Posted on 09/30/2006 10:18:39 AM PDT by DAVEY CROCKETT
"Global Trends 2015" Terrorism-Related Excerpts
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The following items are terrorism-related items from the National Intelligence Council's "Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue About the Future With Nongovernment Experts" report (December 2000).
Transnational Terrorism (page 50)
States with poor governance; ethnic, cultural, or religious tensions; weak economies; and porous borders will be prime breeding grounds for terrorism. In such states, domestic groups will challenge the entrenched government, and transnational networks seeking safehavens.
At the same time, the trend away from state-supported political terrorism and toward more diverse, free-wheeling, transnational networks—enabled by information technology—will continue. Some of the states that actively sponsor terrorism or terrorist groups today may decrease or even cease their support by 2015 as a result of regime changes, rapprochement with neighbors, or the conclusion that terrorism has become counterproductive. But weak states also could drift toward cooperation with terrorists, creating de facto new state supporters.
Between now and 2015 terrorist tactics will become increasingly sophisticated and designed to achieve mass casualties.
We expect the trend toward greater lethality in terrorist attacks to continue.
Reacting to US Military Superiority (page 56)
Experts agree that the United States, with its decisive edge in both information and weapons technology, will remain the dominant military power during the next 15 years. Further bolstering the strong position of the United States are its unparalleled economic power, its university system, and its investment in research and development—half of the total spent annually by the advanced industrial world. Many potential adversaries, as reflected in doctrinal writings and statements, see US military concepts, together with technology, as giving the United States the ability to expand its lead in conventional warfighting capabilities.
This perception among present and potential adversaries will continue to generate the pursuit of asymmetric capabilities against US forces and interests abroad as well as the territory of the United States. US opponents—state and such nonstate actors as drug lords, terrorists, and foreign insurgents—will not want to engage the US military on its terms. They will choose instead political and military strategies designed to dissuade the United States from using force, or, if the United States does use force, to exhaust American will, circumvent or minimize US strengths, and exploit perceived US weaknesses. Asymmetric challenges can arise across the spectrum of conflict that will confront US forces in a theater of operations or on US soil.
Threats to Critical Infrastructure.
Some potential adversaries will seek ways to threaten the US homeland. The US national infrastructure—communications, transportation, financial transactions, energy networks—is vulnerable to disruption by physical and electronic attack because of its interdependent nature and by cyber attacks because of their dependence on computer networks. Foreign governments and groups will seek to exploit such vulnerabilities using conventional munitions, information operations, and even WMD.
Terrorism.
Much of the terrorism noted earlier will be directed at the United States and its overseas interests. Most anti-US terrorism will be based on perceived ethnic, religious or cultural grievances. Terrorist groups will continue to find ways to attack US military and diplomatic facilities abroad. Such attacks are likely to expand increasingly to include US companies and American citizens. Middle East and Southwest Asian-based terrorists are the most likely to threaten the United States.
photos and also Atta photo in banner:
You must see these photos snipped from the video, in memorial to the killers that were on the planes on 9-11:
http://www.globalcrisiswatch.com/060910.php
As-Sahab and al-Eklhaas Media Network Release 9/11 Videos
By Nick Grace
September 10, 2006
The highly anticipated as-Sahab 9/11 anniversary video, "The Manhattan Raid," was released this afternoon in two parts. Part 1 (55:18) focuses on al Qaeda's justification for the attacks, an argument that is practically lifted from Michael Moore's works, and features heavy use of b-roll. Part 2 (36:23) focuses on the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks and includes footage of the hijackers as they trained for the operation. Predictably, there is little mention of United 93. Adam Gadahn and Ayman al-Zawahiri appear in the video, discussing the hijackers and the attacks. Archival footage of Usama bin Laden is prominently featured. Both segments are subtitled in English.
Part 1: http://www.globalcrisiswatch.com/aq/060911a_assahab.rm [21 Megs]
Part 2: http://www.globalcrisiswatch.com/aq/060911b_assahab.rm [14 Megs]
"The Manhattan Raid" was released in 2 different file formats and in 3 different sizes across exactly 500 individual file transfer links. 374 Real Media file links and 126 3GP file links.
As-Sahab Media has now begun to promote its next propaganda package, a new video of al Qaeda operations chief Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Shortly before the as-Sahab release, the al-Ekhlaas Media Network posted a 19-minute video "on the anniversary of the invasion of the country of the brave Americans" that features never before seen clips of the hijackers, including B-roll of Ahmed al-Haznawi al-Ghamidi's martyr video and shots of muscle hijacker Ahmed Alnami.
Subtitled in English and posted in 4 different file sizes (123, 31.5, 14.1 and 7.7 Megs) across 242 file transfer links. The video spends 7 minutes eulogizing the 19 hijackers and 12 minutes on news footage of the attacks with a war nasheed soundtrack.
Production is poor in comparison to recent as-Sahab products but standard with Global Islamic Media Front and al-Boraq Media products, which now produces materials for the Islamic Army of Iraq.
http://www.globalcrisiswatch.com/aq/060910_ekhlaas.wmv [125 Megs]
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http://www.globalcrisiswatch.com/060914.php
Salafist Group for Call and Combat Reaffirms Allegiance to al Qaeda
By Nick Grace
September 14, 2006
The Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC), which seeks to convert Algeria into an Islamic emirate by force, has reaffirmed its alliegance to al Qaeda with a communique dated September 13, 2006 and posted both on their own Web site and the Ekhlaas Forum (as a downloadable RAR file).
http://www.moonnight9876.com/pages/join_qaeda.html
The file as posted on a total of 27 free file transfer sites, including sendspace.com, rogepost.com, 9q9q.net, turboupload.com and uploading.com.
Note: It is interesting that the radicals use the RAR format to compress files rather than the more popular ZIP format.
The communique, according to a SITE Institute report, is a statement by GSPC head Musab Abdul Wadud to declare the group's joining al Qaeda's call for Jihad and thus becoming "one stone in building the coming Islamic nation." The statement cites the balkanization of the ummah through the "disease" of nationalism and declares full support to Usama bin Laden, declaring that "He can use us to strike whomever and wherever he wishes and he will find nothing but obedience from us and shall only receive what pleases him."
Relations between al Qaeda and the GSPC was briefly discussed by Ayman al-Zawahiri in his September 11 "Hot Issues" video, where he stated "All the praise is due to Allah for the blessed union which we ask Allah to be as a bone in the throats of the Americans and French Crusaders and their allies, and inspire distress, concern and dejection in the hearts of the traitorous, apostate sons of France. We ask Him to guide our brothers in the Salafist Group for Call and Combat to crush the pillars of the Crusader alliance, especially their elderly immoral leader, America."
