World Terrorism: News, History and Research Of A Changing World #5

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The following items are terrorism-related items from the National Intelligence Council's "Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue About the Future With Nongovernment Experts" report (December 2000).

States with poor governance; ethnic, cultural, or religious tensions; weak economies; and porous borders will be prime breeding grounds for terrorism. In such states, domestic groups will challenge the entrenched government, and transnational networks seeking safehavens.

At the same time, the trend away from state-supported political terrorism and toward more diverse, free-wheeling, transnational networks—enabled by information technology—will continue. Some of the states that actively sponsor terrorism or terrorist groups today may decrease or even cease their support by 2015 as a result of regime changes, rapprochement with neighbors, or the conclusion that terrorism has become counterproductive. But weak states also could drift toward cooperation with terrorists, creating de facto new state supporters.

Between now and 2015 terrorist tactics will become increasingly sophisticated and designed to achieve mass casualties.

Experts agree that the United States, with its decisive edge in both information and weapons technology, will remain the dominant military power during the next 15 years. Further bolstering the strong position of the United States are its unparalleled economic power, its university system, and its investment in research and development—half of the total spent annually by the advanced industrial world. Many potential adversaries, as reflected in doctrinal writings and statements, see US military concepts, together with technology, as giving the United States the ability to expand its lead in conventional warfighting capabilities.

This perception among present and potential adversaries will continue to generate the pursuit of asymmetric capabilities against US forces and interests abroad as well as the territory of the United States. US opponents—state and such nonstate actors as drug lords, terrorists, and foreign insurgents—will not want to engage the US military on its terms. They will choose instead political and military strategies designed to dissuade the United States from using force, or, if the United States does use force, to exhaust American will, circumvent or minimize US strengths, and exploit perceived US weaknesses. Asymmetric challenges can arise across the spectrum of conflict that will confront US forces in a theater of operations or on US soil.

Some potential adversaries will seek ways to threaten the US homeland. The US national infrastructure—communications, transportation, financial transactions, energy networks—is vulnerable to disruption by physical and electronic attack because of its interdependent nature and by cyber attacks because of their dependence on computer networks. Foreign governments and groups will seek to exploit such vulnerabilities using conventional munitions, information operations, and even WMD.

Much of the terrorism noted earlier will be directed at the United States and its overseas interests. Most anti-US terrorism will be based on perceived ethnic, religious or cultural grievances. Terrorist groups will continue to find ways to attack US military and diplomatic facilities abroad. Such attacks are likely to expand increasingly to include US companies and American citizens. Middle East and Southwest Asian-based terrorists are the most likely to threaten the United States.

PING to New Thread...

Unclear and present danger
The public is still not fully aware of the gravity of the threat posed by Islamist extremists, Britain's anti-terror supremo tells Patrick Walters

September 23, 2006
BRITAIN'S top counter-terrorist cop has no doubt the nature of the threat has changed dramatically. Peter Clarke, Scotland Yard's 51-year-old head of counter-terrorism, talks with quiet resolution about the challenge of Islamist terrorism and how it has turned British policing upside down.
People often say to Clarke how well placed the British authorities must be to deal with Islamist terror given their long experience of Irish Republican Army killers.

No, he responds emphatically. It's a whole new ball game with no defined rules of engagement or carefully delineated boundaries.

"The current terrorist threat is almost the reverse of all those parameters," Clarke said in Canberra this week.

"What we see is global in origin, global in ambition, global in reach. The networks are loose, they are fluid and they are incredibly resilient," Clarke told a security conference.

Defeating the threat demands a level of resources, including sustained surveillance, unprecedented in modern law enforcement. "Unless you have pace and scale on your side, you will fail to deal with these terrorist conspiracies that we are currently seeing," he stressed.

Clarke tells Inquirer the threat posed by radical Islamists in Britain is growing in scale and complexity. "I think the only sensible conclusion is that it is ... because if you look at the pace of terrorist activity since 9/11, it's clearly unabated and there appears to be a consistency, almost a regularity, in the attack patterns.

"I don't want to sound unnecessarily gloomy, but I don't see many positive signs in terms of it being diminished."

He points out that British authorities have managed to foil four or five attacks in the past 12 months. But the "sad probability" is that another attack will get through at some time.

Clarke brings nearly 30 years of experience to his role as national co-ordinator for counter-terrorism investigations, having joined the Metropolitan Police in 1977 with a law degree from Bristol University.

His postings included a stint in the late 1990s as commander of the royalty and diplomatic protection department, with responsibility for the security of the royal family, before taking on his present job at New Scotland Yard in 2002.

Since 9/11 there has been a four-fold increase in the number of Metropolitan Police officers dedicated to investigating terrorism. In the next few weeks there will be a shake-up as Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch merges with the force's special branch to form a dedicated counter-terrorism command.

"That will be quite a historic change. It's a big move for us to do that," Clarke says. "That will create a single large department as big as many medium-sized police forces in the UK, which will greatly enhance our capabilities."

The Metropolitan Police will co-ordinate other counter-terrorism units across Britain's 43 separate local police forces, building surveillance, intelligence and analytical assets.

Clarke says Britain's experience of Islamist terror, including last year's London bombings and the recently thwarted plot to blow up airliners flying to the US, is driving far-reaching changes in the way police now operate.

It used to be that police would only intervene in the final stages of a terrorist plot, making arrests at or near the point of attack, with the strongest possible weight of evidence to put before a court. However, Clarke says the scale of the threat means "we can no longer afford to wait until that moment".

"It's a complete shift in scale. Mentally we have had to completely change our response in terms of interdiction and intervention to prevent an increased risk to the public."

Clarke says earlier action to pre-empt a mass casualty attack also dictates the need to engage closely with local communities as a key element of counter-terrorism strategy. He believes the British public is still not fully aware of the gravity of the threat posed by Islamist terror groups. This is despite the fact there are now 90 people awaiting trial on terrorism charges.

