It’s simple, but it says it. – It’s crossbrowser, backwards compatible, mac and pc friendly. It’s a shame it doesn’t validate. [via redcricket]

According to jessamyn, this should be the virgo month of leisure. One of her recommendations is to quit your job.

Funny how I did just that without having read this prior.

Who are the mentally deficient idiots out there doing crap like this?

A talk with Milton Bearden

More on the mindset of those we will undoubtedly be fighting.

Is Bearden defending the Sudanese now that he’s a lobbyist for them?

This article says,

“Lobbyists also include former high-ranking members of the intelligence community. Milton Bearden, a senior Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer who specialised in Muslim countries and served as station chief in Pakistan when Washington was backing the mujahideen in Afghanistan, has just been hired by a wealthy Sudanese businessman reported to be close to the Khartoum government.”

I guess money talks.

A 3 year old article on bin Laden – sort of like a “best of”. I was amazed at the number of times the plots to blow up jumbo jets came up.

The article also briefly mentions “…Afghan rebels trained and equipped by the CIA”, but Bearden sort of refutes that further down.

“We didn’t train Arabs,” Bearden said. “We did not train anybody anywhere in the world to use truck bombs or car bombs. . . .Sometimes you work with unsavory people to deal with acute evils.”

Maybe nobody asked the right question. Ok, so he didn’t train Arabs, but what about Afghanis?

Muslims afraid of women and bikinis—Now that’s the answer I’ve been looking for.

Frontline interviews Milton Bearden about the Afghan war’s importance to the Muslim world and bin Laden’s role in it. Bearden also questions classifying the Sudan as a ‘terrorist state’ and criticizes America’s retaliatory missile strike in the Sudan against bin Laden.

a very good read.

I could swear I’ve heard Bearden in other interviews talk about the guerilla training they gave the militants in Afghanistan, but he really doesn’t mention it here. He does talk about the backlash of some people saying how the CIA and the US created these guys (not bin Laden directly, or at all really), but he sidesteps that one. I’m gonna try and find that somewhere.

what I find interesting in the article is the tack the Bearden takes regarding US Policy. I mean here’s a guy heading up covert operations for decades, now saying that the US needs to lay things out on the table. That

“…these acts don’t necessarily fit in to the continuum of what the United States has been about for the last half century. And it’s just simply time to maybe address that seriously.”

I get the impression that he feels as long as we were fighting one big dragon in front of his lair (the Russians and communism), what we did was perfectly acceptable, but now that we have to deal with a we need to tread lightly, and reassess how we do things.

He ought to get together with Ollie North and start a band. Ha!

Lawyer Says He’d Defend Bin Laden—Do I have to comment?

Actually, if he was brought to justice, I suppose he’d have to be defended. I wouldn’t wanna be the guy doing it though.