Reuters
Cheered on by a nation brimming with patriotic fervor, U.S. Marines bid farewell to their families on Thursday as three warships loaded with troops, tanks and war equipment prepared to sail for the Mediterranean. The mission was billed as a routine deployment, but with the Pentagon ordering a military build-up in the Middle East in response to last week's attacks on the United States, all were aware they could be heading to war. ``This time it looks like we're going to get called on so I'm going to do my job and if we get called on and we can help out, then I'm all for it,'' said Cpl. Clifford Lewis, 20, of Marysville, California, holding an M-16 rifle as he waited to board a bus that would take him to the USS Shreveport.
About 2,200 Marines and sailors of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit based at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina, have been mobilized. Buses carried them to the port in Morehead City through streets lined with people waving American flags and homemade signs.
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09/20/2001 ||
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CNN
The White House rejected on Thursday a recommendation from Afghanistan's Grand Islamic Council that the country's ruling Taliban ask suspected terrorist ringleader Osama bin Laden to leave Afghanistan. "It does not meet America's requirements," said White House press secretary Ari Fleischer. "It's time for action, not words. The president has demanded that key figures of the al Qaeda terrorist organization, including Osama bin Laden, be turned over to responsible authorities and for the Taliban to close terrorist camps in Afghanistan. The United States stands by those demands."
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09/20/2001 ||
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Christopher Newton Associated Press
WASHINGTON With the military on the move, President Bush addresses Congress and the nation Thursday night to unite Americans for a long battle against terrorists and pledge emergency action to repair the fraying economy. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declined to rule out Iraq as a target of the anti-terrorism campaign. "There are a number of nations that are on the official, public list of terrorist nations nations that have either sponsored terrorism or been involved in it and we know that a number of those countries are in the Middle East," he said on NBC's "Today." But it is up to Bush to decide what targets will be attacked, Rumsfeld said.
In the speech, set for 9 p.m. EDT, Bush will make the case against No. 1 suspect Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network, officials said Wednesday. "I look forward to the opportunity to explain to the American people who would do this to our great country," Bush said. "And why."
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09/20/2001 ||
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(Reuters)
U.S. Army units have been ordered to deploy for possible military operations as part of a major Pentagon build-up in and around the Middle East in response to last week's attacks on America, Army Secretary Thomas White said. White refused to provide any details, including whether elite Special Operations troops might move toward the region around Afghanistan where prime suspect Osama bin Laden and his organization are believed to be based, but added that ``Army elements were part of the deployment order.''
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday signed an order that included plans to move as many as 100 or more heavy bombers, fighters, aerial refueling planes and other combat aircraft toward the Middle East and Central Asia region.
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09/20/2001 ||
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MSNBC
With their nation facing a possible military strike by the United States, Afghanistan's senior Islamic clerics urged terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden on Thursday to leave Afghanistan voluntarily, the Taliban news agency said. U.S. officials believe bin Laden was behind last week's attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, and the United States has threatened military action against Afghanistan if the Taliban the nation's militant Islamic leadership refuses to extradite the Saudi exile.
THE CLERICS ALSO urged Muslims worldwide to declare a jihad, or holy war, against the United States if its forces attack Afghanistan, the news agency said. "If a powerful country attacks a weak country, it is a jihad for all Muslims. When a non-Muslim country attacks a Muslim country, it also is a jihad," the clerics said in a statement at the close of the meeting in the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, according to Bakhtar.
However, the clerics also urged the United States, "Please don't attack and use patience."
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09/20/2001 ||
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Steve Miller THE WASHINGTON TIMES
An anti-war coalition of longtime critics of U.S. policies made a promise this week: "We are going to stop the monster from roaring we have the numbers." The International Action Center (IAC) says that "monster" is the "imperialist" United States, which teeters on the edge of a military response to last week's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. "We have 70 organizing centers, and more and more groups signing on to help us oppose this war," an organizer at an IAC meeting told a packed crowd at its 14th Street headquarters Tuesday night.
