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The size of this thread is causing FR to slow down whenever it is accessed. It is going to be locked and moved to the chat/general interest forum. If anyone wants to post a ‘Part 2’ thread, go ahead, but post it to chat. Thank You http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1065689/posts |
Posted on 11/03/2003 9:17:27 AM PST by tubavil
Edited on 01/26/2004 3:58:09 PM PST by Sidebar Moderator. [history]
Monday, November 3, 2003
A new message was posted in the last few hours by the Jeddah-based al-Qaeda-linked Al-Islah (Reform) society calling on Muslims to flee New York, Washington and Los Angeles in advance of major al Qaeda attacks in those cities. This is revealed by DEBKAfile.
The message accuses the United States of predetermining its end (doom) by its policies. ?The Jews rule the Pentagon by remote control and (are the cause) of Muslims being killed in every corner of the world. The United States should therefore expect more blows.?
The message is signed on behalf of the al Bayan (The Threat) movement by ?your warrior brother, Abul Hassan al Khadrami?.
Our Muslim expert identifies the name of the signatory as belonging to a Yemeni from Hadhrameuth, the Bin Ladens? place of origin where Osama enjoys substantial tribal support.
DEBKAfile?s counter-terror sources stress that warnings appearing on these forums are taken both very seriously and with caution by the intelligence services keeping track of the terrorist network?s electronic traffic.
Last November, Jeddah-based fundamentalist forums addressed a message to an Al Qaeda member, saying whoever understands ? understands; whoever knows, knows, but we are marching towards an operation that will take us to Paradise. Three days later, the Mombasa Paradise hotel was blown up killing 12 Kenyans and 3 Israelis and a failed shoulder-launched Strela anti-air missile missed an Israeli airliner at Mombasa airport.
Do you have a reference to this?
Your right! Hey you FBI, CIA, DHS guys, we at least would like um, um, say a patch for our jackets from each of you!
So into RPG sounds like Castlevania ;)
Nuke program parts unearthed in Baghdad back yard
U.S. officials: Find is not smoking gun
Thursday, June 26, 2003 Posted: 6:47 AM EDT (1047 GMT)
Parts of a gas centrifuge system for enriching uranium were dug up in Baghdad.
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Story Tools -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- VIDEO CNN's Mike Boettcher spoke to the Iraqi scientist who led U.S. officials to the nuclear centrifuge buried in his back yard. PLAY VIDEO -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (CNN) -- The CIA has in its hands the critical parts of a key piece of Iraqi nuclear technology -- parts needed to develop a bomb program -- that were dug up in a back yard in Baghdad, CNN has learned.
The parts, with accompanying plans, were unearthed by Iraqi scientist Mahdi Obeidi who had hidden them under a rose bush in his garden 12 years ago under orders from Qusay Hussein and Saddam Hussein's then son-in-law, Hussein Kamel.
U.S. officials emphasized this was not evidence Iraq had a nuclear weapon -- but it was evidence the Iraqis concealed plans to reconstitute their nuclear program as soon as the world was no longer looking.
The parts and documents Obeidi gave the CIA were shown exclusively to CNN at CIA headquarters in Virginia.
Obeidi told CNN the parts of a gas centrifuge system for enriching uranium were part of a highly sophisticated system he was ordered to hide to be ready to rebuild the bomb program.
"I have very important things at my disposal that I have been ordered to have, to keep, and I've kept them, and I don't want this to proliferate, because of its potential consequences if it falls in the hands of tyrants, in the hands of dictators or of terrorists," said Obeidi, who has been taken out of Iraq with the help of the U.S. government.
Obeidi also said he was not the only scientist ordered to hide that type of equipment.
"I think there may be more than three other copies. And I think it is quite important to look at this list so they will not fall into the hands of the wrong people," he said.
Centrifuges are drums or cylinders that spin at high speed and separate heavy and light molecules, allowing increasingly enriched uranium to be drawn off.
David Kay, who led three U.N. arms inspection missions in Iraq in 1991-92 and now heads the CIA's search for unconventional weapons, started work two days ago in Baghdad. CNN spoke to him about the case over a secure teleconferencing line.
"It begins to tell us how huge our job is," Kay said. "Remember, his material was buried in a barrel behind his house in a rose garden.
"There's no way that that would have been discovered by normal international inspections. I couldn't have done it. My successors couldn't have done it."
