Sherwood Ross: George Bush vs. Gospel of Matthew

George Bush vs. the Gospel of Matthew

By Sherwood Ross

According to the gospel of Matthew, it came to pass that Pontius Pilate said to Jesus, “ Do you not hear all this evidence that is brought against you?” for even in those days of rudimentary justice a man had the right to hear the charges of his accusers. Yet two thousand years later, under a bill urged by President Bush, a compliant Congress may agree to allow a prisoner of war to be tried without hearing all the evidence against him, some being held back in the name of “national security.” For what is more important, the life of one individual or the security of the State? Every totalitarian regime knows the answer to that. And so prisoners may be put to death, perhaps on false charges, without even knowing what wrong they are accused of.

According to the gospel of Matthew, not long before his trial and while journeying to Jerusalem, Jesus took his disciples aside and told them he would be arrested in the city where he would be handed over to a foreign power, to be tried and crucified. And so, too, today, there are more than 400 captives in Guantanamo prison, removed from their homeland by a foreign power in defiance of Geneva, men who have been made to suffer for years in a strange land half a world away from their homes and families, without being charged, without a lawyer, without trial, every one of the uncharged denied due process and thus every one of them innocent. And others, even more unfortunate, have been abducted by the CIA against international law, handed over to a foreign power to be imprisoned, tortured, and, in some cases, crucified, with no trial, and the new bill urged by Mr. Bush allows the CIA to continue its practices.

According to the gospel of Matthew, Jesus extolled those who showed mercy, saying, “ when I was naked ye clothed me; when I was ill ye came to my help, and when I was in prison ye visited me.” By some strange reversal of New Testament teaching, in the same way as Jesus was stripped of his clothing, captives in U.S. prisons have been stripped of theirs and confined naked in rooms of extreme temperature or threatened by dogs or stacked naked in human pyramids or mocked and scorned or sexually abused or beaten. Such actions, contradicting the words of Jesus, “ That which ye do to the least of my brethren ye do also to me,” violate Common Article 3 of Geneva that forbids “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.”

As for being visited in prison, many a captive in U.S. custody, such as those in the CIA compound in Kabul, has been denied visits by the International Red Cross, and some have been held incognito, as the “ghost” prisoners of Guantanamo, whose names are not even carried on the prison rolls, also a violation of Geneva. Nor do their families have the opportunity to visit them, a privilege that was commonly afforded even in the days of primitive justice in the time of Jesus, who saw prison visits as a blessing.

But what is international law to President Bush, who reportedly told aides, “the Constitution is just a damn scrap of paper”? By contrast, Jesus said, “ If any man therefore sets aside even the least of the Law’s demands, and teaches others to do the same, he will have the lowest place in the kingdom of Heaven..”

According to the gospel of Matthew, Jesus went up to the hills, and “When he was seated there, crowds flocked to him, bringing with them the lame, blind, dumb, and crippled, and many other sufferers…and he healed them…and they gave praise to the God of Israel.”

Only in Bush’s prisons, the sighted are put in darkness for days at a time, whole men are beaten until they are crippled, and sane men are driven mad and to suicide. Recall the words of Matthew: “They (the chief priests) put him in chains and led him away, to hand him over to Pilate, the Roman Governor.” Today, in America’s prisons, men are being chained in stress positions for days at a time or hung by chains suspended from the ceiling for a week or longer.

According to the gospel of Matthew, Jesus told his disciples, “ Do not murder,” an injunction not followed by the Bush White House, as more than 100 prisoners have died in U.S. custody, likely every one of them murdered, and several admittedly murdered by their handlers. As for following the Lord’s injunction, “ anyone who commits murder must be brought to judgment,” not one administration official in an executive position responsible for shaping the brutal torture policy has been put on trial.

According to the gospel of Matthew, in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “ How blest are those who show mercy; mercy shall be shown to them.” Yet, the world sees none of it from the White House. Mercy, a gift within the reach of all humanity, is also within the grasp of President Bush and a Congress that appears liable to codify his inhumane bill on the trial and treatment of prisoners. Any member of Congress who votes “aye” will be guilty of condoning torture and subject to prosecution under international law. Equally despicable, any member of Congress who approves the bill will be voting in defiance of the highest moral law ever preached on this planet.

The president’s biographers write he is a regular reader of the Bible. If so, he must be reading the King George version.