They were protest veterans, with a long pedigree of causes and events: military exercises in Vieques, the presidential inauguration, the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle, the IMF in Washington, Philadelphia cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The upstairs loft is sandwiched between two union halls, those of the Local 169 and the International Brotherhood of Painters and Allied Trades. Coalition members, wearing T-shirts emblazoned with communist guerrilla Che Guevera and touting the AFL-CIO, seated the 90 attendees Tuesday. They were protest veterans, with a long pedigree of causes and events: military exercises in Vieques, the presidential inauguration, the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle, the IMF in Washington, Philadelphia cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.
"It is essentially the working class that is under attack right now by the United States government and all over the world," said Samia Halaby, who is with the Al-Awda Palestine Right of Return Coalition. "Muslims are now under attack all over the world," she added.
The more than 20 groups represented Tuesday including the National Green Party, the Sikh Student Organization from George Washington University and the National Lawyers Guild have made plans for a march on Times Square when the first U.S. missile is fired. If it occurs on a weekday, the groups will convene at 5 p.m., rush hour. If the U.S. response comes on a weekend, the meeting time is noon.
This article starring:
International Action Center
SAMIA HALABY
Al-Awda Palestine Right of Return Coalition
Al-Awda Palestine Right of Return Coalition
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09/20/2001 ||
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NRO Kumbaya Watch
The "religious" Left has begun to weigh in, and the results aren't pretty. In the wake of the bombings, "we need to ask ourselves," says Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun magazine,
"What is it in the way that we are living, organizing our societies, and treating each other that makes violence seem plausible to so many people?"
"what is it in the way that we are living, organizing our societies, and treating each other that makes violence seem plausible to so many people? Why, if it's plausible to them, isn't it plausible to us?
And why is it that our immediate response to violence is to use violence ourselves thus reinforcing the cycle of violence in the world?" What's the precise reason we shouldn't?
Not why did the terrorists do it, you see, but how did we make them do it. Naturally, he has an answer: "We may tell ourselves that the current violence has 'nothing to do' with the way that we've learned to close our ears when told that one out of every three people on this planet does not have enough food ... We may tell ourselves that the suffering of refugees and the oppressed have nothing to do with us ... On the other hand, what's the evidence that we have anything to do with them? Other than our mere existence, of course.
But we live in one world, increasingly interconnected with everyone, and the forces that lead people to feel outrage, anger and desperation eventually impact on our own daily lives. The same inability to feel the pain of others is the pathology that shapes the minds of these terrorists."
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09/20/2001 ||
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FoxNews.com
A Roxbury, N.J. school superintendent who ordered signs with the slogan "God Bless America" removed and replaced with "Stand Up for America" and "Proud to be American" said he was merely trying to be fair to those who refer to God as Allah and other names, reports the Associated Press. But he immediately rescinded the ban after a slue of callers branded him as unpatriotic and hostile to religion.
The school board president says the original decision was made out of respect for the First Amendment and not intended to diminish concern for the issues facing the country in the wake of the terrorist attacks. And the principal himself says he's actually very religious and patriotic.
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09/20/2001 ||
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CNSNews.com
A new Federal Aviation Regulation scheduled to take effect in November of this year would take away the right of pilots, co-pilots, and navigators to carry firearms and other weapons for self-defense. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) spokesman Paul Takemoto acknowledged Thursday that flight crews have been authorized to carry firearms for the past 20 years. "That will change on November 14," he said. "The new rule will not include authorization (to carry firearms) and crew members will no longer be allowed to carry arms."
Federal Aviation Regulation 108.11 currently allows armed individuals on aircraft, "if the person having the weapon is authorized to have the weapon by the (airline) and the Administrator (of the FAA) and has successfully completed a course of training in the use of firearms acceptable to the Administrator."
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09/20/2001 ||
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MICHELLE MITTELSTADT The Dallas Morning News
WASHINGTON Investigators scrambling to uncover the plot behind last week's terrorist attacks have not uncovered evidence that a second wave is planned for Saturday, the Justice Department said Wednesday. That date Sept. 22 has appeared repeatedly during the investigation, authorities said. "We have taken a serious look at that information, and at this point we do not know of a credible threat," Justice Department spokeswoman Mindy Tucker said.
Attorney General John Ashcroft and other law enforcement officials have cautioned in recent days, however, that the threat of violence is not over. They say that people connected to the terrorist network responsible for last week's attacks may remain in the United States.
