I just read a news item saying that US Special Forces have made incursions into Iran, to get intel on nuclear processing plants capable of making weapons grade uranium. I don't know if that's true, but I think that given the WMD issue (and then some), we should be very careful whom we should believe. And I fully agree with you: these bumper magnets don't help anyone but their manufacturers and vendors. Maybe worst of all is the fact that they perpetuate the idea that continued presence of US and other troops in the region will be necessary for years to come. Almost a kind of 'hearts & minds' campaign in America's main streets to bias or consolidate public opinion at home. You sure this bumper magnet isn't one of The Firm's little tactics, can these magnets be traced by satellite? Sorry about that, I must be reading too many spy stories

But the whole thing reminds me of the following: in the early nineties, Margareth Thatcher was extremely unpopular because of her unbending policy aimed at breaking the dreaded British trade unions (I once got thrown off a bus in London, because its driver and his 'clippie' -the person who sells bus tickets in the back- spontaneously decided to join a strike right there and then).

Then suddenly and almost overnight, her popularity soared, and for years afterwards she was almost regarded as a latter-day pop star because she had transformed and redirected the widespread feelings of national discontent into a wave of unprecedented patriottism when she declared war on the Argentinians over the Falklands. I was in London at the time, and witnessed the sudden change of the otherwise stiff-upper-lip Brits into a unified bunch of raving loonies, ready to maim and slaughter any Argentine that crossed their path. That most of them didn't have a clue as to where the Falkland Islands were, didn't seem too much of a problem.

In politics, fear is a powerful motivator, and declaring war on a real or perceived threat can fool the majority of the electorate into thinking that they have been given a enabling instrument with which to counter these disconcerting feelings, a kind of pyscholgical pacifier if you will. However, the information we're getting doesn't come directly from UBL or any other terrorist organization, but reaches us mainly via western media and government channels. I for one don't see how fighting an ever-expanding war in the Middle-East can effectively prevent terrorists from blowing up civil targets in our own backyards, no matter what CBS, CNN, BBC et al want to make me believe.

BTW, what's with the hummer armour or lack thereof? Big hug, -Wil