"We have a whole series of trials which over the coming months and years will unfold in the UK. When that hard evidence is produced the public are able to see what has been planned over the last months and years, that will contribute to their understanding of the threat."

When Metropolitan Police discovered a cache of military training equipment in the Finsbury Park mosque in January 2003, it took three years before the authorities could inform the public of the find because of contempt issues.

"From a law enforcement perspective, the scale of these investigations is simply immense. The level of investigative activity has never been higher," Clarke says.

He acknowledges that the number of people of interest to British authorities looking "right across the span of terrorist activity" is now in the thousands. These included at one end of the spectrum people prepared to mount attacks themselves, and at the other those who might simply facilitate travel or supply forged documentation, or those may one day join the jihadist cause.

"The numbers of people we have to be interested in are in the thousands but I am not saying that we have thousands of people under surveillance or that there are thousands of terrorists in the UK."

International co-operation between law enforcement authorities is critical and transnational intelligence sharing is growing all the time.

"What we are looking at is a global movement that operates across borders. They are extremely mobile. Travel is a key feature of how terrorists are planning and organising themselves."

Clarke says Britain is working closely with Pakistani authorities to better understand the extent of links with British groups, including the 2005 bombers.

The July disruption of a plot to blow up airliners travelling to the US involved the arrest of 17 suspects, of whom 11 have now been charged with conspiracy to murder.

Clarke warns it is vital that the aviation industry examines the implications of the foiled plot for air travel.

The plotters had been planning to smuggle liquid explosives on board several planes.

"I can't go into details about the methodology except to say its very innovative. That will give a clue to the fact that now in response ... new protective measures are required. The methodology is such that there must be an enduring threat to air transport."

So a serious threat to aviation safety remains which has to be addressed?

"Absolutely," comes the reply.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20459724-601,00.html

Did He Really Say That?
By: Peter Schiff, Euro Pacific Capital, Inc. -- Posted Thursday, 28 September 2006

In the past two weeks I was treated to two particularly moronic public statements from market experts.

Last week, during an interview on CNBC, Dennis Gartman, editor of the highly regarded Gartman Letter, asserted that the storage currency of choice among drug traffickers, arms dealers, and the Russian Mafia had switched from $100 dollar US bills to €500 Euro notes. Gartman proclaimed the development to be bullish for the U.S. economy and bearish for the Euro zone. Say what?

Gartman’s “logic” was that when the dormant $100 bills sitting in attaché cases, safety deposit boxes, and mattresses returned to America, the additional spending would boost the US economy. Conversely, he asserted, the removal of euros from circulation would hurt the euro-zone economies. Basically, Gartman’s comments boiled down to the belief that economic growth can be created by introducing more money into circulation. Or, more precisely, that inflation creates prosperity.

The reality is that Americans receive a huge subsidy as a result of U.S. currency being stashed away in foreign suitcases. It’s like writing checks that no one cashes. Dollars circulating abroad do not bid up consumer prices at home, which results in Americans having more goods to consume at lower prices. If the hoarded bills were to suddenly return to domestic circulation, the result would not be more growth but only higher prices and interest rates. Alternatively, were those dollars deposited in foreign bank accounts, Americans would be required to pay interest on balances that previously earned nothing.

Any way you slice it, the fact that criminals are moving from dollars to euros is a negative development for an American economy accustomed to the subsidy. In addition, it reveals the diminishing prestige of the dollar and the increasing concerns others have for its reliability as a dependable store of value. Because cash under a mattress earns no interest, the only consideration given is it’s preservation of purchasing power. The fact that criminals increasingly prefer euros to dollars speaks volumes. If only Gartman had the good sense to listen.

Going from the sublime to the ridiculous, this week, in response to the first national year-over-year decline in housing prices since 1995, David Lereah, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors said “We've been anticipating a price correction and now it's here. The price drop has stopped the bleeding for housing sales. We think the housing market has now hit bottom.''

First of all, when did Lereah ever predict a price decline? Isn’t he the same guy who constantly assured us that real estate prices would never fall? That all that would happen to prices is that they would rise more slowly.

Second, what makes him an economist? Is he really employed to give an honest assessment of the future prospects of the housing market and real estate prices? Lereah is no more an economist than Henry Blodget was an analyst. Despite their titles, both were hired to help salesmen move inventory. For Blodget it was internet stocks, and for Lereah it is houses. Realtors cannot convince as many people to over-pay for houses if their own economist forecasts prices to drop. Why this man still gets taken serious by the media is beyond me. Anything he says should either be printed in the classified section or as part of a legitimate display advertisement for realtors.

Finally, what the hell is he talking about? How can he say that the bleeding has stopped, when its barely just begun? It reminds me of the Monty Python skit where the Black Knight claims his severed limb is “just a flesh wound.” Does it seem feasible that the biggest real estate bubble in U.S. history would bottom out after a mere 1.7% price decline? What signs could he possibly see to confirm that the housing market has bottomed? Let’s see, national home prices fell for the first time in 11 years, with 2006 likely to be the first calendar year in 70 where that occurred. Inventories are at record levels and still rising, sales have fallen for five months in a row and are down 12.6% in the past year, foreclosures are surging, builders are offering additional incentives to sell houses, reporting higher cancellation rates, and repeatedly lowering their earnings estimates. Further, over-stretched homeowners are facing a wave of ARM resets beyond their abilities to pay, the economy is headed for a recession and everyone is still expecting a soft-landing. Yep, it sure looks like a bottom to me.

Anecdotally, the house I rented two years ago, and moved out of six months ago, sits vacant, despite its advertised rent being 15% below what I initially leased it for. In addition, when I first rented it in New Canaan, CT there were only about a half dozen single family rentals available there. Now there are over a hundred.

