well, duke, a couple of things on your post. unlike most everyone on this board i am not totally anti-bush. i don't think he's the greatest president we will ever have but maybe not the worst. anyhow, the speech written after the incident? people are payed at the white house to be able to spout out speeches like that in a small amount of time. and the president awkwardly pausing while making the speech? one who reads a speech for the first time having had it delivered to them moments before taking the podium is bound to make some pauses and errors. not to sound malicious but get over the conspiracy theory. why is it so ubelievable that a known terrorist who claimed he was planning an attack on the US three weeks prior to the WTC incident and was also known to be training his cohorts in the art of jet flight? now understand that i am not a patriot. for the most part what mud said about nationalism and patriotism is true for me as well. i mourn the loss of life as i mourn the loss of life from the unnecessary bombings of nagasaki and hiroshima. i will not change my religious practice and bow my head because of this. i will not change my political stance and sing the national anthem when i get no satisfaction from it. but i give the nation in which i reside and its CEO the benefit of the doubt. who knows? maybe it is a "wag the dog" case taken a bit farther but until i see some hard evidence of that, two planes crashing into the WTC is enough for me to point a finger at terrorism. and about terrorism, where were bin ladin's demands when he bombed the american embassies in africa? terrorism's goal is suggested in its name. to strike terror in its target. now i don't know the exact definition of 'terrorism' but terror is defined as: a state of intense fear. -ism is defined as: act, practice, or process. thusly i assume it to mean the act, practice or process of causing an state of intense fear. which has been accomplished by whomever did this deed. but maybe i'm just simple.

that's it.