From: Gene McAloon 

On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 11:01:14 +0200, Phil Payne
 wrote:

>> >It would not surprise me to see OBL in New York and addressing the UN
>> >within five years.
>>
>> Small wager on that?  Say, $100 US dollars?  We'll send it to Geo for
>> holding purposes.
>
>It's gonna happen.
>
>If Hitler had been assassinated, Goebbels would have taken over.  And if
>you think Hitler was a fanatical racist bigot, you need to read some of
>Goebbels' outpourings.
>
>If OBL is assassinated - who?
>
>I dunno - is he the worst in the pack, or is he actually one of the
>moderates?
>
>THree years after 9/11 the USA's "mighty forces" don't even
know where he
>is.  OK - someone finds him and kills him.  Then another head pops up over
>a nearby hill as his successor - and off we go again.  In each case one
>_trivial_ individual is pulling the plonker of the "most powerful nation on
>earth".

The only one whose plonker is being pulled is you. I cannot imagine anyone other
than G. Bush who elevates Osama to the level you do. Given that he has chosen to
concentrate on Iraq rather than Osama, it would seem even he doesn't think
much of Osama, albeit he is a useful foil in the "war" on
terrorism, which war is about Bush's re-election, not terrorism.

>Yeah - sure looks like it.
>
>In comparative terms - Northern Ireland was indeed an island with one leaky
>border.  OBL has (potentially) the sympathies of a quarter of the planet's
>population in two-thirds of its countries, many of which have indistinct,
>vague borders.  You want to carry on with this?  How long did the Crusades
>last?  Who won?
>
>You have no choice but to talk to him.

There is nothing to talk about with him. Your mentioning of N. Ireland
suggests that you have no conception of what Osama is all about. You equate
him with the only kind of "terrorists" your Brit-centric mindset
recognizes; the kind who are
fighting for freedom from Brit imperialism. But that is not what Osama is about.
He is a fundamentalist religious fanatic who wants to transform the world
into his religious vision. Nothing new about that. The Arab world has seen
his kind come and go for the last thousand years at least.

The previous great "threat" was the Muslim Brotherhood, still
around although it
is more political party now than the firery religious fanatics they once
were. Five, certainly ten years from now it will be; "Osam who?"

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5