The reality for real estate is that the only visible signs are those confirming the formation of a major top. It’s more likely that Mr. Lereah saw Elvis than a bottom in the housing market. My guess is that we are a very long way from a bottom, and by the time its visible, Lereah will be out of a job.

In the mean time, why not take advantage of the big drop in oil and gas prices. Download my must-read, free report on Canadian Energy Trusts here, and discover the best way to profit from this timely opportunity.

-- Posted Thursday, 28 September 2006
http://news.goldseek.com/EuroCapital/1159475400.php

Belarus' president says merger with Russia would lead to violence worse than in Chechnya
The Associated Press

Published: September 29, 2006

MINSK, Belarus Belarus' authoritarian president railed Friday against a proposed merger with Russia, warning it could lead to violence and disorder worse than in Russia's restive Chechnya region.

President Alexander Lukashenko's blunt remarks highlighted the rising tensions between the two ex-Soviet allies amid strained talks over natural gas prices.

Moscow and Minsk signed a union treaty in 1996 that envisaged close political, economic and military ties, but stopped short of creating a single state. The Kremlin, increasingly impatient about subsidizing Belarus' Soviet-style economy with cheap gas, has since proposed that Belarus be absorbed into Russia.

Lukashenko, who has vehemently opposed such a union, reiterated his stance during a 4 1/2-hour news conference Friday. "Even (Soviet dictator Josef) Stalin didn't go as far as that ... I don't want to be the first and the last Belarusian president," he said.

The president, who has sought to cast Belarus as an oasis of calm amid other ex-Soviet nations in turmoil, said its incorporation into Russia could trigger chaos and even fighting.

"As soon as Belarus becomes part of Russia, it'll be worse here than in Chechnya," he said. "We'll have people coming in from Georgia, from Russia, Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic countries. They are ready today to come with weapons."

Lukashenko has ruled this country of 10 million people with an iron fist since 1994, and was re-elected to a third term in a March vote that the opposition and Western nations denounced as fraudulent.

A pariah dubbed "Europe's last dictator" in the West, Lukashenko has relied on close economic and military ties with neighboring Russia.

His comments Friday signaled a new rift, however, as the two nations hold tense negotiations over efforts by Russia's state-controlled gas monopoly OAO Gazprom to increase gas prices fourfold.

The price increase would initially be offset by the acquisition of Belarusian industrial assets, in particular a 50-percent stake in national gas transport company Beltransgaz, Gazprom officials have said, noting that such an arrangement would give Minsk time to reconfigure its economy to better handle the higher gas prices within a few years.

Lukashenko slammed the proposed hike as a "clear break in all relations, particularly economic."

Belarus now buys its gas from Russia at US$46.68 (36.87) per 1,000 cubic meters. Gazprom wants to charge US$200 (158) per 1,000 cubic meters, company spokesman Igor Volobuyev said Friday. Economists warned that such a high increase could hobble Belarus' industries.

Lukashenko said he was not against the sale of the Beltransgaz shares, but insisted Gazprom should buy them at a fair market price — suggesting the gas giant was undervaluing the stake.

Lukashenko warned Russia "you will lose your last ally, you will simply disgrace yourselves" if the increase is put into effect. "Belarus has been offered a higher price than Germany — we will insist on the original price."

Late last year, Russia re-negotiated natural gas contracts with several former Soviet republics, bringing them closer to European prices, which have soared in line with record oil prices.

Russia's move to sharply increase gas prices for Ukraine in January was widely seen as politically motivated Kremlin pressure on Ukraine's new, Western-leaning government before March parliamentary elections.

MINSK, Belarus Belarus' authoritarian president railed Friday against a proposed merger with Russia, warning it could lead to violence and disorder worse than in Russia's restive Chechnya region.

President Alexander Lukashenko's blunt remarks highlighted the rising tensions between the two ex-Soviet allies amid strained talks over natural gas prices.

Moscow and Minsk signed a union treaty in 1996 that envisaged close political, economic and military ties, but stopped short of creating a single state. The Kremlin, increasingly impatient about subsidizing Belarus' Soviet-style economy with cheap gas, has since proposed that Belarus be absorbed into Russia.

Lukashenko, who has vehemently opposed such a union, reiterated his stance during a 4 1/2-hour news conference Friday. "Even (Soviet dictator Josef) Stalin didn't go as far as that ... I don't want to be the first and the last Belarusian president," he said.

The president, who has sought to cast Belarus as an oasis of calm amid other ex-Soviet nations in turmoil, said its incorporation into Russia could trigger chaos and even fighting.

"As soon as Belarus becomes part of Russia, it'll be worse here than in Chechnya," he said. "We'll have people coming in from Georgia, from Russia, Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic countries. They are ready today to come with weapons."

Lukashenko has ruled this country of 10 million people with an iron fist since 1994, and was re-elected to a third term in a March vote that the opposition and Western nations denounced as fraudulent.

A pariah dubbed "Europe's last dictator" in the West, Lukashenko has relied on close economic and military ties with neighboring Russia.

His comments Friday signaled a new rift, however, as the two nations hold tense negotiations over efforts by Russia's state-controlled gas monopoly OAO Gazprom to increase gas prices fourfold.

The price increase would initially be offset by the acquisition of Belarusian industrial assets, in particular a 50-percent stake in national gas transport company Beltransgaz, Gazprom officials have said, noting that such an arrangement would give Minsk time to reconfigure its economy to better handle the higher gas prices within a few years.

Lukashenko slammed the proposed hike as a "clear break in all relations, particularly economic."

Belarus now buys its gas from Russia at US$46.68 (36.87) per 1,000 cubic meters. Gazprom wants to charge US$200 (158) per 1,000 cubic meters, company spokesman Igor Volobuyev said Friday. Economists warned that such a high increase could hobble Belarus' industries.

Lukashenko said he was not against the sale of the Beltransgaz shares, but insisted Gazprom should buy them at a fair market price — suggesting the gas giant was undervaluing the stake.

