By the way: based on your minimal level of personal awesomeness, I would rank you more as a Curly-Joe DeRita.

But how are we to get people from those countries that threaten us to consider our way of life a possibility, enticing enough to change the internal politics, worth a noble effort even, if we cannot even respect the Geneva Convention? The “war on terror” cannot be won from the outside. We can't find Osama Bin Laden. Guess what? We never will, no matter how many Muslims we fake-drown, especially if the only “valuable information” we get from them is that he's down the street at Denny's ordering a Moon Over My Hammy. Most reports conclude that valuable information we thought we had was no more credible than Curveball's first volley of reportage. We know how well that worked out.

You are entitled to your opinion, just as Jon is. But the numbers, the hard numbers, indicate the full frontal assault has produced nothing in the way of intel or extra protection. If we are to really win the “war on terror” we have to present ourselves as a better, more noble ideal. Only then would those inside Iran, Pakhistan and Afghanistan even bother to consider defying their oppressors, the poppy guards that enforce religious fanaticism on their people, all the while bodyguarding opium and heroin farms. Only those people, once instilled with a role model worth following, know where Bin Laden is and, ultimately, only they will deal with him. We can preach all we want, but if our deeds betray our words, all the opposition's propaganda about us being bloodthirsty liars is but a self-fulfilling prophecy.