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Blair in Pakistan
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Afghanistan
Blair in Pakistan
  • AP
    The Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan said British Prime Minister Tony Blair came here Friday "to encourage war" and that the Afghan leadership had nothing to say to him. Blair arrived Friday for a show of solidarity with Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. "Tony Blair has come to encourage war," Ambassador AbdulSalam Zaeef said. "We have no message for him. Had he come for negotiations and talks, then we would have liked to have said something."

    Zaeef praised Iran for refusing to allow the United States and its allies use of its airspace in any attack on Afghanistan. However, Zaeef would not condemn Pakistan for its stand. "We understand the problems of Pakistan but we have no comments to make," he said, referring to Musharraf's policy. Pakistan is the only country to recognize the Taliban as the legal government of Afghanistan.

    President Bush has threatened to target Taliban facilities in Afghanistan because the Islamic militia refuses to hand over bin Laden and his lieutenants. Bin Laden is the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington. "The issue is not Osama," Zaeef said. "The issue is Islam. Osama is a Muslim, he is a citizen of a Muslim country. We cannot hand him over to the United States. We are ready to try him before an Islamic court or under Islamic law. If we send him to the United States, there will be no justice." Zaeef said the current crisis was really a battle between Islam and America, and "we want other Muslims to join us if America attacks."

    "But we see no reason for war," he said, adding that "the problem should be solved through negotiations" involving the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

    Blair later flew to New Delhi on Friday, continuing his efforts to solidify backing for the campaign against bin Laden. He will meet Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on Saturday to discuss international cooperation to combat terrorism and regional developments, India's Foreign Affairs Ministry said.
    This article starring:
    ABDULSALAM ZAIFTaliban
    Atal Bihari Vajpayee
    Organization of the Islamic Conference
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:


    Talibs bomb Northern Alliance positions
  • The Independent
    In what may be the opening shots of the war in Afghanistan, a silver-coloured Taliban jet screeched through the sky and released two cluster bombs. Just missing some mud-brick houses, they exploded in a field, spraying hundreds of steel balls in all directions.

    The attack at noon yesterday by the MiG fighter-bomber on the opposition-held town of Charicar, in the front line 40 miles north of the Afghan capital Kabul, was a clear warning from the Taliban government to its enemies. It showed that it still has teeth and is prepared to use them. If the bombs, taken from old Soviet stockpiles going by Russian markings on the casing, had been released a few seconds later they would have landed in Charicar's packed street market and killed hundreds of people.

    As the MiG passed overhead, General Babajan, the commander of 2,000 Northern Alliance soldiers at Bagram airport, was in the wrecked control tower talking to a group of journalists. One end of the airport is held by his men and the other by the Taliban. Just after the bombs exploded, General Babajan rushed out on to a balcony on the top floor of the control tower and pointed to rising smoke at the foot of the mountains. He said in a surprised tone: "This hasn't happened before." Perhaps equally surprised were his anti-aircraft gunners, who had no time to fire at the jet.

    The Taliban have a small airforce, its planes inherited from the old Soviet-backed government. But its aircraft are mainly used for tactical air support for its ground troops and only occasionally against civilians. The jets have not been in action anywhere in the last four days.
    This article starring:
    General Babajan
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    Saudi diplo: Binny's in charge
  • AP
    A former Saudi diplomat to Afghanistan was quoted Friday as saying Osama bin Laden - and not the Taliban militia - is the real power there. Abdullah bin Saad al-Otaibi, the former Saudi charge d'affaires to Afghanistan, also said the Taliban themselves were in the dark about the locations of bin Laden's "hidden bases" in the country. Saudi Arabia broke diplomatic ties with the Taliban on Sept. 25 over the regime's refusal to surrender bin Laden, the United States' main suspect in Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon. It was not clear when al-Otaibi returned from Afghanistan. In unusually open remarks, al-Otaibi was quoted as saying bin Laden holds greater power than the Taliban and "that's why the movement cannot hand him to the United States. In fact, Osama bin Laden has more authority than any other defense minister in the world."
    This article starring:
    Abdullah bin Saad al-Otaibi
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    ABC interview with Abdul Haq
  • ABC
    In the 1980s when Afghans were fighting to push the Soviets out of their country, Abdul Haq was one of the heroes. A commander of the Kabul front, he led his Mujahideen fighters in the first attacks on the Soviet-held capital. Today, at age 43, he is a big man with a gray beard and 16 war wounds, including a missing foot, blown off by a Soviet land mine. "I stepped on it because I was in the frontline," he said. "There was this tremendous explosion, no pain, and I didn't know what had happened until I saw my boot flying through the air with my leg in it." Now, more than a decade into retirement, Haq is preparing for another fight. Last week, after seeing the attacks in New York and Washington, he returned to Pakistan from self-exile in Dubai to gather his former, fellow commanders against the Taliban whom he says he now despises. "They don't give people rights," he said. "There's no human rights, there's no job, there's no food, there's no medicine, there's no activity and the only people that have rights is Talib."

