WASHINGTON (AP) Vice President Dick Cheney pledged Sunday that the United States would track down fugitive terrorist Osama bin Laden and warned that nations that sheltered him face "the full wrath of the United States." He identified Afghanistan as a likely target. "What we are going to do is aggressively go after Mr. bin Laden, obviously, and all his associates. And even if it takes a long time, I'm convinced eventually we'll prevail," Cheney said in an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" from the presidential retreat at Camp David.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/16/2001 ||
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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- The Pakistani government, led by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, will ask the Taliban, Afghanistan's rulers, to hand over suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden in three days or face massive military action led by the United States, CNN learned Sunday. In a move called "very encouraging" by a senior Bush administration official Sunday, a high-level Pakistani delegation is traveling to Afghanistan Monday to carry this message to the Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar in Kandahar.
And in New York, Afghan Ambassador to the U.N. Ravan Farhadi -- who represents the Northern Alliance, the anti-Taliban movement in Afghanistan -- said Sunday the Northern Alliance will make 15,000 troops available for any attack against Taliban-held Afghanistan.
Abdullah Abdullah, Northern Alliance foreign minister, told CNN he is "skeptical" of Pakistan's stand. "We have been fighting against them, and they are getting stronger day by day. Terrorists from all over the world have joined them," Abdullah said. "There isn't a balance between our forces and the forces which the Taliban gather or terrorists, which are joining Osama in hundreds, if not thousands, every year."
Bin Laden and Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar "have gone secret," Abdullah said, "and we haven't been able to find out where they stay. But of course we understand they are in southern Afghanistan, in Kandahar province. ... This is as much as we know at this moment."
This article starring:
Abdullah Abdullah
MULLAH MOHAMED OMAR
Taliban
Ravan Farhadi
Taliban
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/16/2001 ||
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Boston Herald by Howie Carr
Speaking of no shame, there's the Amherst board of selectmen - excuse me, the Selectboard, as they say in the People's Republic. The night before the sneak attack, they restricted the waving of Old Glory on Main Street utility poles to six days a year. The vote was 4-1. The lone dissenter wanted to allow the flag to be flown only one day a year.
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09/16/2001 ||
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Boston Herald by Howie Carr
Really, isn't it embarrassing to watch the way so many of the Beautiful People from Massachusetts have conducted themselves since Tuesday? When exactly did we corner the market on horse's asses? What about the thousands of marijuana-addled burnouts at yesterday's ``HempFest'' on the Common? Forget the security angle - maybe history will show that we are overreacting, that there was no real and present danger of a biological or nuclear strike from these savages.
But what about some simple common decency? The bodies of most of the victims haven't even been recovered, and these latter-day hippies are partying, getting stoned in public. Have they at long last no sense of shame?
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09/16/2001 ||
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By Jim Burns CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
(CNSNews.com) - Vice President Richard Cheney said Sunday he has no doubt that Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization was behind last week's attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., and said if possible, he would take the terrorist's head on a platter today. Cheney said bin Laden is "the target at the moment. But I don't want to convey the impression that if we had his head on a platter today that that would solve the problem because it won't."
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09/16/2001 ||
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WASHINGTON (AFP) - Calls for an end to a 25-year-old US ban on assassinations grew here Sunday as officials said they were seeking sweeping changes to regulations governing military and intelligence operations in the wake of last week's terrorist strikes. With President George W. Bush ordering the country on a war footing to combat terrorism, officials and lawmakers said they believed US counterterrorism efforts were being hindered by burdensome restrictions that could have resulted in the September 11 strikes not being stopped.
Attorney General John Ashcroft said the Justice Department would this week ask Congress for expanded powers to detain non-US citizens, intercept telephone communications and trace laundered money. "We need to upgrade and strengthen a number of laws," Ashcroft said, sketching out changes Washington wants to use against the prime suspect in the strikes on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Osama bin Laden, and prosecute a wider war on terrorism in general. Ashcroft refused, however, to discuss a possible and highly controversial reversal of the ban on assassinations, but Secretary of State Colin Powell said "everything" -- including former president Gerald Ford's 1976 decision to forbid US personnel from killing foreign leaders -- would be reviewed.
