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Posted on 05/30/2004 12:05:02 AM PDT by JustPiper
Picture credit: TheCabal
Picture Credit:Calpernia
"I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat"
KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia - Tens of American, European and other hostages were released Sunday and a gunman believed to be the lead Islamic militant holding them was arrested, a Saudi security official said, adding that two other gunmen were "in the process of being arrested."
We are the "Stotters" who make ourselves aware of the enemy who wishes to do us harm
James Glanz NYT Wednesday, June 9, 2004 BAGHDAD Coordinated sabotage attacks on fuel and transmission lines around an enormous power plant south of Baghdad shut the plant down last weekend, American and Iraqi government officials said Tuesday, raising new fears that insurgents were targeting major sectors of the Iraqi infrastructure as part of an overall terror plan......
More worrisome than this specific act of sabotage, Haris said, is the pattern of attacks on the electrical grid around the country. He estimated that the high-tension lines that are the backbone of the grid have been attacked an average of twice a week recently, and he expressed irritation at what he said had been a refusal by the Coalition Provisional Authority to provide security for the lines....... Link to Full Article
Well, I have no problem with the protestors being kept in the correct New Brunswick (Canada)
:))
::shivers::
That is a little surreal.
Thank you LC!
Good for you N&V!!!
Should have asked them if they cried for krill ;)
Seems those protestors got the memo to use bikes too.
I do remember that. Everyone was speculating as to whether it was DC, Las Vegas or some other city.
Great minds.
Pakistan's forgotten al-Qaeda nuclear link
Asia Times ^ | June 4, 2004 | K.Kapisthalam
Posted on 06/08/2004 7:16:24 PM EDT by JimBr
Pakistan's forgotten al-Qaeda nuclear link
By Kaushik Kapisthalam
Novelists Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins, authors of such bestsellers as City of Joy and Is Paris burning?, have just written a new novel titled Is New York Burning? whose plot involves al-Qaeda members, with help from a Pakistan army major, successfully smuggling a Pakistani nuclear device into New York and then using it to try to blackmail the United States into stopping support for Israel.
The Pakistani jihadi group that plays a big part in the plot is called Lashkar-e-Tibi. Even fiction writers have now started connecting the dots linking Pakistan's nuclear establishment, its home-grown jihad groups and the possibility of an al-Qaeda nuclear attack overseas. But US authorities seem curiously blase about this threat and still appear to be content with the old shibboleths about the "inviolability" of Pakistan's nuclear program.
The ones who met Osama bin Laden
In late 2001, US officials investigating the activities of Osama bin Laden discovered that the al-Qaeda head had contacted some Pakistani nuclear experts for assistance in making a small nuclear device. US officials sought two veteran Pakistani nuclear scientists in particular, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Abdul Majid, for interrogation. The two admitted working in Afghanistan in recent years, but said they had only been providing "charitable assistance" to Afghans.
Mahmood was no low-level scientist. He was one of Pakistan's foremost experts in the secret effort to produce plutonium for atomic weapons. In 1999 he publicly said that Pakistan should help other Islamic nations build nuclear weapons. He also made some public statements in support of the Taliban movement. After more interrogation, both Mahmood and Majid admitted that they had met with bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri during their visits to Afghanistan and held long "theoretical" discussions on nuclear weapons.
Then the trail went cold. After months in Pakistani custody, both Mahmood and Majid were quietly released. Fearing that Mahmood's charity organization, Ummah Tameer e-Nau, could be a front for al-Qaeda, the US government placed the entity in its terrorist list and designated Mahmood himself "a global terrorist". Pakistan's government never put the two scientists on trial, and they are free men today.
The ones who got away
In December 2001, the New York Times reported that while US authorities were investigating Mahmood and Majid, they found some links between al-Qaeda and two other Pakistani nuclear scientists, Suleiman Asad and Muhammed Ali Mukhtar. Both Asad and Mukhtar had long experience at two of Pakistan's most secret nuclear-weapons-related installations. However, before US investigators could reach them, Pakistan sent the two scientists to Myanmar on an unspecified "research project".
The New York Times also quoted Pakistani officials as saying that President General Pervez Musharraf personally telephoned one of Myanmar's military rulers to ask him to provide temporary asylum for the two nuclear specialists. In January 2002, the Wall Street Journal reported that Asad and Mukhtar were possibly aiding Myanmar's efforts to build a 10-megawatt nuclear "research reactor". Asad and Mukhtar are still in Myanmar, well away from US reach.