    To defeat the Taliban, he says he has recruited tribal elders inside Afghanistan who are willing to fight with him, even some commanders in the Taliban army, he says, have promised to defect. Because he is Pashtun, the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, he thinks most fighters will come over to his side instead of the Northern Alliance, which is dominated by ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks. "There are many people or commanders who are fighting with the Taliban not because they like the Taliban [but] because they are afraid of the Northern Alliance taking over," he says. "If they see another alternative coming then they will have no reason to stay fighting with the Taliban."

    Haq's plan is to capture Kabul first with just a few thousand troops. He says he and his fellow commanders have weapons buried in the mountains inside Afghanistan that they can access quickly. Once Kabul is in his hands, he says he will bring in Afghanistan's former king, Mohammad Zahir Shah and convene a loya jirga, a traditional Afghan council, to lay the groundwork for a new, democratic government.
    Haq's plan is to capture Kabul first with just a few thousand troops. He says he and his fellow commanders have weapons buried in the mountains inside Afghanistan that they can access quickly. Once Kabul is in his hands, he says he will bring in Afghanistan's former king, Mohammad Zahir Shah and convene a loya jirga, a traditional Afghan council, to lay the groundwork for a new, democratic government. He does not want a monarchy. "I think in the present situation, the people in Afghanistan would like to see him as somebody who unites the nation, who brings the country together as a fatherly figure and have a loya jirga and decide right there what the people want," Haq said. "Most Afghan people probably don't want to go back to have royalty and kings and things; they want to move forward and have a democratic type of system."

    Haq is not alone in his desire to remove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan. Pakistan's border cities seem to be filled with former fighters hoping to return to fight with or against the Taliban. Haq is the best-known former commander to emerge yet and he has the blessing of the exiled king.

    The biggest obstacle Haq says would be an American attack. "If they just go bomb, kill, shoot these people that have nothing to do with that, this will make many people upset," he said. "And you will create thousands of bin Ladens. My advice to the U.S. government is let the Afghans to do it." For Haq the fight is partly personal. Two years ago while he was working to create a more moderate government in Afghanistan, professional assassins climbed over the wall around his house and killed his wife and 11-year-old son. The police never caught the killers. "Only one thing I can say; it was done through professional people because they cut off the electricity," he said. "They cut off the telephone systems and they went in within a few minutes, and they fired this silencer or used silencer weapons, and the way it was done it was through very professional people."

    Although he will not speculate on who sent the assassins, a 1999 U.S. State Department report suggests it was probably the Taliban, as part of a widespread campaign to silence dissident voices. "My wife and my son are probably one of the one million, one-and-half-million people who died in this country. Whatever I do, of course I care, I love my family, but more than anything my country and my people are important because if I make my country safe, everybody will be safe."

