Osama Bin Laden, your time is short;
We'd rather you die, than come to court.
Why are you hiding if it was in God's name?
You're just a punk with a turban; a pathetic shame.

I have a question, about your theory and laws;
"How come you never die for the cause?"

Is it because you're a coward who counts on others?
Well here in America, we stand by our brothers.

As is usual, you failed in your mission;
If you expected pure chaos, you can keep on wishing
Americans are now focused and stronger than ever;
Your death has become our next endeavor.

What you tried to kill, doesn't live in our walls;
It's not in buildings or shopping malls.

If all of our structures came crashing down;
It would still be there, safe and sound.

Because pride and courage can't be destroyed;
Even if the towers leave a deep void.

We'll band together and fill the holes
We'll bury our dead and bless their souls.

But then our energy will focus on you;
And you'll feel the wrath of the
Red, White and Blue.

So slither and hide like a snake in the grass;
Because America's coming to
kick your ass!!!

Keep this email going. PASS IT ON

An Afghan perspective on the crisis

Tamim Ansary, who grew up in Afghanistan, (and has lived in the US for years) offers an interesting perspective on Bin Laden, the Taliban, and Afghanistan.
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 10:14:27 -0700

Dear Friends,
Yesterday I heard a lot of talk about bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio allowed that this would mean killing innocent people, people who had nothing to do with this atrocity, but we¹re at war, we have to accept collateral damage, and he asked, What else can we do? What is your suggestion? Minutes later I heard a TV pundit discussing whether we have the belly to do what must be done.²

And I thought about these issues especially hard because I am from Afghanistan, and even though I¹ve lived here for 35 years I¹ve never lost track of what¹s been going on over there. So I want to share a few thoughts with anyone who will listen.

I speak as one who hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. There is no doubt in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in New York. I fervently wish to see those monsters punished.

But the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan. They¹re not even the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who captured Afghanistan in 1997 and have been holding the country in bondage ever since. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a master plan. When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think the people of Afghanistan² think the Jews in the concentration camps.² It¹s not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would love for someone to eliminate the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their country. I guarantee it.

Some say, if that¹s the case, why don¹t the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban themselves? The answer is, they¹re starved, exhausted, damaged, and incapacitated. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan food. Millions of Afghans are widows of the approximately two million men killed during the war with the Soviets. And the Taliban has been executing these women for being women and have buried some of their opponents alive in mass graves. The soil of Afghanistan is littered with land mines and almost all the farms have been destroyed. The Afghan people have tried to overthrow the Taliban. They haven¹t been able to.

We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. Trouble with that scheme is, it¹s already been done. The Soviets took care of it. Make the Afghans suffer? They¹re already suffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals? Done. Destroy their infrastructure? There is no infrastructure. Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that.

New bombs would only land in the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today¹s Afghanistan, only the Taliban eat, only they have the means to move around. They¹d slip away and hide. (They have already, I hear.) Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans, they don¹t move too fast, they don¹t even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs wouldn¹t really be a strike against the criminals who did this horrific thing. Actually it would be making common cause with the Taliban they¹ve been raping all this time.

So what else can be done, then? Let me now speak with true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. I think that when people speak of having the belly to do what needs to be done many of them are thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. They are thinking about overcoming moral qualms about killing innocent people. But it¹s the belly to die not kill that¹s actually on the table. Americans will die in a land war to get Bin Laden. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden¹s hideout. It¹s much bigger than that, folks. To get any troops to Afghanistan, we¹d have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I¹m going. The invasion approach is a flirtation with global war between Islam and the West.

And that is Bin Laden¹s program. That¹s exactly what he wants and why he did this thing. Read his speeches and statements. It¹s all right there. AT the moment, of course, Islam as such does not exist. There are Muslims and there are Muslim countries, but no such political entity as Islam. Bin Laden believes that if he can get a war started, he can constitute this entity and he¹d be running it. He really believes Islam would beat the west. It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and the West, he¹s got a billion soldiers. If the West wreaks a holocaust in Muslim lands, that¹s a billion people with nothing left to lose, even better from Bin Laden¹s point of view. He¹s probably wrong about winning, in the end the west would probably overcome mean in such a war; but the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden yes, but anyone else?

I don¹t have a solution. But I do believe that suffering and poverty are the soil in which terrorism grows. Bin Laden and his cohorts want to bait us into creating more such soil, so they and their kind can flourish. We can¹t let him do that. That¹s my humble opinion.

Tamim Ansary

THE LADY
I wonder what she thought
As she stood there, strong and tall.
She couldn't turn away,
She was forced to watch it all.
Did she long to offer comfort
As her country bled?
With her arm forever frozen
High above her head.
She could not shield her eyes
She could not hide her face
She just stared across the water
Keeping Freedom's place.
The smell of smoke and terror
Somehow reduced her size
So small within the harbor
But still we recognized...
How dignified and beautiful
On a day so many died
I wonder what she thought,
And I know she must have cried.
---------------------------------------------------
One
As the soot and dirt and ash rained down,
We became one color.
As we carried each other down the
stairs of the burning building,
We became one class.
As we lit candles of waiting and hope,
We became one generation.
As the firefighters and police officers
fought their way into the inferno,
We became one gender.
As we fell to our knees
in prayer for strength,
We became one faith.
As we whispered or shouted
words of encouragement,
We spoke one language.
As we gave our blood in lines a mile long,
We became one body.
As we mourned together the great loss,
We became one family.
As we cried tears of grief and loss,
We became one soul.
As we retell with pride of
the sacrifice of heroes,
We become one people.
We are:
One color
One class
One generation
One gender
One faith
One language
One body
One family
One soul
One people
We are The Power of One.
We are United.
We are America.

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The date of the attack: 9/11 - 9 + 1 + 1 = 11
September 11th is the 254th day of the year: 2 + 5 + 4= 11 After September 11th there are 111 days left to the end of the year.
119 is the area code to Iraq/Iran. 1 + 1 + 9 = 11
Twin Towers - standing side by side, looks like the number 11 The first plane to hit the towers was Flight 11
State of New York - The 11 State added to the Union
New York City - 11 Letters
Afghanistan - 11 Letters
The Pentagon - 11 Letters
Ramzi Yousef - 11 Letters (convicted or orchestrating the accack on the WTC in 1993)
Flight 11 - 92 on board - 9 + 2 = 11
Flight 77 - 65 on board - 6 + 5 = 11

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