I happen to believe that forgiveness should be given to those who ask for it. Forgiveness and repentance to me mean an awareness and understanding that some ill was done and sincere attempts will be made to prevent similar things from occuring by a change in behavior and attitude. Many women fall into the trap -as I see it- of "forgiving" their husbands for fooling around even though he is going to do it again and again in spite of his possibly having asked for forgiveness each of the ten or more times he did it. Many women refuse to even hold the guy accountable and ask for an apology and instead keep saying "I forgive him" as if that makes them a superior person and everything is okay.

I also believe that many of these people now filling the churches are anticipating Armageddon (sp?) and rushing to make sure God remembers who they are when the time comes. There are some people who have probably had their faith reaffirmed -and many more had theirs shaken- but I think there are an awful lot of "foul-weather friends". We finally had to start an offshoot of the designers list I'm on since things were getting so heated. Some people wanted to talk about design, some wanted to talk about the disaster and some wanted to prosletize and we just couldn't all get along.

There has been some discussion on that list and other places saying that if we had more female leaders we wouldn't be experiencing the "testosterone surge" we are now. But, you know, it's not like the female leaders have been timid churchmice who were afraid of their own shadow. If Margaret Thatcher were still in office, she would have started the bombing without us. Benzhair Bhutto, Golda Meir, Indira Ghandi were all strong tough women who led their country in battle. To imply that women could or should encourage cheek-turning is obviously wrong. Or maybe I'm so far into menopause that my testosterone level is already off.

The problem with only punishing bin Laden, or whomever turns out to be guilty, is that especially if it is him he will have such "clean" records it would be tough to pin things on him in a War Trial. His couriers and other workers take a vow of silence or death when they go to work for him. And it isn't as if he has phones we can tap like John Gotti did. War is the only way. Unless GW does something about this, and I mean something substantive and punitive, he will not be re-elected and we will see another Democrat in the White House in 2004. And I'll switch parties and vote for them, too. I want someone's a** to pay for this. It's probably not bin Laden since that would be the most obvious suspect. Optimism, whether shameless or not, aside there is going to be a war, my friends. May God have mercy on us all. And may future generations forgive us either way. And in that wish I am most sincere.