Posted on 06/09/2004 10:26:41 PM PDT by Dick Holmes
WASHINGTON, June 9 — While the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, was renouncing terrorism and negotiating the lifting of sanctions last year, his intelligence chiefs ordered a covert operation to assassinate the ruler of Saudi Arabia and destabilize the oil-rich kingdom, according to statements by two participants in the conspiracy.
Those participants, Abdurahman Alamoudi, an American Muslim leader now in jail in Alexandria, Va., and Col. Mohamed Ismael, a Libyan intelligence officer in Saudi custody, have given separate statements to American and Saudi officials outlining the plot.
Mr. Alamoudi, has told Federal Bureau of Investigation officials and federal prosecutors that Colonel Qaddafi approved the assassination plan. Mr. Qaddafi's son, in an interview in London, called the accusation "nonsense."
American officials confirm that Mr. Alamoudi and Mr. Ismael have offered detailed accounts of a Libyan plot to assassinate Crown Prince Abdullah and that they appear to be credible enough to have launched an American investigation. But the officials said they are still examining the scope of the plot, how far it advanced and whether Colonel Qaddafi was involved. They said the accusations were one reason the United States had not removed Libya from the State Department's list of nations that support terrorism.
On Wednesday, a senior administration official said: "We are fully aware of Libya's significant past involvement with terrorism. Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi has pledged to end Libya's ties with terrorism and cooperate with the United States and our allies in the war on terrorism. We continue to monitor closely Libya's adherence to this pledge."...
Colonel Qaddafi and Crown Prince Abdullah clashed at the Arab summit meeting that immediately preceded the war in Iraq. The two leaders exchanged insults in open session, accusing each other of selling out to colonial powers. An indignant Prince Abdullah glared at Colonel Qaddafi and said, "Your lies precede you and your grave is in front of you."...
A senior Bush administration official said that the emergence of convincing evidence that Colonel Qaddafi ordered or condoned an assassination and terror campaign could cause a "180 degree" change of American policy toward Libya.
President Bush has conveyed to the Saudi royal family that he is going to find out what happened in the alleged conspiracy, according to a diplomat....
The accusations present a difficult problem for Saudi Arabia, which has suffered a series of major terrorist attacks in the last year, the most recent of which left 22 people dead during a shooting spree by militants in Khobar on the Persian Gulf coast.
Crown Prince Abdullah is said by two officials to be convinced that Colonel Qaddafi was out to kill him and decapitate the Saudi government. But the Saudi leader is also concerned about playing into the hands of American hardliners who might use the case to call for leadership change in Libya, a step that Saudi Arabia would oppose, officials said.
"We are going to really jam Qaddafi over this, but there is no pretext for regime change," the Saudi official said. "What is in our interest is to keep the caged animal in his cage."...
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After a number of large cash transfers, Mr. Alamoudi traveled to Tripoli in August and stated that, while there, he met again with Colonel Qaddafi.
"How come I haven't seen anything? How come I have not seen heads flying?" Colonel Qaddafi reportedly demanded?
Mr. Alamoudi briefed him on how plans were progressing.
In early August, Mr. Alamoudi was arrested at Heathrow Airport carrying $340,000 in cash that he later said he had received from a Libyan intelligence officer. British officials confiscated the cash and interrogated Mr. Alamoudi, who said he had accepted the money from the World Islamic Call Society, a Libyan-backed charity.
Mr. Alamoudi boarded a flight from London to Washington Dulles airport in late September, he was arrested upon landing.
He was later indicted accused of violating United States sanctions by traveling to Libya and by receiving funds from Libyan officials.
Colonel Ismael has freely spoken about the plot, according to persons familiar with his statement. During one F.B.I. interrogation, he was asked whether he had been tortured or abused in detention. He replied that he had been treated well and that he wanted to apply for political asylum, because he assumed that if he returns to Libya, he will be killed, the people said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The Saudi crown prince must really be feeling boxed in!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1052017/posts
Accused Terrorist Wrote School Guidelines with ACLU
Abdurahman Alamoudi, President of the American Muslim Council, supporter of Hamas, Hezbollah and accused of ties with Osama bin Laden, helped develop "Religious Expression in Public School" with the ACLU which holds the copyright. Launched by Clinton in 1995, these "Presidential Guidelines" greatly impact public schools today. Nadine Strossen, President of the ACLU, refers to these guidelines as the authority to support the ACLU’s lawsuits restricting Christmas celebrations and removing Nativity scenes from public schools. ...
