The Many Faces of US Politics...

[Hedley Lamarr]

Na sorry..it's men shes into Hedley.

Do you know any?

[Hedley Lamarr]

Quote from meat and potatoes

"As for my gun, my home has been attacked twice, I have a wife and two kids that live with me, you bet yer arse I have a gun."

Is it a Super Soaker?

Similar to your mattress most mornings then

Did your woman tell you then?

Eh should I tell him or should one of ye tell him.

Penny dropped..... thanks Holly

[Hedley Lamarr]

I hope and pray that George can kick start this. I'm weary of it so I can only imagine how the Palestinians and Israelis feel.


Mitchell to give peace train a fresh push
But perhaps the big question today is: Are there still believers in the US-sponsored peace process?

We've seen this before in the past. The US special envoy to the Middle East heads to the region amid signs that peace talks, bogged down for what seems like an eternity, are about to resume. The peace process, an American coinage that dates back to the 1970s, is going into its penultimate thrusts. It has become an institution, a diplomatic edifice that thrives and withers depending on geopolitical agendas and regional crises.

Since Oslo and the signing of the Washington Accords in the early 1990s between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, both of whom have since been eliminated, the peace process has taken on a new direction. There was much promise and hope in the beginning; long days and nights of arduous negotiations, going over minute details, complicated maps with A, B and C area markings, a breakthrough in Wye River, another in Sharm El Sheikh, only to be followed by a setback in Camp David and another in Taba. This is how difficult and frustrating the search for an ultimate settlement has been.

And then it all changed so quickly. A Palestinian Intifada in 2000, instigated by a provocative visit by opposition leader Ariel Sharon to Al Aqsa and the Sacred Sanctuary on the eve of his election victory, sent the peace process into a free fall. Two years later, Israel reoccupied the entire West Bank, reversing Palestinian fortunes, besieged Arafat for months before his mysterious demise.

9/11, the war on terror, the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq derailed the peace process completely. It was downhill from there; the Road Map, Annapolis and other gestures, but none was genuine enough to jump-start the lifeless peace wagon. It stood idle for years as suspicions, distrust and accusations between Israel and the Palestinians poisoned the atmosphere. In the meantime Israel launched two wars; against Lebanon in 2006 and on Gaza in 2008-09, before electing a right-wing government composed of radical coalition parties headed by an intransigent Benjamin Netanyahu.

The PNA under Mahmoud Abbas lost political ground as well. Radical factions had contested the 2006 elections and defeated moderate Fatah in Gaza and the West Bank. A Hamas-led government quickly collapsed, all credit to the Americans and Israelis, and Palestinian internal strife finally led the eviction of the PNA from Gaza, which fell under Israeli siege.

In brief, the first decade of the third millennia has not been good for the peace process institution. In the past years Israel has had a change of heart, refusing to yield on final status issues and looking for ways to derail the prospect of ending the conflict through a two-state solution. Their backs against the wall, the Arabs, and Palestinians, could only tout the peace option. For them no other option exists.

In came President Barack Obama with his promise to breathe life back into the dead body of the peace process. But his early attempts were met with stiff, and humiliating, Israeli resistance. They were willing to talk but without preconditions. East Jerusalem, the presumptive capital of the future Palestinian state, was beyond the scope of negotiators, and so were the "legal" settlements, Jordan Valley, borders and refugees.

It is a tough challenge for George Mitchell, Obama's envoy to the region, and the Palestinians, divided and all, and the Arabs, now also divided over the credibility of the process. After many false alarms, Mitchell is back again, and this time he hopes to give the peace train a much-needed nudge forward. It will be a humble beginning; indirect talks, no conditions, no clear agenda and no obvious finishing line. To resume negotiations in such a symbolic manner, 18 years after Oslo and the big achievements of Rabin and Arafat, is no breakthrough.

But it's not déjà vu all over again. The mood has changed significantly since Oslo and Camp David. Certainly regional realities are different. Perhaps the big question today is: Are there still believers in the peace process?

Two seasoned Americans, a politician and a scholar, have given separate answers to this question in the past few weeks. Both have lost their faith in the peace process. Writing in this month's Foreign Policy magazine Aaron David Miller, who had served as an adviser on the Middle East to Republican and Democratic secretaries of state for over 30 years, declares that he had lost his faith in the false religion of Middle East peace. And he presents a solid argument.

