Afghanistan authorities have averted an attack against government officials, according to a report on the country's national television. Citing the Afghan intelligence service, the report said that a man identified only as a "foreigner" was arrested after a traffic accident in Kabul. Bet he wasn't a Norwegian or a Mexican...
Explosives were reportedly hidden in his car. The intelligence service report said he was planning to drive the car into a vehicle carrying Afghan officials, including top leaders. It is not clear if Afghan President Hamid Karzai was the target. The Bad Guys would love to take out Karzai, and they'll keep trying until they either do, or they're all dead. If they succeed, they'll try and use the awful that follows to throw the country into chaos, so that Hekmatyar and Mullah Omar can fight it out to see who gets to misrule the ruins.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/30/2002 07:58 am ||
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All this shows that Gore's prescription to "stabilize Afghanistan" before invading Iraq has that certain whiff of unreality. Afghanistan may be stable in a Western sense about two decades from now.
Posted by: Tom Roberts ||
07/30/2002 12:25 Comments ||
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That's another way of saying "let's never do it, cuz I'm scared it'll fail." Afghanistan's never going to be "stable." Even if it was, there would be some reason not to take decisive action. The last Gulf War, the left were hollering about how we should fix all our problems at home before we embarked on those foreign adventures.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/30/2002 18:41 Comments ||
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Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, former ambassador of Afghanistan in Islamabad has been killed in a detention facility at Guantanamo, Cuba, family sources alleged. According to a report Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef was tortured excessively at the detention center. The torture was so excessive that he breathed his last at the camp, his relatives said. However, neither the Afghan government nor the US sources have confirmed his death. Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef was arrested by the Pakistanâs security forces loyal to the United States ignoring his diplomatic status and his application for political asylum in Pakistan to escape the wrath of Americans in Afghanistan. He was the senior most official of the Taliban government who could be arrested by the US forces. Pakistani authorities later handed him over to their masters and they bundled him to Guantanamo prison facility in Cuba along with hundreds of other Afghan, Pakistan and Arab prisoners. Guess they're dropping like flies in the inhuman conditions of Club Fed. How do they know he's dead? "He ain't writ home in ages, so he must be dead. An' if he's dead, it's cuz somebody done tortured him to death!" So there you have it.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/30/2002 11:11 am ||
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How do we know that he's not dead? Because the Chomskeyites aren't braying about it, that's why. If he were dead, there would have been a report AND an editorial about inhumane conditions at Gitmo in the New York Times.
Regards,
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/30/2002 11:32 Comments ||
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This is crap. There is no torture on our side of the fence in Guantanamo, Cuba( on the other side- its a proven fact). This is just a other attempt by the left to get a published list of names being held. Somehow they feel that we'd all be safer if only we knew who was being held. Of course, they never stop to think that one of the values of not telling anyone who is being held there is that they can be turned and used to ferret out their former breatheren.
Posted by: Frank Martin ||
07/30/2002 12:11 Comments ||
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It's not the left. It's from Jihad Unspun - so it's the Bad Guys. As far as I know, they haven't been writing home from Guantanamo, so the 'rents don't have any way of knowing if he's dead or alive. I'd imagine he's alive.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/30/2002 14:46 Comments ||
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They've been letting a few write home. I doubt he's one of them. I'd also imagine he's alive (if he is in Gauntanamo).
Posted by: Kathy K ||
07/30/2002 15:40 Comments ||
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I stand corrected. I was typing, and suddenly, my knee jerked and I fat fingered "left" , when I clearly meant to type "his family". I will be more careful when slandering in the future.
Posted by: Frank Martin ||
07/31/2002 1:18 Comments ||
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A bomber who was captured in a car packed with a half-ton of explosives was just 300 yards from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul when he was stopped by a chance traffic accident. Foreign intelligence information indicated the alleged bomber, who was captured Monday after a car chase through Kabul, is a foreigner and a member of al-Qaeda, said Amonullah Barakzai, deputy director of the Afghan intelligence service. "He was on a suicide mission," Barakzai said, adding that Afghan authorities were not sure whether his target was the embassy, other foreign installations, or the Afghan leadership, including President Hamid Karzai, whose palace offices are little more than a half-mile from the accident scene. Just pick a place and explode...
An Interior Ministry spokesman said late Monday that a second unidentified man also had been arrested in the case. But the intelligence official reported only the single arrest and said investigators had not determined the man's identity or nationality. "Unfortunately for the past 24 hours we have not been able to make him speak," he said. They're not hitting him hard enough...
