Kevin-

Some of our friends on the board don't think I'm treating your hypothetical situations seriously enough. We've certainly experienced enough evasion regarding direct questioning for one week so here goes:

Terrorist training, bomb- making, and planning are undoubtedly taking place in many places throughout the world as I write this. (recent events in Spain, Indonesia, and Israel bear this out).

Would you- should we- launch pre-emptive strikes against those countries. Should we commit troops and invade them? We know there are terrorists in those countries.

What about Iran and North Korea? They've been identified as sponsoring "state terrorism". So was Libya until about a month ago, but that's another story; apparently some evil despots have a capacity to change.

I don't think that there would have been much lasting reaction in the US to the assassination of either Osama or Saddam, no matter who ordered it. Both were immediately recognizable evildoers. I think world opinion is another matter, especially in the Muslim world. As we now know there are consequences for any course of action we choose.

Invading and aerial bombing a country is another thing though involving civilian and US military deaths. That's what people react to and that's what's ultimately going to play a huge role in the outcome of the Iraq occupation.

Lastly, I don't think that Saddam had much capacity for anything other than making his own countrymen's lives miserable. There is still, I will remind you, no evidence of WMD's and his secular approach to totalitarianism was in direct opposition to the religious ideology of his fundamentalist Muslim brothers. That's why I think your hypothetical scenario of him financing and executing an attack on the US is unlikely.