Barry Soetoro
Nov 6th, 2008, in Opinion, by Guest WriterBarry Soetoro aka Barack Obama’s Indonesian connection.
Former Menteng student now US President
Obama Barack has been democratically elected President of the US.
Quite an about face for the best democracy money can buy, in view of the Bush presidential se-lection.
But of course, corruption, collusion and nepotism is the sole monopoly of the Third World – or so the deluded denizens of the West repeat to themselves as they hug their knees, rocking back and forth – reminding themselves of how they uphold human rights equally across the board, entirely devoid of double-standards and totally oblivious to race, creed or religion.
Barrak Hussein Obama II was born to a white American Ann Dunham and Kenyan Barrak Hussein Obama Snr, in Nyang’oma Kogelo now in Kenya.
Here the Indonesian link starts.
Ann Dunham married in 1967 Lolo Soetoro, a Javanese, whose own father, in 1946 was killed along with his eldest brother were killed, after which the Dutch army burned down the family’s home. Soetoro fled with his mother into the countryside to survive. Incidentally yet more proof of Dutch war crimes – delibrate destruction of civilian property outside the scope of battle.
Pak Lolo Soetoro was an army geologist then later a government relations consultant for Mobil Oil. Obama describes Soetoro as well-mannered, even-tempered, and easy with people.
Barry Soetoro in Indonesia with mother Ann Dunham, step-father Lolo Soetoro, baby-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng.
From age 6 to 10, Obama lived in Jakarta. Age six, Obama attended the Catholic Primary St Francis di Assisi. Much was made of the lie he was educated in a Madrassa – or more accurately a pesantren – this of course was totally untrue. Obama Jnr later attended Model Primary School, Menteng and was registered as a Muslim – as his father was Muslim.
In the Muslim school, the teacher wrote to tell my mother that I made faces during Koranic studies. My mother wasn’t overly concerned. ‘Be respectful,’ she’d say. In the Catholic school, when it came time to pray, I would close my eyes, then peek around the room. Nothing happened. No angels descended. Just a parched old nun and 30 brown children, muttering words.
One of “Berry’s” childhood friends was Adi who often visited “Berry’s” 16 Jalan Haji Ramli house. Speaking volumes of Dutch “development” at the time the road was of this established middle-class neighbourhood was a dirt lane where Obama used to wile away the hours kicking a soccer ball.
Adi recalled Obama and his friends wore plastic bags over their shoes to walk through the muddy street during the rainy seasons.
Neighborhood Muslims worshiped in a nearby house, which has since been replaced by a larger mosque. Sometimes, when the muezzin sounded the call to prayer, Lolo and Barry would walk to the makeshift mosque together, Adi said.
His mother often went to the church, but Barry was Muslim. He went to the mosque,” Adi said. “I remember him wearing a sarong.”
Obama spent most his spare time hanging out with Adi and other friends at the home of Yunaldi Askiar, a classmate. They used to play a kind of fencing game using sticks, kick a ball up and down the narrow dirt lanes or go swimming in the river behind the school, said Askiar, 42, a car mechanic.
Obama was taller and better dressed than most kids in classes where shoes and socks were still luxuries, so he stood out from the start. As an African American, and the only foreigner, he suffered racial taunts and teasing but never turned to violence.
“At first, everybody felt it was weird to have him here,” Israella Dharmawan, his first grade teacher said. “But also they were curious about him, so wherever he went, the kids were following him.”
His friends enjoyed playing tricks on Berry: Harmon ASki recalled,
“Sometimes we’d say, ‘Barry, do you want a chocolate?’ And we’d give him a chocolate. The next day we’d give him a chocolate again. The third time we’d give him terasi (fermented shrimp paste) wrapped up like chocolate. Obama didn’t get mad. He would laugh it off.”
Ann Soetoro moved to Yogyakarta, while Obama Jnr studied in Jakarta. She was inspired by Jogja village industries, which became the basis of her 1992 doctoral dissertation.
