ARTICLES
Optional burqas and mandatory malnutrition, by Janelle Brown (Salon)

Profiles in courage,
by Greg Easterbrook
(The New Republic)

Learning to love terrorists,
by John Leo
(Jewish World Review)

Getting to the root: What’s really behind the terrorism,
by Stanley Kurtz
(National Review)

Did the U.S. create Osama bin Laden? Think again,
by Peter Beinart
(The New Republic)

Fighting the forces of invisibilty,
by Salman Rushdie
(Washington Post)

ROOTS OF TERROR
"It's time to stop making enemies and start making friends [in the world]. To say this is in no way to join in the savaging of America by sections of the left that has been among the most unpleasant consequences of the terrorists' attacks on the United States…Let's be clear about why this bien-pensant anti-American onslaught is such appalling rubbish. Terrorism is the murder of the innocent; this time, it was mass murder. To excuse such an atrocity by blaming U.S. government policies is to deny the basic idea of all morality: that individuals are responsible for their actions."
—Salman Rushdie, The Washington Post

"… the bombers of Manhattan represent fascism with an Islamic face, and there's no point in any euphemism about it. What they abominate about 'the west,' to put it in a phrase, is not what western liberals don't like and can't defend about their own system, but what they do like about it and must defend: its emancipated women, its scientific inquiry, its separation of religion from the state. Loose talk about chickens coming home to roost is the moral equivalent of the hateful garbage emitted by Falwell and Robertson, and exhibits about the same intellectual content. Indiscriminate murder is not a judgment, even obliquely, on the victims or their way of life, or ours. Any observant follower of the prophet Mohammed could have been on one of those planes, or in one of those buildings—yes, even in the Pentagon."
—Christopher Hitchens, The Guardian

"According to the Digos report, the European cells send their members to Afghanistan. The recruits assemble in Geneva, and using false Italian documents, fly to Pakistan, where they are escorted into Afghanistan. “To finance all this, evidence suggests that it is Khemais who takes care of it by means of drug-trafficking, counterfeiting money and documents, recycling dirty money,” the Digos report said. “Groups who are versed in the use of explosives are sent to Europe to fill in the losses from various police roundups.”

“The moment to strike has arrived because they’re arresting everyone,” Heni said in a recorded conversation with Khemais after the Frankfurt arrests. “We have to show them we are here. We have to show them who the mujaheddin really are.

But he continued, “We have to await the orders” of bin Laden. While waiting, they sat around in seedy apartments, such as the one outside Milan where the conversations were recorded, speaking of their heroics in Chechnya and watching gory video footage from various holy wars.

In March, for instance, Khemais’s lieutenant, Khammoun, in a bugged conversation, boasted of his experience in Chechnya. “When the order came from the emir ... it was very nice,” he said, “because first we studied the structure and after with the plastic [explosive] boom! “The building collapsed and then there was dust,” Khammoun said. “And then a fire broke out and that way the enemies of God were buried and burned.” Everyone in the room laughed, according to the Italian transcript.
—Peter Finn and Sarah Delaney, The Washington Post