Posted on 12/21/2003 7:44:08 PM PST by Calpernia
Navy forces have detained four al Qaeda suspects as a result of maritime interdiction operations in the U.S. Central Command area or responsibility, Vice Adm. David Nichols said Dec. 19.
Nichols, who heads the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, 5th Fleet, said that within the last two weeks, ships stopped and searched two ships. In one instance, sailors detained one individual; in the other it was three.
In one case, the suspected al Qaeda was trying to enter Iraq. In the other, Navy officials do not know where the ship was destined.
At least one ship was carrying hashish, said Navy officials. They conjecture that al Qaeda is running drugs to pay for terrorist acts.
"We're having some success at that disrupting movement, not only of terrorists going into Iraq but other terrorist activities in the region," Nichols said. "Frankly, drugs and terrorists use the same network and stopping one will stop the other."
He would not say where the men are being held.
U.S. and coalition ships interdict terrorists and terrorist support that is flowing or finding its way into Iraq. What's more, the maritime interception program works against drugs and weapons of mass destruction also. The operation also puts a damper on oil smuggling out of Iraq.
Unless there is specific intelligence, most ships are simply queried by crews of frigates and destroyers enforcing the rules. Only some ships that fit the profile are searched, and a very small proportion is impounded.
Most interceptions occur in the Persian Gulf but, Nichols said, some also happen in the Gulf of Oman and in the Red Sea.
Navy forces have detained four al Qaeda suspects as a result of maritime interdiction operations in the U.S. Central Command area or responsibility, Vice Adm. David Nichols said Dec. 19.
Nichols, who heads the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, 5th Fleet, said that within the last two weeks, ships stopped and searched two ships. In one instance, sailors detained one individual; in the other it was three.
In one case, the suspected al Qaeda was trying to enter Iraq. In the other, Navy officials do not know where the ship was destined.
The ACLU will be all over this by tomorrow. They don't believe in profiling.
It might have been part of it, but not the most important part. What really bothered him was the boarding of large tankers just to learn how to pilot them, along with a number of tugs disappearing.
As I understand it, it is not entirely true to say that Islam strictly forbids drug use. Drugs may be lawfully used with a doctor's prescription. What is forbidden is anything taken for the purpose of intoxication.
The Golden Crescent exceeds the heroin output of the Golden Triangle, and Afghanistan and Pakistan (among other countries there) have been narcoeconomies for decades.
And it's not just selling it. Pakistan, Iran, even Saudi and Kuwait all have big addiction problems. Ecstacy (and other drugs) are widely used in Jakarta's "club scene."
Keep profiling, troops. This week it was drugs, next week it could be weapons.
Let us hope they get even more intel, or have they?
I'm also reminded of the use of hashish and other drugs by the "Old Man of the Mountain" and his Hashishim (the name later becoming Assassins, which is the origin of the modern term)
How the World Trade Center and the Pentagon Cult Terrorists were manufactured:
Experts on Middle Eastern terrorists have discovered that they are regularly recruited from ultra-fundamentalist Islamic religious schools.** In these schools the potential recruits are subjected a severe process of mental exercises, discipline and testing far more difficult than that of the terrorists’ physical training in the training camps.This known clue is important because it links directly to the long history of mind control cult terrorism in the Arabic world. As early as the 7th century AD a cult called the Hashishin was already in the terrorism business. (Hashishin is the derived source of the modern word assassin.)
Through the centuries this cult perfected some of the earliest empirical antecedents of modern mind control using its members as unknowing test subjects. Using distorted Islamic religious imagery and a series of severe mental and physical exercises (initiations) they were able to program their members to kill themselves with or without reason literally on command or kill themselves while executing assassinations or, joyously go on missions of certain death. Their members did anything asked of them because they were programmed to believe they would immediately go to Paradise as a martyr for Islam and be awarded with scores of waiting virgins and all other forms of comfort and wealth.
For centuries the Hashishin cult network has been the dark side of Arabic culture and has terrorized any person or organization that opposed it. Now, in an evolved and morphed form, the mind control skills and cultic structure of the Hashishin is still in existence and being used again. But, today it is also being augmented with the additional power of more modern mind control technology and modern intelligence training.
Hashish was debated among scholars around 900 to 1000 AD while its use spread throughout Arabia. By the early 12th Century, hashish was very popular throughout the Middle East. 1378 saw one of the first edicts against the eating of hashish. In 1798 Napolean saw that many of the lower classes of Egpyt used hashish, and banned it. In 1890 hashish was made illegal in Turkey. In the 1950s, the Moroccan kingdom tacitly allows kif production. In 1962 the first hashish was made in Morocco. In 1973 the Afghani government makes hashish production illegal. By the 1980s Morocco was the biggest producer of hashish.
Just from these few facts, it is apparent that the status of at least this one drug varies from time and locale, albeit all within Islamic cultures.
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