It is probably safe to say that we are being watched - in a Bloopers and Practical Jokes sense. Take a trip through the Islamic world, and I am in the moderate part of it now; we look pretty funny to them right now.
Originally Posted by etch5895
'What evidence do you have, other than your imagination?!?'
None whatsoever. My theory is just that: a theory, an educated guess, a probability based on our current world situation.
I'm not one, however, to just ignore the likelihood that we are being watched. Not like McCarthyism with a commie behind every tree, but by patient, intelligent people who are either being well paid or are zealous enough in their religious beliefs to want to harm us. The fact that the British caught these people in the UK preparing for an attack should indicate that there are plans afoot. Or the person arrested in Germany for putting a bomb on the train that did not go off. These people are out there.
Indeed, the misguided and apparently not very bright blokes in the UK believed (or at least the one who did the video believed it) that they had a workable plan to bring down airplanes. However, the fact that they blogged about for months would indicate some possibility that there might also have been an attempt to impress friends / maybe some girls? Once again, we are not talking about the brightest lights on the block here. They must not have done much research on their plan, otherwise they would have known the Ramzi Yousef actually exploded a nitroglycerin (much worse than TATP) bomb under the window seat of an airplane and was only successful in killing the poor Japanese businessman in the seat...everybody else landed safely in the plane.
Originally Posted by etch5895
Al Qaeda is a cancer, and we are helping to spread it with our foreign policy. But I still don't want to see anymore people of this world get killed by religious whackos who think that killing people who believe in a different fairy tale is a morally sound thing to do.
I agree that Al Qaeda needs to be removed and that as long as people like that exist that we all need to be vigilant. However, jumping at shadows and then reacting by using a shotgun approach to security is not helpful.
And if we continue to overreact to lame-brained threats by restricting individual liberties further, then Al Qaeda has already won the war...hasn't it.