Posted on 11/19/2002 11:26:37 PM PST by Republican_Strategist
DUBAI - Osama bin Laden has urged Muslims to join a holy war on American infidels, in an uncanny echo of language used a decade ago by another US foe, Saddam Hussein.
In a carefully staged video recording, Bin Laden vowed to rid Palestinians of Israeli occupation and to purify Arabia's holy places of "defilement" by the US military.
Saddam made similar promises to try to rally Muslim opinion during the Gulf crisis when he stood alone against a US-led coalition that drove Iraqi occupation troops from Kuwait.
The two men have been demonised by US presidents with the same name - Saddam by George Bush the father and Bin Laden by the son who is now leading a global campaign against terrorism."
"I swear to God that America will not live in peace before peace reigns in Palestine, and before all the army of infidels depart the land of (the Prophet) Mohammad," Bin Laden, a Saudi-born millionaire said from his hideout in Afghanistan.
Arab analysts say Bin Laden's rhetoric on the Palestinian cause and Iraqi suffering under UN sanctions might strike a chord with some Muslims, but most oppose his deadly tactics."
"They are two faces of the same coin," an official in the United Arab Emirates said of Bin Laden and Saddam.
"Instead of fighting Israel, Saddam invaded a fellow Arab country.
Tell me of any military operation Bin Laden launched against Israel?
None," said the official, who asked not to be named.
Iraq, itself a frequent target for US and British air strikes, was among the few countries to criticise the raids on Afghan, denouncing them as "treacherous aggression".
Analysts who have studied speeches by Saddam and Bin Laden said they saw a striking resemblance in their attempts to paint their battles as a war between "Muslim believers and infidels".
Each has invoked terminology from Islam's holy book, the Koran, to win the hearts and minds of their co-religionists.
Bush and other Western leaders have sought to dispel fears among the world's 1,2 billion Muslims that they are waging war on Islam or the Afghan people, rather than on terrorism.
Saddam has often portrayed his confrontation with the United States as a holy campaign to free Arabs from Western hegemony, linking his invasion of Kuwait with the Palestinian cause.
Some Arab analysts question the devotion of Muslim militants to righting the wrongs felt by Palestinians.
"I don't buy the theory that political Islam is after lifting injustice, hitting at US support of Israel," Abdel Moneim Said, director of the Cairo-based al-Ahram Centre for Strategic Studies, told Reuters."
"These fanatics are hungry for power, they want to make a cause. I haven't seen them doing anything for the poor, for the unemployed, or talking about freedom," he said.
"In fact, they systematically use intellectual terrorism to suppress freedom of speech."
Bin Laden, like Saddam before him, calls for the toppling of pro-Western Gulf rulers both men see as puppets of Washington.
Saddam has in the past denounced the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt as "evil and corrupt" for letting "unbelieving invaders desecrate the land of Muslim shrines".
Bin Laden, blasting unidentified Muslim leaders as "hypocrites", has promised a wind of change that would "remove evil from the Peninsula of Mohammad".
Flanked by his top lieutenants, including the head of Egypt's Islamic Jihad, Ayman al-Zawahri, Bin Laden evoked what Muslims believe are glorious memories of their religion's early conquests against its enemies about 14 centuries ago.
While some Muslims undoubtedly see Saddam and Bin Laden as heroes for their defiance of the United States, many share the revulsion of non-Muslims at the events of September 11.
Most Muslim religious and political leaders have strongly condemned the suicide-hijackers who slammed civilian aircraft into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon - attacks praised enthusiastically by Bin Laden in his videotape. - Nampa-Reuters
1999 Article: Iraq tempts bin Laden to attack West
The world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, has been offered sanctuary in Iraq if his worldwide terrorist network succeeds in carrying out a campaign of high-profile attacks on the West over the next few weeks.
Intelligence sources say the Saudi dissident believed responsible for the bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and a US military barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1998, is running out of options for a safe haven.
He is now thought to have overcome his initial rejection of Saddam Hussein, whom he regarded as an exploiter of the Islamic cause rather than a true believer, and is considering the offer of a bolt-hole from which he can continue to mastermind terrorism on a global scale.
A US counter-terrorist source said yesterday: "Our State Department issued a worldwide warning on December 11. We have solid information that many of the groups operating under bin Laden's patronage are planning 'spectaculars' to coincide with the period leading up to and through the millennium celebrations.
