The "OBL" Factor...Questions & More ?????

[Ocean Breeze]

Why Bin Laden Roams Free

South Asia Could Soon Face Its Biggest Ever Crisis

By Rajinder Puri

10/12/05 "The Statesman" -- -- Four years have passed since 9/11. Osama bin Laden has not been caught. They had cornered him once at Tora Bora in Afghanistan but he allegedly escaped. CIA director Peter Goss says they know roughly where he is. Yet with all their technology and resources they can’t catch him. That’s unbelievable. So what’s going on? For one there is President Musharraf. He doesn’t want to catch Osama. He knows if he catches him he will have to hand him over to America.

That could ignite an internal revolt led by the jihadis which his government might not be able to handle. Musharraf was candid enough to tell Time magazine: “One would prefer that he’s (Osama) captured outside Pakistan. By some other people”.

Musharraf & America

Musharraf’s game is understandable. He is milking the US by posturing as an ally against terrorism. But he refrains from confronting domestic hardliners in order to survive. But why does America play along? America is constrained by its past cooperation with Osama and complicity in nuclear proliferation. That has made it vulnerable to exposure and embarrassment. The Bush administration has the difficult task of extricating Pakistan without destabilising it from the clutches of America’s erstwhile accomplice and patron of n-proliferation, China. For that America needs Musharraf.

America’s links with Osama are not confined to the early era of anti-Soviet insurgency in Afghanistan. The Pentagon continued to cooperate with the Mujahideen trained and financed by Osama in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia right up till 2001. According to Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Ottawa University, writing for the Montreal-based Centre for Research on Globalisation in August 2001: “In a bitter twist, while supported and financed by Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, the Kosovo Liberation Army is also supported by NATO. In fact, the Islamic Militant Network — also using Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) as the CIA’s go-between –— still constitutes an integral part of Washington’s covert military-intelligence operations in Macedonia and Southern Serbia”. Echoing this view London’s Sunday Times reported that bin Laden had visited Albania himself. His was one of several fundamentalist groups that had sent units to fight in Kosovo. Bin Laden was believed to have established an operation in Albania in 1994.

Ralf Mutschke of Interpol’s Criminal Intelligence division testified in the US Congress House Judicial Committee on December 13, 2000: “The US State Department listed the KLA as a terrorist organisation, indicating that it was financing its operations with money from the international heroin trade and loans from Islamic countries and individuals, among them allegedly Osama bin Laden”.

So where is Osama’s ultimate sanctuary? Robert Fisk, intrepid correspondent of London’s The Independent, and a close Osama watcher met with the Al Qaeda chief several times. In his recent book, The Great War for Civilisation: the Conquest of the Middle East, he writes: “I said to bin Laden that Afghanistan was the only country left to him after his exile in Sudan. He agreed. “The safest place in the world for me is Afghanistan”. It was the only place, I repeated, in which he could campaign against the Saudi government. Bin Laden and several of his Arab fighters burst into laughter. “There are other places”, he replied. Did he mean Tajikistan? I asked. Or Uzbekistan? Kazakhstan? “There are several places where we have friends and close brothers — we can find refuge and safety in them”.

China sanctuary

A pity Fisk thought of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan but overlooked the one place America would dare not invade. And in the mid-nineties during one of his visits while being escorted to meet Osama, he even writes how he could see the distant mountains of that ultimate sanctuary. It is Xingjian of course, in China, connected by passes to Afghanistan via Gilgit.

The probable reason for the terrorist network killing Wall Street journalist Daniel Pearl was one of his last articles which disclosed how Pakistan’s senior nuclear scientist Bashiruddin Mahmoud met Osama in Kabul in late August 2001 just weeks before 9/11. According to ace French investigative journalist and author Bernard-Henri Levy that visit paved the way for Osama’s meeting with a delegation of China’s Peoples’ Liberation Army (PLA) on the very day New York’s WTC towers were attacked on 9/11. The Chinese provided Taliban with missile tracking state of the art communications in return for Osama’s assurance that Uighur separatism in Xingjian would not be supported.