*************(Sherwood Ross writes for newspapers and magazines. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com)

Source

::snerk, snerk::

Welcome to the new US Police State!

WHAT DOES HR 4844 DO? The votes

What HR 4844 does is require "government-issued, current and valid photo identification
for which the individual was required to provide proof of United States citizenship as a condition
for the issuance of the identification" -- this is quoting from the text of the bill.
Drivers licenses do not fit this definition because proof of citizenship is not required to obtain a driver's license (there are three states that DO require proof of citizenship but the majority do not).
The only existing document that fits this definition is a passport. In order to get a passport
you need to obatin your state issued birth certification (not a hopsital version). There are
fees connected to getting your birth certificate. Married women might need to provide copies of their marriage license to document their name change (another cost and more hassle).

All this just to be given a ballot in order to vote. Not to register to vote but to cast a ballot.
HR 4844 is an add-on to the "Real ID" bill that was tacked on to the Defense Appropriations bill last year. It is part of a strategic plan to track U.S. citizens in all aspects of their lives. The Hyde bill has been lurking since April, ready to be sprung in time for election year grandstanding.

Text of Bill visit THOMAS and search on "Federal Election Integrity" HR 4844

Getting a passport where I live takes 30-40 days but can expediated for a fee of $35 in addition to the original cost ($30 in 2002), the cost of two-away overnight postage (I ship a lot so I know it would be around $15 each way.) and the cost of the photo (place in the mall does it for $15).

You will need a birth certificate. For me, the cost is $19 and takes around 6 weeks. AFTER you have proven you are who you say you are. In California, where my current husband was born, you have to have notarized documents proving your identity.

As a married woman, I could be required to establish my name changes. At three marriages and two divorces, I will need to come up with two marriage licenses (One "disappeared" while being copied by Social Services about 15 years ago and I might have burned one of them okay.) and divorce papers. THAT I can do. I think I framed the first one. I have yet to figure out how I go about get a copy of the marriage license from Ohio. Talk about a pain in the butt website. So let's just put it at $10 each and at least 4 weeks to obtain.

Those documents would establish I am who I say I am. Here's the list of what it would cost me to vote.

Birth Certificate 6 weeks $19.00
Marriage License 4 weeks $10.00
Marriage License 4 weeks $10.00
Divorce Papers Have .00
Total for docs: $39.00

Passport app 30-40 days $30.00
Expediated 7-10 days $35.00
Photo $15.00
Shipping $30.00
Total admin costs: $110.00

So I'm seeing 8 weeks and $149 to be allowed to vote. IF I start NOW. Imagine how much price gouging will go on if this becomes law and everyone MUST have these documents?

Anyone else have a problem with this?

Help defeat the Public Expression of Religion Act

The House of Representatives is expected to vote this week on a bill that makes a stealth attack on the First Amendment. The Public Expression of Religion Act [H.R. 2679], introduced by Rep. John Hostettler (R-IN) would prevent plaintiffs who sue over First Amendment Establishment Clause issues from recovering their litigation fees. This is brazenly designed to make it next to impossible for private citizens to sue to protect their First Amendment rights as federal court litigation and lawyers' fees are prohibitively expensive. Marci Hamilton at Findlaw writes:

"Obviously, the religion Hostettler and the other PERA supporters intend to establish is Christianity. Once again, a majority wants to water down disestablishment principles to squelch a minority. (As of 2001, about 80% of Americans identified as Christian, though that encompasses many denominations, while only a little more than 5% identified themselves as believers in other religions. About 15% identified themselves as atheist, agnostic, or having no religion.)

In other words, these Representatives want to cement the establishment of their own religion - already commanding the belief of a supermajority of Americans — as dominant via the force of the government, and the force of law. This is an old story, and it puts these representatives in a light that makes them look very much like the Puritans at the time of the Constitution's Framing who expelled dissenting religious believers (like Baptists and Quakers), because they did not believe what the established church required.

To be blunt, this is yet another bill pandering to the Christian religious right, who persistently but misguidedly insist that the separation of church and state is anti-Christian. That, of course, is historical revisionism at its worst. As I explained in a previous column, the disestablishment principles embodied in modern Establishment Clause cases were derived from the principles of a variety of Christian organizations. So to argue that the separation of church and state is hostile to Christianity is to say Christianity is hostile to itself - an argument ad absurdum, to say the least."

