If Osama bin Laden is so hot on the idea of suicide bombings, I wonder why he doesn’t offer to lead the way. Y’know, show how it’s done. Otherwise it’s like being one of those people standing safely on the ground, shouting to the guy on the ledge ten stories up “Jump! Jump!”
PAD
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… this leaves me thinking about if this is meant only ironic …
I don’t know what’s sillier, or more “out of touch”…
1 – The Pope going to the U.N. to try to convince Sø-dámņ Insane to come clean about his secret arsenal …
or
2 – bin Laden urging the Iraqi people to attack the U.S. As though getting flattened with almost contemptuous ease ten years ago wouldn’t tell them that they really didn’t want to make the U.S. upset with them?
P.S. Count me in on the camp of those convinced bin Laden is dead and people are using him as a convenient bogeyman. This is not to say there aren’t threats out there, but he’s not one of them.
Easy. Osama’s a manager.
Somehow, I can just see Bin Laden admitting, in a private and unguarded moment: “Hey, listen, effendi…I may be a fanatic…but I’m not stupid!”!!
Hooper
Somehow, I can just see Bin Laden admitting, in a private and unguarded moment: “Hey, listen, effendi…I may be a fanatic…but I’m not stupid!”!!
He basically did just that on the video of him taken shortly after the war in Afghanistan — chortling about how some of the hijackers on Sept. 11 didn’t know it was a suicide mission.
What I’m wondering is, if he’s not dead and this isn’t just a Hari Seldon-style tape, how bad shape he must be in not to be doing video.
I don’t know…it just looks like this war must exist,even if no civil people around the world want it.I’m very worried and agry,too.
Report: Bin Laden Predicts ‘Martyrdom’ in New Tape
LONDON (Reuters) – A British-based Islamic news agency said Wednesday it had a new tape recording of Osama bin Laden in which the Saudi militant allegedly predicts his own death this year in an unspecified act of “martyrdom.”
The Ansaar news agency said it bought the recording, which it likened to bin Laden’s last will and testament and said was freshly recorded, from an unidentified man through the Internet.
“Indeed surely this year will I lead my steed and hurl it, and my soul, at one of the targets … and I become a martyr,” Imran Khan, who runs Ansaar in the Midlands city of Birmingham, translated the tape as saying.
Original story here.
So you’ll take the time to throw out a jab at UBL, but never take the time to give one bit of credit or at least support to Bush.
If I’m wrong, I apologize in advance, but I am sick to death with his being undermined because of his supposed lack of intelligence or his supposed stealing of the White House or his last name or his being a Republican or his affiliation with oil or….you get the idea. He’s been dealt a rough hand and, in my opinion, he’s handled it well. I don’t agree with him 100% of the time, but he’s a dámņ far cry better than the alternative in this situation and I don’t feel as if I’m being lied to every time he draws a breath.
Sorry if this comes off as a rant, but my fuse is short these days.
And as to your comment, I would gladly dispatch UBL into the next life, given the chance. No regrets.
On a lighter note, I just finished the first New Frontier novel and started the second. Good stuff. I plan on reading them all.
I second that emotion, Jim. The anti-Bush rantings are getting really old (not to mention cliched).
The anti-Bush rants will never be old until the sociopathic, manipulative goon is out of the White House. Probably not even then. So there.
Notice how bin Laden didn’t have any problems making common cause with the supposedly secular Hussein, contrary to what self-appointed “experts” have been saying? of course, they’re the same ones who dismissed the idea of a major terrorist attack as a “Tom Clancy fantasy”
As for the Iraqis, they’ve been calling for an invasion:http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030210&s=alsuwaij021003 and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2751951.stm. Tom Brokaw related last week on Letterman that how an Iraqi he was interviewing last year parroted the party line about how he would resist the invaders, then, when the government minder wasn’t looking, asked, “Do you think you’ll be here by December? We’d love to have you then.”
Notice how bin Laden didn’t have any problems making common cause with the supposedly secular Hussein
Yeah. Interesting how he’d emphasize his alliance with Iraq when Bush is looking for any excuse to invade. With friends like that…
And you don’t expect a madman like him to be a coward?
For those claiming that anybody was supporting Iraq’s leadership… read the whole text, OK?
It’s clear he isn’t supporting the leadership. He clearly hates the leadership. Whatever the Bush team is saying, read the actual words, not what they are saying about it.
Ben Laden wants us to attack. And Bush seems he will do exactly what a madman wants.
And how badly does anybody think Gore would have done, in this situation? Implying that it would be worse than Bush is wild guesses, at best.
Hey PAD…..Speaking of the New Frontier novels when is #13 getting out to the stores? I’m still hanging on from “Being Human”. No fair doing a…to be continued….then leaving me…………..Well,……hanging.