The French government is alarmed. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has just been quoted across the wires as saying that Zawahiri's statement falling on the 9/11 anniversary could not have been by chance.
Although this communique and the resulting implications on France are now being widely reported, the GSPC has declared an alliance with al Qaeda in the past. In 2003 GSPC head Nabil Sahraoui announced an allegiance with al Qaeda. Various GSPC videos released in 2004 and 2005 also contained images and footage of Usama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It appears, as Cindy of TruthUSA.com pointed out to me, this latest communique is a reaffirmation of its pledge of allegiance to al Qaeda.
While the history of GSPC terror attacks have led some analysts to conclude that the group is more committed to a nationalist agenda than a global one, it cannot be denied that this group has, in fact, operated on an international scale. In September 2005 French authorities rolled up a GSPC cell that was planning an attack on the Paris metro system. Later that year, in November, Italian authorities broke up a GSPC terror cell that was planning attacks on Jewish targets in Norway. In December 1994 members of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which GSPC splintered off from in 1998, hijacked an Air France jet in Algiers for the purpose of using it to strike the Eiffel Tower (and probably served as the inspiration for al Qaeda's Bojinka Plot in late 1995). And in December 1999 Ahmed Ressam was arrested while attempting to enter the United States from Canada with a trunk of explosives. While the foiled Millenium attack is associated with al Qaeda, Ressam was a GSPC operative.
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http://www.globalcrisiswatch.com/060907.php
[there are hidden links in all these posts]
Note: The video has been released. Read our report and see the videos here.
As-Sahab 9/11 Documentary on the Way
By Nick Grace
September 7, 2006
A new video is slated to be released by al Qaeda's propaganda wing, as-Sahab media. The animated gif promotional banner for the video that has been posted on the radical Ekhlaas Forum and is awaiting a link. You will note that both Ayman al-Zawahiri and Adam Gadahn are advertised as appearing in this video. It appears to promote the 90-minute video that was leaked to al-Jazeera on Thursday, of which only 3 minutes were broadcast.
http://www.globalcrisiswatch.com/aq/060907_aljazeera.wmv
Segments of the video included in al-Jazeera's package include pre-9/11 footage of Usama bin Laden, Mohammed Atef, combat training exercises in Afghanistan and the martyr videos of 9/11 hijackers Hamza al-Ghamdi and Wail al-Shehri. The video is likely to be a documentary on the 9/11 attacks.
Here are my observations on the video that deserve attention:
Keeping in line with recent as-Sahab products, this new video is extremely well produced and subtitled in English - a trend that began with the July 7 documentary on the 2005 London attacks.
Practically all of as-Sahab's products this year have relied upon the nebulous distribution network of supporters on radical message boards. It is unusual that this new video has been leaked or pre-released to al-Jazeera.
The martyr videos of al-Ghamdi and al-Shehri have been heavily modified with Adobe AfterEffects. The background design that was used in the July 27 Zawahiri video is used again but two of the background "image panels" have been replaced.
July 27 al-Zawahiri video
Image panels (L-R): Mohammed Atef, airbrushed WTC graphic, Mohammed Atta
al-Shehri martyr video
Image panels (L-R): Airbrushed WTC graphic, Pentagon reconstruction, burning WTC building
al-Ghamdi martyr video
Image panels (L-R): Airbrushed WTC graphic, Pentagon reconstruction, WTC collapse graphic
First, note the pixelzation evident on the top of Zawahiri's turban and the discoloration of his left hand as he swats at a fly in the July 27 screenshot. As I have previously argued, he was green-screened onto a "studio" graphic that was most likely designed in Adobe Photoshop. The studio graphic has been used in the al-Shehri and al-Ghamdi martyr videos in the segments of the new as-Sahab package aired on al-Jazeera. Interestingly, the burning WTC graphic that appears in the center panel of the July 27 Zawahiri video, which is heavily airbrushed and practically repainted, is used for the far left panel of both martyr videos. As-Sahab's designer has placed a graphic of the Pentagon with a construction crane in the center panel. And oddly uses two different graphics for the right-hand panel. Also note the graphic of what appears to be a static 3-D image of an American Airlines jet that changes position in the martyr videos.
Will this new video contain surreptitious messages to sleeper cells? This cannot be known, of course, but we should recall that as-Sahab's July 7 documentary contained liquid bombmaking training footage at a time when, as we now know in retrospect, a large cell in London whose members had trained in Pakistan were planning to destroy muliple aircraft over the Atlantic using liquid bombs. The image panels that flank Zawahiri in the July 27 video are also an interesting coincidence considering that they focused entirely on the 9/11 hijacking. I have been told from an extremely reliable source that the transatlantic hijackings were originally planned for September 11 but suddenly pushed to August 16. The plot was ultimately foiled on August 10.
Based on recent video releases by as-Sahab, this new video, the 9/11 documentary, is likely to be released in its entirety on the Internet on Friday. Expect new speeches by Zawahiri and Gadahn.
The questions on my mind:
* Why is as-Sahab using heavily airbrushed WTC graphics in the image panels when the original graphics are already dramatic?
* Is there a significance of the WTC graphic that appears in both the July 27 video and the 9/11 documentary?
* Why does as-Sahab feature a graphic of the Pentagon under reconstruction when images of its destruction are easily accessible?
* Will this video be as-Sahab's feature presentation between now and September 11 or is a significant message from UBL, who we have not heard from since July 1, being prepared for release?
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http://www.globalcrisiswatch.com/060910.php
As-Sahab and al-Eklhaas Media Network Release 9/11 Videos
By Nick Grace
September 10, 2006
The highly anticipated as-Sahab 9/11 anniversary video, "The Manhattan Raid," was released this afternoon in two parts. Part 1 (55:18) focuses on al Qaeda's justification for the attacks, an argument that is practically lifted from Michael Moore's works, and features heavy use of b-roll. Part 2 (36:23) focuses on the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks and includes footage of the hijackers as they trained for the operation. Predictably, there is little mention of United 93. Adam Gadahn and Ayman al-Zawahiri appear in the video, discussing the hijackers and the attacks. Archival footage of Usama bin Laden is prominently featured. Both segments are subtitled in English.