If you want your fellow Americans to be able to continue to vigorously defend their rights to practice the religion of their own choice, or to practice no religion at all, then write to your Congressional Representatives today. Our friends at the Council For Secular Humanism have made it easy to e-mail them, but I suggest you call as well. If you don't know who your Representative is, you can quickly find out by using this page at the U.S. House of Representatives website.

Source

Thank you, congress critters, for seeing to it our men and women aren't safe while they defend us!



See how YOUR congress critter voted.

I made the decision to write “Dillon, Read & Co. Inc. and the Aristocracy of Prison Profits” while gardening at a community farm in Montana during the summer of 2005. I had come to Montana to prototype Solari Investor Circles, private investment partnerships that practice financial intimacy — investing in people and products that we or our network know and trust. If we want clean water, fresh food, sustainable infrastructure, sound banks, lawful companies and healthy communities, we are going to have to finance and govern these resources ourselves. We cannot invest in the stocks and bonds of large corporations and governments that are harming our food, water, environment and all living things and then expect these resources to be available when we need them. Nor can we deposit and do business with the banks that are bankrupting our government and economy.

Surviving and thriving as a free people depends on creating and transacting with currencies and investments other than those printed and manipulated by Wall Street and Washington to the eventual end of our rights and assets.

What I found in Montana, however, was what I have found in communities all across America. We are so financially entangled in the federal government and large corporations that we cannot see our complicity in everything we say we abhor. Our social networks are so interwoven with the institutional leadership — government officials, bankers, lawyers, professors, foundation heads, corporate executives, investors, fellow alumni — that we dare not hold our own families, friends, colleagues and neighbors accountable for our very real financial and operational complicity. While we hate "the system," we keep honoring and supporting the people and institutions that are implementing the system when we interact and transact with them in our day-to-day lives. Enjoying the financial benefits and other perks that come from that intimate support ensures our continued complicity and contribution to fueling that which we say we hate.

Sitting in the rich dirt among the beautiful vegetables and flowers, I was facing the futility of trying to craft solutions without some basic consensus about the economic tapeworm that is killing us and all living things — while we blindly feed the worm. In a world of economic warfare, we have to see the strategy behind each play in the game. We have to see the economic tapeworm and how it works parasitically in our lives. A tapeworm injects chemicals into a host that causes the host to crave what is good for the tapeworm. In America, we despair over our deterioration, but we crave the next injection of chemicals from the tapeworm.

With this in mind, I decided to write “Dillon Read & Co Inc. and the Aristocracy of Prison Profits” as a case study designed to help illuminate the deeper system. It details the story of two teams with two competing visions for America. The first was a vision shared by my old firm on Wall Street — Dillon Read — and the Clinton Administration with the full support of a bipartisan Congress. In this vision, America's aristocracy makes money by ensnaring our youth in a pincer movement of drugs and prisons and wins middle class support for these policies through a steady and growing stream of government funding, contracts for War on Drugs activities at federal, state and local levels and related stock profits. This consensus is made all the more powerful by the gush of growing debt used to bubble the housing and mortgage markets and manipulate the stock, gold and precious metals markets in the largest pump and dump in history — the pump and dump of the entire American economy. This is more than a process designed to wipe out the middle class. This is genocide — a much more subtle and lethal version than ever before perpetrated by the scoundrels of our history texts.

The second vision was shared by my investment bank in Washington — The Hamilton Securities Group — and a small group of excellent government employees and leaders who believed in the power of education, hard work and a new partnership between people, land and technology. This vision would allow us to pay down public and private debt and create new business, infrastructure and equity. We believed that new times and new technologies called for a revival that would permit decentralized efforts to go to work on the hard challenges upon us — population, environment, resource management and the rapidly growing cultural gap between the most technologically proficient and the majority of people.

My hope is that “Dillon, Read & the Aristocracy of Prison Profits” will help you to see the game sufficiently to recognize the dividing line between two visions. One centralizes power and knowledge in a manner that tears down communities and infrastructure as it dominates wealth and shrinks freedom. The other diversifies power and knowledge to create new wealth through rebuilding infrastructure and communities and nourishing our natural resources in a way that reaffirms our ancient and deepest dream of freedom.

My hope is that as your powers grow to see the financial game and the true dividing lines, you will be better able to build networks of authentic people inventing authentic solutions to the real challenges we face. My hope is that you will no longer invite into your lives and work the people and organizations that sabotage real change. If enough of us come clean and hold true to the intention to transform the game, we invite in the magic that comes in dangerous times.

