Osama bin Laden
Pataki on Almost Calling Obama Osama
MINNEAPOLIS--I asked Governor George Pataki just now about a speech he gave yesterday in which he briefly conflated the names Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden and, intentionally or not, got a laugh out of the audience of convention delegates.
"That's totally untrue," he said. "I would never do that."
Asked if he meant that he had not done it purposely, he said, "I didn't do it, period." Then he added, "The word ‘Os’ came out and I stopped. But that's a lot better than Joe Biden or Ted Kennedy did."
Our Critic's Tip Sheet on Current Reading: Osama's Siblings; Osama's Whereabouts; and the War on Osama
In his forthcoming Observer review of The Second Plane, Tom Bissell admires this throwaway Martin Amis line: “I found myself frivolously wondering whether Osama was just the product … of his birth order. Seventeenth out of fifty-seven is a notoriously difficult slot to fill.” Funny, but not entirely accurate—or so I gather from Steve Coll’s The Bin Ladens (Penguin Press, $35), an epic history of the vast and vastly rich Saudi Arabian family that spawned W.’s nemesis. Meticulous and compulsively readable, Mr. Coll’s book has a huge cast of characters, swollen by the legion of Osama siblings—the exact number of which is apparently tricky to establish. (One declassified F.B.I. e-mail from 2003 referred to the “millions” of bin Ladens “running around”—and added, reassuringly, that “99.999999% of them are of the non-evil variety.”) Mr. Coll counts 54 children of Mohamed bin Laden, and notes that Mohamed “fathered seven children during the year of Osama’s birth—five sons and two daughters.” His cautious conclusion is that “Osama arrived among the Bin Ladens as somewhere between son number seventeen and son number twenty-one.” read more »
In Their Own Words: The Gospel According to Al Qaeda
This volume, a collection of essays and broadcasts by Ayman Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden, does the Al Qaeda leaders no favors. read more »
In Today's Observer
"The President will say we're in business with Osama bin Laden. Anytime, politically, you have to explain what you are saying, you have a problem. And so if I am there saying, 'Cut the funds for Iraq and the war in Iraq,' then someone is going to say, 'You are taking away rifles.'"
Joe Conason thinks the Democrats ought to cut funding for the war anyway.
Steve Kornacki explains the political perils of the McCain Doctrine.
And John Koblin writes, from amid the steaming wreckage in Foxborough, about the feel-good season of the New York Jets.
-- Josh BensonWhy Aren't American Alpinists Looking for Osama bin Laden?
Still the search continues. It's a national spectacle on 24-hour cable. And where there are eyeballs, there's money: Wampler said that he has all the resources he could want from the federal government and state to try and find them. You see the military helicopter behind him.
We've never had anything near this sort of media spectacle about the search for Osama bin Laden, who they say is hiding out in mountains about Hood's height or less on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Supposedly we're looking. But in the war Bush likes to compare this one to, WW2, the 10th Mountain Division drew on the talents of a lot of privileged skiiers. This time around you'd think that our alpinists would rather risk their lives in Afghanistan than in the Cascades. I wonder if anyone's even asked them. Our priorities are out of whack.
King v Mejias
Like the Times wrote today, most Republicans have done an about-face on the idea of campaigning on Iraq. King, as chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, doesn't have that option, and doesn't sound like he'd want to take it if he could.
Quick highlights:
Mejias, around the 3:20 mark:
"Five years later, after September 11th, we still have not hunted down and killed Bin Laden. That's a crime."
King talks about Iraq around the 4:45 mark:
-- Azi Paybarah"There are parts of the country that are stable. There are parts of the country that are deadly...I was on a convoy along the highway when a bomb went off. A bomb went off [and I] was almost killed. Then we went through the city and the city was perfectly stable. It shows how dangerous it is and how stable it is at the same time."
Bin Laden Makes an Appearance on Staten Island
Here is an unusual piece of literature from Rep. Vito Fossella's campaign, which features the image of Osama Bin Laden.
Next to the phrase "Steve Harrison opposes key tools in the war on terrorism" is a headshot of Bin Laden, somebody the Republican Party hasn't been very keen on mentioning lately.
The strategy for most Republicans this year has been to focus on local issues - like Tom Reynolds and the snow storm in Buffalo. Fossella, then, is that rarest of Republicans who appears to be trying to nationalize his race in what is expected to be a pretty dismal year for the GOP. read more »
(Note the kicker: "Steve Harrison: Wacky Ideas...Wrong for Staten Island.")
