BIGGER BEN
The one man considered to be both the Time-Keeper and Pay-Master of most of the Arabic troubles around the world - Ben Laden - is reported to have died of natural causes.
The "news" items was published in a French newspaper and it contained few factual features as you might expect. It was a enough, however, to set Intelligence Units scurrying about asking each other if they found it to be true or just another tale set wagging get our attention. The latest reports I've heard are still marked: "Case In Progress".
This reminds one somewhat of he manner in which the Marshals nailed up posters reading: "Wanted: Dead or Alive" of doors and rough-lumbered walls. Most Americans I talk with seem to prefer that Ben Laden be brought in alive and kicking. They don't go along with this idea of his being allowed to die of natural cause at all. Many seem to feel that Saddam set a good president by digging, or having a hole dug in the ground where he might hide from his tormentors. Those very same people, now at they see the rather cumbersome bulk of the Saddam trial slowly etching itself in our history books, they wonder would have been better off to have simply have leveled that back lot and bulldozed it heavily.
How do you feel about old Ben Laden? He has, on this day alone, fallen as a victim of a dozen ailments." I have always said" - critics now claim "he looked sickly - probably diabetes!" In don't know if the French news item mention any particular malady which might have caused his reported death.I've heard it was "sugar", cancer, Alzheimer's , and I expect a few more be before night falls.
I, for one, will be glad see him pecking his rocky way down that rocky mountain side - always down, down, down, never up to brighter, sunnier views of the world. We cannot favor any of the suggested punishments we hear people talking about. We must check, first, to see if they can be equated with the possible intent of the framers of the Geneva conventions which have just recently been re-discovered.
Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 9-23-06 [c376wds]
