First Salon,now nando,where's this beancounting BS going to stop? navigating Salon now is worse than incestrapezoo.org.Pop tarts,mousetraps,browserjackers,you name it,just as I wrote that I had to break off and close down some yuppie blipvert,FUCK SALON.WHERES the LOVE! Aug. 15, 2002 | In July, 2001, a group of retired diplomats from the United States, Iran, Pakistan and Russia gathered in Berlin to discuss the future of Afghanistan, one of several brainstorming sessions about that troubled country sponsored by the United Nations last year. During the days, the men met in tony hotel conference rooms. At night, they shared drinks or dinner. And during every discussion, the diplomats focused on the Taliban -- how to make the radical Muslim group form a broad-based government, and give up Osama bin Laden, who was suspected of masterminding several terrorist attacks. These facts about the Berlin meeting are not in dispute. Everything else is. Exactly what was said in Berlin and how it was translated to the Taliban has become the centerpiece of a vast dispute about the Bush administration, Osama bin Laden and the buildup to the Sept. 11 attacks. On the left, it has become an article of faith for many that the U.N.-sponsored meetings were part of a concerted Bush administration effort to push for an oil and gas pipeline through Afghanistan. When the talks fell apart, it's been alleged, the administration used the diplomats to issue a military threat, which was carried back to the Taliban. Bin Laden, the theory goes, then decided to strike first, making the Sept. 11 attacks not a random act of terrorist violence, but rather a pre-emptive strike -- a calculated response to the Bush administration's love of oil, and its irresponsible sabre-rattling in pursuit of it. That tangled theory mostly hinges on one source: Niaz Naik,a member of the Pakistani delegation to the U.N. talks, who told the British press two weeks after Sept. 11 that the United States had issued a military threat at the meetings. SALON you cockteasing butt ugly HO! The taliban were sounding out the west prior to s11.In spite of their Saudi like state security and cultural vandalism,they might have been approachable.Certainly some money changed hands to burn off a little surplus smack.Make up your motherfucking mind SALON,do you want to be the grey lady or the downmarket HUSTLER? The way your going you'll wind up the grey bag lady who used to be a Hustler cover girl.We do not have endless patience,SALON!