“She loved living in Java,” said Dr. Dewey, who recalled accompanying Ms. Soetoro to a metalworking village. “People said: ‘Hi! How are you?’ She said: ‘How’s your wife? Did your daughter have the baby?’ They were friends. Then she’d whip out her notebook and she’d say: ‘How many of you have electricity? Are you having trouble getting iron?’ ”
Dunham-Soetoro became a consultant for the United States Agency for International Development on setting up a village credit program, then a Ford Foundation program officer in Jakarta specializing in women’s work. Later, she was a consultant in Pakistan, then joined Indonesia’s oldest bank to work on what is described as the world’s largest sustainable microfinance program, creating services like credit and savings for the poor.
Obama in Hawaii with Maya and Ann and maternal grand-father, shortly after leaving Indonesia.
In his tellingly-titled Memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama describes his Indonesian interlude as “one long adventure, the bounty of a young boy’s life”. But he also recalls being troubled by the poverty around him: “the empty look on the faces of farmers the year the rains never came,” and the desperation of the disabled beggars who came to the family’s door.
“The world was violent, I was learning, unpredictable and often cruel,” he writes. Obama and his mother thus we were very well acquainted with the harsh realities of indigenous Indonesians.
Fermina Katarina Sinaga, recalled yojhng Obama in her class: in the common task of class to write an essay titled “My dream: What I want to be in the future.” Obama “wrote ‘I want to be a president,’ ” she said. During a later writing assignment on family, he wrote, “My father is my idol.
The Indonesian connection for Obama and all that shaped him proving once again all things Javanese and indigenous Indonesian the bedrock for the towering monuments built on the foundations of a great civilisation.
1,047 Comments on “Barry Soetoro”
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stevo says:
Err Drones and Contractors, mmmm pretty much started with who? A couple of names spring to mind, Halliburton, Bush, Cheney..
How long will you Obama supporters keep trotting this rubbish out? The fact is Obama has massively increased drone attacks and has launch military incurrsions on many other countries. Nothing to do with Bush.
When you transfer responsibility for American aggression to Bush, you are saying that Obama has no control over events today. You can not have it both ways Oigal. Is Obama in charge or is he not? Simple.
His Sabre rattling towards Iran is very concerning. This clown could lead us into a world war. Yet his one eyed supporters keep transferring responsibility to Bush. Trully pathetic. I have repeatedly said I do not consider Obama any better or worse than Bush, but the double standards of his supporters and media are what annoys me most.
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AQ is running Libya? Really?
Many optimistic observers thought the Arab Spring would lead to secular democracies emerging. I predicted otherwise (I think I did so on this very thread somewhere)
While many of the protesters may have wanted secular democracies, I predicted that fundamentalist Muslims would use the instability as an opportunity to increase their power. It gives me no joy to say; it appears I was right.I seriously doubt we are going to see stable, democratic, secular governments emerge from all of this. Obama has to learn that bombing people does not make them less radical, nor does it make them submit to the values of liberal Westerners. I would have thought that was a self-evident truth, to an educated man of the world such as he.
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Dearie me Stevo, what a lil outburst, miss the Meds today?. Firstly as I have pointed out many times I am no BO supporter as such that said lets be honest then and now, he was and is better than the dismal crop of religious zealots and drunks on offer.
In fact you are right about the drone attacks and you can add he has deported more illegal immigrants than any other President which makes most the the loony claims of the far right look sillier than normal and that is hard to do. Personally I find BO very simliar to SBY, the best of a really rotten bunch who has failed to deliver what the people wanted although it was a tall order. The question is now does the USA hand the keys over to the far right, religious nutters that currently dominated the Republicans. Now there is a threat.
World war with Iran, hardly. Iran is detested even by its neighbors oh and it case you ave not noticed there are more than a few other nations concerned about Iran.
Curious how in your world it is suddenly BO doing all the bombing rightly or wrongly..mission accomplished is all I can say.