And lo, my pet theories are let off the leash, to show that they have not been paper-trained…
As always, posts made after 11:30 at night are to be taken with a grain of salt. If you have high blood pressure, do not read blogs. No more than $0.02 has been invested to post the following notions:
1) Osama bin Laden is not only dead, but the knowledge he was dying was what motivated him to concoct the 9/11/01 scheme. He wanted to look good for Allah. Silly man.
2) Al-Quaida planners are still scratching their heads over the failure of 9/11/01. “Where was the mass Islamic insurrection? Where was the American collapse?” Suicide bombings are an attempt to draw to an inside straight. They’re too far gone to fold.
3) G.W. Bush does NOT have the skills to navigate this mess. On 9/11/01 itself, when he spoke to the American people, when I most wanted to give any elected official benefit of the doubt, he looked like a high school kid reading cue cards that he couldn’t quite see. At the end of that speech, I was wishing he’d abdicate and appoint Rudy Guliani!
(A few days later, Bush gives an orchestrated speech that’s competent, and the organized response is that he was erudite and inspiring. Pfui.)
We are on the verge of going to war with Iraq. We need to ask ourselves:
1) Do the people of Iraq really want him gone, or are they deluded into thinking that he’s their only savior against the “evil” west?
2) What is the end goal? Do we oust Hussein and … then what? Put another dictator in the palace to take his place?
3) How long does a U.S./NATO force have to stay before our objectives are reached? And again, besides de-throning a petty dictator, what precisely are they?
4) Will this become another Vietnam — a quagmire that we have a hard time getting out of?
5) Why is the focus off of international efforts to hunt down Al Queda cells and now onto this war with Iraq? Afghanistan was invaded, but we knew (for a long time) that it had terrorist training camps. Do we have proof to show the world of Hussein’s connection to these terrorists?
It’s important to think about these things and discuss them. Public disagreement is the hallmark of a healthy democracy. Let’s not react out of fear; if we do, then the terrorists have already won.
-My 2 cents-
It would be tragic if UBL killed himself. We need him for the sequels.
If you question this, you have to question how an non-Aryan Austrian ran the German government all those years! People who are psychologically adrift don’t care WHO the leader is, just that they’re LED somewhere.
And as long as W is mentioned…won’t it be interesting to see him try to say Kerry is “pro-Cancer” the same way he duped some into thinking McCain was? Just wait for it. =)
First- do NOT construe this as a pro-bin Laden statement, I’m just making a point in regards to PAD’s thought:
Sure, Osama is not leading the suicide brigade, but he is out there following his twisted beliefs, when he could be sitting back enjoying his family’s fortune. The bin Laden’s are bigtime players, and associates of the Bush family.
So you can see how he would be popular among the disenfranchised- he’s passed up wealth to be a “man of the people.”
(PS- I’m not convinced he’s even alive. Notice we only get audio tapes, it could be the Arab Rich Little for all we know.)
Robb P – We’ll know for sure if he accidentally starts with his world-famous Johnny Muhammed Makarakesh Carson impression.
Oh he’d lead a movement for suicide bombings, except that 1]He’s a fugitive just now, and 2]Yasir Arafat is doing that already, and 3]they prefer to rely on minions to do it.
Speaking of jumping off rooftops, BTW, don’t you just wish that all those Islamic terrorist leaders would do that themselves and give us something less to worry about? If only they’d do that already.
Why isn’t Bin Laden committing his own suicide attaxcks? For the same reason most generals aren’t in the middle of combat: They’d rather stay alive to plan than to end their lives doing what any follower could do.
What amazes me is the hysteria this announcement has produced among people (anyone *really* think duct tape is gonna keep them safe?) — and the typical reaction of Bush. He claims that because this Bin Laden message was aired on Al Jazzera (sic), it proves a link between him and Hussein. But since it also aired on several U.S. newspapers and tv networks, are they linked to Hussein too? Will the government be raiding CNN soon?
Finally, for the people who are getting tired of the anti-Bush rhetoric: If Al Gore was president, and over a year had passed without capturing the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, how vehement would the Republicans be in denouncing him for not bringing Bin Laden to justice?
I guess being a peace-supporter doesn’t actually mean that I’m anti-Bush.I’m anti-war.Anti-looking innocent people who die everyday:before 9/11,during 9/11 and after 9/11,all over the world.I’m so sad for Twin Towers victims,but I’m – the same way – sad for those who live/die in the hëll of Palestine,Afghanistan,Iraq…and I could finish tomorrow…
Just a thought on behalf of the anti-Bush camp… it’s not all about the war. He’s managed to screw up plenty of other things, too, pre and post Sep 11. Do I think he’s a sociopath? No… I think he’s a moron. Which is a hëll of a lot more dangerous.