Threat Matrix: Daily Terror Threat - Thread Ten

Yahoo News ^ | 6-10-04 | AP

[JustPiper]

Picture credit: TheCabal

"I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat"

LINK TO THREAD NINE

U.S. Charges Australian Linked to al-Qaida

WASHINGTON - An Australian held at the Navy's prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will face a military tribunal for allegedly training and fighting alongside members of al-Qaida in Afghanistan (news - web sites), the Pentagon (news - web sites) announced Thursday.

We are the "Stotters" who make ourselves aware of the enemy who wishes to do us harm

[liberallyconservative]

No News on Fate of South Korean Being Held

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=564&ncid=716&e=11&u=/nm/20040621/ts_nm/iraq_dc

In this artical, it states that Mr. Kim is an Arabic speaker and evangelical Christian who has worked in Iraq for a year as a translator for a Korean firm supplying goods to the U.S. military.

Continued prayers for him and any other hostages rumored to be held.

[Velveeta]

I hope someone thought to grab a few of the egss to test before they were dumped at the landfill.

Not to mention "Muhammed Ali" is not up for any safe driver awards!

[Revel]

Passengers Told Not To Peek When Flight Lands At Air Force Base

Jun 20, 2004 5:03 pm US/Central
St. Paul (AP) Robert Morrell wondered what was up after his Northwest Airlines flight touched down.

Nobody from the flight crew got on the intercom to welcome passengers to Rapid City, S.D. He looked out the window and saw barracks-like structures and military officials. And then the crew told passengers to pull down their window shades.

Turns out it wasn't Rapid City Regional Airport. It was Ellsworth Air Force Base.

After about five minutes, a voice from the cockpit broke the news to the passengers aboard Flight 1152 from Minneapolis-St. Paul.

"He (the pilot) hemmed and he hawed and he said, 'We have landed at an Air Force base a few miles from the Rapid City airport and now we are going to figure out how we're going to get from here to there,"' Morrell told the St. Paul Pioneer Press on his cell phone during the delay Saturday.

The delay stretched past three hours as the 117 passengers waited in the nearly full Airbus A-319.

During that time, military officials questioned the crew. Eventually, the captain and first officer were replaced by a different Northwest crew, which made the short hop to the right airport, three hours and 42 minutes late.

More:

http://wcco.com/localnews/local_story_172180536.html

[JellyJam]

things are heating up ...

CHERMEN, Russia (AP) — Heavily-armed militants launched coordinated attacks against police headquarters, border checkpoints and government offices in a Russian region bordering warring Chechnya, authorities said Tuesday. At least 22 people were killed, including three high-ranking officials, and dozens were wounded.

The fighters seized the Interior Ministry in Nazran, the largest city in Ingushetia, and attacked the border guards’ headquarters there as well as in two villages near Chechnya shortly before midnight Monday, emergency officials said.

The Ingush medical center said that 59 injured people were hospitalized and 16 of them had died. The ITAR-Tass news agency, citing law enforcement officials, said five of the dead were policemen.

Witnesses reported at least six more people dead in an attack on a border guards’ post on the outskirts of Nazran.

“There are a lot of casualties, both from the law enforcement side and among civilians,” the Interfax news agency quoted Ingush President Murat Zyazikov as saying.

An official from the Ingush Interior Ministry said it was not immediately clear who the attackers were, but said some of them were shouting “Allahu akhbar” — a frequent cry of Chechnya’s separatist rebels as their insurgency increasingly comes under the influence of radical Islam. Police estimated that up to 100 militants, armed with grenade- and rocket-launchers, were involved in the assaults.

Thousands of Russian anti-terrorist special forces headed into Nazran, through the border village of Chermen in neighboring North Ossetia, in a long column of armored personnel carriers and army trucks shortly after dawn Tuesday. Inside the city, firefighters fought blazes at the Interior Ministry and its weapons storehouse, as residents cowered in their homes.

[ExSoldier]

This is an excellent summation and it raises the hair on the nape of my neck. I went to the site of the "Aussie Bloke" and that just made my lip curl. My old Pastor (now he runs a radio ministry called KEYLIFE) and he'd say when it comes to this: "Smells like SMOKE, comes from the pit of HELL." Well, yup that applies here.

But you done good here, Honestly! lol This is one form of the kind of stuff we need to be cross referencing here on TM. It all comes together to form a cogent picture. We need everybody with eyes to see and ears to hear and we need to keep our FOCUS.

[Oorang]

Interesting Cosco/Panama info:

http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/926499/posts

http://www.cosco.com.cn/en/global_offices/staff.jsp?catId=662

[Cindy]

Thanks Velveeta.

[MamaDearest]

Jill IMHO your site is the very best site available to us that has consistently provided us with excellent information without charging us an an arm and a leg to obtain. God bless you for your selfless devotion to fighting terrorism. Hugs for all the hard work and dedication you put into your site and sharing it with us without restricting info to paying customers only. I understand that sites like yours need funds to operate, but withholding relevant information for paying customers only tells me that the purpose of the site is to generate money. I pray one day soon you will find someone who cares enough about our country's security to help fund your site if you still want to pursue it. Thanks Jill for doing what you could to help us to fight terrorism through viruses, and people who delight in seeing you gone (I read your messages). Those people are pure evil and just as nasty as the terrorists to wish you ill or to cause your site the problems it has experienced. End of losing Jill Rant

[Revel]

We already did the Aussie Bloke thing here. If you were following it with a keen eye it became obvious that it was a hoax some time ago. Now finaly due to dates that were given it has been proven to be just that...A Clever Hoax. There are so many of them out there. That is why it is not good to spend any amount of time on them here. It just detracts from the main purpose of TM and makes us look foolish. I don't think most of us objects to a quick mention and link to something Interesting like that. But Not many want it to be widely debated on TM. It just sidetracks us and as in the case of Aussie Bloke it was a waste of time.

