The entire leftist terrorist hugger movement is founded on his teachings and beliefs. I don't see why not.

If Hitler and Stalin can be Man of the Year, why can't Bin Laden?

Hopefully, by the time the issue comes out, we can make the guy who kills Bin Laden Man of the Year.

They aren't praising him with this, people:

"Time's managing editor, James Kelly, has said the moniker designates the one person on Earth who has had the biggest effect on history throughout the year - for better or worse."

He fits the bill as a candidate. Repeating: They AREN'T praising him or his actions. Keep them jerkin' knees under control.

He came from nowhere and is more famous than Madonna in 4 months. That's impressive.

Asinine? How prissy is that?

He came from nowhere and is more famous than Madonna in 4 months.

1993 WTC attack + Two embassies + Khobar Towers + USS Cole = nowhere?

I think Bin Laden is not so much Man of the Year as others lately in the news. In the last year we have a few rants from the maniac and nothing more. Otherwise, he is cowering in a cave somewhere. More than likely others were masterminding while he was financing. How about Sharon? He is killing Palestinians left and right. Obviously not Arafat, the guy has no control over anything. What about Bush? From declaring war against global terrorism to being out front against stem cell research and human cloning. Time is just trying to sell magaizines, if Laden is on the cover I sure as hell won't buy it. Crappy excuse for news anyway.

1. Time magazine is one of the most conservative publications out there

2. bin Laden fits the criteria.

Oh, alright then. So he did a couple of local gigs first.

But in that case, how come he wasn't got before this happened?

Or is that one of those questions that isn't meant to be asked?

"But in that case, how come he wasn't got before this happened?"

We didn't have thousands of dead to motivate us/other nations before.

I can see it now. There will be a huge furor over the whole thing, Katie Couric will do interview after interview on the subject, and then the magazine will sell the most copies ever. Total ploy.

Clinton tried to bomb him a while back--didn't hit anything but a few empty camps.

From snopes2.com:

"In August 1998, President Clinton ordered missile strikes against targets in Afghanistan in an effort to hit Osama bin Laden, who had been linked to the embassy bombings in Africa (and was later connected to the attack on the USS Cole). The missiles reportedly missed bin Laden by a few hours, and Clinton was widely criticized by many who claimed he had ordered the strikes primarily to draw attention away from the Monica Lewinsky scandal."

So, do conservatives STILL think it was a Lewinsky ploy, or do they admit that Clinton tried to respond to a threatening terrorist?

From what I understand, the Sudan offered him up once, but we also screwed that one up.

Really? When? Do you have a link?

Damn tags.

"The entire leftist terrorist hugger movement is founded on his teachings and beliefs"

Terrorist hugger movement?

"Ok guys we break in and hug everyone, no mercy"

Fb no-one on the left agrees with BL as you well know.

Ayatollah Assahola was "Man of the Year", if Ah recollect (sorry, Slick Willie) correctly.

From what I understand, the Sudan offered him up once, but we also screwed that one up.

Really? When? Do you have a link?

From what I understand, Sudan tried to send him to Saudi Arabia, but put conditions on turning him over which were unacceptable to the Saudis.

My vote goes to Al Snore. Look at this Drudge Report story about how he's stimulating the economy:

AL GORE NOW RESTAURANTEUR IN TENNESSEE:

LAGOS, Nigeria (Reuters) - Former Vice President Al Gore told a Nigerian audience on Thursday that he now runs a family restaurant in Tennessee.

Gore narrowly lost the 2000 U.S. presidential election to Republican George W. Bush.

"This has been a time of transition for me and it hasn't been easy," Gore told an audience at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs.

"For example, there are usually a lot of cars on the road. Now it takes a lot longer to get around, and given that I haven't driven for eight years,
I'm not sure it's wise (to drive)," said Gore, who was driven in a limousine while he was vice president.

He also told the capacity audience that he had started the new family enterprise in his home state.

"We have started a family restaurant in Tennessee and we are running it ourselves. It is a low-cost restaurant," he
said. "I am also a visiting professor...VP for short."

Spokesmen in the United States were not immediately available to provide further details.

Gore, who became a vice chairman for U.S. investment firm Metropolitan West Financial Inc earlier this month, said
playing with his grandchildren has become another priority
since leaving office.

The media is only as liberal as the conservative corporatin that owns them.

