First, to my friend the Marine: I salute you, and am glad to know that there are people in our armed forces who are not simply in it for killing. I don't agree with most military action (I am a buddhist and a pacifist, two things I also hold in high esteem) but when times like these roll around, I'm glad you're on the collective side of our nation's freedom.

A reply:
Don't be as quick to question it when we want everyone to have the same ability as us. And for God's sake, don't act like we are the world's tyrant's when someone comes to our Land and threatens our very way of life.
It seems to me that going into a country and pushing them around, telling them who can and who can't be their leader is exactly what you just described. American foreign policy of late seems bent on nothing more than total world domination. As disgusting as Saddam Hussein is, as well as what he does to his people, what we do by saying "regime change" and "supporting revolution" is muddling in the paints of the fine picture of the world. What makes this such a wonderous world is diversity, and not just firendly "you don't look like me" diversity: For every person in Afghanistan who we liberate by bringing them democracy, there is at least half a person who feels rather violated because the government he liked and supported is now gone. But that's no problem, because a soldier will just shoot him and say he was a member of the Taliban army.

You can NOT say that this has never happened.

And to El Diablo:

You're very, very right. CNN has done some rather idiotic things before. Somalia is (to a journalist such as myself) one of the dark days in reportin history. What really irks me about the situation was that very little coverage was given to it: TV news networks watch each other's backs when the public is in an outrage. No respected news channel ever reports on "what they're reporting".. they more or less just deny the existence of these other channels altogether (and of course we can expect CNN to come right out an admit to it, eh?)

The point I was trying to make with the whole "evil ENOUGH" thing was that these tapes are now a part of the public domain. CNN purchases footage just like every other network, and happenend to be the first to jump on the boat when these tapes popped up. There is a large deal of controversey over the content, as well, because A) (as stated above) it doesn't seem like there would just be a bnch of tapes surviving a practical TNT holocaust, B) The contents of the tapes seem more designed to shock people than to teach (which was reportedly why the tapes were created, right? unless CNN is doing some of their world famous "creative editing"), and C) Wouldn't tapes like this, containing your entire methodology of Jihad, be one of the most precious assets a terrost had? Wouldn't they want to keep TRACK of them?

I will also give you credit for the entire "gov't feeding them misinformation" bit.. so I'll give you this to chew on, maybe: Perhaps these tapes were discovered LONG ago, and american intelligence sold them to CNN to ge them to shut the hell up, AND to give them a bad name.

You really just never can tell. The money spent, in Afghanistan, is a fortune. No person there would get that much for ANYTHING, as it is equivalent to giving an american citizen several million dollars for 150 hours of tape. That's not the kind of money any intelligent human being would just give out., especially not knowing that the money may well be used to blow up his / her hometown. These are different circumstances, where CNN is not being stubborn, they simply bought these tapes form someone (who is probably not an Al Qaida mamber as they've *cough*Daniel Pearl*cough* not been too fond of them).

I guess that's it.