Part 1: http://www.globalcrisiswatch.com/aq/060911a_assahab.rm [21 Megs]
Part 2: http://www.globalcrisiswatch.com/aq/060911b_assahab.rm [14 Megs]
"The Manhattan Raid" was released in 2 different file formats and in 3 different sizes across exactly 500 individual file transfer links. 374 Real Media file links and 126 3GP file links.
As-Sahab Media has now begun to promote its next propaganda package, a new video of al Qaeda operations chief Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Shortly before the as-Sahab release, the al-Ekhlaas Media Network posted a 19-minute video "on the anniversary of the invasion of the country of the brave Americans" that features never before seen clips of the hijackers, including B-roll of Ahmed al-Haznawi al-Ghamidi's martyr video and shots of muscle hijacker Ahmed Alnami.
Subtitled in English and posted in 4 different file sizes (123, 31.5, 14.1 and 7.7 Megs) across 242 file transfer links. The video spends 7 minutes eulogizing the 19 hijackers and 12 minutes on news footage of the attacks with a war nasheed soundtrack.
Production is poor in comparison to recent as-Sahab products but standard with Global Islamic Media Front and al-Boraq Media products, which now produces materials for the Islamic Army of Iraq.
http://www.globalcrisiswatch.com/aq/060910_ekhlaas.wmv [125 Megs]
About Global Crisis Watch
Global Crisis Watch is a weekly current affairs podcast that brings listeners to the front lines on the War of Ideas with people who are fighting tyranny and terror with the pulse of freedom. More >>
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Be alerted via e-mail when new shows are posted. E-mail addresses will not be sold or given to third parties and will only be used for the purpose of sending show alerts.
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-524-2382788-524,00.html
The Sunday Times October 01, 2006
Focus: Chilling message of the 9/11 pilots
A video shows two of the world’s most infamous terrorists joking and laughing while filming their ‘death wills’ at Osama Bin Laden’s lair in Afghanistan. The journalist and author Yosri Fouda explains the terrible significance of the new find
See the video from noon today
Two bearded young men laugh and joke for the camera. They appear relaxed, well groomed, intelligent; they might be high-achieving students quietly celebrating an exam success. They look at a piece of paper and laugh some more.
What is so funny? Certainly not the piece of paper. There is Arabic script on it. Easily decipherable is the word “al wasiyyah”. This means “the will”.
It is the handwritten last testament of Ziad Jarrah, the lighter-haired and better-looking of the two young men. A well educated, middle-class Lebanese, he has been studying in Germany. So has his dark-haired companion, Mohammed Atta, also middle class and university educated, but born in Egypt. Atta has his will, too. Unsmiling, both men read them to camera.
These images are part of a videotape, nearly an hour long, that was filmed at Osama Bin Laden’s lair in Afghanistan 6½ years ago. They are revealed today for the first time, and they are a missing chapter in the searing story of the attacks on America on September 11, 2001.
Atta led the team of 19 suicide attackers and flew American Airlines flight 11 into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Jarrah piloted United Airlines flight 93. His assigned target was Capitol Hill, but the plane crashed.
ATTA and Jarrah have never been pictured together before. Indeed, a key element of their tradecraft was that they steered clear of each other. They were leading figures in the September 11 story, not only because they flew the planes but also because they apparently had everything to live for. Unlike most of the other hijackers, who were mainly provincial Saudi fundamentalists, Atta and Jarrah fitted easily into western society.
To the Germans who knew them in Hamburg they seemed entirely normal. The tape explains this mistake. It would be hard to look less homicidal — until the camera pulls back and reveals that Atta is sitting next to an AK-47.
So the tape not only fills a gap in the story of September 11 but also provides chilling proof of the difficulty of fighting Islamic terrorism: these two “normal”, happy, unthreatening individuals turned out to have an explosive effect on the history of the 21st century.
The unedited video was passed to The Sunday Times through a previously tested channel. On condition of anonymity, sources from both Al-Qaeda and the United States have confirmed its authenticity. It has no sound — and lip-readers have failed to decipher it, according to a US source — but the images speak loudly for themselves.
The tape not only features Atta and Jarrah. It also gives a rare and intriguing sight of Bin Laden with his inner court.
It opens with 100 or so Al-Qaeda hardcore members sitting on the ground in the open air, obviously expecting something to happen. Among them are several children.
A very tall man surrounded by three armed bodyguards arrives in a sedate, presidential manner. It is Bin Laden, dressed in white from head to toe with an all-enveloping, light brown robe. He looks serene as he makes his way to a makeshift podium and beings to speak into a microphone.
The date recorded on this section of the video is January 8, 2000. That makes the occasion Eid ul-Adha, the end of Ramadan.
There are a few recognisable faces among the audience, including Ramzi Binalshibh, Atta’s Hamburg flatmate who was later to become the co-ordinator of the September 11 attacks. And among the bodyguards is Abu Jandal, who was the only one with the authority to put two bullets in Bin Laden’s head if he was about to fall into enemy hands.
In the background are the tall mud-red walls of an impressive compound. It is clear that the location is part of a complex of about 80 buildings called Tarnak Farm in the desert near Kandahar airport. It was Bin Laden’s clan base during his Afghan sojourn — where he lived with his family and the inner core of Al-Qaeda.
American intelligence knew all about Tarnak Farm. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, “CIA officers were able to map the entire site, identifying the houses that belonged to Bin Laden’s wives and the one where he himself was most likely to sleep”.
Less than two years before the video was recorded, the CIA had a plan to work closely with some of the local tribes to grab Bin Laden as he slept. It was a clear-cut, well rehearsed “perfect operation”, according to Michael Scheuer, who ran the CIA Bin Laden unit at the time. But it was never executed and there is still controversy in America about who cancelled it.
TEN days after Bin Laden’s Eid speech, according to the date on the film, Atta and Jarrah read their martyrdom wills to the camera. This proof of their presence in Afghanistan at that time is just about the final main piece of the jigsaw: Atta, the man who decided zero hour on September 11 is for the first time on video, getting ready to record his “martyrdom” will.
Investigators have pieced together most of Atta’s life from his childhood as the son of a lawyer in Giza, northern Egypt, to the moment he boarded flight 11 — except for an unexplained absence from Hamburg in early 2000. The date on the tape perfectly corresponds with this.
Those who have been closely following the story had little doubt where Atta had been. Binalshibh told me, “Afghanistan, what else?” when I asked him during a secret meeting four years ago. But in their painstaking efforts to find the proof that connected the dots, US investigators and, especially, their German counterparts, have struggled with little more than circumstantial evidence and presumed facts.
