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Posted on 03/22/2003 10:35:52 PM PST by Happy2BMe
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19 minutes ago
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By PATRICK McDOWELL, Associated Press Writer
KUWAIT CITY - Grenades exploded at a 101st Airborne command center in Kuwait early Sunday, killing one and wounding 13 servicemen, and a U.S. soldier was detained as a suspect in the attack, the Army said.
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Three others who sustained serious injuries were undergoing surgery, the military said.
The attacker threw three grenades into three tents, including the command tent, military officials said. The motive in the attack "most likely was resentment," said Max Blumenfeld, a U.S. Army spokesman. He did not elaborate.
The name of the soldier who died was not released because family members had not been notified, said George Heath, civilian spokesman for Fort Campbell, Ky., the storied 101st Airborne Division's home base.
"Incidents of this nature are abnormalities throughout the Army, specifically in the 101st," Heath said. "Death is a tragic incident regardless of how it comes, but when it comes from a fellow comrade, it does even more to hurt morale. Our hearts and prayers go out to the families of the soldier. We pray that incidents of this nature do not happen again in any military organization."
The suspect, found hiding in a bunker, is an engineer from an engineering platoon in the 101st Airborne, said Col. Frederick B. Hodges, commander of the division's 1st Brigade.
The attack in the command center of the 101st Division's 1st Brigade at Camp Pennsylvania happened at 1:30 a.m. (5:30 p.m. EST Saturday) and apparently involved only grenades, Blumenfeld said.
One of the grenades went off in the command tent, he said. The tent, the tactical operations center, runs 24 hours a day and would always be staffed by officers and senior enlisted personnel, Blumenfeld said.
Ten of those wounded had superficial wounds, including puncture wounds to their arms and legs from fragments of the grenade, Heath said.
Helicopters evacuated 11 to Army hospitals, Blumenfeld said.
Names of the wounded were not released, and Blumenfeld did not say if any high-ranking officers were hurt.
Hodges said he was asleep when a sergeant woke him up.
"I immediately smelled smoke," the commander told Britain's Sky News television. "I heard a couple of explosions and then a popping sound which I think was probably a rifle being fired. It looks like some assailant threw a grenade into each of these three tents here."
The suspect, whose name was not released, has not been charged, Blumenfeld said, adding that investigators did not know if others were involved.
Two Middle Eastern men who had been hired as contractors were detained and later released, Heath said.
Earlier, Heath said the attack appeared to have been carried out by terrorists. Military officials had said the attacker used two grenades and small-arms fire.
Camp Pennsylvania is a rear base camp of the 101st, near the Iraqi border. Kuwait is the main launching point for the tens of thousands of ground forces — including parts of the 101st — who have entered Iraq (news - web sites).
Near Camp New York, another encampment in Kuwait, a Patriot missile hit an incoming missile, a military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. There were no reports of injuries or where debris from the missile might have landed. Camp New York, which is near Camp Pennsylvania, was the largest of the desert staging camps.
Jim Lacey, a correspondent for Time magazine, told CNN that he was about 20 yards away when explosions at Camp Pennsylvania went off at what he said were two tents that housed division leadership.
"The people who did it ran off into the darkness," he said.
He said he interviewed an Army major who was sitting outside the tent. "He said he saw the grenade roll by him," Lacey said.
After the attack, troops fanned out around the compound to find the perpetrators, Lacey said.
"When this all happened we tried to get accountability for everybody," Hodges told Sky News. "We noticed four hand grenades were missing and that this sergeant was unaccounted for. We started looking for him and found him hiding here in one of these bunkers. He is detained and he is being interrogated right now."
The 101st Airborne is a rapid deployment group trained to go anywhere in the world within 36 hours. The roughly 22,000 members of the 101st were deployed Feb. 6. The last time the entire division was deployed was during the 1991 Persian Gulf War (news - web sites), which began after Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait.
Most recently, it hunted suspected Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in the mountains of Afghanistan (news - web sites). Its exploits are followed in Kentucky with much pride.
News of the attack at the camp compounded the anxiety of relatives of the division's soldiers.
"I get a little worried but when I think I should be crying, I'm not," said Chelsey Payne of Clarksville, Tenn., whose husband, Sgt. Robert Payne, is with the division. "I just don't get scared about my own husband, I just know that he's a good soldier and he's coming home. He promised me."
Kuwait is the main launching point for the tens of thousands of ground forces who have entered Iraq. Before the war with Iraq broke out, Americans had come under attack four times in the oil-rich emirate since October. Three of the attacks were blamed on Muslim extremists.
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You'd never know the suspect was a muslim from this article.
