Heh, Buddha32. Perhaps you should check up on your Kuwait info. Sounds like you're confusing the Taliban with Kuwait. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_345000/345400.stm I suggest the above news story. WWII could definitely have been ended without nuking the two cities. Could it have been done with less loss of civilian lives? No, not very likely at all. Teph, you're right in the sense that you can't know where these people's loyalties lie, but neither can you know that about people from any where else. Be it born-and-raised-americans or not. It could just as well be the guy in the seat next to you in your local church or in the bar or at the checkout line in the supermarket that has a bottle of anthrax in his coat pocket. The thing is that you can never know. But when you automatically assume that people of a certain denomination are terrorists, that is when you truly leave yourself open for attack. Oh and many of these terrorists did enter the country illegally. Many had been here without visa's for months, if not years. The fact that our system is so poor at catching people like that is a big part of the problem. Experience IS the best teacher, and like you I have been shaped by my experiences with moslems and people of other faiths. What my experience taught me is that the biggest mistake you can make is to judge somebody based on their skincolor, religion or country of origin. There are equal amounts of assholes in every race, creed or nationality. Egyptian fundamentalists killed a bus load of tourists some years back in Egypt. My step dad is from Egypt. Did that mean that his colleagues at his job suddenly looked at him with fear or hate in their eyes, because "He was one of them!"? No. By the way, my moslem stepdad married a christian woman (my mom) in a christian church and not one member of his family or friends back in Egypt had anything bad to say about it, despite my mother having had me in her first marriage. I was accepted by his VERY large family as just another member of the family and this family are all devout moslems. My stepdad to this day will still not eat pork. And he works for The Christian Childrens Fund. All I'm saying is don't judge every member of a certain people on the actions of a few madmen. Fanatics of ANY persuasion are potentially very dangerous. Oh and I never did call you ignorant. That was not the intention of my parable and if it was construed as such, then I apologise. Regards Ian