This played nicely into the hands of conspiracy theorists, both in the Muslim world and in the West. Now the investigators have the proof, and only the flakiest of anti-American fantasists can go on claiming that Bin Laden, Atta, Jarrah and co had no hand in September 11.
We can now even reveal Atta’s itinerary. On November 29, 1999 he boarded Turkish Airlines flight TK1662 from Hamburg to Istanbul, Turkey, where he changed to flight TK1056 bound for Karachi, Pakistan. From there he would have crossed into Afghanistan by road, most probably through Quetta. On the return journey, he left Karachi on February 24, 2000 by flight TK1057 to Istanbul where he changed to flight TK1661 to Hamburg. Five months later he entered the United States to start flight training.
Unedited, the extraordinary footage also gives us a glimpse into the superficially ordinary character of the man who would later spearhead the devastating terrorist attack.
Wearing western clothes — black trousers and a dark brown, zip-collared sweater with zigzag stripes — Atta appears uncomfortable putting on a typical Pashtun hat.
He gives a how-do-I-look glance at the camera. The hat goes off, on, off and he throws it away with wry smile. Ready now. He crosses his legs and picks up his handwritten will.
Cool, gathered and deliberate, Atta reads to camera for 10 minutes before the tape cuts to a collector’s item: Atta and Jarrah together for the first time on camera.
With his stylish glasses, the handsome Lebanese is wearing a white, Saudi-style robe but appears to have western clothes on underneath.
Smiling, laughing and exchanging remarks, they discuss Jarrah’s will as he holds it — a superb set-up shot. Jarrah then gets his seven-minute exclusive appearance to tell the camera his last words.
THE significance of even a single frame of any of the September 11 pilots in Afghanistan could not be overestimated, let alone the sudden appearance of nearly 6,000 frames of the two most important and most puzzling hijackers.
Distinctively the black sheep of the whole lot — plotters and hijackers — Atta and Jarrah came from the two most liberal Arab countries, both from the heart of their respective communities, both from middle-class families, both intelligent, pleasant and trusted wherever they went, and both with impressive educational track records. Jarrah went to a Christian school in Beirut; Atta advanced his English at The American University in Cairo.
Then they both had ambitions beyond what they thought their countries could offer. They both went to Germany; Atta in 1992 to end up preparing a masters degree in city planning; and Jarrah in 1996 to end up preparing his in aeronautical engineering.
Again, they both could not cease to impress. So much so that Professor Dittmar Machule, who taught Atta at the Technical University in Harburg, a quiet suburb of Hamburg, still cannot understand what happened to the brilliant student he used to pick to fill in for him in seminars whenever he was busy.
While they lived in Hamburg, Atta and Jarrah were never meant to be seen together in one place at the same time, almost certainly on instructions.
Atta lived with other members of the Hamburg cell in a small flat while Jarrah was kept apart in a nicer part of Hamburg, living with a girlfriend and drinking alcohol. Yet in Afghanistan they appear at ease in other’s company.
When in mid-2000 they travelled to Florida, they were separate once again — even though they enrolled at flying schools that stood virtually next to each other.
If the appearance of this video solves one mystery, the big question about both Atta and Jarrah is still with us: how on earth did such impressive young men with everything to live for develop such a mindset? Neither was mad and neither was brainwashed. If anything at all they were both the antithesis of such naive and easy explanations.
One would confidently argue that someone of the calibre of Mohammed Atta would have been incapable of being brainwashed.
When Atta taped his will, he was not yet the leader of the hijackers. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the organiser of the plot, had earmarked two other men — Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar — as his spearhead and had sent them to flight school in California. But he quickly changed his mind.
His protégés failed to live up to his expectations. One flight instructor actually called them “dumb and dumber”.
Much more importantly, Atta’s exceptional abilities had just been discovered.
The perfect soldier was here and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed could not have asked for more. I would even argue that had not Atta accidentally appeared on Khalid’s radar, the “aeroplanes operation”, as it as known to Al-Qaeda, may never have stood a chance of success.
# Yosri Fouda is the chief investigative reporter for Al-Jazeera Television Pictures: The Sunday Times Tarnak Farm, near Kandahar, where Mohammed Atta’s video was shot, has a special place in the history of Al-Qaeda: it was once Osama Bin Laden’s personal kingdom within Afghanistan.
Exclusively Arab, it was home for Bin Laden’s wives and children, as well as for the elite fighters being trained for special operations. And, as we now know, for a few weeks in early 2000 it was home to Atta, leader of the 9/11 hijackers.
The farm, which covered about 100 acres, lay on a patch of desert about three miles south of Kandahar airport. It had originally been constructed by the Afghan government as an agricultural co-operative.
A mud-brick wall was built 10ft high to create a compound; inside there were about 80 one and two-storey buildings, including dormitories, storehouses, a small mosque and a building that Bin Laden converted into a medical clinic for his family and followers.
US intelligence knew Bin Laden, already a wanted terrorist, used Tarnak as his base, and in spring 1998 the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center began working on a plan to capture him at the compound, partly with the help of Afghan tribal fighters.
Afghans scouted and mapped the farm, and the CIA photographed it from space. The plan called for about 30 fighters to assemble at a staging post before driving to a second position a few miles from Tarnak.
From there the main raiding party would walk to the farm, arriving at 2am and avoiding minefields by crawling through drainage ditches. A second group would make its way towards the front gate, taking out the two guards as the main party attacked the group of huts where Bin Laden’s wives slept.
The plan was to bundle Bin Laden into a Toyota Land Cruiser and drive him to to a cave complex 30 miles away already stocked with food and water.
However, getting the plan accepted at CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia, was not straightforward. It was known that dozens of women and children lived in the compound, and security chiefs feared there would be many casualties.
By June 1998, much to the disappointment of the field officers responsible for devising the plan, nobody at a senior level within the CIA seemed willing to support it. Nor was there any support within the White House.
