Murray's mouth has
challengers lining up

WASHINGTON – Sen. Patty Murray's safe Washington state seat isn't looking so safe any more.

Following her remarks two weeks ago praising Osama bin Laden's generosity and criticizing the United States for its foreign aid budget and failing to work hard enough to make friends in the Third World, potential challengers are getting easier to find.

The latest name being discussed from Washington state to Washington, D.C., is Rep. Jennifer Dunn.

There was speculation she would be leaving her House seat for a $700,000-a-year lobbying job with the Air Transport Association. The Republican had interviewed for the job with America's airline industry, but her chief of staff, Doug Badger, said yesterday that Dunn intends to serve out her full House term.

He heatedly denied a published report that Dunn had decided to resign from Congress shortly to take the ATA job.

"That's just complete garbage. It's totally inaccurate," he told the Associated Press.

Badger said the trade group, which represents 20 U.S. airlines, told him it hasn't settled on a new executive director. He also pointed to a recent report in an industry publication, Aviation Daily, suggesting Dunn wasn't one of the top two finalists.

"I assume that that is final and from her standpoint, she's looking ahead," Badger said.

He and other Dunn advisers said the 10-year veteran congresswoman is under pressure from the White House to run for the Senate seat held by Murray. He said she might also seek re-election to the House or retire from Congress at the end of her term to take a private sector job.

"She is seriously considering the options available to her," Badger said.

Asked if she was going to serve out her two-year term, he said, "Yes, she is. That would be her desire."

Dunn, 61, has close ties to the Bush administration. The White House has pledged help if she agrees to run for the Senate.

Another contender for the job is Rep. George Nethercutt, the 5th District Republican, who has challenged Murray to debate the remarks she made to a high school class two weeks ago. The senator has not responded.

Also yesterday, Washington state Republican Chairman Chris Vance challenged Murray to debate the issue.

"Let's have her come out of hiding and debate this with George Nethercutt or whomever," Vance said.

Murray told school children bin Laden was beloved by his people because of his compassionate social spending programs. However, as WorldNetDaily reported, Murray was one of 13 U.S. senators to urge the Bush administration to send $30 million in emergency taxpayer aid to his Taliban hosts to relieve widespread starvation and a refugee crisis in Afghanistan just five months before Sept. 11.

On May 2, 2001, 13 senators released to the press a letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell calling on the administration to provide $30 million in emergency aid for Afghanistan, warning failure to act could spark a humanitarian crisis of "massive proportions."

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

Two weeks ago, at the conclusion of a session with students at Columbia River High School in Vancouver, Wash., Murray said she wanted to bring up a further point to add to their discussion about alternatives to war.

"We've got to ask, why is this man so popular around the world?" she said in reference to bin Laden, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "Why are people so supportive of him in many countries that are riddled with poverty?"

Murray said that bin Laden has been "out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. We haven't done that."

The second-term senator asked the students to ponder: "How would they look at us today if we had been there helping them with some of that rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan?"

Despite Murray's claim that bin Laden had invested heavily in social infrastructure and improved lives among the people who supported him, five months before Sept. 11 she was describing an Afghanistan on the verge of social catastrophe.

Indeed, tens of thousands of Afghans were facing starvation brought on by a serious drought and civil war.

"The conditions in temporary camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan are horrendous, and people are dying daily from starvation, cold and disease," said the letter to Powell. "If we fail to act, the world may soon be witness to a humanitarian crisis of even more massive proportions. We urge your immediate attention to this matter."

Even before some $43 million in additional aid was released to the Taliban, described six months later by President Bush as one of the most repressive regimes the world has ever known, the U.S. was already the biggest aid donor to Afghanistan - even bigger than bin Laden.

Bin Laden had provided an estimated $100 million in cash and military assistance to the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan over the five years leading up to Sept. 11, according to intelligence information presented to President Bush and his senior national security advisers after the terrorist attacks.

But, those sources said, the money he provided to the Taliban did not come from his personal fortune. The money comes from three primary sources: legal and illegal businesses or front companies bin Laden operated directly or indirectly; tribute payments he received from several Persian Gulf states, companies or individuals that gave him funds so he and his al-Qaida supporters would stay out of or minimize activities in their countries; and entities masked as charities.

Bin Laden even reportedly used a network of shops selling honey to generate income and secretly move weapons, drugs and agents throughout his terrorist network. But the goal, terrorism experts insist, was always the funding of his terrorist infrastructure - not the improvement of social conditions.

Both the Taliban government and bin Laden's terrorist organization were always funded in part by the opium poppies of Afghanistan.

When the U.S. committed $43 million in aid to Afghanistan in May 2001, it brought the total of U.S. aid to the country that year alone to $124 million. Powell's aid package came just two weeks after Murray and 12 other U.S. senators including Joseph Biden, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Hillary Clinton, Russell Feingold, Edward Kennedy, Mary Landrieu, Patrick Leahy, Barbara Mikulski, Harry Reid, Debbie Stabenow and Paul Wellstone, lobbied for $30 million.

The request from Murray and her colleagues in May 2001 came after a team of officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development toured Afghanistan in April. It was the first time U.S. officials had set foot in Afghanistan since before President Clinton's August 1998 missile strikes on terrorist camps there.

While some of Murray's remarks to the schoolchildren also appeared to be critical of Bush's war policies in Afghanistan, she was immediately supportive of those plans in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and following his address to the joint session of Congress.

"These attacks were meant to divide us, but what they've done is bring us closer together," she said in a statement Sept. 20. "From the heroes in New York and Washington, D.C., to a fifth-grade class in Lynnwood, Washington, that is holding a bake sale to benefit the Red Cross, last week's tragedy has brought out the best in America."

In response to the political brushfire kicked up by Murray's comments to the school children, she issued a statement calling bin Laden "an evil terrorist who is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans."

"While we continue to search every corner of the globe to destroy Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network, should we also consider the longer-term issue of what else can be done to improve relations with all nations including the Arab world?" she asked in the statement.

As to the question of whether Murray's comments have provided aid and comfort to bin Laden's supporters, the Islamist website Taliban Online reprinted the opening section of WND's original story that included Murray's glowing comments about bin Laden, complete with a hyperlink back to WND.

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Previous stories:

Protest to flood Murray with express mail

Father of 9-11 victim blasts Murray

Petition calls for Patty Murray to resign

Murray pushed for aid to Taliban before 9-11

National press ignores praise for bin Laden

'Bizarre' praise of Osama riles senator's challenger

Democrat senator praises bin Laden

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