Not surprisingly Osama and Al Qaeda have always identified America, Russia and India as the great enemies of Islam, never China. America’s symbiotic economic relationship with China impelled it to overlook the rogue actions related to aiding terrorism and nuclear proliferation undertaken by Beijing. NYT columnist Thomas Friedman described America and China economically as Siamese twins. At best America was a silent spectator to PLA perfidy, at worst an active accomplice. In 1975 the Netherlands government stumbled on Abdul Qadeer Khan’s involvement in nuclear proliferation. But according to former Dutch premier Dr Ruud Lubbers, the CIA prevailed on his government not to arrest Khan. Dr Lubbers said: “I think that the American intelligence agency put into practice what is very common there: just give us all the information. And do not arrest that man; just let him go ahead. We will have him followed and that way gain more information. In hindsight that is very stupid indeed.”

Not so stupid. That was the year when finishing touches were being put on the strategic Sino-American alliance. The CIA, therefore, was either monitoring a dangerous enterprise undertaken by the US administration, or it was making sure that their new ally, China, was staying on a mutually agreed course. Later, US involvement became even more conclusive.

Investigating nuclear proliferation, William Broad and David Sanger in New York Times of 21 March, 2005 disclosed “the discovery of step-by-step instructions, some of which appear to have come from China and Pakistan, among the documents recovered last year from Libya. More recently, investigators have found that the Khan network had offered similar materials to Iran”.

Earlier, the same duo in the course of their investigations of the Chinese connection had written in NYT of December 26, 2004: “Dr Khan quickly led the (CIA) agents to Beijing. It was there in the early 1980’s that Dr Khan pulled off a coup: obtaining the blueprints for a weapon that China had detonated in its fourth nuclear test, in 1966. The design was notable because it was compact and the first one China had developed that could easily fit atop a missile”.

Payback time

Clearly America those days pursued national interests diametrically opposed to the perceptions that dawned on it after 9/11.

Empowering Pakistan to serve strategic interests of China to corner India helped America counter the Soviets. But now it’s payback time.

And the US economy remains so closely enmeshed with China’s that any rash move could tear the fabric of America’s entire foreign policy. Americans have to coax China along. That will not be easy. Meanwhile, time is running out. Osama still roams free. Al Qaeda still issues threats of a huge new strike against America. And voices within America are becoming alarmed and desperate.
In a recent editorial The Washington Post wrote: “President Musharraf has allowed the extremist Afghan Taliban movement to base itself in Pakistan’s western provinces with virtual impunity. He has repeatedly insisted, almost certainly falsely, that Osama bin Laden is not in Pakistan. All the while he has gone on collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in aid each year from the Bush administration, which accepts his words and ignores most of his actions”.

Presidents Bush and Musharraf should worry. They are approaching denouement. South Asia could soon face its biggest ever crisis.

(The author is a veteran journalist and cartoonist)

 

[no1important]

RE: The "OBL" Factor...Qu

Well, I for one do not believe "W"wants Osama caught just yet, he needs him as the face of terrorism and as an excuse to potentially invade other countries.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: RE: The "OBL" Factor...Qu

Well, I for one do not believe "W"wants Osama caught just yet, he needs him as the face of terrorism and as an excuse to potentially invade other countries.

exactly what I think too. the bushlet needs OBL alive more than dead. ....as OBL serves as the figurehead ....etc.

In a sick way OBL and bush need each other to keep things on this planet in war mode. Both want war, both are religious fanatics .... both have serious psychological problems.......and both are on some delusional mission based on ideology/religion .

.............a weird thought occurs. Wonder how much OBL and his ilk were paid by the USG to "attack" the WTC etc.... so that bush could go onto a war footing in order to execute his pre conceived (vile) plans .......to try to take control of the ME.

Not for a single moment would I put it past the bush regime to do just that. That is how unethical, immoral and illegal they are.

 

[no1important]

RE: The "OBL" Factor...Qu

Not for a single moment would I put it past the bush regime to do just that. That is how unethical, immoral and illegal they are.

Same with me. Especially all the shenanagins we have seen since 9/11. At times I wonder who is really worse, OBL or "W"?