    Haq admits he was much more comfortable living far from Afghanistan with his children in Dubai. "But psychologically something was missing," he said. He dreams of the day he takes back Kabul again. The last time he did that the country erupted into war. This time he says it will be different.
    This article starring:
    Abdul Haq
    Mohammad Zahir Shah
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    Major military action may not come soon
  • PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer
    Administration and European officials are signaling that a major military action may not come anytime soon, even as U.S. troops, warplanes and ships gather in the Gulf region. Meanwhile, Taliban soldiers were reported Friday to be taking heavy weapons into the mountains of Afghanistan to await an assault. There were growing signs that the coalition the United States is assembling for the anti-terrorism campaign is still struggling to decide exactly what to do. Some have even raised the possibility that the campaign can be waged with little or no fighting - without the kind of military fireworks that Americans may expect.
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    Talibs have 20 - 30 percent defection rate
  • ABC Tom O'Byrne in Islamabad
    The Taliban has a loyalty problem. We've conducted two interviews and we heard in both that there is an element of a 20 to 30 per cent defection rate. You must remember that the Taliban effectively inherited large bands of warriors back in the mid-90s because obviously these people wanted to be on the winning side. It now seems as though large numbers are preparing to, in effect, shop around - window shopping to see who might be on the winning side again. But clearly the Taliban is hanging onto its extreme element. The conscripts are the ones that are leaving.
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    US doesn't expect strikes to hit bin Laden
  • Wall Street Journal
    In the clearest indication yet of how the administration plans to wage its coming military campaign, Bush aides concede that they have only a slim chance of hitting Osama bin Laden and his deputies through military strikes and that their best chance of ridding the country of terrorists is by squeezing the Taliban directly. The campaign will be "a very precise effort over several days to take out the elements of Taliban control," one senior administration official said. Bombers and jets using precision missiles will target the Taliban's various headquarters, training camps, airfields and military supplies, he said. He added that the wave of air strikes is intended to create "a nearly instantaneous shift in the balance of powers" as military commanders desert or join up with opposition forces, and the Taliban begins to fall apart.
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 10:56 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    Talibs waiting for American assault at Kandahar
  • MORT ROSENBLUM, AP
    Taliban soldiers in large numbers have taken heavy weapons into the mountains near Kandahar to await any American assault, according to Afghan travelers reaching this border post Friday. Both Taliban sympathizers and others who denounce the fundamentalist government concurred that convoys had left the city, which is exposed in a valley, to dig into defensive positions on higher ground. Passing time seems to have polarized positions in the southern city, stronghold of Mullah Omar Mohammed, who heads Afghanistan's Taliban rulers who refuse to deliver Osama bin Laden in spite of the threat of U.S. retaliation. ``Kandahar is almost empty, and everyone remaining there is afraid,'' said Bashir Ahmed, 27, a trader who shaved off his Taliban-imposed beard the moment he reached Pakistan. ``No one knows what will happen tomorrow.''
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    Northern Alliance says they can be in Kabul within 30 days
  • The Times BY ANTHONY LOYD, 40 MILES FROM KABUL
    The Northern Alliance has told American diplomats that with sufficiently heavy airstrikes it could force the Taleban from the capital "within 30 days". The deployment of the 8,000 men, who are being held in reserve behind a line manned by some 5,000 fellow Mujahidin less than 40 miles north of the city, followed a series of meetings of General Fahim and other alliance commanders. "We are thirsty for Kabul and the blood of the Talebs," a middle-aged Mujahidin exclaimed as he supervised the unloading of hundreds of mortar rounds into a storage site at the mouth of the Panjshir Valley, which opens onto the Samali Plain.
    This article starring:
    General Fahim
    Northern Alliance
    Panjshir Valley
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    Northern Alliance says they're ready
  • The Christian Science Monitor - By Scott Peterson
    BAGRAM, AFGHANISTAN - The stout general hoisted himself up the steep metal staircase of the airport control tower and surveyed the nearby front line - as close as it gets to the capital, Kabul. The windows are gone. The buildings below are in ruins. The carcasses of scavenged MiG jet fighters rot in a collapsing hangar nearby. Taliban troops line trenches and man rocket launchers less than two miles away. But General Babajan doesn't see wreckage at this military air strip just 18 miles north of Kabul. He sees an opportunity, now that the US has pledged to begin its war against terrorism with his foe, the radical Islamic Taliban militia. "American forces can use it if they want," the general says magnanimously.

    While few believe that the Northern Alliance - an umbrella grouping of ethnic Tajik and Uzbek and other minority militias, united only in their opposition to the Pashtun-dominated Taliban - can rule this unruly country, the 15,000-strong alliance is a powerful card for the US to play.