Lukashenko warned Russia "you will lose your last ally, you will simply disgrace yourselves" if the increase is put into effect. "Belarus has been offered a higher price than Germany — we will insist on the original price."

Late last year, Russia re-negotiated natural gas contracts with several former Soviet republics, bringing them closer to European prices, which have soared in line with record oil prices.

Russia's move to sharply increase gas prices for Ukraine in January was widely seen as politically motivated Kremlin pressure on Ukraine's new, Western-leaning government before March parliamentary elections.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/09/29/europe/EU_GEN_Belarus_Russia_Union.php

How funny...

Putin tries a new look, but does it suit him?
Russians aren't quite sure what to make of the president's shift to more casual garb

MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin is not typically a flashy guy. He tends to dress in conservative colors, is spare with emotion and, despite his compact frame, gives off a tough-guy look.

From him, it can be said, one knows what to expect.
Which is why it was unusual, a touch unsettling even, to see the former KGB officer striking a jaunty pose recently in the pages of one of the nation's most popular newspapers, the tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda.

There he was, the usually staid and stoic head of state, bereft of his conventional dark suit and predictable tie, exercising a bit of fashion freedom by sporting more casual garb--in daring colors, no less.

"Putin Has Changed His Wardrobe," announced the headline, above a full-page, inside spread that pictured him in four outfits.

In May, in the southern Russian resort town of Sochi, Putin showed up in a light beige suede jacket with black jeans.

In steamy Morocco, Putin appeared in a nearly transparent shirt that showed off his "rippling muscles."

At the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg in July, at an informal dinner with President Bush, Putin went with a suit in a color he had never been photographed in: mustard brown.

And he received members of the East Asia Economic Caucus last month in light-hued pants and jacket. His broad-striped tie was bright blue and red.

Trained in the ways of the secret police, Putin knows how to keep a straight face. His usual dress reflects that sentiment. In a 2002 survey of how the electorate viewed him, one respondent from Voronezh described the president as "buttoned up" and a "black box."

That's why this new attire makes him seem almost wild.

"What is the cause of this obvious `liberalization' of Putin's clothes?" Komsomolskaya Pravda wanted to know.

Perhaps, the newspaper suggested, he is feeling more self-confident and is expressing, through lighter-colored suits and jackets, an "inner freedom."

Russia's most esteemed fashion designer, Vyacheslav Zaitsev, declined to offer his thoughts on the matter, saying through a spokesman it is "immoral" and "taboo" to comment on the way politicians dress.

But Natalya Turkenich, an imagemaker and stylist at the Moscow-based Style Guide agency, which advises well-to-do businessmen and their wives, had a few words on the president's new look.

"When I noticed these changes for the first time, I thought, aha, he must have an imagemaker who whispered into his ear, `It's not correct to wear dark-colored suits all the time,"' she said. Then she noticed some faux pas which confirmed--in her mind, at least--that he was selecting his outfits: a beige shirt that made him look "pale and tired," and a light blue shirt with a red tie, a combination that grated on her eyes.

"It was not becoming for him," Turkenich said. "Seeing him wearing such a shirt, he was associated by many people with middle-level management.

"I was very pleased to see that he's no longer wearing boring dark suits," she allowed. "But he doesn't understand a thing about small details. Nuance in clothes is something he can't comprehend."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0609290153sep29,1,6504127.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

The Bin Laden’s-Still-Alive Blame Game
September 29th, 2006

There is potentially no more deplorable aspect of politics in the new millennium than the backwards-looking blame game played by both Parties on a daily basis. Whether it’s the economy, taxes, budget deficits, or corruption, members on both sides of the aisle always have an extended finger ready to accuse the other for the problems in the world.

In the past four weeks, a new category for contestants has been created: The bin Laden’s-Still-Alive Blame Game.

When Doves Lie

It is certainly no great surprise that once all the faux hawks – the doves that felt so threatened by the 9/11 attacks that they actually wanted to respond militarily – started feeling less vulnerable, the country would return to its 9/10 divisions. However, nobody could possibly have envisioned that five years later, the political parties would actually be debating who was more responsible for the national tragedy that fateful day.

Alas, here we are, and suddenly there isn’t enough soap in the world to make any rational American feel clean. How sad.

Yet, more despicable than this current condition is that it was actually precipitated by a former president’s disgust with a television program, and inflamed by a simple question from a Sunday talk show host. Maybe this was to be expected given the utter failure of the 9/11 Commission to dispassionately look at all of the information that was available to it, and give the nation an honest and nonpartisan assessment of what truly happened in the years leading up to the attacks.

Instead, what we received was a purely political report that tap-danced around specifics to protect both presidential Administrations involved from embarrassment. As a result, we ended up with more questions than answers, wasting a lot of time and taxpayer money in the process.

Retort to the Commissioner

With that in mind, I recently sought the opinion of Michael Scheuer to try and navigate the current landmine that has been laid by those pointing the fingers, and determine what the facts are from someone that was actually involved with both White Houses.

For those unfamiliar, Scheuer is a 22-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency who led the Osama bin Laden unit of the Counterterrorism Center from 1996 through 1999, and was Special Advisor to it from 2001 until he left the agency in 2004. He is the author of two books on the war on terror. He now serves as a terror analyst for CBS News and the Jamestown Foundation.

There are few people who have more inside information as to what was going on with the hunt for bin Laden than Scheuer, and, as he has no specific ties to either political party at this point in his career, his opinions appear nonpartisan.

Scheuer feels the 9/11 Commission did the country a huge disservice. The picture this panel painted was of an intelligence community in total disarray. Yet, the inability to catch bin Laden prior to the 2001 attacks was by no means due to a lack of information about the terrorist leader, or his whereabouts.