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: RE: The "OBL" Factor...Qu

Not for a single moment would I put it past the bush regime to do just that. That is how unethical, immoral and illegal they are.[/url]

Same with me. Especially all the shenanagins we have seen since 9/11. At times I wonder who is really worse, OBL or "W"?

who is worse??? W of course! why??? He is supposed to be CIVILIZED. and know better . He has killed MANY MANY more innocents than OBL has..

.......and is still killing/ planning??? to kill more.

an aside but one really has to wonder about the amerikan population. How can they just sit there and not ask about the OBL situation?? Are they that beholding to their gov't?? That trusting??? That compliant?? Very weird..

 

[no1important]

RE: The "OBL" Factor...Qu

Al-Qaeda disowns 'fake letter'

A statement claiming to be by al-Qaeda in Iraq has rejected as a fake a letter allegedly written by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's second-in-command.

US intelligence published the letter in full, saying it was intended for the alleged head of the movement in Iraq.

In it, Ayman Zawahiri appears to question insurgents' tactics in attacking Shia Muslims in Iraq.

The claims by US intelligence are "based on imagination", a statement posted on an Islamist website.

"We in al-Qaeda organisation announce that there is no truth to these claims, which are only based on the imagination of the politicians of the Black [White] House and their slaves," the statement said.



I do not know what to think. I would have no trouble believing it is fake as the "W" administration likes to pull "Al Qaeda" or "Osama" out of the hat when they feel public opinion is slipping or to draw attention away from real issues like Katrina devestation.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

I do not know what to think. I would have no trouble believing it is fake as the "W" administration likes to pull "Al Qaeda" or "Osama" out of the hat when they feel public opinion is slipping or to draw attention away from real issues like Katrina devestation.

understand the dilemma.. But given the bush regime's recordfor truth telling..........one is quite safe NOT believing anything the USR has to say. (not suggesting that believing everything Al Quaeda has to say is truth either)

Still think this current lack of credibility the USG has achieved through its consistant lies , manipulation, diversional tactics is backfiring on them big time.

Cry wolf syndrome factors in too.

.............Now people have a hard time taking any terror alert seriously..........and should there be a REAL one...... how is one to know the difference??? bush really shot himself in the foot with his lies and actions.

Currently ........it is almost impossible to know what is truth /fact and what is just more cotton candy spin.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

A letter that U.S. intelligence attributes to al-Qaeda’s second-in-command undercuts George W. Bush’s latest claims that the terrorist organization has plans for conquests reaching halfway around the world and targeting America’s freedom.

The 6,000-word letter purportedly written by Osama bin-Laden’s deputy Ayman Zawahiri on July 9 lists al-Qaeda’s goals as far more limited – driving U.S. forces from Iraq, establishing a state or “emirate” in the country’s Sunni enclaves, resisting outside assaults, and only later trying to expand into a religious “caliphate” incorporating surrounding territory.

The proposed “caliphate” could stretch to the Mediterranean Sea and Egypt, said the letter purportedly sent by Zawahiri to al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, Jordanian-born Abu Musab Zarqawi.

By contrast, Bush said in an Oct. 6 speech that Muslim extremists intended to use Iraq as a base to “establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia,” while simultaneously engineering the strategic defeat of the United States.

The alleged al-Qaeda letter states, too, that the “idea” about the caliphate is not “infallible” and was mentioned “only to stress … that the mujahedeen must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and then lay down their weapons, and silence the fighting zeal.”

Along with its fears that its jihadists might quit if U.S. troops leave Iraq, al-Qaeda – as reflected in the letter – looks like a struggling organization under financial and political duress, holding out hope for limited successes in Iraq, rather than dreaming of global domination. Al-Qaeda’s leaders are so short of funds that they asked their embattled operatives in Iraq to send $100,000 to relieve a cash squeeze, according to the letter.

The letter in Arabic and an English translation were posted at the Web site of the U.S. director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, on Oct. 11.

Bleak Picture

Five days earlier, Bush sought to rally U.S. public support for his Iraq policy by painting a terrifying picture if Iraq fell to Islamic extremists.

“With greater economic and military and political power, the terrorists would be able to advance their stated agenda: to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people, and to blackmail our government into isolation.”

Bush envisioned an Islamic terrorist empire reaching from the Atlantic Ocean on the west to the Pacific Ocean on the east.