But Qaddafi is our friend now I thought. He's renounced WMDs. /Sarcasm
Cake crumb, how true that statement was! This is just terrible.
The wogs really have a problem, Dick. Democratic-Republics are gonna start popping-up all over the place, and that Islamo-Bull$hit's gonna die!
When their women start loppin'-off their 'Johnsons', NOT SOMETHING I WANT TO SEE, except on Pay-TV, they'll have to get in line.
It should be interesting.............FRegards
My apologies, this is in regard to the link on post #2.
Hmmm, does that mean that the ACLU has terrorists ties? Does that mean we can freeze their bank accounts?
Just like the tammay tiger the leapard of Libya can't change it's spots.
I'm sure there are countless stories of attempts thwarted that never make it to the news. Men, and sometimes women are silently dying in the protection of our leaders. Even letting the news out that an attempt has been foiled can help our enemies. Our President currently has enemies without and he has his democratic enemies within. Sometimes I think the enemies within (one would wish they were only opponents) are worse.
This is why, I believe John Kerry is so dangerous. He is a proven intelligence botcher and defunder. He would undermine our military and emasculate the services that protect us. He said, a number of years ago, "Our democracy is a farce", so am I not right to believe that he would overturn our country into anther form? Perhaps a dictatorship with Teddy Kennedy as his minister of political correctness and Hillary in charge of national heath and nursing?
We need prayers for our country that the Lord would spare us of the evils within and without.
NOt really, there was slammie terror for 1300 years before Reagan
What I mean is...if something like 911 happened on his watch.
Oh I agree. There has been Islamic terror for a long time. I read an article the other day about Thomas Jefferson fighting it.
I don't think too many folks think that America is a safe place. A safer place than most, perhaps, but after 9.11, we know we're not safe. Our enemies are within our borders.
You need to read a little history.
President Reagan destroyed the USSR.
He basically did nothing to contain Islamofascist terrorism with the exception of the bombing raid against Krazy Kadaffi. This is not throw blame at him. He had bigger dangers to defuse while he was president.
Americans were attacked and killed by Islamofascists during President Reagan's terms like 241 US Marines killed in Bierut and at US embassies attacked by Islmo terrorists:
"After Reagan became president, relations with Iran improved very little. On October 23, 1983, a truck bomb supposedly planted by Iranian terrorists killed 241 US marines in Beruit, Lebanon. On December 12, more truck bombs went off in Kuwait. Investigations into the bombings ensued, and soon, seventeen members of a group known as Da’wa (Arabic for “The Call”) were convicted. Angry allies of Da’wa in Lebanon decided to seize American hostages in exchange for the freedom of the prisoners.3 But the prisoners were not released, and on March 16, 1984, William Buckley was kidnapped and held in Lebannon by pro-Iranian extremists. He eventually died due to the torture that he suffered at the hands of the Iranians. In the following months, several more Americans were taken hostage."
President Reagan saved this country by destroying the USSR.
Don't belittle President Bush with your very limited knowledge the Islamofascists since the Days of Jimmy Carter.
Isn't this where we heard the legendary phrase -- A curse on your moustache?
A senior aide to Saddam Hussein threw diplomatic niceties to the wind yesterday, bringing disorder to an emergency summit of Islamic states when he yelled "Shut up, you monkey!" at Kuwait's minister of state for foreign affairs.
Years of bitterness between Iraq and Kuwait boiled over at the Organisation of the Islamic Conference in Qatar, when Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri responded to an inaudible interruption from the Kuwaiti minister of state, Sheikh Mohammed Sabah al-Salem al-Sabah.
He called him a monkey and added: "Curse be upon your moustache!" - an idiomatic phrase impugning the minister's honour.
So... while he was handing over WMDs, he was up to his old tricks.
Of course, thsi is the New York Times claiming this...
The Slimes writes about 2 people in custody in connection with killing a Saudi but does not report on documented fact that Al Queada was in Bed with Hussein.
And that is why my cat craps on the Times every day.
Given the House of Saud's long and colorful relationship with Wahabi extremists, I'm not sure that this would have been a bad thing.
That statement reminds me of what some folks said about the Shah of Iran. It was very helpful to Ayatollah Khomeini.
