Posted on 12/01/2001 6:53:56 PM PST by NC Conservative
LONDON: The United States has asked Britain to help prepare military strikes against Somalia in the next phase of the global campaign against terrorism, the Sunday Telegraph reported here. US President George W Bush indicated last week that Somalia, Yemen and Sudan were likely to be the next targets in the war on terrorism because of their links to Al-Qaeda.
A team of British military top-brass which visited the US Central Command in Tampa, Florida, last week was asked to prepare a strategy for attacks on sites in Somalia, the paper said. They have now returned to London to discuss the plan with Ministry of Defence ministers, it added. According to the paper the request came as it emerged that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was funding a number of terrorist training camps in Somalia used by a militant Islamic group with close links to Al-Qaeda.
Hussein has agreed to help out the Al-Itihaad group in return for assistance from the Somali authorities in avoiding UN sanctions, the Sunday Telegraph said, quoting Iraqi dissident groups based here.
Bin Laden's network is known to have several training camps in southern Somalia and there has been speculation that he might head there if forced to flee Afghanistan.
Western intelligence agencies told the paper that members of Al-Itihaad had been trained at Al-Qaeda camps and that members of the group are suspected of involvement in the 1998 bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
The Pentagon officials have confirmed that US naval ships have been stationed off the Somali coast to prevent Bin Laden gaining access to the country by sea, the paper said.
Another British Sunday paper reported that the next phase of the war was being planned not against Somalia, but Iraq. The US is planning to depose Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein by giving armed support to Iraqi opposition forces across the country, The Observer said.
Bush has ordered the CIA and top military personnel to draw up detailed plans for an operation that could begin in months, according to the paper. The plan is being opposed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other EU leaders and threatens to blow apart the fragile international coalition, the paper added. It envisages a combined operation with US bombers targeting key military installations with ground troops assisting opposition groups in the north and the south of the country.
Sources quoted in the paper say the trigger for such an invasion would be the refusal of Hussein to resubmit to weapons inspections under the UN sanctions imposed after the Gulf war.
Washington has been told that evidence it has presented on an Iraqi link to September 11 is at best circumstancial. "In the past week the Americans have shut up about Iraqi links to September 11 and have been talking a lot more about their weapons programme," said a European diplomat quoted in the paper.
You're free to THINK any way you wish. However, there are rules on FR concerning racist remarks. One of yours has already been removed on that account.
You have no right to come here and make such remarks, in violation of those rules.
Were I you, I'd button it, and keep on "thinking freely" in absolute silence.
Another ASS-U-ME-ption.
Aren't you lucky no one thought to stop YOUR ancestors' immigrating on that basis?
Might have been the Irish Potato Famine in the mid-1800s for instance. "We can't solve their problems...!"
What a pathetic argument.
Not the standard definition of the phrase, yet I certainly grant you the right to avoid the question.
Then, under that interpretation, I suggest biggots only date/marry biggots (their own kind). If you insost on this interpretation, please drop the term Holy in Holy Bible and insert Aryan.
I think that refers to the taliban and their goats.
At least you're finally being more honest about your psychological motives here. And so predictable as well. It's always amazing how racial bigots come back to feelings of sexual inadequacy.
What should be at issue is inter-cultural relationships. More accurately, importing every strange and self-important culture into our nation and then giving them 'rights' that never existed before and don't exist for those already here.
Note to the Lutherans and anyone else mildly interested - I don't WANT Somali, Mexican, Armenian, or any other band of culture imposed on mine!
Perfectly willing to taste the food, buy the products, share my own culture. Not not interested in going out looking for something new to replace what we've got. Not interested in hearing how Somali institutions have to be given a place of honor because they have become the biggest 'minority' in town.
It's America folks, that's the only statement that governments ought to be made to translate into dozens of languages for every form and instruction they see fit to publish.
Rant concludes here.
Oh, yeah, this thread started with "will they be loyal" and "do they have aids" - probably not and quite possibly true.
We stopped asking new comers to say thank you and we hardly expect them to recognize our "white" system of laws and obligations. Somalia, like much or most of Africa, is still wondering what to do with AIDS and still protected by the PC aversion to admitting that it started there. Have we not seen that AIDS is the number one killer in many of those post colonial utopias?
And if you noticed, I'm not the one hiding behind the statement that I'm "entitled to my opinion," as if that means something in this context.
Try to keep up. That was his line and you restated it inanely.
While trying to keep up, you have overlooked the fact that I said that you and he are entitled to his own opinion. Are we going too fast for you?
If you'd take a moment to read instead of hammering the reply button, you'd see that nobody is denying that he can have his own opinion.
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