems we face now are as a direct result of NOT alienating muslim countries in the past. The Saudis and Iranians and Pakistan created the Taleban, it wasn't the CIA. The CIA built the Mujahedeen - who were defeated by The Taleban in 1994 [ish]. We have stood back and watched billions of Saudi oil dollars fund the maddrasses religious schools throughought the middle-east and Africa where extremist Islam is the only subject on the timetable, it would be like turning over our entire education system over to the National Front. After 15+ years of this indoctrination we suddenly find [surprise surprise] that the M.E. and N Africa is falling under the influence of extremists and increasingly hostile to the West. It is little more than medieval primitivism but pretty soon they'll probably have nukes.. and unlike the Soviets they won't be afraid to use them. We simply *cannot* allow them to get that far - they must be stopped, and if you think some Oslo accord or UN food drop will permanently solve this problem then you're deluded.
Whatever the solution it won't be pretty, and lots of innocents will suffer, but there has to be a solution on *our* terms and not on some group who wants to turn the clock back 600 years.
There'll be lots of CNN pics of dead babies but ask yourself.. if CNN had been in Germany in WW2 we would have all been crying 'Oh they're hungry.. look a dead child.. we must stop this barbarity'.. yes we probably would, and it might have lost us the war.
The whole situation is bloody scary, but I think too many people don't appreciate the threat to *all* the west, lets face it, if the US is wiped out through some genetically engineered resistant anthrax strain, we here in the UK are f*cked! Todays US papers reveal intelligence reports of an imminent attack that will 'dwarf Sept 11th'... I'm off to the pub.
[ 03 November 2001: Message edited by: Smoketoomuch ]