As Scheuer has said and written on many occasions, America had between eight and ten opportunities to kill or capture bin Laden. The failure to do so was not one of intelligence, but, instead, the inability of those given the information to literarily and figuratively pull the trigger.

For instance, the controversial scene depicted in ABC’s Path to 9/11 about an operation to capture bin Laden in 1998 is largely based on fact according to Scheuer, and is detailed on pages 111 – 115 of the 9/11 Commission report. Despite inaccuracies which are greatly up for debate, there was indeed such a mission that was cancelled for reasons that none of the principles questioned by the Commission agreed on.

But, that’s just one of the missed opportunities. According to Scheuer, there was another mission cancelled in late 1998 due to the fear that a nearby mosque could be accidentally hit with some shrapnel, and that this would inflame the region. This view is supported on pages 130 and 131 of the 9/11 Commission report. Keep in mind that “Mike” is actually Scheuer:

On December 20, intelligence indicated Bin Ladin would be spending the night at the Haji Habash house, part of the governor’s residence in Kandahar. The chief of the Bin Ladin unit, “Mike,” told us that he promptly briefed Tenet and his deputy, John Gordon. From the field, the CIA’s Gary Schroen advised: “Hit him tonight—we may not get another chance.” An urgent teleconference of principals was arranged.117

The principals considered a cruise missile strike to try to kill Bin Ladin. One issue they discussed was the potential collateral damage—the number of innocent bystanders who would be killed or wounded. General Zinni predicted a number well over 200 and was concerned about damage to a nearby mosque. The senior intelligence officer on the Joint Staff apparently made a different calculation, estimating half as much collateral damage and not predicting damage to the mosque. By the end of the meeting, the principals decided against recommending to the President that he order a strike. A few weeks later, in January 1999, Clarke wrote that the principals had thought the intelligence only half reliable and had worried about killing or injuring perhaps 300 people. Tenet said he remembered doubts about the reliability of the source and concern about hitting the nearby mosque. “Mike” remembered Tenet telling him that the military was concerned that a few hours had passed since the last sighting of Bin Ladin and that this persuaded everyone that the chance of failure was too great.118

Some lower-level officials were angry. “Mike” reported to Schroen that he had been unable to sleep after this decision. “I’m sure we’ll regret not acting last night,” he wrote, criticizing the principals for “worrying that some stray shrapnel might hit the Habash mosque and ‘offend’ Muslims.”

Hillary’s Questionable Claim

This revelation is all the more fascinating in the context of a recent statement made by Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) concerning what the former president would have done if he had received the famed August 2001 Presidential Daily Brief.

“I’m certain that if my husband and his national security team had been shown a classified report entitled `Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside United States,’ he would have taken it more seriously than history suggests it was taken by our current president and his national security team,” Hillary Clinton said.

What makes this statement by Sen. Clinton so astounding are the following sentences from page 128 of the 9/11 Commission report:

On Friday, December 4, 1998, the CIA included an article in the Presidential Daily Brief describing intelligence, received from a friendly government, about a threatened hijacking in the United States. This article was declassified at our request.

The title of this PDB was “Bin Ladin Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks.” Somehow this little piece of history slipped the Senator’s mind. Makes one wonder what Sen. Clinton feels “taken it more seriously” means.

So, what we have here is a PDB on December 4, 1998, warning the Clinton administration of an al Qaeda plot to hijack American planes. Sixteen days later, the CIA believed it knew of bin Laden’s whereabouts in Kandahar, and had a plan to take him out. Yet, for at least the second time that year, absolutely no action was taken.

Of course, what’s potentially more despicable concerning this issue is that the last time the powers-that-be chose not to act on a covert mission to capture or kill bin Laden in 1998, the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Africa occurred just a few months later.

Almost unbelievably, just four months after those embassy attacks, with a PDB warning of new ones in their hands, this December 20, 1998, plan to take out bin Laden was scuttled due to the risks to civilians and holy religious structures in the area. Despite protestations to the contrary, it quite seems the Clinton administration was more concerned with the politics of the region than in preventing the loss of life to Americans.

He Tried, But He Couldn’t Do It

This brings us to another glaring contradiction between recent statements made by former president Clinton, and what was in the 9/11 Commission report. During the now infamous Fox News Sunday interview, Mr. Clinton said repeatedly that he tried to kill bin Laden. However, for some reason, in February 1999, Mr. Clinton added ambiguous language to directives concerning bin Laden that made it more difficult for CIA operatives to actually kill him:

In February 1999, another draft Memorandum of Notification went to President Clinton. It asked him to allow the CIA to give exactly the same guidance to the Northern Alliance as had just been given to the tribals: they could kill Bin Ladin if a successful capture operation was not feasible. On this occasion, however, President Clinton crossed out key language he had approved in December and inserted more ambiguous language. No one we interviewed could shed light on why the President did this. President Clinton told the Commission that he had no recollection of why he rewrote the language.129

Later in 1999, when legal authority was needed for enlisting still other collaborators and for covering a wider set of contingencies, the lawyers returned to the language used in August 1998, which authorized force only in the context of a capture operation. Given the closely held character of the document approved in December 1998, and the subsequent return to the earlier language, it is possible to understand how the former White House officials and the CIA officials might disagree as to whether the CIA was ever authorized by the President to kill Bin Ladin.130 [emphasis added]

This appears to be another instance when supposedly the most intelligent president in American history couldn’t recall himself doing something, or why.