But the disparity between the ambitions cited in the purported al-Qaeda letter and the claims in Bush’s speech suggests that the president may be continuing his pattern of exaggerating the threat posed by his Islamic enemies, much as he hyped allegations of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify invading Iraq in March 2003.

Just as he roused American fears with images of “mushroom clouds” from hypothetical Iraqi nuclear bombs, Bush now appears to be presenting a worst-case scenario about the threat from Islamic extremism.

In his speech, Bush likened al-Qaeda leaders to historic tyrants, such as Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin, suggesting that anyone opposed to the Iraq War is inviting slaughter on a massive scale. But there are few indications that al-Qaeda’s leaders – believed to be holed up in the mountains along the Pakistani-Afghan border – represent that level of threat.

Rather than totalitarian leaders on the scale of Hitler and Stalin in charge of powerful countries, al-Qaeda comes across in the letter like a marginal movement whose dreams of just gaining a foothold in Iraq are fragile.

If U.S. intelligence is correct about the letter’s origin, al-Qaeda’s leaders appear to be the isolated ones, knowing little about world news and even lacking a reliable means for getting out their message. The letter’s author – purportedly Zawahiri – complains that six of his audio statements “were not published for one reason or another.”

The letter also lectures the foreign jihadists in Iraq about how offended many Muslims are by the beheadings of Western captives and the bombings that have killed hundreds of Shiites, the majority Islamic sect that gained political dominance after the U.S. invasion and the ouster of Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein.

“Many of your Muslim admirers amongst the common folk are wondering about your attacks on the Shia,” the letter said. “The sharpness of this questioning increases when the attacks are on one of their mosques.”

[An Internet posting by Al Qaeda’s Iraq wing denounced the letter as a fake “based only on the imagination of the politicians of the Black (White) House and their slaves,” Reuters reported on Oct. 13.]

Menacing Threat

Though the “Zawahiri letter” – if real – depicts a nearly bankrupt movement facing political and physical isolation, Bush has given the American people another image: al-Qaeda as a menacing strategic threat bent on first regional and then global domination.

Bush’s argument goes back to his assertions after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks that the motive then was hatred of American freedom and al-Qaeda’s goal was to establish a worldwide totalitarian system.

A number of Middle East experts, however, said al-Qaeda’s goals were much smaller, seeking to punish the United States for its interference in the Muslim world, its positioning of military bases in Saudi Arabia and its support for Arab governments that Islamic fundamentalists considered corrupt.

In his Oct. 6 speech, however, Bush again insisted that the struggle was really about freedom.

“Freedom is once again assaulted by enemies determined to roll back generations of democratic progress,” Bush said. “Once again, we’re responding to a global campaign of fear with a global campaign of freedom. And once again, we will see freedom’s victory.”

Bush also made the historical observation that “over the past few decades, radicals have specifically targeted Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and Jordan for potential takeover.” Bush could have added Algeria, too.

But the larger point is that in all these cases the radicals were defeated. That’s why al-Qaeda leaders have been forced to flee their homelands. Bin-Laden is a Saudi; Zawahiri is an Egyptian; Zarqawi is a Jordanian. In the late 1990s, bin-Laden was even banished from the Sudan, forcing him to seek refuge in the remote Afghan mountains.

This history could support an analysis that Muslim societies can handle these extremist movements if the United States and other Western powers don’t get too directly involved. That analysis, in turn, could justify a policy shift in which U.S. and British forces withdraw from Iraq, thus removing the lure for foreign suicide-bombers and enabling Iraqis – both Sunni and Shiite – to deal with Zarqawi’s depleted forces.

The “Zawahiri letter” seems to share that view, albeit expressed in the fear that a prompt departure of U.S. troops might cause young jihadists to lay down their weapons and give up the fight.

Indeed, an argument could be made that al-Qaeda’s leadership and hard-liners in the Bush administration are serving to bolster each other. While Bush and his neoconservative advisers argue that U.S. forces can’t leave Iraq now, al-Qaeda’s leaders are worried that a sudden U.S. withdrawal might precipitate a collapse of their jihadist forces in Iraq.

