"Nobody in Al Qaeda is living in a cave."

Osama and his comrades "live comfortably" in Pakistan — according to "a senior NATO official."

"No one ever said it better than Osama bin Laden."

When people see a column by Thomas Friedman and a humor piece in The New Yorker, by nature they will....

By nature they would... what?
	Go buy the latest Thomas Friedman bestseller.
	Subscribe to The New Yorker.
	Increase their devotion to the Republican Party.
	Breathe a sigh of relief that Barack Obama is President.
	Bitch and snark about it all in the Althouse comments section.
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"We call on the local radio stations to stop broadcasting the songs and all music as well."

"We give them a 10-day deadline and any radio station found not complying with the orders... will face sharia action.... We also issue orders banning the local media from using the word 'foreigners' to refer to our Muslim brothers coming from outside the country to help us fight against the enemy of Allah.... Every Muslim fighter can come to Somalia to fight the enemy of Allah and we would also invite Osama bin Laden to the country if the we get the opportunity."

It's springtime in Mogadishu.

Eric Holder would like you to think he's a tougher fighter than George Bush.

Recall what George W. Bush said a week after the 9/11 attacks:

"I want justice," he said after a meeting at the Pentagon, where 188 people were killed last Tuesday when an airliner crashed into the building. "And there's an old poster out West that says, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive.' "

He then seemed to temper his remarks by adding: "All I want and America wants is to see them brought to justice. That's what we want."

The blunt, Texas-style rhetoric, delivered off the cuff, came a day after Vice-President Dick Cheney said he would willingly accept bin Laden's "head on a platter". Some advisers said that although the comments might be popular in America, they would not be welcomed by European or Arab allies.

Mr Bush had just received a briefing on the call-up of military reservists and plans for Operation Noble Eagle, the name given to the "war on terrorism" that the president has vowed to prosecute.

Striking a sombre tone, he told Americans they should expect further casualties. "The United States military is ready to defend freedom at any cost," he said. "We will win the war and there will be costs."

Bush was criticized harshly over the years for saying "Wanted: Dead or Alive." At the end of his term, Bush expressed regret about talking like that:

"I regret saying some things I shouldn't have said," Bush told CNN's Heidi Collins when asked to reflect on his regrets over his two terms as president. "Like 'dead or alive' and 'bring 'em on.' My wife reminded me that, hey, as president of the United States, be careful what you say."

Now, here's Attorney General Eric Holder, at a House hearing yesterday:

"The reality is that we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama Bin Laden - he will never appear in an American courtroom," the nation's chief enforcement officer told a stunned House hearing....

GOP congressmen tried to pummel the nation's top law enforcement official over giving terrorists the same constitutional rights in civilian courts as American defendants, such as the now-unlikely lower Manhattan trial of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

Holder said terrorists are treated like the murderers they are in federal courts - or, more specifically, "like Charles Manson."

When Rep. John Culberson (R-Tex.) said that if Bin Laden himself were arrested, it would be absurd to give him the same due process afforded Manson, Holder erupted.

Charges he coddles terrorists get his "blood boiling," the attorney general conceded....

Holder repeated - slowly - to the Texas congressman that "the possibility simply does not exist" that Bin Laden will ever be arraigned in any court....

"The possibility of capturing him alive is infinitesimal - he will be killed by us or he will be killed by his own people," Holder said.

So, Bush, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, called for the capture of bin Laden "Dead or Alive," but Holder, with 9 years to meditate on the right way to deal with the situation, assures us that bin Laden will not be taken alive. What has brought Holder to this heated state of mind? Not the death of thousands of Americans. The threat to his political prestige. It gets his "blood boiling" that he is attacked. The fact that we were attacked did not loom large when he decided to try KSM in federal court New York City. But when that decision was savaged, he changed his tone.

He needed to show how tough he was, and now he's resorting to saying that bin Laden won't be taken alive. Oh, he concedes an "infinitesimal" possibility. What does that mean? If bin Laden openly surrendered or he was trapped and utterly defenseless, we couldn't gun him down. And then what would Holder do? Read Miranda rights to bin Laden's not-yet-a-corpse? Try him like a Manson? Ah, but Holder doesn't want you to think about that. He suddenly wants to strike the Dick Cheney bring-me-his-head-on-a-platter pose... until we stop calling him weak, his blood cools down, and he can get back to lecturing us about America's abstract ideals.

How much do you have to torture the truth to get to an answer other than George W. Bush?

When the question — asked by the Washington Post — is "Who was the most influential person of the decade?"

People really want to say Obama. They probably think Bush was dumb. It can't be Obama. It could be Osama.

ADDED: And here's the BBC's list of people who defined the decade:

David Beckham
L/Corp Johnson Beharry
Osama Bin Laden
Tony Blair
George W Bush
Shami Chakrabarti
Simon Cowell
Roger Federer
Norman Foster
Stephen Fry
Bill Gates
Jade Goody
Brian Haw
Rupert Murdoch
Barack Obama
Jamie Oliver
Larry Page and Sergey Brin
David Tennant
Jane Tomlinson
Jimmy Wales

Bush isn't even on it.

