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Elsewhere in the thread I linked Osama bin Ladin's 1998 fatwah. Read it. Notice how pissed he was that the US is attacking Muslims? He was worried that the Arabian peninsula would become a base to the US attacking the rest of the Middle East, he was pissed that the US seemed eager to subjugate Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan and use them to decisively conquer the Middle East and ensure the survival of Israel.

Notice also how many times he didn't say he was glad the US was attacking Muslims from other countries, and how often he didn't mention that his sect was the only true sect of Islam and all other Muslims should die.

Osama bin Ladin's 1998 Fatwah

Osama bin Ladin seems to disagree with you about his intentions. Now I'm not sure who to believe.

By the way, the entire US doesn't pray to Allah, so we haven't become like them.

I vote for ETA. The Basque should to get rid of MS, er all of all those Spanish and French who invaded their homeland Euskadi.

That is because you are biased and do not want to look at the facts.

Once again, I'm not a christian, can we get over this now? I keep telling it like it is but you keep wanting to argue the same point hoping something different is the outcome. It's not going to happen.

Yeah, and if I needed any more evidence that you don't know what you're talking about, you just provided it. Yes, it most certainly was.

No, it's about secceding from a government. There is a difference and if you don't understand that I simply can not help you. The war did not begin until the south had offically left the union. They had no intention on fighting the war altho most certainly thought that this was going to happen from the northern federal government. Understand this history. it's very simple and it does not qualify as taking arms against your own nation.

"All"? "Decades"? Again, there have been MORE "Christian" attacks on abortion clinics than there have been Islamic attacks in the continental US.

I'm neither worries about christians nor just happenings inside the united state. Stick to the subject and if you can't it proves how wrong you are.

This concept of "context" just kicks you ass every time, doesn't it?

Nothing has been taken out of context. get off your high horse.

I simply pointed out a page with some quotes from muslim writings. The single word I said IIRC is "perhaps". How is that taking anything out of context?

Anyone who wasn't Christian would take any website that was so pro-Christian with more than a grain of salt.

Again, his religious idealogy does not change the quotes. Quotes are quotes. Now, if he misquoted the texts you'd have a point, but he didn't and you don't have a point.

Here is more if you really need it...

Read the reasons for yourself.

there is the occasional Timothy McVeigh (and yes, he was a former soldier...at my former duty station, no less). But the chance of a terrorist actually posing as a soldier in uniform, wife in tow, with a forged military ID is small enough

Give me 3 years and I can turn any middle-eastern guy into a white-skinned, blonde and blue-eyed corn-fed mid-westerner. Blue contacts for the eyes, bleach and straightener for the hair and most of the 3 years applying benequin cream to remove all pigment from his skin, and speech lessons to get him talking like an Okie.

As for the wife in tow - female suicide bombers are becoming more and more common.

On not setting off the metal detector, my favorite kitchen knives are ceramic with plastic handles - i.e. no metal at all and ten times sharper than the sharpest metal blades.

The other half of why "profiling" is a bad idea is that if exceptions are built into the system, invariably they will be made for the people who most directly influence the system -- the first thing congress does whenever they pass a law is exempt themselves (for example, minimum wage, equal opportunity and social security all do not apply to people working on capital hill). So, you end up with the very people making life more difficult for the rest of us being exempted from the effects of it. They won't have to experience the stupidity first hand and are thus less likely to ever do anything to fix it.

In their book Political Terrorism, Schmidt and Youngman cited 109 different definitions of terrorism

Wikipedia tries to clarify the definition of "terrorism" somewhat, and notes that there are several things people commonly attribute to terrorism, but all of them have exceptions:

• The motive is political or religious (counter-examples: Psychiatric cases, and murders by organized criminals as a reminder to others that they should fall in line)
• The target is civilian (counter-example: bombing of USS Cole, any PLO attacks on Israeli military)
• The objective is to intimidate (counter-example: some examples of eco-terrorism)
• The perpetrator is non-governmental (counter-example: state terrorism)
• The act was unlawful (not even simply "violence or threat of violence" applies to all, counterexample cyber-terrorism)

bin Laden's fatwa, to wit:

The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies--civilians and military--is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim.

