Terrorist Attack _______________ Information Only

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011122...

Top 425. Nov 22, 2001 9:02 AM

» rasputin - Surrender of Kunduz

http://www.msnbc.com/news/627086.asp#BODY

-- posted by rasputin

Top 426. Nov 22, 2001 1:08 PM

» rasputin - Allies uneasy about U.S. eye on Iraq

These countries were Johnnie-come-lately to the little adventure in Afghanistan if you ask me. Didn't France just try to get some of their troops to cross the Afghan border yesterday and were rejected? Yesterday? Unbelievable. And Germany? Where the hell have they been? When there's some kind of major terror activity in one of these countries and they ask for help, maybe we'll just drag our feet and say, "Oh shucks, I don't know if we can support that."

Germany’s Fischer urges caution as Bush rallies troops. President Bush greets soldiers Wednesday in Fort Campbell, Ky. "Afghanistan is just the beginning of the war against terror," Bush told troops over early Thanksgiving dinner.

Nov. 21 — European allies have effectively vetoed any future attempts by the United States to take its war on terrorism to Iraq, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said after meetings with high-ranking U.S. officials in Washington on Wednesday. “Everybody in Washington knows that Europe would have very, very serious questions about engaging Iraq, to say it in a diplomatic way,” Fischer told reporters.

Fischer had just concluded meetings with Secretary of State Colin Powell as well as National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and was answering reporters’ questions. His comments reflected a growing sense that the Bush administration wants to expand its military operations to other countries, especially Iraq, where it could finally take care of unfinished business by toppling Saddam Hussein.

President Bush has yet to address the American people about the next phase of the war, but speaking to a cheering crowd of more than 10,000 soldiers in Fort Campbell, Ky., on Wednesday, he offered perhaps the strongest hint yet that the United States has larger ambitions for its war on terrorism. “Afghanistan is just the beginning of the war against terror,” Bush said. “There are other nations who will not be secure until their threat is dealt with.”

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, who has advocated expanding the U.S. anti-terror campaign to Iraq from the start, told an interviewer over the weekend, “I think any government that supports or harbors terrorists should be very worried right now.”

Although there are no proven direct ties between the Sept. 11 attacks and Iraq, the country has demonstrated chemical and biological capabilities, and is reported to have used such weapons on its own people during the Iran-Iraq war. Iraq has also tried to build nuclear weapons.
“We have said for a number of years that Iraq is a threat to its neighbors, to its people, to the region and to American interests,” Rice said in a recent interview on CNN. “We didn’t need Sept. 11 to tell us that he is a threat to our interests,” she said, adding, “We’ll deal with that situation eventually.”

On the same day Fischer warned of Europeans’ discomfort with an expanded U.S. anti-terror campaign, Bush rallied U.S. troops on the eve of Thanksgiving. “The most difficult steps in this mission still lie ahead,” he said, hinting again at an expanded war. “There are other terrorists who threaten America and our friends, and there are other nations willing to sponsor them,” said Bush. “We will not be secure as a nation until all these threats are defeated. Across the world, and across the years, we will fight these evil ones, and we will win.” Bush traveled to Fort Campbell, home of the 101st Airborne Division, for a turkey and macaroni dinner with 150 troops in the base mess hall. Clad in a brown flight jacket, Bush also gave an update on the military campaign in Afghanistan to a crowd of 15,000 soldiers in camouflage fatigues and red, green or black berets. “We cannot know every turn this war will take, but I’m confident of the outcome,” Bush said. “I believe in the strong resolve of the American people. I believe good triumphs over evil. And I believe in the fearless hearts of the United States military.”

The president pledged to persevere against the al-Qaida network, suspected of orchestrating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and the Taliban government that has sheltered the followers of suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden. So far, Bush said, 27 of 30 Afghan provinces have been taken from Taliban control. But that is just a start, he cautioned; U.S. forces have yet to approach Afghanistan’s rugged mountains, where Taliban fighters can hunker down in caves. "These hideouts are heavily fortified and defended by fanatics who will fight to the death," Bush said. “Unlike efforts to liberate a town or destroy Taliban equipment, success against these cells may come more slowly.

“The enemy hopes they can hide until we tire. But we’re going to prove them wrong. We will never tire, and we will hunt them down,” Bush said. His speech drew whoops and raised fists from the crowd, made up of the 101st, a rapid-deployment air assault division; the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment; and the 5th Special Forces Group. Bush beamed as they chanted in unison, “USA!” and their rallying cry, “Air assault!” Black Hawk helicopters buzzed the field.

