Posted on 10/03/2001 10:18:54 AM PDT by PrivacyChampion
'US called off first attacks' by Jeremy Campbell in Washington The United States and Britain yesterday called off military strikes against terrorist targets in Afghanistan at the last minute.
Washington officials say today that a severe attack of last-minute cold feet by some key Arab members of the coalition caused President Bush to postpone the operation.
The waverers are Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan and Oman, and US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is embarking on an urgent mission today to strengthen nerves in these countries.
Prime Minister Tony Blair is also about to undertake a hasty visit to the region. Saudi Arabia's support is especially vital, because Allied aircraft and commanders need its base facilities.
Two senior US officials have told reporters that until yesterday the Saudis were firm in their offer to provide assistance for strikes, including use of a state-of-the-art command centre at the Prince Royal Sultan Air Force Base.
Then the situation changed. One US official told Knight Newspapers: "That is no longer true. We fear there is something deeper here."
Mr Rumsfeld's trip to the Middle East is intended to mend these unexpected ruptures.
Downing Street, meanwhile, confirmed Mr Blair will be departing on a mission tomorrow but refused, on security grounds, to be drawn on any of the detail. Amid clear unease over the advance leaks of the trip, a spokesman dismissed all reports as "speculationî maintaining that some of the suggested calling points for the Prime Minister were simply wrong.
Mr Rumsfeld's tour, which includes Saudi Arabia, Oman, Egypt and Uzbekistan, is being compared to the stage-setting trip made by Dick Cheney, then Defence Secretary, to the Gulf just before the start of Desert Storm.
This time there is more at stake. Near the top of Mr Rumsfeld's list of priorities is to talk his way to an agreement with Uzbekistan, on the northern border of Afghanistan, to use the country as a staging area for the attack.
Uzbekistan is now regarded as a potential key asset in the coming showdown, but is rated the coalition's single most fragile link.
Highly attractive to the US are the number of abandoned air bases there, once used by the Soviet Union.
This will be Mr Rumsfeld's first face-to-face meeting with the ruling regime there. It has demanded that the US negotiate a complete Status of Forces Agreement before it will permit the use of its military bases - an unrealistic condition which could be tangled up in legal knots for years.
The trip, undertaken at the request of President Bush, is expected to last three days.
Oman, also skittish, is regarded as an important support base for a ground incursion. US special operations forces can be flown there and then put on amphibious invasion ships.
US officials are not sure whether this is a case of last minute jitters, or " something more serious".
One notable omission on Mr Rumsfeld's itinerary is Pakistan. "The last thing Pakistan needs is a high profile visit by a US Secretary of Defence," said a Pentagon official.
The country is contending with ferocious anti-American demonstrations, with Mr Bus burned in effigy and hordes shouting: "Death to America! Let Americans come here to be buried!"
Washington officials advised reporters not to assume military action was only hours away. They stressed that Mr Bush will act only when he is convinced, by Mr Rumsfeld and others, that "all the pieces are in place". Such action will come "at various stages and times", they said. The President himself told reporters there is "no calendar" for the start of hostilities.
This "information" has not been released without consideration of it's impact on all of the parties involved. Either the information is correct, and the politicians want everyone to know that attacks are imminent, or the information is false and the politicians want to gage the response of all parties. Either way, don't be stunned, this is a multifaceted card game and bluffing is a legitimate strategy.
And your statement is what happens when ignorance trumps reason.
Race has nothing to do with any of this, except in the limited minds of some.
Look, I'm in favor of decisive military action as much as the next guy -- probably more -- but did it ever occur to you that Powell is NOT Secretary of Defense, he's Secretary of State, and it's his JOB to present the diplomatic options, not the military options, to the President?
Translation: "You are with us, or unless you have oil, you are with the terrorists."
me too.
As for the precious coalition, screw them all! When we get done with mopping up the terrorist networks, I say we move in and replace the government of Saudi Arabia. These guys are corrupt; they live off the wealth of the nation's oil production, with little going back into the welfare of the nation in general; they have little support from their own people. The world would be a better place without them. In the meantime, we need to roll -- with them, or without them.
1. Ultra-secret and extremely credible (and terrifying) assassination threats against the leaders personally.
2. Ultra-secret requests for more American bribe money, er, aid money.
I'm not, this what happens when you fight a war by commitee, especially ones that include the enemy. Right now we have lost and terrorism is the most effective weapon any country could have in it's arsenal against the weak, cowardly and liberal west.
It's like having a fire drill at work several times a week. At first, everybody vacates the building quickly. But after a few days, people start getting aggravated. They start shuffling out with their hands in their pockets. Some of them begin to just ignore the alarms and stay at their desks. After a while, it all becomes a big joke. When was the last time anybody ever took a car alarm seriously?
I think this is the perfect setup. Let the press think the attack is "imminent" and keep pulling back. Make it seem like we don't have the support or we don't have the resolve. Pretty soon, the Taliban aren't going to take us seriously either. In the meantime, we have all this extra time to get additional forces and materials into place so that when we finally do strike, not only do we catch them off guard but we attack with overwhelming force.
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