The plan was called off shortly afterwards. CIA abandoned plan to snatch Bin Laden from Afghan farm
Atta's journey to mass murder
September 1, 1968 Born in Kafr el-Sheikh in the Nile delta, Egypt
October 1986 Joined Cairo University to study town planning; graduated in 1990
July 24, 1992 Arrived in Germany on a cultural exchange programme
November 23, 1992 Registered for a master’s degree in urban planning at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg
End 1997 Thought to have travelled to Afghanistan for the first time, staying close to the compound of Osama Bin Laden near Kandahar
November 1, 1998 Moved into an apartment in Germany with other members of what later became known as the Hamburg cell. Many Al-Qaeda members lived in this apartment at various times; the September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed visited repeatedly. Ziad Jarrah, the flight 93 pilot with whom Atta is pictured above, moved close by at about the same time
November 29, 1999 Atta flew from Istanbul to Pakistan. From there he travelled to Afghanistan
January 2000 At Bin Laden’s Tarnak Farm he is filmed laughing and joking with Jarrah while filming his last will and testament
March 2000 From Germany, Atta contacted 31 US flight schools to discuss pilot training
June 3, 2000 Entered US for the first time
July 2000 Atta enrolled at Huffman Aviation in Venice, Florida. Jarrah trains at a flight school nearby
November 2000 Both earned their instrument certificates from the FAA
December 29, 2000 Atta practised on a Boeing 727 simulator in Miami
January 4, 2001 Atta flew to Spain to co-ordinate with Ramzi Binalshibh, a key Al-Qaeda planner, returning to America a week later
April 11 2001 Atta rented an apartment in Coral Springs, Florida, and assisted with the arrival of other hijackers
July-September 2001 Atta made eight or nine flights around America, some to meet other hijackers, some to carry out reconnaissance
August 28, 2001 Atta and other hijackers buy flight tickets for September 11
The other hijackers
# Nineteen men hijacked four planes. They acted in teams of five, except on United Airlines 93, which had four hijackers led by Jarrah
# Fifteen of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, two from the United Arab Emirates. Atta came from Egypt, while Jarrah came from Lebanon. Only Atta and Jarrah were highly educated
# Four weeks before the attacks Zacarias Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker, had been arrested, ostensibly on immigration charges, after the FBI became suspicious about his pilot training
# He later denied knowing about the September 11 attacks, but did plead guilty to conspiring to hijack planes. He is serving life in a US prison
# It is thought that 18 of the 19 terrorists recorded video wills. Before this weekend only five had come to light and none from the four pilots
The attacks and the toll
# United Airlines flight 175 and American Airlines flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Center towers on the morning of September 11, 2001. A total of 2,602 people died in the towers and on the ground
# American Airlines flight 77, carrying 64 people, crashed into the Pentagon shortly afterwards: 125 people died on the ground
# United Airlines flight 93 is thought to have been heading for Capitol Hill. But it crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back. Forty crew and passengers died
# There were no survivors from any of the planes, which were carrying 265 people. In total, the September 11 attacks are thought to have killed 2,973 people, although some others are still listed as missing
Click here to find out more!
Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd.
The OBL 9-11 video that shows him and hijackers in front of the rock cave: [2006]
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-10889-2347222-10889,00.html
Times Online September 07, 2006
Footage of the alleged meeting between Osama bin Laden and September 11 hijackers (AL-JAZEERA)
New Bin Laden video aired
By Vik Iyer , Elsa McLaren and agencies
Video: Times Online TV
Video footage allegedly showing Osama bin Laden meeting with September 11 hijackers has been shown on al-Jazeera television today.
The previously unseen footage showed the al-Qaeda leader sitting with his former lieutenant Mohammed Atef and Ramzi Binalshibh, another suspected planner of the 9/11 terror attacks.
Atef, also known as Abu Hafs al-Masri, was killed by a US airstrike in Afghanistan in 2001. Binalshibh was captured four years ago in Pakistan and is currently in custody in the US.
The station did not say how it obtained the video, which was produced by As-Sahab, al-Qaeda's media branch. It shows Bin Laden wearing a dark robe and white head gear walking outside in a mountainous area.
The television station also broadcast a recording attributed to the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, in which he said he was sure of victory against US-led forces in the country. The recording was posted on an Islamist Internet site as well.
Earlier today the alleged mastermind of the September 11 terrorist attacks also planned to crash airliners into Heathrow, according to documents released by American intelligence.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is accused of planning the Heathrow attack in 2003, as well other plots, and is dubbed "one of history's most infamous terrorists" in documents published by America’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence (Odni).
The information is detailed in profiles of 14 terror suspects who, the US announced yesterday, had been transferred from the secret CIA prisons to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Mohammed, one of the 14, enlisted Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, another of the suspects, as the lead operative for the planned Heathrow attack.
Mohammed, accused of devoting most of his adult life to terrorism, first came to attention after his 1995 indictment over a plan to explode a number of US commercial jets over the Pacific Ocean.
Bin al-Shibh, who was "slated" to be a hijacker for the September 11 operation, according to the documents, fled Afghanistan after the overthrow of the Taleban in late 2001 and headed to Karachi.
There, he and Mohammed worked on "follow-on plots against the West, particularly the Heathrow plot," the US document said.
The statement continued: "He was tasked by KSM to recruit operatives in Saudi Arabia for an attack on Heathrow Airport, and as of his capture, Bin al-Shibh had identified four operatives for the operation."
Bin al-Shibh was captured in September 2002 at a house in Karachi, Pakistan, after a shootout.
For his part, Mohammed, a mechanical engineering graduate, is further accused of plotting to attack a skyscraper on the US west coast with a jet and a 2003 plan to smuggle explosives into gas stations, railways and a bridge in New York. He was arrested in Pakistan in 2003.
This latest information comes into the public domain weeks after British airports were plunged into chaos when police said they had disrupted a plot to blow up transatlantic airliners.
Meanwhile, during a speech about the CIA programme yesterday, President Bush said information from those held had "helped stop a plot to hijack passenger planes and fly them into Heathrow or the Canary Wharf in London".
Click here to find out more!
Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd
Thanks for the help...this is good stuff...but there is a website that has an amazing amount of info about the muslim terrorists...If I locate it I will pass it back to you
[One has to ask, "how many become loved children and how many are abused to death"]
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2383126,00.html
The Sunday Times October 01, 2006
Revealed: Bulgaria's baby traders
Nicola Smith Plovdiv
'Little Kalinka is yours for £11,000' – her grandmother
THE tiny baby slept snugly in the crook of her grandmother’s arm, oblivious to the ghetto filth around her and to the squalid manner in which she was being offered for sale.
The old woman may have held the infant gently, but her face was hard. This, after all, was business.
“Her name is Kalinka — it means ladybird,” she said, passing the child to me in a soft pink blanket that enveloped all of her except for a pretty face of perfect serenity.
I cuddled Kalinka for a moment, feeling her warmth while the gleam of avarice in her grandmother’s eyes chilled me.
“How much money do you want for this baby?” I asked.
