At the same time, the highly influential traditional Russian Orthodox Church is calling for the government to deal with the non-traditional/foreign/"totalitarian sects" (including Protestants/evangelicals) so as to prevent "psychological addiction" and social breakdown. The government knows this is necessary for political security.
President Putin is doubtless aiming to cleanse Russia and bolster both national and political security by sweeping out all non-traditional religion in the easiest way possibly: indiscriminately, and for maximum political advantage.
Elizabeth Kendal
rl-research@crossnet.org.au <<<<
This is a step back in time, the time of KGB and terror.
"This is a step back in time, the time of KGB and terror."
OPINION: I agree.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1531015/posts
First Ever Zarqawi Interview Released In New Book
Inside the Resistance ^ | 11/9/2005 | Zaki Chehab
Posted on 11/29/2005 10:20:52 PM PST by jmc1969
The road leading to the rendezvous with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was a rutted track though farm land, one hour’s drive beyond the boundary of the Sunni Triangle. His minders, all wearing scarves to conceal their identities, were Iraqis – there was no a single foreign Arab among them. Zarqawi sat cross legged on a thin sponge mattress covering a dirt floor. The room had mud walls and a wooden ceiling, and its doors opened onto farmland. The ultra hi-tech equipment used to search visitors seemed incongruous with the simplicity of his surroundings.
Though quietly spoken, his brain is sharp, and he has a street-wise mentality. He is conversant with all kind of technology, using sophisticated methods of communication to prevent detection, and some liken him to Bill Gates because of his wizardry with computers. He is organized, energetic, and totally self-reliant, moving around without bodyguards. His visitors are received unarmed, as he relies on his quick reactions and his many screening devices for his protection.
Zarqawi is assiduous in keeping up-to-date with international affairs, using all manner of technology – even when on the run – and is clued up on the opinions of the principle players on the global political scene.
He speak knowledgably about the American administration’s plan and policies toward the Middle East and the Islamic world, and he can recall in detail the political views of the previous US secretary of state, Colin Powell, which were out of step with the policies that the Pentagon and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld were pursuing in the region.
He accuses the American administration of establishing a puppet government in Iraq that will serve only Washington’s long-term interests; uppermost of these is to get their hands on the largest oil reserves in the world.
(Excerpt) Read more at bookbyte.com ...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1530880/posts?page=2
Why Syria Welcomed David Duke
Arutz Sheva ^ | 11-29-05 | Dr. Rafael Medoff
Posted on 11/29/2005 5:12:48 PM PST by SJackson
David Duke, perhaps America's most notorious racist and Holocaust-denier, has finally found a country that welcomes him: Syria.
The Syrian government last week rolled out the red carpet for Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, one-time Louisiana State Representative, and author of a vicious screed called Jewish Supremacism: My Awakening to the Jewish Question.
Duke addressed a rally that was broadcast on Syrian government television (he told the crowd that New York and Washington, DC are "occupied by the Zionists"), held a press conference alongside members of the Syrian parliament, and basked in the lavish praise of the Grand Mufti of Syria, the country's top Islamic religious leader, who praised Duke's "courage" and his "message of peace.” A photo of a beaming Duke with two Syrian officials now headlines his web site.
It's not hard to see why Duke was pleased to be in Syria. Pariahs crave legitimacy. The fact that a government, any government, is willing to befriend him is welcome news to the former Klansman. It's the same reason that Kurt Waldheim, when he was declared persona non grata by the United States in 1987 because of the revelations about his Nazi past, desperately sought countries that would invite him to visit (Egypt, Jordan and the Vatican were the only ones to do so).
So, it's not hard to understand why Duke eagerly embraced Syria. But why did Syria embrace Duke?
I posed that question to a colleague of mine, an academic who enjoys close relations with various Arab officials and who himself visited Syria not long ago. I found his explanation less than persuasive.
"The United States has pushed the Syrians into a corner," he said. "This is their way of responding." He was referring to the Bush administration's strong criticism of Syria for its role in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and for its reported sheltering of Iraqi terrorists and Iraqis who took part in Saddam Hussein's war crimes.