This article starring:
John Ashcroft
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09/20/2001 ||
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AP
A Louisiana congressman apologized Thursday after coming under fire from Arab-Americans for saying anyone with "a diaper on his head" should be stopped and questioned. Republican Rep. John Cooksey, who is planning to run for Senate next year, made the comment Monday in a radio interview broadcast statewide. "If I see someone come in and he's got a diaper on his head and a fan belt around that diaper on his head, that guy needs to be pulled over and checked," Cooksey said.
Don Phillips Washington Post Staff Writer
False bomb threats were made against air traffic facilities and airliners at the same time that hijacked planes were flying toward New York and Washington last week, and government investigators say they believe it was probably accomplices of the hijackers attempting to confuse air traffic controllers. The controllers refused to leave their posts despite the threats. In Pittsburgh, they moved to a temporary facility to be certain they could keep aircraft moving safely if a bomb exploded or a hijacked plane hit the tower.
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09/20/2001 ||
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Arutz Sheva Israel Broadcasting Network
Beirut's al-Manar newspaper, in an attempt to link the multiple terrorist attacks on the United States to Israel, published a report that "four thousand Israelis" worked at the two towers of the World Trade Center, yet, the paper continues, none of them turned up for work on the day of the attacks. Indeed, "No one talked about any Israeli being killed or wounded in the attacks." Quoting unnamed "Arab diplomatic sources," who spoke with Jordan's al-Watan newspaper, the Israelis who worked in New York were tipped off to the impending terror attacks by "hints from the Israeli General Security Apparatus, the Shabak." That "fact" aroused "unannounced suspicions on [sic] American officials." Seeking further support for their claims, al-Manar reported on articles from the Israeli Yediot Aharonot and Ha'aretz about the cancellation of Prime Minister Sharon's trip to the East Coast of the US and about five Israelis detained for "puzzling behavior" in the aftermath of the bombings.
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09/20/2001 ||
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Arutz Sheva Israel Broadcasting Network
The Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram, considered the most closely affiliated with the Egyptian regime, published an article questioning the ability of United States President George W. Bush to face the catastrophe that befell America. The article warns against a war coalition under US leadership that would launch attacks without United Nations support. According to the Egyptian paper, "This expected collective war is brainchild of [former Israeli Prime Minister] Ehud Barak who said, shortly after the tragedy happened, that to face terrorism and defend western civilization it is a must to adopt a collective Western stance. He, further, enumerated 6 Arab and Islamic organizations and recommended to deal with them."
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09/20/2001 ||
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Arutz Sheva Israel Broadcasting Network
Not to be outdone by those Moslems and Arabs blaming Israel for the terrorist attacks on America, Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan told the weekly al-Rai that the attacks were, in fact, an operation carried out by American internal agents. The attacks were "undoubtedly an inside job which heralds the beginning of the collapse [of the US] from within." A collapse, said Ramadan, that would be "the will of Allah." Furthermore, Ramadan said, "I don't think any [foreign] organization is capable of staging such attacks."
Criticizing those Arab and Moslem leaders who "shamelessly" condemned the terrorist attacks, Ramadan said that they should either remain silent or "thank God for His mercy." Ramadan also counseled America to "rethink both its internal and foreign policies." The Iraqi VP called the American intention to launch an offensive against terrorists a sign of "hostility to Arabs and Muslims."
This article starring:
Taha Yassin Ramadan
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09/20/2001 ||
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(AFP)
Though Afghanistan is now in the cross-hairs, several Arab countries risk becoming targets in the US-led war on terrorism, analysts said Thursday. Iraq, Somalia, Sudan as well as Libya and Syria could face diplomatic and financial pressure or even military action sometime in the next five years, once the United States completes the first phase of its campaign, experts say.
The message from Afghanistan will be to cooperate with the United States and its allies or face the consequences, according to Charles Heyman, a former British Army major who is now an editor of Jane's World Armies. "If you harbor international terrorists, you are in the firing line," Heyman told AFP when contacted by telephone in Shrewsbury, England. While he said Afghanistan was "definitely phase one" of a five-year campaign, phase two would include Sudan, Somalia and Iraq, as well as possibly Libya and Syria, Heyman said.