Around the time this change in presidential directives was inked in February 1999, America had another chance to get bin Laden according to Scheuer. Operatives had spotted the terrorist leader spending some time at camps south of Kandahar. An attack plan was again submitted, and, again scuttled as documented on pages 137 and 138 of the Report:

No strike was launched. By February 12 Bin Ladin had apparently moved on, and the immediate strike plans became moot.158 According to CIA and Defense officials, policymakers were concerned about the danger that a strike would kill an Emirati prince or other senior officials who might be with Bin Ladin or close by. Clarke told us the strike was called off after consultations with Director Tenet because the intelligence was dubious, and it seemed to Clarke as if the CIA was presenting an option to attack America’s best counterterrorism ally in the Gulf. The lead CIA official in the field, Gary Schroen, felt that the intelligence reporting in this case was very reliable; the Bin Ladin unit chief, “Mike,” agreed. Schroen believes today that this was a lost opportunity to kill Bin Ladin before 9/11.159 [emphasis added]

According to Scheuer, something the Commission chose not to include in its report was that the real concern about this mission was that it might jeopardize a large sale of F16s to the United Arab Emirates, the homeland of the “Emirati prince” referred to. It appears this financial transaction was more important to the Clinton administration than preventing further terrorist attacks by America’s public enemy number one.

Three Times Not a Charm

Adding it all up, there were three good, documented chances to take out bin Laden in about a nine-month period between May 1998 and February 1999. In all three, information and intelligence were not the problems. Some person or persons not being able to decide to act was.

This suggests that all the furor over ABC’s docudrama was a smokescreen, as was Mr. Clinton’s rant on Fox News. After all, regardless of the factual errors presented in the one depiction of a failed opportunity to capture or kill bin Laden in that program, there were others that the docudrama chose not to deal with. In particular, Path didn’t reference the December 4, 1998, PDB, about a hijacking plan by bin Laden, or the decision not to attack him sixteen days later.

Yet, the August 2001 PDB was referenced in the docudrama. With all the finger-pointing concerning this Brief, Scheuer addressed the constraints upon the Bush administration to actually act on its contents. At the time, bin Laden’s specific whereabouts were unknown, leaving virtually no military options at Team Bush’s disposal. In Scheuer’s words, “should Bush have bombed Cairo?”

In reality, there was a lot more that could have been depicted in this miniseries, but for time’s sake wasn’t. And, the inaccuracies presented regarding events immediately before 9/11 were conceivably much more fallacious than anything surrounding what occurred in the ’90s.

Path painted a picture of an extraordinary amount of information coming into the FBI and the CIA in the days just prior to 9/11 that made it seem as if a fool could have connected all the dots. At one point in the docudrama, the Northern Alliance’s Ahmed Shah Massoud called his contact in the CIA to warn him that: the attacks were imminent; they would be significant, and; would be by air. He also told his CIA contact that they had uncovered a plot by al Qaeda to attack the Northern Alliance, and that if he (Massoud) was indeed assassinated, it meant that a terrorist attack on America was just days away.

According to Scheuer, this is a total fiction. His recollection is that “chatter” was indeed higher than normal, but that large volumes of information are always coming into such agencies. Furthermore, at that time, there was nothing so definitive about anything imminent involving airplanes. And, this entire call from Massoud to someone inside the agency in his view was literary license.

This raises an important question: given the factual misrepresentations of events in 2001 by this docudrama, why didn’t the Bush administration lodge complaints to ABC? Is it possible that it recognized that this was just a television program, and that most Americans are intelligent enough to understand the difference between a documentary and a docudrama?

Oh What a Tattered Web We Weave

Finally, Mr. Clinton in his interview with Chris Wallace stated that after the USS Cole was attacked in October 2000, he and his team had come up with a detailed plan to get bin Laden, and that this was passed on to the Bush administration in January 2001. According to Scheuer, nothing could be further from the truth.

The Clinton administration’s reaction to the Cole attack in Scheuer’s view was one of inconvenience, as the presidential and Congressional elections were just weeks away, and they didn’t want to do anything that might upset the apple cart. As far as he was concerned, the only planning involved at that time was the identification of possible targets to hit inside of Afghanistan if another attack occurred before the January inauguration.

In the end, it is truly sad that America is actually having this discussion in such a political and acrimonious fashion. After all, Democrats and Republicans died on 9/11, and we are all still at risk from terrorism regardless of political affiliation. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could analyze what happened during this period in an exclusively factual manner in order to better protect this country from future attacks without the seemingly requisite blame game?

Noel Sheppard is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. He is also a contributing editor for the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters.org, and a contributing writer to its Business & Media Institute. He welcomes feedback.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5898

IMHO Omar killed binny boy before 2004...

Osama alive? Analysts react
Thursday, September 28, 2006 05:05:25 pm

‘I don’t know where Osama is. Do you?’ Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf on America’s ‘Daily Show’
General Pervez Musharraf does appear to have a short term memory - a day after feigning ignorance on the whereabouts of Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden to ‘Daily Show’ host Jon Stewart, he tells the Times of London, exactly where President Bush can hope to find the elusive terror master mind:

"It's not a hunch. We know there are some pockets of Al-Qaeda in Bajaur Agency. We have set a good intelligence organisation. We have moved some army elements. We did strike them twice there. We located and killed a number of them."

Mir dismisses Musharraf’s claim

So is Musharraf plugging his memoirs? Or are his revelations aimed at Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a man who has accused the Pakistani general of sheltering the Taliban and Al-Qaeda? We put that question to Hamid Mir, an authority of Osama Bin Laden and a journalist who has met Laden three times.

Mir dismissed Pervez Musharraf's claim. Drawing attention to the fact that the Pakistani President’s comments to the Times, a London daily, come after what the American press have called a ‘contentious meeting’ with the Afghan President Karzai at the White house on Wednesday, Mir suggested that President Musharraf was merely trying to get back at Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai.

“Like George Bush and Hamid Karzai, Musharraf does not have any exact information about the location of Osama Bin Laden,” said Mir, adding that the reason the general had made such a comment could perhaps be because “he is trying to taunt Mr Hamid Karzai – President Karzai has claimed many times that Bin Laden in hiding in Pakistan”.

