Our government is neither secular nor dominated by any specific faiths.  Seperation of church and state, people.  It's there and always has been. 

The bill certainly will come due eventually, in the form of continuing interest payments if nothing else.  And I would dearly love to run down the debt over the course of a few decades.  I've said a number of times that I would support a carefully written balanced budget amendment, but I've also said that such an amendment has to include a clause that allows deficit spending in case of formally declared war or emergency.

to make an analogy that's closer to where you and I probably live it's perfectly true to say that people in general shouldn't run up a lot of creidt card debt and should put some money away for savings.  But when someone's just lost their job it is reasonable for them to run up a bit of debt just trying to get by until they have another income.  Once they do then they should pay off what they owe and start trying to be more dilligent about savings.  September 2008 the US lost her job.  It's still not clear if she can colect unemplyment until the job situation gets worked out.

I didn't vote for McCain.  I voted for Palin.  If I could have scratched McCain off I would have.  :)

from your first link:

1) Richard Reid, the attempted shoe bomber.  Well he wasn't exactly thwarted by anything Bush did.  He was thwarted by AQ's lack of technical knowledge which resulted in a bomb that wouldn't explode. 

2) Padilla is poster boy for the idiocy fo the Bush administration.  Padilla was initially arrested because the government said he was part fo a plot to murder americans by planting a dirty bomb.  After holding Padilla (an american citizen arrested on american soil) without charging him with anything they finally charged him to try and head off another spanking by the SCOTUS.  What did they charge him with?  Conspiring to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas.  In other words nothing even remotely like what they claimed he was being arrested for.  According to the government case arresting Padilla did nothing for the safety here in america.

3) the Lackawanna Six never actually tried... well.... anything.  The FBI picked them up because they thought their emails might contain code words to an attack but no evidence of such an attack was ever found.  They were convicted on charges of providing material support to Al Qaeda.

4) Iyman Faris was actually a double agent working for the FBI.  The plot he supposedly foiled (destroying the brooklyn bridge with a blow torch) was so unbelievably stupid that it thwarts itself.

5) The "Virginia Jihad Network" was typical of the "terror" plots we've thwarted- clueless nohopers who were more a danger to themselves than anyone else.  These were the guys who played paintball to get ready for the real thing.  Oh and they planned to attack India, not the US.

6) Barot might have been competent and stopping him was a good thing.  But it was a good thing done by the brits, not us.  Scratch another one.

7) It's unclear whether Siraj actually was a terrorist that the NYPD stopped or if it was a case of grotesque entrament by police who paid a less than reputable source 100 grand to give them somebody, anybody to justify their new counterterrorism efforts.  But what the hell it's the closest thing to an actuall success so far, I'll spot you that one.

8) Yassin Aref and Mohammed Hossain also appear to be victims of an overzealous attempt to seek out terrorism where none existed.  Arif was cleared of 20 of the 30 charges the government tried to pin on him and it seems likely the remaining charges may be dropped in appeal.

9) Umer Hayat and Hamid Hayat, same as above.  A highly questionable confession (unless you really believe Al Qaeda trains by wearing teenage mutant ninja turtle masks and doing pole vaults).

10)  These guys are in the nohope category.  They wanted to do big things but screwed up robbing a gas station.

11) Another nohoper.  He was eventually charged with possessing a hand grenade.  Apparently he was going to blow up us oil pipelines with it.  Yeah.

12) It isn't clear if these guys had the ability to do any of the things they threatened but it is a moot point- the FBI said they were caught because of tips from the muslim community.  Unless it is Bush who is the crypto-muslim it's hard to see how he gets credit for this one either.

13) These guys are indicted for videotaping buildings.  Scary, neh?  I'm glad bush is keeping us safe from terrorist cameramen!  Personally I'm guessing the case falls apart when it comes to trial.  Operating a camera just isn't a crime unless your name is Andy Warhol.

14) More nohopers.  These guys wanted to blow up the sears tower but didn't have so much as a pistol by way of weapons and explosives.  These might have been the dipshits who got caught because they sent off the photos of themselves training to be developed.

15) Assem Hammoud was picked up by lebanese security forces.

16) The liquid explosive plot is not something a bush supporter wants to mention or even pretend ever happened.  The brits handled that one and almost lost their court case because we screwed up badly and pushed them to make arrests before they had much of any evidence.  As it was almost all the charges ended up being dropped.  It was a HUGE F(*&up by the Bush justice department.

17) KSM is another case of our guys screwing the pooch, and he was captured by the ISI anyway.

18) ah yes, the Fort Dix Plot.  You got to admire the moxy of a small group of guys with no real combat experience who think that with rifles and a few handgrenades they could attack an army *base*.  Serious cojones...but no brains.  Once again, nohopers.

19) The JFK plot was a joke and required no thwarting as it was preemptively thwarted by physics itself.  Another case of guys with the intent but not the capacity for terrorism.

20) I don;t even know what this one is referring to tbut the article itself makes it clear that it was the germans, not us, who dealt with these guys.

So once you actually run through some details that list is pretty pathetic.  The majority were losers that were no real danger.  The ones who were actual threats we didn;t have much to do with (or if we did it was usually our stupid handling that ruined things for others).

How much did Bush spend on counterterrorism to rack up this pathetic list?