Interview with a Taliban Trained Suicide Bomber

By John, H/T Abbas Raza

A few comments from me.

?This line jumped off the screen at me from the translation.

If our leader orders us to kill two people and hundreds are
killed in this process even then we will do so.

I need for someone to explain to me how targeted assassinations by drones are somehow different.
Take a look at the anguish expressions of pain in this link. The comments thread comes across as a pumping, spurting artery, bleeding out after a traumatic injury.

The Obama Administration says it will give Pakistan $1.5 billion a year for development. Economists estimate that the war on terror cost Pakistan $6-8 billion last year. I don�t find either number relevant. All I know is that over a thousand Pakistanis died last year in this conflict. For what? For whom? Why?

The newspapers are full of statements and analysis. They offer little solace, and even less insight. They only add to a noise that is now no less deafening than all the bombs themselves. We must speak out and act up against the forces that spread terror in our country. But we cannot remain silent on the deaths of Pakistanis by those who claim to be our friends.

?Yesterday's follow-up report of a terrorist attack in a mosque in Rawalpindi, Pakistan included this revealing exchange.

MCCARTHY: Eyewitnesses said the attackers, dressed in traditional loose-fitting trousers and tunics, entered the area with their weapons openly displayed.
One survivor said: They were killing people like animals.
Another told Dawn Television, They took the people by the hair and shot them.


The attack recalled the brazen raid on the complex of the Army general headquarters in Rawalpindi in October.

Friday's assault was another blow to the military at a time when Pakistan's army is under increased pressure to eliminate militants in the tribal area along the Afghan border.
General Abbas said this latest terror attack is the militants' reprisal for the army's current offensive in South Waziristan.

Maj. Gen. ABBAS: And they are responding towards our cities and towns and soft areas, soft targets, and also security forces.

MCCARTHY: The targeting of a mosque struck many here as so excessively sacrilegious, that they could not comprehend that the attackers could be Muslim or Pakistani. Gibran Khan says his countrymen's Islamic faith does not allow them to kill other Muslims.

Well, who do you think did it if they weren't Pakistani?


Mr. GIBRAN KHAN: Basically, you know what I think about this? These are external forces who are just trying to make us weak, trying to cut the dignity which we had. 

MCCARTHY: The sort of denial prevalent on the streets of Rawalpindi today is, according to political commentator Kamran Shafi, part of a long history here.


Mr. KAMRAN SHAFI (Political Commentator, Dawn Newspaper): We've denied that we've set up these terrorists in the first place. We've denied that we use them in Kashmir. We've denied that we've used them in Afghanistan. We've always denied these things. We don't face up to reality. We don't face up to facts.

MCCARTHY: If the country does not come together after this attack and resolve to end extremism, Shafi said, we never will.

Even at what appears to us a "late date" many Muslims remain in denial that extremists in their midst are really born, reared and produced among them.

Denial of "home-grown terrorism" is real.
Unfortunately it is universal.
Remember that when you see someone throwing stones. 

?In other news, another suicide bomber in Somalia blew himself up at a graduation ceremony in Mogadishu, Somalia, killing and injuring a number of students and government ministers.

On Thursday morning, hundreds of people had gathered in a hall at Hotel Shamo in Mogadishu to mark the graduation of doctors, engineers and others from Benadir University. Until last year, no medical students had graduated in Somalia for nearly two decades.

Toward the end of the ceremony, a blast shook the hall, filling the room with smoke and spreading blood and body parts. People began screaming and running for the exit, trampling the wounded as they fled.

Three Somali ministers -- of health, education and higher education -- were killed in the bombing, said Mohamed Ali Nur, the Somali ambassador to Kenya. The minister of youth and sports was critically wounded, according to U.S. officials. Mr. Nur said at least 22 people had been reported killed, and many others injured.

The bomber appeared to have been a man dressed in women's clothing, according to evidence seen by a Wall Street Journal reporter present at the scene, and a statement by the Somali information minister.

My wife and I caught the story on the car radio when the person reading the news referred to "...remains of a man in woman's clothing were found afterward, the lower half of his body missing..."

?It's possible that US military efforts in Afghanistan may have ancillary anti-terrorism results elsewhere in the world, but from where I sit, it looks more like a jobs program for civilian contractors and the defense industry than anything else.
I guess those people have families to feed like everyone else. Imagine how much worse the unemployment stats would be if they were added to the list.