Yep. That's what the headline sez. No good deed goes unpunished...
A confidential U.N. memorandum found evidence to justify a "full-fledged criminal investigation" into the deaths in Afghanistan of hundreds of Taliban prisoners held by the U.S.-backed northern alliance. Citing the memo, Newsweek said U.N. investigators based their finding on an investigation of a mass grave that "contains bodies of Taliban POWs who died of suffocation" while being transferred from Kunduz to a prison at Shibergan after Taliban resistance in northern Afghanistan collapsed in November. I can recall the incident. I remember feeling apathetic about it at the time, too...
The magazine said the memo referred to "political sensitivity" and recommended a halt to "all activities relevant to this case" until a decision was made on whether to push for a criminal trial, truth commission or other alternatives. Yes, we must come up with some sort of PC moves to assert the primacy of the UN and the hand-wringing crowd. The Talibs, keep in mind, were in the habit of executing their own along with any prisoners or anybody standing around, but don't worry about that. They were also in the habit of blowing themselves up by the shipping container-load, too. But that's not important. Work it right, and you can get some smear on the Merkins. That's what's important...
Asked Sunday on ABC's "This Week" whether the Bush administration was prepared to support a U.N. investigation into the deaths, White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett said: "It's important that we not rush to judgment, that we look at the facts. And as we look at those facts, the proper course for an investigation or inquiry will be made at a later date." That's bureaucratese for "somebody's gonna sling some mud at us and there's not much we can do about it, so to hell with it."
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
08/19/2002 11:44 am ||
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Twenty-one North Koreans, believed to all be members of three families, arrived at a port in South Korea Monday after fleeing their hunger-stricken communist homeland. "Thank you for the warm welcome," said 70-year-old Soon Jong Sik, who was representing the group. "We prepared for this for a long time. I am from South Korea and my lifetime dream was to see my hometown again before I die." The 11 adults and 10 children were found Sunday evening in South Korean waters aboard a 20-ton fishing boat off the west coast of the divided Korean peninsula. The North Koreans said they left before dawn on Saturday from a small fishing village near Shinuiju, a North Korean city near the border with China, said Lt. Kim Gyung-su of the maritime police in Incheon. Why would they want to leave? They've got beer, culture, and their Dear Leader has the adulation of millions...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
08/19/2002 12:04 pm ||
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A Russian military helicopter loaded with troops crashed in Chechnya on Monday, killing at least 74 people. The Mi-26 helicopter went down near the Russian military headquarters at Khankala, near the Chechen capital Grozny. Interfax and ITAR-Tass news agencies reported that at least 80 soldiers were killed. Interfax later adjusted its toll to 74, saying 106 servicemen were aboard the helicopter and 32 survived. Cheeze...!
The head of the Defense Ministry press office, Nikolai Deryabin, told ORT state television that the pilot had requested permission to perform an emergency landing because an engine was on fire. He said 13 or 14 servicemen were hospitalized. The military headquarters later said that fire and smoke from the crash hampered efforts to determine the full number of casualties. Interfax said the helicopter was shot down by rebels. The Russers had better come up with better commanders in Chechnya than they have. I hope they still have a few Lebeds left. They were still running a draftee army, last time I looked, and draftees are historically a poor way to deal with guerrillas. They're trying to use MVD troops and regular line troops, when they should be using SpetsNaz and airborne troops â which are (used to be) the cream of their crop. If they don't wipe out the nasties in Chechnya root and branch it's going to be a trouble spot for the next fifty or a hundred years.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
08/19/2002 11:04 am ||
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104 servicemen and crew in a single helicopter? Talk about being a sardine. That sucker must be the size of a DC-9.
Regards,
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/19/2002 12:24 Comments ||
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Actually thermal imaging technology would help the Russians discover troop concentrations. If Bush would dump Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as so-called "allies", in favor of Russia and India, then shared technology and manpower would yield a cost-effective victory over the terrorists. No more oil-patch Presidents, please!
Posted by: Allah the Dog Faced God ||
08/19/2002 18:21 Comments ||
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In response to Mr. White. I saw a MI-26 in Somalia and can best describe it as a C-130 with rotor blades.
