Terrorist Mohamed Atta's driver's license headshot became one of the world's most viewed images. The picture showed a hard, steely-eyed, malevolent figure. Jared Lee Loughner's mug shot has been nearly as ubiquitous. It reveals a vacant-eyed, awkwardly-smiling killer, whose eyebrows and hair have, a la The Wall's 'Pink,' gone missing along with his mind. The former is the face of evil; the latter, the picture of crazy. Yet, as I write in my article @ FrontPageMag, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton equated the act of a lunatic with the decades-long campaign of jihadists on Arab television.

This may seem off topic, but it's not really:

V really sucks this season.

OMG, no kidding. Take a great premise and make it super sloooooooooooooooowwww...

And yeah, totally off topic. However, Hillary does have a certain "lizardlike" quality to her.

It's not off topic, but I don't want to give any spoilers.

The original, last season, and this season, V has always sucked Homer. V makes the X-files look like a good TV show.

Haha, yeah probably. I watched the original as a pre-teen. Still a great premise (although definitely not "hard" science fiction).

You guys should read, "Illegal Alien" (not what you think!) by Robert J. Sawyer, sometime.

O.J. Simpson trial meets Close encounters...I kid you not.

There really is no equivalence between Mohamed Atta and Jared Loughner. From all indications Mr. Loughner was lone gun man who is likely crazy by any rational definition. On the other hand Mohamed Atta is best understood as a soldier in a a military. Furthermore Mr. Atta is best understod as a military commander within this military structure. The best way to understand Al Qaeda the organization he worked for is a military, much like our army. The command structure may be somewhat different than how we think of a military command structure but for all practical purposes Al Qaeda is a military operation. In addition, the decades long campaigns of Jihadists you speak of are best understood as military operations.

Furthermore there seems to be no comparison between the actions of the AZ gun man and the actions of Al Qaeda on 911. The actions of the AZ gun man seem to be the actions of a lone man whose only real purpose was to kill people and perhaps to seek fame for himself. There seems to be no real purpose beyond that. The actions of Al Qaeda on 911 involved hijacking commercial airliners and using them as weapons to destroy important targets in America. The goal was to destroy America's economy, its government, and cripple its miliatary. Al Qaeda's operations on 911 are best understood as a military operation.

In summary, the actions of Al Qaeda and other Jihadists are military operations whose purpose is to gain political power and to spread Islam and as we can see they wil use force if necessary. Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, and others are militaries that the Jihadists use to further their political and religous goals. The actions of the AZ seem to be a lone man with no organized political agenda nor did he have a military structure or troops under his command as Mt. Atta did.

Post 911 President Bush and his team recognized this as what it is. Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorists are part of a military operation. As such, they understood this is NOT and CANNOY be a police operation hence they launched the "War on terror."

Now having said this where they made mistakes was they failed to understand that with a military it has countries who support it. This leads to yet another difference between the AZ gun man and Al Qaeda. The AZ gun man was not backed up by any national governments that we know of whereas Atta and his team recieved substantial support from a number of governments. Essentially they Bush Administration focused on a "stateless group of terrorists." They failed to properly name the states who support Al Qaeda or take any serious action against nation who is the main culprit.

Furthermore the term "war on terror" is completely ridiculous. Its a bit like in the wake of the Japense attack on Pearl Harbor we had declared a "war on aviation." While we understood that this is a war, we didn't properly name the enemy nor did we have a frank discussion of what drives the enemy!! Now what should have happened, IF we were going to go to war, 15 of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia is the chief sponsor of Sunni inspired Islamic terrorism around the world. Was should have been declared against Saudi Arabia and that government should have been liquidated and the oil fields should have been siezed and placed under our control or destroyed. War should have been declared against Afghanistan as well, since this was the home of Osama Bin Laden and an important training ground for Al Qaeda. The Tailban should have been liquidated and the nation's resources seized or destroyed.

As for Iraq, while I can emphasize with decision the decision to invade the nation especially given the intellegence we had on the country former President Clinton, a potential President Gore, or anyone else might have made the same decision the Bush Administration made. Unfortuately much of the intellegence turned out to be wrong. Its easy to criticize in hindsight on this. In addition, the invaison of Iraq may have distracted us from Afghanistan and may have caused us not focus on the main enemy which
is Saudi Arabia who we have yet to formally admit is an enemy!!

There's probably a better way to handle the problem of Islamic Jihad than war with Saudi Arabia but that's liekly beyond the scope of Mr. Flynn's post. In summary, Mr. Loughner appears to be a lone gun man who is mentally unbalanced by any clinical or rational definition. Mr. Atta was a military commander in a military who has/had the backing of many nations. As such, Mt. Atta is a soldier in the military of an enemy. Mr. Atta also appears to be quite sane.

There is no comparison between Islamic Jihadists and the AZ gunman. To suggest there is a comparion between them is quite frankly stupid and even insulting to the intellegence of most people. Sorry about the length or rmabling nature of this post.

Wow, B. Poster, right on target. Very good summary (in my opinion) of the difference between a terrorist and a mentally ill attention seeker.

I'm glad you contributed and it was hardly a ramble (especially compared to some of the stuff the rest of us...No Homer, not you!...have written here). Kudos!