Threat Matrix- Daily Terror Thread (4):

New York Post ^ | February 24, 2004 | By NILES LATHEM

[Revel]

February 24, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - The Pentagon has dispatched the elite commando force that hunted down Saddam Hussein to Afghanistan for a new operation aimed at getting Osama bin Laden, officials said yesterday. Military sources confirmed that members of the shadowy Task Force 121, the unit that conducted the high-tech search for Saddam and his henchmen, have recently begun operating in the remote mountainous region along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border where bin Laden and key al Qaeda and Taliban fugitives are believed to be hiding. The Task Force is made up of highly trained Delta and SEAL commandos, as well as CIA paramilitary operators. It operates outside normal military channels.

[Labyrinthos]

I don't think we would need two months to "recapture" him in Afghanastan. If we in fact had him already, his capture would have been reported someplace other than this thread. I'm also not willing to implicate Iran just because OBL is found there. I suspect we have lots of AQ terrorists living right here in CONUS, but that doesn't mean GWB is complicite (although my answer might be different if the ketchup boy was in charge).

[ladyjane]

My comment was about Saddam, not OBL. Someone mentioned a blood infection and I responded that it was Saddam who looked really sick. Maybe the message was about him.

[oceanview]

its just one hypothesis to consider, that's all I am saying.

[Calpernia]

Oh, sorry. I misunderstood. You are right, Saddam did look sickish.

[Calpernia]

Maybe the war is being called off?

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1094080/posts?page=1

Task Force Commander Says Insurgents 'Desperate, Isolated'

"We see this enemy taking the shape of former regime elements, extremists, as well as foreign fighters and international terrorists," he said. "Those cells, I believe, are becoming extremely desperate and isolated."

[Cindy]

NOTE: The Following Text Is An Exact Quote:

http://travel.state.gov/algeria_warning.html

Travel Warning
United States Department of State
Bureau of Consular Affairs
Washington, DC 20520
This information is current as of today, Tue Mar 09 2004 13:04:22 GMT-0800.

Algeria

March 8, 2004

This Travel Warning supersedes the Travel Warning dated September 5, 2003, and is being issued to alert Americans to ongoing security concerns in Algeria. Americans are warned to avoid travel to the Sahara desert areas of southeastern Algeria and northeastern Mali, where terrorists held 32 Europeans hostage between February and August.

The Department of State urges U.S. citizens to defer nonessential travel to Algeria and to evaluate carefully their security and safety if they choose to travel. Over the past several months, the city of Algiers and its immediate suburbs have recorded a drop in the number of terrorist-associated incidents. However, there are continued security concerns. Random terrorist attacks still occur in rural and remote areas, on public transportation outside the major cities, and in some parts of the country at night.

In February 2003, 32 Western Europeans were taken hostage by terrorists in the Sahara desert areas of southeastern Algeria, between the cities of Ouargla and Tamanrasset. Fourteen of the hostages were transported by the terrorists into northern Mali. As of August 20, 2003, one had died in captivity, and all others have been released. We continue to caution U.S. citizens to avoid traveling in this area.

The Department of State cautions Americans who reside or travel in Algeria despite this warning to take prudent security measures while in the country, including arranging for pre-determined local contacts to meet and accompany them upon arrival and departure at Algerian airports. Nighttime and overland travel outside the greater Algiers area should be avoided if possible. Visitors to Algeria are advised to stay only in the large, internationally recognized hotels where security is provided. Americans should arrange for a known Algerian companion to accompany them when moving anywhere in Algeria, whether in the capital city of Algiers or in other cities and rural areas.

U.S. Embassy personnel take all of the precautions mentioned above. Embassy employees and official visitors live on or adjacent to the Embassy compound or reside in Embassy-approved hotels. They travel off compound by armored car and, depending on circumstances, may have armed security personnel accompanying them. Employees are permitted to travel outside the capital on private or official business and with appropriate security. U.S. oil companies operating in the desert region south of the Saharan Atlas Mountains, as well as Algerian government officials, also take similar security precautions to ensure their safety.

