[KellyHogan]

Apparently Osama was a weak man, a vegetarian, was constantly harassed by the Taleban and Mullah Omar and put most of his money towards engineering and building roads and homes for poor people in Afghanistan. He was also against the Taleban's terrible education system and had his children educated western-style. Not bad character points. It's a shame that a man like that was roused up to support terrorist activity.

(Would he have done that if the world was a fairer place?)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/monitoring/media_reports/newsid_1871000/18711 82.stm

[ 03-14-2002: Message edited by: KellyHogan ]

[theUpsetter]

Originally posted by KellyHogan:
<STRONG>
(Would he have done that if the world was a fairer place?)
</STRONG>

yes

[MikeM32]

Heh, if the world was a "fairer place" you wouldn't be here to spout off such nonsense.

Wait, maybe I can kill you and blame it on "the world"

Mike

[starman]

The guy's an asshole who grossly miscalculated the scope of what he did.

Mike

[driven]

Yeah. It's not his fault. The world wasn't fair.

[hytek]

I don't care how many damn roads the guy built, he and the rest of his goons should still die a thousand horrible deaths.

[KellyHogan]

Hey, so what about Jesus?

[zigzag]

Originally posted by KellyHogan:
<STRONG>Apparently Osama was a weak man, a vegetarian, was constantly harassed by the Taleban and Mullah Omar and put most of his money towards engineering and building roads and homes for poor people in Afghanistan. He was also against the Taleban's terrible education system and had his children educated western-style. Not bad character points. It's a shame that a man like that was roused up to support terrorist activity.

(Would he have done that if the world was a fairer place?)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/wor...00/1871182.stm

[ 03-14-2002: Message edited by: KellyHogan ]</STRONG>

OK, I just read the entire article, and I can only conclude that you are a hopeless romantic when it comes to anti-Americans.

Let's see - OBL had stomach and kidney ailments, and didn't sleep well. Describes about half of the middle-aged men I know, especially ones who are plotting mass murder. But to you, it makes him a sympathetic figure.

And you say that he's a "vegetarian", although the article only says that he rarely eats meat. Whatever. Almost-vegetarians are swell people. I seem to recall that Hitler was a vegetarian, but I could be mistaken.

By the way, how does his love of honey reconcile with your theory that Americans are politically complacent because of sugar intake? Oh, right - it's the wrong kind of sugar.

And according to you, he was "constantly" harrassed by the Taliban and Mullah Omar, even thought the article doesn't say that. Poor Osama. And nevermind that, by most accounts, he virtually controlled The Taliban.

Nor does the article say that he put "most of his money" towards engineering and building roads and homes for poor people. Another romanticization by you. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't, but the article certainly doesn't say it. I would bet that a significant amount of his wealth went towards The (fascist) Taliban and the training and enabling of terrorists.

And all this based on an anonymous interview with one of his wives. You not only accept every word as true, you exaggerate them.

Let's say it had been an anonymous interview with one of Henry Kissinger's girlfriends. "Oh, Henry, he was so exhausted, fighting Communism and all. And half of Congress was harrassing him. But he loved his honey and yogurt, and he never stopped giving, giving, giving to the causes and charities he believed in. And he cared so much about his children that he had them privately-schooled. Nothing too good for Henry's kids." Let me guess - you wouldn't be saying that these were "not bad character points". You'd be saying, "****king capitalist hypocrite murderous criminal pig. And what idiot press outlet would expect us to take this sentimental crap seriously?".

It's not your willingness to see OBL as a multi-dimensional human being that bothers me, it's your transparent romanticizing of him coupled with your relentless villainizing of everyone else.

And no, I don't care a whit about Jesus. Say whatever you like about him - if I never heard his name again it wouldn't be a day too soon.

[philzilla]

Originally posted by starman:
<STRONG>The guy's an asshole who grossly miscalculated the scope of what he did.</STRONG>

are you talking about Hogan, or Bin Laden?

[BlackGriffen]

Qhotes Originally posted by KellyHogan:
"Apparently Osama was a weak man,"

Napoleon was short and Julius Caesar had epilepsy. The firmness of the body has nothing to do with the character of the mind. I've known many perfectly sane people with handicaps.

"a vegetarian,"

Hitler - no smoking, no drinking, vegetarian (not sure of the last one)
Winston Churchill - smoked like the Titanic, drank like a fish, and I assume ate meat, too.
FDR - Don't know if he smoked (probably did), drank, probably ate meat, and he was confined to a wheel-chair.

Do you see a lack of a pattern developing? I don't see a pattern either.

"was constantly harassed by the Taleban and Mullah Omar"

Yeah, he kept forgetting to pay his rent .

"and put most of his money towards engineering and building roads and homes for poor people in Afghanistan."

Or, he put most of his money in to building infrastructure to support Al-Qaeda operations. I find my scenario more likely, considering that it includes his training camps, chemical manufacturing plants, etc.

"He was also against the Taleban's terrible education system and had his children educated western-style."

He didn't want his kids to be idiots, did he? The elite always try to get the best schooling possible for their own kids.

"Not bad character points."

More like "not bad spin." That's the problem when you run in to reality, though, nothing is black and white. Osama was probably a loving man to his kids, treated his wives decently (for the culture), and even cared about what happens to the people of Saudi Arabia. The problem is that there's another side to the sick twisted fck that is that coin: he wanted to kill millions of innocent civilians, against the prohibitions of the Qur'An I might add, he didn't care what happened to his men, he deceived the people who worked for him (he implies that many of the hijackers didn't know what end the hijackers had in mind), etc. Which one is the "real" Osama? They both are. You'll often hear comments from the neighbors of serial killers, rapists, and child molesters like, "He was just an ordinary guy," and, "He was such a nice man."

"It's a shame that a man like that was roused up to support terrorist activity.

(Would he have done that if the world was a fairer place?)"

That's despicable. Your either implying that he wasn't a rational agent (i.e. responsible for his own actions), which is wrong, or justify his actions, which is worse. If his aims were really what he professed them to be, he could have followed in the footsteps of Ghandi, and been much more successful. He had a choice, he chose an evil path, he deserves the consequences.

BlackGriffen

[philzilla]

i've been a vegetarian for over 10 years now. i've not felt the urge to talk people into committing atrocious acts of terrorism. it was religion that brought that on.

i've talked people into a coma before, but that's different...

[hytek]

it was religion that brought that on.

Rather, religion is their *excuse* to commit hate crimes against the western nations. There is nothing about the true Islamic religion that says you must go out out kill Americans.

Hey, so what about Jesus?

I don't even want to answer this. :/

[ 03-15-2002: Message edited by: hytek ]

[CRASH HARDDRIVE]

Ms. Bin Ladin?

So they gave him that sex change operation and turned him back over to the Taliban after all?

[KellyHogan]

Actually Islam does condone military or any other action when Islam is oppressed. Likewise the Catholic Church still preserves the doctrine of a 'Just War'. No wonder there have been so many Opus Dei members in the Pentagon and CIA including William Casey...who helped set up the Taleban and trained Bin Ladin.

Who made a potentially good man into an enemy and why? Who has profited? Who has profited? Please don't say nobody did because there has been plenty of political and financial profit for a few clever people since 9-11.