The Lashkar-Nuke link
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is a terrorist group based in Muridke, Pakistan. Although founded by the chief promoter of the Afghan jihad and bin Laden mentor, Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, LeT claims ousting India from Kashmir as its main goal. But experts say LeT shared training camps with al-Qaeda and that many al-Qaeda-linked Afghan-Arabs have been found fighting for LeT in Indian-administered Kashmir. The LeT fought on the side of the Taliban in Afghanistan as well.
An Australian named David Hicks, who was picked up by coalition forces in Afghanistan and who is now in Guantanomo prison in Cuba, was trained by LeT. LeT has also provided training for jihadis from Southeast Asia, Central Asia and Chechnya. In December 2001, the US banned LeT after it was implicated in a terrorist attack on India's parliament. Pakistan subsequently banned LeT in January 2002, but allowed it to operate under a new name - Jamaat-ud-Dawa. Prior to being banned, LeT used to hold massive annual conclaves in Pakistan, preaching jihad against India, Israel and the United States. Today, it is widely believed that LeT is operating as a global al-Qaeda "franchisee", even though it is still active in Indian Kashmir.
In a sensational claim, French journalist and author Bernard Henri-Levy stated that Pakistan's disgraced "father" of the nuclear bomb, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, was in fact a member of LeT. What is definite is that Khan did attend the last openly held LeT moot, in April 2001, as an honored guest. Accompanying Khan on the dais was none other than Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, the plutonium expert who met bin Laden. According to the South Asia Analysis Group, bin Laden himself was known to address LeT annual meets over the phone for many years, even when he was hiding in Afghanistan and Sudan.
Despite being banned, the Pakistani media have frequently reported that LeT has openly collected funds under its new name. Pakistani authorities have allowed LeT's leader or "emir", Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, to barnstorm Pakistan, calling for jihad against the United States, in particular. In the recent past, Saeed has stated in his public meetings and rallies that Pakistan's nuclear weapons should be used to benefit all Islamic nations and that Pakistan must share its nukes with such nations as Iran and Saudi Arabia. More alarming, in a 2002 statement Saeed released to the LeT website, he claimed that people loyal to his organization "control two nuclear missiles". He is claimed to have said that the two missiles with warheads would be used against "enemies of Islam".
In 2002, top al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida was arrested from a LeT safe house in Faisalabad, Pakistan. Pakistani officials did not, however, arrest LeT leader Hameedullah Khan Niazi, who had housed Zubaida. In late 2003, the brother of Indonesian terrorist Hambali and many of his Indonesian and Malaysian associates were also arrested from a LeT-owned seminary in Karachi.
In what is now known in the United States as the "Virginia Jihad" conspiracy, nine terrorist suspects were recently arrested from Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania. The men were later convicted on terrorism-related charges. As per the indictment, all were members of LeT and trained in LeT camps in Pakistan.
Last October, a French-born terrorist named Willie Brigitte was arrested in connection with his actions in Australia. Brigitte admitted to be a member of LeT. Australian police later arrested a Pakistani architect - Faheem Lodhi, who was also a member of LeT, and was supposedly Brigitte's co-conspirator in a plot to conduct a major terrorist attack in Australia. Reports indicate that Lodhi's and Brigitte's target was supposedly the electrical grid. Other targets considered included the Lucas Heights nuclear research center outside Sydney and various military facilities and natural-gas pipelines. It is also known that both Lodhi and Brigitte received funds and took orders from a mid-to-high-level LeT member in Pakistan named Sheikh Sajid. More alarming, Brigitte told interrogators that he had personally seen a Chechen chemical-weapons expert named Abu Salah experiment with chemical weapons in an LeT camp in Pakistan.
Why the Pakistan threat is real
Despite all the ominous-sounding facts mentioned above, some readers might wonder whether the Pakistan nuclear-terrorism threat is a credible one. Indeed, some analysts do feel that the idea of Pakistan's nuclear warheads falling into the hands of terrorist groups such as LeT is an exaggeration. After all, it is widely believed that Pakistan's nuclear weapons are under the secure safekeeping of the nation's army, the only institution in Pakistan that is supposedly free of al-Qaeda influence. But is that really so?
Just recently, Musharraf revealed that some "junior" Pakistani army and air force officers had colluded with al-Qaeda terrorists in the two attempts on his life last December. The Pakistani newspaper the Daily Times revealed that the "junior officers" referred to by Musharraf may include an army captain, three majors, a lieutenant-colonel and a colonel. This is extremely significant. While many retired Pakistani generals and intelligence chiefs have openly associated with groups such as al-Qaeda, their actions have been glossed over because they weren't in active service. But when we know that serving Pakistani military officers have been conducting joint operations with al-Qaeda, the possibility of a Pakistani nuclear device falling into the hands of al-Qaeda appears more credible.
