The Four Questions

This was posted on CNN.com:


"The Taliban--the fundamentalist Islamic militia that seized power in Afghanistan in 1996--denied his [Osama bin Laden's] ties to terrorism and said they have taken away all his means of communication with the outside world."


Question 1: If he has no ties to terrorism, why take away all his means of communication with the outside world?


Also, bin Laden said, "I have been living in the Islamic emirate of Afghanistan and following its leaders' rules. The current leader does not allow me to exercise such operations."


Question 2: With no means of communication to the outside world, how did he get this statement out?


Question 3: How does he know the current leader does not allow him to exercise these operations? How did this subject come up in conversation? I mean, how did it go: "Oh, by the way Mr. bin Laden, we know you don't do these things, but we just thought we might remind you that you're not allowed to have people fly planes into skyscrapers."


Question 4: What am I missing here?

The truly religious have a fluid notion of what constitutes moral behavior. After all, when one becomes the instrument of God's will, certain license can be taken for its implementation. Now that slaughtering the infidel is the activity of the moment, lying to him in order to promote the slaughter is certainly appropriate.


When was the last time you heard of an atheist constructing a car bomb to achieve a sectarian purpose?


Yup, it's just that ol' time religion.

Why ask these people anything? Their answer is predetermined and irrelevant. Might as well ask if Bin Laden used his knowledge of explosives to help the Taliban destroy all the priceless Buddhist artifacts. But your questions do highlight what liars these folks are.

While religion still leads the Terrorist Bombing League by a mile, the Weather Underground (a.k.a. Weatherman) and the Unabomber suggest that religion isn't the only one in the standings.

1500 year old Buddhist statues were destroyed, despite pleadings from other Muslim countries not to do it. Why? Because statues are idolatrous and therefore forbidden. I suppose it's a minor infraction compared to the crimes of Bin Laden, but symptomatic of the quality of their thinking.