Jed, what terrorist gun and what terrorist training? From everything I've read, he was a Taleban soldier. Before the U.S. invaded, the only fighting he would have done was against indiginous rebel groups. So where do you get this 'Taleban = al Qaeda'-type bullshit? Fox News? USA Today? Just because "patriotic" pro-U.S. government propagandists repeat it 24 hours a day doesn't make it so. The interests of the Taleban never reached outside southern Central Asia, and I'll give you $5.00 if you can name ONE Afghan terrorist. Maybe it helps you sleep at night, thinking that all those Afghan civilians are probably "terrorists," and so it's not wrong for the U.S. government to vaporize them. They probably even owned a turban or two... :P

I was listening to some CNN reporter the other day, describing his tour of what was "obviously a terrorist training camp." They had stockpiles of weapons, shooting ranges, excercise equipment, and, most damning of all, books written in ARABIC SCRIPT. That's right, the script of terrorism!

Oh, I mean, could have been a place to train SOLDIERS, I guess, but how do you explain the literature? Huh? HUH?! Oh, yeah, Pashto is written in a modified Arabic script, isn't it? Well... Still, they must be terrorists!

Seriously, I'm so fucking sick of the "news" lately. Do you know how many years I wished that CNN would have just ONE interesting story on Central Asia? Many. But if I turn it on right now, I'd either see a O.J./Elian/Lewinski-style John Walker story, or some cocksmoker patting himself on the back because he can now find Turkmenistan, unlabelled, on the map. JESUS.

So, I'm watching less CNN, hehe. The BBC site doesn't bother me at all. I LOVE EurasiaNet. (Check out Ahmed Rashid's profile of Hamid Karzai, or, to make this music-related, their great essay in image and sound' on the music of Kyrgyzstan.) But network/cable news must DIE. :)

---Lepus Rex