pap

I dunno. D'you reckon your average Kenyan is going to have fifty nicker to spunk on a Saints shirt? Especially when he could be spunking on actual knickers, if linked article is anything to go by.

For all the talk of a nanny state while Labour was in power, particularly around the smoking ban, it seems that the Conservatives have done one better. Nanny state and the beginnings of a blackmail list

I largely agree with you. ms pap would goad me about Rickie's impact whenever he was unavailable for selection, and she was mostly right. The boys who do the Saints podcast say "Rickie's basically our front". Can't really argue with that, and getting someone with all of those attributes (or better) will be a tall order.

Well, possibly. I like your picture.

Not a great line, VW. Existing law should be enough to get people that are sending dodgy stuff around. This is nothing more than a w4nker's register. Expensive one too, probably.

So why hasn't the US invaded Iran, who they claim fund terrorism, or as they have frequently misquoted as wanting to "wipe Israel off the face of the map"? How well do you think they've achieved their objective, given that most observers have acknowledged that the Taleban are still going to be around post-withdrawal. Is the world a safer place as a result of this action, or have we simply created more trouble for ourselves? The Afghanistan invasion can at best be described as an over-reaction, and if OBL had been hiding out somewhere else, somewhere less convenient, it's highly doubtful that the US would have invaded said country to prosecute a manhunt. You may want to ignore it, but the US were perfectly happy dealing with the Taleban when it looked like they'd be the conduit for their non-Russian gas pipeline. Long time ago, so perhaps people have forgotten. The Taliban offered to hand over OBL in October 2001. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.terrorism5 Their price? A bit of evidence, for the US to stop bombing them and for OBL to be transferred to a third impartial country. Not a tall order for the world's most wanted man. You have to wonder why it wasn't taken up. Only because every time the administration tried to spin that line, they were firmly rebuffed by experts on the area. Of course it was. They didn't want him in an international court for the same reason they didn't produce a bit of evidence when the Taleban asked for it. They had their story. Scrutiny was not only irrelevant, but dangerous. You've got some front, aintforever. I don't know if I've got the ball to ask someone for evidence on the same thread where I'd been caught instantly inventing stuff to make your point, but kudos to you for having them. Interesting, this evidence thing, isn't it? I was merely repeating what his surgeon was saying. I believe I even posted a link so that people got the full context. I read an interesting post about Tsarneav turning up on the cover of Rolling Stone. The message very much seems to be "the terrorist next door" now, which is some progress from "madman in a cave". Welcome to the Second Weimar Republic

I think they'd have already discounted me as "all bark, no bite", Super Michael. It's not as if I have several Panzer Divisions stashed in Home Counties hedgerows.

If I "opt" to nob a willing girly (this is all hypothetical, of course), the government probs won't know about it unless I send them pictures or something. Apologies to Twitter fans for repetition, but I'm only on-board with this plan if anyone who opts in is officially decorated as a W4nker of the British Empire.

Anyone who opts in will be a government recognised w@nker.

Well, for the crime of the century, the standard of investigation afterward was p!ss-poor. Bush and co had to be pilloried by the families of the victims for two years before he agreed to a commission on the subject, and like many "early doors" investigations, the scope of the report, along with its findings, can be considered massively deficient in light of all we know. Building 7, the one that fell down by itself, wasn't even mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report. There is also this little beauty:- To date, the U.S. government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance. Al Qaeda had many avenues of funding. If a particular funding source had dried up, al Qaeda could have easily tapped a different source or diverted funds from another project to fund an operation that cost $400,000-$500,000 over nearly two years. Little practical significance? Excuse me, but hasn't "follow the money" been a tool of the trade of investigators everywhere, for centuries?

I met a mate of Rickie's the other day. While I don't consider this outside the realms of possibility ( hey, we might really have bigger targets ) I'd be gutted if he went, and a little surprised if he did. From the account given by his mate, he seems to be very happy at Southampton. While I recognise that there are better strikers out there, I'd hoped that Rickie would drop back between the main striker and the centre mids. Think he can play there for years.

You may buy pure incompetence as a reason for OBL eluding the authorities. I'm not such an easy customer. I'm not suggesting that the US is all-powerful, or indeed whether it happens to be the Great Satan. Such comments are unhelpful when you're trying to have a serious discussion. Besides, it's only complete morons who conflate the actions of an administration ( or in our case, majority party forming a government ) as reflecting the will or intent of a people. I am suggesting that in prosecuting a global manhunt, particularly prior to any invasion of Afghanistan, that is was uniquely empowered to get OBL. Not only did the US have its usual impressive array of forces, but it also had the sympathy of the world. Let's recap the OBL capture plan:- 1) Invade Afghanistan (because we think he's there, and the Taleban won't hand him over) 2) Invade Iraq (he's definitely not there, but we're saying that they're involved, and our buddies the Brits are backing us up) 3) (Ten years later) Send special forces team into execute, not capture, OBL. It doesn't sound like a particularly straightforward capture to me. Sounds more like OBL was being used as justification for other things they wanted to do anyway, like invade a load of countries.

The chronology of the CNN interview is a fair point. Ceded. I still maintain that OBL was gettable, and for political reasons, was not got.

