Till he died on Mt. Hood, Kelly James led a rich, daring life. He did “high-end modernist” landscape design and loved climbing mountains. He proposed to his now-widow at 14,000 feet, on Mt. Rainier. The two men he climbed the challenging north approach to Hood with last week were also veteran adventurers. But the evidence that Hood River County Sheriff Joe Wampler just described at his news conference—two abandoned ice axes, a climbing rope cut with a knife, a glove—suggest that the two died in a fall days ago.
Still the search continues. It’s a national spectacle on 24-hour cable. And where there are eyeballs, there’s money: Wampler said that he has all the resources he could want from the federal government and state to try and find them. You see the military helicopter behind him.
We’ve never had anything near this sort of media spectacle about the search for Osama bin Laden, who they say is hiding out in mountains about Hood’s height or less on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Supposedly we’re looking. But in the war Bush likes to compare this one to, WW2, the 10th Mountain Division drew on the talents of a lot of privileged skiiers. This time around you’d think that our alpinists would rather risk their lives in Afghanistan than in the Cascades. I wonder if anyone’s even asked them. Our priorities are out of whack.
The difference is, peabrain, Osama doesn't want to be found. You must some sort of effete metrosexual.
This comment by what passes for a pious jew provides some merriment for the season I think:
Re: Woman beaten on Jerusalem bus for refusing to move to rear seat (Haaretz)
Comment by "Shiloh":
"The Haredim are the disgrace of the Jewish world. They are nothing more then reincarnations of Erev Rav. Moshe should have listened to G-d and NOT have brought them. But since when do we listen? The Mashiakh won`t be liked by this group but maybe once and for all when they are rid of, being the world is a mirror of Israel, then the radicals of other `religions` will dissapear too. These haredim are not `the gate keepers` as they like to think."
http://haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/ResponseDetails.jhtml?resNo=1650722&itemno=801449
– this is very interesting, because 'erev rav' is the mixed multitude of non-Israelites who supposedly followed Moses and Co. out of Egypt into the so-called Exodus. In other words, the argument is that every Jew one doesn't agree with possesses a non-Jewish soul, inherited from this 'erev rav'. Because this is such a fantasmatic criterion, it can be applied by any Jew to any other Jew, but I suspect the author is a Lubavitcher, since they are very much into reincarnation.
They can't find dead guys on one mountain. Why in your right mind do you think they would find someone like Osama who is actively trying to evade capture in an entire mountainous region. Your comparison is absurd,idiotic, and moronic. And as for not having a media spectacle for the hunt for Bin Laden, what cave were you hiding in during 2001-2002? I have only one word to say to you: Geraldo.
Mr. Weiss:
You seem to receive comments only from your critics… I fully agree with you in this. The U.S. is fighting this war, one supposedly so essential to this country, and, to credit the rhetoric, the entire future of Western civilization, with one hand tied behind its back…or more than one hand, if that is possible. There seems to be little or no attempt to excite patriotic sacrifice amongst the classes that might find a mountain warfare an enjoyable challenge. I know from personal experience that the Marine Corps does a splendid job in tranformings city kids into hardened warriors, capable of carrying the war even to the mountains of Afghanistan, but there is still something to be said for personal inclination. By all means, let the Pentagon form a corps of alpinists. If nothing else, it would make for more interesting recruiting videos.