Experts Balance Terror Fight, Freedoms (conclusions of Madrid conf)

[Rose Siding]

MADRID, Spain -- Dirty bombs, biological weapons, huge truck bombs. Governments around the globe are trying to protect their people against the danger of ever more lethal attacks, but the steps they take can also threaten the very values they seek to defend.
...
Recognizing a key problem, the participants called for global acceptance of a single definition of terrorism, one that essentially discredits all violence knowingly directed at civilians, whatever the political goal.

As if to underscore that, the document included mention of Palestinian attacks on Israelis in Tel Aviv, the bloody Chechen hostage-taking at the Russian school in Beslan, and the insurgency in Iraq -- all linked to political causes.
...
Though many of the participants had been swapping ideas on the Internet for months before the meeting, the final document was only seven pages long -- much of it directed at the notion that security without freedom is no victory.

Such concerns have already been playing out in the United States and Britain, America's prominent ally in President Bush's war on terrorists.........

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-terrorism-the-next-frontier,0,5646949.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

[Trillo]

1. Interesting that it mentioned attacks "all linked to political causes"

It would seem that some people need to learn to disagree peacefully.