Miller believes that America has lost the magic associated with its mediator role, that the Israel-Palestine conflict has no ownership, that both parties have no historical leaders who are willing to take historical decisions, that Palestine no longer represents a central issue in Middle Eastern politics — with two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a third possibly against Iran — and that the influence of the Israeli lobby in Washington will circumvent any attempt by Congress or the White House to force a deal on the Jewish state. In Miller's view Washington must come to the conclusion that it cannot implement a deal; that its power has limits.

Professor John Mearsheimer, co-author of a controversial book on the influence of the Israeli lobby on America's foreign policy, believes the two-state solution is no longer viable. Speaking at the Palestine Center in Washington DC last month, Mearsheimer believes Israel will not allow the Palestinians to have a viable state of their own in Gaza and the West Bank.  "Regrettably," he says, "the two-state solution is now a fantasy." Instead, those territories will be incorporated into a "Greater Israel," which will be an apartheid state bearing a marked resemblance to white-ruled South Africa.

Nevertheless, a Jewish apartheid state is not politically viable over the long term, he adds. In the end, it will become a democratic bi-national state, whose politics will be dominated by its Palestinian citizens. "In other words, it will cease being a Jewish state, which will mean the end of the Zionist dream."

Both views may disagree on the final outcome of the conflict, but both believe the peace process is dead; that it cannot deliver a two-state solution. There are others who share these beliefs based on the conviction that Israel's political establishment has finally and irrevocably abandoned the basic tenets that launched Oslo and extended the life of the peace process institution all these years.

The alternatives are daunting and unpredictable. One thing is for sure and that is the region cannot go on suspended in midair between a state of no war and no peace. The process, the occupation and the future of both Jews and Arabs in historical Palestine are converging at a point of culmination. Few can dare predict what that point will finally mean!

[Declan]

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2010-05-06/news/christian-right-leader-george-rekers-takes-vacation-with-rent-boy/

You gotta chuckle at these boys

[dec]

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2010-05-06/news/christian-right-leader-george-rekers-takes-vacation-with-rent-boy/

You gotta chuckle at these boys

My favorite bit.

"I had surgery," Rekers said, "and I can't lift luggage. That's why I hired him."

[J70]

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2010-05-06/news/christian-right-leader-george-rekers-takes-vacation-with-rent-boy/

You gotta chuckle at these boys

Rentboy.com 

The average homophobic fundamentalist must tear their hair out at their church leaders and political representatives! How many of these outspoken warriors for Jesus have been exposed as closet gays messing around with prostitutes or young boys! A partner of  the mighty Dr. James Dobson no less as well! No doubt he'll be heading into the clinic for a bit of good old fashioned christian treatment to cure him of his homosexuality!

On one of the previous ones... I was passing through Minneapolis-St. Paul airport a couple of years back and saw a bunch of college lads taking pictures of themselves in a toilet cubicle! The scene of Senator Larry Craig's attempt to entice an undercover cop with a bit of sub-partition footsie has become a tourist attraction!

[tyssam5]

Oh fcuk..I was wondering how long it would take
Till McVeigh would be mentioned in this...the PC
Passiveness knows no bounds on this board

What are you talking about? PC? passiveness? I'm really not following you.
Just the fact that it didn't work struck me as a lone nutter type thing as opposed to anything organized. My opinion had nothing to do with politics.

[Hedley Lamarr]

The price of courage
No amount of lies, intimidation or blackmail could sell Israeli war crimes as self-defense, or smear Israeli critics as anti-Semites

In his report on Gaza issued late last year, prominent South African jurist Richard Goldstone accused Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes. His language also showed awareness of the fact that the former is an occupying power with most sophisticated weapon arsenal (as reflecting in the number of Palestinian victims), and the latter is a besieged, occupied faction in a state of self-defense. Although Goldstone must have been aware of the kind of hysteria such a report would generate, he still did not allow ideological or ethnic affiliation to stand between him and his moral convictions.

Despite some initial apprehension — owing to the fact that Goldstone is a self-declared Zionist with links to Israel — many justice and peace advocates were comforted by the man's past record. He was a former judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and former Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals of the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

In April 2009, the United Nations Human Rights Council appointed Goldstone to lead the mission of investigating war crimes committed by Israel in the devastating war in Gaza between Dec. 27, 2008 and Jan. 18, 2009. Goldstone insisted that the mandate must also include alleged violations committed by Palestinians. At the end, he was asked to set his own mission's mandate, a reflection of the level of trust placed in him by the UNHRC.