Critical information

With reference to Musharraf’s claim that Osama was hiding in Aghanistan’s Kunar province, Mir said such information could not be ignored by serious analysts, coming from a head of state such as Musharraf. However, Mir expressed skepticism that the general could so easily have made public, facts about Osama’s location – were they indeed true.

“It is like providing an alert to Bin Laden that ‘we have come to know you are hiding in Kumar’, which would prompt him to change his position,” said Mir.

Whatever Musharraf's motivations, he might just be on to something, however - reports of Osama Bin Laden sightings have come from areas adjoining the Afghanistan-Pakistan border regions. This is an area that includes the provinces of Khost, Waziristan, Paktika and the Kunar province.

Osama’s recent hideouts

The Bajaur Agency, where Musharraf insists Osama is hiding at present, is very close to the above four provinces. If Osama is holed up with the Afghan war lord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, it will be very difficult to get to him. The ravines provide for safe havens and easy escape routes that go undetected even under the gaze of spy satellites.

The trail of video tapes

At present, the US and its allies can only rely on a video trail - from 2001 to 2004, a number of videos have been released by the Al-Qaeda showing Osama Bin Laden at different points in time talking of different events. These at most, provide an inaccurate picture of the man and his whereabouts.

Osama dead?

The speculation over Osama's whereabouts hit fever pitch after a French Journalist Lad Sammari said last week that Osama had died. He said that he had acquired French Intelligence top secret reports that claimed as much.

Sammari writing in a French newspaper said:

“I think we can't contest that these documents of the DGSE (French foreign intelligence service), which are classified "defence confidential" are authentic. It's dated from September 21 and it's so authentic that the French president announced today that he must open an investigation to discover how they were leaked. It's the first time it made a report that is so precise and in which a source is noted, which is quite rare. And it says too that Saudi services will probably confirm the statement that Osama bin Laden has died.”

Why no news

Defence analyst Maroof Raza believes that the reasons why Bin Laden has not been appeared to the public for some time now, could be numerous. He says there is a possibility that Laden may be ill – but also that he simply might not be in complete control of al-Qaeda operations, or that he may have chosen to remain anonymous to get greater freedom of movement.

“There are assertions by some people that Bin Laden may have changed his facial persona a bit, maybe shaved his mustache or trimmed his beard to mingle with the crowd in the border areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan , so that he gets a greater degree of autonomy,” says Raza.

“The other (reason) is, he could be very ill, and if he’s not in good health there would be no point showing a fumbling Bin Laden trying to address his followers worldwide. And third, it could be an indication that Bin Laden himself does not really control every operational aspect, and therefore his No 2 and No 3 can be well within their rights also, to make televised statements,” Raza says.

In any case, Raza notes that Bin Laden having initiated a process, it would continue on its own momentum regardless of whether Bin Laden survived or not.

For now, Osama's deputy Ayman al Zawahiri is making up for his absence. A TV channel in the Middle East says Zawahiri will soon release a tape about the Pope, US President Bush and the conflict in Darfur in Sudan.

War on Terror: tough roads ahead

As long as Osama evades capture, there will be pressure on Bush to deliver on his promise. For Bush and his allies - the greatest roadblock to finding Osama may actually come from the people – people who live in villages along the Pakistan - Afghan border, like Tazagram..

Here the small Pakhtun-speaking population has survived US and Pakistani forces, even the much-publicised air strike meant to target Al Qaeda No 2 Ayman Al Zawahiri earlier this year. But despite the fire power and the $25 million bounty - Bin Laden is a hero here.

“I would feel privileged if Osama comes and stays with me as a guest, because he is a great hero and he is the enemy of the USA. I would look after Osama and I would support him. There is no way that anyone here would hand over Osama for money. If anyone does this he would not be able to live here any more,” says Humayun Khan, a villager.

Added to this, is the peace deal worked out between Musharraf's generals and the pro-Taliban militia on Tuesday - a deal that many in the Bush administration are viewing as akin to harbouring terror elements, making their hunt for Osama even more difficult.

http://www.timesnow.tv/articleshow/2035902.cms

binny boy should have handled this NOT Omar...

Pakistani tribal leader claims Taliban chief Mullah Omar backed truce
The Associated Press

Published: September 27, 2006

PESHAWAR, Pakistan Taliban leader Mullah Omar purportedly approved the truce deal that ended fighting between Pakistani troops and tribal militants, a Pakistani political leader claimed Wednesday. A government official and militants rejected the claim.

Latif Afridi, a lawyer and top official from the pro-Pashtun Awami National Party, claimed that Omar gave his go-ahead for the Sept. 5 cease-fire, which ended more than four years of fighting in the semiautonomous North Waziristan tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

Fears have been raised that the truce could make it easier for militants to operate in the region and send weapons and fighters across the porous border into Afghanistan. Pakistan's government says its military will not let this happen.

Afridi told The Associated Press that he has received a copy of a letter containing Omar's approval and written by one of Omar's aides, Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Osmani.

"Osmani issued a letter on behalf of Mullah Omar approving this Waziristan agreement, and asking the Taliban in the area to stop fighting against the Pakistani army," Afridi said in Peshawar, capital of North West Frontier Province, which includes the North Waziristan region.

Osmani, who like Omar is at large, was an aviation minister in the Pashtun-dominated Taliban regime and corps commander of the southern Afghan city of Kandahar for the hard-line militia before it was toppled in the U.S.-led invasion after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Afridi said the letter also alleged that pro-Taliban militants in North Waziristan would fall under the command of Jalaluddin Haqqani, a front-line Taliban commander who served briefly as tribal affairs minister. He too remains at large.

Britain's Telegraph newspaper on Sunday first reported on Omar's purported role in the truce.

It was not immediately possible to verify Afridi's claims. He declined to make a copy of the letter available.

But Shah Zaman, government spokesman for Pakistan's northwestern tribal region, which includes North Waziristan, dismissed Afridi's claim as "baseless."

