Freedom fighter Massoud dead

“Well one brilliant force against the Taliban is gone. Damn!

Massoud dead”

“Here's another link. Massoud's forces had led a strike in Afghanistan's capital Kabul this past weekend.

Kabul attack”

“Downtown
Where all the lights are bright...”

“So I guess what you are saying lizs, is that compared to a Taliban extremist, bacpac is kinda sexy.”

“LOL! Now that is LEVITY!! Lessee....... bacpac vs. freakin' wacko Islam fundamentalist??????? Make your own judgment!!”

“Um...bacpac, I think it was more like, compared to a dead freedom fighter...”

“I dunno... the chicks still go nuts over Morrison and he's been dead for how long?”

“Lizs is this the guy you were referring to when you talked about "Mossad" fighting against the Taliban?”

“Yup, Ped.

Ok, I found a link to the story on the National Geographic's Adventure magazine site. It was in the March/April issue this year. If you go to this link, you can also hook up with other links on Afghanistan and the Taliban.

He was a brilliant strategist. Probably not so far from using the same tactics the terroristic Taliban took in the ground wars of Afghanistan, but he was fighting to rid his country of the Taliban and their distorted, warped realities.

Story on Massoud”

“Looks like its a good article (yoou only get to read part of it if you aren't a subscriber). Sad timing that he is now dead.

No wonder though that neither Arclite or I recognized the name when we saw "Mossad."”

“What does this have to do with backpacking? You people crack me up. {:-)”

“thanks lizs

very educational”

“Here's ABC's story on the death. They spell the name differently.

Another story

Why Zanger? What are you doing here?? LOL”

“I'm not sure Lizs. It used to be for backpacking stuff, but lately, that seems to be taking second fiddle to newsgroup type threads, that have nothing to do with trails, or backpacking at all. Guess I'll go back to the other sites, where they stay on topic...”

“Backpackers happen to be human beings and have human interests. Even when we backpack, we discuss issues like this.”

“The site IS called 'The Backpacker'”

“uh, since lizs backpacks, anything she says is relevant”

“That's true, Biz. Lizs is a sweetheart, so I'll retract my comments now, strap on my pack, hone my knife, load my guns, and head to the middle east for some high adventure....{:-)”

“Zanger, I doubt it.”

“Zanger, contact Spam. He can prolly set you up with a new rifle,gear and a ticket...All for free.”

“Zanger, whatever you do, don't get on a plane!!!”

“Hey stanlee, what's up cutie?”

“Bugaboo, have we met?”

“Exactly what do you doubt, bacpac? The sharpness of my knife?”

“Zanger, this is a site for backpackers, and that doesn't necessarily mean we should only talk about backpacking :{}”

“Lips, where have you been?? I've been missing you on ICQ! (and do you think bacpac is dissing ME?!?! The GALL!! haahhaha)”

“Zanger, lately it had become a site for brain dead biggots.”

“it's "bigots".

geez, talk about brain dead.”

“Yes,....you rang?~?~?”

“back to the "topic"

Ronald Reagan called bin Laben a "freedom fighter" when we were arming him and training him to fight against the Soviet Union. I guess he was a pretty good student.”

“Yeah, isn't that interesting?? The US should perhaps be watching out which young terrorists it decides to finance in training, no??

As to Massoud, I still can't believe he's gone. He would have been such a tremendous asset to any ground war in Afghanistan. I read the leader who is replacing him -- who, again, has much experience -- has pledged the 15,000 troops of the Northern Alliance to the United States.

We sorely need people who REALLY know the area and how an enemy trained from birth on to proudly and gladly give up life in a holy war (jihad) THINKS and RATIONALIZES -- and can be stopped!”

“liz, since I was sick, I've been going to sleep early, and not getting on ICQ. Also, I've been rivited to the news. I miss our chats.”

“Hope you're doing much better, Lips!! :-)”

“Liz: the death of Masssoud seems like more than a coincidence. I did a search and someone agrees:


Speculation”

“Interesting. I wondered, too. The timing just seemed a bit too coincidental!”