    And there is other good news for the Alliance. Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah on Wednesday announced that he has the names of "dozens" of Taliban commanders who are willing to change sides. Many were paid for their allegiance in the mid-1990s, when the Taliban swept across Afghanistan, and reportedly have no ideological connection to the Taliban. Dr. Abdullah claims that "it will not be exaggerating to talk about 10,000" Taliban fighters who would switch over to the Alliance side. Such figures, though, are impossible to independently verify. "These people have been living under Taliban control for a long time, and they are willing to change sides," he says.

    But any such defections do not necessarily mean that Taliban morale is flagging, according to Babajan, who claims that 1,000 Taliban fighters crossed over early this week in three regions. "The morale of the Taliban is too high, because they burned the US Embassy [in Kabul] and burned effigies of President Bush," says the general. "They are telling the people, 'Americans can't do anything against us, and many Islamic countries will help us,' " Babajan says. "So day by day, they are becoming hopeful."

    But there is hope, too, budding among Alliance fighters, that one more battle could spell the end of a generation of war. Before proudly touring the broken airbase, he had been speaking before a group of 200 of his soldiers - one-tenth of those under his command at Bagram. Turning to his assembled troops, he asks, loudly: "Are you ready to fight against the Taliban?"

    "We are ready!" the troops shout back, raising their guns. Then they disperse, wearing a wide collection of black and white and colored scarves, turbans, and brimmed wool Afghan hats. They carry AK-47 assault rifles and shoulder-held rocket grenades. Most have beards, though some were too young.
    This article starring:
    Abdullah Abdullah
    General Babajan
    Northern Alliance
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    Fifth Column
    Prof. Lutz: US has been in state of war since the 30s
  • WSJ James Bowman
    The fruit of the anthropological researches of Catherine Lutz of the University of North Carolina is the discovery that the U.S. has been, as she says, in a "permanent state of war since the late 1930s" and, except for a brief period during World War II, on the wrong side. When Mr. Bush talks about "hunting the terrorists from their holes," she is reminded "of the racial hatred that has preceded, stoked, and been inflamed by nearly every one of the 20th century's wars." Luckily, she boasts, she and her students have refused to accept the war-like "framing devices" of television.
    This article starring:
    Catherine Lutz
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    Prof. Foley: Ultimate cause is US fascism
  • WSJ James Bowman
    Prof. Robert Jensen of the University of Texas wrote that the suicide mission "was no more despicable than the massive acts of terrorism . . . that the U.S. government has committed during my lifetime." Prof. Barbara Foley of Rutgers University wrote of the terror attack that "whatever its proximate cause, its ultimate cause is the fascism of U.S. foreign policy over the past many decades."
    This article starring:
    Barbara Foley
    Robert Jensen
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    Al-Arian suspended with pay
  • Debbie Schlussel
    Since a recent appearance on FOX News Channel's "O'Reilly Factor," Sami Al-Arian has been suspended with pay. He claims it is for his safety — due to threats. But, in reality, it is due to the justified outrage of South Floridians, University of South Florida students and their parents, and other U.S. citizens that a college professor who illegally launders money for Islamic Jihad and helps its leaders and operatives get into the U.S. on temporary visas is allowed to remain on a taxpayer-funded faculty, teaching students.
    This article starring:
    Sami Al-Arian
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: Islamic Jihad


