Shiva,
As usual I don't disagree with you.
Something that you mentioned but didn't expand upon though:
You correctly point out that Bin Laden is wanted by the Justice department for the Embassy bombings.
Why is he not wanted for September 11th? The answer is simple:

There's not enough evidence linking Bin Laden to September 11th to bring in front of a Grand Jury, yet we've conducted 2 wars, altered our foreign policy, and shredded our own Constitution on the assumption that he's the man responsible.
This is not to suggest that Osama merely needs a good hug, but it does illustrate how irresponsible it is to go off half-cocked before you get your facts straight.

If we can't even prove satisfactorily before a grand jury that he did it, how on earth can we justify invading multiple sovereign nations in order to apprehend him?

And furthermore, if we lack the evidence to put him behind bars for Sept. 11th, what on earth are we supposed to do with him if we ever did get our hands on him? Just try and convict him for the embassy bombings and hope nobody notices that there was no mention of Sept 11th?

I've got a novel concept: Let's prove to our satisfaction that he actually *did it* before blundering off into even more follies after him.

__________________
"Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain"- Iowa state motto
-Proof-hunter

Ventura/ Paul '12

I have often pointed out this fact and yes, if we capture bin Ladin we would have to press the 1998 Embassy bombing charges and not for 9/11. Of course people would notice that no 9/11 charges were filed and I would love to see how our government attempts to explain it.

__________________
Soldiers swear to protect and defend the Constitution with their lives.

Politicians swear to protect and defend the Constitution with someone else's life.

I don't like the idea of treating the war on terror as a criminal investigation. It's a war that needs to be won. The terrorists are not a few thugs setting off bombs randomly. They are highly trained and highly organized and well financed and have the guidance and support/protection of actual governments in the middle east.

As for a trial against Osama. I hope the US would not take a chance on some Johnnie Cochran type shucking and jiving that monster out of trouble. I hope if they ever get a chance to capture him he is killed in the process very publicly and very gruesomely.

Crimson Mask,
No offense, but I don't care what you "like". The pertinent question is "what is our government authorized to do in accordance with the Constitution".
The issue is that we cannot prove that Osama had anything at all to do with September 11th, yet our policy is founded in the assumption that he's responsible. We're flying blind here. Doesn't that fact bother you?

__________________
"Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain"- Iowa state motto
-Proof-hunter

Ventura/ Paul '12

Osama and al queda have admitted to and taken credit for 9/11.

Fact-check that statement and get back to me. Here's a fun fact: An admission of guilt is adequate for an indictment.

__________________
"Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain"- Iowa state motto
-Proof-hunter

Ventura/ Paul '12

We're not fighting it like a war or conducting it like a police investigation, though. We're basing our intelligence on politics and our tactics on long-term occupation of foreign soil.

As for the OP, I agree.

__________________
"I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center." - Kurt Vonnegut

The number of individuals that have or would commit acts of terrorism is actually very small worldwide. We must also recognize that the United States cannot prevent any and all terrorist acts in the world and that we need to focus on terrorist attacks against the United States which further limits the number of individuals that we should be concerned with. The total number of individuals that have carried out actual terrorist attacks against the United States is less than 100 individuals including the planning and execution of those attacks. Certainly this is a number that can easily be addressed by law enforcement efforts.

__________________
Soldiers swear to protect and defend the Constitution with their lives.

Politicians swear to protect and defend the Constitution with someone else's life.

The distinction between terrorism on the one hand, and war on the other, is a fallacious one as has been alluded to previously. In effect, the rich and powerful nations of the world dictate the rules and ideology under which international relations are played out so as to reinforce and maintain their position of domination and subjugation of the poor and powerless. If these rules and ideological boundaries are not adhered to and the weak take it upon themselves to organize their own societies along lines that they themselves directly benefit, then the rich and powerful nations of the world will wage war on the poor and powerless as a means of re-establishing the pre-existing uneven relations of power, and hence a pretext for the theft of their resources will be established.

Historically, a multitude of reasons and excuses have been given by the rich and powerful as a means of justifying their continued domination and subjugation of the poor and powerless and the theft of their things - humanitarian interventionism, liberation, democracy, defeating communism and terrorism etc. But here's the rub. All self-respecting and dignified people the world over who suffer at the hands of those waging wars upon them, are compelled to resist and fight back against their oppression. Thus, the rich and powerful are then in a position of being able to demonize their poor and powerless adversaries by labelling then "terrorists" - a subjective phrase that has lost all meaning.

If this logic is followed through, then those who resisted Hitler fascism during WW2 ought to also be accorded with the "terrorist" label. But of course, they weren't. Why? Because they were perceived by the rich and powerful as fighting on behalf of "democracy" and "freedom" as opposed to fighting in an attempt to undermine it, as the Iraqi's for example are perceived as doing now.

So to summarize, when the rich and powerful use all their military might in their attempts to crush national resistance movements, they refer to this as "war". However, when the poor and powerless fight back against this oppression, the rich label the perpetrators "terrorists". The victims of state terrorism, in other words, are portrayed as the perpetrators of terrorism, whilst the real perpetrators are portrayed as the victims. This is truelly an Orwellian twist on reality.

Peter Ustinov in remarking on this phenomenon famously said:

"War is the terrorism of the rich and powerful, and terrorism is the war of the poor and powerless".

This expresses the situation in a nutshell.