While Bush was at Fort Campbell, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld traveled to Fort Bragg, N.C., home of the Army Special Operations Command, and Pope Air Force Base, N.C., on Wednesday to hear briefings and talk with troops.

The appearances marked a military end of a work week that Bush had focused largely on humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, on treatment of women there and on respect for Muslims celebrating Ramadan.

Gen. Tommy Franks, the U.S. commander of the Afghanistan campaign, said Wednesday there would be no letup in fighting. Franks also said larger-scale ground forces remain an option, signaling yet again that the Bush administration may be inclined to broaden the campaign’s scope. But, as Germany’s foreign minister warned, the Bush administration risks alienating an already fragile coalition of supporters in Europe and elsewhere overseas, if — bolstered by recent military gains — it proceeds on its own.

-- posted by rasputin

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/p/ap/200111...

Top 427. Nov 22, 2001 1:46 PM

» JenL_2 - Re: Bush Rallies Troops

In response to message posted by rasputin:

Thanks Ras....How bout this....

Bush rallied U.S. troops on the eve of Thanksgiving at Fort Campbell, home of the 101st Airborne Division:

“The most difficult steps in this mission still lie ahead,”

“There are other terrorists who threaten America and our friends, and there are other nations willing to sponsor them,”

“We will not be secure as a nation until all these threats are defeated.

Across the world, and across the years, we will fight these evil ones, and we will win.”

“We cannot know every turn this war will take, but I’m confident of the outcome,”

<img src="http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/a..." width=449 height=335>

“I believe in the strong resolve of the American people.

I believe good triumphs over evil.

And I believe in the fearless hearts of the United States military.”

“The enemy hopes they can hide until we tire. But we’re going to prove them wrong.

We will never tire, and we will hunt them down,”

His speech drew whoops and raised fists from the crowd, made up of the 101st, a rapid-deployment air assault division; the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment; and the 5th Special Forces Group. Bush beamed as they chanted in unison, “USA!” and their rallying cry, “Air assault!” Black Hawk helicopters buzzed the field.

.....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

http://www.afghanradio.com/azadi.html

Top 428. Nov 22, 2001 5:53 PM

» rasputin - House of Saud looks close to collapse

(Any thoughts on this one? I sure as hell don't know what the implications are. Prospects for more fun and games, though. And what are the implications of the shift in power away from OPEC? Any articles clarifying that issue?)

Modern Saudi Arabia is supported by the US and Britain in order to guarantee a steady flow of oil. Their war on terrorism could destroy it
The Guardian - United Kingdom; Nov 21, 2001

While tabloid cheerleaders and spin doctors have been celebrating the fall of Kabul and the retreat of Taliban and al-Qaida fighters, the mood in other parts of Whitehall is much more sombre. For senior ministerial advisers know that the real cancer in the Middle East is not Afghanistan, but Saudi Arabia.

Fears are growing that the important but anachronistic country which spawned Osama bin Laden and many of the September 11 hijackers faces the real prospect of a coup. "The Saudi royals have been paying off the terrorists with danegeld for a long while," says one well-placed source. "There is a danger that well-educated returnees from US colleges who cannot get work will make common cause with the people of the souks and overthrow them."

This week, newspapers, including the Economist and Time magazine, published extensive and flattering advertisements placed by the Saudi regime - a clear indication of its concern about the future, as well as the bad publicity seeping out about its past links with Bin Laden and the Taliban.

Modern Saudi Arabia is to an extent a perverted creation of America and its British ally. Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state, spelled out in his recent book on American foreign policy its essentially manipulative approach to such Middle East states as Saudi Arabia. The US, he says, cannot afford the region to be "dominated by countries whose purposes are inimical to ours". Their economic "purposes" have been to prop up a regime which would guarantee a stable flow of petrol and oil to the US at relatively low prices and recycle its petrodollars back to the west in the shape of construction projects and arms purchases.

The Saudis control 25% of world oil reserves. The US has paid the royal family up to $100 billion a year for it.

The first bomb attack on the World Trade Centre in New York took place in 1993: Osama bin Laden was in exile in Khartoum, nursing his rage against the Saudi royal family and the US bases they permit on Saudi soil. In Britain, the then government was more interested in money-making opportunities than in registering these sinister signs and re-evaluating their relationships with a frustrated Muslim world.

British MI6 intelligence about Iranian military planning was being circulated by John Major to the ailing King Fahd in Riyadh, to help keep him on his throne in return for more lucrative arms sales: the notorious Al Yamamah weapons deal was already transferring pounds 1.5bn a year into British pockets.