I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that the hunt for Osama Bin Laden was immediately de-prioritised in favour of making some link, any link between Al Qaeda and Iraq. When that couldn't be credibly established, a significant proportion of effort was instead placed in the 2003 invasion of Iraq (dodgy dossier, etc). Incidentally, it took them a fraction of the time to hunt down and execute Saddam Hussein. What really makes me laugh, especially in light of the mild ribbing I've received on here, is the very low burden of proof you're prepared to accept. OBL's death is a great example. Apart from the video of OBL getting gunned down in his jim-jams, you've nowt. They could have easily brought him into custody, made an example of both him and the way that democracies are supposed to prosecute justice. This was the international crime of the century. Why wasn't he pulled up in an international court? We're supposed to care about protecting civilians from further harm. Why no effort to debrief him, to pull information on the menacing Al Qaeda that could potentially prevent further atrocity? These are questions one could reasonably ask, but there's no decent answer to, apart from "dead men tell no tales". Returning to Guantanamo, I'm amazed at the attitudes of some people on here. I get the sense that not only will you accept tyranny when it comes knocking at your door, but you'll have pre-emptively placed yourselves over a barrel pre-greased.

I hope St Peter gives him an easier time than Vyv and Bacon Sandwich there. RIP Mel. Great comedic performer. Alas Smith and Jones was occasionally funny.

Have you ever heard of the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline? It's a project that was first mooted in the mid 90s, aimed at getting gas out of former Soviet republics without having to use the Russian pipeline system. The Taleban weren't willing to play ball. Now due for completion in 2017. Have you ever heard of heroin? It's a highly addictive and lucrative drug derived from the poppy, and grows best in Afghanistan. Have you ever heard of the Iran Contra scandal, part of which involved US officials setting up a drugs corridor for the Contra rebels? Have you ever heard of locations of strategic importance? That's when a force has long term objectives on getting into a certain place, but cannot do so immediately. In these instances, other places tend to get invaded first so your eventual target is easier to get to. This happened a lot in the Second World War, whether it was the US snaking across the Pacific or the Allied Forces in Europe taking places on the way to Berlin. Now I suppose if you hadn't heard of any of these things, the invasion of Afghanistan might look a bit motiveless.

Let's recap, shall we. You say that OBL would never have been "got" without the information from Guantanamo, and this is somehow justification for it being open. I say that OBL could have been dealt with at any time, and was not, largely to keep an identifiable bogeyman out there to justify pre-existing plans. If OBL had been killed in 2002, there would have been ZERO appetite for war in Iraq. I also make the point that if a CNN camera crew was able to track them down, then the US authorities should have been able to do so. You paint OBL as someone eager to get his message out, without any thought or research ( dude, Google is your friend, sometimes ) and come back with your imagined idea of how it all went down. You're then confronted with an account from the person who actually tracked him down, which conflicts massively with the argument-winnin' scenario. You come back with "they met his press officer first". Tell me something. When CNN reporters conduct interviews with famous people, who do you think they get to speak to first? The person they want to interview, or some middle-man who decides whether the interview is going to happen? Is this really your strongest counter-argument? I'd suggest that the only reason that things are screamingly obvious to you is because you want them to be. For all the "looney" tags you want to attribute me with, you're the only one who is fantasising here.

Oh aye? From the bloke who conducted the interview. I went to my bosses at CNN with a suggestion: that we try to interview bin Laden at his new headquarters in Afghanistan. In fact, it turned out that bin Laden had no direct role in the first Twin Towers attack (even though its ringleader, Ramzi Yousef, had trained in a camp on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border where Al Qaeda had dispatched some of its earliest recruits). But bin Laden would, of course, prove to be a key to unlocking the puzzle of worldwide jihadism. Getting to him wasn’t easy, but, after months of negotiations and a certain amount of hassle in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, we finally met him in the spring of 1997. He was not the table-thumping revolutionary I had expected; he had a retiring demeanor and comported himself more like a cleric. Yet his words were full of rage against U.S. foreign policies in the Middle East, and he promised revenge for them. http://peterbergen.com/chasing-al-qaeda/ Is the answer still screamingly obvious?

There are two possibilities really. 1) Either those tracking Bin Laden were utterly inept, unable to achieve what a reporter on a CNN expense budget was able to. 2) They didn't really want him dead, at least, not then. What do you reckon?

Yeah, but anything is better than the monkey pen at Marwell Zoo

They were never interested in killing Bin Laden while prosecuting their wars on terror. They needed a mythic boogeyman for people to rail against. Even before 9/11, Bin Laden was apparently one of their most wanted. Every arm of the US state department turned up empty in tracking Bin Laden down. Perhaps they should have enlisted the help of the CNN reporters who managed what no arm of US authority achieved; tracking Bin Laden down and getting an interview in 1997. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXOslH6aM1E

Given your two year stay in the place, what would you say were Bristol's key cultural attractions? It's supposed to be sh!t hot, innit?

Boyle will get some publicity from this, but the most important thing is that Guantanamo gets the publicity it deserves. It's a concentration camp.

Prior to the Wanyama signing, Pochettino said we'd be getting 2 or 3 new players. We have one of the those in VW already, and taking MP at his word, either one or two to get. Early yet.

Why so obvious?