The Bush administration also has failed to make clear the distinctions between the foreign jihadists, the fraction of the fighters in Iraq whose tactic of choice is the suicide bomb, and the much larger Sunni-led insurgency, which is battling over more traditional political grievances and fighting mostly with small arms and booby traps.

With U.S. forces acting as allies of the Shiites, the Sunnis are not in position to turn on the foreign jihadists who also are fighting the Americans and the Shiites. If American troops left, however, not only would many young jihadists be deprived of their chief motivation for suicide-bombing but the Sunnis would no longer find the Zarqawi remnants very useful. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Iraq & the Logic of Withdrawal.”]

Stay the Course

Back in the United States, seeking to revive public enthusiasm for the war, Bush and his neocon advisers are reprising the strategy of late 2002 and early 2003, using over-the-top threat analyses to whip the U.S. public and the news media into a war frenzy.

Before the Iraq invasion, leading U.S. publications, including the New York Times, played up dubious claims about Iraq’s alleged WMD, while Bush’s supporters lashed out at anyone who questioned Bush’s case for war. Some pro-war enthusiasts drove trucks over Dixie Chicks CDs because one of the singers had criticized the president.

In the months after the invasion, even though the WMD wasn’t found, Bush continued to have a relatively free hand in misrepresenting facts about the Iraq War. For instance, four months after the invasion, Bush began revising the history about whether Hussein let in United Nations weapons inspectors before the invasion.

Hussein had acquiesced to a resumption of the UN inspections in fall 2002, but Bush forced the inspectors out in March 2003.

By July 2003, however, Bush began claiming that he had no choice but to invade Iraq because Hussein had shown “defiance” and had not let the U.N. inspectors in. Though Bush repeated this false claim again and again, no one in the U.S. news media challenged him. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “President Bush, With the Candlestick …”]

There is also a longer history of neoconservatives getting political mileage out of overstating foreign threats. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the neocons exaggerated Soviet strategic power to justify a massive U.S. arms buildup. They did it again when leftist governments in Nicaragua and Grenada were pitched to the American people as grave dangers to the United States.

Amid the triumphalism around the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, few American analysts bothered to reexamine the issue of whether the communist bloc was in terminal decline by the mid-1970s, as some intelligence experts believed, and thus whether the U.S. arms buildup in the 1980s was a waste of money.

Instead, the neoconservatives enshrined as conventional wisdom that the arms race of the 1980s and the military assaults on leftist regimes in places like Nicaragua and Grenada brought the Soviet Union down. [For details on this history, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.]

If the purported “Zawahiri letter” is real – as the U.S. intelligence community asserts – the discrepancy between that image of al-Qaeda, subsisting on the political fringes, and Bush’s portrait of an immensely powerful al-Qaeda suggests that Bush and the neocons are back at the game of scaring the American people.

 

[MMMike]

Along with its fears that its jihadists might quit if U.S. troops leave Iraq, al-Qaeda – as reflected in the letter – looks like a struggling organization under financial and political duress, holding out hope for limited successes in Iraq, rather than dreaming of global domination. Al-Qaeda’s leaders are so short of funds that they asked their embattled operatives in Iraq to send $100,000 to relieve a cash squeeze, according to the letter.

Too funny! Stay tuned for announcements regarding Bin Laden's speaking tour, for $500 a plate.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Along with its fears that its jihadists might quit if U.S. troops leave Iraq, al-Qaeda – as reflected in the letter – looks like a struggling organization under financial and political duress, holding out hope for limited successes in Iraq, rather than dreaming of global domination. Al-Qaeda’s leaders are so short of funds that they asked their embattled operatives in Iraq to send $100,000 to relieve a cash squeeze, according to the letter.

Too funny! Stay tuned for announcements regarding Bin Laden's speaking tour, for $500 a plate.

I am waiting for OBL's book to be published. Immediate best seller.........(all proceeds go to.......... :roll:

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Wanted, dead or alive: Where's bin Laden now?
By Peter S. Canellos, Globe Columnist | October 18, 2005

WASHINGTON -- It's been four years since President Bush, in the first days after the worst terrorist attack on US soil, declared: ''I want justice. And there's an old poster out West . . . I recall, that said, 'Wanted, Dead or Alive.' "

That ringing call referred to Osama bin Laden, whose desire to destroy the United States has now been the basis for billions of dollars in security planning, a war in Afghanistan, and nuclear nightmares that continue to disturb the sleep of millions of Americans.

