And you are worried about the government tapping (Page 2)

I like that.

I also like the other poster that commented about how despite our troops fighting for our freedom overseas, the POTUS is taking them away here. Maybe they should turn their guns on the real enemy.  

But G the II said he had WMD's when many of us knew he didn't. The place (Iraq) was crawling with CIA, DIA, UN Inspectors(many  who were prior US military officers) aerial surveillance, etc. Just how was he to launch this proposed attack against us?

But Tyrant don't miss my point here and that is that our current enemy (Muslem terrorist) doesn't hate us because of our constitution or our form of Gov. It's much deeper than that and G the II knows it, he just won't confront it. When it's all said and done we will know that Saddam was really a non-player in this part of world history.

Huh. I thought we were in it for the oil. 

There's a much larger geopolitical dynamic at work in the mid-east than whether Syrians want their teens watching MTV.

A very simplistic overview:

About 100 years ago, the Ottoman Empire was in the final stages of decay. The victors of WWI carved up the remains of the Ottoman Empire (the Ottomans picked the wrong side to back in WWI), creating the relatively new nations we see in the Middle East. (The Kurds, a huge ethnic group, were split into 5 different nations and we are still seeing much discord as a result.) Some people in the Middle East see the European-created nations as illegitimate and arbitrary. There are collective, cultural - BIG culture, not minor nationalities - egos yearning for a return to Ottoman glories.

You really have to read at least one history book on the topic to get an appreciation for the dynamics at play. This is not a holy war; that's a superficial, simplistic, knee-jerk and historically ignorant view of the forces at play.  Geopolitical tectonic plates are moving and grinding against each other and we are experiencing the resultant earthquakes and upheaval.

Okay, I am going to sway clear of the political debate about the issues surrounding the Middle East as this thread is probably already being watched by big brother because of all the 'key' words and phrases used......

Back to the original $150.00 for your phone history.....

I the USA and in some larger centres here in Canada, anyone can go into a RadioShak type store and buy a scanner.  that scanner can then be used to listen to every phone conversation you are making on a cordless phone or a cell phone.  No need to just see a list of numbers, you can hear the entire content.

Did I mention that most store clerks will show you haw to set up the scanner to be able to access this info.....  A trained monkey can do it.

Take this one step further, with these same scanners, people can listen to Police, Ambulance, Fire and Military communications.  Don't think it's true, well tell me why the media always know where to go for the Breaking News story? 

Tyler,

I see this claim of holy war within the same context that Spanish Catholicism was used to unify the bickering, disparate kingdoms within Spain in order to finally throw the Moors out of Spain during Isabel & Ferdinand's reign. Religion was used as a pretext for unifying the nation to accomplish national goals.

Spain had trouble throwing out the Moors because the princes bickered and lacked unity. Isabel used Catholicism as a rallying point to bring them together and create one unified nation with a national identity wrapped around the Roman Catholic Church. The national goal (for Isabel) was to create a unified Spain and overthrow the Moors from the last Muslim stronghold (Granada) and she did it under the guise of religion. The Spanish Inquisition - a religious "cleansing" - was instigated as a means to cleanse Spain of perceived national threats (Spanish Muslims who might covertly support the reconquest of Spain by foreign Muslims).

Which came first - the chicken or the egg? The answer is Isabel.

Sidenote: The reconquest of Spain is one of the goals of some Muslim warriors. Hard to believe that, 500 years later, they still see the loss of Spain as a point of contention.

Shhh don't tell the Basque.

There is another way - engaging in a war of ideas. The pen, as the saying goes, is mightier than the sword. The West is losing the war of ideas in the Middle East and that is why the extreme zealots in the Middle East have support of any kind.

Israel and Palestine must resolve their land dispute. Remove Palestinian discord from the equation and everything changes.