U.S. Sen Patty Murray -- Senator Asks Students to Ponder (Sen. Murray lauds Osama bin Laden)

Columbian ^ | 12/19/2002 | Gregg Herrington

[B Knotts]

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray was in Vancouver on Wednesday challenging high school students to answer these questions:

What is behind terrorist Osama bin Laden's popularity in some parts of the world, and should the United States adopt his nation-building tactics?

Speaking at Columbia River High School, Murray, D-Wash., responded to questions from students, most about the war on terrorism or government spending for education.

Later Wednesday, Murray visited C-Tran headquarters and checked out a new bus.

Murray met at Columbia River with world history students and student government leaders. Across town, Hudson's Bay High School students participated via teleconference.

Murray concluded the session by challenging the students to consider alternatives to war.

"We've got to ask, why is this man (Osama bin Laden) so popular around the world?," said Murray, who faces re-election in 2004. "Why are people so supportive of him in many countries ? that are riddled with poverty?

"He's 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.

"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?"

Murray said she doesn't know where she comes down on that guns-or-butter question, and building infrastructure in Third World countries would "cost a lot of money, and we have schools here and health care facilities here that are really hurting."

Be 'better neighbors'?

"War is expensive too," she said. "Your generation ought to be thinking about whether we should be better neighbors out in other countries so that they have a different vision of us.

"It is a debate I think we ought to have."

Murray was in the minority when the Senate voted 77-23 in October to give President Bush authority to use military force in confronting Saddam Hussein. The state's other senator, Democrat Maria Cantwell, voted for the resolution.

Murray opened Wednesday's event telling the students, "You'll be graduating into a world that is very difficult. ? The economy is struggling. War in Iraq is a very real possibility in the short term" and could cost $200 billion even if it were to last only a few weeks.

The cost of waging war could result in cuts to domestic programs such as Pell grants for college students, she said.

Responding to a question about federal spending for schools, Murray said the Bush administration is backing off its pledge of support for the No Child Left Behind program.

"There are crises in every one of our schools in this country," Murray said, and cutting spending on education has long-term deleterious effects.

Visit to the bus barn

Later in the day, Murray spent 45 minutes at the C-Tran administrative and operations facility at 2425 N.E. 65th Ave. for a holiday potluck. Randy Frasier's Mountain View High School jazz and concert choirs serenaded her with holiday carols.

Afterward, Murray examined a new $312,000 Gillig coach, the first of several dozen that will replace 20-year-old GM buses that have racked up an average of 650,000 miles each.

Murray is on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on transportation, which funnels matching money to states and local agencies for buses and other transit programs. Eighty percent of the cost of new buses will come from federal grants, and the remainder from local C-Tran money.

[Astronaut]

Send the mom in tennis shoes your comments at senator_murray@murray.senate.gov.

[chnsmok]

Hey! She's OUR nut. Just kidding. She doesn't even answer my email with form mail anymore.

[dennisw]

Her brain is a flat liner.

[Friend of thunder]

People who are poor and oppressed tend to be angry; it is relatively easy (and more profitable for the oppressor) to channel their anger toward outside sources – the great Satan – than to reform and empower their own society; Osama bin Laden has the support he has because the frustration of oppressed people has been turned outward. The solution is free markets and free elections.

[Conservateacher]

"He's 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."

What? We spend Billions. Does anyone know how many billions?
I want to write a letter to the editor in Spokane and need to know how much we spend annually on non-domestic WELFARE.
I have relatives moving out of Seattle. As soon as they do I will give "mother nature" the go-ahead to earthquake the place to submission!!

[dixiechick2000]

"Hey! She's OUR nut."

LOL

I moved to Oregon 10 years ago from NC. It surely has been interesting, to say the least.

BTW, we have plenty of our own nuts.

[nightdriver]

"I just can't believe the morons in Washington who would elect such an imbecile and the incompetent Republican Party that can't recruit a candidate who might win."

We DID have a republican candidate that could have beat this power-mad little "mom in tennis shoes," and a good one, too, but the RNC wouldn't support them. They preferred the two-faced democRAT instead, I guess.

[LiteKeeper]

Huh?

[chnsmok]

You have pecans! Those are good nuts.

[Wait4Truth]

President Bush calls bin Laden a cold-blooded killer, Patty basically calls him a humanitarian...what a disconnect. What a traitor to America she is. UGH!

[John Lenin]

I still think back to when I was a kid and how anything a grown up told me had to be wrong. It may backfire on them trying to brainwash the kiddies.

[hchutch]

You know, sometimes, one needs to use profanity to properly express themselves for stuff like this.

[chnsmok]

I hope you're right, but MTV et al is a powerful influencer (is that a word?).

[Rummyfan]

I am without speech too. This woman is a United States Senator? I'm tempted to ask how an idiot like this ever got elected but.....

Please, people of Washington, mark these words and remember in 2004!

[Rummyfan]

Listen, someone was found to beat McKinney in Georgia, even if she (Denise Majette) was a Democrat. I would settle for another Dem taking her place rather than keeping an idiot like this in the Senate. The Senate for g** sakes!

[B Knotts]

True, but the people who live in the rest of Washington (outside Seattle) deserve a Senator. Right now, Seattle has two, the rest of the state has none.

[Salvation]

**Do you think the news media will make as big a deal out of these comments as they did of Sen. Lott's?**

Worse, I think her words are the words of a traitor.

[fieldmarshaldj]

You know, they've never gotten in right in how they describe this nut. It's not the "mom in tennis shoes", it's the "mom who has been repeatedly kicked in the head with tennis shoes." Paging Jennifer Dunn, paging Jennifer Dunn, your Senate seat awaits.

[B Knotts]

Well, I'm just keeping to the standard that the Democrats have established when I say:

Senator Murray needs to do the honorable thing, and resign.

[Guillermo]

Absolutely incredible.