BuboTitan

I always have wondered why immigrants come to western countries if they dislike the people in those countries so much. I never have received an answer to that.

Edit: Just to clarify, for example, I couldn't imagine moving to a place like Africa, and then freaking out if my daughter decides to date an African person. If it was really that important to stay culturally separate, I would stay home. It's pretty simple stuff.

That's a misconception. In Arizona, the law requires "legal contact" (ie driving or breaking some law) before they can demand ID.

Was there retaliation against your family because of your escape?

I think the United States had to fight the war in Afghanistan, but we took our eye off the real objective, which was the destruction of Al Qaeda. The mishandling of the fight at Tora Bora in 2001 was incompetence at its finest. The Bush administration then took its eye off the ball again through its ill-considered invasion of Iraq, leaving Afghanistan to fester.

COL Pete,

Your words looked familiar because they were copied almost verbatim from a 2004 John Kerry speech against George Bush. And I'm afraid you are wrong. General Tommy Franks addressed them long ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/19/opinion/19franks.html

"First, take Mr. Kerry's contention that we "had an opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden" and that "we had him surrounded." We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001. Some intelligence sources said he was; others indicated he was in Pakistan at the time; still others suggested he was in Kashmir. Tora Bora was teeming with Taliban and Qaeda operatives, many of whom were killed or captured, but Mr. bin Laden was never within our grasp. ... Contrary to Senator Kerry, President Bush never "took his eye off the ball" when it came to Osama bin Laden. ... As we planned for potential military action in Iraq and conducted counterterrorist operations in several other countries in the region, Afghanistan remained a center of focus. Neither attention nor manpower was diverted from Afghanistan to Iraq. When we started Operation Iraqi Freedom we had about 9,500 troops in Afghanistan, and by the time we finished major combat operations in Iraq last May [2004] we had more than 10,000 troops in Afghanistan."

BTW, not only I am I a long time Redditor, but I am currently a Major in the US Army and served in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

How much impact do you feel that the number of illegal/undocumented people have had on the housing market?

I don't live in Richmond, but I live in Northern Virginia, and there is also a housing shortage in cities like Alexandria that have a massive "shadow" population of people, and I don't think the city council even knows the true number of people living there.