How is the House of Saud preferable to another Khomeini? Khomeini was at least open and honest about his hatred for the West. The Saud clan, on the other hand, is all smiles and sweet words as they funnel millions to foaming-at-the-mouth mullahs ranting in madrassas all over the world.
Well. 19 Saudis attacked us and according to our govt, it was not a Saudi govt plot.
So, it's not conclusive that Qaddafi approved this even if a "rogue" intel officer instigated it.
Be that as it may, I like it, I like it, Qaddaffi deserves a gold star if this is true.
Too bad it didn't come off.
Exactly right.
The correct question is: How is the House of Saud preferrable to al Qaeda?
Given that choice, if you prefer to have al Qaeda ruling Arabia, we'll just have to disagree. Nothing good would come from ceding Arabia to al Quada. That would irrepairably harm the interests of the United States. I'd rather support the Saudi regime and use our influence to institute reforms.
WE are to busy cleaning up AL QEADA, which HIS country STARTED and continues to FUND.
Yes they were. Problem is, you can only do business with terrorists for so long before your own people pay the price in blood.
There was also a plot, detailed by Mr. Shales, an exBritish intel agent, about how western intel agencies used AQ jihadis in a plot against Qaddafi.
WHich caused Libya to issue an Interpol warrant for Osama, the first country to do so, at the time when we were, at besst, ignoring him or at worst, actively supporting OSama to do our work circa 1994.
Well, if Alamoudi was involved in this, perhaps he's not all bad.
This is nothing but Western propaganda. Everyone knows that Muslims do NOT kill Muslims.
Maybe we should have Lorena Bobbitt show them how!
"Reagan would have destroyed Islamic Terror with ease. Reagan Memorial Photos."
Just like in Lebanon, right? :p
While I will always love the Great Man and had a hard time seeing the events of his state funeral procession through the tears, I disagree. President Reagan would have had no easier a time destroying Islamofascism than President Bush has had.
Different branches of organised terror began becoming more and more interlinked and interchangable since the days of Jimmy Carter, who really ushered in the era of state-approved, organized Islamofascism. During the Carter admiistration, organized terror mushroomed beyond any known capacity of the time to deal with it, mostly due to ingrained prejudices, EUro complacancy and EUro Islmophilia, which persist and continue to hamper our efforts to destroy terrorism today.
While Presidnet Reagan did try to counter terrorist attacks against the US, the looming, immediate threat he had to destroy was the Soviet Union. The height of organized terror came in another era, the Clinton era. Presidnet Bush has been left with the task of leading the free world in a fight to defeat the most insidious threat of our time. President Bush has been a huge admirer of Reagan since his (Bush's) college days.
It's not unfair to his father to say that Reagan had at least as much influence over GW Bush's political and economic veiws as GHW Bush did...and possibly more.
We now return you to the current thread.
Agreed.
Let me re-phrase the question: How is the House of Saud any different than Al Qaeda? One of those two groups murdered 3000 Americans on 9/11; the other paid their expenses.
Just as the Shah of Iran was different than Khomeini.
The Pavlavi monarchy was not perfect, but it was far better than the alternative for the people of Iran and the national interests of the United States.
Why not? The Iranians who seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran came from state-funded universities.
A little Saudi payback for Libya's recent rapprochement with the West?. And perhaps giving out too much info about the Pakistanis and their Saudi connections. AQ Khan network a little more official and leading to Saudi more than thought?
And a good way to get Alamoudi off the hook in America?
Keeping with my usual...
Sanctions on Libya were fruitful in increasing Saudi welath as were the Iraqi sanctions...
As are the very professional disablements of Iraqi pipelines today...attributed to "insurgents"...
Those students were supported by the Ayatollah, not the Shah. The Shah was long gone by then. Your comparison does not hold.
The "House of Saud" is not a singular entity. It constitutes many royals with different interests.
Document, how King Fahd and Prince Abdallah funded the murder of 3000 Americans?
"A little Saudi payback for Libya's recent rapprochement with the West?."
Tonight Loftus claims that the Saudis want to discredit the Libyans because Gaddafi is going to spill the beans about Saudi's interest in nuke development.
"...because Gaddafi is going to spill the beans about Saudi's interest in nuke development."
Nothing in that part of the world surprises me a bit. "What a tangled web we weave" when the object of an alleged assasination states that he wants to "protect" the alleged assasin! There is no telling how broad the alliances are against the US in that part of the world. Sounds like the Arab bonds are stronger than the self-protection instinct.
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