Al Qaeda again threatens America (Thread 3) Daily Terror Threat

Alert Name: Acts of terror

Radio: Bush outlines plan to stop spread of WMD
02/14/04

President Bush emphasized on Saturday the need to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction, stressing the dangers of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons getting in the hands of terrorists.
FULL STORY at CNN

3,381 posted on 02/15/2004 9:59:56 AM PST by JustPiper (When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred)

To: StillProud2BeFree

I'm in tornado alley, so we hear the sirens often. :(

3,382 posted on 02/15/2004 10:01:02 AM PST by Letitring

To: Letitring; All

3,383 posted on 02/15/2004 10:03:50 AM PST by JustPiper (When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred)

To: Letitring; All

I'd like to make a suggestion. I am going through my paper..Chgo Sun-Times and finding articles on a daily basis for this thread. If each of us covers a local paper daily in our states, imagine the things we'd be finding out. Opinions...Comments?

Johns Manville to clean up asbestos in Waukegan

February 15, 2004

BY ART GOLAB Staff Reporter

Asbestos-contaminated lagoons in Waukegan would be drained and cleaned up under a proposed settlement between manufacturer Johns Manville and state and federal authorities.

The lagoons, which have leaked the cancer-causing material into Lake Michigan, are on the site of a former asbestos factory operated by Johns Manville. A million tons of asbestos waste is capped in a landfill there.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-asbestos15.html

If my waters are this contaminated, imagine the waters in our country!

3,384 posted on 02/15/2004 10:07:55 AM PST by JustPiper (When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred)

President Bush is at Daytona, NASCAR event. LOL. I just love that man. :)

3,385 posted on 02/15/2004 10:11:38 AM PST by Letitring

You may want to use the link for this is a 4 page story!

New York Police Take Broad Steps in Facing Terror
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM and JUDITH MILLER

Published: February 15, 2004

The New York Police Department, working with city health officials, federal authorities and other agencies, has been preparing for a possible attack with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, perhaps the most daunting threat facing municipalities in a post-9/11 world.

Meeting in secret and conducting complex drills, the department has brought together government agencies in a broad effort for much of the last year. In doing so, it has put together a program that some national security and law enforcement officials describe as unrivaled among American cities.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/15/nyregion/15THREAT.html?th

3,386 posted on 02/15/2004 10:12:07 AM PST by JustPiper (When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred)

That's a very good idea. I haven't retrieved my local excuse for news from the doorstep, yet. BRB.

3,387 posted on 02/15/2004 10:12:31 AM PST by Letitring

Islamabad accused of nuclear 'cover-up'
By Edward Luce in Islamabad

Published: February 13, 2004

Relatives of six scientists who worked with A.Q. Khan, the disgraced "father of the Islamic bomb", have accused Islamabad of indulging in a cover-up to protect the Pakistani military from being tainted by the nuclear proliferation scandal.

The Pakistani government alleges that the scientists, five of whom have been held since 17 January and one since 27 November, "passed on" nuclear materials, designs and machinery to "foreign countries" - thought to be Libya, Iran and North Korea.

http://www.nytimes.com/financialtimes/international/FT1075982536042.html

3,388 posted on 02/15/2004 10:16:07 AM PST by JustPiper (When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred)

To: Velveeta; All

Just came across this and wanted to give smiles:

3,389 posted on 02/15/2004 10:18:16 AM PST by JustPiper (When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred)

H.I.V. Surge Catches Tradition-Bound Estonia Off Guard
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ

Published: February 15, 2004

ALLINN, Estonia — The virus first crept in at the Russian border and, for a time, nobody in Estonia blinked.

For more than a decade, beginning in 1988, only a handful of people in Estonia tested positive for H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. Those who did were easily ignored — young, Russian-speaking heroin users in the country's depressed northern reaches. The problem seemed small enough to shrug off.

