Stompy

Surprised this hasn't been posted yet (if it has, then the search function needs to be fixed!)

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/nation...Bush%20Grenade

So, let me get this straight... someone has the once in a lifetime chance to get something like that 100ft away from him and it DOESN'T go off?

Hah, some dumb assassin's gettin his life cut tonight.

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liquidlight

This is too comical to be disturbing, from 100ft away bulletproof glass or not the worst he would have had is ringing in his ears!

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Seaver

100 feet? I could have done some damage had it not been impeded by bullet proof glass. More likely than not it wouldn't have gotten him though, would have been a slight chance. But yeah... that guy's going to get caught really soon. If he wasnt smart enough to see it wasn't going to happen, he's not smart enough to elude anyone for very long.

Hardknock

(edited: Completely unproductive and volatile drivel)

mike059

The way this is being handled make me think that perhaps the whole thing was a plant, cause a little trouble over there, some news and PR spin here....

host

An opposition assessment..........

Seaver

Jesus Host to you ever post any of your own thoughts or do you just cut/past?

host

Yeah.....here's a thought for Hardknock: In the current repressive climate, recognize that your right to free speech and free expression had been severely curtailed. If you want to preserve this forum in it's present state, quickly edit your last post, or maybe one of the mods will have exercise the caution to beat you to it. I am sure that you underestimate the risk that you are taking, and that you personally advocate no such thing, but be more careful.

Seaver, I don't happen to agree with what you posted about the style and content of my posts, but I admit that there is some basis for what you wrote.
My last post here should not be taken out of the context of the majority of my posts. I posted the article with so little added commentary because it contained the most information, opinion (of the author, not mine) and detail
about the incident that I have seen today. I thought that it might provoke curiousity and discussion, and I wanted to get it out on the thread quickly.

I do my best to present persuasive, credible, informed, opinion. I put in a lot of time and effort researching and learning as I compile my posts. I regret that my posts often end up being too lengthy and discourage potential readers. The media and most other posts on these threads offer enough snippets and "short takes" to fill the demand for that sort of presentation.

I wish that I had the command of the language and the ability to communicate in this venue that members such as manx and roachboy so often display. I do not, but I have a passion for making my points anyway, as best as I am able, given the narrower limits of my vocabulary and intellectual abilities. Consider that not all members publicly communicate their feedback.

Hardknock

I'm not editing jack. I stand by what I said. I'm only making a point. And that point is, people don't like dumbya very well and the fact is, that there are some people that don't like him well enough to go to extremes. And that includes throwing grenades at him. Which, apparently, has already been demostrated.

That's a fact. And he brought it on himself. Telling the world to go fuck itself and comitting war crimes is not the best way to make friends.

Free Speech

While Clinton, on the other hand, was loved by everyone from China to the Taliban, as well as Osama Bin Laden.

Here's a handy link for you to express your thoughts further:

The FBI

samcol

This story almost sounds bogus to me. The two security agencies can't even agree with each other. Why would someone go out of their way to throw a grenade that obviously wasn't going to get to the president, then it's also just happens to be a dud. Sounds like a big misunderstanding to me. Like someone through some fruit or something and there was a huge over-reaction.

connyosis

Of course Clinton was disliked in certain areas as well, but not even close to hated as much as Bush. (Me speaking from a european point of view)

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ObieX

You say this as if Bush wasn't the same way with Osama. Hell wasnt't some of Osama's family having a meting or party with US officials at the time 9/11 occured and they had to be flown out of the country? Osama was a VERY IMPORTANT person before all this crap went down. A VERY rich person, and a person who, if i recall correctly, was in the business of building buildings for very rich people. Him and his family dealt witht he US on many occasions, with extremely friendly relations up until 9/11.

Also we're the ones who trained and armed the taliban (the US) in order for them to fight russia for us. So up until 9/11 they were on pretty friendly terms with us as well.

