U.S. military officials: Afghanistan isn't the only country where American forces are fighting

U.S. military officials are making it clear publicly that Afghanistan isn't the only country where American forces are fighting - or planning to fight - terrorist networks.

They won't say where, but other areas known as hide-outs for terrorist Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network include Somalia, Yemen, Sudan and the Chechnya region of Russia. All are predominantly Muslim, with vast, war-ravaged areas under little or no central government control.

The Afghanistan war's commander, Army Gen. Tommy Franks, gave one of the strongest indications yet about the shadowy aspects of the U.S. military campaign. Speaking to The Associated Press Tuesday on the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier, Franks said overt and covert U.S. military operations are ``going on in a great many places.''

Those operations ``are designed to do away with these pockets of terrorism,'' Franks said without giving details.

``I think General Franks was being vague for an obvious reason,'' said Army Col. Richard Thomas, spokesman for U.S. Central Command, which Franks heads. ``There's a lot of stuff going on. Some of it you get to report, some of it you don't.''

Defense Department officials have said they are focusing on rooting out al-Qaida and their former Taliban sponsors from Afghanistan. They also have stressed that the fight won't end there, and have mentioned several countries where al-Qaida operates or that sponsor terrorism.

One of those countries is Yemen, the native country of bin Laden's wealthy construction magnate father, the late Mohammed Bin-Awad Binladin.

State Department spokesman Philip Reeker on Wednesday denied reports that the United States had asked Yemen to allow U.S. forces to participate in the hunt for al-Qaida members there. Yemeni troops have been searching for members of the terrorist network since Dec. 18, and at least 24 solders and six tribesmen have been killed.

U.S. officials hold al-Qaida responsible for the Sept. 11 terror attacks and the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in a Yemeni harbor which killed 17 sailors.

In Somalia, guerrillas believed to be trained by bin Laden's group shot down two U.S. helicopters during a 1993 peacekeeping mission, resulting in the deaths of 18 American soldiers. Americans have been meeting with local Somali leaders recently and the Pentagon has said they are not from the military.

Bin Laden spent several years living in Sudan, which borders Somalia, before leaving for Afghanistan in 1996. The United States hit a Sudanese factory with missiles in 1998 in response to the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Although al-Qaida was linked to the bombings, controversy continues over whether the Sudanese plant was making chemical weapons components, as the United States claimed, or pharmaceuticals.

Bin Laden's network also has ties to Chechnya, the breakaway Russian region where Muslim fighters have battled government troops for years. Russian President Vladimir Putin has portrayed the fighting as Russia's battle against terrorists, and U.S. criticism of Russia's handling of the conflict all but disappeared after Sept. 11.

U.S. military officials also are quick to point out that al-Qaida is believed to have operations in 50 to 60 countries worldwide, leaving open the possibility of military action in other countries as well. President Bush has criticized Iraq for refusing to allow United Nations weapons inspectors into the country, although he has not linked Iraq to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Amen - you hit an important point! Just imagine how different the world would be today if instead of Clinton's 8 years of hell in which terrorists were coddled and encouraged and communism/totalitarianism was applauded and copied here we had had a President Bush I, followed by another pro-freedom President encouraged FREE NATIONS to develop and expand. Yes: The Cold War ended during Bush I (caused, of course, by the Reagan/Thatcher resolve) and the opportunity for Freedom to expand and soar - benefitting the peoples of the world as in no other time in the history of the world - was wide open! Intead, Clinton found his way into power and killed the hope of freedom all around the world - substituting for it a loathing of freedom - which is shared by every one of their totalitarian terrorist friends around the world. What was the result? Instead of soaring human freedom, we saw the expansion of Communist Chinese and terrorist military might. We saw the attempt by Clinton to turn America into a totalitarian nightmare with "Clinton enemies" becoming enemies of the State. We saw Communism continue to thrive in Cuba, to grow in Venezuela, to fester in assorted countries in Africa, and to remain a terror to its slaves in North Korea and in VietNam - coddled and adored rather than vigorously opposed.

The truth is that because of the Clinton Crime Machine's reign of terror - Freedom died and enslaving totalitarian barbarism grew.

Okay, I hate to rain on your parade, but the reason for Clinton's "coddling" of Communism had beans to do with any desire to spread a Revolution. Indeed, the reason for the United States making nice with various commie regimes for the past ten years is actually fairly simple, and it has to do with American business interests. We do not deal the way we do with China because the State Department is run by secret Leninists, we deal the way we do with China because K Street likes it that way. And why does K Street want us being friendly towards China? It could, just possibly, be because the Chinese government lets American industry build factories in China staffed at best by people working for abominable wages who are forbidden to unionize and at worst by political prisoners. Clinton was not twisting the arm of the aerospace industry it was falling all over itself to furnish the Chicoms with technology that they could not themselves produce.

Why do we do business with Venezuala? Why do we (more or less) tolerate an obnoxious communist government there? Again, it has nothing to do with ideology. If that were the case, we would think the Reagan and Bush (Sr. and Jr.) administrations were strong proponents of Wahabbi Islam, because the reason that the United States is friendly with myriad brutal tinpot despots the world over is oil. We will never put too much pressure on either Venezuala or Saudi Arabia for the simple reason that we do lots of oil related business with them. The French have a saying, which is, "I surrender." Seriously, they have another saying, which is "Money has no smell." Capitalism, free trade, and the like work best for humanity because they are willing to acknowledge that simple truth of the way people think. Unfortunately, they also have their downsides, which is why we live in a regulatory state.

In the final analysis, it must be remembered as well that William Jefferson Clinton was only a leftist in that tiny flicker of principle that may have flickered weak and dim beneath a morass of sleazy opportunism. Clinton was a sleazy opportunist with virtually no principle, but this was not necessarily a bad thing. Why? When he pushed for HillaryCare, the right pushed back (I'd say "we pushed back," but I was still a few months shy of voting age then), and he caved without much fight. He pushed only very weakly for the inclusion of gays into the military, and didn't put up much of a stand on that either. When the GOP took over, he billed himself as a defender of the weak and downtrodden to the left, but then proceeded to sign welfare reform into law.

I'm not denying that this opportunistic lack of convictions was a uniform benefit. At times, it had horrid consequences: He sat with his thumb up his nether regions and ignored terrorism because there was no constituency to fight it. He let the Bosniacs be slaughtered wholesale and considered Slobodan Milosevic a man whom he could do business with, but then decided this same Slobo was Hitler a few years later when he needed a legacy, jumping in to defend a force much less worthy of our support than the Bosniacs ever were (I refer to the KLA).

Lest we let such images cause us to despise Clinton's lack of character, let us look at what happened when he did act on principle: He had federal agents kick in the door of a Cuban family and send Elian Gonzalez packing back to Cuba. Imagine what would have happened if he had pushed hard on HillaryCare (he'd have been a one termer, but we'd still be saddled with another highly expensive bureacracy). Or think what would have happened had he acted on principle to veto Welfare Reform. All of the above indicate that, while I have no love for the man, we were better off with the fact that he was utterly unprincipled. C.S. Lewis said it better than I could when he stated that a petty and corrupt robber baron is always better than an inquisitor. One cares only about his personal power, while the other is concerned with Saving your Soul and making you Do Good. Let us be thankful that Clinton was the former.

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