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As for your last point, you are sounding a bit confused again. The Arab spring had sweet FA to do with the USA bombing or otherwise. BTW so you are saying AQ is running Libya then?
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I hope your right about Iran. But I have a bad feeling about it. Sure there are other nations concerned about Iran. Are they teh same ones who supported Bush in the invasion of Iraq, by any chance?
The Arab spring had sweet FA to do with the USA bombing or otherwise.
Agreed.
However Obama could not pass up the chance to drop a few bombs on yet another Muslim land. It seems to me that these conflicts in the Muslim world have more to do with commercial interests than human rights. I also believe that the American tax dollar (& soldiers lives) are being spent fighting the enemies of Israel, not the enemies of the US. I think the people of the US have been misled, as have many others. Its about time Obama earned that Nobel Peace Prize.
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Again Stevo you seem to mixing up a very diverse group of conflicts, uprisings and reducing them to a very broad and simplistic generalisation.
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ET says:
AQ is running Libya? Really?
According to the late beloved leader Khafafi it is them who are behind the Arab uprising.
Anyway, everything well considered and although they may have been decimated it is AQ who seems to be winning the war on terror and realizing their program of spreading and invigorating fundamental Islam by the sword, one Arab country after another, cunningly using Western strategic and economic policies to their advantage. When I saw those idiots in Libya driving their gun mounted pick-ups back and forth on the roads wasting ammunition before the cameras I’ve asked myself repeatedly: ‘Is this the stuff secular democracy is going to be built upon?’ -
ET, I think AQ is given far too much credit for what is fundamentally a disjointed bunch of no hopers. As far as criminal gangs go, even the Hells Angels have a better organizational structure and at least they have some rules on who wears the patch.
The bogey man AQ tends to be used by all sides to justify some pretty obnoxious goings on and frankly shows a lack of understanding of the deeper dynamics. Personally, I would be more concerned for the world if a lunatic zealot like bloke that came second in the first Republician Ballot ever got to be President of the USA. Nukes and religious zealots never a good thing (that alone is reason enough to harass Iran). Did you see the story on that nutter, his wife lost a new born baby so they brought it home and made all the kids cuddle it..seriously creepyand weird. Oh let’s give him the keys to the nukes….NOT!
Of course, I would be hard pressed to name even one sane Republician at the moment.
Democracy was never a real option in the ME (at least in the short term) same as it is not used in Indonesia. You can call it many things but it ain’t democracy however it is better if marginally at times better than what went before.
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BrotherMouzone says:
Ah so Obama is too right wing for you then D?
Actually, if I’m honest, Obama is too right wing by far for my tastes. Not for the mix of fact, urban myth, and conspiracy theory put forward by D, but simply because I get the sense that the man is a genuine progressive who has felt forced to temper his instincts.
But who knows; between frothy Santorum (Google him if you don’t know what I mean), bland Romney, and pants-on-head-lunatic Gingrich, Obama will probably win another term and then he might be willing to take some risks…
Anything could happen then…
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Oigal
As an aside,
Did you see the story on that nutter, his wife lost a new born baby so they brought it home and made all the kids cuddle it..seriously creepyand weird.
I didn’t hear about the cuddling, only that he brought the stillborn baby home to present it to his family before burying, about which I read in Wikipedia
However, mental health experts interviewed by ABC News said what the Santorums did was encouraged at the time, and while their response is no longer recommended, it did help in the family’s grieving process. Washington Post columnist Charles Lane defended “the right of the Santorums and all families to grieve an infant’s death in accordance with their personal needs and beliefs” and wrote that he personally regretted not showing the body of his stillborn baby to his then-six year old son.
Would it be also be wrong for a father to allow his children to great and pay respect to the remains of their deceased grandfather/mother? IMO the question here should be whether a child is old and mature enough to deal with disturbing emotions when confronted with death and grievance.
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Yes I am generalising a complex situation Oigal. But that does not detract from my central point. You are focusing on details and missing the bigger picture.