The report's findings were published in September 2009, providing one of the most vivid, sober and unmistakable recommendations ever issued by a UN mission since Israel began its open-ended campaign of massacres and violations on the territorial sovereignty and human dignity of the Palestinian people and its Arab neighbors.

What has been shocking for Israel and its supporters is the nature of the report's recommendations. It urges the international community to "start criminal investigation in national courts...where alleged perpetrators (of war crimes) should be arrested and prosecuted in accordance with internationally recognized standards of justice." But more than this, the anger in Israelis and Zionists everywhere has largely been inspired by the fact that Goldstone is supposed to be "one of them." He cannot be easily derided either as a "self-hating Jew," nor can he be accused of anti-Semitism, the ready-to-serve warrant of anyone who dares criticize Israel's criminal conduct.

My own interest in Goldstone is motivated by three reasons. First, Gaza is still suffering under the very conditions that Goldstone so aptly described in his report. Nothing has happened since then to ease the pain of the victims, nor to heed his call for justice.

Second, there is the ongoing "controversy" over the man's wish to take part in his grandson's bar mitzvah in South Africa. He has now been forced to negotiate with a group of South African Jewish leaders in order to participate in this coming of age ceremony. South Africa's chief rabbi, Warren Goldstein, accused Goldstone of being a liar whose report is "delegitimizing Israel." The South African Jewish Board of Deputies accused Goldstone of "selling out."

It behooves Rabbi Goldstein to remember that it is only the barbarous killing of thousands of innocent civilians that is "delegitimizing" Israel. As for "selling out," Goldstone is indeed a "sell out" as far as any blind tribal affiliations are concerned, affiliations that seem to matter more to the Jewish Board of Deputies than the cause of justice, fairness, equality and peace that are enshrined in all major world religions and philosophies, notwithstanding Judaism.

That leads to the third reason that compelled the revisiting of this subject — Norman Finkelstein's most recent volume, This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion.

Finkelstein is not an ordinary author. His readers know well that one rarely finds so many strong qualities in a single writer: Compelling academic research, unbending moral clarity, lucidity in style, and a refusal to dehumanize the subject and the victim. This Time We Went Too Far will serve in academic and human rights circles — as Goldstone will serve a similar purpose in the legal arena — as the categorical indictment of Israel's brutal policies in Gaza. More, it will forever shame those who have allowed titles, money, prestige and, again, blind tribal affiliation to prevent them from seeing the untold inhumanity that took place, and continues to take place in Gaza and the rest of Palestine. Sadly, as such cruelty perpetuates, so do the diatribes of Israel's apologists. Finkelstein is no stranger to vile attacks from Israel's diehard friends, and Goldstone will also eventually get used to it.

Finkelstein positions his book within proper historical contexts. He summons the events that lead to, coincided with and followed the Israeli war on Lebanon in the summer of 2006, which also killed and wounded thousands, and destroyed much of the country's civilian infrastructure. The similarities are too stark, but are made much clearer by Finkelstein's patient evaluation of both events. Moreover, he revisits the Israeli war and invasion of Lebanon of 1982, revealing much of Israel's bizarre but predictable behavior.

Finkelstein provides lengthy and immaculate research that highlights the repellent propaganda which preceded and followed the massacre in Gaza. Although he makes various references to the Goldstone mission and report earlier in the book, he dedicates most of the book's epilogue to the Goldstone report and its many consequences. His revelations and analysis are encouraging in that they suggest that things are in fact changing. Israel, a rouge state by any reasonable standards, will never reclaim its fictitious old status as a beacon of progress and democracy. No amount of lies, intimidation or blackmail could sell Israeli war crimes as self-defense, or smear Israeli critics as anti-Semites. The book makes a very convincing case to back up this assertion.

"The times they are a-changing," wrote Finkelstein. True, and that is a most impressive achievement that was made possible by the likes of Jimmy Carter, John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, Richard Goldstone, Richard Falk, John Dugard, Finkelstein himself, and the innumerable authors, journalists and bloggers who tirelessly worked to document the truth.

But it is also the courage of the Palestinian people in Gaza and elsewhere that made it possible for us to take such stances. Our efforts dwarf in comparison to their courage, resilience and sacrifices.

Finkelstein's book is a testimony to all of that and much more.

[tyssam5]

Hedley, what's the source of the above?

[Hedley Lamarr]

Hedley, what's the source of the above?

— Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is a columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com.