"I was deeply involved in the entire peace process, and let me tell you that Mullah Omar or any of his deputies or associates played no role before or after the signing of the agreement," Zaman told the AP.

Gul Hassan, a local pro-Taliban leader in North Waziristan's capital, Miran Shah, also said Omar played no role in the peace accord, which tribal leaders brokered between militants and the government.

"Mullah Omar didn't give us any signal to sign the agreement," said Hassan, who was among several militants freed recently by the government under the accord.

A purported spokesman for the militia, Mohammed Hanif, also denied Taliban involvement in the truce deal, telling the AP in a telephone interview that it was "Pakistan's internal affair."

Pakistan deployed 80,000 troops to the frontier after U.S.-led forces invaded Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 attacks to topple the Taliban for harboring Osama bin Laden, who is believed to be hiding along the porous Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

But the Pakistani troop presence angered fiercely independent tribesmen and sparked a violent anti-government campaign that killed hundreds of soldiers, militants and civilians.

Under the truce, soldiers manning security posts throughout the region returned to their barracks and militants agreed to no longer take part in attacks in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Militants are also prevented from fanning extremism.

But in a worrying sign, militants on Wednesday vowed to use hard-line Islamic laws regarding punishment.

Militants opened an office in Miran Shah for people to report robberies, car thefts and murders and help bolster the peace deal, a militant said on condition he not be named, in line with the office's policy.

"Punishment will be given in accordance with Islamic laws and according to the crime," one of the militants said at the office, which was guarded by about 30 armed, bearded militants and opened Monday in a house in Miran Shah's main bazaar.

Separately, three Pakistani tribesmen detained on suspicion of attacking a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan's Khost province on Sept. 19 were released in Miran Shah on Wednesday under the truce, intelligence officials said.

In neighboring South Waziristan, drive-by gunmen killed two militants and wounded three near the region's main town of Wana, officials said.

No one claimed responsibility, but an intelligence official said the attack may be linked to a local rivalry between pro-Taliban tribal militants and Uzbek fighters.

____

Associated Press writers Bashirullah Khan in Miran Shah and Munir Ahmad in Islamabad contributed to this report.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan Taliban leader Mullah Omar purportedly approved the truce deal that ended fighting between Pakistani troops and tribal militants, a Pakistani political leader claimed Wednesday. A government official and militants rejected the claim.

Latif Afridi, a lawyer and top official from the pro-Pashtun Awami National Party, claimed that Omar gave his go-ahead for the Sept. 5 cease-fire, which ended more than four years of fighting in the semiautonomous North Waziristan tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

Fears have been raised that the truce could make it easier for militants to operate in the region and send weapons and fighters across the porous border into Afghanistan. Pakistan's government says its military will not let this happen.

Afridi told The Associated Press that he has received a copy of a letter containing Omar's approval and written by one of Omar's aides, Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Osmani.

"Osmani issued a letter on behalf of Mullah Omar approving this Waziristan agreement, and asking the Taliban in the area to stop fighting against the Pakistani army," Afridi said in Peshawar, capital of North West Frontier Province, which includes the North Waziristan region.

Osmani, who like Omar is at large, was an aviation minister in the Pashtun-dominated Taliban regime and corps commander of the southern Afghan city of Kandahar for the hard-line militia before it was toppled in the U.S.-led invasion after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Afridi said the letter also alleged that pro-Taliban militants in North Waziristan would fall under the command of Jalaluddin Haqqani, a front-line Taliban commander who served briefly as tribal affairs minister. He too remains at large.

Britain's Telegraph newspaper on Sunday first reported on Omar's purported role in the truce.

It was not immediately possible to verify Afridi's claims. He declined to make a copy of the letter available.

But Shah Zaman, government spokesman for Pakistan's northwestern tribal region, which includes North Waziristan, dismissed Afridi's claim as "baseless."

"I was deeply involved in the entire peace process, and let me tell you that Mullah Omar or any of his deputies or associates played no role before or after the signing of the agreement," Zaman told the AP.

Gul Hassan, a local pro-Taliban leader in North Waziristan's capital, Miran Shah, also said Omar played no role in the peace accord, which tribal leaders brokered between militants and the government.

"Mullah Omar didn't give us any signal to sign the agreement," said Hassan, who was among several militants freed recently by the government under the accord.

A purported spokesman for the militia, Mohammed Hanif, also denied Taliban involvement in the truce deal, telling the AP in a telephone interview that it was "Pakistan's internal affair."

Pakistan deployed 80,000 troops to the frontier after U.S.-led forces invaded Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 attacks to topple the Taliban for harboring Osama bin Laden, who is believed to be hiding along the porous Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

But the Pakistani troop presence angered fiercely independent tribesmen and sparked a violent anti-government campaign that killed hundreds of soldiers, militants and civilians.

Under the truce, soldiers manning security posts throughout the region returned to their barracks and militants agreed to no longer take part in attacks in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Militants are also prevented from fanning extremism.

But in a worrying sign, militants on Wednesday vowed to use hard-line Islamic laws regarding punishment.

Militants opened an office in Miran Shah for people to report robberies, car thefts and murders and help bolster the peace deal, a militant said on condition he not be named, in line with the office's policy.

"Punishment will be given in accordance with Islamic laws and according to the crime," one of the militants said at the office, which was guarded by about 30 armed, bearded militants and opened Monday in a house in Miran Shah's main bazaar.

Separately, three Pakistani tribesmen detained on suspicion of attacking a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan's Khost province on Sept. 19 were released in Miran Shah on Wednesday under the truce, intelligence officials said.

In neighboring South Waziristan, drive-by gunmen killed two militants and wounded three near the region's main town of Wana, officials said.

No one claimed responsibility, but an intelligence official said the attack may be linked to a local rivalry between pro-Taliban tribal militants and Uzbek fighters.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/09/27/asia/AS_GEN_Pakistan_Tribal_Deal.php

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