[mburbank]

Kev; I think we can find common ground in the desperate hope that the next administration is nothing like this one. I think this one is tainted, stupid, egotistical and hamfisted, a very bad combo platter.

"1. Do you think these innocent people are being targeted, or are they being targeted due to reasonable suspicion or cause? "

Dude... (and I hate to say dude, but you made me) how about neither? Almost no one from soldier on the ground to policy maker ever thinks of themselves as a supervillian. Of course they are not being targeted. That in no way means that our causes and suspicions are reasonable. In our fairly recent history we trained, funded and in some cases fought alongside right wing death squads all over south and central America. We engineered a coup in Argenina and at very least turned a blind eye to the assasination of their president. Why in the world would you think we've gotten over that kind of behavior? We didn't do all the evil shit for the sake of being evil, we talked ourselves into thinking we had reasonable suspicions and causes. Any time we send soldiers to places where they don't get intense media scrutiny should send up red flags, not because we are evil, but because the nature of unfettered, unobserved power is abusive.