Fox-owned by Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp
CNN/Time/AOL-Owned by AOL Time Warner
ABC-Owned by Disney formerly owned by Capital Cities
NBC-owned by General Electric-has a huge stake in defense industry

Washington Times-Owned by Moonie Cult and a huge campaign contributor to both Poppy and Junior Bush.

Time magazine isn't conservative by any stretch of the imagination and it is asinine. Although I doubt if Time actually go through with it because it would be a public relations nightmare. They'd lose 1/2 their readers right after the issue came out. Also, no matter how you try to spin it, calling someone the "Man of the Year" isn't a neutral statement. It's a huge compliment. I can already imagine the protestors in Indonesia with giant posters of Time's "Osama Bin Laden is our Man of the Year" cover on their posters.

AF
http://www.brassknuckles.net

I agree with a suggestion in the article, the title should be changed to "Newsmaker of the Year." "Man of the Year" sounds too much like some sort of accolade. Osama's deadly political stunts are just that, they are not "world-changing" events, sorry.

Boy, if Fark admins think Time Magazine is liberal, I want some of what they're smoking.

* Sorry about the lenth of this, couldnt find a link just a cached copy*


In '96, Sudan Offered to Arrest bin Laden
Barton Gellman Washington Post Service
Thursday, October 4, 2001

Saudis Balked at Accepting U.S. Plan

WASHINGTON The government of Sudan, using a back channel direct from its president to the Central Intelligence Agency in the United States, offered in the early spring of 1996 to arrest Osama bin Laden and place him in custody in Saudi Arabia, according to officials and former officials in all three countries.

The Clinton administration struggled to find a way to accept the offer in secret contacts that stretched from a meeting at hotel in Arlington, Virginia, on March 3, 1996, to a fax that closed the door on the effort 10 weeks later.

Unable to persuade the Saudis to accept Mr. bin Laden, and lacking a case to indict him in U.S. courts, the Clinton administration finally gave up on the capture.

Sudan expelled Mr. bin Laden on May 18, 1996, to Afghanistan. From there, he is thought to have planned and financed the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, the near-destruction of the American destroyer Cole in Yemen last year and the devastation in New York and Washington on Sept. 11.

"Had we been able to roll up bin Laden then, it would have made a significant difference," said a U.S. government official with responsibilities, then and now, in counterterrorism.

"We probably never would have seen a Sept. 11. We would still have had networks of Sunni Islamic extremists of the sort we're dealing with here, and there would still have been terrorist attacks fomented by those folks. But there would not have been as many resources devoted to their activities, and there would not have been a single voice that so effectively articulated grievances and won support for violence."

Clinton administration officials maintain emphatically that they had no such option against Mr. bin Laden in 1996. In the legal, political and intelligence environment then, they said, there was no choice but to allow him to leave Sudan unmolested.

"In the United States, we have this thing called the Constitution, so to bring him here is to bring him into the justice system," said Samuel Berger, who was deputy national security adviser then. "I don't think that was our first choice. Our first choice was to send him some place where justice is more" - he paused a moment, then continued - "streamlined."

Three officials in the Clinton administration said they hoped - one described it as "a fantasy" - that the Saudi monarch, King Fahd, would order Mr. bin Laden's swift beheading, as he had done for four conspirators after a June 1995 bombing in Riyadh.

But Mr. Berger and Steven Simon, then director for counterterrorism for the National Security Council, said the White House considered it valuable in itself to force Mr. bin Laden out of Sudan, thus tearing him away from his extensive network of businesses, investments and training camps.

Conflicting policy agendas on several other fronts contributed to the missed opportunity to capture Mr. bin Laden, according to a dozen participants.

The Clinton administration was riven by differences on whether to engage Sudan's government or isolate it, a situation that influenced judgments about the sincerity of the offer. In the Saudi-American relationship, policymakers diverged on how much priority to give to counterterrorism over other interests, such as support for the ailing Israeli-Palestinian talks and enforcement of the no-flight zone in Iraq.

And there were the beginnings of debate, intensified lately, on whether the United States wanted to indict and try Mr. bin Laden or to treat him as a combatant in an underground war.

