Word from the eastern front

President Karzai of Afghanistan knows and remembers:

PRESIDENT BUSH: Thank you. We'll have two questions a side. We'll start with Jennifer Loven.

Q Thank you, sir. Even after hearing that one of the major conclusions of the National Intelligence Estimate in April was that the Iraq war has fueled terror growth around the world, why have you continued to say that the Iraq war has made this country safer?
And to President Karzai, if I might, what do you think of President Musharraf's comments that you need to get to know your own country better when you're talking about where terror threats and the Taliban threat is coming from?

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PRESIDENT KARZAI: Ma'am, before I go to remarks by my brother, President Musharraf, terrorism was hurting us way before Iraq or September 11th. The President mentioned some examples of it. These extremist forces were killing people in Afghanistan and around for years, closing schools, burning mosques, killing children, uprooting vineyards, with vine trees, grapes hanging on them, forcing populations to poverty and misery.
They came to America on September 11th, but they were attacking you before September 11th in other parts of the world. We are a witness in Afghanistan to what they are and how they can hurt. You are a witness in New York. Do you forget people jumping off the 80th floor or 70th floor when the planes hit them? Can you imagine what it will be for a man or a woman to jump off that high? Who did that? And where are they now? And how do we fight them, how do we get rid of them, other than going after them? Should we wait for them to come and kill us again? That's why we need more action around the world, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, to get them defeated -- extremism, their allies, terrorists and the like.
On the remarks of my brother, President Musharraf, Afghanistan is a country that is emerging out of so many years of war and destruction, and occupation by terrorism and misery that they've brought to us. We lost almost two generations to the lack of education. And those who were educated before that are now older. We know our problems. We have difficulties. But Afghanistan also knows where the problem is -- in extremism, in madrassas preaching hatred, preachers in the name of madrassas preaching hatred. That's what we should do together to stop.
The United States, as our ally, is helping both countries. And I think it is very important that we have more dedication and more intense work with sincerity, all of us, to get rid of the problems that we have around the world.

Property owners have rights, don't they?

The Seattle Times reports that the cost to individual property owners of what are sometimes called "regulatory takings" of private property amounts to more than a billion dollars a year in Washington state:

A statewide property-rights initiative on the November ballot would cost the state, counties and cities $7 billion to $9 billion over the next six years, the state budget office estimated Wednesday.

That's a lot of money to take from property owners.

Initiative 933 would end this wrongful taking -- putting the burden of paying for the taking where it belongs, on the people who supposedly benefit from these takings.

What could be wrong with that? If the benefit of these regulatory takings isn't worth so much money to the beneficiaries, they can simply leave the property owners alone.