Not any more. Estonia is in the grips of a "concentrated" H.I.V. epidemic among intravenous drug users that has migrated south and west to the country's graceful medieval capital, Tallinn, and is threatening to spread still wider through unprotected sex.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/15/international/europe/15ESTO.html

3,390 posted on 02/15/2004 10:19:29 AM PST by JustPiper (When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred)

Iran Says It's Ready to Sell Nuclear Fuel Abroad
By REUTERS

Published: February 15, 2004

TEHRAN, Feb. 14 (Reuters) — The Iranian foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, said Saturday that Iran was willing to sell nuclear fuel to international buyers.

Iran has said it will enrich uranium only to fuel power stations and not to the level of weapons-grade purity.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran, as a country that has the potential to produce nuclear fuel, is ready to offer fuel to international markets," Mr. Kharrazi told the official IRNA news agency.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/15/international/middleeast/15TEHR.html

3,391 posted on 02/15/2004 10:21:32 AM PST by JustPiper (When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred)

I called the Aurora Police Dept today and asked about last night and before I even had a chance to ask her about the sirens she answered that it was a malfunction and every thing was alright. I then asked her do you even know what I am talking about and she said the sirens at midnight last night right? They have been bombarded with calls.

Interesting?

3,392 posted on 02/15/2004 10:27:34 AM PST by jLOREE40

Give us the all clear everything is ok?!

3,393 posted on 02/15/2004 10:30:08 AM PST by JustPiper (When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred)

MUHAMMAD ZIMAM ABD AL-RAZZAQ AL-SADUN

Baath Party Regional Command Chairman for Ta'mim Governorate

Iraqis Seize No. 41 on U.S. Wanted List

By SAMEER YACOUB, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi police on Sunday arrested No. 41 on the American military's most-wanted list, Baath Party official Mohammed Zimam Abdul-Razaq. He was the party's regional chairman in the northern provinces of Nineveh and Tamim, which include the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

Meanwhile, insurgents attacked two U.S. convoys less than a mile apart in Baghdad, and American soldiers in one incident opened fire, killing one Iraqi driving nearby and wounding six others, witnesses and hospital officials said.

The violence came as Iraqi security officials investigated one of the most sophisticated guerrilla attacks yet — a bold daylight assault Saturday by dozens of fighters on a police station in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, in which 25 people were killed, most of them policemen.

A U.S. military police officer was among more than 30 people wounded, said Col. William Darley, a military spokesman.

Police caught Abdul-Razaq at one of his homes in western Baghdad, the Interior Ministry said. He was the four of spades in the military's "deck of cards" of top fugitives — leaving 10 still at large from the most-wanted list of 55.

Pictured shortly after his arrest, Mohammed Zimam Abdul Razaq, left, is displayed to journalists inside an office of the Iraqi Interior Ministry while new Deputy Interior Minister Ahmed Kadhum Ibrahim speaks, in Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, Feb. 15, 2004. Iraqi police on Sunday arrested Abdul Razaq, a former Iraqi Baath Party chairman who was one of 11 fugitives still at large from the U.S. military's list of the 55 most wanted members of Saddam Hussein's regime, at one of his homes in a suburb of Baghdad. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

In Qaim, near the Syrian border about 200 miles northwest of Baghdad, U.S. troops backed by tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles clashed Sunday with Iraqi gunmen. There were no reports of casualties. Residents said gunmen attacked the Americans in retaliation for a U.S. operation against suspected smugglers the day before.

Also on Sunday, the military said an 82nd Airborne Division paratrooper died when his vehicle overturned near Baghdad a day earlier. The soldier's name was not released.

There were conflicting reports who may have been behind the Fallujah attacks.

Police claimed foreigners — Arabs or Iranians — were involved and that two of four attackers killed in the battle had Lebanese identification papers. Rumors spread in the city that an Iraqi Shiite Muslim militia with links to Iran, the Badr Brigade, was to blame.

But a U.S. officer in Baghdad said the attack's sophistication pointed to former members of Saddam Hussein's military.