But is it really fair to blame President George Bush for Syria's invitation to David Duke?
The fact is that Syria's soft spot for Nazis, neo-Nazis and Holocaust-deniers long predates the current policies of the Bush administration.
More than fifty years before Syria began sheltering Iraqi war criminals, it was sheltering Nazi war criminals. Israeli military intelligence reports during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war were filled with references to the presence of Nazis among the Syrian forces attacking northern Israel. Some of them served as commanding officers.
The names of prominent Nazis living in Syria began to surface during the 1950s and 1960s. One was SS Captain Theodor Dannecker, who helped Adolf Eichmann implement Hitler's genocide policy in France, Bulgaria and Hungary. Another was Karl Rademacher, a senior Eichmann aide who had been involved in the mass murder of Jews from Belgium, Holland, Croatia and elsewhere. After World War II, Rademacher escaped Allied capture by fleeing to Syria, where he became an official in the Syrian Secret Service.
The most notorious of the Nazis granted asylum in Syria was another top Eichmann aide, SS Lieutenant Alois Brunner. After being convicted in France in 1954 of responsibility for the murders of more than 100,000 Jews, Brunner disappeared. Two decades later, the famed French Nazi-hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld tracked down Brunner in Damascus, where he was making a comfortable living as an adviser to the Syrian intelligence services. And he is apparently still there.
Not that sheltering the perpetrators of the Holocaust has stopped the Syrians from denying that the Holocaust took place. Indeed, the Syrian government-controlled media's take on the Holocaust sounds like it could have been scripted by David Duke. The daily newspaper Tishrin has described the Holocaust as "a Jewish lie," while the Syria Times has called the gas chambers "a myth." Damascus Radio has accused world Jewry of spreading "the myth of the Nazi ovens" in order to extort reparations money from Germany and Switzerland.
Why, then, did Syria invite David Duke? Perhaps the answer is not to be found in sophisticated analyses of international diplomatic developments, nor in partisan assumptions that somehow it must be President Bush's fault. Perhaps the answer is to be found simply by glancing at Syria's sixty-year-old record of hostility toward Jews and Israel, and affection for those who share that hostility.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1530996/posts
Two Face Charges in Calif. Store Vandalism
AP ^ | November 29, 2005 | JUSTIN M. NORTON
Posted on 11/29/2005 9:37:56 PM PST by ncountylee
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) -- A man linked to a black Muslim group was among two men who turned themselves in to police Tuesday for their roles in vandalizing a pair of stores for selling alcohol to blacks, police said.
Investigators said it was too soon to say whether the vandals were connected to Monday's fire and kidnapping of clerk at the same store ransacked by a gang of black men in suits and bow ties three days earlier.
Yusef Bey IV, 19, and Donald Cunningham, 73, turned themselves in to face charges including robbery, felony vandalism and terrorist threats, Oakland Deputy Police Chief Howard Jordan said. Police obtained warrants charging four others with similar crimes and expected to make arrests.
No arrests have been made in the kidnapping or the fire. Store employee Abdel Hamdan was found safe in the trunk of a car Monday, about 12 hours after the fire, as police sought to get to the bottom of the attacks.
The fire destroyed the store's merchandise and caused major structural damage to the building, police said.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
The threat, carried by local media, follows increasing violence against international forces in Kosovo and may lead to an alliance between armed rebel groups and jihadist forces, according to a former security chief from the region.
Rebels have blown up several vehicles belonging to the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the Kosovo Protection Service (KPS), leading UNMIK to warn employees to check their vehicles for bombs before starting the engines. (Click here to view UNMIK internal memo on vehicle tracking.)
Prior to the bombing of vehicles, graffiti across Kosovo warned "UNMIK get out!" Last month U.N. vehicles were defaced to read "FUND," which is Albanian for "The End."
Internal U.N. emails obtained by Cybercast News Service described the development as "extremely serious." (Click here and here to view photos of defaced vehicles)
Cybercast News Service has learned that NATO's Kosovo Force has an emergency plan called "Operation Safe Haven" in place to evacuate internationals.