Americans who remain in Algeria are urged to register and to obtain updated information on travel and security in Algeria at the Consular Section at the U.S. Embassy in Algeria. The Embassy is located at 4 Chemin Cheikh Bachir El-Ibrahimi, B.P. 408 (Alger-Gare) 16000, in the capital city of Algiers. The Embassy can be reached at telephone [213] (21) 691-425/255/186; fax [213] (21) 69-39-79.

For further information on travel to Algeria, please see the Department of State’s Consular Information Sheet on Algeria, the State Department’s World Wide Caution Public Announcement and the Middle East and North Africa Update Public Announcement at http://travel.state.gov.

Return to Consular Information Sheets and Travel Warnings Page

[TexKat]

Maybe the war is being called off?

I doubt that Cal. Stay vigilant, those sneaky bass turds are up to something.

[TexKat]

Abul Abbas, the mastermind of the 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking, is seen during a press conference in Gaza City Monday April 22 1996 after years in exile. Abbas said that seizing the ship was a mistake and apologized for the killing of disabled American passenger Leon Klinghoffer. Abbas has died in U.S. custody in Iraq, Palestinian and U.S. officials said Tuesday, March 9, 2004. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

Achille Lauro Hijacker Abbas Dies

MOHAMMED DARAGHMEH, Associated Press Writer

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Mohammed Abul Abbas, head of a Palestinian splinter group and mastermind of the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro passenger ship in which an American tourist was killed, has died in U.S. custody in Iraq, Palestinian and U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The ship was commandeered by Abbas' small Palestine Liberation Front. Palestinian militants threw an elderly wheelchair-bound Jewish American tourist, Leon Klinghoffer, overboard.

Abbas was captured in Iraq in April by U.S. forces. Late Tuesday, officials in Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's office, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Abbas had died in U.S. custody.

In Washington, a U.S. official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Abul Abbas died recently of natural causes while in U.S. custody. The official said his health had been deteriorating.

When Abbas was captured, the Palestinian Authority demanded his release, saying the United States had pledged not to prosecute him as part of a blanket promise not to press charges against Palestinians who acted against Israel before interim peace accords were signed in the 1990s.

The United States also endorsed a 1995 interim peace dea which grants PLO members immunity for violent acts committed before September 1993, when the two sides signed a mutual recognition agreement.

The 55-year-old Abbas has been a marginal figure in the PLO. He was a member of the PLO's executive committee, but left in 1991. His tiny faction has very few followers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. According to Israel's Shin Bet security service, the PLF has sent some members to Iraq for military training.

In April 1996, Abul Abbas visited Gaza for the first time, as part of the amnesty offered by Israel. At the time, he apologized for the killing of Klinghoffer.

In 1998, he returned to attend a session of the Palestine National Council, the Palestinians' parliament-in-exile, for a crucial vote on abrogating chapters of the PLO founding charter calling for Israel's destruction. In the end, Abul Abbas did not participate in the vote.

At that time, Israeli attorney general Elyakim Rubinstein said Abul Abbas did not pose a threat to Israeli security, and that it would be unreasonable to prosecute him for acts committed before 1993.

U.S. commandos caught Abbas last April during a raid on the southern outskirts of Baghdad.

Abbas had been convicted in absentia in an Italian court for the 1985 hijacking and sentenced to life in prison in 1986, but never served any time. His arrest came 18 years after his crime.

Abbas became an internationally known figure with the seizure of the Achille off Port Said, Egypt.

During the hijacking the Palestinians demanded that Israel release 50 imprisoned Palestinians, and militants shot Klinghoffer in his wheelchair and tossed him overboard.

The other passengers were released after a two-day ordeal and the commandos surrendered to Egyptian authorities, who put them on a flight to PLO headquarters in Tunisia.

U.S. Navy fighters forced the flight down in Sicily. The Italians, to the Americans' dismay, allowed Abbas to flee to Yugoslavia before a U.S. warrant for piracy and hostage-taking could be served.

Abbas disappeared, and international manhunts and a price on his head failed to flush him out. He next turned up in Gaza where he renounced terrorism.

[MamaDearest]

Prayers outgoing for Harley. I lost a cat this past fall and don't believe I am over it yet. She hated everyone in our family (hissed and spit) except me and so there's a special attachment there for me.