Note: This piece of literature also got some attention here. -- Azi PaybarahThe Morning Read: September 27, 2006
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Richard Miniter said Bill Clinton "made no attempt to rally the public against terrorism...Bill Clinton did not fully grasp that he was at war."
The debate between Eliot Spitzer and John Faso is covered here, here, here, here, and here.
The Libertarian gubernatorial candidate vented about not being allowed to debate.
The City dropped its bid to develop the West Side rail yards.
Taxes are owed on rebate checks the state is currently mailing to people.
Jeanine Pirro raised $750,000 at a fundraising breakfast while Andrew Cuomo's supporters criticized her position on abortion.
The reputation of the outer borough is redeemed.
Rudy Giuliani will make his first presidential campaign stop in Pennsylvania this November.
And columnist Ellis Henican indulges in thoughts of Oprah for president.
-- Azi Paybarah
Mosque Remember This: Bin Laden Burning Man At Culver City Shrine
What Rose Garden?
The press release Hillary Clinton just sent out about John Spencer's attacks appears to mark her first overtly aggressive maneuver of this election cycle. It should serve as something of an alarm to the Spencer folks that, after the bumpy but ultimately easy ride against KT McFarland, life is about to become considerably more challenging.
"If comparing Senator Clinton to Osama bin Laden is what John Spencer's 'positive' campaign looks like, what do his negative campaigns consist of?" Howard Wolfson said in the release. "Given John Spencer's history he probably doesn't consider a campaign negative until he threatens to murder his opponent. It's unfortunately very clear that John Spencer is determined to run a negative, personal campaign against Senator Clinton."
After the jump is the whole thing, which includes an early sampling of opposition research that, we're guessing, isn't all they've got. read more »
-- Jason Horowitz UPDATE: Rob Ryan sends over this response:"Senator Clinton is a "left-wing anti-defense liberal" that's not being negative, it's simply a fact. John Spencer wants to have numerous debates so Senator Clinton can personally explain her opposition to the Patriot Act, NSA wire-tapping and a host of other issues."
Spencer, Not Playing Politics, Links Osama and Hillary in Ad
There's something to be said for shock value, I suppose.
John Spencer has reacted to this week's foiled air terror plot by taking out what I assume to be a pretty limited cable TV buy for this spot, which features images of Hillary Clinton and - who else? -- Osama bin Laden.
After a female narrator scolds the senator for opposing "the Patriot Act and the NSA wiretaps that helped stop another 9-11," John Spencer has this remarkable, apparently un-ironic kicker: "That's wrong. I'm John Spencer, and I approve this message because I won't play politics with our security."
-- Josh BensonM.T.A. Officials Fiddle While the World Burns
An Unmourned Death, An Unspeakable Cause
As United 93 Opens At Tribeca Festival, Shock, Pain, Culture
The Wrath of the Dersh
Good point. Dershowitz is brilliant and aggressive and intimidating. In their paper on the Israel lobby, Mearsheimer and Walt correctly identify The Dersh as an important part of the lobby. Because when anyone challenges the morality of our one-sided policy in the I/P world (Israel Palestine), Dersh is sure to land with both broad feet, hard and fast.
He's done so again, in responding, on the Kennedy School website, to the Walt-Mearsheimer paper. http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/research/working_papers/dershowitzreply.pdf His attack is emotional and forceful, accusing the authors of distortion and anti-semitism. And it's wrong. He argues in essence, this paper is a neo-Nazi tract that twists evidence out of hatred for Jews and therefore must not be taken seriously. (In fact, as I've said before, Walt-Mearsheimer is a considered, provocative and heretical analysis that must be taken seriously...)
But let's consider one of Dersh's key points: Osama bin Laden couldn't care less about the Palestinians.
Prior to September 11, Israel was barely on bin Laden's radar.
Here he echoes a central claim of the Israel lobby, that the 9/11 attacks were about Saudi Arabia, Arab male social frustration, Arab dictatorship, Arab lack of opportunity-- anything but American policy in I/P. And to some degree, the lobby is right. The hijackers apparently had a wide range of motivations, which historians will be parsing for a long time to come--about as long as they're trying to figure out why the U.S. invaded Iraq!