Kay said he had mixed emotions when he saw the centrifuge components: "It was a realization that I hadn't gotten all the parts [of Iraq's nuclear program]. So there was a moment of regret, but there was also an exhilaration that now maybe we have a chance to take this to the very bottom."
CNN had this story last week but made a decision to withhold it at the request of the U.S. government, which cited safety and national security concerns.
The U.S. government told CNN the security and safety issues have been dealt with and there is no risk now in telling the story fully.
The gas centrifuge equipment dates to Iraq's pre-1991 efforts to build nuclear weapons.
Experts said the documents and pieces Obeidi gave the United States were the critical information and parts to restart a nuclear weapons program, and would have saved Saddam's regime several years and as much as hundreds of millions of dollars for research.
David Albright, who was a U.N. nuclear weapons inspector in Iraq in the 1990s, said inspectors "understood that Iraq probably hid centrifuge documents, may have had components, and so it is very important that those items be found."
"What it is that Obeidi was ordered to keep was all the information and some centrifuge components, so that if he was given the order, he could restart the centrifuge program," said Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.
"In a sense, the program was in hibernation. He was the key to the restart of this centrifuge program, and he never got the order. So in that sense it doesn't show at all that Iraq had a nuclear program. And Obeidi told me that he never worked on a nuclear program after 1991."
Obeidi said he felt unsafe in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion and that he was getting pressure from different corners of the country.
He also said other Iraqi scientists were watching to see if he was safe after he cooperated with the U.S. government.
Now that he and his family are safely out of Iraq, Obeidi said he believes other scientists would come forward with other components of Iraq's weapons program.
Before the Iraq war, U.S. officials said Iraq tried to purchase aluminum tubes that could be used in centrifuges that enrich uranium.
In his March 7 presentation to the U.N. Security Council, however, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said there was no evidence "Iraq intended to use these 81-millimeter tubes for any project other than the reverse engineering of rockets." (Full story)
U.S. officials, including President Bush, also had cited British intelligence documents indicating Iraq may have tried to buy 500 tons of uranium from Niger, but the IAEA said the documents were obvious fakes.
CNN correspondents Mike Boettcher and David Ensor and producer Maria Fleet contributed to this story.
George John Tenet was sworn in as Director of Central Intelligence on 11 July 1997 following a unanimous vote by both the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the full Senate. In this position he heads the Intelligence Community (all foreign intelligence agencies of the United States) and directs the Central Intelligence Agency.
Mr. Tenet served as the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, having been confirmed in that position in July 1995. Following the departure of John Deutch in December 1996, he served as Acting Director.
Through the entire Clinton admin. Deutch also was a Xlinton man
That high enough?
This worries me...why is Gulf Air still allowed here?!
Good for you, self-defense is so important.
ijaz is an American-born muslim of Pakistani descent. I trust him as much as those muslim fbi translators... ======================================================= Tonight on The O'Reilly Factor, Bill O'Reilly addressed the arrest of Florida State University Professor Sami Al Arian. Bill O'Reilly's guest was Fox news analyst Mansoor Ijaz.
Bill O'Reilly pointed out that he had been under heavy attack over the past year from the Muslim community for originally breaking the first arrest of Professor Al Arian, but had kept quiet over the ongoing debate.
Sami Al Arian was arrested on terrorism-related charges and Bill O'Reilly said that if he was innocent, Al Arian should be fully exhonerated and given full backpay.
In the closing remarks of the segment, Bill O'Reilly said that if the Islamic Imams had come out publicly, which they should have done, after 9/11, and condemned it with mass ralleys that he would recieve it. Bill O'Reilly said that it was the imam's responsibiity to tell the American people what they think - not his.
Bill O'Reilly gave the closing remarks to Fox News analyst Mansoor Ijaz, who had led a very stern and vigorous (sometimes heated) defense for Islam during the segment.
Manssor Ijaz's reply to Bill O'Reilly:
"You're right about that, but there is a problem - and that is that these people are scared. They're scared of you, they're scared of the media, they're scared of people that are driving them further and further under the ground.
And, I'm telling you that it is creating a basement that is going to retaliate against the American people (O'Reilly says, "I hope not!") in a way we have never seen before!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/852754/posts
IMPORTANT
But there's one more factor not being considered by the Republicans and their overconfident cheerleaders: The possibility of a major third-party candidate who could draw more votes away from Bush than from the Democratic nominee.
How Bush can lose
Unfortunately, this feels right
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