Posted on 04/04/2005 12:24:11 AM PDT by underlying
Posted by @ 11 11 200212:02 AM
Revelations of an ongoing Al Qaeda conspiracy to kill John Paul II should cause us to examine the 1981 attempt on the Pope's life.
The London Times is reporting that Al Qaeda planned to kill John Paul II in the Philippines in 1999. Bin Laden's lieutenant Khalid Mohammad, who is still at large, was reportedly the mastermind. The plot was apparently called off because the papal visit was cancelled.
An earlier Qaeda plot to murder the pope was foiled on January 6, 1995, when a fire led Philippine police to Flat 603 in the Dona Josefa Apartments in Manila. Philippine security officials were then on alert for the imminent arrival of John Paul on a long-scheduled papal visit, and the apartment was located just 200 yards from the Papal Nunciature.
Inside the burning rooms police found a pipe bomb and timer; a demolitions manual, handwritten in Arabic; ecclesiastical robes; a map of the Pope's route; a mixture of crystalline chemicals in the bathroom sink (an attempt to mix explosives had apparently gone wrong); and a Toshiba laptop computer belonging to Ramzi Youssef, the suspected mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Files in the laptop confirmed that the Pope was to be assassinated as part of a spectacular three-pronged plot, to include the demolition of a dozen airliners over the Pacific, and the crashing of a plane into CIA headquarters.
Interestingly, the man who shot and nearly killed John Paul in May 1981, Mehmet Agca, was also an Islamic militant. Some have speculated that Agca was an agent of Bulgarian intelligence, and that the Soviets were, io ipso, behind that attempt. No compelling proof of such a scenario has ever emerged, however. KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn has noted that the KGB preferred to kill with poison, and that after 1959 it targeted only (1) dissident exiles, and (2) political figures whose deaths would advance the careers of KGB agents-of-influence.
Thus, while a KGB plot to kill John Paul might conform to Western anti-communist preconceptions, the possibility should not be excluded that Agca was acting on behalf of the Islamic International. In fact, Agca himself promptly confessed that he was driven to shoot John Paul from a sense of Islamic duty.
Documentary evidence suggests that Islamic militants had ample motivation to kill the Pope as early as 1982. U.S. National Security Council files released to me under the Freedom Act show that John Paul was aligned with the U.S. against Islamic militants during Ronald Reagan's first term as president.
In the weeks before he was shot by Agca, the documents attest, John Paul was heavily lobbying the Reagan Government to intervene on behalf of the Christian Druze militia in Lebanon. The Druze, it should be recalled, were aligned with Israeli occupation forces against Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerillas. What is more, the NSC files show that Reagan, in his first January 1981 telephone call to the Pope, was specifically asked by U.S. intelligence officials to thank the Vatican for its "assistance" during the Iranian hostage crisis.
Acga's attempt on the Pope may have been an overlooked episode in the Iranian-led Jihad which began with the 1979 takeover of our embassy in Teheran; expanded in 1980 in Afghanistan; and escalated in 1983 with Hezbollah bombings and kidnappings against U.S. targets in Beirut. If that's the case, then Al Qaeda's plots to kill the Pope in 1995 and 1999 cinch yet again the doctrinal and operational afifnity between Iranian-backed Shiite and Arab-backed Sunni terrorists. Such concordance would, in turn, buttress the thesis advanced by Michael Ledeen, Youssef Bodansky, Barry Rubin, Robert Baer, and me: viz., that Al Qaeda and the Iranian Pasdaran are so closely aligned that any distinction between them is chimerical.
Another worth reading.
Ping
All must submit to the god of the black stone and to the teachings of his prophet, or lose your head. Just the way it is folks. After all, Islam is the one true religion of peace. And the prophet had his followers pen exactly what allah had an angel tell him over many years of sweaty fits in caves etc.. So obey. Kill in the name of allah the black stone. If you do not you are not a true believer, and of course you will not get your 72 white grapes and nice prayer matt in the next life.
Whoops got carried away. Forgot to make comment on what a perfect group of peoples for the commies to take advantage of and use in various ways over the years. Egypt, Syria, Iraq, etc.. The Arabs in their backward and confused state often have fallen prey to the most sneaky of em all. Sure I fully realize it is not the peoples, but the leaders who elected to have the Soviets take care of many of their needs. Sort of two faced, countries under Islam falling in line with the Soviet Union for earthly gains.
Kerry hasn't been Catholic since the age of 8. Interestingly enough, that's the age at which he decided he deserved to be president.
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