Posted on 06/22/2002 7:55:04 PM PDT by RCW2001
Osama bin Laden is to give another televised address to the world.
The al-Qaeda leader is to deliver a hate-filled video on July 4, American Independence Day.
The announcement was made on the Arabic Sahab website which issues daily information on the war in Afghanistan.
Bin Laden was pictured on the site, kneeling between two al-Qaeda officials.
His spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith says: "America should get ready and fasten its safety belt.
"We will come to them from where they don't expect. Yes, we will wage attacks but at the right time, at the place we want, in the way we please."
On Friday the FBI were taking seriously a Lebanese-born man's claims to have overheard a mobile phone conversation in Arabic about an attack on Las Vegas.
But yesterday they said they had no evidence of any threat on July 4.
According to Michael Hamdan, the speakers said: ``"We are here in the city of corruption...the city of gambling and prostitution, the city of the unbelievers.
The warlord, who was behind the September 11 attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon, has not been heard from since he was detected on December 11 at his eastern Afghan hideout in Tora Bora.
American intelligence sources believe he is surrounded by al-Qaeda's high command either in Afghanistan or Pakistan. The FBI has also been tracing another website, alneda. com, the mouthpiece for al-Qaeda.
The site has audio and video clips of bin Laden and photographs of al-Qaeda suspects in detention in Pakistan.
There also appear to be coded messages for followers to transmit instructions for attacks.
It has been closed down twice by US intelligence forces after appearing in Malaysia and Texas.
Earlier this month the site posted a message of condolence from terrorist and Taliban chief Mullar Mohammed Omar after the death of a Pakistan scholar.
It was revealed yesterday that the man believed to have recruited September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta to al-Qaeda was investigated in 1999.
Mohammed Haydar Zammar, 41, attracted the attention of German intelligence after making contact with bin Laden's suspected financial chief.
Zammar was arrested in Morocco this week along with other suspected al- Qaeda members, including Abu Zubair al-Haili.
Al-Haili is thought to have been pivotal in training hijackers for September 11.
I believe, if we announced a policy to nuke Mecca in the event of another al-Qaeda attack on our soil, it would guarantee another attack. Whereupon, they would wait gleefully for us to follow through...
The terrorists would dearly love for us to do something that would unite the entire Islamic world against us (and with them). In their eyes, sacrificing Mecca to a martyr's fate would be a small price to pay.
Terrorists aren't like you and me. They don't think the way we do.
But put to logic, what future can there be between the West and Islam? When the US attacks Iraq, will not Iraq attack Israel? And when Iraq attacks Israel, will not the Palestinians join the fray? Israel will surly respond, drawing in Jordan, Syria and Iran. When Iran supports a war against Israel, the US attack on Iraq will widen to include Iran, and it is hard to imagine that at that point any Islamic country will support the United States with the possible exception of Turkey. Meanwhile, the United States will compel its NATO allies to join in the fun, if only to help grab up enough undamaged oil fields to keep the tanks and planes running, and the home economies working.
Now, the question must be asked, what has changed in the world that a centuries old document should suddenly cause the world to be threatened with WWIII? The answer is that the believers in that document, which requires world domination, have possession of weapons of mass destruction. But this is not the first time we have faced an enemy whose ideology called for world domination and who possessed more than a mere few WMD, but a vast array of same. For over forty years during the cold war we faced the Soviet Union which country possessed enough nuclear missiles to destroy the United States many times over. Yet, even though world domination was their aim, we confined our struggles to small parts of the world and conventional weapons. We did this with a doctrine known sardonically enough as MAD: Mutually Assured Destruction. The essence of that doctrine was that America always kept herself in a position that if she were attacked with a WMD, she could assuredly respond and destroy utterly her attacker.
The only differences between now and then are two: (1) first, our government expects us to absorb such an attack and has told us so, even to the extent that it is inevitable, whereas formerly our government did not expect its' citizens to absorb an attack of any kind with a WMD from the Soviet Union, and (2) second, the enemy does not come from a single country but from a religion, which prima fascia makes retaliation seemingly impossible.
As to the first problem, it is up to us to wake up and start screaming to our representatives that we will not absorb an attack with a WMD when such an attack can clearly be averted by closing our borders, checking every shipment of every package that enters our harbors, deporting all non-resident aliens of Islamic origin, and announcing a new form of the MAD doctrine. As to the second problem, even though the enemy is a religion, it is a unique religion because it is a religion with a country and a city as its' capital. In fact, it is a religion that cannot be worshipped as required by its' own mandates without a pilgrimage to the city of Mecca. Therefore, a version of the MAD doctrine can be developed stating that if the United States is attacked with a WMD, then upon thirty days notice, the holy city of Medina will be destroyed with a small nuclear warhead such that no one will be able to inhabit Medina for hundreds of years. Should the United States be attacked a second time with a WMD, the city of Mecca will be destroyed on the same terms. There will be no lose of life due to the notice period, but the religion itself will not be able to be practiced in the manner it heretofore has been practiced for a thousand years.
Many will say that this is a radical idea, but it is no more radical than the idea that the Soviet Union and the United States were going to destroy the entire world over whether Cuba had a few nuclear warheads. It is all a matter of historical perspective. The MAD doctrine as I propose it is far less severe than the MAD doctrine as it was actually practiced in the cold war. Additionally, it would have the added benefit of motivating moderate Muslims to seek out any radicals that might actually try in any event to attack the US with a WMD, and would probably have a calming effect on the radical anti-Western teachings so prevalent in the Islamic schools. In all events, it is certainly preferable to the Bush plan of waiting for the inevitable shoe to drop, walking around with a target on our backs, as if we were some third rate country rather than the United States of America, the most powerful country that ever existed, and one that can destroy an entire city without killing a single person unless that person seeks to die.
The only thing al-Queida has going for it is that they are doing things... if they stop doing things they will lose followers and money quick. A terrorist organization is only as good as it's last successful terrorist act.
Look for something before the 9-11 anniversary.
A positively proven 'it's alive' video from ole binny right now, is all that would be needed for now.
If that could have been done I believe that it already would have been done.
I see the war against al-Quaida as now being a war of attrition.
It seems that way. Because the only Islamists we ever hear about are either a.) al-Qaeda, b.) al-Fatah, c.) Hezbollah, d.) Hamas, e.) Islamic Jihad or some other crackpot radicalist group.
But the best estimates are that no more than 10% of the population of Islam, from Morocco to the Philippines, actually sympathizes with the radical Islamist factions and is actively anti-American.
If there are 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide, and only about 150 million hate our guts, it doesn't serve our purposes to gratuitously make another billion enemies. We're better off trying to keep them from joining up with the bad guys.
For a very good perspective and some valuable insights on how not to fight an Islamic terrorist war, check out this thread.
In my estimation, from a learning standpoint, this is one of the most valuable threads ever on Free Republic.
Yeah, I will be going to work, just like always. I will get double pay though.
You're just freaking BRILLIANT, aren't you? I guess you want all ONE BILLION Muslims hating us and trying to kill us instead of just the *relatively* few who feel and act that way now.
I'm just glad people like you don't hold any power...
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