    Katha Pollitt's utterance in The Nation
  • Brent Bozell
    The flag stands for jingoism and vengeance and war.
    Likewise the Nation's Katha Pollitt. She is not just a leftist; she is a committed America-hater, as is the Nation for publishing her vicious attack on her country. "My daughter ... thinks we should fly an American flag out our window," Pollitt wrote in her Oct. 8 column. "Definitely not, I say: The flag stands for jingoism and vengeance and war ...(The flag) has to bear a wide range of meanings, from simple, dignified sorrow to the violent anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry that has already resulted in murder, vandalism and arson around the country."
    This article starring:
    Katha Pollitt
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    Derrick Z. Jackson: US leading exporter of tools of death
  • Brent Bozell
    And there's Boston Globe columnist Derrick Z. Jackson. On Sept. 12, with the Pentagon and the World Trade Center still burning, Jackson threw gasoline on the fire by placing America's values squarely on par with those of the terrorists: "With all the condolence that can be offered, it is incongruent to think that the world's leading exporter of the tools of death and destruction would not someday be visited with an evil in return." A week later Jackson returned with another screed against his country: "When stock traders sing 'God Bless America,' and (New York Stock Exchange CEO Dick) Grasso says, 'America is ready to go back to business,' it is unclear how much of America's business is worthy of God's blessing."
    This article starring:
    Derrick Z. Jackson
    Dick Grasso
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    Rev. Sheldon is against assistance for gay 9-11 partners
  • By Thomas B. Edsall Washington Post Staff Writer
    The Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman and founder of Traditional Values Coalition, said yesterday that public and private relief agencies providing assistance to the survivors of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks should not give aid to surviving members of gay partnerships. Groups such as the Red Cross "should be first giving priority to those widows who were at home with their babies and those widowers who lost their wives," Sheldon said. Assistance "should be given on the basis and priority of one man and one woman in a marital relationship."
    This article starring:
    Rev. Louis P. Sheldon
    Traditional Values Coalition
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    Home Front
    Krauthammer on the debate on war aims
  • By Charles Krauthammer
    There is a serious debate raging in Washington about war aims. And then there is the caricature debate in which, on the one hand, you have the reasoned, moderate, restrained doves who want very limited war aims. And on the other hand, you have the unreconstructed hawks -- those daring to suggest that the war on terrorism does not stop with Afghanistan -- aching for blood and continents to conquer.

    Let's begin at the beginning. No one, hawk or dove, sought this war. This war was declared on us. The only question is how to prosecute it. The question is whether after Pearl Harbor our strategic objective should have been (a) destroying the Japanese First Air Fleet that did the deed, or (b) destroying the regime in Tokyo to put Japanese imperialism permanently out of business. The previous generation had no difficulty making that choice. Nor did the president of this generation in his national address on Sept. 20. "Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them," he said. "And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism."
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    Slate on the economic fallout
  • Slate
    The WSJ relays "the most graphic report yet" of how widespread the economic fallout from the Sept. 11 attacks has been: initial claims for unemployment insurance rose 71,000 (to 528,000), more than double what Wall Street had been expecting. The paper quotes an economist predicting that the U.S. unemployment rate--which was at 4.9 percent in August--will hit 6 percent early next year.
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    "100%" chance of more attacks
  • Slate
    The WP front reports that U.S. intelligence officials have told members of Congress that there is a "high probability" that terrorists associated with Bin Laden will try to launch another major attack on American targets "in the near future," a likelihood rising to "100 percent" (in the words of one unidentified intelligence official) if the U.S. strikes Afghanistan.
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    Student fesses up to fabricating assaults
  • Michelle Malkin
    Meet Ahmad Saad Nasim. This 23-year-old Muslim, originally from Saudi Arabia, has zealously promoted his religion and ethnic identity at the University of Arizona (UA) and Arizona State University (ASU) for the past four years. Among the subjects of Nasim's campus rants: opposing sanctions on Iraq ("I don't give a damn if Iraq has weapons or not"); lambasting Catholic flyers in dorm halls; pushing "diversity training"; and demanding "respect" for Muslim victims of alleged discrimination.

    In the fall of 1999, Nasim discussed the issue of racial bias in UA's campus newspaper when the FBI detained two Saudi Arabian students at an Ohio airport. According to news reports, an America West pilot said that one of the two suspects "jiggled the cockpit door handle and asked suspicious questions during the flight." The FBI interrogated the men, who both attended schools in Arizona, and released them without pressing charges. Instead of crediting the pilot and agents for taking responsible precautions against suspicious behavior, Nasim (then president of UA's Muslim Student Association) pulled out his well-worn bigotry card. "Whenever there's a plane crash or terrorist act," Nasim was quoted on Nov. 22, 1999, in UA's campus newspaper, "Arabics (sic) are always held suspicious."