Nukes and religious zealots never a good thing (that alone is reason enough to harass Iran).
Yes, or Israel for that matter. How about Pakistan or North Korea? Should the USA have a go at all of them and really push the boat out? I really think there are better ways to advance human rights, or even oil interests.
Iran is faced on all sides by people who are hostile to her, just you said. Israel is a nuclear armed nation and Iran is the primary target, America has thousands of troups right next door. Why should they not have nukes? Their reason are as valid as anyone elses.
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Oh & btw. I agree the whole AQ thing is a bit of a myth, at least in terms of being some sort of cohesive organisation.
So remind me why Obama esculated the war in Afghanistan ? And how is that working out…… ha ha ha ha
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Oh dear what a numpty! How on earth did you draw unmitigated support by me for the afghan war from that. Althought to be honest the situation is a bit difficult explain atyear 7 level, so I won’t bother. Perhaps if Bush and it’s cronies were just a little smarter they may have had a plan for post destruction and not left such a smoozle for others to soak in.
Pakistan and North Korea,..obviously yes although you cannot blame the USA for saying about time the rest of you bludgers stood up. Iran..err no Israel and the USA have no said Iran has no right to exist nor they should be pushed into the sea, silly comparison. Not to mention ..please do so research Iran threatens every other nation in the region virtually weekly so stop spouting it’s an Israel thing, you sound like one of the clones.
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Oh and I have just gotta hear the Stevo plan for world peace and the solving of the human rights problems in North Korea, Pakistan and the ME. This is gunna be good…
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ET, I did read about the cuddling but I doubt my source is any more reliable than wiki, so happy to concede that. However, I maintain it’s creepy and weird but again hey that’s just me but what child is really capable…
Fortunately, it appears the loopyness has effectively sunk him as well and they are left with Mitt..which works for BO.
BM ..I agree it continues to bemuse me when people continually refer to BO as left wing or Socialist ..he makes Big President Ronnie R look like Ho Chi Ming. BO really does remind me of SBY coming to power carrying the aspirations of millions to improve the lot of the little people but has essentially failed and capitulated to vested interests. Although I think in BOs case it was more pragmatism and in SBY more a case on a lack of fortitude never the less both huge disappointments.
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po
. Perhaps if Bush and it’s cronies were just a little smarter they may have had a plan for post destruction and not left such a smoozle for others to soak in.
There you go again tranferring responsibility and power to Bush!!! Obama has had plenty of time to make a post conflict plan. He has had plenty of time to move the troops out, but instead esculated the conflict. At what point will you accept that Obama is in charge now and Bush is history?
As I expected, you failed to address the double standard in regard to nuclear arms. It is nothing to do with the “right to exist” argument and you threw that in to distract from the nuke issue.
Oh and I have just gotta hear the Stevo plan for world peace and the solving of the human rights problems in North Korea, Pakistan and the ME. This is gunna be good…
Are you seriously saying these conflicts are about “human rights” and that the way to advance that cause is by occupying their country and killing them? Remember these are Muslim lands and the occupying troops are from one of worlds biggest Christian church goers. They represent every thing the locals oppose and fear. They are playing into the hands of radical Muslims.
Come on Oigal, I expect better, even from you.
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No Stevo, you said it was about human rights, read your own post and you had the master plan..so let’s hear it.
Laugh, of course it was Bushes mess..based on lies and once in he completely cocked the recovery plan..(ok, he ever had one). All I can say is mission accomplished. BTW, do try and keep up, BO did withdraw the troops.
Eer of course, it has a everything to do with ‘right to exist’ and nuclear weapons. What a simply bizarre thing to say.
Once again you are mixing a whole lot of nonsense together rather incoherently….So North Korea is a Muslim land? The US has troops in those countries under going the ‘Arab Spring’ or are you talking Iraq ….oh who knows…
Seriously Stevie, it’s amusing to play with you but you have to be more coherent to make it credible.