#4
Unless things have changed considerably since I knew something about the subject, the Russian army is made up of conscripts snagged for two years, most of them 18-year-olds. They rotate new kids in every six months. Senior NCOs are professionals but are underpaid and under-rated, and junior NCOs are bumped up from the draftee ranks. Officers seemed to split between very good and very bad - a large number of time servers and a smaller number of very competent professionals. I believe that was a function of the Soviet system. Line units performance in Afghanistan fighting the same kind of war was pretty much indifferent; it was my impression that the airborne troops were the actual fighting edge. Their technology wasn't all that great, but the real problem lay with the bloated staff structure and the fact that the kids in the line units weren't adequately trained and motivated.
That's the same weakness most draftee armies have. The Russers get around that, somewhat, by picking the best of the draftees for the airborne units, strategic rocket forces, and other positions that call for above-average smarts. That leaves the average for the artillery and tank corps, and the below average for the infantry. That doesn't make for good infantry. Professional armies get around that by being selective - they don't take the below-average in the first place.
I agree that the Russians and Indians are probably the natural American allies in the 21st century, assuming both countries can avoid falling apart for different reasons. I think it's something that'll grow naturally - keep in mind that 10 years ago the Russians and we were still eying each other suspiciously and occasionally still showing our fangs. And the Indos were busy being "neutrals" while implementing some gawd-awful version of socialism, and didn't really like us at all.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2002 20:54 Comments ||
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An Islamic court in northern Nigeria ruled Monday that a woman must face death by stoning according to Muslim law for having a child outside marriage. The decision looks set to re-ignite international outrage against Nigeria and could stoke sectarian tensions in the country's largely barbaric Islamic north. The judge said the stoning would not be carried out until Amina Lawal Kurami, 31, had weaned her eight-month-old daughter Wasila, which may not be for another two years. His heart's just chock full of mercy, isn't it?
Holding the baby in her arms, Kurami remained calm as the verdict was announced and was quickly whisked away by her lawyers who said they would appeal against the decision. There's a good argument in favor of breast feeding...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
08/19/2002 11:04 am ||
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Thousands of missiles seized by federal agents from a counter-terrorism school in New Mexico were licensed and had been obtained legally, an official of the school said on Monday. David Hudak — president of HEAT, or High Energy Access Tools, an antiterrorism and police-training services company — was arrested last week on federal explosives and immigration charges. Toldja it's a non-story...
Agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms said they found 49 crates of armor-piercing missiles at the school, which had clients from Yemen and the United Arab Emirates, and believe there are about another 4,000 pounds of munitions on the premises. Frank Fish, HEAT's director of security, said Hudak's visa had expired but insisted his boss had come by the weapons legally. "The weapons that he had are licensed. We do have the paperwork for that," Fish said on CBS's "The Early Show." "I'm sure after the ATF have finished their look, they'll see that everything is in order." The weapons had come through customs legally from Canada and were on HEAT's inventory, which had been inspected by the ATF, Fish said. It's so much easier to catch the law-abiding than the crooks, ain't it?
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
08/19/2002 11:04 am ||
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*raises hand* Um... what, pray tell, was he going to do with those 49 crates plus 4000 lbs. of munition? 'Cause the 4th of July was last month...
And even if everything is legal, that doesn't exactly calm my fears; a bunch of the 9-11 terrorists were in here legally as well.
Posted by: Just John ||
08/19/2002 17:23 Comments ||
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Hell BATF just hates rockets of any kind. Browse the rocket society just for fun.
Hmmmmm.... Come to think of it RantBurg needs a Prefect.
#3
Hudak's visa expired and he had 49 crates of rockets training Yemenis and UAE arabs...nothing to see here, move along..
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/18/2004 17:27 Comments ||
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ATF = Assclowns Trampling Freedom. I suggest they concentrate on the booze and tabaco they have repeatedly shown they are incapable of enforcing firearms laws with out running rough shod over the bill of rights and without killing inocent people. You are less likley to be killed by a terrorist than you are by an ATF agent. This is also very old news. 8/19/2002 This guy did nothing wrong period.
From the Washington Times... Sorry for the size of this post...
The National Education Association is suggesting to teachers that they be careful on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks not to "suggest any group is responsible" for the terrorist hijackings that killed more than 3,000 people. You mean al-Qaeda didn't do it? Who did? Esquimeaux? Samoans? Did the Japanese come back?
