[fleitz]

I thought the founding fathers had something to say about standing armies. Standing armies should be disbanded and instead we should seek advice from the 2nd amendment as to how the gov't can best guarantee rights not delegated from the people.

[ascendant]

But this "war" on terror is an excuse for the government to continue to grant themselves "emergency" powers and give their friends in the defense industry hundreds of billions of dollars.

[colinplamondon]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTioaRXiSps&feature=relat...

The fact that we crushed Al Qaeda in the opening years of the war doesn't diminish the threat that existed at the time. The Treasury Department essentially rewrote the rules of international finance in a matter of months, devastating their financing, and the followup in Afghanistan crippled them.

This hasn't been a "war", it's been a War.

The biggest problem is that we haven't gone far enough yet- security theater in the airports instead of Israeli-style real security. No screening of cargo containers. Virtually all American cities lack plans for how to deal with nuclear terrorism.

[SamReidHughes]

Here's a different take on "Israeli-style" security: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1909154

Nuclear terrorism is not a realistic scenario, if only because it's much easier and much more terrorific to have a bunch of quadrotors dropping poison-tipped darts on a city.