It sounds like he's pissed that the US has a military presence in Saudi Arabia. I also suggest you read the entire fatwa. Nowhere does he suggest converting people to Islam or killing non-muslims, nor does he speak of western attitudes toward women.

Why we shouldn't leave? It's like bribery.

Speaking of logical fallacies, you've successfully begged the question. Read again. "We need to stay there because we are there."

If we roll over and do as they say because of a bomb, then they'll see that as a working avenue

That type of thinking also precludes rational judgement of demands. If civil rights leaders in the 60s would have used these tactics, their arguments would have still been valid. The way someone goes about change does not invalidiate their ideas. That is, just because bin Laden believes that the US should get out of Saudi Arabia, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't.

The claim you cite is an example of rationale morphing. Leave Iraq and the rationale for attacking us will change. You're dealing with people who hate us because we're not exactly the same kind of Muslim they are and will use any excuse they can conjur to attack us. Unfortunately, we fund some of them every time we fill our gas tank.

Jews have laws this tough on protecting their culture, yet they bomb the palestinans without mercy, often killing innocent bystanders and not giving a crap. Sure, they say "it is just payback", but who exactly are they paying back? Screw it... they all look alike.

Well, if you look at a factual analysis of all deaths, you will see that the Israels are going out of their way to avoid civilian casualties when they kill leaders of Islamic Jihad, Hamas, PFLP, and all the other islam-o-nuts.

By comparison, killing civilians is the goal of terrorist attacks.

In summary:

1. Israel tries to avoid civilian casualties.
2. Palestinians try to cause civilian casualties.

No matter how bad the crime, they can never give the death penalty to another Jew. But they can slaughter non-jews at will.

If that were true, at the next large Hamas rally/brainwashing event, the Israelis would lob in a few cluster bombs, killing a few thousand. Repeat a dozen times, and the conflict will be over. But unlike the Arab world, Israel doesn't believe in killing indiscriminately.

In the early 1980s, when the Muslim Brotherhood began to threaten the government of Syria, President Assad had the army surround the town of Hama, where they were based, and demolished it, killing 30,000 people. What was the reaction from the UN? Nothing. From the Arab League? Nothing.

• http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/myths/mftoc.html
• http://www.ict.org.il
• http://www.idf.il (Hebrew site, click for English version.)

Al-Qaida is a multi-national support group which funds and orchestrates the activities of Islamic militants worldwide. It grew out of the Afghan war against the Soviets, and its core members consist of Afghan war veterans from all over the Muslim world. Al-Qaida was established around 1988 by the Saudi militant Osama bin Ladin. Based in of Afghanistan, bin Ladin uses an extensive international network to maintain a loose connection between Muslim extremists in diverse countries.

Which president completely ignored any intelligence pointing to an upcoming attack?

Uhh, Clinton??? Nope
http://www.cnn.com/US/9605/12/terror.plot/
http://www.ict.org.il/spotlight/det.cfm?id=591

Uhh, Bush? *ding* ding* *ding*
http://911digitalarchive.org/

The economy is still in shambles

I realize that you probably want to be in shambles, but unfortunatly (for you) it is not. Things are going quite nicely now, as witnessed by record setting GDP growth, strong employment growth, and record high wages for the past year and a half.

the national debt is at an all-time high

I have news for you. They national debt is always at an all-time high. It hasn't gone down in any year since the 1950's. You could make this complaint against any president in recent memory.

we go to war

I don't know if you remember or not, but we didn't "go" to war, we were forced into war by a group of fanatic Islamic terrorists who declared war on us in 1998.

and this administration is still pushing for tax cuts to the extreme upper class.

Thats funny, because I'm not the "extreme upper class", and my taxes (both state and federal) have significantly gone down since Bush took office.

Any good will that the United States had immediately after 9/11 has been squandered thanks to arrogant and stubborn foreign policy

Ok. You go and worry about international "good will". I'll vote for the guy who worries more about terrorists who want to blow us up, and dictators with terrorist connections ignoring international orders to disarm.

Thanks to the appointment of a prude like John Ashcroft, our freedoms to make choices about what we can do and say are being eroded. The Patriot Act is an obscenity against the Bill of Rights.

The Patriot Act didn't change a thing in the Bill of Rights. Exactly what freedoms have been eroded for you?