The news organization has also obtained the first communique issued by the Kosovo Independence Army (KIA). It was signed on Oct. 5 and delivered by children to UNMIK police headquarters in Pristina, according to local and U.N. sources. (Click here to view communique)
The KIA promised to apply the "rules of war" and execute parliamentarians who failed to declare independence by Oct. 15. "Kosovar quislings" (collaborators) would be executed as well, the KIA stated. "They don't deserve one bullet in their forehead but seven."
On Friday the KIA ordered UNMIK, which it labeled the "modern occupier," to release all "war hostages" taken since 2000 or UNMIK officers and those who apply U.N. laws and regulations would "suffer.""[F]or six years you betrayed us," the communique read. International judges, prosecutors and investigators have also been ordered to "retreat" from Kosovo.
The existence of the KIA was at first denied by UNMIK and the Kosovo Force (KFOR), but later confirmed by UNMIK Police Commissioner Kai Vittrup. KFOR is a NATO-led international force responsible for establishing and maintaining security in Kosovo.
While the KIA is considered a new rebel group, it is made up of former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, said Thomas Gambill, a former security chief for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in the eastern region of Kosovo.
OSCE is a regional security group made up of members from 55 countries and operating under the authority of the United Nations.
"All rebel groups are offshoots of the KLA. It's just the KLA renamed," Gambill said.The threatened destabilization of Kosovo comes at a sensitive time, as the United Nations is making preparations for final status talks on the troubled Serbian province.
Gambill believes that Albanian frustration over the independence issue could lead armed rebels to forge an alliance with al Qaeda. Both groups want the international presence out of Kosovo and al Qaeda has a history of attempting to destabilize the Balkans region where it wants to gain influence.
Al Qaeda activity in neighboring Albania has been a primary concern to Gambill since 2000, given the porous borders and intelligence indicating that terrorist training camps were operating in the country.
Two months ago, Abdul Latif Saleh, an alleged associate of Osama bin Laden and a resident of Albania, was listed by the United Nations as a terrorism financier. Bin Laden gave Saleh $600,000 to create extremist groups in Albania in order to destabilize the country, according to the U.S. Department of Treasury.
Cybercast News Service, meanwhile, has learned that a bomb which exploded in a downtown market in the town of Strpce last Thursday was a time-triggered IED (improvised explosive device) planted beneath the truck owned by a Kosovo Albanian from Kacanik. The man had gone to the market to sell goods and was injured by the blast.
According to Gambill the man was warned recently by members of the KIA to stop doing business with Serbs. No one has declared responsibility for the attack. "The people are frustrated and scared. Tensions are high." said Gambill who maintains sensitive contacts with officials and Serbian and Albanian locals. The threats are played down, Gambill said, because "it does not suit the internationals to have a serious crisis such as this at the time when they are sending out reports on how much improvement has been made in Kosovo.
""The time for the KIA-KLA to join with al Qaeda seems to be close at hand," said Gambill. "The Albanian and American love affair will be put to the test.
"Make media inquiries or request an interview with Sherrie Gossett.
Off Topic.
This caught my eye, my earthquake lists showed 4 today of 3+. Said they were in a line on the Nevada side.
granny.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1530966/posts
ALASKA VOLCANO OBSERVATORY INFORMATION RELEASE (Augustine Volcano status raised to Yellow)
Alaska Volcano Observatory, USGS ^ | November 29, 2005
Posted on 11/29/2005 8:37:52 PM PST by Strategerist
AUGUSTINE VOLCANO (CAVW#1103-01-) 59.3633°N 153.4333°W, Summit Elevation 4134 ft (1260 m) Current Level of Concern Color Code: YELLOW Previous Level of Concern Color Code: GREEN
AVO has detected important changes in earthquake activity and ground deformation at Augustine Volcano in southern Cook Inlet. These data are consistent with renewed volcanic unrest. AVO is therefore raising the level-of-concern color code from green to YELLOW and will continue to monitor activity closely. There is no indication that an eruption is imminent or certain.
Continued.....