Suggested lesson plans compiled by the NEA recommend that teachers "address the issue of blame factually," noting: "Blaming is especially difficult in terrorist situations because someone is at fault. In this country, we still believe that all people are innocent until solid, reliable evidence from our legal authorities proves otherwise." It would seem that blaming would be especially easy, since someone is at fault, unless you don't want to offend anyone by blaming them. Don't we have a vid with Binny bragging about it? And didn't Sully 'fess up? Remember? "Let America be prepared to fasten its seat belt because, thanks to God, we are going to surprise it in a place where it is not expecting." It took less than two days to figure whodunnit last September. Or has the NEA uncovered new evidence to the contrary?
But another of the suggested NEA lesson plans â compiled together under the title "Remember September 11" and appearing on the teachers union health information network Web site â takes a decidedly blame-America approach, urging educators to "discuss historical instances of American intolerance," so that the American public avoids "repeating terrible mistakes." Such terrible mistakes as kissing the wife and kiddies goodbye, going to work in the morning, having a bagel, and then being incinerated? That was the tack the less imaginative or cautious academic anti-Americans took in the immediate wake of the attack. In the face of normal people snarling at them, they retreated to their holes, waited for things to blow over, and then cautiously re-emerged. Except for an occasional fisking by bloggers they've since resumed going about their business, the while whining about how oppressed they were when people pointed out how foolish they were.
"Internment of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor and the backlash against Arab Americans during the Gulf War are obvious examples," the plan says. "Teachers can do lessons in class, but parents can also discuss the consequences of these events and encourage their children to suggest better choices that Americans can make this time." What was that sound? Socrates turning over in his grave? Or maybe Pythagoras. I dunno. It was one of those logic-loving Greeks. No matter; they're part of the Western tradition, so we don't need to worry about them anymore in a post-modernist world. However, we might modernistically, or maybe pre-modernistically, point out that there is no internment of Muslim-Americans. None. A bunch of detentions, most of them for immigration violations, but there aren't any internment camps. No one's being rounded up, and the Feds are being quite stoopid in their reluctance to "profile" anyone. The "backlash against Arab Americans during the Gulf War" was considerably less noticeable than the backlash against Italians and Germans during the Second World War. And if we have to depend on children to make "better choices" for the nation then we're in biiiiiig trouble, aren't we? That means all the grownups, the ones with the education, experience, world-view, and fully formed brains, have been killed, captured, or taken over by pods from outer space...
The NEA Web site list includes more than 100 lesson plans teachers will be able to use to help elementary, middle and high school students integrate how they might remember the day's events through subjects such as art, drama and math. The Web site (www.neahin.org) is scheduled to go live Aug. 26. I can hardly wait to see it. Math? How're they gonna work it into math lessons? I'll bet it's not rendering 15/19ths as a decimal, or subtracting 3000 from 280 million...
"America is very much together in terms of remembering September 11," said Jerald Newberry, executive director of the union's Health Information Network. "Americans see their schools as the place that will help their children make sense of these horrific events and move forward as better people." We'll be better people when all the members of al-Qaeda are dead or incarcerated for extended terms, and Jerald Newberry a.) learns how to spell "Gerald", and b.) has a nice job in the food service industry, with free paper hats and uniforms.
However, critics said some of the suggestions included in the lesson plans aimed at junior and senior high school students can be seen as an affront to Western civilization. Damn those westerners, picking on the unoffending turban-and-automatic-weapons set. It's no wonder they cut people's heads off and stone their women. It's all our fault because we, uh... we do things.
The suggestions and lesson plans were developed by Brian Lippincott, affiliated with the Graduate School of Professional Psychology at the John F. Kennedy University in California. Critics argue the proposed lesson plans are a form of "cultural Marxism," in that the lessons defend all other cultures except Western civilization. What's really, really surprising is how unsurprised I am. The clap-trap machine just never seems to shut down, and it never, ever, learns anything. Kaus said it would all be blown over by last November; he was a few months off, but he was right. These people count on the nation having a short attention span, and usually they're right. It'd almost be worthwhile to lose the war to watch some jerk in a turban lop off Brian Lippincott's head â but since I'd be standing in line waiting my turn ("Please form a line so you can be executed in an orderly manner...") I guess I'll pass on that...
"A lot of what's stated in these lesson plans are lies," said William S. Lind, director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation, a conservative policy think tank. "None of what is mentioned in these plans are facts. It's an ultimate sin to now defend Western culture. It does not matter today whether a student learns any facts or any skills. What matters now is the attitude they come away with when they graduate school." I sure hope that statement's just polemic, but I suspect it's not. We spend so much time striving for "balance" that we never bother looking for "truth" or "justice." And we can just forget about The American Way; that's irrelevant because... because... um... because they say it is.