A government television report Monday night on the arrest was accompanied by video of the man's Toyota Corolla, whose door panels were exposed to show yellow blocks of what the intelligence service statement said was explosives. The report also showed a photo of the suspect, a heavily bearded young man in a waistcoat and open shirt. His dress and appearance seemed Afghan or Pakistani, but the government statement read by the station said he was a foreigner and the plan was developed abroad. Dressing up to blend in with the natives...
When the fugitive had to stop at a crowded road checkpoint a half-mile away, the officers rushed the car. They became suspicious of the car doors, which were very heavy. Dismantling them, they found "500 or 600 kilograms" â 1,100 to 1,300 pounds â of TNT and C-4 explosives, rigged with an electrical detonating system, the intelligence official said. Afghan authorities had been tipped by information from the International Security Assistance Force and "other organizations" that a foreigner with explosives would be entering Kabul, Barakzai said, and so had deployed special mobile patrols and set up checkpoints. Eventually they'll get through and blow something up. Maybe then Binny will step forward and take credit. But the Kabul Kopper Korps and the intel system seems to be on top of things for now.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/30/2002 11:29 am ||
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Iraq has accused the United States of wanting U.N. arms inspectors to return to update intelligence information for a possible attack to oust President Saddam Hussein. Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said Washington wants to topple the Iraqi government and install "a puppet regime" to control its oil, the world's second-largest reserve. "The U.S. has an eye on Iraqi oil," he said in an interview with Reuters. "They would come to this country, including U.S. spies, Israeli spies and British spies," Sabri said of U.N. inspectors who have been barred from Iraq since December 1998. "Like, no blood for oil, man!"
Somebody tell him to shut up. He's boring...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/30/2002 07:58 am ||
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South Korea has accepted a North Korean offer to reopen negotiations on improving relations between the two nations. The South Korean Unification Ministry proposed on Tuesday that North and South Korea hold preliminary talks August 2-4. Seoul suggested the North's scenic Diamond Mountain resort, on the east coast of the Korean Peninsula, as the setting. Cabinet-level talks would take place later, but a date has yet to be set. The roses and kissy face fill last until the North Koreans either get the urge to put a few rounds through something South Korean, or one of the real rulers in the nomenklatura decides to remind Dear Leader to stick with giving field guidance to chicken factories and leave the substantial stuff to them.
Choi Jinwook, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification, says both sides have compelling motives for reopening negotiations. "South Korea wants to continue its sunshine policy for engagement and reconciliation between the two Koreas," he said. "From the North Korean perspective, they immediately need food from South Korea, and also South Korea is a major country which can support North Korea's economic recovery." "Covery" would be more like it. There's never been anything to "re"-cover.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/30/2002 07:58 am ||
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I knew as soon as I started reading that North Korea merely wants food. They never talk unless they want something; then, once they get it. . . .
Posted by: Dee Bates ||
07/31/2002 4:20 Comments ||
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The two main Kurdish factions sharing control of northern Iraq are poised to seal an agreement on the implementation of contentious provisions in a 1998 US-brokered peace deal. The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Massoud Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) led by Jalal Talabani are expected to announce Wednesday that they have agreed on "final formulas for resolving" the remaining issues in dispute, sources in the KDP stronghold of Arbil told AFP. They described Wednesday's meeting as the "most important" in a series of meetings officials of the two sides have held to discuss implementation of the deal signed in Washington four years ago. The Hawlati newspaper, published in PUK-controlled Sulaymaniyah, said on Monday that the two parties had agreed to hold elections for a new regional parliament within six to nine months, "conditions in the area permitting", and to allow each faction to reopen offices in the zone controlled by the other. The KDP and PUK often fought each other in the past for predominance in the Western-protected enclave in northern Iraq, which has been off-limits to the Baghdad government since the end of the 1991 Gulf War. I'd guess that conditions in the area should permit formation of a new regional parliament within the next six to nine months. Now maybe they can get going with setting up a "provisional government" for the U.S. to deal with.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/30/2002 06:21 pm ||
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When Web operator Jon Messner gained control of one of al-Qaida's prime Internet communication sites, he offered it to the FBI to use it for disinformation and collecting data about sympathizers. What followed, he says, was a week of frustration. FBI agents struggled to find someone with enough technical know-how to set up the sting. By the time they did, the opportunity was lost as militant Islamic Web users figured out the site was a decoy, said Messner of Ocean City, Md. "It was like dealing with the motor vehicle administration," said Messner, who runs Web sites, many of which sell pornographic materials. "We could have done something that could have seriously impacted things. It took me so many days just to get somebody who understood the Internet." So it wasn't the feds â it was a guy who wanted to do something for his country and the feds fell down on the job...