[TexKat]

Reports: Bomb Blast in Turkey Kills 2

By JAMES C. HELICKE, Associated Press Writer

ISTANBUL, Turkey - A bomb exploded at a building housing a Masonic lodge Tuesday, killing at least two people and wounding five others, reports said, months after four suicide attacks struck this city.

NTV television said police blamed the attack on a suicide bomber. CNN-Turk said a man chanting, "Allah, Allah," entered the building and detonated a bomb.

Authorities evacuated the building in case a second explosive was inside.

Officials sent ambulances and firefighters to the scene in the residential Kartal district, the Anatolia news agency said. One of the injured was reported in critical condition, television reports said.

The Masons, a secretive society that traces its roots to medieval craft associations, are active in this predominantly Muslim but strictly secular country.

Four suicide attacks against two synagogues, the British Consulate and a British bank killed 62 people in Istanbul last year. Prosecutors have indicted 69 people suspected of belonging to a local al-Qaida cell in the case. Underground leftist and Kurdish groups also are active in Istanbul.

There are an estimated 5 million to 6 million Masons worldwide, pledged to the principles of brotherliness, charity and mutual aid.

Masonic practices include oath-swearing, rituals and pledges of secrecy, conducted in Masonic temples by officials wearing regalia.

Membership is by invitation, usually limited to professional men and women.

[MamaDearest]

Ah yes, the Rajneeshis. I remember those idiots

We lived across the river in Goldendale at that time. I thought it might be of historic value sometime down the road. We used to go to Spooky's Pizza in The Dalles back then. The Rajneesh sat at a long table and we laughed because all their socks were white gone wrong (turned orange). When we went to the closing down sale, one of the Rajneesh men told us they were being forced out because of persecution by the Christians! We thought that statement very amusing and a very skewed rationale.

[TexKat]

Thanks for the heads up freeperfromnj. I was definitely in the dark on that one. I have been having trouble with my internet connection. I left it on on Saturday while I was away and it keeps tying up with all kinds of advertisement popups.

[MamaDearest]

I doubt that Cal. Stay vigilant, those sneaky bass turds are up to something.

As ususal TexKat, you are right on the money about that!

[MamaDearest]

I thought it might be of historic value sometime down the road.

Scratch that sentence - sorry /about that.

[TexKat]

Iraqi: Saddam 3 Years From Nukes in '91

By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Iraq was three years away from becoming a nuclear power before the 1991 Gulf War, the No. 2 Iraqi scientist on the program said Tuesday.

Noman Saad Eddin al-Noaimi, a former director-general of Iraq's nuclear program, told The Associated Press that Iraq produced less than a kilogram — 2.2 pounds — of highly enriched uranium before the war and U.N. inspections halted the program.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, considers 55 pounds the standard minimum for a rudimentary bomb.

"Producing the appropriate amount would have required at least two more years, under normal circumstances," al-Noaimi said on the sidelines of a meeting in Beirut about the repercussions of the Iraq invasion. "Putting that substance into a weapon could have taken an additional year."

Al-Noaimi was believed to be the first senior Iraqi involved in the clandestine program to disclose a specific timeframe for Iraq to acquire a nuclear bomb.

A British intelligence dossier made public in September 2002 as U.S. and British leaders were building their cases for war maintained that if U.N. sanctions against Iraq were lifted, Saddam Hussein could develop a nuclear weapon in one to two years. However, the IAEA said there was no evidence of any nuclear weapons programs.

Al-Noaimi, who retired in the late 1990s, said Saddam ordered his scientists to develop atomic weapons as early as 1987. He said other scientists may have different estimates on how close Iraq was to making the weapon.

"Others could be more optimistic or more pessimistic, but my personal assessment is that we were two to three years away from that, if everything went according to the required level and speed," he said.

Jafar Dhia Jafar, the father of Iraq's nuclear bomb program, was also at the Beirut meeting. He refused to give a timeframe on Iraq's attempts.

"I cannot estimate that because we didn't reach this point," Jafar told AP. "We had attempts in designs and attempts in manufacturing but we did not reach" the bomb.

David Albright, an American nuclear expert and former U.N. inspector during the 1990s, said the three-year timeframe was "plausible" for part of the nuclear program.

Before the Gulf War, Iraq's nuclear program was divided into a crash program to build a bomb and an indigenous effort to enrich uranium for use in atomic weapons.