The critics also have trouble with schools teaching about Islam, specifically when teachers describe it as a "peaceful religion." Instead, they say, schools should warn children that the root of the problem lies in Islamic teaching. Ummm... Maybe we could demand a factual presentation of Islam: an aggressive religion at birth, that conquered much of the civilized world and and brought now life to it, then gradually declined into the long night backwardness. Islam has multiple branchs, including Sufism, which is on the decline, and wahhabism, which is growing, propelled by Soddy money and preachers. Wahhabism, rooted in Soddy Arabia, and the allied Deobandi school in Pakistan, intends to conquer the entire world, make all the girlies wear ninja outfits, and make men wear turbans and carry automatic weapons in the service of a divinely-ordained Khalif. Democracy is an invention of the Jews and it'll be tossed onto the ash heap of history. I don't imagine that's what the NEA intends to teach the kiddies about Islam, though. Nope. Nope. It wouldn't be "balanced," would it?
"There is no such thing as peaceful Islam," Mr. Lind said. "It says that followers should make war on those who believe that Christ is the Messiah." Actually there are sects of Islam that are perfectly peaceful and even get along with their neighbors. The wahhabis are killing them, too...
Phyllis Schlafly, president of the conservative Eagle Forum, said schools should stick to teaching more important subjects such as math, English and science. "There is nothing that schools can add to what happened on September 11, that the children haven't already seen in the media," Mrs. Schlafly said. "They should stay off of it and teach what's true. They should leave it alone." I disagree with that statement. 9-11 is one of the pivotal events of our history, unless we allow ourselves to forget about it. It should be taught as history and it should be presented as a part of our national culture. The passage of time blunts the shock and rage we felt almost a year ago. Eventually it'll be as memorable as the Lusitania, the Maine, the Alamo, and the Siege of Vienna. It's something we must revisit regularly, at least until the war's over. The NEA effort appears to be directed toward not revisiting it, toward letting it recede and become something that happened ever so long ago, when we were so much younger than we are now...
Mr. Newberry said the suggested list was compiled by about 200 teachers from across the country after the NEA received hundreds of calls from parents shortly after September 11 asking the schools to help their children understand what happened. Mr. Newberry said that the site will feature speeches that will be read in New York City, including the "Gettysburg Address," the Declaration of Independence, Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" speech and Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. How 'bout a few others? Patrick Henry? "Give me liberty or give me death!" Nathan Hale? "I regret that I have but one life to give for my country!" Thomas Paine? "These are the times that try men's souls..." How about the Constitution? "We the people of the United States, in order to ... provide for the common defense..." â remember that part, NEA? Who was it that actually said "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute." Was it really Jefferson? Or a nameless blogger pamphleteer?
It also will include a look at using the Pledge of Allegiance; however, no specifics were announced. Oh, good Lord, no! Maybe the kiddies can hum it, so they don't have to say the words and that way no one will be offended...
"Our goal is to capture from the patriotism point of view some of the history of the United States where outstanding leaders have spoken to the issues of patriotism and freedom," Mr. Newberry said. "I think it would be difficult to find an American who doesn't agree with remembering September 11. I think these critics are in the minority." Just as long as it's reduced to a flavorless blend of pablum and treacle, eh? The argument is over who's taking custody of the remembering...
Muslim groups applauded the NEA's efforts, saying the critics' statements are centered around "an anti-Muslim phobia." Well, there's a really good argument against it. The Muslim groups must be taking the gas pipe as more and more people learn more and more about Islam, especially without their supervision...
"The NEA's [lesson plans] provides teachers with a well-balanced, wide range of resources teachers can use to help teach students how to appreciate diversity," said Hodan Hassan, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based Council on American Islamic Relations. "You're only enriching the learning process. The critics' viewpoints will only harm The Children™." If CAIR is for it, I'm against it.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
08/19/2002 09:10 pm ||
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Who was it that actually said "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute." Was it really Jefferson?
Uh, Madison I think. And in an almost exact parallel: Europe paying blackmail to some Mohammedan states, the brand-new US going along for about a generation, then going in an kicking some...
Anyway, "the Shores of Tripoli" of the Marine Corps is a reference to the same thing, action against the "Barbary Coast Pirates".
