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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (582635)	6/13/2004 2:40:07 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 769669

A disturbing article......... ********************************************************** A Kingdom in Crisis A wave of terror has Saudis asking whether their rulers can stand up to al-Qaeda By SCOTT MACLEOD \| RIYADH Sunday, Jun. 13, 2004 As a veteran reporter on the global terrorism beat, Frank Gardner knew the dangers facing foreigners in Saudi Arabia when he ventured last week into al-Suwaydi, a Riyadh neighborhood known as a stronghold of Islamic extremists. Gardner, a BBC correspondent, and cameraman Simon Cumbers had arrived in Saudi Arabia a week earlier to cover the aftermath of the May 29 terrorist rampage in the oil-industry city of Khobar, which killed 22. As Gardner and Cumbers prepared to do some filming, a car pulled up alongside them. A man opened fire with a machine pistol, killing Cumbers and leaving Gardner fighting for his life. A photo taken by a bystander shows Gardner, his shirt and trousers soaked in blood, struggling to escape as a group of Saudis stood and watched. According to one account, he pleaded for help by claiming, "I'm a Muslim." He was eventually taken to a hospital, where he remains in critical but improving condition. The killers escaped. Almost immediately, a website favored by al-Qaeda branded the journalists "dirty infidels." It was the latest episode in al-Qaeda's accelerating and increasingly successful campaign to wreak havoc in Saudi Arabia, the homeland of Osama bin Laden, by taking aim at foreigners working in the kingdom. Two days after the attack on the journalists, a hit squad believed to be linked to al-Qaeda gunned down Robert Jacobs, an American working on a contract to train the Saudi Arabian National Guard, outside his Riyadh home. An almost identical attack in the capital on Saturday killed Kenneth Scroggs, an American who worked for Advanced Electronics Co., a Saudi firm that supplies technology to the armed forces. And in a further escalation, al-Qaeda claimed Saturday to have taken an American, Apache-helicopter specialist Paul M. Johnson, hostage. Riyadh now resembles a fortress, with government buildings, hotels and expat compounds protected by heavily armed Saudi forces and concrete barricades. Travellers endure long queues at police checkpoints. "I get nervous when I see a group of Western-looking foreigners," says Khalid Yousef, a 22-year-old university student in Jidda. "You don't want to get caught in the cross-fire." Nowhere is anxiety running higher than in the fortified palaces that house the country's royal rulers. Though the al-Saud dynasty has controlled the country for 72 years, the public is losing faith in its ineffectual governance and doubts its ability to snuff out terrorism. British ambassador to Saudi Arabia Sherard Cowper-Coles calls the terrorist threat "serious and chronic." One Saudi lawyer, Mansour al-Qerni, is even more pessimistic. "Is this going to end, or are my children going to have to accept this as a part of their lives?" Says a Saudi political analyst: "The way people are talking, it amounts to a no-confidence vote for the government." Al-Qaeda's campaign to overthrow King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud and establish a Taliban-style regime has now become a constant assault. The attacks are targeting Western experts and the oil trade — the twin pillars that have propped up the House of Saud almost since the desert kingdom was founded in 1932. The Saudis are still far from witnessing anything like Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution — "Nothing's getting toppled," says one U.S. intelligence official — yet diplomats fear al-Qaeda's tactics may dry up foreign investment at a time when the economy sorely needs it. Anxiety about the world's leading petroleum producer saw oil prices spike to an all-time high of $42.33 per barrel on June 1 before sliding back to $38.45 last week. The surge of attacks is prompting hundreds of expats to leave, and those who remain behind are scared stiff. "Guys are growing beards and putting 'Allah is Great' bumper stickers on their cars," says a longtime American resident. "A suit and a tie is tantamount to wearing a bulls-eye." For the third time in six weeks, the State Department issued a warning "strongly urging" some 25,000 Americans to quit the country — and a U.S. official told Time that the advisory could remain in place for years. "Al-Qaeda tells [the U.S.] to leave, and so you leave," says a dismayed senior government adviser. "This hands the terrorists a victory." 1 2 Next > time.com

To: tejek who wrote (582635)	6/13/2004 3:24:44 PM
From: Johannes Pilch	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769669

No, that's not what I said, genius. Leftists are such liars. And the DC's did not slander a state or this country, they expressed extreme discomfort with your president. And in doing so they assaulted an entire state, in effect saying that the state is so much jaundiced because of its association with Bush, that they are ashamed to be also associated with it. That was no mere criticism. It was typical leftist poison, one of many leftist poisons that has destroyed America. An opinion that roughly 50% of us hold. Deal with it!... And roughly 50% of us hold the opposite view. And Bush is president according to our wishes, not yours. So deal with that, you left-walking sodomitic twit. Hmmmmm.......you do know that Bush is president. So its pretty automatic that when you say you are unhappy with Bush, one can conclude you are unhappy with his presidency. It is one thing to claim you don't like a president's policy, his political approach to problems. But to say you are ashamed to be from the same state as the president is not merely to criticize policy. It is to claim that the man himself is so abominable that his association with a state makes that state soooo unfit, that you are ashamed to also be associated with it. The reason you are having difficulty with so simple a moral issue is because leftists are morally insensitive. They think they have a right to literally insult people and not have those people become fighting mad. You folks are friggin' creepy. You're just friggin' creepy creeps. There was no valid cause for that fat chick to assault the President and his state as she did. Bush, the man, has done nothing wrong in this regard. And just for the record, that is a perfectly legitimate complaint in a democracy whether its expressed in the US, in Europe or in Antarctica. Well, it is legitimate to you, of course, because you haven't a clue about true legitimacy, which ought to evoke pity in any decent person for your children. But for the rest of us, the assault on Bush and on his state, in a foreign country, is leftist behavior and highly divisive. It does not support American unity, but disunity. Leftists are attacking, publicly and viciously leveling personal attacks, against their own leaders --not policies or immoral behaviors, but simply because they disagree with their leaders' official positions. It is abominable behavior because Bush, the man, has done nothing to warrant this sort of sordid, comprehensively deviant behavior from you. It is uncivilized, immoral and unAmerican. That's right.......and you might want to think about why 50% of the people this country and most people in the world do not have a very flattering view of Mr. Bush. Well over 50% of the people in this country have a flattering view of Bush, and get this - Bush is in office. You might want to think about that, you freak. As for most people in the world, they are every bit as filthy as you are. So they obviously do not rate anyone's consideration but yours and other leftwinding snakes. Can that many people be wrong?! I don't think so. You don't think, period, and you haven't a clue about what is right or wrong, so deviant is the leftist mind. Over 50% of the people in this country support Bush - and accordingly, Bush is in office. So by your little goofy criterion, these folks can't be wrong. (What a friggin' twit.) Right and you geniuses do........where are the WMDs? Because of the astute leadership of George W. Bush, we now know that whether they are in Iraq or not, they will never be used by Saddam Hussein. You wouldn't know the truth if it hit you on the face. Well, if it hit me on the face, it wouldn't be the truth, you immoral savage. And you're rhetoric doesn't change from one post to the next. That is because it is the truth. You're pathetic! And you're a leftist - so I am still far better off than you.