The IAEA said in 1997 that Iraq's "crash program" had set a target to build a bomb in 1991.

But the agency said there was no evidence the Iraqis, by the time of their Gulf War defeat in February 1991, had produced more than a "few grams" of highly enriched uranium.

Al-Noaimi co-authored a paper with Jafar saying that most Iraqi nuclear facilities were damaged or destroyed in the 1991 war. They said scientists, engineers and technicians involved in the program dispersed after the war and the program was dismantled on Saddam's orders.

On Monday, Jafar denied that Saddam tried to restart his atomic activities, but acknowledged Iraq tried to conceal its banned weapons operations before destroying them 13 years ago. Jafar also claimed that U.N. inspectors had "reached total conviction" that Iraq was free of nuclear weapons yet failed to convey that to the Security Council because of U.S. pressure.

Al-Noaimi said that at the beginning of the nuclear program, Iraq did not have any intentions to enrich uranium for military purposes, and only planned to use the technology in producing electricity.

"In 1987 when we reached an advanced scientific, technological and production stage of enriching uranium, the orders came: 'Now think about studying and designing nuclear weapons,'" he said.

Iraqi physicist Imad Khadduri, who worked for years for Iraq's nuclear program, told AP his country was years away from the bomb. "I would say that we finished between 10 to 15 percent of it, which means we still needed about 90 percent of work," said Khadduri.

He said Iraq had produced no more than a fifth of an ounce of enriched uranium by 1991.

After the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq was forced to throw open its doors to U.N. inspectors who were given the mission of destroying Baghdad's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and the programs to develop them.

___

Associated Press writer Dafna Linzer in New York contributed this report.

[Revel]

Nien calls it possible phys ops...or however you spell that...LOL. I for one know that AQ is not anywhere near dumb enough to think we would take that funny release seriously. It is an obvious spoof. Daleel could be having fun with us...But I don't think so. I don't think he would make fun of such a thing. Here is my Theory.

Daleel him self was had. Remember he says he cannot read Arabic. My guess is that someone passed the link to the article to him and he was just passing it along and he assumed it was what he thought it was because he could not read it. It sounds like the joke was on him...And I bet he is ticked with whoever passed him the link to the spoof.
He has since replaced the spoof with the real one according to Nein.

[TexKat]

Good evening MamaDearest, I have missed you guys. I have been reading the posts, but did not dare post anything because it would tie up my computer very badly. Hopefully I am back in business.

[rickylc]

I like the thought of that.

Poetic justice,Daleel get's taken in by prankster because he can't read arabic :)

What a hoot!

[TexKat]

Daleel him self was had.

LOL, the little wannabe jihadist idiot.

[TexKat]

Yemen Official: Detainees Linked to Cole

By AHMED AL-HAJ, Associated Press Writer

SAN`A, Yemen - Four of 32 militants captured in a crackdown by Yemen's security forces are linked to the October 2000 USS Cole bombing that killed 17 American sailors, an official said Tuesday.

The four were among 10 suspects who escaped from prison early last year, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The crackdown in the southern mountains led to the arrests of 32 suspects believed to belong to al-Qaida and other militant groups, including the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army and the Yemeni Islamic Jihad.

Senior al-Qaida agents Abdul Raouf Naseeb and Sayed Imam el-Sharif were among those captured, but the country's most-wanted man — Jamal al-Badawi — apparently slipped away with more than a dozen foreign fighters, witnesses and officials in the region said.

The official said Naseeb and four other suspects had been transferred to San`a for further questioning. There was no information on el-Sharif.

The official said 13 of the 32 suspects were released after they and their families promised to renounce violence.

Sixteen fighters from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates who were thought to be hiding in the mountains are believed to have slipped away, including al-Badawi, a Yemeni wanted in the United States and by his own government for the Cole bombing.

The crackdown, which ended Tuesday, followed reports of planned attacks in Yemen. Security has been tightened around embassies, foreign companies and government institutions in San`a, the capital.

Witnesses said military checkpoints around the mountains had been reduced and patrols were no longer visible — an indication the operation was over.

Yemen has allied itself with the U.S. war on terrorism, allowing American forces to enter the country and train its military. The country, which long has tolerated Muslim extremists, is the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden.