PM: Embassy bombing suspects in Somalia

MOGADISHU, Somalia - Somalia's prime minister said Sunday that the suspects in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in east Africa are sheltering in the stronghold of his country's militant Islamic movement.

"If we capture them alive we will hand them over to the United States," Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi told The Associated Press.

The three men — Comorian Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, Kenyan Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and Abu Taha al-Sudani, a Sudanese — are al-Qaida suspects and are under U.S. indictment for the 1998 bombings of embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed hundreds of people.

"We know they are in Kismayo," Gedi said. "We would like to capture or kill these guys at any cost. They are the root of the problem."

more:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061231/ap_on_re_af/somalia

doesn't that excuse ever get old with humans? One group or another has been defining and then exterminating one 'root' or another for several thousand years now.

Some day (maybe) we will collectively learn that the true root of the problem is the system which define the 'roots of the problem'.

That is, the system promotes the root which it rejects. This has been going on, is going on and will continue to go on until we collectively see the real 'root' of the problem, IMO.

Eliminating "eliminating the root of the problem" sounds about as realistic as declaring war on a common noun (the war on terror)...

I'm not saying the elimination of any system in particular would solve the issue. It would not. I guess what I'm saying is that 'the system' is going to have to allow humans to be human.

It seems that we have enough space to find suitable space to accomodate various groups of people. It would seem simple enough to learn to play nice with one another, but you're right in that this is about as feasible as the elimination of a noun.

I was speaking from a philosophical point of view, rather than a practical one. I think it's necessary to identify the problem in abstract terms, and to have that meme work it's way through the collective conscience, at which point something more practical might be proposed.

But hey, you have to start somewhere, right? :-)

The 'root of the problem' stuff I mean. In itself, it's the root of many overstretches and many Pyrric victories. (And when it works, you get Holocausts or similar events, so that's not necessarily better, to understate it a bit...)

Guy's talking the talk that gets US officials excited. Guess the arms will keep coming now.