bible warning- nice.

"Holy" Bible?

Must be a disclaimer, lest someone starts asking questions.

By claiming it is "Holy" you can always avoid the inevitable argument that begins with "What the fuck?"

"Holy" Bible?

Must be a disclaimer, lest someone starts asking questions.

By claiming it is "Holy" you can always avoid the inevitable argument that begins with "What the fuck?"

Thanks so much for linking to my lastest song parody, Ode To Takeout. I appreciate it, Norm, as always!

Damn, my heart weeps for John Walker Lindh and his father. Call me a bleeding heart liberal, go ahead. We are all bleeding hearts as concerns ourselves and our loved ones. Why can we not, then, apply the same concern for self to others?

Thanks for the monkeys! OT, but everyone should check out this Gore speech.

"Damn, my heart weeps for John Walker Lindh and his father."

I won't call you a bleeding-heart liberal, but I will call you emotionally illogical. From his father's speech:

"When he did go into Afghanistan, John received infantry training at a government-run military training camp. But the training camp was funded by Osama bin Laden."

He then goes on to document that his kid took up arms to 'resist' American and alliance forces. Sure he never fired. But that's irrelevant. He joined the enemy.

You can whine and dither all you want about extenuating circumstances, horrors of war, et al. But Lindh made his choice. Feeling sorry for him is just dumb.

On the Internet, troll is a slang term for a person who posts messages intended to create controversy or provoke an angry response rather than to add content to a discussion.

I liked the Monkey clip but for the almost imperceptable transition between the religion diversity and total war. Sorry, I don't buy that. In religion, as in anything else we monkeys do, we can add a touch of the worst in us and make it rotten.

"On the Internet, troll is a slang term for a person who posts messages intended to create controversy or provoke an angry response rather than to add content to a discussion."

Also on the internet, people who make vacuous statements and are then embarassed by having the ignorance of their position held up for public scrutiny often resort to calling others 'trolls'.

THE MONKEYS! THE MONKEYS! That was bloody hilarious. I was almost crying it was so funny.

Robert Young Pelton responds to Frank Lindh here: http://www.kathryncramer.com/kathryncramer/2006/01/thetruth_about.html

It's kind of hard to tell exactly what's going on, but I think we can at least glean the following:

• Lindh took up arms against American forces. He may not have pointed a gun at anyone, he may not have known his side would be on the other side, but he still made choices that put himself in the position of being a member of an army that was at odds with the U.S.
• His treatment after capture was a gross violation of the Geneva Convention.
• The media coverage that surrounded the events may have damaged his case.

As to whether he was well-intentioned or not, violent or not, a knowing member of Al Qaeda or not... we just don't know. It's the word of a father vs. the word of a journalist trying to protect his reputation. Frankly, I don't really trust either one of them.

NationElectric, Your points are well taken as there is more than one side to this issue and I am with you that I don't trust either one of them. I will admit that I gave a rather knee-jerk response after reading the passionate plea from the father. After reading what Pelton wrote, it looks like Mr Lindh has not told the entire truth here. On the other hand, Pelton made some comments which are not truthful too. For example, his claim that Osama bin Laden never received any US CIA funding is not true. I thought that this was common knowledge. It all began with President Carter.

According to Zbigniew Brzezinski, on July 3, 1979 President Carter approved of aid for the mujahadeen in Kabul. Brzezinski, in an interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998:

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

B: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.

I wonder what Brzezinski thinks about what he said back then?

NE, You said that Lindh took up arms against American forces. It is my understanding that he took up arms against the Northern Alliance, which prior to 9/11 was no ally of the United States.

This discussion led me to reading a lot of things this morning. Here is an article written in 1998 from the U.S. Institute of Peace entitled The Taliban and Afghanistan. Here are a few excerpts from that article.