Barry Maddox, a spokesman for the FBI's Baltimore office, said he "cannot confirm or deny" that his office worked with Messner earlier this month. "If we received information of any sort from anything related to 9/11 or any continuing terrorist type activity, we would take it under consideration and pass it on," Maddox said. "We're not going to turn down anything." "It is FBI policy to refer any action to higher echelons so as not to be blamed if anything goes wrong..."
Though many of his Web sites involve pornography, Messner said he became interested in Alneda.com, a militant Islamic Web site that promotes the Al-Qaida terror organization and carries messages from its top members. He's talking about the one the FBI â or CIA or NSA â should be vitally interested in. The porn has nothing to do with whether or not he wanted to help the country...
Alneda originally was registered in Malaysia but has been chased out of several countries after pressure by authorities. It also has shown up on computers in Michigan and Texas. Messner used a software program that probes Web site addresses whose registrations are about to lapse, meaning the address will go into a pool available for sale. When it did, Messner snapped it up and filled the site with Web pages from the original Arabic site. Good move. Why didn't the feds do that?
He hoped U.S. officials could use the site for disinformation campaigns or to collect data on visitors who used its message boards or other resources. Which wasn't at all an unreasonable expectation, since we're at war with international terrorism and we'd really like to collect all the information on them we can...
Even though some features didn't work yet, his decoy site fooled some Web users. Almost immediately after putting the site online July 16, he saw visitors from Arab nations and references to it on other militant Islamic Web sites. Since he couldn't write any new articles in Arabic, he needed the FBI's help to keep the site alive. He said FBI officials in Baltimore and Salisbury, Md., encouraged his work but took too long to decide how to help him. Within a week, other Arabic Web sites outed Messner's site as a phony and warned visitors away. He shut it down. Should have left it up to get the guys who hadn't gotten the word. But he was probably disgusted mos' to death by then...
Since Messner gave up the Internet address, the Alneda Web site is back up again, this time hosted in Dayton, Ohio, and carrying a new interview with an Al-Qaida field commander describing battles against American forces. Messner said he handed over the data he gathered to the FBI. Why'd he give up the site? That was a dumb move, even if the FBI didn't want it...
Intelligence experts said the gamble on a fake Alneda site might not have been worthwhile. What the hell kind of "intelligence expert" would say a dumbass thing like that?
Rather than a traditional sting operation â a routine task for the FBI â Messner's decoy site would be available to everyone on the Internet, said John Pike of Globalsecurity.org. That means the FBI might have inadvertently helped terrorists communicate. It would be available to everyone on the internet, John, because it's the internet. It's available to everyone by definition, just like radio traffic. With control of a major communications node, you could do all sorts of things: you could passively collect intelligence, thereby building a nice list of all the cannon fodder and wannabe's, all over the world; you could selectively disseminate disinformation; you could set up "operations" and grab large numbers of Bad Guys at a time... Think about it for a couple hours and you could come up with a whole bunch more.
"There is a difference between tossing a kilo of coke into a guy's lap and then cuffing him, versus going out and selling it to little children," Pike said. "I'm sure there would have been somebody at FBI who would have said this information is going to be publicly accessible. We don't even necessarily know all that is going to be communicated here." Did that sentence make any sense at all? Didn't think so...
Pike said that concern, coupled with the pressure caused by the Internet's breakneck speed, makes the lost opportunity understandable. No, it's not understandable. It's reprehensible and someone should be reprehended â as in fired. My respect for the FBI has hit bottom. The FBI is apparently not even making it as a police agency anymore, much less capable of conducting even rudimentary intelligence operations. Even if the operation had flopped, it should have been tried.
"It's too new, and they were probably scared," Pike said. "And they might have well-founded fears." In other words, they were too timid and bureaucratic to take an opportunity that fell into their collective lap and run with it...
Former CIA counterterrorism expert Vincent Cannistraro said relying on the public to do intelligence work is dangerous. Dangerous to whom, you ass?
