Bin Laden’s Video: ‘Deluded Dreamer’

I read the pathetic, maniacal rantings of cult leader Osama bin Laden from his dirt hole in Afghanistan (Oct. 8). It was a fruitless effort to pit the entire Muslim world against the entire Western world and it failed miserably. When he says, “There is America, full of fear from its north to its south, from its west to its east. Thank God for that,” he is clearly not only mad but a deluded dreamer as well. I do not now nor will I ever live in fear of him or any of his psychotic cult members.

Brian Foyster

Los Angeles

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I’m sure everyone saw Osama’s monologue on TV. I really don’t think he had to waste so many words, when he made a good enough statement just by sitting by the cave.

Dragan D’Voltaire

Long Beach

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We are grateful that our president makes it clear that our fight against criminals is not a fight against Muslims and that in our concern for them we are sending food packages to Afghanistan labeled as gifts from us (Oct. 8).

We should also emphasize that we are making the world safe for Muslims. While Bin Laden seeks personal safety, he sends brainwashed young Muslims to die carrying out his plans for killing others, including Muslims. Many Muslims were killed in or near our demolished embassies and the World Trade Center. We will not let complicity in the suicides and the killing of other Muslims on our land go unpunished.

Roy B. Woolsey

Karyn Greene

Newport Beach

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If the U.S. had distributed food and other vital, lifesaving supplies to the Afghan people without missiles, at this juncture, Bin Laden would have been deprived of his weapon of vitriol. How could he rant against a country that supplied needed aid to the suffering people of the very country we believe harbors the terrorists who attacked America? Wouldn’t that be a better way to begin to win the hearts of the Muslim world?

Virginia M. Donohue

Los Angeles

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It was somewhat heartwarming to know that our C-17 cargo planes dropped food to the starving Afghans in the remote areas. However, I would like to question why the U.S. people’s message on food packets is in English, French and Spanish. I doubt the Afghans who pick up the boxes have an education in English, French or Spanish and can understand the message.

If the $320 million set aside for Afghan aid by President Bush is to be used wisely, this kind of bad communication with the Afghan people should be eliminated first.

Vyong-kun Paek

Anaheim

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The campaign we’re now engaged in is intolerable. Bush is taking advantage of worldwide sympathy to embark on this dark, destructive path that will alienate us from much of the world, cause divisiveness at home and ultimately deepen the causes from which this quagmire originated. Are Americans’ deaths the only civilian deaths that matter?

Jerry Schaefer

Long Beach

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Maybe something positive for Afghanistan can be obtained by its refusal to hand over Bin Laden. By the U.S. dismantling the Taliban regime, the suppressed Afghan women might finally move toward finding a better life and equality.

It is downright appalling to read how females in Afghanistan are treated. The so-called Virtue and Vice police beat women if so much as their ankles are showing (“An Anger Behind the Veil,” Oct. 5). The Taliban is anything but virtuous. It not only supports Bin Laden and his terrorist activities, it terrorizes the Afghan people as well.

J. Scott Scheffer

Victorville

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Our current military plan seems a more civilized variation on the hawks’ famous war cry. Now we’re trying to bomb Afghanistan back from the Stone Age!

Mark James

Los Angeles