WEEKEND OPEN FORUM: What's on your mind?

Post comments below on any issue you want. The only limitations: the ground rules listed at the left and your own imagination. I'll reply when appropriate. Have fun. dc

(If you wish your comment to be considered for publication in the newspaper, copy it into an e-mail and send it to opinions@thesunnews.com. Please add your address and phone number to the e-mail so we can contact you for verification. The size limit for letters is 150 words.)

Post comments below on any issue you want. The only limitations: the ground rules listed at the left and your own imagination. I'll reply when appropriate. Have fun. dc

(If you wish your comment to be considered for publication in the newspaper, copy it into an e-mail and send it to opinions@thesunnews.com. Please add your address and phone number to the e-mail so we can contact you for verification. The size limit for letters is 150 words.)

Comments

[Dr. James E. Dunn]

The hostage and terror situation in Mumbai (formally Bombay), India suggests a dramatic alteration in this, and in every other nation’s, approach to dealing with these “terrorists” attacks!

Moreover, there was no powerful terrorist group that didn’t have some particular nation from which is launches its terror attacks, and, for the most part, these attacks were definitely not against innocent civilians.

This has all changed with the advent of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups who have the same philosophy and religion, however, as we are now beginning to discover!

These so-called terrorists plot to “hit” any country when the government disagrees with Right Wing Moslem religious teachings of these groups, and they don’t really care what people they hurt.

They are all united in their morbid causes, and the have hurt, among some other people, common citizens of the United States, Spain, Great Britain, Russia, the Philippines, and now India.

Each nation has done its own investigation of these terrorist attacks, but absolutely no one - including the United States in Afghanistan - has broken up and/or severely hurt any of these terrorist groups.

This is because the “traditional” approach of defeating a people insidiously bent on your and my destruction will not work with this group.

Although they all agree with one another philosophically, they are not united into one unit as any nation’s army might be; they will all kill you and me if we dare to disagree with them, however.

The only way for us in the United States to defeat this radical group of Moslems is to STRONGLY UNITE with each other nation in this effort; and the rest of the civilized world is long past ready.

And this is exactly what the United Nations was created to accomplish.

Therefore, it is long past time the United States brought this before the United Nations, and recommends that a special task force to thwart this evil and sinful force of madmen be set up, and special rules for the ultimate demise of these madmen be agreed upon by all the nations in the U.N.!!!

Dr. James E. Dunn

[Moofy]

Hey Doc; I read that those Afghanastanianites are stockpiling up on opium. The drug is in such over-abundance supplies that a lot is being put aside for future sales for their part of the war effort.

Question; would "red-blooded" Americans who use drugs from opium products, whether legally or illegally, be labeled as aiding and abetting these terrorists?

[Dr. James E. Dunn]

Moofy:

I don't really think that they are aiding the terrorists by selling cocaine and heroin to the same people that the terrorists are trying to kill.

Moreover, the terrorists are very ridged about their Moslem religion, and that religion strong rejects drug use.

I might be wrong, but I don't think I am.

DrJED

[Sunny Fry]

Dr. Dunn, I believe the issue of terrorism has been brought up before the UN. Like a lot of times. For decades.

http://www.un.org/terrorism/

Just so you know.

[Sunny Fry]

One more thing.

Drugs are commonly used to finance paramilitary groups. It's the largest cash crop of Afghanistan.

[Dr. James E. Dunn]

Sunny:

Thanks for the information about the U.N.

Previous terror groups have been a single entity, but al Qaeda is just a small part of a much larger splinter group of Moslem fanatics.

They span from the Phillipines in the east to Morrocco in the west, and from the former Soviet republics in the north to the Sudan in the south.

Though they don't work together as a single group, they ALL have the same philosophy; everyone who doesn't believe as they do dies!

They are not in the U.N., however, because they are not a nation, and when the U.N. gets its act together they may be defeated, but not until then!

What they might do is get the Pakastanies to go to war with the Indians, which is the prime reason the did what they did.

And I was aware that Afghanistan's main source of funds is the poppy.

And I really wonder just what Bush is doing over there now anyway, as we don't vigorously hunt down bin Laden!?

We are building a democracy based upon the poppy!

Dr. James E. Dunn

[Tom Davis]

I miss Lewis Grizzard very much. I was lucky enough to meet Lewis in 1982 and got to know him pretty well; in fact, we became friends ... for a decade until his too-early death in 1994 at the age of 47 Lewis wrote an (approximate) 15-inch column that appeared in about 450 newspapers nationally four times a week. Lewis was good, Lewis was funny and Lewis was usually right.

Once after his beloved Georgia BULL 'Dawgs lost to hated-rival Georgia Tech Lewis set what MUST BE a record for the shortest (in words) national column on record for American journalism. Above approximately 14 3/4 inches of TOTALLY BLANK SPACE ... right under his photo and byline was one sentence: "I don't want to talk about it."

That was it; his entire column that day.

Yesterday's UGA-GA Tech game well might have killed Lewis if his bad heart-valve hadn't beaten the Engineers to it ... and Lewis' sentiment in the aforementioned post-game column is SHARED BY ME with regard to the Clemson Tiger's smackdown of my equally beloved (as Lewis loved his 'dawgs) University of South Carolina Gamecocks on Saturday. Thus, this venue will be my last word on the matter. Should ANYONE question me on my opinion of the game it's not only my intention but a promise they will be directed to Denney's blog, where upon investigation ... if they're still reading my entry this deep into its submittal they will know that "I", too ... like Lewis once famously wrote, also "don't want to talk about it."

I miss you, Lewis and really wish you were still here. I'd drive to St. Simons to meet my old friend and buy you a beer at Poor Stephen's. We wouldn't have to talk.

[jim sefter]

Tom, for what it's worth, I too miss Lewis. He was a TRUE Southerner.Although I have no ties to either school, I feel for you.
js

[Denney Clements]

I love Grizzard's work too, especially its incisiveness and its conciseness. He sure mastered the art of say8ing a lot with just a few words -- a skill on which I, at 65, am still working.

dc

p.s. Sorry about yesterday's outcome, Tom. I don't have a dog in that fight, being a University of Illinois man (that school has its own special set of sports agonies). But I watched the game and was amazed and depressed at how a team as talented as Carolina could not mentally get on top of the game.

[Dr. James E. Dunn]

I don't understand the conflict between Pakistan and India about what just tragically happened in Mumbai, India.

Of course some of the terrorists were Pakistanie terrists, and there were other terrorists from several other nations, as well.

The reason the terrorists remnain anonymous is because they wanted to cause a high level of conflict between India and Pakinstan, and right now they are very nearly getting their wish!

Instead, if India and Pakistan were to join forces and really get after these terrorists, we would begin to make progress at ridding to world of these fanatics!!!

DrJED