"It may be looked on as a large resource for law enforcement. On the other hand, it does lend itself to massive cases of abuse," Cannistraro said. "When it comes to monitoring the Internet and exploiting it, you have to leave it to the professionals." Apparently they went to the wrong professionals. Or maybe they should have found some professionals instead of a bunch of guys who seem to regard the war on terror as something that could present hazards to career progression.
I'm so mad I could spit.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/30/2002 08:37 pm ||
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I propose the immediate creation of the 1st American Provisional Volunteer Brigade ( Hacker Division)
I too was furious when I heard about this, and I keep asking my tech breatheren " if we know that there are Al-Qaida websites and infrastructure why arent we doing something to shut them down?" why arent we as the tech community doing what we can to harass the enemy - or even the idiots who host their sites. I think Steve Gibson of GRC Research would know a thing to two about how to deny service to the goons.
the 'thugburg' listing is a good start, can we consider listing known or suspected websites for these goons? We cant wait for the FBI to find this stuff out, they are trying to make sure theyve got their pensions locked up and dibs on the best parking space at the hawaii main office. Maybe its time we used Teddy Roosevelts 'Rough Rider' approach and gathered up a bunch of the cyber cowboys and whomped a bit of cyber-ass.
For those of you afraid of letting the cyber war genie out of the bottle, Lets try to remember, these goons are trying to kill us,not people in a far away land, not just people in the uniform, but us. Our kids, husbands, wives and families, in our homes and places of work and in the most gruesome ways possible. If there was ever a justified use of the DOS attack, this would be it.
Posted by: Frank Martin ||
07/31/2002 1:06 Comments ||
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I agree with Frank. I don't think the bureaucrats have the first idea about the power of the internet. They talk a lot, but there's damn little action.
The fact that they couldn't find an "expert" in a timely manner is disturbing enough. The fact that they are making up excuses for the lack is truly frightening. These are the guys who are supposed to protect us?!
Posted by: Dee Bates ||
07/31/2002 4:31 Comments ||
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I could have written another six or seven paragraphs on this subject, but I was so mad I said to hell with it and went to bed, expecting to wake up in the morning living in a caliphate. Probably the FBI was the wrong agency to contact, but they should have put the guy in touch with the guys who are the right agency.
Kaus said back in September that the whole 9-11 thing would have blown over by November. He was off by a few months, but he was right. I think the people who take this stuff seriously are in a minority and that by the time the next couple thousand casualties come we'll be regarded as (dangerous) cranks who don't understand that there are other things in life besides terrorist threats. The war on terror has already gone to being in many quarters "the war on terror," and in some "the so-called war on terror."
I'm content to be a crank. I'm now convinced there will be another mass-casualty attack. When they have the predictable congressional hearings in its wake - possibly with a new Congress because the old one will be dead - I'll be agreeing with the statements that the feds didn't take it seriously enough and I'll be disappointed when they don't fire and/or jail the sons of bitches.
I've alluded to my agnostic religious beliefs a time or two. I hereby announce that I've got religion: I'm converting to voudon as soon as I can find an FBI doll and a big enough box of pins.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2002 6:08 Comments ||
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The condition of Maulana Azam Tariq, former member of the National Assembly of Pakistan and a leader of Sipah-e-Sahaba has been in coma for several days and his condition is stated to be precarious. According to the sources at the central prison here, Maulana was observing fast unto death for the last about four weeks and is in coma for several days. Although the jailâs doctors are providing him food and liquid, he is losing weight rapidly and his condition is getting serious. A medical board constituted by the Lahore High Court visited the central prison Mianwali to determine the condition of Maulana has recommended that he should be shifted to a hospital immediately for treatment. Maulana Azam Tariq started his fast unto death to protest against his detention for over two years without any charges against him. He was arrested under Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) ordinance which allows preventive detention for 90 days without any charges. Every once in awhile one of these "holy men" goes so far that even the Paks can't stand them, and they get tossed into the calaboose. Sipah-e-Sahaba is one of those instances, and jug is the best place for its leader.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/30/2002 08:36 pm ||
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Home Secretary Balochistan Azmat Hanif Orakzai has said that neither there are any traces of so-called Al-Qaeda organization in Balochistan nor the government was conducting any operation to find the Al-Qaeda activists in the province. If they're not conducting operations to find them, how do they know they're not there?