[Tyrones own]

Oh fcuk..I was wondering how long it would take
Till McVeigh would be mentioned in this...the PC
Passiveness knows no bounds on this board

What are you talking about? PC? passiveness? I'm really not following you.
Just the fact that it didn't work struck me as a lone nutter type thing as opposed to anything organized. My opinion had nothing to do with politics.

Really not that hard to follow at all Tyssam... I never heard so much mention of white this and white that out of the
media when the video surfaced of the NY bomber, almost delirious that it could potentially be a white Teapartier or
someone who was opposed to the health care bill according to Mayor Bloomberg
in other words, absolutely anything but mention the likely fact of it being an extremist attack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdbUwlM4bK4
What a fecking embarrassment

Then when he learned that it was indeed a Muslim extremest he put's a call out for sensitivities around Muslim people living here.
Now I have to ask a question, would that be the same sensitivities that would have been afforded the TeaPartiers group if indeed
they had been guilty of this? the media and the Washington elites have no problem offending and insulting everyday Americans
but hey we need to be sensitive to our ( silent on all of this as usual ) Muslim brotherhood!
That's PC passiveness in my book

[J70]

You may have a point regarding the reaction had it in fact been some tea party person or a militia man or some leftist extremist. But those movements, associated with white America, do not have an international terrorist movement purportedly acting in their name. While such an act would damage whatever cause it was, at least temporarily in PR terms, the damage would be minimal. Rush Limbaugh and the like can try to discredit the environmental movement by pointing to a couple of isolated, deranged ecoterrorists burning down housing projects (or his recent suggestion that it was actually they that caused the Deepwater Horizon disaster) or the fuss over the climate change emails, but it does not change the reality of the problems or the legitimacy of the concerns. Similarly for those in the tea party movement who have genuine concerns about deficits and spending who get attacked from the other end of the spectrum and dismissed because some of their fellow travellers are morons carrying Obama as Hitler/Stalin/Joker/illegal alien/muslim/antichrist posters etc. But muslims in the US are not so deeply rooted in American history and society that they can brush off the acts of extremists as a tiny unrepresentative minority. There is an assumption among many in the US that they all (secretly or not) approve of what those who act in their name are doing, terrorism-wise. Sarcastic "religion of peace" rhetoric sound familiar? There are some 9/11 family members kicking up a fuss this week because an Islamic cultural center is being built in downtown Manhattan, basically saying that because it is muslim, it should not have been approved in an area so close to the World Trade Center. To me, anyway, it smacks of kind of a domestic type of dispute - you can say what the f**k you want about the person in your family, but they're still part of your family and will remain so. You have to be a little more sensitive when it comes to the neighbours.

[J70]

Don't know anything about this guy or how true his piece is, except that a Google news search for something on the muslim response to the Times Square car bomb attempt turned up this Huffington Post piece...

Failed Time Square Bombing: Blame the Muslims?
      
Frank Fredericks

Founder of World Faith and Conar Records
Posted: May 4, 2010 06:58 PM


In the shocking and fortunately failed case of the attempted bombing of Time Square this past weekend, I began seeing a pattern in terminology defining anti-government violence and terrorism. Many reports say, "It is unsure whether or not this was an act of terrorism." What they mean, of course, is, "We don't know if the culprits are Muslims."

This is a pattern because of other examples in which the changing of the identity of the assailant changes the crime. When Andrew Stack of Austin flew his plane into the IRS building just over two months ago, it was determined by Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo not to be terrorism, and media outlets like The New York Times, Fox News, and CNN echoed this refrain.

Why? When Arabs or South Asians with falsely Islamic, anti-American rhetoric fly an airplane into a building, it's terrorism. When an anti-American, vaguely-Christian white man does the same, how we could we label it any differently? This is a problem that is equally shared by both conservative and liberal media outlets, including some of my favorite personalities like Jon Stewart and Bill Maher, as well as politicians.

After a South Park episode depicted Muhammad supposedly in a bear costume, a New York-based website called Revolution Islam responded with threats to the creators of South Park. Soon thereafter, almost all news sources warned of "Muslim retaliation." But can these guys be called Muslims? Zachary Chesser, one of the punks from Revolution Islam, isn't exactly your typical Muslim. A troubled kid who used to draw satanic images and dress in goth attire, his recent "conversion" to Islam can be compared to kids 40 years ago becoming communists to rebel against their parents.