“That is for her mother to negotiate. Come back at 5pm and we will wait for you at that corner over there,” she said, pointing across the mud road to a building as run down as any in the slums of Bulgaria’s second city, Plovdiv.
I had come to Plovdiv, an ancient and largely dilapidated city where a hepatitis epidemic is currently raging, to investigate claims that human trafficking is on the rise in Bulgaria, which secured terms last week to join the European Union on January 1.
Foremost among the concerns of human rights activists is the suggestion that scores or perhaps hundreds of Bulgarian babies are being sold for adoption across Europe.
I posed as a childless woman looking for a fast and easy way to adopt a baby. I said my husband was a banker and we were willing to pay.
Accompanied by an interpreter, I walked into the Sheker Mahala ghetto — home to around 4,000 impoverished Roma — last Wednesday afternoon and approached a middle-aged woman, asking whether she knew of anyone who could help. A curious crowd soon surrounded us.
“If you want to adopt children you need to go to the maternity hospital. It’s the tall building over there,” said one man.
But as we turned away, the crowd parted to make way for the old woman, whose large gold earrings and imposing presence marked her out as the matriarch of the group. “There is one baby,” she said.
She introduced herself as Bogdana and, apparently trying to impress on me the robust good health and fecundity of the family line, claimed to have 17 children and 50 grandsons. Her daughter had seven children, she said, but their father was in prison so I could adopt the youngest, who was just a month old. Someone ran off to fetch her for inspection.
When the baby arrived I asked permission to take a photograph to show my husband. Bogdana posed impassively with her granddaughter.
When I returned at 5pm to agree the terms of the deal Bogdana was nowhere to be seen but the baby’s uncle, Rumen, was waiting with his wife.
“Come and sit down inside. The baby’s mother is working. She will be here in three minutes,” he said, smiling with a flash of two prominent gold teeth and ushering me into the one-room brick home the couple share with three children.
Rumen, a streetwise man in his mid-twenties who hopes to work as a labourer in London when Bulgaria joins the EU, said there would be no difficulty in getting hold of adoption papers. He knew a lawyer who could “arrange things” in one to two days if I paid him well.
As the three minutes stretched to 20, Rumen and his wife served hot lemon tea and started negotiating the price of their niece. The figure 20,000 was written on a scrap of paper.
“Leva?” I asked, referring to the local currency. “Ne, dollari,” came the quick response: he was asking for the equivalent of £11,000.
“Come back tomorrow,” he said when I opened my purse to show I did not have much money with me. The lawyer would join us then, he added.
At this point I asked to see the baby again so that I could take some more pictures but in doing so I may have alerted the the family to my true purpose. I was told to wait on the street, where a small group of women approached.
“The baby’s mother,” said Rumen, pointing to a large woman in a blue dress. She eyed me suspiciously, and shook her right hand as if to say no. They appeared to have guessed that my visit was a ruse. “She says she is not selling,” Rumen said. It was time to leave.
The trafficking of babies from Bulgaria’s deprived Roma communities is a growing problem, according to the police and social services. An increasing number of children are sold before they are even born.
One social worker in the Burgas region in the east of the country said he knew of 60-70 such cases over the past few years.
“Baby-trafficking has existed for the past 10-15 years but in the last few years it has become very intensive. Some of the poorer women are getting pregnant on purpose,” he said.
Some women borrow money from loan sharks who take their babies in lieu of repayment; others fall prey to dealers who seek out vulnerable single mothers with unplanned pregnancies.
Many of the babies end up in Greece, where purchasers pay lawyers to fix the paperwork. According to Svetoslav Tanev, the chief of Bulgaria’s border police, some infants have been smuggled as far away as France.
In the Black Sea town of Burgas, a network has sprung up to transport pregnant women across the Greek border to rich couples willing to adopt illegally “Nikolay”, 25, who is involved in the lower levels of the network, said women were usually driven to the border town of Kulata, where they were collected by traffickers on the Greek side of the operation, then hidden until they gave birth. The market price for a newborn Roma baby is between £11,000 and £16,000, but the mother may receive as little as £1,000 to £1,500.
Some wretched women are said to have been duped by dealers whose sole intention was to steal their babies and pay them nothing.
There can be few more poignant illustrations of Bulgaria’s grinding poverty than the plight of these mothers. When it joins the EU with Romania in three months’ time it will be the poorest member. A 2005 survey suggested that almost half its 7.8m people live on less than £1.50 a day.
Nowhere is the deprivation more evident than in Roma ghettos such as Gorno Ezerovo, a slum on the outskirts of Burgas just 25 miles from Sunny Beach, a resort popular with British holidaymakers.
Entering Gorno Ezerovo is like stepping back a century into a world of hovels made with corrugated iron and scrap wood. They are connected by muddy paths where sewage pours from broken pipes amid fly-blown heaps of rubbish. The older children are often shoeless and shirtless; babies a few months old crawl around unsupervised.
It was here that I met Albena, a worn and weary single mother of six children who told a horrifying story of being conned into accepting a job in Greece while pregnant with her latest daughter.
Albena, 29, who asked for her full name to be withheld, said she had been struggling to feed and clothe her family when she was approached by a man offering “work abroad”.
Desperate for money, she agreed. Last April she was driven across the border at Kulata in a taxi at night and left in a house with three other pregnant women.
Under constant threat of violence they were imprisoned there for 10 days. A man provided cigarettes and sparse supplies of food, but the promised jobs never materialised.
Albena grew more and more suspicious. “One day I heard the man on the phone speaking about selling babies. I heard the word baby many times and I started to cry,” she said.
When she told her companions they screamed out of the windows for help. A passer-by alerted the police, the house was raided and the women were returned to the Bulgarian border and given tickets home.
Albena’s daughter Maria was born on May 17. Her head is covered with eczema and her mother has little money to treat it. But it was clear that she truly loved her child.
“I didn’t want to sell her, this was not my intention,” she said, clutching the baby close. She is now preparing to appear as a witness in the trial of the alleged traffickers.
Irina Bulanova, the head of the Burgas immigration office, said women were often threatened by criminal gangs if they went ahead with prosecutions.
“The problem of baby trafficking is a brand new thing and it is really a very negative development in our society,” said Bulanova. “But please be aware that our country knows it is a problem and Bulgarian laws are being updated.”
There was no law against selling babies until two years ago and even then it applied only to the traffickers. Later this month it will become a crime for mothers to sell their babies. They could face one to six years in prison and a fine of up to £5,000.
Kumen Kupenov, the public prosecutor in Burgas, claimed the authorities were striving to combat trafficking but were hampered by a lack of co- operation from Greek officials.