"They want to inflict maximum loss of life in return for publicity. Now we are also facing the prospect of an unholy alliance between bin Laden and Saddam. The implications are terrifying.
"We might be looking at the most wanted man on the FBI's target list gaining access to chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons courtesy of Iraq's clandestine research programmes."
The US intelligence community has been squeezing bin Laden's finances steadily for several years. His personal fortune of anything up to £500m has been whittled down to single figures, although funds continue to flow into the coffers of his Al Qaeda - Arabic for "The Base" - organisation from wealthy individuals in the Middle East.
These include members of the Saudi royal family opposed to American involvement in the region and rich businessmen in the Gulf States hoping to buy themselves immunity if bin Laden's Islamic revolution ever manages to overthrow their governments.
But the bulk of his income comes from acting as middleman and fixer for the Afghan opium producers. According to the United Nations, Afghanistan supplies 75% of the world's opium and its heroin derivatives in a narcotics' trade worth an estimated £4bn to £6bn a year.
The Taleban religious fanatics who control 85% of Afghanistan need the cash to fund their never-ending civil wars. They gave bin Laden refuge because he had connections with the Chechen and Russian mafias and their access to money-laundering in the West.
According to Middle Eastern intelligence sources, bin Laden rakes off anything up to £500m a year from his pivotal role in the drugs' trade. It is more than enough to underwrite the cost of mujahideen training camps in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan and the provision of weapons for bin Laden's personal war against the US and its allies.
Up to 20 Islamic extremist groups operate under the loose control of Al Qaeda.
They include Algeria's GSPC, responsible for the casual murder of civilians in the country's Kabylie region, and a network for recruiting Muslim volunteers to fight in the Balkans and Chechnya.
Al Qaeda's tentacles spread across Europe and the Middle East, including the United Kingdom. Up to 2000 young Muslims a year were enlisted in Britain between 1995 and 1998 to fight militant Islam's cause.
They received basic survival and unarmed combat training in Britain, and were then flown to various camps in Yemen, Pakistan, and Afghanistan to be instructed in the use of firearms and explosives. A few were involved in combat in the latter stages of the Bosnian conflict.
The spread of bin Laden's influence has spawned some strange alliances.
Israel's Mossad agency is currently helping the Russians identify known fundamentalist militants in Chechnya. British, Italian and US agents reportedly co-operated with Slobodan Milosevic's regime to root out veterans of the 1979-89 Afghan-Russia war while they were themselves on opposite sides in Bosnia.
The Americans have also resorted to hi-tech destabilisation. Various agencies inserted "sniffer" software programmes into the banking systems of Europe and the Middle East from the mid-1990s onwards.
These were targeted on known or suspected accounts for bin Laden's front men in Holland, Britain, Switzerland, Italy, the US and the Caribbean.
When large amounts of cash were moved around, the programmes flagged up the transactions. Computer experts then transferred or deleted the cash electronically to starve Al Qaeda of funding.
Bin Laden has almost outstayed his welcome in Afghanistan. Despite the Taleban's public declaration of protection for a "guest", the regime is suffering from international sanctions as long as it harbours him.
The Americans have a continually updated plan for a special forces' team to snatch him from his mountain lair in the Hindu Kush.
But they look back to a Soviet raid in the same area in April, 1986, when three battalions of elite Spetznaz commandos went in after a local Afghan commander. Few came back.
Bin Laden is understood to have selected Yemen, his father's birthplace, as a first alternative. But the Yemenis could not protect him from the wrath of the West or Saudi Arabia. Chechnya was his second choice, but the province is being ground under Russia's military jackboot.
That leaves Iraq, and the potential for an alliance which would be everyone else's nightmare. - Dec 28
Bush Doctrine Unfolds :
| To find all articles tagged or indexed using Bush Doctrine Unfold , click below: | ||||
| click here >>> | Bush Doctrine Unfold | <<< click here | ||
| (To view all FR Bump Lists, click here) | ||||
Ashton, et al. v. al Qaeda, et al.: Complaint (PDF) Lawsuit claiming a 9/11 link between Iraq and al Qaeda. Sept. 3, 2002
The file is in slow loading .pdf format, but it is an interesting read. Some excerpts:
39. Upon information and belief, there have been numerous meetings between IRAQI Intelligence agents and high-ranking AL QAEDA terrorists to plan terror attacks. Once such meeting occurred in 1992, when ZAWAHIRI (EGYPTIAN ISLAMIC JIHAD leader and AL QAEDA officer) met with IRAQI INTELLIGENCE agents in Baghdad, IRAQ over several days. An IRAQI serving with the TALIBAN who fled Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, was captured in Kurdistan and has corroborated this meeting and confirmed that IRAQI contacts with AL QAEDA began in 1992.
