Outside the Beltway

Comments

1. vnjagvet says:
   Wednesday, 13 September 2006 at 20:59

   Who can identify the commenters on the “outtake”?
2. Tano says:
   Wednesday, 13 September 2006 at 21:35

   Wow, so aint you guys proud now!

   You do remember, dont you, how it was the Republicans who spent the nineties obsessed with Clinton’s sex life and manufacturing phony scandals, instead of engaging on the issues, and, who knows, maybe pressuring the administration to pay attention to things they might not otherwise see.

   The sad truth is, that whatever the failings of Clinton with regard to terrorism-awareness, he was infinitly more interested in the serious issues facing the nation than were the Republicans, for whom scandal-mongering and political positioning were the only real interests.
3. vnjagvet says:
   Wednesday, 13 September 2006 at 23:37

   Tano’s sense of humor remains non-existent.

   He’s got to admit, that was not one of his hero’s best moments, even without the dubbed commenters.

   It wasn’t the Republicans that “made him do it”, either.
4. anjin-san says:
   Thursday, 14 September 2006 at 02:19

   >altering historic evidence after the fact.

   Interesting observation. How do you feel about the Bush White House having to scrub their own White House website because so much of what they say on it turns out to be crap?
5. Jim says:
   Thursday, 14 September 2006 at 06:54

   Tano & Anjin-san, I am sure that if the democrats take over the house in November that they will take the lessons you quote above and not launch massive investigations of President Bush’s administration. Am I right?
6. LJD says:
   Thursday, 14 September 2006 at 07:59

   (Crickets chirping)
7. sam beaumont says:
   Saturday, 16 September 2006 at 17:48

   Clinton’s *timing* was provocative, at home and abroad.

   ME tyrants exploit western weaknesses to control their hate-fed, radicalized slaves, and to hold the world hostage.

   The slaves remember Clinton bombed Iraq on the eve of the House impeachment vote (Dec. 16, 1998, exactly 1000 days before Sept. 11, 2001, odd that), just as they remembered Clinton bombed Afghanistan on the eve of his grand jury testimony, Aug. 1998 – as their leaders keep the hate fresh!(Gulag! GITMO! Plantation! Halliburton! You know what I’m talking about!).

   Wiring the dark jungles, caves, deserts to the modern world with modern high tech communications equipment even zombies can use may have negative longterm rammifications for civilization.
   …

   Where bin Laden is beloved, anti-US calls mount

   By Marion Lloyd

   MARDAN, Pakistan – The 6-year-old boy watched intently as his father dusted off his favorite possession, a leather-bound scrapbook of Osama bin Laden, pausing at a photo of the Saudi dissident with a semiautomatic rifle tucked in the folds of his trademark white robe.

   ”Osama!” his son squealed excitedly. ”That’s me!”

   The boy, whose name was changed to Osama last year, is one of hundreds of Pakistani children named for bin Laden since Aug. 20, 1998 – the day the United States launched missile strikes against alleged terrorist camps run by the Saudi millionaire in eastern Afghanistan.

   The attack sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world. But the response was particularly heated in Pakistan, which sends thousands of Islamic guerrillas to similar training camps in Afghanistan.

   ”I love his bravery and gallantry,” the boy’s father, Niaz Ali Salar, said of bin Laden. ”He boosted the morale of Muslims throughout the world.” The local leader of the radical Barelvi sect of Muslims, Salar said he hoped his son would ”live up to his name” and lead the war against ”the enemies of Islam.”

   In Mardan, a crumbling tobacco center 75 miles east of the Afghan border, Islamic priests deliver diatribes against ”evil America” during Friday afternoon prayers. They urge followers to join the jihad, or Islamic holy war, against Western infidels.

   The calls have become more heated in recent weeks, with rumors that the United States may be planning new missile strikes against bin Laden to coincide with the anniversary of last year’s attack. Those fears were bolstered by a recently revised US travel warning for Afghanistan, which says the US government ”reserves the right to retaliate against the facilities of those who harbor terrorists, as well as the terrorists themselves.”

   … On Thursday, hundreds of militants belonging to the Islamic fundamentalist Jamiat-i-Islami party demonstrated in the southern port city of Karachi, warning Washington not to incur the ”wrath of Islamic forces.”

   Hundreds of villagers living outside Jalalabad, the Afghan city near where bin Laden is believed to have set up a new base, fled the area last week fearing a US attack.

   Meanwhile, reports of terrorist threats against Americans are cropping up in places as far afield as Africa and Washington.

   …In Pakistan, few buy Washington’s vilification of bin Laden, whom it accuses of masterminding the Aug. 7, 1998, bombings of two US embassies in east Africa and several other terrorist attacks.

   ”He’s a man on the run, whose only friends are the Taliban. How can he be a threat to the world’s most powerful nation?” said Sahib Zada Khalid Jan Binuri, head of Pakistan’s most influential Islamic seminary. ”It’s all spin control. If America tells me, `You are a terrorist,’ what can I say?”

   There are other signs, though, that his network is growing stronger…

   – Boston Globe, July 25, 1999