[Shaun @ Tru6]

I'd like to hypothesize that an organized Al Queda as it's been described by the media does not really exist.

I have no positive evidence, simply negative reinforcement.

We all know our borders are as open as the fields of Kansas.

We know that maybe 5% of cargo in our ports is screened, the rest is allowed entry with no screening.

We know that you can jump on an Amtrak in Boston and arrive in Penn Station under Manhattan 2 hours later with absolutely no screening of you or your baggage.

We all know that 20 or less men is all it takes to do extraordinary damage to anything.

In fact we know that 2 men, McVeigh and Nichols, can nearly duplicate Al Quaeda in terms of pure mechanical devastation.

We know it's pretty easy to build bombs.

We know it's really easy to get virtually any gun you ever wanted. there was a story here in Boston recently and any 10-year-old in Roxbury can directly get a gun... 1 degree of separation.

Given all of this, why haven't we been attacked?

Conventional Right Wing rhetoric says that they are too busy fighting us "over there." I'd be OK with this argument if Al Quaeda were a conventional army, but even that logic falls flat: conventional armies also have intelligence and infiltration departments.

In effect you are saying that Al Quaeda, a worldwide network of loosely organized yet highly connected cells, can't spare 10 guys or so to attack the US, their most hated enemies.

All this talk about giving comfort to our enemy is really hokey and truly rings of Western arrogance and the supposition that their daily experience mirrors yours. Newsflash: it doesn't. There's only one thing we can say in the US that empowers our enemies:

We're leaving Irag on June 23, 2006.

Everything else is just media/rhetoric hype. If you aren't with us, you're against us. Wanted: dead or alive. and so on.