During the early 1990s, Sudan’s Sheikh Hassan al-Tourabi of the Islamic National Front arranged meetings between BIN-LADEN and IRAQI INTELLIGENCE officials. BIN LADEN met with FARUQ AL-HIJAZI, an IRAQI INTELLIGENCE agent in the Sudan who would later head IRAQI INTELLIGENCE for SADDAM HUSSEIN. BIN LADEN again met with IRAQI INTELLIGENCE officers in 1994 and 1995 in the Sudan. At these meetings, BIN-LADEN and IRAQI INTELLIGENCE secret service director FARUQ AL-HIJAZI agreed to work together on terrorist projects directed against the U.S.
55. From 1996 until 2001, BIN LADEN with the financial and logistical support of OMAR and others in the TALIBAN and IRAQ and IRAQI INTELLIGENCE, created, supplied and operated at least five training camps in order to create an “Islamic Foreign Legion” capable of attacking their enemies throughout the world. These camps trained men from 15 nations in guerrilla warfare, terrorist activities, rocket warfare, demolition and bombing, including the use of mines, grenades, TNT, nitroglycerine and plastic explosives. Classes were also given in “how to kill a policeman” and “traps, murder and terrorist moves.”
57. In February 1997, BIN LADEN publicly expressed his support for IRAQ in its conflict with the United States stating:
“The hearts of the Muslims are filled with hatred towards the United States of America and the American president for American conduct towards IRAQ.”59. IRAQ upon information and belief, agreed to supply arms to AL QAEDA and provide AL QAEDA with access to and training in the use of chemical and biological weapons and agreed to instruct AL QAEDA terror trainers at its Salman Pak camp in Baghdad that contained a Boeing 707 used to practice hijacking. IRAQ also agreed to supply AL QAEDA terrorists with new identities and passports from Yemen and the United Arab Emirates.
60. AL QAEDA agreed to provide protection from political opponents to IRAQ and SADDAM HUSSEIN, and to commit assassinations and other acts of violence to create instability in regions of IRAQ, particularly Kurdistan, to assist the regime of SADDAM HUSSEIN. AL QAEDA further agreed to provide trained terrorists, assassins and martyrs to carry out terror attacks in concert with IRAQ against their common enemies, including the United States.
64. Between April 25 and May 1, 1998, two of BIN LADEN’s senior military commanders, MUHAMMAD ABU-ISLAM and ABDULLAH QASSIM, visited Baghdad for discussions with SADDAM HUSSEIN’s son -- QUSAY HUSSEIN -- the “czar” of IRAQI INTELLIGENCE.
65. QUSAY HUSSEIN’s participation in those meetings highlights the importance of the talks in both symbolic and practical terms. Upon information and belief, as a direct result of these meetings, IRAQ again made commitments to provide training, intelligence, clandestine Saudi border crossings, financial support and weapons and explosives to AL QAEDA.
66. IRAQI INTELLIGENCE officials met with BIN LADEN in Afghanistan several more times. A second group of BIN LADEN and AL QAEDA operatives from Saudi Arabia were then trained by IRAQI INTELLIGENCE in IRAQ to smuggle weapons and explosives into Saudi Arabia and other countries, which they later accomplished in an effort to carry out future terrorist acts of violence. A third group of BIN LADEN and AL QAEDA operatives received a month of sophisticated guerrilla operations training from IRAQI INTELLIGENCE officials later in the Summer of 1998.
67. Despite philosophical and religious differences with SADDAM HUSSEIN, BIN LADEN continually sought to strengthen and reinforce the support he and AL QAEDA received from IRAQ. In mid-July 1998, BIN LADEN sent Dr. AYMAN AL-ZAWAHIRI, the Egyptian co-founder of AL QAEDA, to IRAQ to meet with senior Iraqi officials, including Iraqi vice president TAHA YASSIN RAMADAN. Upon information and belief, the purpose of this meeting was to discuss and plan a joint strategy for a terrorist campaign against the United States.
69. During the July 1998 visit ZAWAHIRI toured an IRAQI military base and nuclear and chemical weapons facility near al-Fallujah in IRAQ and upon information and belief, observed training by IRAQI INTELLIGENCE officials of AL QAEDA operatives at the al-Nasiriyah military and chemical weapons facility in IRAQ.
