I was reading this message board regarding this story that a Canadian hostage in Israel (Palestinian province) was let go upon discovery of the Maple Leaf on his passport.
A couple things stand out: St. Petersberg is in Canada, it seems; also Afghanistan is a mecca of oil and gas. Apparently only Bush/Cheney know anything about it, since its widely believed that the Soviets have drank much of Afghanistan dry. (No War for Oil! Brezhnev Lied, People Died!)
Most importantly in my mind is this post (or maybe another one, I thought I'd read something more vitrolic the first time, but I can't seem to find it) which seems to think that the U.S. is "meddling" in the Middle East. This is something I've thought of a couple of times, and haven't thought of or had anybody come up with a good answer.
What precisely did the U.S. do to earn this wrath in the Middle East? The "American imperialism is offending the Muslims" line is tossed around by the left a lot, but have they actually come up with some actual event that was the first example of American imperialism? Osama bin Laden apparently was bothered by the U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War, forgetting that this was a case of defending one nation of Muslims from a larger more militaristic nation of Muslims. (The left also does some forgetting, saying there's no link between Iraq and al Qaida...which makes no sense from bin Laden's own biography). We hear all about American imperialism over Afghanistan and Iraq, but between two WTC attacks, the U.S.S. Cole bombing, the "Black Hawk Down" incident, and the like, there was a lot during the Clinton years that really went unimpeded. The U.S. didn't really initiate any of these conflicts. So the whole theory breaks down from the fact that the Muslims started it.
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The Western Standard Shotgun blog also addresses this point.
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