Journalist Beaten By Afghan Mob

LONDON, England -- A British journalist has been attacked and beaten by a mob of Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

Robert Fisk, 55, a veteran foreign correspondent for the London-based Independent national newspaper, was assaulted when his car broke down on the road between the border city of Quetta and Charnan.

He suffered head, face and hand injuries after being pelted with stones when he was set upon by a group of up to 100 people.

Recovering at his hotel in Quetta, the veteran journalist told the Press Association:

"It was a very frightening experience and I am in a lot of pain but I am glad to be alive.

"I'm going to bear the scars for the rest of my life - sadly I broke down in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Fisk, the newspaper's Middle East correspondent, had been travelling to Charnan when his car overheated and broke down close to a village housing refugees who had fled across the border from Afghanistan.

He got out of the vehicle and was attempting to push it to the side of the road when a group of 40 to 50 people gathered.

"At first they were reasonably friendly but then a little kid threw a stone at me. More stones followed and then I find myself being punched and beaten in the face.

"My glasses were smashed and my spare glasses were ripped away from me. I was covered in blood and couldn't see anything. I was obviously frightened."

Fisk said he fought back and began lashing out at the mob, whose numbers swelled to about 100.

He knocked a couple of his attackers to the ground but was then rescued by a Muslim religious leader, who forced the mob back and guided him to a police wagon.

He made it back to his hotel in Quetta, where he was given further medical attention by two Pakistani doctors.

"I later found out that the village housed lots of Afghan refugees, whose relatives had been killed just last week in the American bombing of Kandahar," he said.

"It doesn't excuse them for beating me up so badly but there was a real reason why they should hate Westerners so much. "I don't want this to be seen as a Muslim mob attacking a Westerner for no reason.

They had every reason to be angry -- I've been an outspoken critic of the US actions myself. If I had been them, I would have attacked me.

"I have worked in the Middle East for many years. This is a warzone and sometimes you just have to accept that these things happen."

perhaps a little more substantiation to implicate BinLaden (or whomever) before the bombs started falling.

That was an even more lame reply than I anticipated.

It's as if you're saying it's ok for the US to "be proud of the carnage we have wrought ... despite our 'surgical strike capabilities' and our 'smart bombs" if we had only proven to YOU that we knew who was ultimately responsible for the 9-11 attack.

You should have just not replied at all and left me thinking that you possibly had an alternative solution but you had yard work to do or something. You gave me nothing that resembled an actual answer to my question. I'm glad you weren't my President at that defining moment.

It's a lot easier to say this bomb didn't land exactly were you wanted it, or that "smart" bomb didn't work so well. But when it comes to making a decision what TO DO, you are silent.

Well our President wasn't silent. He clearly stated this was an act of WAR against the United States. We would track down the terrorists, the states that harbor them, and put an and to their organizations, and the governments that allow them to freely operate within their borders. We already had PLENTY of evidence that bin Laden's Al Qaeda network was responsible for many acts of violence against the US, and that the Taliban government was harboring them within the borders of Afghanistan. Even without direct evidence that ObL was responsible for the 9-11 attacks at the time, there was little doubt of his culpability for previous attacks against the US. The fact that ObL was later tied directly to the horrible events of 9-11 only served to make our decision to attack Afghanistan first that much stronger.

Do you really think think the US deliberately targets civilians during the wars we fight? Do you think it's easy to decide to bomb a building that's close to civilian targets because the enemy chooses to use them as shields from US attacks? Don't you think they hide amongst civilians because they know we won't want to take a chance at causing civilian deaths? People die in war. Mistakes happen. We even accidentally kill our own troops sometimes, or do you think that's on purpose too?

Look, we are gonna try to get every last member of that terrorist group (Al Qaeda) and every last member of that government that gave them a safe harbor (Taliban) whether you like it or not. Then we are gonna go on to the next country (Yemen, I think) that's guilty of doing the same. "We will not tire, we will not falter, we will not fail". Those are the words of a leader. He decided what must be done to best insure that OUR country will be free to continue on with our daily lives without looking over our shoulders every time we step out of our homes, and for our kids, and their kids (you get the idea) We will do that job that our President set for us the best we can. Causing as little "collateral" damage as possible (like we always do) along the way, but still get the job done. It may work out just like we hope, but then again it may not, but it's a decision that has been made. It's a decision that 80% of the American public backs. So help out, go join the other side, or get out of the way. It seems to me that you are happy to just throw dirt in the trench while the real men try to pour the foundation, then toss wood around while the real men frame the house. You're no good to anybody.

Finished breakfast. So I will re-enter the fracas now ... or do I need your permission?

' ... if we had only proven to YOU that we knew who was ultimately responsible for the 9-11 attack.

As opposed to you, who needed no proof at all as to who the perps actually were before launching an all out attack on the poorest people on G-d's earth.

You didn't respond to one thing I said, you just launched into another upchuck of the same-old-same-old, like those pathetic little cliches that everyone keeps barfing up will resolve anything.

We've 'hired' the northern alliance to carry our water in this 'fight' and now that they've got their 'blood' money, NO one will be safe over there, including our soldiers. Why? Because all the 'alliance' wanted was their power back ... and now we've given it to them. But soon you will see (actually, if you're looking, you've already seen) the infighting going on between the 'members' northern 'alliance' for pure unmitigated power over the other 'alliance' members and over the Afghani people, who are forever the pawns in the endless war for power. Our so-called 'allies' have never been allied ... they were never 'our' allies ... and they would as happily shoot you who paid their blood money, as to hand over one inch of ground they've recaptured from the taleban with the help of our high fliers. That ground is needed to plant some more poppies (which the taleban had outlawed). Poppy power is back, so to speak.

I'm absolutely stunned by this brand new example of our innate inability to discern who our friends/enemies really are, and who they really ain't.