“'While Mr. bin Laden's role among the Taleban is hard to fully assess from the outside'

Oh, like this guy works alone? Give me a flippin break! Friends of a feather flock together”

“"Bin Laden hopes to change the political map by creating a militant Muslim nation with armed revolts fired by his ultra-spectacular blow against U.S.
power."

So egotistical..and naive. How historically unoriginal. Bin Laden just signed his deathwish.”

“The loss of Masssoud does hurt and I've heard tha Osama did do it as a "gift" for his Taliban buds. Another intresting thing I heard today. In posts past, bacpac was insistant that "Big Willie Style" didn't sign the order to off Osama. He did sign an order in 1998. They tried to get him in a caravan of cars with rockets, but hit the wrong car.”

“like they 'missed' Saddam when they were going after him?”

“Can't go after "Sadum". He's a head of state and thanks to President Ford, can't be "gone after".”

“An Afghan-American speaks
You can't bomb us back into the Stone Age. We're already there. But you can
start a new world war, and that's exactly what Osama bin Laden wants.

By Tamim Ansary

Sept. 14, 2001 | I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan
back to the Stone Age." Ronn Owens, on San Francisco's KGO Talk Radio,
conceded today that this would mean killing innocent people, people who had
nothing to do with this atrocity, but "we're at war, we have to accept
collateral damage. What else can we do?" Minutes later I heard some TV
pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be done."

And I thought about the issues being raised especially hard because I am
from Afghanistan, and even though I've lived in the United States for 35
years I've never lost track of what's going on there. So I want to tell
anyone who will listen how it all looks from where I'm standing.

I speak as one who hates the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. There is no doubt
in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in New York.
I agree that something must be done about those monsters.

But the Taliban and bin Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the
government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who
took over Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a plan. When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think "the Jews in the concentration camps." It's not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would exult if someone would come in there, take out the Taliban and clear out the rats' nest of international thugs holedup in their country.

Some say, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban? The answer is, they're starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, suffering. A fewyears ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan -- a country with no economy, no food. There are millions of widows. And the Taliban has been burying these widows alive in mass graves. The soil is littered with land mines, the farms were all destroyed by the Soviets. These are a few of the reasons why the Afghan people have not overthrown the Taliban.

We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistanback to the Stone Age. Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already. Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals?
Done. Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them off from medicine and healthcare? Too late. Someone already did all that. New bombs would only stir the rubble of
earlier bombs. Would they at least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's
Afghanistan, only the Taliban eat, only they have the means to move around.
They'd slip away and hide. Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans; they don't move too fast, they don't even have wheelchairs.

But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs wouldn't really be a strike against the criminals who did this horrific thing. Actually it would only be making common cause with, the Taliban -- by raping once again the people they've been raping all this time.

So what else is there? What can be done, then? Let me now speak with
truefear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with
ground troops. When people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be
done" they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as
needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing innocent
people. Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually on the table
is Americans dying. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout.It's much bigger than that, folks. Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not
likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I'm going. We're flirting with a world
war between Islam and the West.

And guess what: That's bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants.
That's why he did this. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right
there. He really believes Islam would beat the West. It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and the West, he's got a billion soldiers. If the West wreaks a holocaust in those lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose; that's even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably wrong --in the end the West would win, whatever that would mean -- but the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours.

Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden does. Anyone else?”

“Sorry ya'll. I know this is kinda hard to read. But its a good article.”

“Cool, Chey. Someone else had posted this on some other thread. But it is definitely good to read this perspective!!”

“null”

“A little more on past efforts to kill bin Laden.”

“Wow! I just visited another backpacker site and there was also a discussion of Massoud, and a link to the same International Herald Tribune story that I posted. Wow do backpackers think alike? Are different sites like parallel universes.

Ooops time to take my meds!”

“Settle, Ped.......settle.”

“Liz was right on the money with the article she posted about Moussoud. I saw a clip of him on Dateline. He told a writer that was in Afghanastan that he wished he had help (from the west), because then he would be able to go in and get Usama Bin Laden. His death was a great loss to us, and to his cause for Freedom.”

“I did a little more research on Massoud. While he would have been a very useful ally, its not clear that his cause was freedom. There is good evidence that he was involved in his share of massacres and brutalities.”