I'm sure they realize that Bush has no real interest in human rights..

Nice, Bitt. If people have the opinion that Bush is not a human rights advocate, fine. But to claim that someone would "realize" that he has "no real interest in human rights" is stating it as if it were fact. Whatever.

About the "illegal combatants," I think it's similar to the abortion fiasco. Here's how I see that issue and how it applies (in my mind) to the War on Terror.

Basically, I think that people agree on 90% of the issue but neither side is good at explaining the other 10.. Sure, with abortion, you have your NWO fanatics and right-wing cooks who are into the issue for pure power grabs (and the politicians who pander to them), but when you come down to it, the only thing that rational people disagree on is when life begins. Granted, that bullet point is a really hard one to prove one way or another (or is it?) but people tend to agree on just about everything else... (ie, no "Pro Choice" person would walk up to a 1 month old baby girl and stick a shaft of metal in her brain and no "Pro Life" person would seriously think that the government has any right to deem what is legal for a woman to do with her own body.) So, except for the sticky issue of when life begins, there is a lot of common ground...

A similar case with the war on terror... Besides the "Bush haters" who are still upset over the election of 2000 and others who are just hopeless party liners, I think that the "War on Terrorism" has one major point that people are not seeing eye to eye on and that is the concept of "War." Some people look at what is going on in the world and are worried that it might bring about WWIII. But there are others in the intelligence community who think that this is World War 4 and the Western World just realized it. You see, WW3 was the Cold War and Democracy and Capitolism (no need to appologize for being capitolists, none of us would have computers or empegs if we didn't live in a capitolist world) won that war. If you look back at all the weird stuff that went down after WWII, none of it makes sense until you look at the big picture. And when you look at the big picture, horrible acts by the CIA don't seem so bad as a communist state.

For example, many people think Afghanistan was pointless (in the 80's) or Korea or Vietnam. But if you look at the big picture, those things added up to Communism's fall. So did McDonald's in Moscow. Back to WW4 (current day)...

Likewise, some people look at 9/11 as a "day" when in fact, it was an act of war. And that war had been going on since the late 70's but we never knew it. I hate to break it to some of you, but radical Islam, however small a percentage of Islam as a whole, wants us destroyed. They do not want us out of Holy Lands, they do not want a sweet trade agreement - they want us 6 feet under. This isn't like releasing a German Nazi at the end of WWII. A terrorist isn't going to just go home and thank Allah it's over. Rather he is going to plot your destruction.

And I think that's the major issue that people don't see eye to eye on. Some people think that 9/11 was a single event while others know (and I say KNOIW because it's clear as day if you pay attention) that this is an on going War. No, it is not the West vs. Islam, because without our Muslim allies, we wouldn't be doing as good as we are. But it IS democracy and freedom vs. terror.

And to boot, I think that we are winning finally. Have you seen how many Al-Kinda ranking officials we have captured or killed? And best of all, we have a democracy on the way in Afghanistan and another in Iraq. Those two countries just so happen to border that largest financer of terrorism: Iran which is also at the point of imploding. I don't think that it will happen as quickly as it did with Eastern Europe, but I see this spreading through the Mid-East. There are enough people in the world that are sick of terrorists hijacking their religion and who also want the simple right to vote. Damn, even Saudi Arabia had its first election within the last week. So if some people out there are all in a hissy fit because the government has the ability to find out that you download porn or shop at Amazon.com then that person is either failing to see the big picture or is simply too wrapped up in their own political mindset to think rationally. (The real test to find out "who" is "what" is to see if they are happy when there is good news about the war on terror or pissed because it's happening during President Bush's stay in office.

Yet, like I said earlier, except for the people who are still mad that Gore didn't win the election or who live for redistribution of wealth (and thank God they are a minority) I think that most people agree on 90% of the issue. This is the first time that I've writen this out (been chewing on it for quite a while) so I'm sorry if I'm a bit scattered in explaining. I never took a debate class.

BTW: I voted for Nader.

EDIT: Re-reading that, I realized that there was no need to bring up the abortion debate as a comparison. And even though I just wrote where I think each side is coming from without taking a stand either way, please don't go OT with it, start a new thread if you're that passionate about it!