The Sudanese offer had its roots in a dinner at the Khartoum home of Sudan's foreign minister, Ali Othman Taha. It was Feb. 6, 1996, the last night in the country for the U.S. ambassador, Timothy Carney, before evacuating the U.S. Embassy on orders from Washington. Paul Quaglia, then the CIA station chief in Khartoum, had led a campaign to pull out all Americans after he and his staff came under aggressive surveillance and twice had to fend off attacks, one with a knife and one with claw hammers.

Mr. Carney and David Shinn, then chief of the State Department's East Africa desk, considered the security threat "bogus," as Mr. Shinn described it. Washington's dominant decision-makers on Sudan had lost interest in engagement, preparing plans to isolate and undermine the regime.

One factor in Washington's hostility was an intelligence tip that Sudan planned to assassinate President Bill Clinton's national security adviser, Anthony Lake, the most visible administration critic of Khartoum. Most U.S. analysts came to believe later that it had been a false alarm.

On Feb. 6, 1996, Mr. Taha, the foreign minister, asked Mr. Carney and Mr. Shinn what his country could do to dissuade Washington from the view, expressed not long before by Madeleine Albright, then the chief U.S. delegate to the United Nations, that Sudan was responsible for "continued sponsorship of international terror."

Mr. Carney and Mr. Shinn had a long list. Mr. bin Laden, as they both recalled, was near the top. Mr. Taha mostly listened. He raised no objection to the request for Mr. bin Laden's expulsion, though he did not agree to it that night. On March 3, 1996, Sudan's defense minister, Major General Elfatih Erwa, arrived at the Hyatt Arlington. Mr. Carney and Mr. Shinn were waiting for him, but the meeting was run by covert operatives from the CIA's Africa division. In a document dated March 8, 1996, the Americans spelled out their demands. Titled "Measures Sudan Can Take to Improve Relations with the United States," it asked for six things. Second on the list - just after an angry enumeration of attacks on the CIA station in Khartoum - was Osama bin Laden.

"Provide us with names, dates of arrival, departure and destination and passport data on mujahidin that Usama Bin Laden has brought into Sudan," the document demanded.

During the next several weeks, General Erwa raised the stakes. The Sudanese security services, he said, would happily keep close watch on Mr. bin Laden for the United States. But if that would not suffice, the government was prepared to place him in custody and hand him over, though to whom was ambiguous.

Susan Rice, then senior director for Africa on the National Security Council, remembers being intrigued with but deeply skeptical of the Sudanese offer. And unlike Mr. Berger and Mr. Simon, Ms. Rice argued that mere expulsion from Sudan was not enough.

"We wanted them to hand him over to a responsible external authority," she said. "We didn't want them to just let him disappear into the ether."

Mr. Lake and Secretary of State Warren Christopher were briefed, colleagues said, on efforts to persuade the Saudi government to take Mr. bin Laden.

The Saudi idea had some logic, since Mr. bin Laden had issued a fatwa, or religious edict, denouncing the House of Saud as corrupt. Riyadh had expelled Mr. bin Laden in 1991 and stripped him of his citizenship in 1994, but it wanted no part of jailing or executing him, apparently fearing a backlash from militant opponents of the government.

Some American diplomats said the White House did not press the Saudis very hard.

Resigned to Mr. bin Laden's departure from Sudan, some officials raised the possibility of shooting down his chartered aircraft, but the idea was never seriously pursued because Mr. bin Laden had not been linked to a dead American, and it was inconceivable that Mr. Clinton would sign the "lethal finding" necessary under the circumstances.

"In the end they said, 'Just ask him to leave the country. Just don't let him go to Somalia,'" General Erwa said in an interview. "We said he will go to Afghanistan, and they said, 'Let him.'" On May 15, 1996, Mr. Taha, the foreign minister, sent a fax to Mr. Carney in Nairobi, giving up on the transfer of custody. Sudan's government had asked Mr. bin Laden to leave the country, Mr. Taha wrote, and he would be free to go.

Mr. Carney faxed back a question: Would Mr. bin Laden retain his access and control to the millions of dollars of assets he had built up in Sudan?

Mr. Taha gave no reply before Mr. bin Laden chartered a plane three days later for his trip to Afghanistan.

Subsequent analysis by U.S. intelligence suggests that Mr. bin Laden managed to access the Sudanese assets from his new

"Osama's deadly political stunts are just that, they are not "world-changing" events, sorry."

I'm sure many Afghanis, WTC employees, New Yorkers, U.S. Military personnel, and world citizens would disagree.