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09/16/2001 ||
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NY TIMES By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN
After hijacked airliners crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last Tuesday, President Bush told American military pilots to shoot down any commercial aircraft that ignored warnings to stay away from Washington, Vice President Dick Cheney reported today.
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09/16/2001 ||
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Chris Matthews
Only now, with the towers gone, do we Americans appreciate what our cities mean to us. In the War of 1812, British troops marched into Washington in 1814 and burned the White House, the Capitol and other government buildings. But that was long ago. Germans know what it means to see their cities in rubble. The Japanese know. The Poles know. The people of Iraq know. Now we know.
"I can't tell you how sad I am and America is," President Bush told the people of New York on Thursday. "I want you to know there is a quiet anger in America. I can't tell you how proud I am of the good citizens and the extraordinary job you all are doing." But there was no more impressive politician last week than New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. He spent the days walking through the rubble, consoling the people of his city, urging unity. A combination of morale officer and grief counselor, he knew the indispensable power of being there.
New York can no sooner forget its lost World Trade Center than Ahab could forget his lost leg. The atrocities at the World Trade Center and Pentagon were insults to the American soul as well as injuries to our body.
The consoling powers of a great politician can go only so far. Of all the horrid news photos from New York, none is more admonishing than those of the pristine World Trade Center before it fell. No one will ever take such a picture again. Those who flew past Manhattan on the 8 a.m. shuttle Tuesday were the last to glimpse a New York skyline that's now part of the past.
We're talking about an amputation. New York can no sooner forget its lost World Trade Center than Ahab could forget his lost leg. The atrocities at the World Trade Center and Pentagon were insults to the American soul as well as injuries to our body. The grand cityscape of New York took years to take form; it took an hour and a half to change forever. Losing the World Trade Center is a permanent blow, as if Washington were to lose the Capitol, or San Francisco the Golden Gate Bridge.
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09/16/2001 ||
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Alan Reynolds Washington Times
When we speak of "fundamentalist" Christians and "orthodox" Jews, we mean those who follow quite strictly the teachings of the New Testament or Torah. If "Islamic fundamentalist" likewise means strict adherence to the Koran, then the phrase cannot be properly applied to those who attempt to terrorize Christians and Jews. The Koran demands respect of all monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), and does not condone war against any of them, much less cowardly acts of terrorism.
Dictators and aspiring dictators are angry with the United States for limiting their lust for power and land. They may try to cloak their ambitions and their brutality in religious garb, but they are lying. Religion cannot justify atrocities against the United States any more than it justifies thuggery in Northern Ireland. Murder is murder. There is nothing religious about it.
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09/16/2001 ||
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NYT Editorial
But the normal we are returning to is different from what we knew a week ago. Tuesday's tragedies were not only unifying but clarifying. Americans now live a state of war against an irrational, vengeful and elusive enemy. And if we are to win, we will have to become used to the idea that we are in this for the long haul. Coming to terms with that new reality, winning this war, will require discipline, stamina and sacrifice.
For years now, younger Americans have yearned to prove that they are as patriotic and as capable of self-sacrifice as the Greatest Generation. The commitment made after Pearl Harbor was both larger and simpler than the one we are being asked to undertake. Back then, the aim was clear, the path was obvious, and the sense of solidarity was natural for a country that had to focus single-mindedly on winning World War II.
Our shared mission, to eradicate terrorism, is a noble one. The rewards for victory would be immense a safer world and a planetary commitment to cooperation and tolerance. But our individual tasks are vague. President Bush is unlikely to reinstate the draft or impose rationing. We will go about our ordinary jobs as before. Buying consumer goods is not only possible, it has been elevated to a virtual act of patriotism to aid a flagging economy. Nevertheless, we will need to make sacrifices that are all the more difficult because they are unseen and require more patience than heroism.