At least they didn't say he was a white supremacist Tim McVeigh type. Thank goodness for small favors.
Exactly - as others have noted that without Fox, this small and irrelevant bit of info would go completely unreported in the commie press.
Give them some time - newspapers haven't been printed yet.
Fast Court Martial and shoot him at dawn!
The first time was in Desert Storm. The man who tried to kill his peers was John Allen Williams, aka John Allen Mohammad, the DC sniper. "...[John Muhammad] Williams’s unit was sent to Operation Desert Storm to clear mines and bulldoze holes in enemy lines. A few nights before the invasion of Iraq, Sergeant Berentson awoke in the early hours to find his tent, with 16 sleeping men inside, on fire. Someone had tossed in a thermite grenade. Berentson, who was fed up with Williams’s insubordination, immediately suspected Williams and told the Army’s Criminal Investigative Division. Berentson says he last saw Williams being led away in handcuffs. Williams’s military records make no mention of the incident; indeed, they suggest Williams had a distinguished gulf-war stint. But Berentson always kept Williams’s name and dog-tag number in his wallet. He says he was not surprised to see Williams’s face on television..."
By then, they'll be saying he mailed D*sshole the anthrax.
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
A U.S. soldier being described as a Muslim is now in custody for alleged complicity in the grenade and small-arms attack on members of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division encamped in Northern Kuwait, which injured 16 soldiers, one of whom has died.
Several others were injured seriously, and three are in surgery.
In addition, two Kuwaitis who had served a translators are being held for questioning, according to CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann, who is imbedded with the 101st.
Strassmann reported that the grenades were rolled into two commanders' tents. When officers ran from their tents, they were hit by small arms fire, he said.
In an initial statement, George Heath, 101st spokesman at home base Fort Campbell, said: "From our reports it appears that a terrorist penetrated Camp Pennsylvania, one or more terrorists threw two hand grenades into a tent."
But soon it became apparent that the attack was, as the Pentagon now says, an "inside job." After a roll call revealed that one soldier was missing on base, he was eventially found hiding. The soldier implicated was reportedly in charge of grenades, according to MSNBC.
Time reporter Jim Lacey told ABC News that he talked to an eyewitness at the rear base camp who said that grenades were rolled into a tents that housed the leaders of the brigadier unit. A "terrorist," the witness told Lacey, shot the first two people who exited the tent. Sky News reports that a third grendade was rolled into a third tent housing officers, but that it did not explode.
Camp Pennsylvania was named to honor of the victims of plane that crashed in Pennsylvania during the Sept. 11 attacks. The camp, located approximately 20-30 miles south of the Iraqi border, is surrounded by large berms and guarded by armed soldiers, with others in observation posts watching the desert. The camp is also home to Patriot missile batteries.
The U.S. soldier implicated is currently being questioned, and U.S. authorities are tight-lipped about characterizing his possible involvement.
Stuart Ramsay, a reporter with Sky News, says the Muslim soldier had become a concern to his commanding officers.
"In recent days they were concerned about his behavior and were not going to send him up to the front when the soldiers were going to be deployed," Ramsay said.
It is not clear whether the soldier, who Ramsay said would have been in the Gulf for some weeks, had planned the attack before being deployed.
"Talking to other soldiers, it could be that he was disgruntled," Ramsay said. "They said he had been acting 'weird' for days."
Lacey, the Time magazine reporter imbedded with the 101st, was in the tent next to the two tents that were the object of the grenade attack. In a phone interview, he told Fox News that the soldier responsible has an "Arabic-sounding" last name. Asked what his explanation of the perpetrator's motives, he said he believed "it was part of his misguided interpretation of his Muslim faith."
Military justice in war is different than that during peace. The stakes are much, much higher.
I don't buy the stories about this man acting weird, being disturbed, etc. If he were messed up enough that it was being noticed, he should have been sent home or , at very least, definitely should not have been guarding munitions.
The way our gubberment hiring structure is designed, the chances of an Islamic terrorist getting hired is greater than that of a non-minority - they beat the odds simply by writing "Muslim" under the religion block of the application form.
Don't believe me? What was one of the first things out of the Islamic professor from Florida who had been organizing and stragically carrying out clandestine terrorists ops in broad daylight - "I am a minority - I HAVE RIGHTS!"
Twenty-Year Plan for USA: Islam Targets America
(Dr. Anis Shorrosh)
The following is my analysis of Islamic invasion of America, the agenda of Islamists and visible methods to take over America by the year 2020! Will Americans continue to sleep through this invasion as they did when we were attacked on 9/11?