    After 9-11, Nasim continued diverting attention away from the real victims of violence and toward his radical pro-Muslim agenda. He took matters into his own hands -- literally -- by faking not one, but two hate crimes. On Sept. 13, Nasim told ASU campus police he was assaulted and pelted with eggs in a parking lot while assailants screamed "Die, Muslim, die!" Administration officials and classmates earnestly condemned the attack, which received national media coverage. Over 50 Muslim students left the ASU campus as a result of Nasim's claim. Nasim basked in attention.

    On Sept. 18, he publicly described "being slapped and punched on my back." He outrageously equated himself with the dead victims of terrorism at the World Trade Center and Pentagon, and he linked himself to recent "hate crime" incidents involving Middle Eastern victims: "A Pakistani man was shot in Texas, a Sikh Indian and an Arab were shot in Mesa, and I was beaten in Tempe ... I might get shot at some gas station, too! It all depends on fate!"

    Nasim confessed to fabricating the assault when cops interviewed him last week after another admittedly staged performance. On Sept. 27, a custodian found Nasim in a library bathroom stall. He had the word "Die" written on his forehead, a plastic bag tied over his head, and a racist note stuffed in his mouth. But, as Lt. John Sutton of the ASU campus police told me, "Something was not right." The bathroom door was locked from the inside, Nasim's hands were free, and he suffered no symptoms of suffocation. Tom McDermott, a UA law graduate student, wondered whether Nasim's treachery was "a pathetic grab for attention or a means to advance a political agenda by dividing campuses along racial lines, which is a favorite tool of the radical Left? Probably a bit of both." Exactly. This perverted ideological stunt came straight from the Tawana Brawley/Al Sharpton Self-Help Guide to Racial Hoax Crimes.
    This article starring:
    Ahmad Saad Nasim
    Al Sharpton
    Muslim Student Association
    Tawana Brawley
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    Rooney to retract stupid criticism
  • Media Reseach Center
    Sunday night on 60 Minutes Andy Rooney will retract his attack on President Bush as "not too smart" when it was Rooney who wasn't very smart himself. USA Today's Peter Johnson reported Thursday that Rooney "will apologize for noting in his commentary two weeks ago that President Bush didn't sound too swift when he said that America's enemies in Afghanistan think their 'harbors are safe. But they won't be safe forever.'" On the September 23 60 Minutes Rooney had countered: "Afghanistan is landlocked. It doesn't have a harbor." Johnson relayed the content of some of the letters Rooney received: "'If you didn't know the meaning of 'safe harbor' you probably thought the 'underground railroad' had tracks.' Said another writer: 'If he really thought Bush meant seaports, Andy must think 'wildlife preserves' are breakfast jams.'"
    This article starring:
    Andy Rooney
    USA Today's Peter Johnson
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    "Hundreds of millions" of dollars sent to extremists
  • Las Vegas Sun
    Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, chairman of the Islamic Supreme Council, a non-profit religious organization, said during a 1999 State Department forum that hundreds of millions of dollars have been sent by nonprofit organizations in the United States to extremist parties in the Middle East, Afghanistan and the Caucasus. "They send it under humanitarian aid, but it doesn't go to humanitarian aid," he said. "They say that it is to help the people of this country or that country, and they show on television and on their fliers that they are delivering it to help homeless people or poor people. Yes, some of it will go to homeless people and poor people but the majority, 90 per cent of it, will go into the black markets in these countries and buying weapon arsenals."
    This article starring:
    Islamic Supreme Council
    Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    Commercial pilots want to be armed
  • KATHRYN MARCHOCKI Manchester Union Leader
    Commercial airline pilots will be asked to suspend air service if they cannot have trained, armed pilots in the cockpits, a New Hampshire pilot said. A resolution that will be circulated among the various councils of the 67,000-member Air Line Pilots Association this month asks federal regulations be changed to allow for the voluntary arming of flight crew members, Robert Giuda, a United Airlines captain of Warren said.
    This article starring:
    Air Line Pilots Association
    Robert Giuda
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    International
    Muslims say we're "threatening innocent people"
  • By MARIAM FAM The Associated Press
    CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Across the Middle East, weekly Muslim prayers hailed the Palestinian struggle against Israel and accused the United States of "threatening innocent people" in its campaign to get terror suspect Osama bin Laden. Friday's messages from Muslim preachers contrasted with the words of sympathy heard shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. As the United States' coalition-building has gathered momentum ahead of a showdown with Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, who are refusing to hand over bin Laden and his lieutenants, so has the rhetoric in mosques.
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    The Alliance
    Britain, Paks discuss future of Afghanistan
  • By Andy Soloman Reuters
    Britain and Pakistan sounded a death knell for Afghanistan's Taliban, discussing a future for the country that appeared to exclude the current leadership of the hardline Islamic movement. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in Islamabad to shore up support for the global war on terrorism, discussed the possible composition of a post-Taliban government with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Both men said evidence of Osama bin Laden's links to September 11 suicide hijack attacks in the United States -- which left nearly 5,600 people feared dead -- were clear, although they used different words to express it.