Yet the media did a terrible job of catching this, instead lumping them together with actual Muslims from both in the United States and abroad. I agree whole-heartedly with the right of shows like South Park to use free speech, and they certainly don't target one group over another. (I remember seeing Jesus die by machine gun in a specific Christmas special of South Park.) Hell, I am admittedly a South Park fan. Some of my Muslim friends found it funny. Others didn't appreciate it as much, but all were much more pissed off that some jackasses claiming to be speaking for Muslims were misrepresenting them by calling for violence. They share their faith with those terrorists no more than I share my faith with the "Christian" terrorists who bomb abortion clinics.

This uncovers a greater issue, and that is the strength of Muslims voices against violence. The Gallop World Poll conducted the largest ever survey of Muslim opinions worldwide. Their findings revealed that 93 percent of Muslims believe that there is never a case for violence against civilians. When given the chance to write in a response, many cited the Quranic verse 5:32, "Killing a man is like killing all of mankind," a verse used to condemn violence. Of the seven percent who considered violence acceptable, they often cited political rather than religious reasons. Further research reveals that this seven percent is no more religious than the majority.

You may often hear Americans claim that not enough Muslims condemn violence and terrorism. However, that simply could not be further from the truth. There have been many Muslim religious leaders speaking out against terrorism, including some of the most prominent, like Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri (who issued a 600-page fatwa on the issue), Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, Abdel Motei Bayyoumi, and many others. There have been many organizations started by Muslims to mobilize against terrorism and improve Muslim-West relations, such as ASMA, Free Muslims Coalition, Muslims Against Terrorism, The Cordoba Initiative, and many more. Also, there have even been massive demonstrations by Muslims against terrorism, in places like India (over one million people participated), London, and even across the US.

Why isn't this common knowledge? It's simply not covered by the media at all. I don't believe this is a product of agenda as much as it's just the nature of the business. Conflict news retains viewers and attracts ad revenue.

Terrorism is not a Muslim invention, and the vast majority of Muslims don't consider those who act in violence to be Muslims.

Terrorism is the latest step in a long tradition of anti-conventional warfare. Non-traditional warfare has many historical examples, such as the American Revolution, when the British cried foul play due to revolutionaries' lack of uniforms and their targeting of generals over soldiers. Guerrilla warfare, defined by attacking and withdrawing and confusing the lines between civilians and combatants, was used by the Filipino rebels against Americans during the US occupation of the Philippines, by the Sardinistas in Nicaragua, and by Ho Chi Minh in the Vietnam War. Terrorism, defined loosely as "violence targeting civilians by non-state actors with the intent to cause public fear," is the latest in this underdog non-conventional warfare progression. Terrorism has been used by ETA in the Basque region of Spain, by the Irgun against the British in Palestine (leading up to the creation of Israel), and by the IRA to fight the British presence in Northern Ireland.

Terrorism is wrong and despicable. However, it is not a Muslim invention, and those who claim Islamic reasoning won't be the last to use it. Even more importantly, by their own religious tendencies, by fatwas by religious leaders around the world, and by Muslims' rejection of their violence, they should not be bundled together with Muslims who despise terrorism.

Whether or not the culprit in the attempted bombing of Times Square was an angry Arab or a wacky white guy, the act is terrorism, no matter where the culprit is from or what he or she believes.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-fredericks/failed-time-square-bombin_b_562041.html

[tyssam5]

Oh fcuk..I was wondering how long it would take
Till McVeigh would be mentioned in this...the PC
Passiveness knows no bounds on this board

What are you talking about? PC? passiveness? I'm really not following you.
Just the fact that it didn't work struck me as a lone nutter type thing as opposed to anything organized. My opinion had nothing to do with politics.

Really not that hard to follow at all Tyssam... I never heard so much mention of white this and white that out of the
media when the video surfaced of the NY bomber, almost delirious that it could potentially be a white Teapartier or
someone who was opposed to the health care bill according to Mayor Bloomberg
in other words, absolutely anything but mention the likely fact of it being an extremist attack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdbUwlM4bK4
What a fecking embarrassment

Then when he learned that it was indeed a Muslim extremest he put's a call out for sensitivities around Muslim people living here.
Now I have to ask a question, would that be the same sensitivities that would have been afforded the TeaPartiers group if indeed
they had been guilty of this? the media and the Washington elites have no problem offending and insulting everyday Americans
but hey we need to be sensitive to our ( silent on all of this as usual ) Muslim brotherhood!
That's PC passiveness in my book

Don't know what's in the youtube video, but I know it's not me. Nor am I Bloomberg. So I'm still a bit confused regarding your outburst about my original post

[Hedley Lamarr]

The next bomb in America
As long as US troops are occupying Muslim countries, Al-Qaeda's cause will prosper

Faisal Shahzad was no Timothy McVeigh, let alone a Mohamed Atta. McVeigh, who killed 168 people in Oklahoma City in 1995 with a massive truck-bomb, took the trouble to learn how to make a bomb that actually works. Atta, who piloted one of the planes that crashed into the Twin Towers on 9/11, even learned how to fly. Shahzad, who left a vehicle rigged to explode near New York's Times Square on Saturday night, was a bumbling amateur.

