Their efforts to get people to reenlist border on the bizarre. For example, Gall interviewed a man who made headlines for being arrested for being part of the Taliban. However, the real reason he was arrested was because he wouldn't reenlist in the Taliban. In other words, Pakistan is doing one thing and telling the Western media another for their consumption.

The relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban fighters has been historic. For instance, Pakistan has helped them fight the USSR when they were still in power in return rigging local elections in the favor of the religious factions there. It is interesting that the Pakistani government trusts them more than they trust the Bush administration, whom they will not allow to operate along their borders or try to capture Bin Laden. They are now sheltering Bin Laden, which should have been a capital offense in Bush's book.

The ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service, has the capability to capture Bin Laden. Nothing goes on in the northeastern part of that country along the border with Afghanistan without their knowledge. People were so fearful of them that they would only speak to the reporter on the condition that they not be named. The fact that they refuse to do so means that they are against us in Bush's own book.

Musharraf pledged that his country would do anything it could to get rid of religious extremism in his country. However, that was a bald-faced lie that he told to cover his own scalp. It is really interesting that Bush got a dose of his own Neocon medicine here -- Musharraf told Bush the Straussian version of the Noble Lie -- telling him what he wanted to hear and then doing what he thought was best.

The JUI is the regional party and an important political ally for the Pakistani president. They openly support the Taliban regime; in their school, there were posters saying, "Long Live Mullah Omar!" Yet we have heard no word of condemnation from Bush, who supposedly was going to hold Pakistan and any other country that sheltered terrorists to account.

In their Massadras, they preach a violent brand of Islam where they equate Jihad with violence. Many of the students who attend that school go off and fight for the Taliban in Afghanistan. Many go on to commit suicide bombings, inspiring others to come to their school. The vicious cycle goes on and on.

Members of the government are regular nighttime visitors to the school. My question is, why would members of the government visit that place at night? It seems that contrary to their stated intentions, Pakistan is actively working to undermine the interests of the Bush administration in Afghanistan even as they pledge over and over again to fight terrorism and take billions of taxpayer dollars worth of modern weapons.

Pakistan, of course, lies about this on a regular basis. They have mastered the art of lying from the Bush administration, and they lie to their would-be master on a regular basis. The exact words of one of their spokesman, confronted by a NATO report documenting Taliban activity in the area, are, "You can count the numbers of the Taliban on one finger." Of course -- they are all in Southern Afghanistan fighting to establish a stronghold in that part of the country.

And the reach of the ISI is scary -- they have agents among the Afghan Army's own generals. That would be like 2-3 of our own generals secretly working for the Soviet Union by handing over maps and plans during the height of the Cold War. The occupation of Afghanistan is every bit of a disaster as the one of Iraq. No post-war planning, no clue on how to rebuild an Afghan army, no accounting for the massive tribalism, and outsourcing important tasks like the capture of Bin Laden to the Afghan warlords. I wonder if the person in charge of the capture of Bin Laden was bought and paid for by the ISI.

The village of Karbala seems to be the one which is the heart of Taliban activity. Unlike the surrounding countryside, it has all sorts of lavish mosques, houses, and massadrahs. Yet nobody from the Bush administration seems to want to ask questions about any kind of activity in that village or any other kind of activity. They look the other way. For them, it is see no evil, hear no evil. Bush was actually telling the truth when he said that he was not concerned about Bin Laden.

And then, there is the matter of people who are travelling the circuits, speaking at masaddrahs, and preaching the need for Jihad. There are people like Hamid Gul, who does that sort of thing for a living. And then, there are people like Azizullah, who was a religious scholar who became widely mourned after becoming a Taliban commander and who was killed in the fighting. People like that are heroes in this area, not villians like we might think of them as.

Then, there are others who completely disappear from their families and go off and don't tell anyone that they are going to go to Afghanistan to commit suicide bombings. Nobody knows how they got in contact with the Taliban. Nobody knows how they turned from family men to Jihadists whose only calling was to die and go to heaven. Nobody would tell this family what happened to their son or where he was even when he was alive. These groups teach that duty to their twisted version of Jihad is more important than any kind of duty to family whatsoever. And, as one villager told the reporter, "You can't get into Afghanistan without the help of the ISI."

One thing that was not talked about in the story, but which is important, is the rampant poverty that is in the area. People make the kinds of choices that these people do because of the poverty and the hopelessness that they have to deal with on a daily basis. When confronted with a choice between 50 years of poverty and wondering where their next food will come from and going to heaven right now, many people choose the latter. This is no different than the millions of people who chose Christianity over Roman Paganism because of its promise of an eternal afterlife as compared to the rampant poverty of the Roman Empire and the emptiness of Bread and Circuses.

It is clear when looking at these sad stories that the best way to stop future terrorism on US soil is ending the vicious cycle of poverty and ending all types of religious fundamentalism that prey on these people. This should not be construed as an attack on Islam as all; most Muslims do not subscribe to the extreme orthodoxy written about here. This should be read as an attack on religious fundamentalism and its dangerous forms of escapism that do not properly allow one to address the problems of this world.