Well said Jamie...I simply wish you could ramp up the volume without becoming another media idiot. By "volume," I mean" laser-focused decisiveness. I've studied the tribal mess of AfghsnPeshwarPakistan since even before "Three Cups of Tea." I've studied as an academic who just missed getting the last call for Vietnam. And I've had the benefit of in-country assets who were great friends...and veterans of Vietnam. Tora Bora was our chance to finish the job of killing Bin Laden while we were still welcomed as guests. It has been wrong ever since, terribly murderously wrong. And it is Vietnam part DUH- We launch a Crusade (yes, that IS the word), we install Saigon-serial puppets (Chalabi/Perv/Karzai) and we're transformed into the hated infidels.

It is GAME OVER. It is TIME to EXIT...for all the sound reasons in your NPR interview. But even you and your host avoided the cultural issues, the vast void we simply don't "get." Jeez, now even the STRYKERS are blowing up. And whatever teacups of welcome we had earned, now they are bomb-shattered shards. And they slice through the jugulars of our sons and daughters with every IED, with every passing day spent straddling the fence while insisting "we lose wither way." Try to float that intellectual tap dance up here where we just buried Army Pfc. Jeremiah Monroe, our neighbor-- http://www.poststar.com/articles/2009/09/26/news/local/doc4abe659be7fd6438863155.txt

I can't hit the pause, not in a small adirondack corner where We All Feel The Loss.

-Bless 'em all, Bring 'em Home,
Kyle York
Saratoga Springs

Thank your for your painfully personal passion to set the record correct. My local community swarms with "Truthers"... and yet I remain thankful that this is still America. And STILL The Home of the Brave.

The Brave. Like my brother who personally oversaw the evacuation of his floor of Building 7... and no, his corner office columns were never wrapped in detonation explosives. No, he walked the entire floor one last time before following his co-workers down the stairway.

The Brave. Like my friend FBI Agent John O'Neill who was last seen going up Tower 2 to rescue the victims, most already dead.

The Brave . Like my friend who took the pictures of the North side of Building 7 with two floors ablaze and a company of firefighters who had been turned away, dejected and disgusted. I was the one who posted the photo on a Truther's blog... a photo now widely spread and attributed to an "anonymous" source.

The Brave. Our friends and quiet anonymous neighbors who boarded planes for flights to see those they loved, those they laughed with. Those they left with broken hearts and shattered worlds.

The Brave. Like those of us who have a general grasp of the killers, a motivated and meticulous team of religious zealots, murderers all. We've learned the names of the guilty, names which do not include "Cheney" or "Rumsfeld."

The Brave. We who continue to hunt for Bin Laden and all Al Qaeda brethren committed to killing more Americans. We realize that for all of our government's lies of the past, we remain focused on the realities at hand. For all our shortcomings, we know the value of a "Canary in the Coalmine"... and the perverse Prairie Dog Panic of the delusional "Truthers."

Yes, it is always wise to know the failings and the propaganda of our nation's darker moments. Better still to understand the history of the Mideast, the meaning of Jihad, and the extreme underpinnings of the Wahabi followers of Abd al-Wahhab... the Saudi Arabian sect of Islam that took unspeakable terror into the skies on September 11, 2001.

It haunts us still. And it hunts us with a bloodlust.

Vietnam has been ringing in my ears since Powell gave his UN show on "mobile WMD trailers"... the things that turned out to be hydrogen generators for tethered observation balloons. It was "The USS Maddox" redux, all over again. We installed our trademark clumsy puppets, Thieu/Perv/Karzai. Then the soldier's hell of fighting an enemy who blended into the "friendlies." Outnumbered, enter the total reliance upon air power. Finally, we lose all support in the errant bombs and collateral damage. Nothing hit home so hard as the recent documentary on Pete Seeger and his Smothers' Brothers segment where he sang "Big Muddy," delivered with a passion and a fire showing that not one day had passed between Twiggy and Twitter.