Osama Day Care!
Posted on 12/19/2002 4:20:16 PM PST by B Knotts
U.S. Sen. Patty Murray was in Vancouver on Wednesday challenging high school students to answer these questions:
What is behind terrorist Osama bin Laden's popularity in some parts of the world, and should the United States adopt his nation-building tactics?
Speaking at Columbia River High School, Murray, D-Wash., responded to questions from students, most about the war on terrorism or government spending for education.
Later Wednesday, Murray visited C-Tran headquarters and checked out a new bus.
Murray met at Columbia River with world history students and student government leaders. Across town, Hudson's Bay High School students participated via teleconference.
Murray concluded the session by challenging the students to consider alternatives to war.
"We've got to ask, why is this man (Osama bin Laden) so popular around the world?," said Murray, who faces re-election in 2004. "Why are people so supportive of him in many countries ? that are riddled with poverty?
"He's been out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. We haven't done that.
"How would they look at us today if we had been there helping them with some of that rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan?"
Murray said she doesn't know where she comes down on that guns-or-butter question, and building infrastructure in Third World countries would "cost a lot of money, and we have schools here and health care facilities here that are really hurting."
Be 'better neighbors'?
"War is expensive too," she said. "Your generation ought to be thinking about whether we should be better neighbors out in other countries so that they have a different vision of us.
"It is a debate I think we ought to have."
Murray was in the minority when the Senate voted 77-23 in October to give President Bush authority to use military force in confronting Saddam Hussein. The state's other senator, Democrat Maria Cantwell, voted for the resolution.
Murray opened Wednesday's event telling the students, "You'll be graduating into a world that is very difficult. ? The economy is struggling. War in Iraq is a very real possibility in the short term" and could cost $200 billion even if it were to last only a few weeks.
The cost of waging war could result in cuts to domestic programs such as Pell grants for college students, she said.
Responding to a question about federal spending for schools, Murray said the Bush administration is backing off its pledge of support for the No Child Left Behind program.
"There are crises in every one of our schools in this country," Murray said, and cutting spending on education has long-term deleterious effects.
Visit to the bus barn
Later in the day, Murray spent 45 minutes at the C-Tran administrative and operations facility at 2425 N.E. 65th Ave. for a holiday potluck. Randy Frasier's Mountain View High School jazz and concert choirs serenaded her with holiday carols.
Afterward, Murray examined a new $312,000 Gillig coach, the first of several dozen that will replace 20-year-old GM buses that have racked up an average of 650,000 miles each.
Murray is on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on transportation, which funnels matching money to states and local agencies for buses and other transit programs. Eighty percent of the cost of new buses will come from federal grants, and the remainder from local C-Tran money.
The DNC hasn't caught on yet - she was one of the senior members of the planning committee for their recent electoral debacle. And so far not a single member of that gaggle of lost geese has paid a price for leading their party down the path to oblivion, and we have excellent hopes for a repeat performance in 2004. That's the good news. The bad news is that Murray is senior enough to have a prime teat on the DNC funding piggy and all the other advantages of an ill-deserved incumbency. Patty darling is one of those odious politicians with the odor and persistence of a pickled-egg fart, and she's going to be around for awhile.
I've sent this article to a number of people, but others are welcome to blast it around.
Sen. Murray should do the honorable thing and resign.
Osama Day Care!
You got that right!
The only reason we need to understand why Bin Laden and his ilk have support is so we can undermine that support, uncover everyone of these sorry SOB's, and KILL THEM DEAD.
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