    "I personally ... and my government feels that there is evidence leading to an association between this terrorist act and Osama bin Laden," Musharraf said at a joint news conference. "However we did, I would say with satisfaction, understand each other's concerns on the happenings in Afghanistan and likely future events in Afghanistan."
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    US may wait until OIC conference is over before attack
  • UPI
    The United States may wait for an Islamic conference to be over before launching a possible military offensive against Afghanistan's Taliban rulers. Foreign ministers from 57 Muslim nations are expected to attend the meeting called by the Organization of Islamic Conference in on Tuesday. Moderate Muslim states backing the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism expect the meeting to favor their position. Pakistan, which was among the three Muslim countries to call for an emergency meeting of the Saudi-based OIC, faces a violent campaign by more than a dozen religious groups against its decision to back the United States. The protesters want the Pakistani government to support the Taliban
    instead.
    This article starring:
    Organization of Islamic Conference
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    US, Russia discuss antiterror cooperation
  • (Itar-Tass)
    Russia-US cooperation in fighting terrorism and extremism was discussed when Director of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Robert Mueller and head of the Russian Interior Ministry Boris Gryzlov had a telephone talk late on Thursday evening. Gryzlov told the FBI director that the information Russian law enforcement bodies have on the activity of bin Laden`s emissaries in Russia`s territory will be referred to the FBI representative in Moscow Harry Dixon. Gryzlov in this connection stressed the need of closer bilateral cooperation for the search and detention of participants in international terrorist organisations. This refers to operations to detain persons involved in the terrorist activity in the Chechen territory and wanted for their crimes by international police. The Russian law enforcement bodies announced for 63 people accused of terroristic activities in Chechnya are on the wanted list. In his turn, the FBI director said that every possible assistance will be given to the Russian side. Mueller promised that the FBI would be informing Russian law enforcement bodies of possible targets of terrorist attacks in the Russian territory, if this becomes known to the FBI.
    This article starring:
    Boris Gryzlov
    Harry Dixon
    Robert Mueller
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    Thatcher criticism angers Muslim leaders
  • Chicago Sun-Times CATHLEEN FALSANI RELIGION REPORTER
    Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has angered Muslim leaders in Britain by criticizing them for not speaking out louder against the Sept. 11 attacks. Scholars of Islam in the United States, where Muslim leaders from a broad spectrum of Islamic organizations by and large have spoken with one voice in condemning the attacks, disagree on whether Thatcher's criticism is founded. "They must say that it was disgraceful," Thatcher told the Times of London in an interview published Thursday. "I have not heard enough from Muslim priests."