Even if al-Qaeda never gets hold of a Pakistani nuclear warhead, thanks to US technical safeguards, the possibility of it building a Pakistani-designed radiation dispersal device or a "dirty bomb" looks plausible. A recent analysis by US nuclear experts David Albright and Holly Higgins found strong evidence that Pakistani nuclear scientists Sultan Mahmood and Abdul Majid "provided significant assistance to al-Qaeda's efforts to make radiation dispersal devices". Therein lies the most overlooked Pakistani threat - the knowledge in the heads of nuclear experts sympathetic to the jihad movement, and jihadi groups with weapons-of-mass-destruction ambitions such as LeT operating secure facilities and training camps in Pakistan with only the most minimal of restraints.
Assuming that the US might be secretly monitoring Pakistani nuclear fuel and weapons sites, such actions would not be enough to prevent, for instance, radioactive materials stolen from the former Soviet Union by Chechen LeT members and delivered to Pakistan, packaged into a dirty bomb designed by a Pakistani nuclear scientist (or an improvised nuclear device based on a Pakistani warhead design) in an LeT compound and delivered by a Pakistani-trained Western citizen taking orders from a handler in Karachi or Lahore.
For those who are skeptical of such a scenario it is worthwhile to recall that there have been reports of every one of its individual elements over the past three years, including the smuggling of radioactive and fissile material in to the region. This March, Tajik authorities arrested a man with a small quantity of plutonium that he allegedly planned to sell in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Indeed, Pakistan remains the single most important country of focus in preventing an attack using a dirty bomb or even an improvised nuclear device.
Even before September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda had been interested in launching suicide attacks on nuclear reactors, turning them in effect into huge dirty bombs. For instance, in a 2002 interview with alJazeera reporter Yosri Fouda at a secret location in Karachi, September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his associate Ramzi bin al-Shibh claimed that the September 11 attacks were originally going to target nuclear reactors, but they "decided against it for fear it would go out of control". Scientists and engineers from Pakistan's nuclear program could provide essential advice that could make the difference between success and failure. For instance, Sultan Mahmood, who played an important role in the construction of Pakistan's Khushab nuclear reactor, could have given specific tips to terrorists on how to breach nuclear reactors.
Unlearning the lessons of September 11
This summer is slated to be a period of high tension for the West, the United States in particular, with multiple threats of terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda and its affiliates, according to US officials. As horrific as the September 11 attacks on the US were, many terrorism experts have been warning that the next al-Qaeda attacks could be much worse. Even as the US struggles to deal with the aftermath of a war to remove Saddam Hussein from Iraq, where the threat from weapons of mass destruction was highly ambiguous, it appears that US policymakers are unresponsive to a more alarming threat from Pakistan.
Kaushik Kapisthalam is a freelance journalist based in the United States.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1150084/posts
Interesting!
Thx
THX.
I understand about the so called suitcase nukes.
But supposedly, the ones mentioned were the size of refrigerators. That's a different breed of animal as I understand it.
If you talk again, please ask him abut such possibilities.
Blessings,
Yes, I'm catching up again. I've looked all over, where is the new OBL photo (post #)? Thanks.
Danny Pearl didn't forget LeT. It was one of his last articles.
Wall Street Journal
December 26, 2001
Pakistan Moves Against Militants In An Attempt To Reduce Tensions
By Daniel Pearl, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistan is intensifying a crackdown on militant groups that operate in the disputed region of Kashmir as the country tries to avert armed conflict with India over a Dec. 13 attack on India's parliament building in New Delhi.
Members of militant groups operating in the Pakistan-controlled part of Kashmir said Pakistani intelligence operatives are monitoring their movements closely. Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Islamic group that has been declared a terrorist organization by India and the U.S., closed its office in Pakistan's Punjab province Tuesday, one day after announcing its leader, a Pakistani, would step down in favor of a Kashmiri. And Pakistan's government radio Tuesday announced the arrest of the leader of another group targeted by India, Jaish-e-Mohammed.
Pakistan officials aren't explicitly linking these actions to the New Delhi attack. The Jaish-e-Mohammed leader, an Islamic cleric named Maulana Masood Azhar, was cited by Punjab authorities for making provocative speeches against the Pakistan government, according to the government radio report. The two groups, which both denied responsibility for the Dec. 13 attack, are likely to continue operating in both India-controlled and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.
It is unclear whether Pakistan's actions will be enough to satisfy India, which has demanded the operations of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed be shut down. On Friday, India recalled its envoy to Pakistan and cut bus and rail links between the countries; on Monday, it expelled a Pakistan diplomat it accused of attempting to obtain classified information.
