And as regards the ten oclock news can I just say; one Venezuelan with a grenade doth not a bin Laden make! That story is the biggest load of cobblers I've ever heard in my life! He had a grenade in his luggage and got arrested coming IN to Heathrow.... Surely if he was going to run the risk of having a grenade (pure suicide bomber weapon) on him he would have put it somewhere he could use it and don't you think he would have blown hisself up on the way ovah...? And how many nasty terrorists (professional enough to do 9/11) do you know who carry their weapons on the flight with them anyway? Yeah, really story credible guys...
In the words of the imortal Homer Simpson being flown off to become a missionary; "HELP ME JEBUS!"
Ten years ago, we read professor Francis Fukuyama's essay and toasted the end of history. That was followed by professor Samuel Huntington's musings on clashing civilizations. Now it's worse: We're being warned to worry not just about the clash of civilizations, but the end of civilization as we know it, the end, perhaps, of the world itself.
Last week was a pretty typical one in this new age of the apocalypse. Last Sunday, White House chief of staff Andrew Card refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons by the United States against Iraq, perhaps preemptively, vowing that "the United States will use whatever means necessary to protect us and the world from a holocaust." On Monday, Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes threatened that Pakistan would be "erased from the world map" if it were to launch a nuclear attack on India. On Tuesday, Pyongyang Broadcasting Station said that "the United States is in danger of falling into the grave that it has dug" and if it does, it "will never again survive."
The language of our nation's top leaders reflects this grim sense of what the future might hold. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tells reporters that a nuclear attack on the United States is only "a matter of time." And in his State of the Union address last Tuesday, President Bush said, "It would take just one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known."
Not surprisingly, perhaps, 43 percent of all Americans -- and 61 percent of Washington area residents -- have taken specific precautions against terrorist attacks, according to a 2002 Pew Research Center poll. But the underlying fear can't be stuck in a box alongside the emergency food and water supplies
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