The assault involved simultaneous attacks: One group of gunmen overran the police station, freeing dozens of prisoners being held there, while a second team pinned down Iraqi security forces at a nearby compound with a half-hour barrage of fire to prevent them from helping the policemen.

On Sunday, a roadside bomb went off as a U.S. military patrol passed by in western Baghdad, causing no injuries. The American soldiers opened fire wildly in response, shooting three vehicles, witnesses said. One Iraqi was killed and six wounded, hospital officials said.

"I was driving near the U.S. convoy when I heard an explosion. Then the U.S. soldiers randomly opened fire," said Kadhum Salih, a teacher who was wounded in the left hand.

About a half-mile away, gunmen attacked a U.S. convoy on a highway at about the same time, setting one of the vehicles ablaze. Witnesses said U.S. soldiers pulled three wounded people from the stricken SUV.

The convoy was made up of a military Humvee and two sport utility vehicles, the sort used by American civilians and officials in Iraq. The SUV was heavily burned, its hood pockmarked with bullet holes. The U.S. command had no reports of casualties.

Insurgents have launched a series of bloody attacks in the past week, thought to be part of an escalation aimed at wrecking U.S. plans to transfer power to the Iraqis on June 30.

The handover has hit political storms as well, with the United States under heavy pressure to change its method for picking a new government. U.S. administrators want local councils to choose a legislature, which in turn would name a government to rule until elections in 2005.

A prominent Kurdish leader said Saturday he expects the U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing Council to take power June 30 if elections for a legislature cannot be arranged.

"We think that elections are the best way to express the opinions of the Iraqi people," council member Jalal Talabani said. "We expect the Governing Council to receive sovereignty if no provisional government is established or no elections are held."

Talabani spoke after meeting with Iraq's top Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, who holds enormous influence among Iraq's Shiite majority and has demanded elections.

In response, a U.N. mission is in Iraq to explore whether elections were possible. A spokesman for the U.N. team sided with the United States and said it was unlikely a vote could be organized by June 6.

But the head of the team, Lakhdar Brahimi, said major changes were needed in the U.S. plan for picking a government to satisfy Iraqi leaders. American officials say they're open to changes in the formula, which calls for regional caucuses, but have not said how far they're willing to go.

When it transfers sovereignty, the United States wants to give Iraqi security forces greater responsibility in battling the insurgency. But Saturday's attack in Fallujah raised questions about how prepared Iraqis are to face the guerrillas, who have kept up attacks despite the Dec. 13 arrest of Saddam.

The attack occurred at the end of a bloody week in which about 100 people were killed in suicide bombings at a police station in Iskandariyah and an army recruiting center in Baghdad. Those attacks and the Fallujah raid suggest an insurgent campaign against key institutions of the U.S.-backed Iraqi administration.

3,394 posted on 02/15/2004 10:33:25 AM PST by TexKat (Just because you did not see it or read it, that does not mean it did or did not happen.)

3,395 posted on 02/15/2004 10:35:14 AM PST by JustPiper (When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred)

3,396 posted on 02/15/2004 10:39:26 AM PST by JustPiper (When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred)

Dududu Another One Bites the dust dududu...

3,397 posted on 02/15/2004 10:40:01 AM PST by JustPiper (When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred)

LOL. Everything is great. He gave the 'gentlemen start your engines' thingie. Brought the house down when he appeared. People just love this man. I just hope everyone there VOTES for him in November. Everywhere he goes, the public reacts to him as if he is a rock star. ROFLOL. I love it and he just grins. Laura is with him, grinning from ear to ear.

3,398 posted on 02/15/2004 10:40:08 AM PST by Letitring

I'll drink to that JP!

3,399 posted on 02/15/2004 10:40:41 AM PST by MamaDearest (Lets get them before they get us!)

Yesterday I had a brief power outage. Was back in minutes, out long enough to mess up clocks, but did knock me off line and was unable to get back online, for hours. It was odd, as nothing happened locally to cause it.

3,400 posted on 02/15/2004 10:42:14 AM PST by Letitring

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