Did Osama slip away from us?

[plazul]

Do you think this Idema guy is credible? I knew that we had a lot of bounty hunters out there but Idema is the first to claim that he had bin Laden's location and gave it to the FBI.

His story about the FBI having a hand in his arrest sounds plausible because it would be a colossal screw up if it turned out that this guy had accurate information about bin Laden and FBI didn't act in time. Do you believe him?

I'll be suspicious if this story goes off the radar screen

[anastrophe]

bin laden will be captured in mid- to late october. that's my gut feeling. just in time to sway the election.

[Warsai]

Originally Posted by anastrophe

bin laden will be captured in mid- to late october. that's my gut feeling. just in time to sway the election.

Hey, if the government can bring his family to America 2 days after 9/11, then they can bring him in at the right time. Who knows. They probably know where he is already, just waiting for the right time to take him in.

[anastrophe]

actually, you've got that backwards - the bin laden family members were ferried *out* of the US shortly after 9/11. and it was done after airspace had been cleared, so it was perfectly legit. michael moore's film is propoganda, so 'facts' are precisely that - 'facts' in quotation marks, i.e. not necessarily the truth.

[Warsai]

Originally Posted by anastrophe

actually, you've got that backwards - the bin laden family members were ferried *out* of the US shortly after 9/11. and it was done after airspace had been cleared, so it was perfectly legit. michael moore's film is propoganda, so 'facts' are precisely that - 'facts' in quotation marks, i.e. not necessarily the truth.

Thanks for clearing that up! I'm afraid that sometimes I fall prey to leftist propaganda. The F9/11 movie is created from few facts.

[The Day V]

Catching bin Laden is a bad idea.

Whether he could have been or can be caught is irrelevant. The question is whether he should be caught.

Bin Laden is in the middle of a win-win situation; either he doesn't get caught and continues to orchestrate strikes against the West, all while remaining the Muslim version of Robin Hood or he gets caught, tried and imprisoned/executed and that causes a big, and I mean BIG, backlash amongst the extreme, and possibly moderate, Muslim community.

If Uncle Sam's thinkers are worth their salt, then the choice for Bush (or Kerry) is clear. On one hand, try to undercut the Islamic extremists by mending the relationship between the West and the 'mis-educated' members of the Asian and African Muslim community, all while risking further strikes by the existing terrorists, and on the other, catch bin Laden (which will immediately martyr-ize him in the eyes of al Qaeda and it's allies), face the backlash and hope the dice come up seven.

Catching bin Laden gives him credibility amidst the impressionable, firey, Asian and African Muslim youth of today, who already look up to him as a warrior against evil. What the West does not need is for bin Laden to have a wider support base.

[plazul]

I'd be willing to take a chance on dealing with a back lash from Robin Hood's merry men. But binLaden isn't calling the shots now on attack planning. Reports say that he's just playing the role of ideological leader and leaving the dirty work to his trusted lieutenants.

If he's captured just before the election though I'm going to throw in the towel.

[Tombstone]

Nice analysis. My feeling is that we can't win for losing. No matter what we do, we are still going to be targets for all of these militant Islamists.

I'm cynical enough now to believe that even if we went into a complete isolationist state, the Islamic Nations would still have a bounty on our heads.

Western "Culture" just doesn't jive with fundamentalist Islam. It's their duty to rid the earth of infidels. And believe me, they are going to try.

It's a depressing thought, but the next big battles will most likely be Islam vs. Christianity. Islamic Nations vs. Western Civilization.

[capt_buzzard]

Originally Posted by Tombstone

Nice analysis. My feeling is that we can't win for losing. No matter what we do, we are still going to be targets for all of these militant Islamists.

I'm cynical enough now to believe that even if we went into a complete isolationist state, the Islamic Nations would still have a bounty on our heads.

Western "Culture" just doesn't jive with fundamentalist Islam. It's their duty to rid the earth of infidels. And believe me, they are going to try.

It's a depressing thought, but the next big battles will most likely be Islam vs. Christianity. Islamic Nations vs. Western Civilization.

Its not going to happen just yet. Wait until after 2007 when the bold Iran unites the Arab countries/nations into one. Then we might see something like we never seen before.

[plazul]

Iranians are Persians, not Arabs, though many Americans tend to lump Iranians and Arabs together as "towel heads" and "camel jockeys." The Iranians and Arabs are beautiful people who have made major conrtibutions to human civilization. We should remember the Babylonian Empire and that the Fertile Crescent is the cradle of civilization. Arabs and Persians were very far ahead of the west in just about every area of human endeavor for much of human history.

Western hegemony and exploitation gave birth to radical Islam and it is the force that drives it today. But true Islam is not intolerant of infidels and only calls for jihad when Islam is threatened.

If you understand a little bit about Islam you know that it reveres women and western images in cinema and other media which paint women as sex objects has created serious tensions for defenders of the faith. Modern Muslims encourage equal rights for women but they fear the consequences of adopting western attiudes about sexual behavior. Their societies are becoming saturated with American popular culture and they are struggling to maintain their moral values in the Information Age.

There doesn't need to be a war between Christianity and Islam. There just needs to be more respect and appreciation for value systems that are different from ours.