The Stevie Plan for works peace…come on…come on…
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It is crystal clear, the parallels I was drawing, to any reasonably clear headed person. How about answering at least one of my rather simple questions. For example, is Obama or Bush in charge now? or Are you for or against American aggression in the Middle East ?
Is it mere chance that your Avatar is of a mentally disordered alcoholic writer of fiction? Sometimes I wonder 🙂
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The Stevie plan for world peace ..stop dodging..it was your call..up or out 🙂
Oh I take it then North Korea is the secret Muslim empire…laugh…
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I never claimed to have a plan for world peace. Nor did I suggest North Korea was Muslim. In fact, none of your responses seem to relate to my actually posts.
But I will play along with you regardless, my quirky Aussie friend.
We could try by not occupying others countries. It is not working for the Muslims or the Western world. Bombing people does not make them more moderate, it makes them less moderate. Western values have a lot going for them. We could set an example and let the change (in the strict Muslim world) come internally, from its own people. It worked with the former USSR and other communists nations, sabre rattling aside.
America has no right to dictate to other sovereign states, let alone invade them. It is clearly not working out well. Its time to stop blaming Bush and do something about it.
So how about answering a few of my questions? Do you find it a bit hard to do so without sounding like a screaming hypocrite? Well dont worry, that cat is already out of the bag.
Given his personal crusade against the peace loving people of Islam, I wonder if young Barry suffered some sort of sordid abuse by an Imam during his tender formative years in Indonesia? Something must be behind it all………..
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Leonard M. Urban says:
I think Mario Fuentes is right. Obama’s mother WAS present at his birth…
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Scottywad says:
The birth issue is not whether he was born in the U.S.. Earth is calling you. Pick up, stop listening to the news and think for yourself. The issue is whether BOTH parents were U.S. citizens. Ann and Barry Sr. didn’t necessarily have to be born here, just had to be citizens. It is clear, always has been, that his father was not ever a citizen. You can choose not to be afraid of having a man with possible allegiance to a foreign government, or a foreign set of principles. But I do, because of foreseen consequences.
The Constitution says, “No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”
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Scottywad, I will assume you believe in democracy.
Obama was democratically elected. He is (or was) the people’s choice. Why focus on the birth issue, which is nothing more than a technical question of legal interpretation? I think the citizenship of his parents is the least of Obama’s problems.
I don’t care if he is a natural born citizen of Mars, he needs to stop killing Muslims.
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D says:
Glad I got some discussion started after randomly finding this thread on the interweb. Hope people do look at a picture of our Senate chamber and the fasci axes hanging up in there. Also look up the NDAA 2011 that passed with overwhelming majority(93% of our Senators supported it) and get past your rationalizations that everythings going to be OK and being alarmed at events in the political sphere makes you crazy or something. Obama is another in a line of puppets setting up the mechanisms to incrementalize our governmental system towards tyranny(reinstated Patriot Act, created Executive Order to kill U.S. citizens abroad at the whim of the executive branch for future puppets, initiated some of worst additions to NDAA legislation). Someone said I have a mix of conspiracy theory in here, not at all. I deal in facts. Ignoring the blatant signs of facism in your country(complete overlap of corporate and political leadership, draconian legislation aimed at keeping the citizenry in line, FASCI AXES HANGING IN THE SENATE HALL!) and rationalizing them as conspiracy theory is not the smartest decision. We should all be questioning the leadership-role fillers about their actions and motivations.
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You do understand you have just ruled a number of your previous presidents as illegally holding office don’t you Scotty? Not to mention the pretty silly loyality concept.
Stevo, ..so the much vaunted plan for world peace is….wait for it….’don’t drop bombs’. Wow …why didn’t anyone else think of that..By the way, what would you have had the USA do after 9/11 and when the Tailban would not hand over OB, perhaps a strongly worded letter fom the UN?
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Yourfactshurts says:
“By the way, what would you have had the USA do after 9/11 and when the Tailban would not hand over OB, perhaps a strongly worded letter fom the UN?”