Yes, there is a better way and, yes, we can create it.

Source

Government, Industry To Use Computer Microphones To Spy On 150 Million Americans
Invasive surveillance and advertising obliterates even Minority Report style technology

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | September 6 2006

Private industry and eventually government is planning to use microphones in the computers of an estimated 150 million-plus Internet active Americans to spy on their lifestyle choices and build psychological profiles which will be used for surveillance and minority report style invasive advertising and data mining.

Digital cable TV boxes, such as Scientific American, have had secret in-built microphones inside them since their inception in the late 1990's and these originally dormant devices were planned to be activated when the invasive advertising revolution arrived - 2006 marks that date.

The advent of digital video recording devices such as TiVo (Sky Plus in the UK) introduced the creation of psychological algorithm profiles - databases on what programs you watched, how long you watched them for, which adverts you liked or didn't like. This information was retained by TiVo and sold to the highest bidders - an example being Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction during the 2003 Super Bowl half-time show - TiVo were able to compile lists of how many people had rewound the clip and how many times they had replayed it.

Two way communications systems like OnStar also have the ability to tap into private conversations as Americans become increasingly conditioned, by means of the private sector, to having their every movement, web session and conversation tracked and catalogued by big brother.

Each time a new flash application requests permission to run on newer computers, you will notice that a privacy setting box pops up asking if the particular website you are surfing can access your microphone and webcam. Though the webcam is external, the microphone is internal and is a standard feature of all new models.

Now Google have gone a step further by announcing that they will use in-built microphones to listen in on user's background noise, be it television, music or radio - and then direct advertising at them based on their preferences.

"The idea is to use the existing PC microphone to listen to whatever is heard in the background, be it music, your phone going off or the TV turned down. The PC then identifies it, using fingerprinting, and then shows you relevant content, whether that's adverts or search results, or a chat room on the subject," reports the Register .

Since at least 150 million Americans are Internet-active they will all be potential targets for secret surveillance and the subsequent sell-off of all their information to unscrupulous data mining corporations and government agencies.

The report cites the inevitability that the use and abuse of this technology will eventually be taken over by the state.

"Pretty soon the security industry is going to find a way to hijack the Google feed and use it for full on espionage."

The American public has already been brainwashed into thinking that having snooping software record their private phone conversations on behalf of the government is to protect them from terrorists and the Google program is just an entree to the expansion of these 1984 style technologies.

The Bush administration has sold its warrantless NSA spying agenda as the "terrorist surveillance program," and has used its Neo-Con mouthpiece media organs to argue the insanity of "not listening in to Osama bin Laden when he calls the US," despite the fact that Al-Qaeda stopped using phones years before 9/11 when it was publicized that all bin Laden's calls were routinely intercepted anyway.

NSA spying on Americans was spun as a necessary reaction to 9/11 and yet it had been taking place for at least a decade before.

Firstly, the Echelon program has collected information in violation of the 4th Amendment from American citizen's phone calls since th e early 90's at least. In addition, a 2001 European Parliament report stated that "within Europe all e-mail, telephone and fax communications are routinely intercepted" by the NSA.

The fact that Echelon barely even merited a mention during the recent furore created by the original USA Today NSA spying piece goes to show how utterly useless our media are in recalling what has already been admitted and proven.

In 1999 the Australian government admitted that they were part of an NSA led global intercept and surveillance grid in alliance with the US and Britain that could listen to "every international telephone call, fax, e-mail, or radio transmission."

"As you would expect there are a large amount of radio communications floating around in the atmosphere, and agencies such as DSD collect those communications in the interests of their national security," said Bill Blick, Inspector General of Intelligence and Security and the man who oversaw the Australian government's intelligence apparatus.

A large sector of Echelon is dedicated to industrial espionage. For example, in November 1999 the BBC reported that the NSA snooped on phone calls from a French firm bidding for a contract in Brazil. They passed the information on to an American competitor, which won the contract.

Google's ceaseless drive to dominate Microsoft and reap untold profits has come at the expense of privacy as the company jettison's its "don't be evil" mandate and merges itself into a proxy NSA outfit, creating all the tools necessary for the state to suffocate its subjects under an inescapable high-tech panopticon control grid.

