Posted on 10/05/2001 12:28:13 PM PDT by hawaiian
"At a celebration marking a pact between the Egyptian Jihad group and Bin Laden's al Qaeda umbrella organisation, the man who was denounced by Tony Blair yesterday as the organiser of the world's worst terrorist outrage appears relaxed throughout." Click Here for the full article.
Perchance partaking of poppies?
Those who fail to heed history are doomed to repeat it.
On video - Bin Laden breaks cover
by Hugh Muir, Robert Fox and Jeremy Campbell
Terrorist leader Osama bin Laden has broken cover for the first time since the 11 September attacks on America.
As Allied forces mobilise, the world's most wanted fugitive - the man President Bush says he wants "dead or alive" - shows his defiance by sending film of himself with his terrorist henchmen at a mountain hideout in Afghanistan to Qatar's Al-Jazeera television station.
At a celebration marking a pact between the Egyptian Jihad group and Bin Laden's al Qaeda umbrella organisation, the man who was denounced by Tony Blair yesterday as the organiser of the world's worst terrorist outrage appears relaxed throughout.
Flanked by bodyguards armed with AK-47s and with the mountains of Afghanistan in the background, he looks on as gunmen fire into the air and sing militant songs in Arabic.
At the sinister event, Bin Laden is filmed welcoming Islamic militant Ayman Zawahri to the fold and marking the graduation of a group of newly trained fighters into al Qaeda.
Dressed in white and beige robes and an Afghan-style dark-coloured turban, Bin Laden stares obligingly into the camera. Dozens of militants wearing uniforms stand at attention during the ceremony but were filmed from behind in an apparent effort not to show their faces.
At one point Bin Laden and a smiling Zawahri, each carrying an assault rifle, are shown sitting on the ground to listen to a ceremonial speech by an unidentified militant.
An Al-Jazeera journalist said the exclusive footage was believed to be "a couple of weeks old". Intelligence agencies will study copies of the tape as they attempt to pinpoint Bin Laden's whereabouts, but it will be widely assumed that he will have moved on.
The US is preparing for military strikes against the Taliban for harbouring Bin Laden and on his training camps in Afghanistan.
The Saudi dissident was last seen in public in February, at his son's wedding in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. In a speech there, which would be viewed by all but his close supporters as grotesque, he took the opportunity to celebrate the October suicide-bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 American sailors. "The pieces of the bodies of infidels were flying like dust particles. If you had seen it with your own eyes ... your heart would have been filled with joy," he said.
His associate Zawahri has been indicted in the US in connection with the bombings of its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, the same year he joined forces with Bin Laden.
While the hunt for Bin Laden continues, fears are growing about the retaliation he will seek in the event of an Allied attack. Based in part on information provided by intelligence sources in Britain, US officials have told members of Congress there is a "high probability" that terrorists linked to Bin Laden will try to launch another major assault on American targets in the near future.
One intelligence official told the members of Congress there is a "100 per cent" chance of an attack if the US makes a military strike against Afghanistan, the Washington Post reports today.
After the briefing Senator Richard Shelby, of the Senate intelligence committee, said: "We have to believe there will be another attempt by a terrorist group to hit us again. You can just about bet on it."
Officials are especially concerned about truck bomb and car bomb explosions that could be detonated near natural gas lines, power plants and other sites crucial to basic living.
The Coast Guard is boarding and searching ships in New York, Boston and other harbours and security is tightening around nuclear power plants, oil pipelines, refineries and other potential targets. The FBI has a plan to go "full tiltî for security during the first 72 hours after President Bush has launched a military operation.
Meanwhile America has sent Britain a "list of requestsî for military support in action against the Taliban and the Al Qaeda organisation in Afghanistan, which could come in two or three days, at the earliest.
Reports from defence sources in Pakistan suggest the UK will be asked for support facilities such as tankers for air-to-air fuelling and airborne early warning planes. HMS Trafalgar, the nuclear hunter-killer submarine could be called on to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles.
Good...he's discovered that he and his terrorist Islamabots ain't that powerful afterall.
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