That being the case, you and your syncophants, who are blindly following the lead bell into the hands of the sheep shearers; you, who have fallen into the trap that will forever strip us of the Bill of Rights and America's founding principles, now deserve neither safety NOR freedom. It pains me to say that in the end we all will probably get your just desserts.

You say I didn't respond to anything you said in your former reply to my initial question. You didn't answer my question AT ALL, but I'm supposed to respond to what you said. And that's logical to you? .... Ok, I'll play, but only because before I ran into you, I thought I was the dumbest guy on this forum, so you make me feel better about myself.

The first paragraph from your first reply to my question, that you didn't answer, is all about how there was no proof shown to the public that implicated ObL in the attacks. Even though we all know now that video taped evidence has surfaced with Osama saying the attacks went "better than he expected", I will play along with your premise that nobody REALLY knew at the time if Osama was the guilty party or not. As I said in my reply to you before (even though you say I didn't respond to anything you said) we all knew ObL's Al Qaeda was already involved in previous attacks against American interests abroad. I'll list some of them now.

1) Killing of U.S. soldiers in Somalia (1993)
2) Bombing under World Trade Center {6 killed} (1993)
3) Bombing of U.S. barracks in Saudi Arabia {22 soldiers killed} (1996)
4) Bombings of U.S. Embassies in East Africa {224 killed including 12 Americans} (1998)
5) Bombing of USS Cole in Yemen {17 U.S. Sailors killed} (2000)

So forgive me if I didn't think it was a hugh leap of FAITH when Osama's name surfaced after I watched three commercial airliners, loaded with passengers, smash into both WTC towers, and the Pentagon (and one I didn't see crash to the earth in Pennsylvania). It just wasn't a hard sell. The way I saw it was, while the various alphabet soup of agencies were busy connecting the dots, the war on "terrorism" could commence. And as far as I was concerned, Afghanistan was as good a place to start as any. It had nothing to do with turnips or trucks, just common sense.

Your second paragraph was about how one of the "suicide bombers showed up at our embassy in Saudi Arabia a few days after 9/11 saying 'hey man, it wasn't me'", and doesn't that raise a few eyebrows. No, it doesn't. There was no way for the investigators to know the correct names of every suicide high jacker involved in the attacks. All that was important is the fact that there WAS a planned terrorist attack that DID take place on 9-11. That's all I needed to know. Matter of fact, I was relatively sure that a few of them actually used fake names. Did that really surprise you? If it did, I have a turnip truck you can fall off of.

There, I answered your questions that you offered me as answers to the one simple question I asked you (that you still haven't answered).

Now on to your second reply to me ... you said ...

As opposed to you, who needed no proof at all as to who the perps actually were before launching an all out attack on the poorest people on G-d's earth.

You're right, I didn't need proof, I only needed my common sense to be satisfied about the 9-11 attacks to go along with what I already knew about the Al Qaeda terrorist network and there previous attacks against the U.S. After all, Osama always admitted to the acts after about 5-6 months went by after each attack. That's his M.O. And we were going to respond to the attacks with a WAR on terrorists, and the countries that gave them a safe harbor. The best example of that was Afghanistan. Afghanistan's legitimate government was taken over by a group called the Taliban. The Taliban allowed the TERRORIST organization, called Al Qaeda, to operate from the country they were controlling. We wanted those terrorists removed from this earth, or at the very least, have them jailed. We asked the Taliban to hand over Osama and his close associates and to jail the rest of the Al Qaeda network. They refused even when we told them that we would not only come in there to get Osama and pals, but we would also end the Taliban "government" for harboring those TERRORISTS. So that's what we set out to do. NOT to ATTACK the poorest people on G-d's earth. , but to get the terrorists and the government that harbored them, because we had entered into a WAR ON TERRORISM.

The rest of you second reply is sooooooo all over the place, I can't break it down and respond to each item individually. You start out saying how we got the Northern Alliance to fight the Taliban for us, and that we had to pay them blood money. Well I don't know where you get your information from but let me tell ya ... the NA was already fighting the Taliban for about 10 years. We didn't have to pay them. We gave them a few uniforms and supplies, and trained them as much as we could, but that's all. They did the fighting and dying (with our help from above). But then you go on about how they're not REALLY our allies and they just want their Power back and they'd like to shoot me and all that. Let me tell ya ... I DON'T CARE! It wasn't the Afghans we were after. It was the Arabs that inhabited their country to use it as a great big TERRORIST camp. The NA hate the Arabs anyway so it worked out just right.

Now for the strangest part of your reply (that still never answered my ONE simple question to you) You say the "Poppy power is back" as if they shouldn't have the Liberty to grow and sell whatever they want, and then have the nerve to try to slip a mangled form of Ben Franklin's famous quote by me. Let's look at that (real) quote now ... you can pick any one you want, they all have two things in common that you, and a lot of other people manage to leave out when reciting it ...

"Those who will give up essential liberty to secure a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety", Benjamin Franklin
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." --Ben Franklin

It's ESSENTIAL LIBERTY for a LITTLE TEMPORARY SAFETY.

I contend to you that giving up the freedom (liberty) to get on a plane without being searched is NOT my idea of ESSENTIAL LIBERTY.

And furthermore, the federal government attempting to do its constitutional duty to provide for the common defense by trying to prevent anymore terrorist from ramming loaded jets into populated buildings (or stadiums or whatever) is NOT my idea of just a LITTLE TEMPORARY SAFETY.

OK, I'm done. And boy are my two index fingers tiered. Can you please now do me the favor of telling me your alternative solution to the problem President Bush is currently faced with (meaning terrorism). Should we ask the terrorists to make a list of things that piss them off so we can make sure we never do those things again, what? Thank you.

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