Posted on 12/29/2001 3:48:31 PM PST by NativeNewYorker
THE video begins innocently enough: a wildlife documentary presented by Sir David Attenborough shows him raving about rare insects and exotic plants against the backdrop of an active volcano. There is no sign of Al-Qaedas evil here, nor at the end of the tape, which features Princess Diana and Prince Charles at the start of a visit to Kuwait more than a decade ago, writes Mark Franchetti. Sandwiched incongruously between them, however, is a macabre insight into the gruesome world of Osama Bin Ladens disciples: a group of Arab soldiers, somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan, are tossing a severed head around for the camera. They taunt the bloody skull, shaking it by the hair, lift an eyelid to simulate blinking, and throw stones at it, while chanting a chorus in praise of Allah. The film is just one among a surreal video library collected from the caves of Tora Bora, Bin Ladens underground redoubt in the White Mountains of eastern Afghanistan, and from Al-Qaeda safe houses nearby. The innocuous beginning and end appear to have been added to fool anyone who might have stumbled across the tapes. The videos were stolen by villagers before American special forces could retrieve them, and are now quietly traded on the backstreets of Jalalabad with audio cassettes, documents, CD-Roms, and several passports of suspected Bin Laden supporters. It is the videos, though, that offer the darkest insight into the psychology of Al-Qaeda members, revealing for the first time what they were watching as well as producing for propaganda and educational purposes. One film, entitled Preparing for Martyrdom, is a lengthy weapons training video recently shot by Arab terrorists at an Al-Qaeda training camp at Durunta, a few miles west of Jalalabad. Arabic-speaking instructors, their faces blacked out, demonstrate how to use weapons ranging from handguns to anti-aircraft guns. The same video includes footage of Abdullah Azam, a Jordanian Palestinian extremist revered by Bin Laden as a father figure, who was assassinated in Pakistan in 1989. Azam is shown delivering tirades against America and Israel before a crowd of worshippers. Our leaders are wasting time with public works, he rants, in a clip between demonstrations on a grenade launcher and a sniper rifle. Other tapes feature news reports from recent conflicts involving Muslims, including Bosnia, Algeria, Israel, Chechnya, Lebanon and Afghanistan. Religious music has been taped over the original commentaries. The grisly highlights include the beheading with a knife of a hostage in Chechnya and a prisoner being tortured with a sizzling piece of metal. Another close-up shows a victims tongue being cut out. It is not clear how much of the collection was made inside Afghanistan, and how many of the tapes came instead from supporters in Pakistan and further afield. Under Taliban rule, ordinary Afghans faced public floggings and up to three months in jail if caught watching television, but members of Al-Qaeda had free access to satellite television. As soon as the Arabs left all hell broke loose, said one trader. In Jalalabad, neighbours went through the safe houses and took whatever they could, and in Tora Bora it was the same. I took four tapes but had to destroy two because my father is a very religious man and became terribly angry. I have no idea what was on the tapes I burnt. Who knows, maybe Bin Laden himself. |
I'd think you'd be comforted, when contrasted with the fact that the islamists claim Yeshua -- a Jew -- as one of their own. They perverted the world's two great faiths and applied them as a veneer over their foul moon idol cult.
The problem is, it's not restricted to "the" country where that atrocity was committed. It's spreading like cancer throughout the world.
We are truly looking at the begining of a war between civilization and a death cult from the dark ages that has weapons of mass destruction at its disposal. All that makes civilization worthwhile -- openess, freedom, and peace -- makes it vulnerable to these amoral thugs, who view goodness and kindness as weakness to be ravaged.
The world is coming to a precipice, from where it may very well topple into a bifurcated abyss. On one side, there is a very real risk of being overwhelmed by chaos, our cities and economies destroyed. On the other, the tempting -- to some -- option of a global security state, worse than Stalin's Russia.
The straight and narrow path, avoiding either of those tragic endings to civilization, is exceedingly narrow, and frankly, I don't know if we're going to make it.
Americans don't realize that evil demons agents of dark forces and the devil himself stalk this planet. This demonic act of slicing off this man's head is exactly that...DEMONIC. Why do barbarians commit such acts? Because they like it. They feed off the terrible agony that's produced. Barbaric killers feed off such killings almost like a human sacrifice to their
godAllah.
You nailed it. They're not much different from their forebears who worshipped moloch, and threw infants into a raging furnace alive. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
What a dilemma for you pro-islamists. Faced with the videotaped atrocities committed by the taliban/alqaida islamists, as bad or worse than the lies you promulgate about the Jews, you find yourself in an unenviable position. Do you damn the islamists as you damn the Jews, or, do you condone the islamists abominations, and in the process, render your antisemitic lies moot?
We Americans have a saying that would have served you well, had you ever heard it, and taken its message to heart. It begins with, "Oh, what a tangled web we weave..."
Are you incapable of comprehending the idea that "comments" are intended to be just that -- a poster's comments on the thread's topic?
Or perhaps you understand it full well, but simply want to shout down and drown out the voices of reason.
And there's a comment on a previous regime in that region, found in the Book of Daniel. Chapter and verse escape me at the moment, but it begins with "Mene, mene, tekel upharsin."
Hopefully the handwriting is on the wall for bint Laden and his animals. He'll have a hard time going around on all fours eating grass this time of year, but even so, it's better than he deserves.
More than ever, I am hoping that his entreaties to "the religion of peace" are the same brand of diplomacy Will Rogers described: "the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock."
I have to accept that because they truly believe that this will *honor* their moon god. Osama and friends keep appealing to allah in their video statements. "May Allah accept them as martyrs, etc." Interesting that martyrdom is good enough for dupes, but not good enough for the leadership. Insane.
There is no doubt in my mind that the intervention in Serbia will increasingly become a real black mark in the history of American foreign policy.
A shameful and classic example of the triumph of "feel good" PC over a sense of history and common sense.
A murderous foray into unconscious complicity with barbaric animals who have shown their true nature in both Kosovo and in New York.
It creates an interesting question: does the fact that we empowered and aided the Muslim Mass Murderers in Kosovo and Bosnia mean we need to bomb ourselves now?
That might be what he's doing. Interesting that he makes himself a spokesman for Islam and they are pretty forced into allowing him to do so. One leader that did also manage to control Islam was Ataturk in Turkey ---he had the police rip the veils off Muslims and closed their schools and put the military in charge of keeping Islam in control. All that are measures we might be too politically correct to do so maybe Bush's way is the only way to go here.
Now, let's not paint the entirity of Islam based on the actions of a group of sick and twisted people who profess to be adherants. One might wind up pointing to the racist Aryan Nation to indict Christianity or Kahane Chai to indict Judaism
There is one very big difference, Christians denounce the Aryan Brotherhood. Muslims have not denounced the terrorists.
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