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roachboy

from time to time, you get an idea of how this administration operates in the world---what happens behind the Huge Curtain of Paranoia linked to the bogeyman of choice since 2001: the Terrorist--across the series of interesting coups, an obvious geopolitical "vision" being implemented in places far away that would require lots of information to situate--coverage of a coup in someplace like kyrgyzstan, for example, would require not only action footage of the coup itself, but also "where is this place" type stuff. no doubt, this kind of density of information would prompt many tv viewers to wander away from their screens to get sandwiches or something and thereby miss vital advertising. better to keep information short and punchy, to reduce the sense of linkage to information to the most base imaginable level (paranoia works--it prevents folk from wandering away to get sandwiches, thereby missing vital advertising)--even if the cost of this short/punchy model is no understanding whatsoever of the american modes of "managing" the planet that the neocons obviously see as a vast american colony--no idea of why folk in other places might have views of the states that cannot be jammed into the dynamic paranoia/cheerleading that seems to shape most tv coverage of the planet--what matters is not what you know of the world, what you know of the american role in the world, but that you do not wander away from the tv to get a sandwich or something and thereby miss vital advertising.

this absurd mode of information transmittal--the power of which is evident--reduces many to simply wondering "why dont they like us?"

if this is as far as you can think your way into situations like georgia, it is no wonder that the dud-grenade seems surreal, unmotivated. the fact that coverage cannot even decide whether the grenade was thrown or placed is of a piece with it. if the key to the truncated, foreshortened world presented on television news is the pseudo-accuracy of the tight shot, the reduced context, then its inverse--the wobbly image, the lack of visual resolution, the implication of contexts beyond the coverage limits of the reactionary american television news system--could become a moment of critical reflection on this system and its limits. but the problem with wobbly images is that they circulate in a television context of sharply defined pseudo-information, and so tend to dissolve, go away, be forgotten. what determines "reality" has less to do with information than the quality of factoids.

why dont "they" like us? could you bring me a beer, martha? vital advertising is coming.

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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

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Mojo_PeiPei

This is wrong and offbase on a great many accounts. You do realize that the Bin Laden family is comprised of over 50 children Osama being a Jan Brady and son to one of the senior Bin Ladens least favorite wifes. Osama was never an important person before any of this went down, except for his actions in Afghanistan in the 80's, where the Saud family sent all the nutjob extremists to get them out of the kingdom. Osama's family had exclusive rights to Saudi Arabia contracts for building, some of which Osama worked on being a member of the family. Osama never dealt with the US, his family did, remember there were over 50 members, and by many accounts Osama is the black sheep with his fundie ways.

And your last paragraph is out of sync with the actual breakdown of time and relationships. America funded the Pakistani ISI (intelligence) during the Soviet-Afghan conflict (to the tune of 2-3 billion dollars), this was because we couldn't directly give them money because it was Islamist-nationalist conflict, America didn't fit in. The ISI in return funnled the money to the factions of the mujahadeen that they supported. After the Soviet presence left Afghanistan many of the mujahadeen remained and there was civil war and chaos until the Taliban was formed in the mid-90's and assumed power. As such in no way did we fund the Taliban.

Bodyhammer86

To add on to Mojo's last paragraph, most of the mujahadeen factions that we supported ended up being fighters for the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, and hell, they even fought under the same name during the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan.

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ObieX

The first part was wrong on a little, i'll admit that. He himself didnt have direct ties with the US but his family certainly did, and were held in high esteem in the US. They often interacted with the US government and probably still do. Just because Osama was the black sheep of the family doesn't mean he didn't interact with them. Yes it was a large family and some of his family didnt have contact with him for long periods of time, but that happens in every family. Every family has their black sheep, and some parts of families may disown other parts of their family. Because this is such a large family with a complex weaving of relationships these things happen, and are understandable.

I said he was in the business of building buildings for rich people. This was true, holding exclusive building rights in a country as rich as Saudi Arabia (even for a large family like that) REQUIRES power. Do you have any idea how much stuff has been built in Saudi Arabi over the past few decades? How many buildings went up? They got their hands on money and the country explanded vertically in an explosion of wealth. A HUGE chunk of that wealth ending up in the hands of the Bin Ladin family, and also in Osama's hands (we're talking billions of dollars). With money comes power. Osama was, as you said "important" in Afghanistan in the 80's and that's when most of the shit went down, he remained a figurehead throughout that time and into the 90's up to 2001. He may not have been the leader of the country but he was *a* leader and major funder of that countries main terrorist group. So to say he had no power is wrong. He had whatever power he wanted in that region, he just chose not to use it to the extent he could on most occasions.


