Tuesday's Show (Second Hour)

Yay, I'm all caught up now! I swear, blogging and having a life do not mix. Anyway, we start the hour with a Nic piece I already covered and then move into an Anderson piece on how Bin Laden escaped at Tora Bora. As we've heard before, Gary Berntsen got intelligence of Bin Laden moving with small groups and he requested more forces, but they never came. And where were those forces? Preparing for a quagmire. Anderson and Nic then join us live and Peter informs us that the general consensus is that Bin Laden is in northern Pakistan. Nic says that not many people are actually hunting Bin Ladin because there are other more immediate people they need to go after first. Plus it is noted that critics of Musharraf believe he doesn't want Bin Laden caught because having him free keeps Pakistan important to the US.

Next up we get an update from Anthony Mills on the Syrian attack and it is believed to have been the work of Islamic fundamentalists. I figure that's a pretty good wager and I guess since this story is days old I should have googled up a real update for you, but I didn't. Sorry.

On now to a Michael Ware piece and things just keep getting worse and worse. Michael explains that Al Qaeda's plan is to take over the Al Anbar province, specifically Ramadi, and use it as their base of operations. And guess what? We don't have enough troops to stop them. The marines have a new strategy of fanning out more to fight them, but it's not helping enough. Michael then joins us live to explain that really it's like "moving chess pieces across a board." I would say it's more like playing whack-a-mole. We take control in one place, leave, and then trouble just pops right up again. Michael thinks we need to hurry up and take advantage of the split between the Baathists and Al Qaeda.

We transition now to a repeat Nic piece and then go into a new Nic piece on how the Taliban attacks schools. I actually posted about this on the 360 blog and am honored they took my suggestion. Or, you know, it's just a coincidence seeing as though this is a pretty common story there. Shut up, I like to feel special. Heh. Anyway, there have been 150 attacks/threats on schools this year, which is an increase. Villagers are eager to help rebuild, but they don't want to talk about who is behind the attacks because they're scared. Also mentioned in the piece is that the army is using our tax dollars to hire Afghan contractors to build roads and this makes everybody happy because it creates jobs and gets intrastructure built. Yay! Smart counterterrorism. I better document this because it doesn't happen often.

Next up Anderson has a taped interview from London with documentary filmaker Kirsten Schmidt. She covered the Taliban in Afghanistan and in her view they are fairly free in Pakistan. She also notes that there are some people who claim to be Al Qaeda/Taliban who were actually never recruited. I think this happens a lot. I'm not all that convinced there's this big network out there. I think there's a lot of wannabes, though not any less dangerous. We end the night with a repeat piece from Anderson. I guess it's back in the studio Monday. See you then. To tide you over here's AC360Review's own special The Shot:

Check out Anderson all layered up while Nic and Peter don't even look chilly. Finally someone on television representing us cold natured people of America! I've felt so alone. Hee.

Awesome screencaps by sherynroyce.