He further said that about 1300 new employees will be hired for the Levies, a sort of tribal police in the province, to make it more effective and organized. The recruitment will be done through the committees which will have the representation of the district governments. All the hiring will be done on the recommendation of the hiring committees, he added. So if you're related to someone on the committees, give 'em a call. There's a job waiting for you.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/30/2002 06:59 pm ||
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A Saudi prince and two other people have died in the searing heat while making desert car journeys, and Saudi police warned residents Tuesday to postpone trips while the summer heat wave persists. Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir, 25, died Monday during a desert trip in the province of Remaah, 55 miles east of Riyadh, the Saudi capital. The Saudi Royal Court announced the death, saying the prince died of thirst. The prince was believed a distant relative of King Fahd. That's three down. 2,997 to go...
The bodies of two other Saudis were found in the desert of al-Qoseem province, 200 miles east of Riyadh, according to a police statement carried Tuesday by the official Saudi news agency. "They were on a trip with three other friends when their car broke down," said the statement quoting Brig. Abdulkader Talha, deputy director of al-Qoseem police. "They left their friends behind to get aid, but their friends made it home safely while the two men lost their way in the desert and died." With 3000 Soddy princes, it's likely this is a true story. On the other hand, if they're killing each other off, it's also likely they'd put out stories like this to account for these fellows not showing up for important meetings because they'd been ventilated...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/30/2002 05:47 pm ||
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It would be very easy to kill someone in Saudi Arabia in the summer. Just kick him out of a car in the middle of nowhere, then make "it home safely" while the victim loses his way in the desert and dies. Just make sure the victim doesn't have his cell phone with him. Be sure to make it look like an accident.
Study Livia, wife of Augustus Caesar, in "I, Claudius" for any number of ingenious ways to bump someone off.
#2
I believe Livia would use poison as her weapon of choice, but I dont think she'd turn down the 'take the dog for a long walk' method youve prescribed. I gotta get to work on that org chart of Saudi princes and the line of succession thing again. This is getting too weird.
Where did I put my copy of daughterys 'arabia deserta'? by the way, there is a big section in the middle of arabia called the 'rub al khali' which means "empty quarter ". You gotta think that this place must be particularly bleak if people who live in the middle of nothing in the first place take the time to denote something as " really, really empty".
Posted by: Frank Martin ||
07/31/2002 1:13 Comments ||
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A military court convicted 16 members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group Tuesday, mostly academics and professionals, on charges of conspiring against the government and sentenced them to up to five years in prison. The convictions, part of a crackdown on Islamic militants, were derided by the defendants and their lawyers as a politically motivated attempt to reassure Washington that Egypt is battling extremism in the wake of Sept. 11. I certainly feel reassured...
On hearing the verdicts, the defendants shouted "God is great!" and repeated Brotherhood slogans. The men were accused of subversion, sedition and recruiting new members for the Muslim Brotherhood. Six defendants were acquitted. Of the 16 convicted, five received five-year prison terms and 11 were sentenced to three years. "The group manipulated the minds of the youth and of the simple people, secretly worked to recruit new members and provided training courses ... to fulfill their personal aim: to rule the country," Judge Ahmed el-Anwar said. There's a real difficult choice involved in dealing with these people. On the one hand, if you're a believer in democracy, it's a terrible thing that the Ikhwan's being suppressed. On the other, if you're a believer in individual liberty, it's a great thing. If the aim of a group is to establish a system in which there is no individual liberty, how to deal with it? The Ikhwan fills the same sort of function as organizations like the Deutsche Arbeitsfront, with elements of the Allegemeine SS, only without the pretty uniforms. Nor is it confined to a single country. In the interest of preserving the liberty (such as it is, in the case of Egypt) of the many, I'm quite willing to see the few locked up â and preferably indoctrinated with some less virulent idea set.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/30/2002 06:12 pm ||
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Palestinian gunmen shot and killed two Israeli settlers near the West Bank village of Jammain, near Nablus, Israeli police and medical services said. The two settlers — employed as truck drivers from the nearby Jewish settlement of Tapuah — apparently entered the Palestinian village for business purposes when masked Palestinian gunmen gunned them down at a cement factory, the Israel Defense Forces said. The gunmen escaped, according to police. No one even bothers asking what the military significance of this kind of target is. Maybe they're too busy listening to the Paleos bitch about their economic conditions because the Israelis don't want to do business with them...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/30/2002 07:58 am ||
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A suicide bomber set off an explosion Tuesday on a busy street in central Jerusalem, killing himself and wounding at least seven others. Police said the bomber was a 17-year-old from Bethlehem in the West Bank. A source in Gaza said the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the explosion. The blast occurred at the Yemenite falafel stand on Hanevi'im Street, which runs parallel to Jaffa Road, a major artery. Police noticed a man acting suspiciously, and they approached him. He apparently went to the stand to get away and then blew himself up. Authorities said they believe the man may have been on his way to nearby Zion Square, a highly trafficked area in central Jerusalem. Guess Tanzim's ceasefire hasn't reached the al-Aqsa thugs...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/30/2002 07:58 am ||
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Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network plans a major anti-US attack, possibly in August, after which its leader will re-appear on television, a newspaper reported on Tuesday. Yup. As though risen from the dead...
