You know ... normally, I'm mostly in favor of the freedom of the press, their right to report news of public import. (Conversely, I don't happen to feel that people's private lives are, in general, of public import, so when invasion of someone's privacy is justified by the statement, "The public has a right to know!", my response is usually, "No, actually, they don't." But I digress.) That said ... I honestly don't think we, the public, needed to know this. Not yet, in any event. Maybe it wouldn't have come as a particular surprise to the Taliban, but they possibly didn't know for certain that this was happening. (And, purely as a side note, having your military wandering around in a foreign country looking to kill or capture a person therein is up there on a list of international crimes.)
The other thing I'm wondering is ... if this country is remotely prepared for what will happen if the operation to kill or capture bin Laden actually succeeds. Maybe funding for all sorts of operations in the more distant future will be crippled, but it won't harm operations already in progress. And it's likely to simply kick many into high gear, because they'll know that their financial support is about to dry up.
And what the hell would we do with him if we captured him, anyway? What prison in this country has the security necessary to protect him from us, let alone any fanatics?
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
Search entries:
12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!