The Saud clan - now estimated to number more than 7,000 privileged tribesmen - are still clinging to absolute power. However, much of their oil wealth has been frittered away, and unemployment among young Saudis is rising. Per capita income in the early 1980s was $28,000. It is now below $10,000.

The dictatorial Saud clan describe themselves as "guardians of the two holy places" and preside over the vast annual pilgrimages to Mecca. They poured cash into the Islamic University at Medina and similar schools across the Muslim world, from Cairo to Peshawar.

The anti-modernist religion they promoted became a focus for guilt and anger among young men frustrated at modern "corruption" and deprived not only of normal social lives, but of all democratic political outlets.

In 1979, 200 armed fundamentalists, many of whom had studied Islam at Medina, took over the grand mosque at Mecca. But 63 of the ringleaders were publicly beheaded in selected town squares all over the country, and the seeds of rebellion quickly led to repression. Shaheed Coovadia, who now teaches in the US, studied at Medina. He says: "That incident was a turning point. When I was there you couldn't move without permission. It was like living in a police state. People even came to check your bed to see if you'd risen for the morning prayer."

Providentially that same year, Soviet troops rumbled over the mountain roads into Afghanistan to shore up a tottering pro-communist regime. The CIA had been covertly undermining the Afghan government by arming fundamentalist rebels - the mojahedin. In Washington, Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's national security adviser, was cock-a-hoop that the Russians had been drawn into what he saw as his cleverly baited trap. The day Soviet forces crossed the border, he wrote to Carter, saying: "We now have the opportunity to give the USSR their Vietnam war."

Young Bin Laden, son of a wealthy construction magnate, joined the anti-Soviet campaign. He set off for Peshawar, as the most prominent of a Saudi contingent of poor citizens, students, taxi-drivers and Bedouin tribesmen.

For the Saudi regime it was an outlet for an otherwise dangerous fanaticism. For the US, the Afghan Arabs were useful proxy troops in the cold war. As Bin Laden himself later described it: "The weapons were supplied by the Americans, the money by the Saudis."

Did the Saudi royals or the US have any qualms about arming and brutalising these frustrated young fundamen-talists? Brzezinski had his response to that question ready: "What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of central Europe and the end of the cold war?"

Nowadays, the west is less smug about its interference. It is beginning to realise that the "stirred-up Muslims" may not have finished their upheavals.

David Leigh is the Guardian's investigations editor. Richard Norton-Taylor is the security affairs editor.

-- posted by rasputin

Top 429. Nov 22, 2001 6:49 PM

» JenL_2 - Re: House of Saud looks close to collapse

In response to message posted by rasputin:

Ras - We've been hearing for awhile that the House of Saud may be a house of cards ready to fall over. Excerpts from your article....

Modern Saudi Arabia is supported by the US and Britain in order to guarantee a steady flow of oil.

Their war on terrorism could destroy it

.....senior ministerial advisers know that the real cancer in the Middle East is not Afghanistan, but Saudi Arabia.

Fears are growing that the important but anachronistic country which spawned Osama bin Laden and many of the September 11 hijackers faces the real prospect of a coup. "The Saudi royals have been paying off the terrorists with danegeld for a long while," says one well-placed source.....

Modern Saudi Arabia is to an extent a perverted creation of America and its British ally....

The Saudis control 25% of world oil reserves. The US has paid the royal family up to $100 billion a year for it.....

IMHO - We've gotta find alternatives to Middle East oil, and we have to do it Now.....but in the meantime...folks aren't conserving cause gas is cheap!.....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

Top 430. Nov 23, 2001 12:33 PM

» BPyles - House of Saud

My personal reaction to all out of Saudi is that they talk and protest too much! This is out today and illustrates my point. Prince al-Faisal seems to thing we are going to solve all the problems of the continuing conflict between Israel and Palestinians...as if that would solve their problems.

Friday November 23 10:23 AM ET

Saudi Arabia Hails U.S. Mideast Peace Initiative

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia welcomed the Bush administration's new resolve to revive the Middle East peace process, saying it could help assuage anti-American feelings in the Arab world that may be the lodestar of terrorism, The New York Times said on Friday.

In an interview with the newspaper in the Saudi capital Riyadh, Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said: ''Undoubtedly, the sore that festers in the Middle East, that taints every aspect of life in the Middle East, is the continuing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.''

``The terrorists want the injustice to be perpetrated so they have something with which to propagandize about their activity,'' al-Faisal said.

