Sky News
Australia is sending 1550 troops and an array of military hardware to Afghanistan, where they are expected to be fighting "very soon". Australian Prime Minister John Howard said he had responded to phone call from George W Bush by offering the soldiers - including elite Special Air Service troops - as well as four fighter aircraft, three frigates and two refuelling aircraft. "Our forces will be overseas fighting in our name within a very short period of time," Mr Howard said.
Mr Howard announced the increased Australian military commitment in Melbourne on Wednesday in the countdown to a November 10 federal election. Australia's forces would be fully deployed by the middle of November. "It will not be an easy operation," he said. "The possibility of death, the possibility of casualties, is quite high."
Under its ANZUS military pact with Washington, Australia had already said it would send 150 SAS troops and two refuelling aircraft to join the US and British strikes on Afghanistan, while a frigate already in the Gulf would remain there. Under the new military commitment, Australia will send two more frigates, the four FA-18As, an amphibious command ship, the SAS, two PC3 long range maritime surveillance aircraft and two Boeing 707 refuelling aircraft.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/17/2001 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
IRNA
An Afghan official told IRNA Wednesday that another 700 Taliban forces defected and surrendered themselves to the United Islamic Front (UIF) forces in Mazar-i-Sharif, in the mountainous northern parts of Afghanistan. Deputy head of Iran's Zahedan Bureau of the UIF, Eshaq Danesh, said that the newly defected Taliban forces surrendered themselves to the North Coalition forces situated near Mazar-i-Sharif on Tuesday, October 16. Danesh added that the North Alliance forces are currently engaged in a full scale war with the remainder of the Taliban forces some two kilometers to the south of Mazar Sharif.
He also announced that to resist against an upcoming U.S. land invasion, the Taliban forces have impressed some three thousand of the indigenous inhabitants of the Kandahar, Ghazni, and Hilmand provinces of Afghanistan and armed them with machine guns.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/17/2001 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
SF Chronicle
On a "close" vote of its City Council, Berkeley last night became the first city in the nation to call for a halt to the U.S.-led bombing of Afghanistan. The bitterly fought decision took place in front of a bank of TV cameras and an emotion-filled, packed council chamber, where some people waved American flags and others held "Stop the War" signs. Dumbocracy in action...
The 5-to-4 vote followed what Mayor Shirley Dean termed "serious death threats" among the thousands of e-mails and phone calls that have poured into the city. "Drop dead" is not a death threat. It's a sentiment.
Councilwoman Dona Spring, who sponsored the move, said she wanted to spare innocent Afghan civilians. She also said in an interview that the military campaign that began Oct. 7 "will breed more terrorism and create more instability in the Middle East (and) particularly Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons." Pakistan is not in the Middle East. It has approximately 24 nuclear weapons. Sparing innocent Afghan civilians allows them to live long enough for the Taliban to kill them for violation of the finer points of religion.
Her resolution said the United States should "work with international organizations" in "bringing to justice all of those complicit in last month's violent attack." When was the last time the International Cops arrived and carted off a mass murdering terror mastermind? Show us how it works. Have them pick up Abu Nidal.
On a companion resolution by Spring, six council members voted to "condemn the mass murder of thousands of people on Sept. 11" in the suicide plane attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. That was very pious of them. The rest of us are as geniuinely touched by their sincerity as the Council is affected by the mass murder of thousands of our fellow citizens.
The anti-bombing vote split on partisan lines. The council's five-member leftist majority voted for it; its four centrist members bravely abstained. A "centrist" in Berkeley is a tiresomely leftist loon anywhere else.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/17/2001 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
By MAUREEN DOWD
I am typing this wearing long black leather gloves.
It's not so easy to type wearing leather gloves. But I had to stop wearing the latex gloves I got at the drugstore on Monday. They made me feel so forensic.
Amid the plague panic, with what appears to be a terrifyingly sophisticated anthrax strain sent to Tom Daschle; with Senate staffers getting nose swabs as their building's ventilation system was checked for spores; with news organizations getting Cipro and security guards; with The New York Post featuring a cover of Abraham Lincoln seated in his Memorial wearing a gas mask â I felt the need for a more stylish sort of sterility.
Osama bin Laden had already made women in New York and Washington rethink wearing high heels and skirts to the office, in case they have to clamber through wreckage. Now anthrax terrorism is forcing us to wear rubber gloves and surgical masks if we want to open our mail. Dowd once again proves herself one of the great comediennes of our time. Who, other than Lucille Ball, could have conceived the picture she paints with a few deft strokes? Who else could have so subtly nudged us into comparisons of the sniveling Flower of Liberalism she has created with the heroism of Barbara Olson?
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/17/2001 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
(AFP)
Israel suspended all contact with Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority Wednesday after the assassination of Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi, saying it would not resume ties until there was a complete halt to "terrorism," Israeli public radio said. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Wednesday that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat bore full responsibility for the killing of Zeevi, claimed by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/17/2001 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
USA Today
An Islamic radical who took flying lessons in Oklahoma and Minnesota exchanged several phone calls this year with some of the hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, federal sources say. FBI investigators recently learned of the phone calls, which represent the strongest link yet between Zacarias Moussaoui and the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, was arrested on immigration charges in Minnesota nearly a month before the hijackings.
Moussaoui attracted attention in Minnesota this summer by offering a flight school more than $8,000 in cash for lessons in how to handle a plane in mid-flight. He was not interested in learning how to take off or land. The new information about Moussaoui comes as the FBI-led worldwide probe into the attacks has focused on fewer than 100 people now in federal custody and another 133 wanted for questioning. Since Sept. 19, the FBI has dropped 284 names from a list of people wanted for questioning in the case. The New York Times reported Thursday that German authorities believe Moussaoui received $15,000 in money transfers from Germany in August, shortly before beginning an $8,300 flying course at a school in Eagan, Minn.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/17/2001 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
Chicago Tribune
In another indication that Pakistan's military regime is determined to crack down on Islamic extremists, its Supreme Court announced Tuesday night that it had sentenced 14 terrorists to death by hanging. Seventeen other men were sentenced to life imprisonment after their convictions on terrorism charges. All were among the 78 people arrested since Sept. 17 for sabotage and rioting. Musharraf, who often argues the best way to neutralize a snake is to cut off its head, made good on his promise to clamp down on extremists when state prosecutors charged Maulana Fazal-ur Rehman with sedition, kept him under house arrest and disconnected his telephone.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/17/2001 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