The myth of fair elections in America

The debacle surrounding the Republican victory in 2000 demonstrated to the world that America's electoral process is wide open to abuse. But as Paul Harris discovers, the system has actually worsened since then

Thursday September 7, 2006
Observer.co.uk

One person, one vote. Count the totals. The one with the most wins. The beauty of democracy is its simplicity and its inherent fairness. It equalises everyone, even as it empowers everyone. What could go wrong? In America, it turns out, quite a lot.

Everyone remembers the debacle in Florida, 2000. The recounts, the law suits and the eventual deciding of a presidential election - not by the voters - but by the Supreme Court. The memory still causes a collective shudder to America's body politic.

Which makes the fact that America's system of voting is now even more suspect, more complicated, and more open to abuse than ever before so utterly shocking. Across the country a bewildering series of scandals or dubious practises are proliferating beyond control. The prospect of a 'second Florida' is now more likely not less. There are many - and not all of them are conspiracy theorists - who believed it may have happened in Ohio in 2004.

This week the venerable New York Times was the latest of many organisations and institutions to declare that America's democratic system is simply starting to fail. Not in terms of its democratic ideals, or some takeover by a Neocon cabal, but by a simple collapse in its ability to count everyone's votes accurately and fairly. The Times is editorialising on a shocking government report into electoral rules in Ohio's biggest county, Cuyahoga, which contains the city of Cleveland. It details a litany of errors and a large discrepancy between the paper record of a ballot and the result recorded by the new Diebold electronic voting machines the county has just installed. It also worried that 31 per cent of black people were asked for identification as they voted compared to 18 per cent of other voters. '[The] report should be a wake-up call to states and counties nationwide,' the paper thundered.

But Ohio is far from isolated. The problem is simply that America has no national standard for tallying the votes in its elections. Apart from a few federal mandates to safeguard broad constitutional rights, it is left up to local officials to sort out the details on the ground. This means in one state a machine might be used. In others a simple paper ballot and a pen. Or it varies from county to county. In one small town a touch screen machine might be on hand, a few miles away other voters might use a punch ballot and in the next county after that you might use a pen. Or pull a lever. Or countless other complex ways to do what should be so, so simple. It also means in one place there is a solid (paper) record of a vote that can be recounted, while in others, it is all down to famously fallible machines and their electronic memories.

In some places you can't vote if you have a prison record. In others, you can. In some states you need identification to vote. In others you don't. In some a drivers' licence will be enough, in others it won't. All this is fundamentally a violation of the basic genius of democracy: it should be simple and uniform. In America that is simply not true.

Then there is another layer of trouble. Because elections are organised locally they are often run and controlled by state office holders or county level election supervisors. Often these officials are nakedly partisan and all too willing to use the power of that office to favour one party over another. Their county or state is, after all, their patch of turf and they seek to protect it for their side.

Then you add a large dose of dirty tricks that are again all too common at a local level in US politics. Forget Ohio or Florida. Just look at Milwaukee where mysterious fliers appeared in 2004 in a black neighbourhood informing residents that all felons and their relatives - even those guilty of traffic violations - could not vote. Or an election in New Hampshire in 2002 where senior state Republicans hired a firm to jam the Democrats phone bank system. Three people are now in jail due to that little escapade. Similar examples of other abuses can be found all over the country.

Now I am not a conspiracy theorist. I don't believe that there is a cunning secret plan, set out in detail beforehand and then masterfully carried out to deliberately steal presidential elections. In fact, you don't actually need a shadowy plot to get much the same effect.

There is little doubt that at a grassroots level America's election is in disarray and being abused. And at a time of narrow election victories where presidential races come down to a single state (Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004) a microscope is instantly cast on that state's electoral practises. And lo, they are found wanting. Or open to fraud. Or being abused. Or local groups (from both sides) are going hell for leather to keep the other side from the polls. This is not because this is being planned out of Washington and targeted into those key states. It is because it is actually happening all over the country. We just notice because it has come down to the wire at that particular state.

You don't need to be a conspiracy theorist to be seriously worried about this state of affairs. In many ways, it is more worrying that the system is not being deliberately stolen from on high. It is actually broken from the ground up.

Source

Press secretary to the president of Pakistan tells ABC Osama bin Laden will not be captured if he agrees to live 'peaceful life'

Ron Brynaert
Published: Tuesday September 5, 2006

Print This Email This

Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan, press secretary to the president of Pakistan, tells ABC News that -- if found -- Osama bin Laden won't be arrested, as long as he promises to behave like a "peaceful citizen."