Kupenov fears that even the tough new laws may be undermined by the demand for babies to be adopted illicitly in Greece and elsewhere in Western Europe.
“If there is no buyer for certain goods, then they will not be offered for sale. If nobody in the West offered money to adopt a child and if they followed the laws of their own countries, then it would not happen,” he said.
The reality, however, is that in the eyes of the affluent childless, babies like Kalinka look cheap. The haggling over such infants is almost certain to continue, their futures determined by bargains struck for meagre sums when they are barely a few weeks old.
THE COUNTRY
Population 7.3m
Main ethnic groups Bulgarian 84%, Turkish 9%, Roma 5%
Poverty Almost half the population live on less than £1.50 a day. Average income £135 a month
Unemployment 9%
Migration to the UK Estimates range from 3,400 to 170,000 in first two years of EU membership
Challenges Corruption, organised crime. Since 2001, 150 people killed in contract killings. Nobody convicted
Life expectancy 69 years (men), 76 years (women)
Click here to find out more!
Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd.
thanks again...no, this isn't it, but it is another good source of info...I appreciate the effort...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2383146,00.html
The Sunday Times October 01, 2006
Al-Qaeda to target westerners in Iraq
Marie Colvin and Ali Rifat Amman
THE shadowy new leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, has switched tactics to target thousands of western contractors working in the country.
In an audio tape released last week, he called on his supporters to kidnap westerners during the current holy month of Ramadan. Muhajir suggested they could be exchanged for Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric jailed in the United States in 1995 for plotting to blow up landmarks.
Muhajir urged supporters “to capture some of the Roman dogs so as to secure his release from the darkness of his prison”.
According to intelligence sources, Muhajir has sharply altered the strategy of Al-Qaeda since a US airstrike killed his predecessor, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Muhajir has moved away from attacks on Iraq’s security forces because they were alienating many people, Iraqi and western sources confirmed.
One of his aims is to redirect his men, mostly Sunni Arabs, to attack Shi’ite militias. The intention is to promote internecine conflict between the majority Shi’ite Muslims and the minority Sunnis.
Muhajir, who has also used the the name Abu Ayoub al-Masri (the Egyptian), was little known until Zarqawi’s death in June.
He is said to be unlike Zarqawi, a charismatic Jordanian who favoured spectacular suicide bombings and loved the spotlight. In contrast, even the real name and nationality of Muhajir (foreigner) are unknown. He is believed to be Egyptian and the only published photograph of him is said to be 10 years old and shows a chubby-faced young man.
“He is older and thinner now. He was with us during the Falluja war, leading a group of fighters in Jowlan district,” an insurgent source said, referring to fighting with US forces in 2004.
The interior ministry describes Muhajir as “35-40 years of age with considerable experience in war that he gained in Afghanistan in the late 1990s”. He trained with Osama Bin Laden, it added.
In a tape released last month, Muhajir warned: “What you saw in the past is a drop of what you are going to see and what is prepared for you.” An earlier video of a man said to be Muhajir matches the voice on the tape. He is shown shooting dead a Turkish hostage.
Click here to find out more!
Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1159193345166&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Sep. 30, 2006 5:00
Man placed dummy bomb in JFK parking lot arrested
By JPOST.COM STAFF
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New York police arrested a Vermont man aged 55 suspected of laying an dummy explosive device in JFK airport's parking lot on Friday.
The dummy explosive device caused heavy disruption on Thursday including a delay of take-offs and landings at the airport for several hours.
AP contributed to this report.
Chavez: 'Assassination attempt against me foiled'
Associated Press, THE JERUSALEM POST Oct. 1, 2006
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Saturday that an attempt was made to assassinate him recently and that those responsible fled to Colombia.
Chavez appeared to link the plot to his main rival in upcoming presidential elections, Gov. Manuel Rosales of Zulia state, claiming that he was in constant danger from opponents seeking to get rid of him.
"No more than a few months ago over in Zulia ... they didn't shoot me by a hair's breadth," Chavez said in a televised speech.
The Venezuelan president said a sniper had waited with a long-range gun and a motorcycle to escape on, and planned to shoot him as he exited from a helicopter and walked across a 200-meter open stretch.
"The plan didn't work out for them - God is always present over there. But those responsible left for Colombia, and by the way, they were from the Zulia Police."
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Ben-Eliezer: Assassinate Nasrallah
JPost.com Staff, THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 30, 2006
National Infrastructures Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer (Labor) called on Saturday for the assassination of Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.
"He is dangerous to everyone," Ben-Eliezer declared in an interview to Army Radio - an interview that Army Radio reported was picked up and reported by a number of foreign news outlets, including the British Sky News - and said that Israel should target Nasrallah at an "appropriate opportunity."
Ben-Eliezer also said that he was "unimpressed" by Syrian President Bashar Assad's announcement that he was willing to negotiate with Israel.
Regarding the IDF withdrawal from Lebanon, Ben-Eliezer said that the army would complete the process as soon as possible, but expressed his concern that another war could break out within months.
"The [status quo] won't hold," Ben-Eliezer said. "Anyone who trusts that Israel will be safe because the Lebanese army and international forces are in Lebanon is under a delusion. Only the IDF can guarantee the safety of Israel's citizens."
Ben-Eliezer said that the IDF was a good army, and that the generalship during the recent war in Lebanon and been "a failure."
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God on duty!!!
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1159193348172&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Sep. 30, 2006 18:11 | Updated Sep. 30, 2006 22:26
Missing jet skier found drifting on Sea of Galilee
By JPOST.COM STAFF
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A man who disappeared Saturday after his jet ski overturned on the Sea of Galilee was found five hours later after a search by marine police.
The man was found exhausted but uninjured about 3 kilometers from shore.
Grenade thrown under car of Lebanese judge
Associated Press, THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 30, 2006
Unknown assailants on Saturday threw a grenade under the car of a Lebanese judge who is investigating a string of bombings that has come under the scrutiny of the international probe into the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. No casualties resulted from the blast, but there was some material damage, a security official said.
The assailants appear to have thrown the hand grenade from a speeding car shortly after midnight Friday, targeting one of three cars used by Judge Salah Mokheiber that was parked in the garage of his residence in Beit Meri, a mountain town east of Beirut.
The car and several others parked in the garage were damaged, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give statements to the press.
No one was in the vehicles at the time of the incident.
