Condolences to London.

Are these Al-Qaeda blasts much different from IRA attacks like the Birmingham Pub bombings? Both organizations target public places such as pubs, department stores, and public transportation.

We may need reminding that London has lived through this sort of terror before. Of course, the IRA has/had moderately more realistic goals -- return of the six northern counties to the Republic of Ireland -- than Al-Qaeda's apparent desire to turn all nations with significant Muslim populations into Islamic Republics (their kind of Islamic Republics actually) and isolate them from the world at large.

It's horrifying when bombs go off, and that's of course exactly the point.

However, it's also disgusting to watch President Bush use this occasion to blithely ignore reality and continue to insist that his version of the War on Terror (TM) is helping. Could this guy be any less articulate? I suppose he doesn't find any irony in his words when he says he is spreading an "ideology of hope and compassion" as he authorizes implicitly or explicitly torture and mass civilian casualties through indiscriminate bombing.

We are faced with a huge challenge in how to keep our society's values intact while combatting a dedicated core of fundamentalists who take advantage of our openness. The Bush administration's solution, thus far, has been to curtail rights that we have often seen as foundational, such as freedom of association. As far as real advances in the War on Terror (TM), we have thus far been treated to a tremendous bait and switch called the Iraq Invasion. And this, at bottom, is the problem with Bush's philosophy: in the absence of a clear target, BushCo found a scapegoat in Saddam Hussein, who had obviously been out of favor with the US Government since he invaded Kuwait (sorry Saddam, but no more handshakes with Donald Rumsfeld for you!).

Now Iraq is both a "supporting point" to Al-Qaeda's thesis that the US is interested mainly in oppressing Muslim peoples and a great ground for recruiting and training new terrorists.

Explain to me again why this fool has a job?