He said that President Bush's speech to the United Nations Nov. 10 and one on Monday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who reiterated the United States' commitment to a truce-to-talks plan drawn up by an international committee led by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, were welcome signs of America's assurance to Middle East peace.

On Monday, Powell, promised the United States would play an ''active leadership role'' and said he was sending envoy William Burns back to the region to try to step up peace moves after nearly 14 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence.

Powell added that retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, who used to command U.S. forces in the region, would also go to the Middle East and work on details of a cease-fire with Israel and the Palestinians.

``We believe this is the beginning of putting back the peace process on its rails,'' al-Faisal told The New York Times. ``And we hope that the dynamic that was achieved by these statements will propel us toward a speedy negotiation, not only on the Palestinian issue but also on the Syrian and Lebanese track, because there is a very clear position taken by the Arab countries
that they want to achieve peace.''

It was Saudi Arabia's first public reaction to the new American initiative. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres on Monday hailed Powell's speech, saying it was ``positive and full of goodwill but most of the work is still before us.''

-- posted by BPyles

Top 431. Nov 23, 2001 12:40 PM

» BPyles - Muslims belated reactions

About time Muslim world woke up and saw what the rest of the world already knows. A quote ***"if world Zionism spent billions of dollars to tarnish the image of Islam, it will not accomplish what the terrorists have done with their actions and words." This from Muslims, no less.

Jen, haven't you posted the cartoon they mention?

Bin Laden Now a Target in Arab Media
Criticism Emerges as Scholars Emphasize Distance From 'Distortion of Religion'

By Nora Boustany
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, November 23, 2001; Page A31

A cartoon this week showed fugitive Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden inside a dark cave "somewhere in Afghanistan," using a flute to charm a mushroom cloud out of a basket, as a serpent recoiled in horror. The cartoon represented one of the first alarms in the official media of Saudi Arabia and Egypt about the fervid support bin Laden attracts.

The cartoon, by Lebanese Mahmoud Kahil in the English-language Saudi daily Arab News, and an opinion piece in Egypt's semi-official Al Ahram yesterday, mark a belated reaction to the threat presented by Islamic extremists and an effort by Islamic scholars to set the record straight on the distance between their religion and terrorism.

The Al Ahram article, by Nabil Luka Bibawi, a professor of criminal law, cited extensive passages from the Koran preaching religious tolerance and prohibiting attacks against innocent non-Muslims, calling them attacks against the prophet Muhammad and God.

"Terrorists don't know the methods of rational, calm debate . . . terrorists impose darkness on the climate of the intellect because they try to force their backward ideas on public opinion under the veil of religious correctness," Bibawi wrote. "They construe religious thought to suit their political objectives to reach power." He accused such extremists of "disfiguring religious tolerance with insane acts.

"There can be no worse distortion of religion than that. If world Zionism spent billions of dollars to tarnish the image of Islam, it will not accomplish what the terrorists have done with their actions and words."

In a series of editorials in the Arab press and even on the occasional talk show on the Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite television
network, there has been a clear effort to discredit bin Laden in religious terms and shed light on his criminal bent, political aspirations and pretensions of piety. The delicate and narrow Islamic dictates on who has the right to issue a fatwa, or religious ruling, are being laid bare to viewers and readers, indicating bin Laden and his associates lack the theological authority they claim.

"While Osama bin Laden and his followers claim to have lofty ideals, they have forgotten that it is their leader's own words which now point the way to damnation," wrote Jamal Khashoggi, the deputy editor of Arab News, in an undated online commentary offering the Saudi perspective on the war against terror. Referring to bin Laden's 1998 fatwa, sanctioning the killing of U.S. and British citizens and military personnel because of their support for Israel, Khashoggi pointed out: "There is no respected Islamic scholar here in Saudi Arabia or anywhere else in the Muslim world who would support such a fatwa. . . . With bin Laden's religious upbringing, he should know that only the most knowledgeable Islamic scholars have the right to issue fatwas.

"It seems that bin Laden has become a revolutionary in a world of his own imagination. He would not hesitate to break any taboo. How did he come to create this fantasyland of terror?"

This initial chorus, however, does not mean that the scrutiny of U.S. actions is waning. With Taliban fighters and their Arab, Pakistani and Chechen sympathizers besieged by the Northern Alliance in Kunduz, some columnists cautioned against what they called a "green light" from the United States to kill so-called Afghan Arabs. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's comments that he would prefer bin Laden and his followers to be killed rather than captured received top billing in front-page news stories and commentaries yesterday.