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Russian planes buzz Alaskan coast
Associated Press, THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 29, 2006
The Russian air force held a massive exercise that involved strategic bombers flying across the North Pole and approaching Alaska, the Aleutian Islands and Japan, a top general said Friday.
Lt. Gen. Igor Khvorov, the commander of Russian long-range aviation, said the exercise that began Tuesday and finished Friday had nothing to do with heightening tensions between Russia and Georgia, Russian news reports said.
Khvorov said the exercise involved 70 Tu-160, Tu-95 and Tu-22M3 bombers, which test-fired 18 cruise missiles, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.
He said some bombers crossed the Arctic Ocean, flew over the North Pole and also reached Alaska, the Aleutian Islands and Japan's western coast without entering any country's airspace.
"All the aircraft involved flew over neutral waters, and none of them came closer than 12 nautical miles (25 km) to the maritime borders of any country," Khvorov said, according to RIA Novosti.
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Copyright 1995-2006 The Jerusalem Post - http://www.jpost.com/
[Running for office and an almost jihadi group member]
Keith Ellison On The Hotseat
Keith Ellison, the DFL's candidate in MN-05, has a couple of problems in the local blogs this morning. First, our NARN partner Michael Brodkorb finds a photo of Ellison leading a march against police brutality in 1998, holding what looks like several copies of the Nation of Islam's Final Call:
ellison-fc.JPG
Brodkorb alleges that Ellison was distributing these copies at the event, which puts lie to Ellison's insistence that he had no affiliation with the Nation of Islam or Louis Farrakhan after the Million Man March in 1995. MN Publius, who like Brodkorb does paid political work, defends Ellison by claiming that the picture doesn't show Ellison distributing the copies of Final Call. I'm on the fence in that respect. Sometimes I pick up a copy of the Star Tribune, especially when dining out where no Internet connection exists, and I'd hate to be photographed doing that. On the other hand, I don't usually pick up more than one copy and then display it while I'm marching down the street at a protest.
I'll call that one a draw. However, Power Line -- which has done marvelous work on Ellison -- notes an Insight News article on Ellison's run for the state legislature in 1998 that establishes his support for the Nation of Islam in the same time frame:
Ellison-Muhammed, who says his affiliation with the Nation of Islam doesn't mean he isn't running to represent all the people in the district, feels the critical issues on the table include criminal justice, education, and economic development. ...
His solution? To use organizations that are already set up for community safety to contribute significantly to securing the neighborhood. Ellison-Muhammed would support legislation that bolsters patrol groups like Mission of Peace, the Nation of Islam, M.A.R.C.H Inc., AMAN, and SALAAM. ...
Anticipating possible criticism for his NOI affiliation, Ellison-Muhammed says he is aware that not everyone appreciates what the Nation does and feels there is a propaganda war being waged against its leader, Minister Louis Farrakhan.
MN Publius argues that Ellison has never been a member of the Nation of Islam. In fact, Jon-David's direct quote is "Keith was never a member of the Nation of Islam, and has never had anything to do with Louis Farrakhan." This is patently false, and the Insight News article proves it. The article specifically goes into his connection to Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam as a way to assure Minnesotans that Ellison's ties do not threaten Jewish voters, although Ellison takes the opportunity to declare that critics have victimized Farrakhan for pointing out his many anti-Semitic rants.
Ellison has lied and continues to lie about his ties to the Nation of Islam. At one point, he proposed having Farrakhan's organization patrol the streets of Minneapolis in place of the police, and this wasn't during his days as a U of M law student -- it was during his political career. Ellison's lies should concern voters in the Fifth Congressional District, and have them consider their alternatives to Ellison's radicalism.
Posted by Captain Ed at 09:46 AM
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061001/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq
Baghdad shut down on suspicion of attack
By PATRICK QUINN, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 29 minutes ago
The U.S. military said a captured al-Qaida suspect and members of his cell were "in the final stages" of planning an attack on the Green Zone. An unprecedented curfew prompted by the arrest left millions of Baghdadis stranded at home on Saturday without supplies during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
The U.S. military said the suspected al-Qaida in Iraq member was arrested late Friday at the home of senior Sunni Arab political leader Adnan al-Dulaimi, where he was working as a personal bodyguard.
Al-Dulaimi is a member of the Iraqi Accordance Front — the largest Sunni coalition in the 275-member parliament, where it holds 44 seats — and the military was quick to distance the politician from the raid, stressing that he was "not the target."
"This operation in no way implies Dr. al-Dulaimi was associated with any illegal activity," the military said, adding that the suspect was captured in a security trailer at al-Dulaimi's home.
After the arrest, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was advised by the U.S. military to shut down the capital and order its 7 million residents to stay at home.
"They have information terrorists entered Baghdad," Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Abdul-Kaim Khalaf told The Associated Press. "The prime minister agreed to give our security forces the freedom of movement to raid certain places."
The curfew was rare both in its scope and severity, catching many residents of Baghdad by surprise. Many people are fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, eating and drinking only after sunset, and they were caught without supplies and fresh bread — a Baghdad staple. Most residents did not have a chance to shop on Friday because of a regular, weekly vehicle curfew to prevent attacks against mosques during prayers.
The U.S. military said the suspected terrorist, identified as Khudhir Farhan, and seven members of his al-Qaida cell "were in the final stages of launching a series" of car bomb attacks "possibly involving suicide vests."
"The detained individual is suspected of involvement in the planning of a multi-vehicle suicide operation inside Baghdad's International Zone," the military said, referring to the heavily fortified Green Zone.
Khalaf said the "intelligence information we received was that there are car bombs and that terrorist Takfiris wearing belts with explosives have entered Baghdad to target civilians." Takfiri is a reference to Sunni Arab extremists.
The Green Zone, also known as the International Zone, is located in downtown Baghdad and is surrounded by layers of concrete blast walls and guarded by Coalition forces and the Iraqi army. The Iraqi government lives and works there, the parliament is housed there and it is also home to the U.S. embassy.
As a bodyguard for al-Dulaimi, Farhan could have had access to the parliament, often attended by the prime minister and his staff, and possibly to offices used by Cabinet members. It is doubtful he could ever have reached the heavily guarded U.S. embassy compound inside the Green Zone.
Farhan also was suspected of having links to a car bomb network operating in the southern area of Baghdad, the military said.
Immediately after his arrest Friday afternoon, al-Dulaimi denied the bodyguard had any terrorist links, but when contacted by the AP on Saturday he acknowledged he could have been mistaken.
continued...............
Thanks for the ping. Thanks to all contributors. Great thread. BTTT.
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