1. Terminate America's freedom of speech by replacing it with hate crime bills state-wide and nation-wide.
2. Wage a war of words using black leaders like Louis Farrakhan, Rev. Jesse Jackson and other visible religious personalities to promote Islam as the original African-American's religion while Christianity is for the whites! Strange enough, no one tells the African-Americans that it was the Arab Muslims who captured them and sold them as slaves, neither the fact that in Arabic the word for black and slave is the same, "Abed."
3. Engage the American public in dialogues, discussions, debates in colleges, universities, public libraries, radio, TV, churches and mosques on the virtues of Islam. Proclaim how it is historically another religion like Judaism and Christianity with the same monotheistic faith.
4. Nominate Muslim sympathizers to political office for favorable legislation to Islam and support potential sympathizers by block voting.
5. Take control of as much of Hollywood, the press, TV, radio and the internet by buying the corporations or a controlling stock.
6. Yield to the fear of imminent shut-off of the lifeblood of America - the black gold. America's economy depends on oil, (1000 products are derived from oil), so does its personal and industrial transportation and manufacturing -41% comes from the Middle East.
7. Yell, "foul, out-of-context, personal interpretation, hate crime, Zionist, un-American, inaccurate interpretation of the Quran" anytime Islam is criticized or the Quran is analyzed in the public arena.
8. Encourage Muslims to penetrate the White House, specifically with Islamists who can articulate a marvelous and peaceful picture of Islam. Acquire government positions, get membership in local school boards. Train Muslims as medical doctors to dominate the medical field, research and pharmaceutical companies. Take over the computer industry. Establish Middle Eastern restaurants throughout the U.S. to connect planners of Islamization in a discreet way. Ever notice how numerous Muslim doctors in America are, when their countries need them more desperately than America?
9. Accelerate Islamic demographic growth via:
a. Massive immigration (100,000 annually since 1961)
b. No birth control whatsoever - every baby of Muslim parents is automatically a Muslim and cannot choose another religion later.
c. Muslim men must marry American women and Islamize them (10,000 annually). Then divorce them and remarry every five years - since one cannot have the Muslim legal permission to marry four at one time. This is a legal solution in America.
d. Convert angry, alienated black inmates and turn them into militants (so far 2000 released inmates have joined Al Qaida world-wide). Only a few have been captured in Afghanistan and on American soil. So far - sleeping cells!
10. Reading, writing, arithmetic and research through the American educational system, mosques and student centers (now 1500) should be sprinkled with dislike of Jews, evangelical Christians and democracy. There are 300 exclusively Muslim schools with loyalty to the Quran, not the U.S. Constitution.
11. Provide very sizeable monetary Muslim grants to colleges and universities in America to establish "Centers for Islamic studies" with Muslim directors to promote Islam in higher education institutions.
12. Let the entire world know through propaganda, speeches, seminars, local and national media that terrorists have hijacked Islam, not the truth, which is Islam hijacked the terrorists. Furthermore in January of 2002, Saudi Arabia's Embassy in Washington mailed 4500 packets of the Quran, videos, promoting Islam to America's high schools--free. They would never allow us to reciprocate.
13. Appeal to the historically compassionate and sensitive Americans for sympathy and tolerance towards the Muslims in America who are portrayed as mainly immigrants from oppressed countries.
14. Nullify America's sense of security by manipulating the intelligence community with misinformation. Periodically terrorize Americans of impending attacks on bridges, tunnels, water supplies, airports, apartment buildings and malls. (We have experienced this too often since 9-11.)
15. Form riots and demonstrations in the prison system demanding Islamic Sharia as the way of life, not American's justice system.
16. Open numerous charities throughout the U.S. but use the funds to support Islamic terrorism with American dollars.
17. Raise interest in Islam on America's campuses by insisting that freshman take at least one course on Islam. Be sure that the writer is a bonafide American, Christian, scholarly and able to cover up the violence in the Quran and express the peaceful, spiritual and religious aspect only.
18. Unify the numerous Muslim lobbies in Washington, mosques, Islamic student centers, educational organizations, magazines and papers by internet and an annual convention to coordinate plans, propagate the faith and engender news in the media of their visibility.
19. Send intimidating messages and messengers to the outspoken individuals who are critical of Islam and seek to eliminate them by hook or crook.
20. Applaud Muslims as loyal citizens of the US by spotlighting their voting record as the highest percentage of all minority and ethic groups in America.
The worm was shot in the leg - eye witnesses saw him lob the eggs.
It was premeditated murder - pure and simple.
He conceived it, planned it, and carried it out - all driven by Islamic hatred for the infidel.
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