[Selene]

If Mr. Kim is an Arabic speaker, why was he pleading for his life in English? It doesn't make sense.

[JustPiper]

WATCHDOG warns over G-string ads near mosques
Telegraph.co.uk - London,England,UK
An underwear company which put up posters of scantily-clad women near mosques has been criticised by the advertising watchdog.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/06/09/uslog.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/06/09/ixportaltop.html

[null and void]

If Mr. Kim is an Arabic speaker, why was he pleading for his life in English? It doesn't make sense.

Hint: What audience are the beheadings supposed to influence...

[JustPiper]

Ah was wondering the lingo, sounded sorta kinda 'spoofy'

[JustPiper]

Don't forget Ma's fsacination and the things it brings up for our GoogleGranny ;)

[Selene]

The beheading threat was meant to influence the Koreans (don't send troops). He should have been pleading for his life in Korean, under your theory.

[ExSoldier]

You and I exchanged freepmails on this. I won't post anything on the "Bloke" (although I didn't really to begin with) and I hope nobody's mad at me. lol I'm off to bed.

[JustPiper]

Check out this passage from a New York Times story on the beheading of American hostage Paul Johnson by al Qaeda terrorists in Saudi Arabia:

There was never really any chance of their release, and Saudi analysts saw the kidnapping as both a means of prolonging the attention paid to the militant group, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and a way to draw parallels with the treatment of Arab prisoners in Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.

And this one, from the Washington Post:

Last weekend, the group announced it was holding Johnson and said he would be treated as Muslim detainees were treated in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, scene of abuse by U.S. jailers, and Guantanamo Bay.

These aren't gratuitous Abu Ghraib references, since the Times and the Post are merely relaying other people's comparisons of Johnson's murder to the abuses at Abu Ghraib and the "abuses" at Guantanamo. But note what the Times and the Post neglect to point out: that no one has ever alleged that America beheaded anyone at either place.
_________________________________________________________

Our Friends the Saudis

After Johnson's killing, the less-bad guys scored a victory when Saudi police killed four terrorists, including Abdelaziz al-Muqrin, leader of the al Qaeda cell that confessed to the murder. "Experts on the extremists were stunned that so many senior members of the cell were moving around together at the same time," reports the New York times. "They said it appeared to be a sign that the group was smaller than had been believed."

That's certainly good news, but here's something troubling: The Associated Press reports that "an account of the operation posted on an Islamic extremist Web site Sunday" claims that "al-Qaida militants disguised in police uniforms and cars provided by sympathizers in the Saudi security forces set up a fake checkpoint to snare the American engineer they later beheaded." It seems that whenever Saudi police end up in a confrontation with terrorists, the terrorists either escape or are killed. Could this be because Saudi authorities are afraid that if captured alive, terrorists could be in a position to reveal official complicity?

Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post reports that top Saudi royals have their own theory as to who's behind the murder:

Crown Prince Abdullah blamed Israel for the execution. Speaking to Saudi television, he said, "Zionism is behind it. It has become clear now. It has become clear to us. I don't say, I mean. . . . It is not 100 percent, but 95 percent that the Zionist hands are behind what happened."

Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef said, "Al-Qaida is backed by Israel and Zionism, " and a Saudi official in the US argued that Zionists and others who argue for regime change in Saudi Arabia "share the same objective as Osama bin Laden."

Riyadh's position seems to be either you're with us, or you're with the Jews.
___________________________________________________

Terror Hurts Bush! No, Wait, It Helps Him!
A "news" story in London's left-wing Independent newspaper posits that Johnson's murder may be "the horror that will finally undo George Bush's presidency":

It is hard not to think back to earlier acts of defiance against the might of the United States and wonder if we are not seeing a parallel erosion of presidential authority: the steady drip-drip of casualty figures from Vietnam that proved the undoing of Lyndon Johnson's presidency in 1968, or the corrosive effect of the Iran hostage crisis on Jimmy Carter 12 years later.

But another left-wing London paper, the Guardian, puts forth a contrary theory:

A senior US intelligence official is about to publish a bitter condemnation of America's counter-terrorism policy, arguing that the west is losing the war against al-Qaida and that an "avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked" war in Iraq has played into Osama bin Laden's hands. . . .

Anonymous, who published an analysis of al-Qaida last year called Through Our Enemies' Eyes, thinks it quite possible that another devastating strike against the US could come during the election campaign, not with the intention of changing the administration, as was the case in the Madrid bombing, but of keeping the same one in place.

"I'm very sure they can't have a better administration for them than the one they have now," he said.

Does terrorism help or hurt Bush politically? The Bush-haters across the pond can't seem to agree
______________________________________________________

A Wrong-Headed Story
An Associated Press dispatch from Cairo carries this peculiar headline: "Al-Qaeda Head Justifies Targeting Johnson." As blogress Dawn Eden notes, a better headline would have been "Johnson Head Justifies Targeting al Qaeda."




http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110005240

[JustPiper]

3 10's? Otherwise I'd wonder if it was 10/10

[JustPiper]

I think you are correct and we definitely need to pray, I read somewhere today there were 9 beside the SK man, do you know who they meant?

[JustPiper]

What?!