“Osama bin Laden is not a serious revolutionary; he is a poseur, a silly but lethal boy.” Times of London And he may be dead. Last week, a Chinese internet news site reported that Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar had been killed by their own guards in an underground Kandahar base on October 16. An interview with James S. Robbins, a professor of international relations at the National Defense University’s School for National Defense Studies, on the evidence for believing these reports. National Review

CIA Weighs ‘Targeted Killing’ Missions. By sleight-of-word, this is not your father’s political assassination: “… the Bush administration has concluded that executive orders banning assassination do not prevent the president from lawfully singling out a terrorist for death by covert action. The CIA is reluctant to accept a broad grant of authority to hunt and kill U.S. enemies at its discretion, knowledgeable sources said. But the agency is willing and believes itself able to take the lives of terrorists designated by the president.” Washington Post

“For some people, war is terror, disaster and death. For others, it’s a PR problem.” The domestic counterpart to the ad agency I mentioned below that is going to help sell the US-eye view of the conflict to the Islamic world, Spinning the War reflects on the public relations firm the Pentagon has hired “to help… look good while bombing Afghanistan.” Working for Change And a collection of the logos the nightly news broadcasts are using in their spins on:

America Fights Back, America Strikes Back, America Responds, War on Terrorism, War on Terror, A Nation United, America At War, America On Alert, Attack On America, Attack on Terror, America Under Attack, Anthrax…

And (for some balance??), John Pilger:

“ The war against terrorism is a fraud. After three weeks’ bombing, not a single terrorist implicated in the attacks on America has been caught or killed in Afghanistan.

Instead, one of the poorest, most stricken nations has been terrorised by the most powerful – to the point where American pilots have run out of dubious “military” targets and are now destroying mud houses, a hospital, Red Cross warehouses, lorries carrying refugees.

Unlike the relentless pictures from New York, we are seeing almost nothing of this. Tony Blair has yet to tell us what the violent death of children – seven in one family – has to do with Osama bin Laden.

And why are cluster bombs being used? The British public should know about these bombs, which the RAF also uses. They spray hundreds of bomblets that have only one purpose; to kill and maim people. Those that do not explode lie on the ground like landmines, waiting for people to step on them.

If ever a weapon was designed specifically for acts of terrorism, this is it. I have seen the victims of American cluster weapons in other countries, such as the Laotian toddler who picked one up and had her right leg and face blown off. Be assured this is now happening in Afghanistan, in your name.”

More about Pilger, a journalist with an emphatic viewpoint, here.

“In short, these guys are not that good in a purely military sense. So why have they never been conquered?” How Afghan men fight: Richard Kidd is a West Point graduate who became an international relief worker. He was providing food relief on the Afghan-Tajik border in 1993 and was in Afghanistan again in 1998 with the UN’s mine clearance program. He wonders if the US is prepared to battle these people.

This will not be a pretty war. Our opponents will not abide by the Geneva Conventions. There will be no prisoners unless there is a chance that they can be ransomed or made part of a local prisoner exchange. We may see videos of American prisoners being killed.

It will be a war of wills and, conversely, of compassion and character. We must show our enemies a level of ruthlessness that has not been part of our military nature for a long time. We will have to kill our enemies – members of the Al Qaeda terrorist network, religious fanatics, and those who support them. We will have to bribe fighters away from the Taliban, and sow disinformation and dissent.

But to those who are not our enemies – the proud people of Afghanistan – we must show a level of compassion probably unheard of during war, by providing immediate humanitarian relief and making a long-term commitment to creating a stable Afghanistan. We should do this not only for humane reasons, but also as a matter of shrewd military logic – to keep people from turning against us. Christian Science Monitor

America’s ‘elite’ troops — ‘Colonel David H Hackworth, America’s most decorated soldier, does not mince his words. “I would be reluctant to jump into a battle zone with any conventional American unit. I would hate to take them into battle – they ain’t ready, they are not ‘good to go’.” ‘ Guardian UK