Abdel Wahab Badrakhan, a columnist in the Saudi-owned, London-based Al Hayat newspaper, wrote that the Northern Alliance could not claim -- as the Americans do -- that their war is not against Arabs or Muslims. "This is the filthy dramatic end to the jihad story for the sake of liberating Afghanistan," he wrote, noting that the alliance was no different from the Taliban militia in its cruelty and lack of respect for prisoners of war.

Badrakhan insinuated that the alliance has been "encouraged and incited by the Americans" to deal with the Arabs, Pakistanis and others in Afghanistan. The conduct of the alliance cannot be understood as the trespasses of individuals, but as the outcome
of clear instructions from its commanders, he added. "No one ever had any illusions that any war could be moral. Neither were the attacks against New York and Washington moral, nor is the response to these attacks supposed to be moral," the columnist
said.

The alliance has forgotten how such "shameful" targeting of Arabs and Muslims is going to enrage entire populations and governments that have offered a lot in the past to Afghanistan, and Rumsfeld has forgotten that his president is saying the aim
behind the war is to bring the terrorists to justice, Badrakhan said.

-- posted by BPyles

Top 432. Nov 23, 2001 2:50 PM

» JenL_2 - Re: Muslims belated reactions

In response to message posted by BPyles:

Jen, haven't you posted the cartoon they mention?

Betty - Nope - but just found it at arabnews.com:

http://www.arabnews.com

.....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Content...

Top 433. Nov 23, 2001 6:41 PM

» Steven_Russell - NA collects al Qaeda terror docs in Kabul

These documents are in Arabic, from 20 al Qaeda safe houses in Kabul.

Nov. 22, 2001. 02:01 AM

Alliance seizes Al Qaeda evidence

Kevin Donovan
IN AFGHANISTAN

KABUL, Afghanistan - Documents from more than 20 Kabul safe houses controlled by Osama bid Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist group have been seized by Northern Alliance forces, a senior Alliance minister says.

So far, they have found no links to the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington, but the Alliance says it will need help to decipher the documents written in Arabic. However most Arab-speaking people left the city last week when the Taliban fled.

"We have collected all the documents from 20 or more houses and we are going to study them," said Younus Qanouni, the Alliance's interior minister.

He's also the man the Alliance, also known as the United Front, chose to lead their mission to Germany next week and discuss the future of Afghanistan with the United Nations.

"Nothing we have found links bin Laden to Sept. 11," Qanouni said, but added the Alliance lacks the expertise to analyze the documents thoroughly.

"We realize, though, that we need sophisticated techniques to properly study them," he said, adding the Alliance will be looking outside Afghanistan for help.

The Alliance will determine the importance of the information and, if they decide it is related to the attacks, "we will give delivery of the documents to the Americans."

The documents include letters between Al Qaeda members, instructions on how to distribute biological weapons, and methods for blowing up skyscrapers and other objects.

Many of the houses are located on a relatively posh Kabul street, very close to the Saudi Arabian embassy. Bin Laden is a Saudi Arabian national, but was expelled from that country in 1996.

Despite assurances that Qanouni forces have carefully gone through the houses in question, it was possible to find more documents in the houses as recently as yesterday.

One house contained a series of charts showing the precise places to plant explosive charges on airplanes, submarines and bridges. Translated from Arabic, the charts revealed they are part of classroom-type presentation on a series of ways to destroy an object. For example, a chart depicting the destruction of a submarine is labelled as No. 31 in a series.

Students are instructed to remember there are many ways to blow up something.

Testimony earlier this year from the American embassy bombing trials shows the people involved in the two 1998 attacks in Africa received their explosives training at Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.

The Kabul houses are still unguarded. Local people and foreign visitors can walk in and out, taking with them what they want.

Qanouni said the Taliban and Al Qaeda probably took many crucial documents with them when they fled southwest to Kandahar.

Not all of them escaped. Alliance forces in Kabul have arrested about 200 foreigners -Pakistani, Saudi Arabian and others - the minister said. They are being held in a prison in the city and no decision had been made on what to do with them.

Recently, The Star visited a large complex in Kabul that used to be a girls' school, until the Taliban captured the city in 1996. The complex was then turned into a staging ground for both Taliban soldiers and members of Al Qaeda.

The senior Alliance officer now in charge of the compound said bid Laden had visited it several times. He also said it served as a barracks for about 4,000 fighters from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, who came to train with Al Qaeda.

The many buildings in the complex appear to have been swept clean. All except the library, which is jam-packed with books and documents, falling off tables and spilling off shelves.

Some of them are written in Arabic and look fairly recent; others are old books from the girls' school.

-- posted by Steven_Russell