Thanks, Harmonia!

"Clinton administration officials maintain emphatically that they had no such option against Mr. bin Laden in 1996. In the legal, political and intelligence environment then, they said, there was no choice but to allow him to leave Sudan unmolested."

Yet another batch of 20/20 hindsight. We ALL know the congress at the time wouldn't have let Clinton launch any kind of action resembling our current military operation. They were too Lewinsky-oriented, and the atrocities weren't large enough to rally public support.

Hench, something like a polio vaccine or world-war is a world-changing event. This is an awful occurance, and I'm sure everyone feels bad for "Afghanis, WTC employees, New Yorkers, U.S. Military personnel, and world citizens," but Osama hasn't nuked half the planet or anything.

Shuh, I disagree. His actions (assuming that he's the mastermind we all suspect) have caused just about everyone in this country to re-think their lives. 90% of all travel this Thanksgiving was by car. Our economy was slammed further into recession. The whole planet is still able to see the world's longest-burning structural fire. Security has been tightened/called into question across the globe. Arabs have even MORE suspicion heaped on them. Wiretapping and privacy laws are being re-written.

Changing the world can be subtle. It doesn't have to "nuke half the planet" to have a tangible effect.

"How about Guiliani for Man of the Year?"

Only if he'd managed to get himself re-elected. THAT would've been a neat trick.

Without underestimating the effects of the WTC atrocity, I think its clear the recession would have happened anyway.

WorldCitizen: Well, by this definition, bin Laden is certainly the man of the year; that is, if Bush is right and he is actually the one to blame.

If Bush is right? How about, since Osama claimed it was his boys, we take his word for it? Sheesh.

Let's look at a few previous Time Man of the Year awards:

1938: Adolf Hitler (bisexual vegetarian... uh, paranoid totalitarian mass murderer)

1939 & 1942: Joseph Stalin (paranoid totalitarian mass murderer).

1971: Richard Nixon (crook)

1972: Nixon and Henry Kissinger (war criminal)

1973: John J. Sirica (Watergate judge with alleged mobster connections).

1979: Ayatollah Khomeini (had his opponents killed)

1985: Deng Xiaoping (Tienanmen Square? Tanks for the memory).

1994: The Pope.

1995: Newt Gingrich (scumbag who divorced his wife by phone while she was dying of cancer in hospital).

2000: George W. Bush (unelected stealer of Presidency, chimp-like buffoon).

Yup, seems clear that no endorsement of moral worth is implicit.

Hench: Some Americans re-thinking their lives is hardly a "world-changing" event. Markets go up and down all the time... that's what they do... it's on an upswing right now. I can't see the world's "longest-burning structural fire." I haven't seen security change appreciably (long term) in airports. Osoma is just a jackass who got "lucky" giving the US a black-eye; this can't be the most significant event this year -- maybe the most significant "political" event, however.

The award is not an award for "good" or "bad". It is an award (if you can call it that after seing those names) that recognizes the person who has had the largest impact on news, society, economics, etc. I do think the title sucks, it isn't truly indicative of what the award recognizes.

Shuh: So, who would you nominate as one person having the greatest effect on the world as we know it this year?

That's right Time is going to put bin Laden on the cover because just like every liberal in the US they love him and want him to destroy America and the whole world.

"It is an award (if you can call it that after seing those names) that recognizes the person who has had the largest impact on news, society, economics, etc. I do think the title sucks, it isn't truly indicative of what the award recognizes."

I think they're wedded to the "brand name" of "man of the year." Until their marketing department comes up with a more neutral yet appealing-to-readers term, they're pretty much stuck with it.

It hasn't been "Man of the Year" for quite a few... uh... years. It's "Person of the Year."

And I do think a change to "Newsmaker of the Year" would be a far more appropriate moniker.

I'm surprised the PC crowd didn't get it changes to "Person" or "Human" or "Life Form" of the Year a long time ago.

Every terrorist hugging leftist US hater in the world is going to be jerking off to this issue big time.

"Ohh yeah oooohhhh.. give it to me Osama.. ohhh.. come to daddy.. ummm yeah.. oohhhh.. I hate America.. ohhh yeah.. they should have done things differently and now they must pay.. ohhh I love you Osama.. give daddy what he needs.. Ohhh bomb that trade center.. ohh yeah!"