Bin Laden, of course, has not been caught. Nor has Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban in Afghanistan, who harbored bin Laden as he plotted the destruction of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Nor has Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden's top lieutenant. Nor has the anthrax terrorist who paralyzed Washington in 2001. Nor has Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man responsible for beheadings in Iraq.

The United States, of course, has captured many other Al Qaeda leaders, the most important being Khalid Sheik Muhammad, the leading 9/11 plotter, who was widely considered to be Al Qaeda's third-ranking leader. The United States also has tracked down most of the Iraqi leaders pictured on playing cards distributed everywhere from Tikrit to gas stations on I-95.

Tomorrow, the former Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, is scheduled to go on trial, in an event that is considered crucial to healing Iraq's wounds.

But the failure to capture so many of the people responsible for attacks on Americans has to be considered a disappointment. As years have passed, with few reports of progress in the inquiries involving bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, Mullah Omar, and the anthrax killer, high-ranking officials largely have stopped talking about them. And the public, from talk-radio shouters to the most devout Internet conspiracy theorists, has been strangely muted as well.

It's as if all of America recognizes the stakes in capturing these terrorist leaders, yet it doesn't want to confront the fact that so many hunts have been fruitless.

But as Hussein's trial proves yet again the cathartic effect of bringing a wrongdoer to justice, Americans will no doubt have occasion to wish for the capture of other demons.

And it may be useful to bring the manhunt for bin Laden and others back into the spotlight, since specific factors seem to be undermining each case.

Dan Benjamin, a former National Security Council official in the Clinton Administration and a coauthor of the new book ''The Next Attack," argues that the search for bin Laden has been hampered by a diversion of resources to Iraq, and by some measure of deference to Pakistan, where bin Laden is believed to be hiding. ''Given the diversion of resources early in 2002, given the way we've played the relationship with Pakistan, it's not surprising that we haven't found bin Laden," Benjamin said in an interview.

The same factors would have hampered the search for al-Zawahiri and Mullah Omar.

The anthrax attacker, however, is now believed by most authorities to be unrelated to Islamic fundamentalism, a domestic terrorist who sought to capitalize on the wave of fear following Sept. 11, 2001.

That fact puts him or her in a different category -- one made all the more mysterious as the attacks have stopped, and as the trail, apparently, has grown cold.

The failure to capture Zarqawi is less a mystery than proof of the difficulty of tracking down a stealth warrior.

Back when Hussein was in charge of Iraq, Zarqawi traveled to Baghdad for two months of medical treatment.

Former secretary of state Colin L. Powell has cited Zarqawi's visit to Baghdad as proof of Iraq's complicity with Al Qaeda, presumably because Hussein's regime could easily have captured him, if it weren't secretly cooperating with terrorists.

''Iraq officials deny accusations of ties with Al Qaeda," Powell told the United Nations, referring to Zarqawi. ''These denials are simply not credible."

But the United States has been in Iraq for 2 1/2 years and still hasn't been able to collar Zarqawi, who, far from hiding out, has been conducting brazen attacks on Iraqi citizens and coalition forces.

His continued ability to menace US and Iraqi citizens reveals how badly Americans underestimated the difficulty of capturing terror leaders.

But the difficulty, and the discomfort it causes to all Americans, are not reasons to allow these manhunts to fade into the fringes of national debate: One way to celebrate Hussein's coming to justice would be to redouble efforts to capture other mass murderers.

Dead or alive.

not an impressive track record is it??? And to top that ......how many INNOCENT people has the US KILLED aka murdered in this time frame.???

 

[jimmoyer]

Not an impressive track record ?

Of what?

Capturing the terrorist network and the Saddam network ?

The article does say we captured most of them.

And the article is somewhat old, because it does not include several reports of Zarqawi having been wounded several times.

How many innocent people have been killed by the terrorists?

That's a question you don't like to pose, for it does not suit your program.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

How many innocent people have been killed by the terrorists?