November 30, 2005 Anti-Terrorism News
Nine dead in Iraq minibus attack
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4484304.stm
Near Baghdad - the farm workers were attacked on their way to work by
10 gunmen who shot at the vehicle and then disappeared.
(Iraq) Christian hostages called 'spies'(update)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20051129-115712-4907r.htm
Al Jazeera television yesterday aired a video of four aid workers
kidnapped over the weekend, apparently being held by a previously unknown
terrorist group called the "Swords of Righteousness." The four -- two
Canadians, an American and a Briton, members of Christian Peacemaker Teams
(CPT) -- sat with their backs against a wall, and looked calm.
Family of Belgian suicide bomber raided (update)
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=24&story_id=25769&name=Family+of+Belgian+suicide+bomber+raided
Police raided 10 premises in Brussels overnight in a suspected link to
reports on Tuesday that a Belgian woman recently carried out a suicide
bomb attack in Iraq.
British police arrest man in probe into suspected terrorist plots
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/theworld/2005/November/theworld_November790.xml§ion=theworld
British police said on Wednesday they have arrested a man as part of an
investigation into suspected plans to buy weapons for international
terrorist attacks.
(Thailand) Govt plays down "al-Qaeda" threat
http://etna.mcot.net/query.php?nid=4820
Egyptian police detain 1,610 Muslim Brotherhood members
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2005/November/middleeast_November838.xml§ion=middleeast
Norway staging post for terrorists
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1168180.ece
Norwegian security police believe that several people linked to major
terrorist networks use the country as a base between operations abroad.
Merkel says Germany not open to terrorist blackmail
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/theworld/2005/November/theworld_November806.xml§ion=theworld
TSA Would Allow Sharp Objects on Airliners
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/29/AR2005112901614.html
Screeners to Focus More on Bombs
European Nations Not Complying with US Passport Rules (my title)
http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/58644.htm
More Iraqi battalions 'in the lead' against rebels
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20051129-121843-6470r.htm
Hamas Beats Out Fatah in el-Najah University
http://www.israelnn.com/news.php3?id=93888
Al-Zarqawi's Family Again Disowns Him
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051129/ap_on_re_mi_ea/jordan_al_zarqawi_tribe_1
Over 370 members of Al-Zarqawi's clan joined his close family members
Tuesday in publishing full-page letter in Jordanian newspapers disowning
him - second declaration in 20 days to renounce all ties
Cremation Of Taliban Dead Leads To Fallout
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/11/C2E93E8E-D57C-4F8F-A171-8BD27B55A257.html
Hostage Video Released, Hostages Identified (Images/Video)
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/139298.php
"Jawa Report" post with names of 4 Western hostages in Iraq and video
Ansar Jihad Mailing List Sends Advisory Announcing One Week Shutdown
http://www.lauramansfield.com/j/112805_ansarvacation.asp
"LauraMansfield.com" post with troubling news about jihadist website
(Iraq) Kidnapped Iranian women released
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17412444%255E1702,00.html
(Spain) Four Algerians charged with financing terrorism
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=81&story_id=25745&name=Four+Algerians+charged+with+financing+terrorism+
A Spanish judge has charged four Algerians (Kaled Bakel, Said Bouchema,
Salim Zerbuti and Lyief Sihamida) with membership of a terrorist cell
that financed and gave logistical support to an Islamic extremist group
linked to al-Qaeda
CIA chief defends agency over bin Laden hunt
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/11/29/cia.alqaeda.ap/index.html
CIA Director Porter Goss, saying his agency struggles to penetrate
terrorist sanctuaries overseas, insists that "we know more than we're able
to say publicly" about Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
CIA sought Muslim drug dealers as moles
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=26&story_id=25733&name=CIA+sought+Muslim+drug+dealers+as+moles%3A+report
CIA asked German domestic intelligence agencies to help it recruit
moles who could infiltrate Islamist terrorist groups
Hotel Probe KO'ed Qaeda
http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/58222.htm
Intelligence from Amman bombings probe led to U.S. raid on Mosul al
Qaeda safe house where 8 Al-Zarqawi followers blew themselves up
Ten dead, 21 seriously hurt in Bangladesh's first suicide bombings
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051129/wl_afp/bangladeshblast_051129191633;_ylt=AjJx0m9KAhOwu274tXJpxtWs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b2NibDltBHNlYwM3MTY-
Updated AFP: Police accuse Jamayetul Mujahideen, which wants to impose
strict Islamic law there
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/8898175/?pageid=rs.NewsArchive&pageregion=mainRegion&rnd=1133365091300&has-player=true&version=6.0.7.811
The Insurgent's Tale
A veteran foot soldier reveals his role in the jihad -- and why he's having second thoughts about a holy war that seems to have no end
By TOM DOWNEY
Khalid had been in Iraq for only a few weeks, but he was already sick of the place. It wasn't the missions that bothered him. He was fighting alongside a small group of Saudis, and they were consummate professionals when it came to jihad, completely focused on the lightning-fast attacks they staged each day on the foreign invaders. The ambushes usually lasted no more than five or ten minutes, but Khalid reveled in the chance to hit the streets and fire off his AK-47 at the American soldiers and their allies, four grenades strapped to his waist so he could kill himself if captured.