"If he is in Pakistan, bin Laden 'would not be taken into custody,' Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan told ABC News in a telephone interview, 'as long as one is being like a peaceful citizen," report Brian Ross and Gretchen Peters at ABC's blog, The Blotter.

"No, as long as one is being like a peaceful citizen, one would not be taken into custody," said Khan. "One has to stay like a peaceful citizen and not allowed to participate in any kind of terrorist activity."

"The surprising announcement comes as Pakistani army officials announced they were pulling their troops out of the North Waziristan region as part of a 'peace deal' with the Taliban," reports ABC.

Pakistan will also be returning many Taliban prisoners and seized weapons.

According to VOA, "security experts say Afghan insurgents and remnants of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network have managed to establish several bases in the region."

Earlier today, President Bush cited Pakistan's help in working together "to stop the world's most dangerous men from getting their hands on the world's most dangerous weapons," in a speech on the global war on terror he gave in Washington, D.C. to the Military Officers Association of America.

"Working with Great Britain and Pakistan and other nations, the United States shut down the world's most dangerous nuclear trading cartel, the AQ Khan network," Bush had said. "This network had supplied Iran and Libya and North Korea with equipment and know-how that advanced their efforts to obtain nuclear weapons."

The president also said that "we're working with friends and allies to deny the terrorists the enclaves they seek to establish in ungoverned areas across the world."

Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, famously known as the "father of Pakistan's nuclear program," was dismissed from his position as Science Adviser to President Musharraf in January of 2004 but was never arrested. A month later, after apologizing to the nation on television, Musharraf pardoned A.Q. Khan.

Reports of al Qaeda in Pakistan

It has recently been reported that al Qaeda's production company, As Sahab, is based in Pakistan.

"Five years after 9/11, Pakistan appears to have replaced Afghanistan as the group's center of gravity," reported CNN. "Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are widely believed to be in the more remote parts of this country."

"Waziristan is one of the places where bin Laden and al-Zawahiri are thought to have hidden out and where As Sahab produces its work," wrote Henry Schuster for CNN.

Two-and-a-half years ago, after reports surfaced that al-Zawahiri had been "captured or killed" in Pakistan, Shaukat Sultan Khan, then spokesman for the Army, said that nobody could "be confident" about such news.

"It can't be said with certainty who is here and who is not here," said Shaukat Sultan Khan in March of 2004.

ABC'S Report

"In effect, the Pakistani government said today as long as bin Laden and the Taliban promise to behave they can stay in Pakistan and will not be taken into custody," reported Brian Ross on ABC's broadcast Tuesday evening.

ABC noted that the deal with Taliban militants "comes just six months after President Bush said Pakistani President Musharraf was committed to victory against terrorists."

"Mr. President and I reaffirmed our shared commitment to a broad and lasting strategic partnership," Bush had said in a joint press conference with Musharraf held during his March visit to Pakistan. "And that partnership begins with close cooperation in the war on terror."

In that press conference, a reporter asked the president if the United States was "getting the access and the help that it needs to go after al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden."

"The best way to defeat al Qaeda is to find -- is to share good intelligence to locate them, and then to be prepared to bring them to justice," Bush had said.

News that Pakistan will "in effect" leave Osama bin Laden alone if he behaves "peacefully" in the region is certain to cause a stir less than a week before the five-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Democrats, as well as many Republicans, may characterize Pakistan's stance as going against President Bush's 2001 declaration that nations which harbor terrorists should be considered "hostile."

"Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make," Bush told the world on September 20, 2001. "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."

"From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime," Bush had declared.

After Bush's speech today, Senator John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic Presidential nominee, accused the president of losing "focus" on the terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

"Because President Bush lost focus on the killers who attacked us and instead launched a disastrous war in Iraq, today Osama bin Laden and his henchmen still find sanctuary in the no man's land between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they still plot attacks against America," said Kerry.

Early Wednesday morning, ABC reported that Pakistan was now denying "it would allow Osama bin Laden to avoid capture under terms of a peace agreement it signed with Taliban leaders in the country's North Waziristan area," and that the Pakistani military spokesman had been "grossly misquoted."

"'If he is in Pakistan, today or any time later, he will be taken into custody and brought to justice,' the Pakistani ambassador to the United States, Mahmud Ali Durrani, said in a statement," according to The Blotter.