The lie the lobby and The Dersh spread is that the unbalanced American policy in I/P had nothing to do with the attacks. When Osama bin Laden and his associates clearly were angry about the Palestinians. Here is Max Rodenbeck, in a thorough piece called "Their Master's Voice," about bin Ladenism in the New York Review of Books. (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18750)
... the notion of payback for injustices suffered by the Palestinians is perhaps the most powerfully recurrent in bin Laden's speeches. It has become fashionable to assert that al-Qaeda's attachment to the Palestinian cause is relatively recent, and has been cynical and deliberately manipulative. That is simply not true. As long ago as 1984, witnesses report bin Laden shunning American goods to protest American support of Israel.Speaking just before the 2004 presidential elections, bin Laden himself voiced amazement that Americans, deceived, he supposed, by their government, had yet to understand that he had struck America because "things just went too far with the American-Israeli alliance's oppression and atrocities against our people." As he goes on to relate in some detail:
The events that made a direct impression on me were during and after 1982, when America allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon.... I still remember those distressing scenes: blood, torn limbs, women and children massacred.... The whole world heard and saw what happened, but did nothing. In those critical moments, many ideas raged inside me, ideas difficult to describe, but they unleashed a powerful urge to reject injustice and a strong determination to punish the aggressors.
Yes bin Laden is evil. No, we don't let a madman dictate our policies. But the point is, when people ask, Why do they hate us? the answer must include the understanding, We've sided almost absolutely with an occupying power in a very morally ambiguous situation, Israel-Palestine.
And that's the strongest evidence of the Israel lobby's power. You cannot make this simple statement in the mainstream. Most significantly, the 9/11 Commission report on the attacks included not one word about Israel as a motivator for the hijackers. That is a true national disgrace: The official response to the most important event of our time, drafted by politicians, and it cannot honestly address a principal sore point in the Clash of Civilizations. Because the commission is afraid to raise questions about the evenhandedness of our policy and the Israel lobby. Afraid to bring down the Wrath of the Dersh. It's time to free ourselves of this bugaboo.Fished In
Here, kitty. Good dog.
Did you hear the one about CIA tracking Osama Bin Laden in rural China using computer-enhanced satellite photos and technology like you might've seen on Murder, She Wrote? Oh, and that they shit their pants when they saw the photos?
If you read the Verdad ("true") issue of Vice, you did. You also might've read about Angus, the adorable dachsund/cat hybrid some Dr. Moreau whipped up in a lab. (Not to mention the awesome pygmy whales!)
Of course, the entire "true" issue is anything but—from the cover that features a BMX rider jumping the Grand Canyon to the report on kidney thefts, it's one long piss-take.
But none of that could stop FishbowlNY from posting an entry yesterday entitled Vice Knows Where Osama's Hiding and gushing, "Believe it or not, Vice does do a fair amount of international reporting."
At least, Vice does enough international reporting to offer a Fishbowl-baffling barrage of Central Asian place names in the deadpan opener, before throwing the Murder, She Wrote reference at the end. Though for future reference, China's policies toward Muslim separatists would actually make Xinjiang about as hospitable an Osama hideout as Tel Aviv. read more »
The Media Mob alerted the post's author to the mistake in an email this morning, but it remains uncorrected or qualified.
Luckily, the item didn't make its way into Mediabistro's 'Media Feed' this morning. Oh, wait. No es verdad.Kinder, Gentler Fundamentalists
"Insh'Allah a new team will be formed within the Islamic Thinkers Society that will refute false allegations, propaganda, false beliefs and ideas that are being spread by the kuffar [Ed.: 'unbelievers'] and the people of misguidance [Ed.: 'reporters']...This is just an idea that a few brothers from ITS and other non-violent organizations came up with..."
Not a bad plan, though it may take a few dozen frenzied flaks to explain the group's avowedly non-violent Bin Laden boosterism, their affection for animated images of stuff blowing up, and slogans like "Your Terrorists Are Our Heroes." But wait! Somebody already has. At the end of his proposal, the group's intrepid PR planner shared a favorite favorite quotation. I doubt that it will make the group's official media kit:
"I would love to be killed in Allah's cause and then be brought back to life, and then be killed and then again be brought back to life, and then be killed."
Kumbaya, baby! Kumbaya. But...
Inspiring words aside, you can't really blame the brothers of ITS for trying to burnish their brand. They've fallen victim to a recent spate of really bad press. On the same day our article ran (oh! the pain of a weekly deadline), The New York Times published a story tying the ITS to Al-Muhajiroun, a notorious group of British extremists. A week later, the Fox News Channel aired another report, which unearthed a bunch of unsubstantiated Internet rumours to connect the group with Al Qaeda. read more »
And the branding campaign has already started with a scintillating screed: Observing the Observer.
