It's a Small World

I still find it so strange in an Alice in Wonderland kind of way, that as a young attorney for Dresser Industries, I was taken to or near Abbottabad, bin laden's last hideout, when I was on a trip to Islamabad.

It was around 1980. I had been to Karachi, the port city that is a Pakistan version of Houston - hot and HUMID. Then I had to go to Islamabad, the capital. Frankly, I can't remember who I saw but I remember they taking me into the mountains that lead to the tourist city of Abbottabad - if you look at a map on Google Earth you can see that it is like Austin is to Houston.

I realized that I had not included either Pakistan experience in my book so I'm adding them - along with the episode where I ended up having to vacate a room at the Nile Hilton in Cairo (Egypt, not Illinois) to make room for a Presidential peace treaty mission, one that actually worked.

A look at Norway is next.

Tomorrow I tape a program on "The New Global Gas War" with the Houston Chronicle columnist Loren Steffy on what he found on a recent trip to Saudi that will scare you more than Al Qaida. Hint: What if Saudi stopped exporting 8 million barrels of day to the U.S. because the SAUDIS were using it for their own economy...!?

What if that day was sooner than you think? Standby...and tune into Global AMerican radio at www.GlobalAmerican.org