Still, by moving against the militant groups' Punjab offices, Pakistan at least reduces the military risks if India decides to act on its own. Military analysts believe there is a real threat that India could launch airstrikes in the Kashmir region to target the training bases of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. That would be provocative enough, but any Indian move on Punjab would be even more incendiary.
Tuesday, the Indian army ordered residents in border villages to evacuate and the air force moved more assets to the frontier, the Associated Press reported. Indian defense officials said they were responding to a massive troop buildup on the other side of the border and the cease-fire line that divides the disputed Kashmir province between India and Pakistan. Indian and Pakistani troops have been exchanging heavy fire along the border in recent days, resulting in several deaths.
More than a dozen Muslim guerrilla groups are fighting to merge the Indian part of Kashmir to attain either the region's merger with Islamic Pakistan or its independence. Pakistan's official position is that it provides only moral and diplomatic support to Kashmiri "freedom fighters."
Some analysts believe President Pervez Musharraf was moving toward a broader crackdown on militant Islamic groups before the Dec. 13 attack. In August, the government had begun a push to disarm militant groups, though it wasn't clear whether that would extend to Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. The government had asked groups to surrender weapons and was keeping some religious party leaders under detention months after they challenged the government's support for the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
Tuesday, Punjab police sought to arrest Mr. Azhar of Jaish-e-Mohammed at his home in Bahawalpur. The cleric was released from a prison in Indian-controlled Kashmir in December 1999 in an exchange for passengers by the hijackers of an Indian plane taken to Afghanistan. A spokesman for the group last night confirmed the police were at Mr. Azhar's house, but said the cleric wasn't at home and suggested that he may avoid arrest.
Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S., Pakistan has also sought to restrict Kashmir militant groups from collecting donations inside Pakistan. "There was much hue and cry" from the groups, says Ghulam Mohammed Safi, a leader of the Hurriyat Conference, an umbrella group of Kashmir parties. But "after the episode in New Delhi, I think there is some kind of stern action from the Pakistani side." He added that "we want our movement to be an indigenous movement."
But Gen. Musharraf faces a further difficulty, which is that India's vocal demands make it hard for him to crack down on extremist groups. "Everything India does creates a reaction from the public," said Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, president of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute.
Indeed, by feeding conspiracy theories about India hatching the Parliament plot itself, Pakistan officials have already made it difficult for the public to accept the idea of Pakistani involvement, even if India does supply proof. Asked about the Parliament attack, Mehmood Ali, a federal minister without portfolio, said, "These are all manufactured things."
President Musharraf, who returned Monday from a trip to China, is expected to meet with religious, political and military leaders in coming days, just as he did in September before announcing Pakistan's support for the U.S. bombing in Afghanistan.
In a televised speech Tuesday during a ceremony in Karachi to mark the anniversary of the birth of Pakistan's founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, President Musharraf avoided direct mention of the crisis with India, but repeated Jinnah's comment that India should abandon its "superiority complex." He also criticized "bigoted extremists" and said, "We, the vast, silent majority must vow not to be passive, voiceless onlookers to our internal destruction."
-- Saeed Azhar of Dow Jones Newswires in Karachi contributed to this report.
Do we know anymore about this.
Train cars transporting chemical derail in Vancouver neighborhood
The incident prompts the evacuation of the rail yard and closes the line from Portland to Seattle
Tuesday, June 08, 2004
HOLLEY GILBERT
VANCOUVER -- Three train cars loaded with a highly flammable chemical overturned Monday in a downtown Vancouver residential and industrial neighborhood, spilling about 10 gallons of the toxic substance.
From Our Advertiser
A fourth rail car derailed but remained upright.
No injuries were reported, but three nearby businesses were evacuated. The train was traveling from Everett, Wash., to Barstow, Calif.
The north end of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway yard at 39th Street and Fruit Valley Road was evacuated after the 3:23 p.m. derailment.
http://www.oregonlive.com/metronorth/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/metro_north_news/10866958158010.xml
I haven't seen a new OBL photo. Ping me if you find it.
Loftus with some somewhat big news - he predicts that these sweeps today in Europe, more information will be coming soon, INCLUDING SOME ARRESTS FROM SWEEPS IN NYC TODAY.
Woo Hoo! Hope that is a true report!
There was an OBL photo in post #3340
Then, at post 3428 Letitring says "2B what does that word say in the new picture you posted with OBL face in it? Something written on the cloud that has the lightening coming out of it."
Post 3429 is SP's reply that says "The Blue Thunder".
I sure can't find no dang picture! (I'm sure it's just me being inept).
::hits self in forehead::
Thank you NW_AZ!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1144669/posts?page=3340#3340
Yes, BLUE THUNDER! See link for new OBL picture!
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