Posted on 07/06/2002 5:20:39 PM PDT by Pokey78
Terrorists are planning a series of spectacular attacks on American, British and Israeli targets to coincide with the anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Centre on 11 September last year.
Intelligence agencies in the UK, southern Asia and the Middle East are detecting an increased volume of communications between suspected al-Qaeda cells as the organisation, led by the fugitive Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden, accelerates efforts to pull off a major operation in the days around the anniversary of the New York and Washington attacks.
According to sources in Pakistan, al-Qaeda activists there have been given a three-month deadline to work with associates from local hardline Islamist organisations to target Western interests in the region.
British intelligence sources told The Observer that the UK is third on the list of al-Qaeda's preferred targets - after the US and Israel, and confirmed last night that credible reports of planned al-Qaeda attacks had grown.
'The threat remains high and the background noise has been growing over recent weeks. It's a question of when, rather than if, they will attempt another spectacular,' said one Whitehall source.
Western security agencies predominantly rely on communications intercepts, which they correlate with tip-offs from informers and information from questioning arrested suspects to alert them to forthcoming attacks. Increases in the volume of communications between known al-Qaeda suspects also suggest that action may be imminent.
Abu Zubaydah, the top al-Qaeda operative arrested in March in Pakistan, has told his American interrogators that the terrorist group was planning a wide range of 'mass casualty attacks'.
Bin Laden is believed to be hiding in the rugged mountains that line the frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Many of his followers remain in Pakistan.
Last week four al-Qaeda gunmen and three paramilitary policemen died in a shoot-out near Kohat, on the borders of the semi-autonomous tribal areas where an estimated 300 al-Qaeda fighters are hiding.
Investigators in Karachi, probing last month's bomb attack on the US consulate in the city, believe that al-Qaeda operatives are now linking up with local Islamic terror and crime groups to carry out their attacks.
The new warning is the second such alert issued by intelligence services in the last seven months. The CIA and MI6 issued a warning at the end of last year after interrogations of al-Qaeda suspects in Camp X-Ray in Cuba revealed that the al-Qaeda high command had regrouped after the bombing of Afghanistan and was already planning attacks across the world.
Moroccan intelligence sources told The Observer last month that they had been told by their American and British counterparts that al-Qaeda reconnaissance cells had been sent from Afghanistan after the bombing of the Tora Bora mountain HQ last December with detailed instructions to carry out attacks on Western and Jewish targets.
As a result the Moroccans were last month able to foil a 'spectacular' designed to hit British and American troops in the Strait of Gibraltar by arresting a cell of three Saudi al-Qaeda operatives. Following the destruction of their support infrastructure in Afghanistan last autumn, bin Laden's operatives have dispersed throughout the region and into the Middle East.
· Additional reporting: Leyla Tabrizi
I didn't know the Constitution of The United States gives foreign nationals the right to kill innocent civilians while restricting law enforcements ability to prevent the attacks.
Bin Laden is believed to be decomposing UNDER the rugged mountains.
That's part of what makes these Islamic murderers so pathetic, their inability to distinguish between their superstitious brethren and the empirically oriented West. The tricks they use to bedazzle a gang of camel-herders don't impress us. And they certainly don't SCARE us.
On the other hand, OUR retaliation takes a more concrete form, such as the little red package dropping from that B-2.
Not one of these "credible threats" has panned out. funny thing is, we know all of their commo, so we certainly should be able to locate them, eh? Easiest way to thwart attacks is to take out the attackers, planners, command levels...so why are we not doing that?
And this "color code" stuff...where is that code posted (you'd think it would be a banner ad or a streaming video on the televiosn like the sports scores and weather alerts)...or are there plags at post offices and the like? What color are we today (lessee...fuschia, mauve, or wht?)
Yup...a new threat alert and story each day...and by now, the US flags are scarcer, the alert and observant status has dwindled and the terrorists have us where they like us...blissfully ignorant, mentally masturbating, and in a fog...and nothing the feds do or annuce now has any great impact...sad, isn't it, that the most militarily powerful nation on the planet succombs to a few cheap box cutters and a civilian missle in the form of an airliner?
He probably had more than one lined up. If Gore were in office, they would have struck again while our "retaliation" was making its way through the ICC.
I'm tired of waiting, it's time to form the flank and put the weapons on "Rock & Roll". Let's fight this thing to the finish, and do it NOW!
These idiots are getting a large majority of this nation into "combat" mode. They are, waaaaay.. to stupid to realize it, but they are doing exactly that.
When your enemy is that dumb, let him run with the ball for a while. That gives you the retrobutional right to mop up everything else that pi$$es you off.
In the words of the California surfer..........GO FOR IT, DUDE!
I think he also said a Sherman can give you a nice edge, and in ref to a Tiger, you got hit it point blank and you gotta hit it in the a$$.
Either than or Santa's red sleigh except I don't see eight tiny reindeer.
I'm starting to realize that those holidays/events you mention are all American, Western Culture dates, of which holds virtually no significance to the average terrorist. If you ask an Arab when Christmas is, chances are that he could not tell you. If you ask me when Rammadon is, I could not give you an exact date; I can't even spell it. One date that would hold major significance to a terrorist/terrorist group would be the anniversary of the "great attack on Evil", Sept 11.
On an aside, McVeigh didn't blow up the Federal building on July 4th, it was on the anniversary of Waco. Also, it was Arab that was here for 10 years that did something (LAX) during one of our holidays.
I am starting to think that our government agencies are just putting the warnings out there as a deternent. If the terrorists think we are on to them then they will not try anything. I am sure they would attempt something on the anniversay of 9/11. I just thion k they Americans have become way to vigilant to allow something like that to occur on any 9/11 ever again. I hope I am right.
They fired the first volley by taking down what they saw as symbolic Judaism in the form of the destruction of the WTC. Let's match them like this:
Step 1: Phone up Indonesia and tell them to clear out the Pertronas Towers 1 and 2, the symbol of ascendant Islam. We are destroying them completely, afterwhich we are making it a landfill for pig carcasses. We will at least give them the courtesy of a warning where they did not do the same with us. Our intent is to destroy the symbol, not kill the people.
Step 2: Instead of continually losing more freedoms at airports and in our daily lives to a government that isn't making anyone else feel safer by shaking down Medal of Honor winners or 85 year old Anglo-grandmas, which is where terrorists are winning this thing, send the Saudi king a DVD featuring what daisy cutter bombs are capable of doing. Put him on notice that we will destroy the symbols of Islam systematically until Bin Laden is handed over, and terrorism ceases. Targets to be destroyed in this order:
a. Failure to produce Bin Laden? Destroy the Mosque of Omar in Jerusalem
b. Still fail to turn over Bin Laden or in the event of any one additional single act of terrorism against a US target: Phone the mayor of Medina, and tell him to clear the town. It's Petronas time all over again, pig carcasses and all.
c. Still don't get it? Third time, and it's Mecca itself.
How's that for a crusade? Simple effective solution isn't it? Worked with the Barbary pirates. Too intellegent for Colin Powell and that subterfuge over at the State Dep't. perhaps.
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