He might still have killed some people, of course. "(The bomb) certainly could have exploded and had a pretty big fire and a decent amount of explosive impact," said New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. But the casualties would have been in the dozens, at worst, and more likely only a few. Not enough, in other words, to drive Americans crazy again.

I'm choosing my words carefully here. Ever since the 9/11 attacks nine years ago, the US media (with the eager assistance of the Bush administration until the end of 2008) have worked to persuade Americans that terrorism is the greatest threat facing the country. The enterprise has succeeded, and most Americans actually believe that terrorism poses a serious danger to their personal safety.

Quite a few Americans have already died as a result of that belief, not just in the wars overseas that were justified in the name of fighting terrorism but even at home. In the first year after 9/11, for example, many Americans chose to drive long distances rather than risk flying, and highway deaths went up by 1,200 people as a result. Nobody died in the planes.

Nobody has been killed by terrorists in the United States since 9/11, but the fear is so great that just one big attack with lots of casualties would still have disastrous consequences. There would be huge public pressure for the government to do something very large and violent, in the delusionary belief that is the way to defeat terrorism. That is what I mean by "driving Americans crazy."

The main goal of terrorist attacks anywhere is to drive the victims crazy: To goad them into doing stupid, violent things that ultimately play into the hands of those who planned the attacks. Terrorism is a kind of political jiu-jitsu in which a relatively weak group (like Al-Qaeda) attempts to trick a far stronger enemy (like the US government) into a self-defeating response.

The US response to 9/11 was certainly self-defeating. A more intelligent strategy would have been to try to split the Taleban regime of Afghanistan, many of whose leading members were outraged by the threat of an American invasion that the action of their Arab guests had brought down on their heads. A combination of threats and bribes might have persuaded the Taleban to hand over Osama Bin Laden and his whole Al-Qaeda crew.

It was certainly worth trying first, but the political pressure on the White House to invade Afghanistan was extreme. Even though those who knew anything about terrorist strategies understood that that was exactly what Bin Laden wanted Washington to do.

Osama Bin Laden's goal was to build support among Muslims for his militant ideology by convincing them that they were under attack by the "infidels." The best way to do that was to sucker the "infidels" (i.e. the Americans) into invading Muslim countries.

The 9/11 attacks succeeded in triggering a US invasion of Afghanistan (and Bush then gave Bin Laden even more help by invading Iraq as well). As a result, Al-Qaeda has made some progress toward its ultimate goal of sparking militant revolutions in the Arab world and even the broader Muslim world, though probably not nearly as much as Bin Laden hoped.

Since Washington was already doing what Bin Laden wanted, he had no reason to carry out further major terrorist operations in the United States after 9/11, and there is no evidence that Al-Qaeda has attempted any. Shahzad's amateurish bomb certainly did not meet that organization's highly professional standards.

Would Al-Qaeda have gone with a bomb triggered by dozens of firecrackers, which were intended to set two jugs of petrol (gasoline) alight, in turn causing three propane gas cylinders to explode, and finally setting off a much bigger explosion of eight bags of fertilizer (except that it was of the non-explosive kind)? I think not.

But would Al-Qaeda now be interested in carrying out a big attack in the United States, if it could manage it? Probably yes, for by the middle of next year US troops will be gone from Iraq. There is reason to suspect that Barack Obama's ultimate goal is to get them out of Afghanistan too, even if he first has to protect his flank politically by reinforcing them.

As long as American troops are occupying Muslim countries, Bin Laden's cause prospers. If they leave, the air goes out of his balloon. He therefore now has a strong motive for mounting a major terrorist operation on American soil.

The goal would be to drive Americans crazy enough that they decide to keep fighting the "war on terror" on Arab and Afghan soil. The last thing Al-Qaeda wants is for the "infidels" to go home.