The Saudi pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat, which on Monday reported that Bin Laden might have been killed or seriously injured in US raids on Afghanistan, quoted "sources linked to aides" of the Saudi-born Islamist militant via the Internet. Well, make up yer goddamned mind!
Bin Laden "is alive and will appear in a TV videotape after the operation is carried out to confirm that he is alive and will go on fighting America", the sources said. They did not say whether the planned attack would target US forces in Afghanistan or elsewhere, but said it might be carried out in August. Asharq Al-Awsat pointed to speculation that al-Qaeda might strike before the first anniversary of September 11. Or next Thursday...
The same newspaper had reported on Monday that Bin Laden's eldest son, Saad, had taken over the command of al-Qaeda "since the US offensive against al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan", which began on October 7, and the organisation's pullout from its main hideouts in the country. Quoting "informed sources", it said this disclosure "substantiates the theory that Bin Laden was killed or seriously wounded" in the US-led military campaign. The sources cited by the paper on Tuesday said Bin Laden would, during his forthcoming TV appearance, speak of "al-Qaeda's success in containing the US attacks, reorganising on the basis of engaging in guerrilla warfare inside Afghanistan, and staging attacks against US interests in various countries". Any time, now...
There are two possibilities: he's alive or he's dead. If he's dead, these are bull droppings. If he's alive, he's either well or he's incapacitated, in which case these are bull droppings. Has he been recuperating from wounds/kidney transplant/major surgery for eight months? Possibly.
The Islamic heroes making up al-Qaeda are trying to psywar the bin Laden subject, but it really doesn't matter if he's alive or dead. If he's alive, all we need is a set of grid coordinates and it's daisycutter time, wedding or no wedding, residential area or no residential area. If he's dead, Zawahiri's probably next on the list, though I'm sure we'd settle for young Sod, and then for his successor, and then for his.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/30/2002 08:43 am ||
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Maybe they're still trying to get the kinks out of the new animatronics.
In an interview from New Delhi, Indian defense minister George Fernandes told Britain's Channel 4 News that he had received intelligence three months ago that bin Laden was alive in Pakistan, and that the country's spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, knew it. He said there was no reason to believe the situation had changed since then, and that India's information had been relayed to the United States. "We had information the man is around, and he is somewhere in Pakistan. We had it from unimpeachable sources," the defense minister was quoted as saying. "The point made by those who ... had access to this information, and we had reason to believe they had genuine access, is that he was moving from place to place, and Pakistanis were taking care of him." If he's alive, that's the most likely scenario. At the risk of repeating myself, maybe they should look under Fazlur Rehman's bed. But I still don't think he's up to running an international terror machine. The last time we saw him on tape he looked like he was a death's door. That tape lends as much credence to the story of Sonny taking over the family business as anything else.
Fernandes said it was possible intelligence officials haven't told Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. "The ISI is capable of operating on its own in certain areas and in certain matters, so where exactly this particular issue is between the two of them, I won't be able to say," Fernandes said. That's a conclusion we've come to ourselves...
Musharraf's spokesman, Maj. General Rashid Qureshi, denied Pakistani intelligence agents had any evidence bin Laden was in the country and dismissed the idea they would not have told Musharraf. "It is typical of Mr. George Fernandes to talk through his hat. This is a typical example of Indian propaganda which is meant just to discredit Pakistan," Qureshi told Channel 4 News. On the other hand, Qureshi's a clumsy liar, so it's difficult to accept anything he says as truthful unless there's evidence to back it up. And maybe not then.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/30/2002 06:38 pm ||
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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.