American resilience, which allows us to bounce back from setbacks, forgive old enemies and rewrite our national story for every generation, has a downside. Some may call it a short national attention span. Yesterday's crusade is tomorrow's inconvenience. The gas crisis that was supposed to commit us to energy conservation quickly gave way to the S.U.V. era. People who willingly stand in lines to get through airport security this month may not be so understanding by the Thanksgiving holidays.
Perhaps most painful of all, America may have to give up the post-Vietnam illusion that it is possible to fight wars with few casualties. Our success in the Persian Gulf and even our limited achievements in the Balkans created the illusion that American military technology is sophisticated enough to be used in combat without putting soldiers in harm's way. But what we have actually been enjoying is an extended string of luck. Last week, the message came through loud and clear that luck can run out.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/16/2001 12:16 ||
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CAIRO (AFP)
Makram Mohamed Ahmed, editor-in-chief of the weekly Al-Mussawar, considered close to senior Egyptian officials, said Arabs must be cautious of the aims of an anti-terrorist coalition.
"Before there is any anti-terrorist coalition, there must be a clear definition of terrorism which does not confuse terrorist groups and resistance movements against occupation such as Hamas, Jihad and Hezbollah."
"Before there is any anti-terrorist coalition, there must be a clear definition of terrorism which does not confuse terrorist groups and resistance movements against occupation such as Hamas, Jihad and Hezbollah," Ahmed said. "If the group of Osama bin Laden is the top suspect in the attacks on September 11, the United States is the second suspect, because they have let the fire burn by allying themselves with Israel," he said.
"Bin Laden has benefitted from American injustice to fool young Arabs and exploit them in his ideological battle against the United States," Ahmed said. The fight against terrorism, he added, "requires a rebalancing of the American position in the Middle East."
Arab countries are meanwhile pursuing their security cooperation with the United States, especially in the exchange of information. Egypt, where the FBI has had an office running since February 1997, is a key country in such cooperation, as two armed Egyptian groups, Jamaa Islamiya and Islamic Jihad, are allied with bin Laden's group.
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09/16/2001 ||
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BANGALORE, India (AP) -- Hindu fundamentalists rioted in a Muslim area of southern India, shouting slogans against Pakistan and the Taliban in a protest prompted by terrorist attacks in the United States. Two people were killed and dozens injured, police said Sunday. The violence occurred during a march of some 50,000 Hindu nationalists in Hubli, a southern city that has been the scene of numerous religious riots.
Police spokesman M.D. Singh said the march turned violent when some participants began shouting angry slogans against the Taliban leaders of Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan for supporting the main suspect in the U.S. attacks, Osama bin Laden. A few hundred marchers broke away, rushing police positions around open land reserved for Muslims to pray and setting fire to several vehicles, including a police jeep, police said.
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09/16/2001 ||
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CAIRO (AFP) - Arab states are cooperating with a US campaign against terrorism, seeing a chance to advance their own battle against Islamic militants, but remain opposed to joining a US-led military coalition. Arab leaders are wary of being sucked into a US military campaign, all the more so because they fear Israel will turn the terror attacks to their benefit.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell looked Friday to the Arab world as the United States forged ahead in building a global anti-terrorism coalition to back US retaliation for the strikes in New York and Washington. But Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak opposes any anti-terrorist coalition to confront the attacks on the United States that is not under the auspices of the United Nations. "A coalition grouping a select number of countries must not be formed since that will not permit decisive and collective international action against terrorism," Mubarak said in the government-run Al-Ahram daily on Saturday. "It would be better to hold an international conference against terrorism under the auspices of the United Nations to adopt binding resolutions for all the countries of the world," he said.
Morocco and Jordan, two other Arab allies of the United States, also expressed reservations about a military engagement, while no Arab country says it is ready to take part in military action. King Mohammed VI of Morocco on Thursday urged Washington to favor negotiations while Jordan's King Abdullah I said the anti-US attacks would not have occurred if Washington had settled the problems in the Middle East.
