“WHO CARES ABOUT a few strippers in the context of the slaughter of 6,000 innocent people?” writes Stephen F. Hayes in The Weekly Standard.
“Actually, the strippers — together with some booze, some hookers, and maybe even a little gambling that some of the hijackers enjoyed before Sept. 11— could help the United States win one of the minor battles in the broader war on terrorism.
“The Bush administration has gone to great lengths to reassure Muslims at home and abroad that the war on terrorism is not a war on Islam. It’s a key distinction, and one the terrorists and their friends are trying to blur. They insist the killing was all done in the name of Allah. So devout were the 19 hijackers, we are told, that they gave their lives for their religion.”
But Hayes writes what they did show was their hypocrisy to their religion. “Weeks after their mid-summer trip to that Las Vegas strip joint, several terrorists paid to gawk at similarly clad, or unclad, women at a strip club, in Daytona Beach, Florida.
“And according to the Boston Globe, four of the hijackers — Marwan Al-Shehhi, Fayez Ahmed, Mohannad Alshehri, and Satam M. A. Al Suqami — did some prostitute pricing on Sept. 10. The prices were too high for them.
“The previous day, some of their fellow hijackers had better luck. A driver for a Boston-area escort service said he took a hooker to visit Wail Alshehri and Waleed M. Alshehri,” writes Hayes.
“A group of terrorists — reportedly including a representative from each of the four hijacked planes — met in Las Vegas as many as six times before the Sept. 11 attacks. Authorities there are currently interviewing strippers, bartenders, and prostitutes in an effort to learn more. Investigators have asked casinos to review old surveillance tapes for signs of the terrorists.
“In piecing together the hijackers’ activities in their last months, FBI agents find themselves in very unreligious places, where very unreligious people do very unreligious things,” notes Hayes.
“…Suffice it to say, the hijackers would be in big earthly trouble for violating Islamic law. Whatever these terrorists were, they certainly weren’t good Muslims.”
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Rumsfeld’s take on the media
SECRETARY OF DEFENSE Donald Rumsfeld loves to jab the press. He says the Washington media often get things wrong, especially when writing about his working relationships with Bush’s other top national security advisers.
In an interview this week, even though the audience comprised Arabic speakers, Rumsfeld found another opportunity to take a dig.
He told an interviewer for Qatar’s Arab-language Al Jazeera TV network: “I don’t know, there’s something about the press that they like to get up in the morning and create conflict between people. It’s apparently a lot easier for people in the media to write about personalities than it is about concepts and strategies and direction.
“If you personalize a thing into good guys and bad guys, it’s an easier story, I suppose, for a journalist, but it’s not terribly useful. I’ve been kind of amused by it all from time to time, and my wife and children know I’m basically a nice person.”
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Bad timing
THE US POSTAL SERVICE, at the urging of Muslim groups in this country, recently issued a postage stamp recognizing the Muslim holiday of Eid Al-Fitr — or “feast of fast-breaking” — which ends the annual fasting month of Ramadan. But one postal clerk in the Washington area informs us he’s had trouble selling the 34-cent “EID” stamps — printed in Arabic writing — calling them “the least popular commemorative.” Which comes as no surprise, unfortunately, given the terrorist anthrax attacks — via the US mail — of recent weeks. For years, US Muslim groups have urged such a stamp as “one sign that the Muslim presence in America is being recognized.” Inside Washington thinks you should urge your friends in the US to buy the stamp — now!