I wonder - do you actually understand that you're helping support the good-ol'-boy club that Bush and Cheney belong to (which, by the way, you DON'T belong to)? If you don't know that they're using you to further their own gains (NOT the best interests of the country), then you really need to pay better attention to current events. And that means turning off Fox News, Rush, and O'Reilly and doing some reading of your own.

Let me guess. Doing some "reading of your own" just happens to mean "reading something that I agree with".

This administration has been a dismal and total failure on many fronts.

I think you need to learn the difference between "failure" and "something that I do not politically agree with". Bush has accomplished much in his 3 1/2 years in office, including much needed tax reform, education reform, campaign finance reform, prescription drug reform, disarming a dictator who had been under international order to disarm for 13 years but refused, and leading the country to properity despite the worst terrorist attack in history and the worst private corporate accounting scandals in history.

You may not like Kerry, but regieme change must occur before this country goes completely down the crapper.

Reading your tripe has encouraged me to make yet another contribution to Bush/Cheney '04 to prevent anybody who agrees with your garbage from taking power.

For "innocent bystanders", read "human shields". Terrorists position themselves among children in order to (i) discourage return fire, because unlike the terrorists, the Israelis don't actually target non-combatants, and (ii) misrepresent any return fire as being against "innocent bystanders".

In a typical Israeli missile attack against "Terrorist leaders", the collateral damage includes an average of three to seven innocent bystanders. How many lives are saved by killing terrorist leaders again?

Let's go with some statistics regarding the current intifada:

...meaningful figures show that Israel is responsible for some 733 Palestinian noncombatant deaths, while Palestinians have killed 546 Israeli noncombatants.

That count is based on the IDF's own estimates, completely disregarding the even more shocking statistics recorded by international human rights organizations.

Or perhaps a listing of the non-combatant deaths among children might impress you with the military force being used against the Palestinians.

If you take into account the ridiculously imbalanced effects of the property damage and impoverishment of this ongoing conflict, the Palestinians are getting screwed on every level. There is no sufficient justification for the actions of Israel's military, and I'm sick and tired of hearing 'terrorism' as the rallying cry of those who defend collective punishment and making war on entire populations.

In a typical Israeli missile attack against "Terrorist leaders", the collateral damage includes an average of three to seven innocent bystanders. How many lives are saved by killing terrorist leaders again?

Let's go with some statistics regarding the current intifada:

...meaningful figures show that Israel is responsible for some 733 Palestinian noncombatant deaths, while Palestinians have killed 546 Israeli noncombatants.

That count is based on the IDF's own estimates, completely disregarding the even more shocking statistics recorded by international human rights organizations.

Or perhaps a listing of the non-combatant deaths among children might impress you with the military force being used against the Palestinians.

If you take into account the ridiculously imbalanced effects of the property damage and impoverishment of this ongoing conflict, the Palestinians are getting screwed on every level. There is no sufficient justification for the actions of Israel's military, and I'm sick and tired of hearing 'terrorism' as the rallying cry of those who defend collective punishment and making war on entire populations.

You need to educate yourself about what a recession is. By definition, a recession is a 2 quarter consecutive decline in the GDP. That has only happened once since Bush took office, and only lasted one quarter (Q3 of 2001). We have maintained positive, and sometimes record-breaking growth, ever since then.

Ongoing wars? He started them! Afghanistan was arguably justified, but the biggest economic damage - Iraq - was soley the neocon's doing.

Wrong. Osama Bin Laden started it when he issued his Fatwah in 1998, declaring Jihad against the US.

The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies--civilians and military--is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God, "and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together," and "fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in God."

. And just as it's evil terrorism when Palestinians blow up Israeli kids, but when Israelis blow up Palestinian kids that's an unfortunate but unavoidable casualty in the war on terror.

When the Palestinians kill Israeli kids, it's because they deliberately target kids. When Israelis kill kids, it's by accident.

There is a fascinating analysis of deaths in intifada 2.0 which proves that Israel is targeting terrorists (who overwhelmingly tend to be Arab men from 18 to 40) while the Palestinians deliberately target civilian non-combatants (women, children & the elderly).

