Bin Laden, Al Jazeera, More OJ, and Sibling Genetics (Wednesday's Second Hour)

Hi guys. The second hour begins with a rerun of all the General Abizaid coverage and then we go into a Brian Todd piece on the democrat's plan for catching Bin Laden. One of their ideas is to double the amount of special forces, but it's pointed out that special forces are only one component and you need intelligence first. The piece then proceeds to knock down the rest of the democratic ideas. I guess the lesson here is that reality is more complicated than talking points. Color me surprised. Now why exactly have I not seen anything like this regarding the republicans and their lists of talking points?

Up next we have a Tom Foreman piece on a new West Point study that has found Bin Laden is having less and less influence on jihadists. Apparently clerics have more power now and his big network is being replaced with smaller independent cells that communicate through the internets. "Jaw Breaker" author Gary Berntsen and William McCants (connected to the study) then join us to discuss this development and Anderson urges everyone to read Gary's book. He also brings up the "The Looming Tower" and endorses that one too. Dude! That's three books I'm suppose to read just from one show! I'm having enough trouble keeping up with my magazine subscriptions. Blogging takes time y'all. Anderson doesn't know what he's doing to me. I've got a book problem. They're like crack to me. And now Anderson is playing the part of my dealer. ANYway, Gary disagrees with William that the internet is of main importance now. He points out that Bin Laden set up the camps and people aren't being trained on the internet. Gary also wants the US to start dealing with Iraq's neighbors.

Moving on to an Anderson piece on the new channel Al Jazeera English. They've hired a lot of people from all over (including CNN and ABC) and they'll be doing international news with a presentation that Americans are used to. Unfortunately not many of them will get to see it because no cable provider will touch the channel. As of right now you can only watch them on the internet. That's a shame because I'd watch it. I think Al Jazeera has gotten a bad rap due to a lot of lies. First off, they've never shown anyone being beheaded, though Rumsfeld has said they have. Plus the US actually used to like Al Jazeera because they're independent and would critically report on their own region. However once they started critically reporting on the US they fell out of favor. I urge everyone to see Control Room , a great documentary about the channel. The most compelling person in the movie is Lt. Josh Rushing because you literally get to watch him kind of mentally process the war as the invasion occurs. What's funny is he didn't even know really what the cameras were for and had no idea he was the star of a major documentary. Rushing has left the military and now works for Al Jazeera International.

Continuing on this topic we have a taped interview with new Al Jazeera English employee David Marash, formerly of ABC. He states that a lot of charges against Al Jazeera have no grounds and nothing ever goes on the air unedited. See? Anderson wants to know if terrorists will actually be called terrorists. The answer is yes, but on our way to yes David goes through a long explanation that's probably going to leave some people skeptical. At the end of the interview Anderson wishes him luck, but not too much luck since he's a competitor. Uh, they're not even carried by cable, I think you're safe.

Transitioning now back to OJ. This is way too much. I appreciate that the coverage is anti-OJ, but it's still giving him publicity and probably getting some people interested in watching the special, so...stop it 360. Joining us for an interview we have prosecutor Christopher Darden. He tells us that he normally doesn't even think about OJ, but this was all too much for him and he had to come on and ask people to boycott. His mind if really boggled by all this too and at one point he literally becomes speechless. From this we go back to our previous OJ panel for a call in segment. Every once in a blue moon Anderson likes to pretend he's Larry King, just without the suspenders and somewhat charming cluelessness. I usually like the call ins, but I'm just really not into this whole topic. There are five calls. Two of the callers are outraged like the panel and want to know what they can do to stop it. Another caller talks specifics about the glove and the two remaining are hanging onto the notion that OJ is innocent. In regards to the latter, Toobin practically throws his hands up in the air and cries, "I can't work with these people." Okay, not really, but that's what it seemed like.

Finally tonight we have a piece from Sanjay Gupta, proud owner of a new baby blog. The piece focuses on twin brothers who were separated at birth and then reunited 24 years later. One brother had a hard life and the other brother had a much easier one. The interesting thing is that both brothers are equally happy. It's been found that 80% of personality is genetic. I can believe that. My siblings and I have similar weird, snarky personalities. Anyway, we then get some headlines and that'll do it.

Screencaps by sherynroyce.

Anyone seen Control Room?