If a majoritiy of Arab countries took part in the US-led military coalition against Iraq's invasion of Kuwait more than 10 years ago, the circumstances are very different today, according to analyst Ahmed Abdul Halim. "The Gulf War was about restoring the sovereignty of a country which had been stricken from the map by another," said General Halim, an analyst with the pro-government Cairo Center for Middle East Studies. "But today, the Arabs cannot join a coalition whose goals are unclear and while Israel is trying to include Palestinian organizations like Hamas and Jihad, or Hezbollah of Lebanon, on a list of terrorist groups," he added.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/16/2001 ||
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Fox News By Carl Cameron
WASHINGTON The world's most extreme terrorist groups met twice earlier this year in an effort to set aside their philosophical differences and unite in a new holy war against the United States and Israel, law enforcement officials tell Fox News. The two meetings, according to the officials, took place in Beirut, Lebanon in February and the Iranian capital of Tehran in late April. The gatherings are described as "unprecedented," and went largely unnoticed in the west. A handful of officials in the White House were briefed on the event.
Dubbed the "Jerusalem Conference" by its 400 or so participants, the group drafted a document pledging to unite behind the Palestinians and win total Arab control over Jerusalem. "The only decisive option to achieve this strategy is the option of Jihad (holy war) in all its forms," the document says, according to law enforcement officials who have seen it. "America today is a second Israel."
The group made up of Usama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda, the Palestinians' Hamas and Islamic Jihad factions, the Lebanese Hezbollah and militants from Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan, Qatar, Yemen, Sudan and Algeria has named its task ahead, "The Jerusalem Project." Sources tell Fox News that at least one participant went to the conference from the United States and returned here afterward.
The sources say "The Jerusalem Project" is headquartered in Beirut and led by two men -- Musa Abu Marzouq, a Hamas leader who was in 1977 arrested in New York and later deported to Jordan; and Ramadan Abdullah Shallah of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who has two sons that served in Bin Laden's Mujahedin unit against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Iran reportedly sent several official diplomats to the meetings, including Hojatoleslam Ali Akbar Mohtashami, a well known Iranian intelligence official.
This article starring:
HOJATOLESLAM ALI AKBAR MOHTASHAMI
Govt of Iran
MUSA ABU MARZUQ
Hamas
RAMADAN ABDULLAH SHALLAH
Islamic Jihad
al-Qaeda
Hamas
Hezbollah
Islamic Jihad
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/16/2001 12:18 ||
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Afternoon Despatch & Courier
Now the truth can be told. Osama Bin Laden, prime suspect in the US terrorist attacks of Tuesday, had met India's most wanted man, underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, a year or so ago and had sought his help to establish bases in India. The meeting, which was set up by Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) in Khost, Afghanistan, also included Chhota Shakeel and Tiger Memon. The trio had met Laden to buy arms from his impressive arsenal. And when Laden had expressed the wish to extend his terrorist outfits in India, Dawood had reportedly assured him of all help.
Indian intelligence sources fear an outbreak of the jehadi movement in this country with this. "The international heat being turned on Pakistan and Afghanistan, the jehadis have nowhere to go and foment trouble but India and Israel. They will not harm America for some time to come now that they have seen how violently President George Bush is prepared to retaliate. Against Israel they came to nought. So they might infiltrate India," said a source. "This is almost certain to happen."
This article starring:
Chhota Shakeel
Dawood Ibrahim
Tiger Memon
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/16/2001 ||
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Sydney Morning Herald
Indian investigating agencies handed over detailed maps and information of terrorist training camps inside Afghanistan to the FBI, news reports said yesterday. The Indian Express reported that most of the documents were part of voluminous dossiers maintained on Afghan mercenaries operating in the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. They provide details of terrorist training camps in Asababad, Sarkanar, Ghazni, Jalalabad, Khost, Paktya and Kandahar in Afghanistan.
One document was said to be the opening page of the 2001 diary of Al Dawa, a small radical Islamic group. It proclaims: "Yesterday we saw Russia being dismembered. We will see US and Israel burning in the flames of jihad (holy war)". Another page calls for young recruits, stating: "The pledge calls for jihad, in the name of Allah, at all costs and in all seasons, against Israel, India, US, Russia, UK and Serbia."
