| Submit your comments on this article |
| Terror Networks |
| Slip of the tongue suggests Binny is toes up? |
| 2002-09-09 |
| That's the interpretation Tim Blair and The Times of London put on this al-Jazeera interview with Khalid Sheikh Mohammad... A SLIP of the tongue by one of Osama bin Ladenâs top henchmen seems to have betrayed al-Qaedaâs most potent secret: its charismatic leader is dead. The blunder was made by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has confessed to being the operational mastermind behind the September 11 attacks. He made his mistake while disclosing many of the secrets behind the atrocities, which were plotted in Kandahar, the religious extremist Taleban movementâs Afghan spiritual home. During two days of interviews, Mr Mohammed referred to bin Laden, who has not been seen since the fall of Afghanistanâs Taleban regime, in the past tense. The reporter Yosri Fouda, London bureau chief for al-Jazeera, concluded that bin Laden is now likely to be dead. I've been considering it an 80 percent or better probability that Binny's retired to a very small farm, but I'm not sure a mere slip of the tongue actually confirms it... Mr Mohammedâs slip of the tongue about bin Ladenâs demise was a serious lapse. Throughout their discussions with the reporter, al-Qaeda operatives persistently sought to suggest that their leader was still alive, well and keenly following events. One intermediary told the journalist that bin Laden remained an avid viewer of al-Jazeera, so much so that âwhatever he misses, he gets on tapeâ. So now we can bump it up to an 85 percent probability that he's the Late Mr Bin Laden, maybe even 90 percent. All he's got to do is make one appearance to blow all that careful interpretation away 100 percent... Al-Qaedaâs decision to bring a reporter from al-Jazeera to meet two of bin Ladenâs generals rather than the man himself adds to the impression that their leader may be no more. The satellite channel has previously been trusted with interviewing bin Laden in person, in 1997 and 1998. Mr Fouda was also suspicious when al-Qaeda failed to send him videotapes of the interviews, as promised, although audiotapes did arrive. âI am driven to the interpretation that something is wrong with the upper reaches of al-Qaeda â some sort of disruption. I now believe it is more than likely bin Laden is dead,â he said. Yeah. I'll go along with the "more than likely" part. I still won't go so far as to say he's "certainly" dead. For one thing, they haven't interviewed Zawahiri, either, and I consider it probable that he's still alive... So, what else ya got? The target of the fourth, thwarted hijack attack in Washington was Congress, not the White House; the original plan was to crash aircraft into atomic power stations; and the plotters used simple codes to keep in touch by internet, he disclosed. Congress, White House, the end result would have been the same. Probably if they'd hit the Capital, it would have been easier to get a declaration of war out of the survivors... A television journalist from al-Jazeera, the Arabic satellite television station that has previously broadcast exclusive footage of bin Laden, was blindfolded and taken to meet two al-Qaeda chiefs. The journalist was taken to the Pakistan city of Karachi, driven five miles into the countryside, blindfolded, then brought to a clandestine rendezvous on the fourth floor of a sparsely furnished flat. He believes that it was in Karachi. And so do I... There he met Mr Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a former flatmate of Mohamed Atta, the hijack ringleader. Mr bin al-Shibh is a suspect in the bombing of the USS Cole, when 17 sailors were killed in the port city of Aden in Yemen in October 2000. He described himself as head of al-Qaedaâs military committee. Thanks to Alicia for the headzup on this one... |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #3 You mean this declaration of war passed within days of Sept 11? http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c107:S.J.RES.23.ENR: |
| Posted by: Don 2002-09-10 07:02:09 |
| #2 Photodude addresses this very question... |
| Posted by: Fred 2002-09-09 20:03:07 |
| #1 Remind me, but wasn't the Capitol incompletely evacuated at the time Flight 93 was crashed into the ground in Shanksville? I seem to recall some confusion and a fair number of Congresscritters still in the building. My only point being it might have been harder to get a quick declaration of war, because we would have had to wait three months or so for a quorum. But then I think GWB would have had whatever he wanted, including a "no-fault" for whatever he had done in the meantime. Regards, |
| Posted by: Steve White 2002-09-09 14:53:34 |