It's worth a try

After all this time, the Defense Department is getting desperate to find Osama bin Laden. While so many of our troops are tied up in Iraq this new approach sounds pretty good to me. Let's hope it works and that any capture of bin Laden, even after he has now had 5 years to set up future attacks against us, will somehow make us safer. I'm not sure any of that will actually happen, but it is worth a try.

An elite group of Native American trackers is joining the hunt for terrorists crossing Afghanistan's borders. The unit, the Shadow Wolves, was recruited from several tribes, including the Navajo, Sioux, Lakota and Apache. It is being sent to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to pass on ancestral sign-reading skills to local border units. The Pentagon has been alarmed at the ease with which Taliban and al-Qa'ida fighters have been slipping in and out of Afghanistan. Defence officials are convinced their movements can be curtailed by the Shadow Wolves. Harold Thompson, a Navajo Indian, and Gary Ortega, from the Tohono reservation, are experts at "cutting sign", the traditional Indian method of finding and following minute clues from a barren landscape. They can detect twigs snapped by passing humans or hair snagged on a branch and tell how long a sliver of food may have lain in the dirt.

Pat Robertson: A Call To Action?

There he goes again. The leader of the Religious Right in the United States is talking terror again and the mainstream media is portraying it as a “prediction” that America will suffer a terrorist attack in 2007. His reason? God told him so.

While those who still have control of their mental facilities will dismiss this as the ramblings of a delusional man, many on the other side of the aisle will actually take his words quite seriously. So seriously, I think that Mr. Robertson is not just giving us a warning – he is also encouraging his most rabid followers to launch such an attack in the coming year.

I know this is a serious charge, but look back at some recent terrorist activities. Osama wants to destroy America and bring us to a right wing Taliban culture. Women as second class citizen and all governmental activities being done in the name of religion. He predicted the end of the USA and gained thousands of followers willing to do the dirty work.

Timothy McVeigh was closely aligned with the militia movement that help birth our present day Republican party. It is documented that he listened to AM and shortwave radio broadcasters who said that a violent overthrow of the United States was constitutional and desirable. That was enough to send him over the edge and blow up the Federal building in Oklahoma City.

In Ireland religious and political leaders preached hate for decades that kept "The Troubles" going for so many years. Those willing to fight and die in this struggle were motivated by these leaders. Hundreds did so during the 1970’s and 80’s.

All through recent history, we see that people like Robertson, have use judgments and predictions to motivate their most devoted (and delusional) followers to carry out their vision. Just as influential talk radio hosts in the early 1990’s sought to instigate a government overthrow and Taliban leaders send out video and audio recordings condemning the morals of the West in hope of swelling their ranks, Pat Robertson talks about mass destruction to the USA in order to fill his pews and coffers. But that is not all that his words could do.

I worry that he may actually be persuading those who still (unbelievably) count themselves as one of his flock, to fulfill his prophesy. The mainstream media can call this a warning from a man who talks directly to God. I find it frighteningly close to a call to arms. So, as crazy as Robertson is – we should worry that his dire prediction is carried out.