They did offer to hand him over. They wanted proof that he was even involved. The U.S. offered none.
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Laugh..thanks yourfactshurts…kexcept the evidence of a video taped self confession, the confessions of those arrested.
That said they did make a half arsed attempt to pass him off onto the Saudi’s once it became clear the primitive clerics were about to bombed direct to Allah’s front veranda.Too little, too late. As a wise man once said you lay down with dogs you get up with fleas
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I think it was the Onion that ran the headline after Obama’s election victory;
“Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job”.
Obama’s real problem is that he is coming into power as the US’s decline becomes more obvious; the US peaked decades ago. Regardless of who is in power, the US is in for a long period of decline and the next few presidents will simply preside over a faltering empire and have to sit back while China picks up the gauntlet and becomes the world’s dominant power.
It’s not the end of the world; Spain, the Netherlands, Britain and countless other empires have been top of the pile then fallen; they didn’t become horrible places to live, they just got on with it, just as the US will. No politician will admit this, though I think many of them know it and that makes leading the US, in this period of history, a thankless task.
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timdog says:
It’s a wild asside, but I do have a smidgen of sympathy for the Taliban over their trouble with the houseguest – in as much as you can have sympathy for a bunch of illiterate village boys with machine guns…
First thing to remember is that, despite the conflation of “Taliban-al-Qaida” in the rhetoric, the Taliban and al Qaida were radically different things in 9/11.
The Taliban were, first and foremost, an ethnic force with absolutely no interest whatsoever outside Afghanistan (remember, incidentally, that dashingly handsome, French-speaking Ahmed Shah Massoud’s lot were every bit as much women-oppressing Islamists as the Taliban; they just weren’t Pashtuns).
They most certainly hadn’t engaged in any kind of “international terrorism”, and had no ambitions to do so. They were anti-modern and engaged in the process of returning their country to the Dark Ages. They used to physically attack modern technology (except for the kind that kills people), hanging televisions from lampposts like dead dictators…
They were certainly not the sort to engage in internet plotting, or to wage war on an abstract concept (the West). They wouldn’t have had the imagination.
In a way they were vicitims of attempting to enforce an entirely insular and primitive ambition in a globalised world. The idea that events in New York could have an impact in Kandahar is not something they could get their heads around…It’s quite well attested that once 9/11 happened, much of the Taliban leadership were thrown into termoil. As outlined above these were people who really didn’t want to have anything to do with the rest of the world; now the bloke with the money, the beard and the satalite phone had brought the world a-calling.
Their problem was that Osama was a guest, and a guest with money. The Taliban were exclusively Pashtun, and whatever Pashtuns might like to think about themselves, non, or at least supra-Islamic cultural codes are a much more important driving force that “Islam” per se. And offering hospitality to a guest, and refuge to any fugitive who demands it are amongst the most important parts of the Pashtunwali…
Breaking these codes is to cease to be a real Pashtun. Seriously, as absurd as it seems, your average traditional Pashtun man (and you didn’t get much more traditionally Pashtun than Mullah Omar’s boys), would rather die than risk failing to protect and offer hospitality.
As long as Osama wanted to stay, they simply had no option to order him out (though as mentioned, there was apparently considerable anguished debate about trying to find some way to do so honourably – and of course there was no honourable option, so they had to take the punishment)…Anyway, nothing to do with anything, but it’s an interesting point, and the one, small point, where you can have a smidgen of sympathy for the Taliban.
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Ah so Obama is too right wing for you then D? Now I could have sworn that tagging people overseas was pretty much a common policy until ..well Col North got busted. Err Drones and Contractors, mmmm pretty much started with who? A couple of names spring to mind, Halliburton, Bush, Cheney..
AQ is running Libya? Really?
So let’s see Obama is too connected to Corperate USA so you are going to vote Republician..yup makes senses to me..
Oh tell us the Indonesian connection kicks in again?