ADDED: Oops! How dare they bamboozle me with alphabetical order!!!

The Philosopher's Petition: "Apprehended like a common terrorist Saturday evening, September 26, as he came to receive a prize for his entire body of work, Roman Polanski now sleeps in prison."

Begins French Philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, who is collecting the signatures of "writers and artists." I put "writers and artists" in quotes, because the list includes, presumably as "artists," at least one actor and one fashion designer. If "artists" is a comprehensive term, why aren't writers "artists"? But I delay. On with the rest of the petition:

He risks extradition to the United States for an episode that happened years ago...

And he fled! That's why time has passed. He's avoided the jurisdiction. It's not as if prosecutors let the case go stale.

...and whose principal plaintiff...

Plaintiff! You might talk like that in France, but here in America, that's the language of torts. And we are talking about crime.

... repeatedly and emphatically declares she has put it behind her and abandoned any wish for legal proceedings.

And how much money was she paid to settle the case? What were the terms of the settlement? Do you approve — as a general rule to be applied to all — of dropping criminal charges whenever the victim has been moved to closure?  It is the nature of criminal law that it is a crime against the people, and not merely a wrong against the victim. Do you argue against that, philosopher? Why? Give reasons! Your assertions are not enough — philosopher.

Seventy-six years old...

Yes, he's that old because he fled and because he was protected in other countries that apparently did not take rape so seriously, at least not when it was committed by a great artist.

... a survivor of Nazism and of Stalinist persecutions in Poland...

If a life of suffering excuses crimes, many, maybe most, of our criminals would escape prison. Wouldn't the Nazis themselves have cried about their own suffering in the years preceding their rise to power? Philosopher, do you approve — as a general rule to be applied to all — that those who have suffered earlier in their lives should not be punished for the serious, violent crimes that they commit? Explain, in abstract terms that meet the standards of the discipline of philosophy, why you think this is so.

Roman Polanski risks spending the rest of his life in jail for deeds which would be beyond the statute-of-limitations in Europe.

We have statutes of limitations here in America too. Do yours absolve fugitives? Philosopher, do you absolve fugitives who succeed in evading capture while a period of years passes? Would you do that for everyone? For Nazis? Explain your reasons in terms that meet the standards of the discipline of philosophy, so we can judge.

We ask the Swiss courts to free him immediately and not to turn this ingenious filmmaker into a martyr of a politico-legal imbroglio that is unworthy of two democracies like Switzerland and the United States. Good sense, as well as honor, require it.

Do you assert that an artist ought to receive special treatment? Would an ingenious Nazi deserve to live out his life in peace? What does the special treatment of artists have to do with democracy? Explain what ingeniousness, filmmaking, and democracy have to do with your proposed rule.

Bernard-Henri Lévy, you present yourself as a philosopher. I would like to honor philosophy. Back up your petition with a philosophical argument that we can understand and critique.

IN THE COMMENTS: Peter Hoh said:

So in Bernard-Henri Lévy's world, there are common terrorists. One must presume that some other terrorists are uncommon. Perhaps some are extraordinary. I wonder how one can tell the difference?

Surely, the 9/11 attacks were uncommon. In fact, they were ingenious.

Let's not forget what the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen said on September 17, 2001:

... Stockhausen...  called the attack on the World Trade Center ''the greatest work of art that is possible in the whole cosmos.'' Extending the analogy, he spoke of human minds achieving ''something in one act'' that ''we couldn't even dream of in music,'' in which ''people practice like crazy for 10 years, totally fanatically, for a concert, and then die.'' Just imagine, he added: ''You have people who are so concentrated on one performance, and then 5,000 people are dispatched into eternity, in a single moment. I couldn't do that. In comparison with that, we're nothing as composers.''

So, Bernard-Henri Lévy, by your standard, we should leave Osama Bin Laden alone?

Obama is powerless.

Osama propaganda.

Omar bin Laden: My father killed my beloved puppies for al Qaeda.

Eh. Son of Osama bin Laden has a book to sell and he's playing on our love of puppies and hatred of his dad. Is there some fool who is thinking now — now! — I see that evil that is bin Laden? And I thought Muslims didn't keep dogs as pets.

From IslamonLine:

We are... not allowed to keep a dog as a pet, since it is not a very clean animal. How often have you come across the nasty sight of dogs taken for a walk licking their own excrement? Isn’t it disgusting to see their owners kissing the mouth of such animals after such incidents as if nothing happened? Would you kiss the mouth of your own baby if he were to do the same? Think how many parasites and microbes may be hiding in their mouths.

The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) has spared us from being contaminated by such filth when he ordered us to stay clear of the saliva of dogs. If we ever come into contact with a dog’s saliva we must wash the spot seven times, the first of which should be with sand or dirt. It is also possible to use a bacterial soap instead of sand or dirt.

In conclusion: Don’t contemplate taking a dog home as a pet. If, however, you do need to keep a dog for [one of the 5 stated purposes at the link], then you may do so. But take every precaution not to have contact with its saliva, and also arrange for a separate living space.