    Thatcher has a basic misunderstanding of how the Muslim world operates, evidenced even in her choice of the word "priest" to describe Muslim teachers, said Abdullahi An-Naim, an Emory University professor of law who specializes in Islamic law and international relations. "We have to think of an extremely diversified and decentralized Islam," said An-Naim, a native of Sudan who is Muslim. "There is nothing like the Catholic Church or even a clergy idea." Thatcher and many other Western commentators "are projecting a vision of how Islam is organized. The notion of clergy as a spokesperson on behalf of their communities is a Western Christian idea that doesn't pertain to the Islamic world."
    This article starring:
    Abdullahi An-Naim
    Margaret Thatcher
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    Israel supplying US with intel
  • Jerusalem Post
    Israel has been supplying the US with an extraordinary amount of behind-the-scenes intelligence assistance and security advice since the September 11 terrorist attacks, despite demands from Arab states that it not be permitted to participate in a coalition against terrorism. Since the attacks, Israel has provided the US with information about the suspected hijackers. And the US has sought intelligence assistance from Israel particularly regarding Central Asia, where Israel has a stronger foothold.

    Israel has better intelligence and stronger relations with countries such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, places that could prove crucial in any offensive against Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network based in Afghanistan. Israel has absorbed large emigrant populations from those countries. And because of its proximity to enemies such as Iran, Israel has devoted intelligence resources there, both human and electronic. A year ago the Uzbek government, in a sign of partnership, appealed to Israel for aid in combating the rise of Islamic violence in the region.
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    The Investigation
    Frenchies have al-Qaeda codebook
  • By Jocelyn Noveck Associated Press Writer
    PARIS (AP) - A former French Defense Ministry official says he believes police have found a notebook belonging to a suspected member of a terrorist group containing codes that could be used to decipher messages within Osama bin Laden's network. Intelligence officials "may be able, with that, to go back to the messages that they may have intercepted already," said Alexis Debat, a teacher and author who until last year worked at the Defense Ministry.

    In a telephone interview, he said "it would be a major breakthrough" if authorities were now able to decipher terrorist codes. But he added: "I don't know if they've been able to make something of it." He said the information had been passed to U.S. intelligence officials. Debat said he got his information not from intelligence officials but from judicial officials close to the case, who told him the notebook with Arabic writing, "seemed to be a code book," and was found in the apartment of Kamel Daoudi. Daoudi has been placed under formal investigation in France for suspected links to a terror network. Daoudi, 27, is a former computer student believed by investigators to have played a key role in a network of Islamic extremists linked to bin Laden and plotting attacks on U.S. interests in France including an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Paris. He spent time in training camps in Afghanistan before returning to France this summer.
    This article starring:
    Alexis Debat
    KAMEL DAUDIal-Qaeda
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


    Mohamed Atta's travel records point to Afghanistan
  • TIME has learned that the CIA is in possession of travel and financial records that can place the hijackers' suspected ringleader, Mohamed Atta, along with several others in his group, at al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan. This confirms the suggestion reported in last week's issue of TIME magazine that "at the end of 1999, Atta, Al-Shehhi and Jarrah reported their passports stolen, possibly to clear any record of travel to Afghanistan."

    Intelligence sources have also told TIME that other travel documents reveal that Atta and several others in the group met with senior Al Qaida leaders, most notably Ayman al-Zawahiri. The Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader is believed to be Bin Laden's deputy, and the top operational commander of Al Qaida's networks.
    This article starring:
    AIMAN AL ZAWAHIRIEgyptian Islamic Jihad
    MOHAMED ATTAal-Qaeda
  • Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 10/05/2001 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: Egyptian Islamic Jihad



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    Two weeks of WOT
    Fri 2001-10-05
      Blair in Pakistan
    Thu 2001-10-04
      Mullah Omar: 'Americans don't have the courage to come here'
    Wed 2001-10-03
      Mullah Omar calls for Holy War
    Tue 2001-10-02
      Blair: Surrender Binny or surrender power
    Mon 2001-10-01
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    Sun 2001-09-30
      Pakistan will allow U.S. ground troops
    Sat 2001-09-29
      Demonstrators Converge in D.C. for Anti-War Protests
    Fri 2001-09-28
      Talibs request Binny to leave...
    Thu 2001-09-27
      Pakistani delegation leaves for Afghanistan on Friday
    Wed 2001-09-26
      400 Taliban militia defect to Northern Alliance
    Tue 2001-09-25
      Northern Alliance says it has assurance of support
    Mon 2001-09-24
      Fighting escalates in northern Afghanistan
    Sun 2001-09-23
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    Sat 2001-09-22
      B52s rolled out, more reserves called up
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