Course you'd need to make sure the signal's undetectable by the enemy, otherwise they could just sit there with a RFID sensor and know exactly where you are at all times.

This would be great for journalist as well. Remember that journalist for the Wall Street Journal that was kidnapped and killed?

I think all these people with the tinfoil hats are paranoid. If the gov't wants to find you it can and will, remember the movie Enemy of the State with Will Smith? The gov't already has satelites that can see a dime from space, but the real question is do the really want to find you? Like these Amber Alerts, they could publish your description, license plate and car model on every electronic billboard & radio station in the country and find you within hours, the point is why do you believe you're so freakin' special that they really want to bother finding you?

After that, what do you do, go back to the hotel. Sorry, it was also bombed. The web ref for the details is here amongst other places. Oh thats ignoring the usual problems like dysentary and so on. Btw, this is one of Bushes 'friendly' countries.

Rabin was murdered, in 1995, by Yigal Amir, who was a member of Eyal. Some have speculated that Eyal is loosely affiliated with Kahane Chai and Kach, based on shared memberships. Speculative, at best, although others may have evidence of stronger links.

Kahane Chai has publicly assumed responsibility for a number of terrorist attacks of Palestinians, including Baruch Goldstein's slaughter of 29 people in the Ibrahim Mosque in 1994. Since March 1994, both Kahane and Kach have been outlawed by the Israeli government.

"The next revolution in P2P file sharing is upon you. Resistance is futile and we are now in control".

Geeze, even the software developers talk like there in Hamas

German law is funky. Help to murder 3,000 people and all you get is 15 years. Then again, that's probably just small fry around there.

Here is a discussion of different definitions of terrorism. Whatever definition you accept, it is a highly charged and ambiguous word. This page goes deeper into the subject and contains a fascinating interview snippet with a State Department official. While seeming to have a clear definition of terrorism, the official evades questions and ultimately states, "I do not think it will be productive to get into a description of the various terms and conditions under which we are going to define an act by the PLO as terrorism."

In other words, the US reserves the right to define terrorism as it goes. I can't blame Reuters for steering clear of this word.

You're confusing two separate points here. You're saying that the Taliban would have been entirely justified, and, in fact, probably correct, in not turning bin Laden over to the United States on the basis of the evidence presented prior to 10/7/2001. I'm not trying to refute that claim. I believe that it's false, but utterly irrelevant to the debate here.

I'm saying that (a) the Taliban would never accepted that they had enough evidence to turn him over for the WTC atrocities, because (b) they had already been presented with compelling evidence that he was complicit in other atrocities and had not handed him over then. The evidence I cite in (b) is public information, presented to a jury in US District Court last year. You could find it yourself; I did a single Google search for "Kenya embassy bombing transcipt" and came up with an Israeli site with the complete trial transcript here. From looking at some of the older CNN sites, it also appears that you can get a transcript through this point in the tree. That second site also contains the full text of the standing indictment against Osama bin Laden in regard to the actions of al Qaeda. That, in itself, is a pretty damning document.

Look, trendy as it may be to want to bad mouth the US, in this case, you don't have to trust the US gov't to realize that the Taliban are in an indefensible moral position here. There's plenty of publicly available evidence that shows bin Laden to be a murderous thug who has directed multiple acts of war against the US. You could have found it yourself, just as I did. That evidence was presented to the Taliban years ago. They should have turned him over on that basis and they did not. Complaining that they weren't shown this batch of evidence is a red herring, a dodge, and a lie. They didn't want to give bin Laden up, so they didn't. End of story.

Picked up this list of potentially involved organizations from some dude on IRC.

Everyone seems to be blaming Osama bin Laden. I hope people do their research completely before resolving to that conclusion. Just imagine we get him extradited to the U.S., try him, convict him, and summarily inject him; only to have the Sears Tower impaled by a Concorde the following day.

It could be anyone. This thing sucks, but justice is only sweet when it's 100% confirmed to be imposed on those who instigated the original offense.

What do I owe Africa?

Really?

"Fruits of the 21st Century?"

How about if Africa gets itself out of the 6th century by producing something the world wants?

And this time, try not to make it slaves, terrorists, virus es, endangered species, or diamonds to raise money to hack people to death.

--Blair
"You are only as free, happy, smart, and rich as you think you are."