Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) - A day after former President Clinton sent cruise missiles against al-Qaida targets in Afghanistan, the leader of that country's ruling Taliban militia telephoned the State Department and offered to talk, according to a State Department message disclosed Friday. Little came of the contact, although Mullah Mohammed Omar counseled the department that the United States would never be accepted as a friend of the Muslims unless Congress forced Clinton to resign. Clinton announced Aug. 21, 1998, that he had sent cruise missiles "to strike at the network of radical groups affiliated with and funded by Osama bin Laden,...

Aziz phoned friend to fix surrender By Alex Spillius in Baghdad (Filed: 26/04/2003) The demeanour of 20 members of a prominent Baghdad family locked firmly behind the iron gates of a suburban mansion yesterday afternoon was positively funereal. But there had not been a death in the family, there had been a surrender. Late on Thursday evening their leading light, the former foreign minister Tariq Aziz, had given himself up to American forces. The man who had once been the smooth-talking public face of Iraq to millions in the West had suffered two recent heart attacks. Now he decided to...

AN al-Qaeda lieutenant linked to hijacker Mohammed Atta phoned Australian contacts several times before the September 11 attacks. Imaz Eddin Barakat Yarbas, also known as Abu Dahdah, phoned people in Australia between 1996 and the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon. Dahdah, a Syrian whose contact details were found in the diary of one of Atta's subordinates, is now in custody in Spain with several other alleged al-Qaeda members. Atta died at the controls of American Airlines flight 11, which hit New York's World Trade Centre first, in the attacks that killed 3056 people. Dahdah reportedly met...