S. Korea Still Denies Paying Ransom to Taliban; Larry Craig Still Not Gay

After months of wildly inconsistent estimates ($2 million? $20 million?) of just how much ransom the South Koreans paid for their two dozen-odd hostages in Afghanistan, the Taliban is saying the actual amount was “at least” $4 million. This final, authoritative answer is brought to you by an unidentified “senior Taliban commander,” so we need not ever speak of this again. Until the next time it happens:

If we were going to free them without any payment, [the hostage taking] would not have been worth it,” he said. “The best way to release them was with a ransom payment.” Two hostages were executed before the others were released. [Newsweek, Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau]

I’m sure that makes perfect logical sense to a terrorist.

Newsweek had previously reported that the Taliban had paid an undisclosed sum to fake Taliban kidnappers, so it’s anyone’s guess how many people South Korea paid, what the total amount must have been, and whether all of this is b.s.

I predict we will soon be hearing a lot of whining from Seoul that we’re taking too many troops out of Korea too soon. Expect this to be slathered with a lot of syrupy, emotive offal about what a loyal ally South Korea has been against commies, hippies, and terrorists. The idea of this will be to distract us from our cold, hard interests, and who exactly we’re ostensibly protecting South Korea from. So just remember what South Korea does when it decides that its interests have diverged from ours:

The commander said the Taliban were aware that U.S. and Afghan intelligence were closely watching the hostage negotiations that were taking place between South Korean and Taliban officials inside the compound of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the Ghazni province and decided to outsmart them. “It was funny,” said the Taliban official, “the intelligence agencies were watching for a transfer of money to us in a Red Cross car in the province.” So the Taliban arranged for the secret payoff in Quetta.

The Taliban claim that 35% of the money went to fund “local operations” in Ghazni while the rest went to Mullah Omar and the Pips. Like I’ve said before, the legal term for this is “material support.”

The South Korean government is sticking to its story:

“We aren’t aware of any new developments in the case. Our government position is we didn’t pay any ransom for the hostages.”

So who is this guy, and why did he get along so famously with the Taliban?