Posted on 12/14/2001 9:20:57 AM PST by RCW2001
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By Jeremy Lovell LONDON (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden may be trapped in the Afghan mountains or on the run but the tape in which he revealed prior knowledge of the September 11 attacks held a grim warning for the future, intelligence experts said on Friday. Not only did the amateur video, found by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and shown around the world on Thursday, make clear his al Qaeda network has a cell structure, with agents operating independently of each other, but it also carried a clear warning to bin Laden's native Saudi Arabia, whose rulers he detests. "The fact is that it is pretty clear that there are a number of cells that are still extant," Jonathan Stevenson of London's Institute for International Strategic Studies told Reuters. "The bin Laden tape confirms that there was a kind of a hub and spokes organization that existed in al Qaeda. "The ability to rally so many different people from dispersed locales...has clearly been compromised. But...there may be a will and a lower level capability to commit terrorist acts because these people have been trained." Few Western intelligence experts doubt the authenticity of the tape, which is of poor sound and visual quality and shows bin Laden discussing the suicide hijack attacks on New York and Washington with an unnamed visiting Saudi sheikh. "I think the tape is genuine, it's authentic. I don't think this has been manipulated," Rolf Tophoven, a German terrorism expert, told Germany's NDR radio. On the tape, bin Laden questions the visiting sheikh about opinions in the country that stripped him of citizenship in 1994 and whose royal leadership he accuses of being false Muslims. "People now are supporting us more, even those who did not support us in the past support us more now," the sheikh replied. "The elderly...everybody praises what you did," he said, adding that leading Saudi clerics were promoting his cause.
CALL TO ARMS Roland Jacquard, head of the International Observatory on Terrorism in Paris, said the tape was "an enormous provocation against Saudi Arabia." "The fact this religious leader accepts to be filmed is a provocation to the Saudi government because he knew it would appear in a propaganda film," Jacquard said. "It is also a challenge from al Qaeda to the Saudi government, saying it was now supported by about 20 Saudi religious leaders." He said the tape was a call to arms for supporters of bin Laden's cause, with the message that his own death would be irrelevant and he would join the September 11 hijack "martyrs." Islamist revolt in Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, is the stuff of nightmares for the Western powers. A senior Italian state prosecutor in Milan told Reuters that victory in Afghanistan would be the end of the first chapter not of the whole book of bin Laden's campaign against the West. "The death of bin Laden would not mean the whole network will suddenly stop," he told Reuters. "The United States is right when it says this will be a long war. Al Qaeda is strong in Afghanistan but it also has had bases in Yemen and in Sudan and we don't yet know the full relationship with countries like Iraq and Iran." The IISS's Stevenson agreed but said he expected the future level of "terror" attacks to revert -- at least in the short term -- to a more localized and hence manageable level following the overthrow of al Qaeda's Taliban protectors in Afghanistan. "The fact that the capability is now lower-level probably means that it is more consonant with current law enforcement and intelligence capabilities," Stevenson said. "To the extent that it has been localized by the decapitation -- at least temporarily -- of al Qaeda it has been made more manageable, and that is the idea. "This is a program of containment." |
Disclosure: Long Beheadings in Saudi Arabia next month.
The number one priority right now for the terrorists is survival. Any communication will be wiretapped, any planning overheard. Finances are getting harder to manage. Every middle-easterner is being watched, not just by the feds, but by their neighbors.
"Has had." Uh, no. Irrelevant. Afghanistan is/was the Disneyworld of Islamic Terrorism. Saudi Arabia is the permissive heartland of the same. The major bases other than Afghanistan are and continue to be London, Paris, Madrid, Brussels, Hamburg, New York, New Jersey, etc. Wake up call time. The bases are not Cairo, Tripoli, Algiers, Teheran, etc.
In the words of Muammar Gaddafi:
"If the United States wants seriously to eradicate terrorism, the first capital that should be pounded with cruise missiles is London." "It is the shelter of terrorism," he added, referring to charges that Islamic militants suspected of violence are protected by Britain's policies on political asylum.
I have posting for about two months that the Saudis had better start killing all al Queerdos and their financial backers in Saudi Arabia before this thing blows up in their face!
If the full extent of Saudi Arabia's involvement with the startup of al Queerdo, their Nazi attitude towards Israel and us, the development of OBL, the financing of OBL and al Queerdo, and on and on. The ruling Saudis will never recover from the data if it comes out!
They are probably making out a post Ramadan list of whom to arrest and behead when Ramadan is over! The super rich and Islamic Fanatic Saudis can't afford for the full story to evolve. They will start killing al Queerdos and their backers in Saudi Arabia and probably neighboring countries! If they don't, they could lose everything!
Just look at what is happening Yemen right now. Yemen's little despot knows that if he doesn't clean out the al Queerdo rats and kill a lot, he will be one of the next targets! He has seen what has happened in Afghanistan. He knows that our Navy/Marines could zero his miserable fanatic country in about 5 hours to revenge the USS Cole.
These super rich arabs who are fanatics and hate America are cowards and love their life styles. Expect them to start kill al Queerdos all over the middle east after Ramadan!
"Saudi Arabia is the posterchild for "fat, lazy, worthless slobs oozing in oil and money". The US protected them and Kuwait against Iraq. The US built the Saudis a topnotch air base. Now, the Saudis deny the US airspace for missions into Afghanistan."
Funnier yet, Osama deepens the terrorist investigation into his former homeland in this videotape. (All the mosque leaders supporting Al Queda in Saudi Arabia). He named some of them. May Saudi Arabia take quick action in collaboration with the US coalition, or else rot to the ground. It is decision time, Saudi."
Yep, that tape will probably end the careers of many of these peace loving mullahs. These fanatics fly to Afghanistan to break bread, smoke dope and to listen to their agent of murder, OBL, brag about the mass murders of 9/11. Their meeting was after the mass murders of 9/11!
To the Saudi monitors of this website, "It is decision time before you end up like the Nazis you are emulating! Clean the filth out of your wretched little Kingdom, before we clean it out for you!"
These are more accessable by aircraft carriers!!!!!
Talk about seeing some glass in the desert.....
During the Gulf War, I heard on good authority that the Saudis and Kuwaitis were calling Americans "our white Ni&&*rs."
They don't like us too much, only our money.
Apparently this was a common remark from their various princes. A friend, a pilot was called up during Desert Storm. He understood Farsi and never let the Saudis know that he did! The last day right before he left to come home he unloaded on a couple members of the Saudi Royal Family who were pilots. He had documented their vile comments about Americans. He told them in the next decade, other Americans would take of the Rotten Saudi rich families. Then he asked a really foul mouth one if he wanted his share before he left! The creep just about soiled his Royal Saudi Air Force pants!
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