Posted on 09/11/2004 12:09:10 AM PDT by nwctwx
How come a nice missile did not hit that bastard in the head??????????????????????????????
Bin Laden's new butchers
Martin Chulov, Tel Aviv
20sep04
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.a...0813973,00.html
AL-QA'IDA'S new torchbearers are on the march. The next generation of Islamist leaders is more determined, more ruthless and far more dangerous than its predecessors. And the world is just getting to know them.
The chilling prophecy was delivered last week by a panel of the world's leading counter-terrorist experts, who have, since the events of 9/11, watched al-Qa'ida shift like sand dunes in a desert storm.
"What they have in store for us is probably more than any of us could bear," one security official told a closed session of the Terrorism's Global Impact summit in Tel Aviv.
The al-Qa'ida brand now extends far beyond its ubiquitous leader Osama bin Laden. The five men who carry on his ideology feel emboldened enough to make revolutionary calls of their own.
First among them is Ayman el Zawahiri, bin Laden's deputy and doctor, and the man who has for the past two years called most of al-Qa'ida's operational shots. Zawahiri has taken up the slack left by the arrest of a swath of mid-level organisers, in particular the group's operational chief Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was nabbed in Pakistan 18 months ago.
It was Zawahiri's face that the world saw on television screens last week, days before the third anniversary of 9/11. And, providing he eludes capture, it will be Zawahiri we will continue to witness publicly trumpeting the aftermath of future strikes.
But Zawahiri's rise to prominence is paradoxical. Just like his boss, he too has become a figurehead. And the organisation they have both sat atop for the past eight years has become an ideological brand.
"The new generation of leaders are more violent and will drive this campaign in ways that are difficult for us to imagine," says Rohan Gunaratna from Singapore's Defence and Strategic Studies Centre.
"Al-Qa'ida has become an ideology of empowerment," says a former senior CIA officer, who did not want to be identified. "People want to identify with the power symbolised by the brand. The best thing bin Laden could do is to die. It would be the last step in the casting of his legend."
Al-Qa'ida's strength now lies in the affiliates it has inspired – some directly and others in its name. Among this conglomerate are four people almost certain to shape the future of Global Jihad Inc; Sheikh Abu Muhammed al-Maqdesi, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Sheikh Ahmad al-Zahrani and Sheikh Abu Omar Seyf.
Al-Maqdesi is a Palestinian who combined the extreme doctrines of Jihadi Salafiyyah and Wahhabism to create the severe Islamic teachings espoused by the insurgency in Iraq today and its supporters in the pan-Arab world.
His teachings have inspired Afghanistan's former Taliban regime, bin Laden, and Islamists in Southeast Asia and Chechnya. No other contemporary Islamic figure has done more to radicalise Islam. Several influential Palestinian clerics have risen in his shadow, and so too has al-Zarqawi.
The Jordanian-born Zarqawi is the most dangerous man in Iraq and, within 12 months of guerilla warfare in Iraq, now ranks among the most menacing Islamists on the globe.
Without the successful intervention of intelligence officers from his home country, Zarqawi would have in April been responsible for the largest terror strike using chemical weapons the world had experienced. The plot targeted the Jordanian intelligence headquarters and the US embassy in the capital of Amman and, if the chemicals had spread as intended, could have killed close to 50,000 people.
According to Reuven Paz, Israeli academic and director of the Project for the Research of Islamic Movements, the Zarqawi-led insurgency against US-led forces in Iraq is flourishing for reasons that had not been anticipated by the Bush administration.
Paz says the invasion triggered the emergence of fundamental conflicts and agendas that had lain dormant for generations – in particular, allowing Sunni Arabs to ramp suppressed ideals of anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism.
At the heart of this comes a call for Jihadis to return to the heart of the Arab world after years of "struggle in exile" in sectarian hot spots such as Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya.
"What we have created here is a veritable hornet's nest," says a serving Dutch intelligence officer. "There are no two ways about it."
The Zarqawi-led creation of an Islamic-fighting triangle in Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia is now well under way, Paz believes.
Gunaratna says the world has ample reason to fear the rise of this brand of Middle Eastern Islamism. "Middle Eastern Muslims view the world in a different way," he says. "They are much harsher."
The fourth figure in the gang of five torchbearers, al-Zahrani, is carrying forward the teachings of al-Maqdesi and a Saudi Islamic scholar Sheikh Yousef al-Ayeeri, the cleric and Saudi commander of al-Qa'ida proper, who was shot dead in Riyadh in May last year.
It is clear, according to Paz and other conference delegates, that the rise of the Saudi-born al-Zahrani marks a shift to the younger generation of global Jihad scholars to Saudi hands.
Another feared Saudi firebrand is Seyf, the man deemed to be the spiritual mentor behind the Chechen militants who killed more than 300 children and civilians in the siege of the Beslan school in southern Russia earlier this month – a depravity seen by many as even more chilling than the foiled chemical plot in Jordan.
