"That's the difference between "us and them"."

How ?, the Taliban (really just a convenient label) is different in what way ?

When we talk of the Taliban who are you meaning - the ones Colin Powell will approve of as part of the new Govt ?, the current spiritual leader Mullah Omar ?, the 2 Taliban idiots who keep appearing on CNN (the Hekel & Jekyl act), the council of Mullahs ?.

Again I feel you are trying to do here what you are quite good at (in a complimentary way) you are trying to boil the situation down into its simplest elements but the reality hin this case is it isn't that simple.

I say again that calling everyone you can attach the Taliban label to as muderous, is an appaling over simplification and lends itself to dehumanizing the real people caught up in this awful crisis. We are *not* on a turkey shoot to pop off every Taliban turkey - they are not our target. It is terrorists and their infrastructure. Taking our fury out of so called Taliban soldiers and collateral civillians solely because we have switched our venom from terrorists we can't see to people in Afghanistan we call Taliban, is not wise.

The original terrorists in their perverse way did that to the victims in the US.

Cheers

Doug

PS - I was arguing right from the start that Taliban and OBL were one and the same (check the posts) but I will now qualify that by saying that I always meant the current Taliban leaders and esp Mullah Omar. I never extended that to ordinary soldiers & citizens under Taliban rule. Also I will say here & now that Powell will include Taliban moderates in the new Govt (those left after the turkey shoot :-)