These documents focussed on Afghan mercenaries and their links with Pakistan-based groups. They also contained "irrefutable evidence" of how Pakistan and bin Laden had been working in tandem to mobilise and support Muslim separatist groups in Kashmir, the report said.
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09/16/2001 ||
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Philadelphia Inquirer By Jeff Gelles
His business ventures have ranged from construction to trade in diamonds and fish. He has contributed to schools, road-building and malaria control. And he may be the mastermind and financier behind the largest act of terror in U.S. history. Osama bin Laden, prime suspect in last week's attacks that killed thousands of people, destroyed the World Trade Center, and damaged the Pentagon, is an elusive character in many ways. And his finances, too, are shrouded in mystery.
At the peak of his business dealings in the mid-1990s, this son of a Saudi construction magnate owned about 30 companies in Sudan, and had investments across the Islamic world and beyond, from Kenya and Uganda to Malaysia and the Philippines. Even after international sanctions against Sudan caused him heavy losses, bin Laden's fortune was still estimated at $250 million to $300 million, said Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert and fellow at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at Scotland's University of St. Andrews.
What has happened to his fortune since then is unclear. "After 1998, his investments have been extremely clandestine," Gunaratna said. "The big companies he had have all been dissolved or given over to others."
After bin Laden was accused in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa, the United States attempted to freeze his assets with little evidence of success. "He's put most of his money into cash or real estate through intermediaries, false-front organizations," said Stephen P. Cohen, a South Asia expert at the Brookings Institution who has studied bin Laden's role in Afghanistan.
What seems more clear is that bin Laden's resources aren't limited to his own fortune but have been bolstered by a continuous stream of contributions. Yet he would need only a fraction of his supposed riches to carry out the kind of terrorism he is accused of. "We're used to thinking in terms of hundreds of millions of dollars" to conduct a complex operation, Cohen said. "These guys are probably thinking in terms of a million or two."
Gunaratna puts the figure even lower, for an attack such as Tuesday's that relied on simple weapons and highjacked airplanes. "To conduct a terrorist operation . . . doesn't require a lot of money. That kind of operation you can conduct with $200,000," he said.
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09/16/2001 ||
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(CNN) -- Federal investigators issued two new arrests warrants for people wanted for questioning as material witnesses in the probe into Tuesday's hijacking attacks, sources told CNN Sunday. The warrants were sealed and no details were made public. The people sought were not named, nor was there any information available on what their connection might be to the attacks.
Two witnesses are already in custody. One was arrested Saturday after being questioned while being held for possible immigration violations. The other was detained Thursday at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport for allegedly possessing a false pilot's license.
The FBI Sunday searched an apartment in Delray, Florida, linked to a suspect in the hijacking of United Airlines Flight 93 that crashed Tuesday in western Pennsylvania. About a dozen agents were seen carrying garbage bags out of the residence where Saeed Alghamdi was believed to have lived. Some of the agents were wearing protective suits.
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09/16/2001 ||
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telegraph.co.uk By David Bamber, Chris Hastings and Rajeev Syal
A SUSPECTED leader of a terrorist group headed by Osama bin Laden is to be quizzed by United States federal agents after being arrested at Heathrow on the same day as last week's airliner attacks. Mufti Mohammed Khan, who security sources suspect is the second-in-command of the Jaish-e-Mohammed (Army of Mohammed), flew in from New York only a couple of hours after the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon were hit. He is now being returned to New York for questioning by the FBI, which has described Jaish-e-Mohammed as one of the most dangerous terrorist cells in the world.
It is a banned organisation in Britain and is a prime suspect as the group behind the attacks in New York and Washington. Its leaders have declared war on all US citizens.
This article starring:
MUFTI MOHAMED KHAN
Jaish-e-Mohammed
Jaish-e-Mohammed
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/16/2001 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