After the attacks, however, Khalid and the other fighters were confined to safe houses in Mosul and Haditha -- dark, dank places with no hot water or electricity. The biggest problem was the Iraqis, the very people he was there to help. Sometimes it seemed as though there were double agents everywhere, checking him out on the street, trying to overhear him speaking the Yemeni dialect that would betray him as a foreigner, all so they could pick up their cell phones and call in the Americans, maybe even collect a reward. That made this jihad more dangerous and unpredictable than the other wars Khalid had fought in -- Afghanistan, Bosnia, Somalia, places where they were often treated like heroes. When they weren't out on missions in Iraq, he and the Saudis were forced to stay in the safe house, the shades pulled down, with only a well-thumbed copy of the Koran and five prayer sessions a day to break the monotony.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was a pillar of strength to the insurgents. Khalid knew him from a decade and a half ago, when they were fighting the Soviets and their proxies in Afghanistan. But now, meeting al-Zarqawi in Mosul, he was amazed at the changes in his old comrade. Back then al-Zarqawi was an ordinary foot soldier like Khalid. Now, flanked by two bodyguards and barking orders with fiery determination, he was the most wanted man in Iraq, an Islamic militant with a $25 million price on his head. He had been hailed by Sheik Osama bin Laden himself as "the prince of Al Qaeda in Iraq," but al-Zarqawi still had time for a word with someone from the old days. He and Khalid chatted for a few minutes, recalling their time together in Afghanistan, before al-Zarqawi rushed off to make arrangements with an ally in Kurdistan to try to send some insurgents off to Iraq's northern mountains to fight.
That was more than two years ago, when the insurgency had been looking for fighters like Khalid, veteran soldiers who could be relied on to attack foreign troops with skill and precision. Now, back in Yemen, Khalid heard that they were looking for suicide bombers only. He would watch kids he knew signing up to go to Iraq, unaware that they were being recruited to kill themselves. It made Khalid glad he wasn't in Iraq anymore. Not that he had anything against that kind of mission -- it was a noble calling -- but he thought that a person willing to fight and die should know what he was meant to do before he left home.
At thirty-two, Khalid was beginning to have serious reservations about the course of the insurgency in Iraq. They are overkilling there. Fighting foreign soldiers was one thing -- he had been doing it all of his adult life. But did his faith really sanction killing civilians in their own country? The blood of people is too cheap. Fifteen years in the jihad, fighting in five foreign wars, imprisoned in England and Yemen, enduring the death of a close friend on a mission in Iraq -- enough. The cost was just too high. Although he was proud of all the fighting he had done in the past, Khalid wanted to settle down to an ordinary life as a father, husband and son. He was a soldier fighting a war. But what if the war had no end?