Not anywhere near as many as the US has killed. No matter what adding machine you use. For one thing , it is easier to find out how many have been killed by terrorists.......than it is to find out how many killed by the US........as the sadistic USRegime does not respect life enough to do "body counts" and says so . Callous and indifferent.

......on the other hand....... considering that the US INVADED Iraq.....which means was a threat to the Iraqis, and then acted on it.......makes the US a terrorist to the Iraqis. So , one could say that all the deaths are terrorist deaths...... just depends on which "terrorist" one is talking about..

 

[jimmoyer]

"Not anywhere near as many as the US killed."

False.

"...easier to find out how many have been killed by terrorists..."

Really ? Have you really thought out the mechanics of how to tally that and what it takes?

"...US does not respect life enough to do body counts..."

This is not like sports where you can have the delicious daily death statistic to feed the righteousness of some American warhawk who wants to prove to some wimpy liberal that the terrorists have indeed killed more fellow Iraqis than the Americans, even blowing up their own mosques to do so, while requesting in Guantanimo that the Koran be treated with care.

I don't want American soldiers piecing together children's limbs and an uncle's head and mother's left finger and spend hours making it a verifiable statistic for some newspaper to feed a reader's need to buttress whatever righteous bias they have.

It is easier to count dead American soldiers than the blood and guts of civilians killed by the terrorists and suicide bombers.

It is easier to count dead American soldiers because the platoon walking the street knows who in their own platoon just got gutted.

You think Americans are knee jerk reactors ?

You should read the incredible flow of thought in your own post.

 

[no1important]

RE: The "OBL" Factor...Qu

You hit it right on the money Ocean. The US did illegally invade on false grounds. They are the real terrorists there. The neocons don't seem able to grasp the big picture of what reality is.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

You think Americans are knee jerk reactors ?

hell.....if anyone knows or cares what Americans are. Honest the world does NOT revolve around the self centred americans. What matters in this equation is how their pathetic gov't is handling /mishandling just about every thing it touches.----particularly on the world stage.

but this is a far cry from the topic....which is OBL and how useful he is to bush as bush can't seem to get him......"dead or alive"...(or chooses not to............or has LIED about that one too.)

ya see, the USR..........and its followers have a major problem.......NO ONE CAN BELIEVE a WORD they say.----and one doesn't. And that is the pathos.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: RE: The "OBL" Factor...Qu

You hit it right on the money Ocean. The US did illegally invade on false grounds. They are the real terrorists there. The neocons don't seem able to grasp the big picture of what reality is.

them silly neo cons think that all revolves around them.......and that THEIR view is the only one that counts. They don't know how or care to try to see how it might look from the Iraqis view..... so they will interpret the Iraqi reaction to fit their preconceived agenda. Not once has an american expressed feelings of sympathy for what the Iraqis must be going through on a daily basis living under the threat and terrrorism of the occupier. Why? .....because they do not have the capacity to see things from the other side. Arrogance and ego does that ... :evil:

interesting that one game they are playing is the "victim" game. ......and trying to get as much mileage out of it as possible.

 

[jimmoyer]

Yep, it sure would have been better for Palestine if Saddam kept paying the parents of suicide bombers 25k in a malevolent play for the peace you so righteously uphold.

It sure would have been better for the Kurds as the world grew disinterested in the northern no fly zone before the war and actually moved to end the embargo and the containment of the northern and southern zones.

Oh the Kurds? Why not the same passion? The Palestinians did not gain the world's passion when Jordan ruled the west bank for 20 years. Nor have the Kurds ever got the passion they scratch their heads about when looking at the world's logic.

I will give you the hypocrisy you so righteous denounce but little do you see the complexity of the hypocrisy you exhibit.

But Ocean's comment about not counting the dead civilian bodies is quite an example of not thinking about what it takes to verify for the likes of you, the reader.

 

[no1important]

RE: The "OBL" Factor...Qu

Americans have been brainwashed since birth that they are always the best at everything and always right and when it is clearly shown they are wrong and misguided on anything they do not want to see or hear it. The neocons are the worst at this.

 

[jimmoyer]

You're quilty of repeating a mantra, no different than the mantra you accuse.