>Yes.  Note that you again refused to address the issue.  This time you
>went back two messages to find something to dispute that you didn't deem
>worthy of comment in your orginal response.

   I reject your claim that Al Qaeda has a list of "legitimate" grievances,
if for no other reason than because, though you claim they do, you have not
been able to list what they are. And I reject your claim that it is a
"legitimate" objective for Al Qaeda to "dismantle" the Saudi regime because
you have not shown that to be the desire of the Saudi people.  Al Qaeda's
objective would be to install a regime that is as, or even more, oppressive.
Attempting to lend legitimacy to Al Qaeda by parsing their objective so that
'good' bits can be gleaned from a bad whole is nothing more than an exercise
in obfuscation. You accuse me of refusing to address the issue, yet you
refuse to support your claim that Al Qaeda has a list of legitimate
grievances by presenting such a list.

>Obviously, if we really want to solve the problem of terrorism, rather
>than just kill or imprison the current crop of terrorists, we have to
>understand how and why terrorism arises, and where there are legitimate
>grievances, we must deal with those grievances.  It is also obvious that
>if we hope to prevent an organization from achieving its objectives by
>use of terrorism, we need to know what those objectives are.

  We are speaking of the legitimate grievances, objectives, and causes you
say Al Qaeda has -- not terrorist organizations in general. And no, obviously
the Allied countries did not enter into WWII to prevent the killing of Jews,
Gypsies, "defectives", or homosexuals. Not sure how you think this relevant,
but okay.

>I note that now you are not including Taliban.  Bravo.  Social
>consciousness rising.

   I will point out to you what I previously pointed out to Bill Bartlett. In
the very first sentence of the very first paragraph of my very first response
to the original post in this thread, I differentiated between the Taliban and
the members of Al Qaeda. I have not changed that approach.

>  But stick to the issue.  The issue here is what
>the treatment of the prisoners of war represents, what it reveals, what
>it means.  These prisoners are being held under no legal system - not
>the US legal system, not the Geneva Conventions, not under the auspices
>of the UN, not under authority of the world court - no system of justice
>at all.  They are being held at Guantanamo precisely so that no legal
>system will apply to them.  What this means is that the US is
>deliberately operating as a lawless state.  It is not operating as a
>"nation of laws."  It is responsible to no one.

  You mean stick to the issue you wish to pursue. I have already addressed
the issue I raised, which is that the prisoners are not being treated
inhumanely. I am now simply entertaining your argument. So, the only dispute
that seems to be of any note is what the status of the prisoners is to be,
POWs or 'detainees' (whatever that means, legally). Apparently, the Taliban
are to be viewed as POWs, and those identified as Al Qaeda members are to be
held as "unlawful combatants". I assume that at some point, when hostilities
are declared to be at an end, the POWs will be returned. The "unlawful
combatants" will probably go to trial. At this time both captors and captives
fall under US law and are subject to any international law they are
signatories(?) to. Have any US or International laws been violated? If so,
which -- or are they simply in dispute?

Yours,
Issodhos
p.s.  Frank, hope you appreciate that I trimmed my response to a more
manageable bandwidth.