79. Following the December 1998 air strikes on IRAQ, SADDAM HUSSEIN dispatched FARUQ AL-HIJAZI to Kandahar, Afghanistan in order to meet with BIN LADEN and plot their revenge.
81. To demonstrate IRAQ’s commitment to BIN LADEN and AL QAEDA, HIJAZI presented BIN LADEN with a pack of blank, official Yemeni passports, supplied to IRAQI INTELLIGENCE from their Yemeni contacts. HIJAZI’s visit to Kandahar was followed by a contingent of IRAQI INTELLIGENCE officials who provided additional training and instruction to BIN LADEN and AL QAEDA operatives in Afghanistan. These Iraqi officials included members of “Unit 999,” a group of elite IRAQI INTELLIGENCE officials who provided advanced sabotage and infiltration training and instruction to AL QAEDA operatives.
82. At that meeting, upon information and belief, BIN LADEN, AL QAEDA and IRAQ agreed to join efforts in a detailed, coordinated plan for a protracted terrorist war against the United States.
84. IRAQ maintains an advanced chemical and biological weapons program and is one of only three countries in the world producing a highly developed weaponized anthrax. Some time during or after 1998, IRAQ agreed to help BIN LADEN and AL QAEDA develop a laboratory in Afghanistan designed to produce anthrax.
85. In addition to the al-Nasiriyah and Salman Pak training camps, by January 1999, BIN LADEN and AL QAEDA operatives were being trained by IRAQI INTELLIGENCE and military officers at other training camps on the outskirts of Baghdad.
86. In January 1999, IRAQ began reorganizing and mobilizing IRAQI INTELLIGENCE front operations throughout Europe in support of BIN LADEN and AL QAEDA. HAQI ISMAIL, believed to be a member of the IRAQ’S MUKHABARAT Secret Service, left IRAQ to train in an Afghanistan AL QAEDA camp. ISMAIL was believed to be a liason between IRAQ, the TALIBAN and AL QAEDA and was rewarded with a position in the TALIBAN Foreign Ministry.
103. On July 21, approximately six weeks before the September 11 th attacks, IRAQI columnist Mulhalhal reported that BIN LADEN was making plans to “demolish the Pentagon after he destroys the White House.”
104. Mulhalhal’s July 21 article further informed that BIN LADEN would strike America “on the arm that is already hurting.” Upon information and belief, this references a second IRAQI sponsored attack on the World Trade Center. This interpretation is further bolstered by another reference to New York as “[BIN LADEN] will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra everytime he hears his songs.” (e.g., “New York, New York”) identifying New York, New York as a target.
105. Mulhalhal further indicated, “The wings of a dove and the bullet are all but one and the same in the heart of a believer.” (Emphasis supplied) This appears to be a reference to the use of commercial aircraft as a weapon. The information was reported in an IRAQI newspaper who’s editor-in-chief serves as secretary to UDAY HUSSEIN’S Iraqi Syndicate of Journalists. The article expressed IRAQI admiration and support for BIN LADEN’s plans and its appearance in the newspaper would clearly have to be endorsed by SADDAM HUSSEIN himself.
106. All IRAQI news media is strictly controlled and censored by the government of SADDAM HUSSEIN and is under the direct oversight of UDAY HUSSEIN. Various members of IRAQI intelligence work at and control the content of each and every newspaper published inside IRAQ.
107. The information contained in Mulhalhal’s published statements were known prior to the events of September 11 th , and that Mulhalhal has ties to IRAQI intelligence, demonstrates foreknowledge of the planned attacks by BIN LADEN and indicates support by IRAQI co-conspirators.
110. According to U.S. and foreign intelligence officials, in the spring of 2000, IRAQI INTELLIGENCE agents met with September 11 th pilot hijackers ZAID SAMIR JARRAH and MARWAN AL-SHEHHI in Dubai, UAE in order to advance the hijacking of U.S. aircraft to commit terrorist acts. Not long after the meeting, AL-SHEHHI entered the United States on May 29 and JARRAH entered on June 27, to begin preparations for attacks.
133. Instruction documents on an artillery weapon known as the “Super Gun” were found in AL QAEDA camps when they were captured by U.S. forces in the winter of 2001-2002. IRAQ is the only state known to have purchased and assembled the super gun, a weapon so large it must be constructed in segments. It has a range of several hundred miles.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.