#2
The Byzantine Empire went for a few hundred years paying "bribes" to various Mohammedan barbarians to keep them from the gates. At the same time they were paying the bribes, their empire was shrinking until eventually all that was left was Byzantium itself, which fell in 1492.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/21/2002 9:30 Comments ||
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Abu Nidal, the Palestinian renegade whose name became a byword for international terrorism, was found dead in his Baghdad apartment with multiple gunshot wounds. Abu Nidal's body was found three days ago, said two senior Palestinian officials in Ramallah. They said the reports they received from Baghdad suggested Abu Nidal had committed suicide but did not explain how that was possible when there was more than one bullet wound. Maybe he wanted to make sure he was dead all the way through?
But Abu Nidal could also have been assassinated, perhaps by one of his own men in the internal feuds for which his organization is known - or perhaps by an Iraqi government fearful he knew too much about its operations. Multiple gunshot wounds might lead one to that conclusion, mightn't they? Especially the ones in the back...
Aby Nidal's presence in Baghdad has fueled the U.S. labeling of Iraq as a state sponsor of terrorism. Not that we needed much help...
The United States once branded Abu Nidal's splinter group, the Fatah Revolutionary Council, the world's most dangerous terrorist organization. It was blamed for killing 300 people and wounding 650 in 20 countries since 1973, though U.S. officials say its activities had largely stopped in recent years. Thanks to Frank G. for the headzup!
I'll be outside ululating and handing out candy to the kiddies for the next few hours. Let me know when al-Jazeera arrives to transmit me to the Arab world...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
08/19/2002 11:04 am ||
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Potrait of a has-been terrorist. Stuck in Baghdad, trying to impress the guys down at the coffee shop, "Hey, I was a big deal! Really! I killed hundreds of people! The world trembled at the sound of my name! LISTEN TO ME! I WAS SOMEBODY!!! Uhm, what's with the gun?"
Posted by: Patrick Phillips ||
08/19/2002 16:11 Comments ||
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I hate to play the skeptical dude here but, How do we know he's dead? do we have a body, DNA, pictures? or is this one more attempt by "that man" to deflect the oncoming rush. Perhaps if Saddam offers to pay to have the USS Stark rebuilt, I might back off. ( might be nice to have Saddams head hanging off the jack of the USS Stark on its way back into port after its all over)
I did enjoy AP reporting today that 'it might be suicide" when its also reported that he died of multiple gunshots, Do they read their copy before broadcast? oh I forgot, they are "journalists".
Posted by: Frank Martin ||
08/19/2002 21:23 Comments ||
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The head of Palestinian security pledged Monday to enforce calm in Palestinian areas from which Israeli troops are to withdraw under a new agreement that brings the first sign of progress in months. But Islamic militant groups said they would continue anti-Israeli attacks. Oh, I am so surprised...
Under the deal, reached by Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Palestinian Interior Minister Abdel Razak Yehiyeh, Israel was to pull its troops out of the West Bank town of Bethlehem and parts of Gaza, to be replaced by Palestinian security. Which is inept, brutal and ineffective, even when not openly collaborating with the Bad Guys...
The agreement, announced Sunday night after a Tel Aviv meeting, was the first directly negotiated by Palestinians and Israelis — without U.S. or other referees — since the September 2000 start of the intefadeh. Yehiyeh told The Associated Press on Monday that the Bethlehem withdrawal would start "in the coming few hours" and be completed in one operation, while the Gaza withdrawal would happen in stages. In the past, Israeli troops have waited until nightfall before moving, and they were expected to follow that practice in this case. "From our side, we will take all the necessary procedures to achieve internal security and public security in those areas," Yehiyeh said. Yehiyeh seems like a he's showing atypical Paleostinian good faith. I'd doubt that he has the control over the Paleocoppers to actually make them an effective force. Even if he does, he's going to have to control Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which could end up leading to civil war.
Not that there's anything wrong with that...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
08/19/2002 11:04 am ||
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Hamas immediately rejected the 'Gaza First' plan and vowed to keep fighting Israeli occupation. "Hamas and the Palestinian people reject any agreement which aims at destroying our resistance and ending the intifada, which is what this agreement is aimed at," Gaza-based Hamas spokesman Ismail Haniya told AFP. Didn't take a 3-digit IQ to predict this, did it?
"This will only give security and quiet to the Zionists and the occupation, not to our people," Haniya said. "We are not able to accept partial quiet in Gaza when all the cities, towns and refugee camps in the West Bank are under Israeli aggression and siege." "Half a loaf won't do us. Not even a whole loaf. We want the whole bakery, and we want the proprietor killed..."