Khalid, who agreed to recount the story of his jihad on the condition that his identity not be revealed, is a Yemeni from the ancient city of Sanaa in northern Yemen. The country is one of the most lawless and drug-addicted places in the world. Despite a recent government crackdown, hand grenades are laid out alongside fresh produce at street-side markets, and sources estimate that there are at least 10 million guns in circulation in a country with a population of 20 million.
Social life revolves around qat, a leafy, reddish-green plant that contains amphetamine-like substances. Eighty percent of adult men in Yemen chew regularly, and important political and business decisions are routinely made in the mafraj, a room in many homes specially designed for chewing sessions. The leaf combines the talkative affability of pot with the drive of speed. First comes euphoria and intense sociability -- not ponderous, marijuana-induced ramblings, but a deep appreciation of the flow of conversation. In this stage, five hours can pass in what seems like ten minutes. Next comes reflective quiet -- a comfortable silence descends as people look inward, contemplating the contents of their minds. The final stage is depression and insomnia -- it's not uncommon to see solitary cloaked figures roaming the streets at night, waiting for the effects of the drug to pass. On average, Yemeni men spend about a third of their income on qat, and commerce in the leaf accounts for a third of the nation's GNP.
I met Khalid at a qat chew in the mafraj of a friend. The room was hot and stuffy, the way chewers like it, and each man in the room was identically posed: left knee up and right arm resting on a cushion. Cold bottles of "Canada" -- the Yemeni term for water, based on the market dominance of Canada Dry -- were distributed all around. The room was clean, but people were already beginning to litter the floor with leaves or stalks too thick or firm to chew. After a few hours, the middle of the room would be blanketed with a thick green carpet of discarded qat.
Qat sessions usually begin with a raucous flow of conversation. But Khalid was quiet, smiling at jokes, carefully pruning his stalks, venturing little. When he finally spoke, he told me that he had just been let out of a Yemeni prison. I asked him why.
"I was arrested as a terrorist," he told me in English, with a trace of a working-class British accent.
Late one night, he went on, an undercover anti-terrorism squad had dragged him away from his family's home in a comfortable, middle-class neighborhood of Sanaa. He was locked up and questioned repeatedly by Yemeni police in the presence of American agents. To curry favor with the Bush administration, Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Salih, has arrested hundreds of suspected terrorists, imprisoning almost everyone who returns to Yemen with a Syrian or Iranian stamp in their passport -- prima facie evidence that they fought in Iraq. Khalid was released after thirty days when a family friend posted a large bond to ensure that he would stay out of trouble.
At this point, a friend at the qat chew hissed at Khalid in Arabic: "Why are you telling him this? Don't talk about these things."
"I have nothing to hide," Khalid told him. He then proceeded to recount the extraordinary story of his fifteen years fighting as a foot soldier in the jihad. Although it is impossible to independently corroborate every detail of his tale, other Yemenis confirmed Khalid's long, frequent absences from Yemen, his presence at training camps in Afghanistan and his imprisonment in Yemen by the anti-terrorism police. His passport contains entry stamps to Syria that match the dates he said he had gone to Iraq, and the account he gave of his arrest in England mirrors one reported by police in the U.K. around the same time. Moreover, the details Khalid gave of fighting in relatively obscure battles in Bosnia, Somalia and Afghanistan match events that actually took place. In the broad strokes of his story, at least, he appears to be telling the truth.
Khalid is not an ultraorthodox, unbending Muslim. Although he meets to chew qat wearing his Yemeni dress cut midcalf, in the style of an Islamic purist, he also wears button-down shirts and European hiking boots. He has lived in England for years and has befriended Westerners. Slight and handsome, he has the quiet charisma and modesty of the guy who is elected class president based on his low-key appeal. In short, he is not the kind of enemy we have been led to believe we are fighting. He harbors some of the same doubts that our own soldiers have about what brought them to fight and, perhaps, to die, in a place so far from home. To hear a polite and thoughtful man talk casually about his friends in Al Qaeda is to have the whole enterprise reduced to a more fragile, human scale. It is to see this war for what it is: a battle between men filled with contradictions, inconsistencies and weaknesses -- not a mythic struggle between our supermen and their ghosts.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is only the top third of the story.