These countries are all members of the 22-member Arab League, and have been accused by the United States of being state sponsors of terrorism or linked to Islamic militant groups in the past. Sudan, backed by other Arab countries, has requested an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers to discuss last week's attacks on New York and Washington, Arab officials said here Thursday. The other Arab countries were not named and there were no details about the agenda of the meeting, which has still to receive the green light.
Sudan has repeatedly denounced terrorism since last week's attacks in the United States in an apparent bid to diminish any chances Washington might target Sudan anew in retaliation for anti-US attacks.
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09/20/2001 ||
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Ha`aretz
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Thursday that he would convene the entire cabinet in the evening to discuss Israel's response to a series of shooting incidents and attacks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. "I am very sorry that the Palestinian Authority did not stand by its obligations and we will make a decision today how to act," Sharon said. Earlier on Thursday Sharon telephoned U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to tell him that Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat was not living up to his cease-fire declaration made Monday and repeated on Tuesday.
Sharon made the call before one Israeli was killed and one injured in a shooting attack near the settlement of Tekoa in the West Bank, but after a series of shooting incidents and attacks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip overnight Wednesday. The two agreed to talk again later Thursday. In one attack, two Israelis were moderately injured near Oranit on the Green Line when an explosive device was detonated near their jeep. Overall, though, there has been a marked drop in attacks over the last few days.
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09/20/2001 ||
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Ananova
Hardline Muslims are pushing for a nationwide strike to show their opposition to Pakistan's decision to co-operate with the United States. Islamic parties in Pakistan oppose Gen Musharraf's stand and have called a nationwide strike for Friday, the traditional Muslim day of prayers. The strike will serve as a barometer of public support for the president in this Muslim country of 140 million people. "The government's hasty decision doesn't enjoy support of the people," said Qazi Hussain Ahmed, chief of the Jamaat-e-Islami, or the Islamic Party.
On Thursday, demonstrators in Peshawar and elsewhere chanted "Crush America!" and vowed to fight a jihad, or holy war, against the Pakistani government if it supports a US attack on neighbouring Afghanistan. However, most of the anti-government protests have been small - drawing only a few thousand people. Islamic parties are hoping for bigger turn-outs on Friday.
This article starring:
QAZI HUSEIN AHMED
Jamaat-e-Islami
Jamaat-e-Islami
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09/20/2001 ||
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Tom Blackwell and Stewart Bell National Post
About half a dozen of the hijackers who killed thousands of people last week were using names of innocent Saudi Arabians who had their passports stolen in the last five years, a senior Saudi diplomat said yesterday. He said most of the passports were stolen while the legitimate holders were in the United States.
The revelation raises the possibility that some or all of the terrorists operated under false identities, perhaps for years, making it more difficult for police to trace their origins and their connections to terrorist networks. "Somebody was keeping [the stolen passports] to use at the right time," said Jaafar Allaghany, information director at the Saudi embassy in Washington. "And they did."
This article starring:
Jaafar Allaghany
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09/20/2001 ||
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Mike Robinson Associated Press
A Middle Eastern man on the FBI list of people wanted for questioning in the terrorism investigation was captured outside Chicago, the FBI said Thursday. Nabil Al-Marabh, 34, was arrested Wednesday night in suburban Justice by police and FBI agents, FBI spokeswoman Mary Muha said. She said he was being held on a warrant issued in Boston in March for assault with a knife. Federal agents had been looking for him since at least Monday. That day, they raided a Detroit house with Al-Marabh's name on the mailbox and arrested three men after discovering false visas, passports and other ID, as well as what appeared to be a diagram of an airport flight line. In December, Al-Marabh was convicted of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon a knife in Boston. He was to have started serving a sentence in March but failed to show up.
During the raid in Detroit on Monday, federal agents found a cache of documents and arrested Karim Koubriti, 23, Ahmed Hannan, 33, and Farouk Ali-Haimoud, 21, on charges of having false immigration papers. The men were identified as resident aliens from Morocco and Algeria. Agents also found a planner with handwriting in Arabic, according to court papers. The planner included information about an American base in Turkey, the "American foreign minister," and Alia Airport in Jordan, the FBI said.
This article starring:
Ahmed Hannan
Farouk Ali-Haimoud
Karim Koubriti
Nabil Al-Marabh
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09/20/2001 ||
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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.
