> On last night's Letterman, the first since last Tuesday, that
> arch-leftist Dan Rather said of the US:
>
> "We do have a terribly swift sword, and it will be striking very soon."
>
come on now! the man burst into tears towards the end of the show... to criticize such a sensitive soul is just not cricket. the more hardened amongst us prefer stronger expression, such as ann coulter at national review:
http://www.nationalreview.com/coulter/coulter.shtml
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This is no time to be precious about locating the exact individuals directly involved in this particular terrorist attack. Those responsible include anyone anywhere in the world who smiled in response to the annihilation of patriots like Barbara Olson. <...>
The nation has been invaded by a fanatical, murderous cult. And we welcome them. We are so good and so pure we would never engage in discriminatory racial or "religious" profiling. <...>
Airports scrupulously apply the same laughably ineffective airport harassment to Suzy Chapstick as to Muslim hijackers. It is preposterous to assume every passenger is a potential crazed homicidal maniac. We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now. <...> We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war.
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there are many fascinating parts to this report. my personal favourite is the "convert them to christianity" part.
in defense of those of us reporting what happened on letterman last night, cbs is pretty much all you can get here in the nyc region if you do not have cable. not that there are wonderful things to watch on cable, but i do long for the days i could enjoy watching charlie rose flirt and giggle at julia roberts on PBS...
--ravi
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- man is said to be a rational animal. i do not know why he has not been defined as an affective or feeling animal. more often i have seen a cat reason than laugh or weep. perhaps it weeps or laughs inwardly - but then perhaps, also inwardly, the crab resolves equations of the 2nd degree. -- alasdair macintyre.