Asked whether he feared the Gaza First plan would provoke a crackdown on Hamas activists by Palestinian security forces, Haniya answered only that Hamas would never allow Palestinian national unity to be broken. "We will not allow (this agreement to cause) internal clashes because we have to have Palestinian national unity," he said. "And we'll kill anybody who disagrees..."
Hania also slammed the agreement as a cynical "first step" to secure some kind of calm before an expected US attack on Iraq. "I am sure that the Israeli Zionists will not respect any agreement but this agreement is the first step before a strike on Iraq," he said. That's going to come whether Hamas is busy killing people or not...
Meanwhile, Islamic Jihad has vowed to step up attacks on Israeli targets to thwart the deal. "The Palestinian people's answer will be to escalate the resistance to foil (Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin) Ben Eliezer's plan," said Khalid El-Batsh, a Gaza Strip leader for the Islamic Jihad. "We in Islamic Jihad reject this agreement because it will consecrate the Israeli occupation of our land," he told AFP. "This accord aims to destroy the intifada." From his point of view, that's a bad thing...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
08/19/2002 12:36 pm ||
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The Indonesian government today told separatist rebels in Aceh province to accept a compromise deal on autonomy by December, or face a government offensive. Indonesia's chief security minister struck an unexpectedly conciliatory tone, saying the government hoped the rebels of the Free Aceh Movement would agree to discuss an offer of autonomy by the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which ends this year on December 7. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said: "If by then they have not shown a positive attitude ... and conditions become uncertain and dangerous, the government will take stern action, including intensifying military operations, in order to maintain Indonesia's sovereignty and integrity." Yup. They're gonna get it...
The offer, which the rebels have so far rejected, includes separatist control over part of the revenues from the region's oil and gas resources. The insurgents say that the central government in Jakarta siphons off most of the revenues from the province's oil and natural gas reserves, while most Acehnese remain desperately poor. So the center offers to quit taking the entire rakeoff for itself, and to cut in the locals, as long as they're armed and dangerous...
The government announcement came as a surprise to many observers, as authorities had been hinting for weeks that they would adopt a harsher policy against the insurgents. Plans included sending in additional troops and imposing a state of emergency in the province of 4 million people.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
08/19/2002 05:50 pm ||
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A cache of videotapes that CNN acquired in Afghanistan shows al-Qaida terror training, bomb-making and poison gas experiments in which dogs die agonizing deaths. The tapes that began airing Sunday also show al-Qaida operatives practicing ambushes and kidnapping. Most of the tapes appear to be made before Sept. 11, although some show television coverage of the attacks in New York and Washington. CNN said its correspondent, Nic Robertson, was given access to more than 250 tapes through a longtime source, and he drove 17 hours from Kabul to a remote part of Afghanistan to first see them. Robertson took about 60 of the tapes out of the country. CNN did not pay for the tapes, he said. Why not? Weren't they worth it? It's irrelevant whether they did or not...
Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the White House's Office of Homeland Security, said the tapes "are consistent with our previous information that (al-Qaida leaders) would use chemical weapons if they're able to obtain them." He said there still was no credible information that the group had been successful in its effort to obtain weapons of mass destruction. Except on a small scale, for training purposes...
"This is just further evidence of why it's necessary to continue to prosecute this war on terrorism — both overseas and here at home," Johndroe said. The people who need reminding aren't the people who'll be watching the tapes...
CNN plans to reveal the tapes' contents through several reports this week. On Sunday, CNN showed repeated images of a white dog locked in a cloudy, glass box. In the tapes shown Monday, a man drops something on the floor and a liquid spills across the floor. A vapor begins rising. The dog begins licking its chops, with CNN quoting experts saying increased saliva is one of the first signs of poisoning. The dog appears to lose control of its hindquarters, and is eventually seen lying on its back, moaning. In all, the tapes show the deaths of three dogs, CNN said. Pretty graphic. And pretty good evidence of the toys al-Qaeda plays with...
CNN prefaced the tapes with a warning that they were disturbing. "It's not recommended for children," Paula Zahn said. "Some adults might not want to watch as well." Y'might say that, Paula. Some other adults might want to kill this people that made the vids, though.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
08/19/2002 11:04 am ||
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Some of the estimated 60,000 jihadis who were trained in production of poison gas, could be the Muslims next door. What they did to that dog, they would do to you, inshallah.
Posted by: Allah the Dog Faced God ||
08/19/2002 18:26 Comments ||
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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.
