Plawrence - All along I thought you were a lefty. You fooled us all and only now does it come out that you are actually Dick Cheney secretly hiding on a BB.

The US cannot afford the two wars that we are fighting now, let alone take on another country. Look at the astronomical cost to fight in Iraq, which has resulted in diverted money and troops that had been going to fight in Afghanistan. The problem is that North Korea and Iran have openly flaunted their nuclear intentions, which should have every American worried.

This is not WWI or WWII where Joe Average can be put to work making military machinery. Modern warfare design is no longer good for the economy as it once was. Our naval fleet wasn't attacked on 9/11 as it was at Pearl Harbor. Our commerce and our civilans were the targets. After Pearl Harbor, the nation went to work to fight Japan & Germany. Jobs were created. But after 9/11 and now in Iraq, the only thing that has happened as that we cleared the rubble at the Pentagon and Ground Zero. The people who lost their jobs as the result of 9/11 aren't rebuilding the new WTC and aren't putting together tanks, planes, etc to fight these wars.

I certainly hope we can defeat bin Laden and al Qaeda. But I worry that we're headed down the same road that the Soviets experienced with their war w/Afghanistan in the late 70s and 80s. Part of what bin Laden did was bleed the USSR dry financially with the war. I'm not saying that OBL was solely responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union, but he certainly played a significant part in it.

If you think that the same thing can't happen in the US, then you're kidding yourself. Look at how extended we are financially right now as a nation. The wars we have been fighting since 2001 have costs us hundreds of billions. Then add the financial losses of 9/11 - from the cities and buildings attacked, the insurance agencies who paid huge death benefits, to the staggering losses of the airline industries, and to shutting down the stock market for 3 days. Then throw in Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which were unanticipated multi-billion dollar disasters. We can't just make that kind of lost money up in a year or two. All the money I menionted isn't even taking into account the costs related to our overpriced medical care, our poor educational system, and poverty in our country.

Perhaps bin Laden wasn't blowing smoke in his latest message warning of another attack. God forbid, but what if we suffer another large scale attack in another city like LA or Chicago or Atlanta? We cannot afford to rebuild large cities every 2-3 years, whether it's from terrorism or from a devastating natural disaster.