Recent sighting of Elvis
Posted on 12/26/2001 4:17:21 PM PST by ATOMIC_PUNK
Bin Laden Videotape Sets Off Renewed Search
KABUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The hunt for Osama bin Laden, which seemed to have gone cold two weeks ago, came alive on Wednesday when al-Jazeera television broadcast a videotape of the world's most wanted man made possibly this month.
In the broadcast by al-Jazeera, a Qatar-based satellite television station that has shown previous bin Laden tapes, the Saudi-born fugitive indicates the tape was recorded in early to mid December.
Bin Laden said the tape was being issued to mark about three months since the Sept. 11 suicide hijack attacks on New York and Washington which killed more than 3,000 people and two months since the United States began bombing of Afghan targets.
There was little doubt al-Jazeera's broadcast of the tape was unexpected by U.S. officials.
The Defense Department said it was not sure what to make of the videotape by the leader of the al Qaeda network.
"I don't know if it's real, if it's new, if it's old," said Richard McGraw, a senior Pentagon spokesman.
But, asked if he were surprised by the existence of the tape, he replied, "Nothing that Osama bin Laden does surprises me."
Looking tired but calm, bin Laden was dressed in a clean, camouflage-patterned combat jacket. There was no indication where he was when he recorded the video.
"Our terrorism against the United States is worthy of praise to deter the oppressor so that America stop its support for Israel, which is killing our children," bin Laden said.
The White House dismissed the videotape as propaganda.
"This is nothing more than the same kind of terrorist propaganda we have heard before," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters in Crawford, Texas where President Bush is on vacation.
Only hours before the tape was shown, U.S. officials had stressed there was no let-up in the hunt for bin Laden even though for days there had been no reports of his sighting and speculation had grown that he might have been killed already or escaped from Afghanistan.
'ALWAYS LOOKING FOR BIN LADEN'
"We're always looking for bin Laden," said a senior U.S. defense official, who asked not to be named.
He said U.S. forces were ready at a moment's notice to sweep the Tora Bora caves, 30 miles south of Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan, to check for bin Laden and al Qaeda survivors of fierce U.S. airstrikes.
Until two weeks ago there had been widespread reports that bin Laden and his followers might be holed up in the caves for a last stand.
But intelligence reports of his whereabouts, including radio intercepts, since then have dried up, coinciding with massive U.S. bombing of the area.
In Kabul, Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah warned pockets of al Qaeda die-hards still threatened violence.
"In some of the southern parts of Afghanistan, in Paktia province, we believe there are still pockets of al Qaeda," Abdullah told a news conference, adding that some al Qaeda forces were active around the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.
American troops would leave "when the mission of eradicating terrorists and all Taliban bases is accomplished," he said.
U.S. military sources said while 500 Marines on standby for a week to go into the caves might still be used, a search would first be carried out by U.S. special forces and Afghan allies.
The presence of al-Qaeda fighters on the run -- and bandits taking advantage of the chaos -- posed threats to growing numbers of refugees heading homes in Afghanistan both from neighboring Pakistan and Iran as well as areas of their homeland once controlled by the strictly Islamic Taliban.
There are some 3 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan and 2.5 million in Iran. Around 1.5 million are displaced within the country.
REFUGEES RETURNING HOME
Some 10,000 refugees had returned to southern Afghanistan through the Pakistani border town of Chaman since Sunday alone, said U.N. spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker. A Pakistani official said 800 families crossed on Tuesday.
Increasing numbers were also returning to Afghanistan from Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, said Bunker.
"People seem to be going back largely to urban areas," she said. "People are going back in search of work and economic opportunities they hope to be able to find now."
A World Food Program spokesman said in Islamabad that armed militias were holding up aid trucks carrying food into southern Afghanistan from Pakistan, demanding a toll of $100 per truck before allowing them across the border.
The United Nations also planned to start returning 4,000 refugee families in northern Afghanistan to their homes on the Shomali plain this week, its first relocation project in the country, U.N. officials said on Wednesday. About 200,000 had fled from the Shomali Plain since the Taliban took power.
As more details emerged about a British man suspected of trying to blow up a transatlantic airliner on Saturday with explosives in his shoes, there were stronger suggestions he may have been part of a wider, possibly Islamist, plot.
The leader of a south London mosque said Richard Reid was a "gullible" young Londoner who converted to Islam in prison. U.S. officials told a newspaper the bomb's design suggested he had an accomplice.
U.S. investigators were still checking whether Reid, who is being held in Boston, had links to al Qaeda or other groups. He was overpowered by cabin crew and fellow passengers on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami when he was spotted trying to set fire to his shoes.
The head of London's Brixton mosque said Reid, 28, was a member of his congregation and "very, very impressionable."
"I definitely believe there are individuals behind him," Abdul Haqq Baker told the BBC.
Baker said it was possible Reid knew fellow Brixton Muslim Zacarias Moussaoui, the Frenchman facing conspiracy charges in the United States over the Sept. 11 suicide hijack attacks.
Recent sighting of Elvis
Think he's realized by now that Allah is on our side?
I know somebodys going to trash me for posting this on all the bin ol boys threads .. but I just can't stop my self ... it must be some sort of sublimenel thing ... scuze me while I kiss the sky ...
Todays Picture
Older Picture
or before the beard ... 
my utmost apoligies kind sir , I just thought I'd spam around a little ...
Exactly what I was thinking!
Gee OBL you have really stimulated the US economy and got us all a perfect chance to be rid of all those excess ordnances .
Maybe George W and George Senior may invite OBL and his dad to a father and son night. Wouldn't that be nice.
O B L is probably there at Uncle Momar Gaddaffi's oasis camping ground or at Uncle Saddam's all night bistro and chemical works preparing a New Year celebration...... ...who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men???
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