As for my last statement i should have definitely expanded a ton on it, but i didnt feel like it. Yea the US sent our money to Pakistan in an attempt to avoid direct interaction with the forces facing the soviet union. If we funded them directly it would have been seen as an act of war most likely. So the money got sent to Pakistan and they funneled it to the hands of fighters, and other people. Lots of different groups of fighters, and groups. After the region fell into civil war the taliban took over, they basically materialized over a short period of time. "Students of Islamic Knowledge Movement" is what they were. Basically a group of people that were.. as the name suggests.. students. Some were fighters too. And they also came out of Pakistan with funding from Pakistan (oh my), and were used by Pakistan on certain occasions and missions, like escorts. After the group saw what they could do they used their power to take over Afghanistan, and pretty quickly. Not everyone liked this (northern alliance, who controlled maybe 10% of the northern part of afghanistan) but that was mainly ethnic conflict. They wouldn't have liked them to begin with, fighting against them is what they do. The taliban didn't end the civil war in Afghanistan, they just had the strongest force and therefore controlled the country (or atleast 90% of it).

Yes i'll admit that that one last statement was messed up. The people in charge over there in afghanistan were not very liked by the US later on, but that was because the taliban stripped the country of everything western, and didnt treat women very well.. and killed people regularly in public executions... etc. However they did help to bring SOME order to the chaos over there and whip the region into shape, that was in US interests. And we all know how the US likes it's interests. We'll get into bed with whoever it takes to get what we want done. Sure a huge flaming pile of shit may erupt after that, but then that just gives us something else to do. When you use people, it often comes back to bite you in the ass, like it did in this case. You help the funding and training of different ethnic groups who don't get along to fight a single enemy, what happens when the single enemy is defeated? Well, gotta fight someone right? Luckily there's still the other groups you hate. You have had a common cause once, but that cause is gone, so now it's back to fighting. The taliban kept that stuff in check, and the US liked that, it was only when they went out of control and started banning everything western, killing people, and turning women into slaves that they turned into an enemy.

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We Must Dissent.

host

ABC news is actually surrendering to make way for what yoiu speak of........
roachboy, can you bring me another beer?

ObieX

Excuse my off-topic posts, had to correct myself.. anyway. The last thing this country needs right now is for Bush to be killed. Sure some people in the US (and certainly hte rest of the world) might not be very upset about it, but the results wouldn't be all that great. As it stands right now we may get lucky and Bush will ride out the rest of his term w/o throwing us into another war. If he were to get killed Cheney would be president (how much would this suck), and the government in general would go even more insane than it has already. Imagine how many more crazy bills would be passed in the name of "national security". Most of the stuff being done in the name of national security now is more about national oppression and fear, governmental dominance, and all sorts of fun stuff like that. All the while moving further and further away from the fact that the nation is the people, and not the government.. because the government is no longer the people.

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We Must Dissent.

Free Speech

Thanks to you and Mojo for posting the responses I would otherwise have done.

I heard a service member speak yesterday. He's been to Iraq twice.

He was very upbeat about how things are going over there, to the point of saying he often wonders what country the media are reporting on, since the news is invariably made out to be bad.

He says we'll have accomplished a very important goal when the media over there stop referring to mujahadin (sp?) and begin calling them some other Arabic word that start with an "M" and sounds similar.

It means "evildoers."

It's going to take awhile, since for about two generations, speaking out against the entrenched powers over there had some very negative consequences.

MSD

I'm not one to censor opinions, but I'll leave it to the board owner to decide whether or not to remove the comment. Any heavily trafficked political forum is going to be running up the tally of hits on the FBI's Carnivore machines, and I doubt that this looks good for us in their eyes. Entire sites have been shut down and servers confiscated because of comments similar to, but to a much greater extent than that which was made above. If the poster wishes to edit it, he may, if Hal wants to, I've forwarded it to him to decide on.