Seyf and al-Zahrani espouse two key principles of their countryman al-Ayeeri, that the Iraq invasion is just one link in a chain of attacks to follow in other Arab Muslim states. And the only way to safeguard Islamic resistance is to call on the help of Muslim volunteers from elsewhere.
Throughout the three-day conference – the biggest counter-terrorism get-together in the world this year – one constant, and somewhat surprising, theme emerged: the American vanguard of the fight against terror needs to urgently reassess where it isheading.
The theme was surprising because it was largely led by academics from Israel – a staunch friend of the US and a big beneficiary of its military aid and capabilities.
"We should bear in mind that the American policy of the wider Middle East, including Central Asia and the Caucasus, might trigger off another axis of global Jihad up to the north," Paz told an audience of academics, intelligence experts, intellectuals and military officers, to warm applause.
"The role of the Arab volunteers in Chechnya, the Wahhabi radical influence in Uzbekistan, and the so far limited support for global Jihad among Kurds and Turks, might lead to the creation of a wider Islamist front."
The scenario weighs on the minds of Israel's leaders who, as they have throughout their nation's history, feel under siege from all fronts – especially as they look to Iran in the east.
It is clear that the question of how to deal with what is seen to be the rise of Iran's nuclear capability and a commensurate rise in the threat level against the Jewish state is as big a problem as how to end the guerilla turmoil in Iraq.
"Iran's determination to acquire non-conventional weapons will no doubt be a disaster for the region," Chief of General Staff for the Israeli Defence Force, Moshe Ya'alon, told the conference.
"It is not just Israel's challenge, it is a challenge for the rest of the world," he said.
And so too is how to stop terror at its source, with a strong view emerging that the Donald Rumsfeld-led proactive attacks create more problems than solutions.
But, aside from musings about education and learning, just how to turn back the surging wave of Islamic militancy and the global threat it brings with it, the cream of counter-terrorism has few solutions.
"We should be determined to protect our values then to convince them that happiness is in this world, not the next world and that they don't have to suffer in this world to get happiness in the next," says Ya'alon.
The only other, perhaps optimistic, hope is to ride the revolution out.
"Every religion has had its fights when its leaders want to realign the religion with the demands of the time," says the former CIA officer. "Let's hope this chapter in time is the same."
US debates military strikes on 'nuclear Iran'
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1217314/posts
Thank you both for the links, much appreciated.
You are welcome, Chani.
Video Claims 25 Iraq Soldiers Kidnapped
Associated Press
CAIRO, Egypt - A videotape showing several Arab men seated at gunpoint - purportedly kidnapped Iraqi soldiers - was aired on an Arabic television station Sunday, and the announcer said they were threatened with death unless a detained Shiite leader is freed within 48 hours.
The video was from a group calling itself the Brigades of Mohammed bin Abdullah and claimed to have 25 captive members of the Iraqi National Guard, according to Al-Jazeera television, which obtained a copy of it.
The brief video clip aired by the station showed men in military dress sitting on the floor, with men standing behind them pointing guns to their heads. Most of the hostages had their heads bowed, but they were not blindfolded and appeared uninjured.
No audio was aired, but Al-Jazeera's announcer said the militants threatened to kill the 25 unless Hazem al-A'araji, a member of rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr' office in Baghdad, was released within 48 hours.
U.S. forces and soldiers from Iraq's national guard raided the Baghdad houses al-A'araji and another senior al-Sadr aide, Raed al-Khadumi, on Saturday. Al-A'araji and his brother were detained.
The raid came as a new round of talks with al-Sadr's militia rejected demands to disband and turn in their weapons in a poor Baghdad neighborhood called Sadr City. Dozens have died in sporadic clashes between U.S. forces and militiamen in Sadr City.
It was not clear where the hostages were taken or when the deadline expires.
An Al-Jazeera producer told The Associated Press the station received the tape Sunday.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1220646/posts?page=1
Next.....I don't get this. PLEASE don't ask me to try and figure anything out. It's frustrating to me and I get mad. :~(
Sorry didn't mean to upset you or anyone else.
psssst come join us
A guy called ''Buckhead'' did that, on the Free Republic
From the Chgo Sun-Times!
CBS defense of Rather hints at bigger story
http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn19.html
MWU! Poll
Muslim organizations will issue an endorsement for
George W. Bush 24.8%
John Kerry 40.5%
Ralph Nader 13.1%
No one this time 21.5%
Total Votes: 274
http://www.muslimwakeup.com/mainarchive/000639.php?action=results&poll_ident=69
This is what I'm talking about people!
LOL
Looking at the time seqence, three 4.+ quakes as precursurs then two 5.+ in a basin and range tectonic environment (geospeak) is interesting.
The sequence and the magnitudes involved in that tectonic setting are a little unusual. I'll have to check the USGS sites next week to see if some initial evaluations of these series of quakes have been done.
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