"A two-decade-long civil war which began as an insurgency against the former communist-led government in Kabul has led to the surprising emergence of the Taliban as the leading power in Afghanistan. The Taliban are championed as the bearers of peace and the saviors of Afghan sovereignty by some; however, the rise of this largely rural, Pashtun-dominated Islamic fundamentalist movement is provoking wider regional fears of conflict and instability."

After defeating the Russians, the U.S. abandoned Afghanistan and the U.S. has once again largely abandoned Afghanistan to the Taliban and warlords. What a complex mess of a situation that has been brewing in that area due to the meddling of Russia and the U.S.

"I will admit that I gave a rather knee-jerk response after reading the passionate plea from the father."

Gee, I'm so offended ... when I said this very thing, I was a troll.

"For example, his claim that Osama bin Laden never received any US CIA funding is not true. I thought that this was common knowledge."

Actually, it's a common lie. Osama bin Laden did not receive direct funding from the US. The US did indirectly fund the mujahideen against the Soviet Union (something which is easy to second-guess from this point in history). But Osama bin Laden himself had a negligible role in that fight. From wikipedia:

While the charges that the CIA was responsible for the rise of the Afghan Arabs might make good copy, they don't make good history. The truth is more complicated, tinged with varying shades of gray. The United States wanted to be able to deny that the CIA was funding the Afghan war, so its support was funneled through Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI). ISI in turn made the decisions about which Afghan factions to arm and train, tending to favor the most Islamist and pro-Pakistan. The Afghan Arabs generally fought alongside those factions, which is how the charge arose that they were creatures of the CIA. Former CIA official Milt Bearden, who ran the Agency's Afghan operation in the late 1980s, says, "The CIA did not recruit Arabs," as there was no need to do so. There were hundreds of thousands of Afghans all too willing to fight, and the Arabs who did come for jihad were "very disruptive . . . the Afghans thought they were a pain in the ass." Similar sentiments from Afghans who appreciated the money that flowed from the Gulf but did not appreciate the Arabs' holier-than-thou attempts to convert them to their ultra-purist version of Islam. ... There was simply no point in the CIA and the Afghan Arabs being in contact with each other. ... the Afghan Arabs functioned independently and had their own sources of funding. The CIA did not need the Afghan Arabs, and the Afghan Arabs did not need the CIA. So the notion that the Agency funded and trained the Afghan Arabs is, at best, misleading. The 'let's blame everything bad that happens on the CIA' school of thought vastly overestimates the Agency's powers, both for good and ill." [Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden (New York: The Free Press, 2001), pp. 64-66.]

Now you're wrong twice in one thread. When you reply with bluster and vitriol, will you call yourself a troll?

Its the Joe® name-calling & simplistic-statements roll call!

1. 'liberal'
2. ignorant misrepresentation
3. this frog's jackass assertion Links With Your Coffee Thursday
4. emotionally illogical.
5. He joined the enemy.
6. Feeling sorry for him is just dumb.
7. vacuous statements
8. bluster and vitriol

You now have 2 points (3 insults = 1 points) You can redeem them for words that are constructive & educate. Eric

I was responding to NationElectric. I will neither respond to nor read what Joe® just pasted.

"I was responding to NationElectric. I will neither respond to nor read what Joe® just pasted."

oh yes! we wouldn't want to be exposed to any opposing view points now would we? I've always found that you learn much more, and hell even sound smarter when you discuss viewpoints with people who think just like you do.

I have no problem with opposing points of view. However, I don't like to engage in childish name calling, negativity, and worn out clichés and bromides as concerns gays and women and liberals. I read conservative blogs and I already know what Joe® is going to say before he says it. The only difference is that he will have some insulting adjectives directed towards myself and I find no benefit to engaging in this kind of tossing of shit into someone eles's face. If you want to be enlightened by the brilliant reparté from Joe®, by all means be my guest. I have better things to do with my time. I come to 1gm to be enlightened, not to be insulted by some angry middle-of-the-road American homophobe. I have plenty of them all around me where I live, should I have a need for them. So Stephen. he's all yours. May the two of you enjoy all that you learn.