To continue on yesterday's theme...

This article - "America's War on Terror: For Muslims Who Love or Hate bin Laden, One Demand - Show Us The Proof" - discusses how Muslims, even those who dispise bin Laden, would like to see proof that bin Laden is in fact responsible for the WTC/Pentagon disasters:

"Pakistanis may admire America, Sayedain said, but few carry that to blind faith. In the past, he explained, people have seen from Washington too many half-truths, damaging blunders and cynical policy shifts."

I completely agree because there are people saying other parties than the Taliban are responsible. Many Muslims, also hurt by the recent terrorist attacks, are eager to blame someone, and who easier to blame old enemies:

"'Israel did it,' said Mohammed Wali, 21, with thick black hair and a piercing gaze. 'Just before the attack, 4,000 Jews secretly left the World Trade Center. I know this. The source was American intelligence.'"

This article - ”America's War on Terror: Definition of Victory in New War Elusive" - has an official war been declared? I don't recall Congress approving a Presidential declaration of war, especially a declaration of war against a specific group/country. Don't we have to specify who we declare war on? Are we doing another Vietnam/Diem Bien Phu?

And here's an unlinkable article that comes to no surprise to me:

Rights concerns fade in hunt for allies

KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWS SERVICE
September 26, 2001


WASHINGTON -- In his search for allies in a new war on terrorism, President Bush -- at least for now -- has pushed long-standing U.S. concerns about human rights and democracy to the background.

Bush has suddenly reached out to -- and in some cases is relying on -- countries and groups that had previously been held at arm's length because of concerns about gross human-rights violations.

They include Central Asian countries such as Uzbekistan that are virtual one-man dictatorships; longtime U.S. adversaries such as Iran, Syria and Sudan that are themselves on the State Department's list of terrorist-sponsoring nations; and the armed opposition to Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, some of whom are accused by U.S. officials of everything from kidnapping to rape, torture and political killings.

Bush administration officials acknowledge that the politics of coalition-building makes for some unseemly bedfellows. But, they say, such concerns must take a back seat to the overriding need to find those responsible for killing nearly 7,000 Americans on Sept. 11 and to prevent terrorist attacks.

"The current situation definitely seems to bolster pragmatism," said one White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"I don't think it (human rights) is in any way off the radar screen," said a senior State Department official, who likewise spoke on the condition that his name not be used. But, he said, concerns over U.S. partners' human-rights records should not be a bar to bringing those responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to justice.

Others, including human-rights advocates and some members of Congress, say they worry about making the fight against terrorism the new organizing principle of U.S. foreign policy.

The long-term consequences of the new alliances appear to have been given little thought in Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell's coalition-building, they say.

For a precedent, the critics say, Bush and Powell need look no further than Afghanistan itself. There, to fight the Soviet Union, the United States supplied arms to the same Islamic fighters who are now attacking U.S. interests worldwide.

Elsewhere around the world during the Cold War, Washington allied itself with corrupt dictators from Africa to Latin America as long as they agreed to be bulwarks against communism.

"We're very concerned that the 'anything goes' attitude toward human rights, when it came to building a Cold War alliance, may be resumed now in the fight against terrorism," said Kenneth Roth, director of New York-based Human Rights Watch, an independent organization that investigates human-rights violations. "If that is the result, the terrorists will have won a major victory."

In a letter sent to Powell on Monday, Roth and Human Rights Watch chairman Jonathan Fanton urged him not to let U.S. coalition partners use the anti-terrorism banner as an excuse to crack down on their internal opponents.

In many countries, they wrote, "there already is a sense that the United States may condone actions committed in the name of fighting terrorism that it would have condemned just a short time ago."

Potentially most controversial is Bush's tentative outreach to Iran and Syria, both of whom sponsor terrorists who oppose Israel.

The White House has few illusions that either one will stop promoting terror, but hopes they will provide intelligence on the Sept. 11 attacks and tell groups they control to cease terrorist operations for now, according to diplomatic sources.

In Uzbekistan, President Islam Karimov runs "an authoritarian state with limited civil rights," according to the State Department's latest annual human-rights report. In his bid to root out the extremist Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Karimov has cracked down viciously on mosques not approved by his government.

Uzbekistan is fast becoming a major staging ground for potential U.S. strikes into neighboring Afghanistan.

"Getting into bed with dictators is a bad strategy, generally, unless it's a quickie," said Martha Brill Olcott, a Central Asia specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

A crackdown in Uzbekistan could breed more Islamic extremism and even terrorism, Olcott said. "Corrupt regimes breed this kind of opposition," she said.

In their fight against terrorism, she said, it's not clear that Bush and his aides are "sensitive to the tension between their short-term and long-term goals."

Bush asked Congress for blanket authority to waive for up to five years sanctions that bar military assistance to countries whose human rights or weapons proliferation practices raise U.S. concerns. Congress balked, and the White House agreed to a one-year waiver on a case-by-case basis. It will be used for Pakistan and India, State Department officials said.

Copyright 2001 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.

Yeah, since when has this been our standard of diplomacy and Foreign Policy?