Форумы Арктогеи (geopolitics): ГЕОПОЛИТИКА И ПОЛИТОЛОГИЯ (архив): США после 11 сентября 2001: архив тем: Conspirology about Usama bin Laden

13135: By Аналитик ЦГЭ on Четверг, Ноябрь 01, 2001 - 21:41:

CIA AGENT ALLEGEDLY MET BIN LADEN IN JULY From 'Le Figaro' [1 November 2001] Translated by Tiphaine Dickson =========================== By Alexandra Richard (Page 2, October 31st, 2001) Dubai, one of the seven emirates of the Federation of the United Arab Emirates, North-East of Abi-Dhabi. This city, population 350,000, was the backdrop of a secret meeting between Osama bin Laden and the local CIA agent in July. A partner of the administration of the American Hospital in Dubai claims that public enemy number one stayed at this hospital between the 4th and 14th of July. Having taken off from the Quetta airport in Pakistan, bin Laden was transferred to the hospital upon his arrival at Dubai airport. He was accompanied by his personal physician and faithful lieutenant, who could be Ayman al-Zawahari--but on this sources are not entirely certain--, four bodyguards, as well as a male Algerian nurse, and admitted to the American Hospital, a glass and marble building situated between the Al-Garhoud and Al-Maktoum bridges. Each floor of the hospital has two "VIP" suites and fifteen rooms. The Saudi billionnaire was admitted to the well-respected urology department run by Teerry Callaway, gallstone and infertility specialist. Dr Callaway declined to respond to our questions despite several phone calls. As early as March, 2000, 'Asia Week,' published in Hong Kong, expressed concern for bin Laden's health, describing a serious medical problem that could put his life in danger because of "a kidney infection that is propagating itself to the liver and requires specialized treatment". According to authorized sources, bin Laden had mobile dialysis equipment shipped to his hideout in Kandahar in the first part of 2000. According to our sources, bin Laden's "travels for health reasons" have taken place before. Between 1996 and 1998, bin Laden made several trips to Dubai on business. On September 27th, 15 days after the World Trade Center attacks, at the request of the United States, the Central Bank of the Arab Emirates announced an order to freeze assts and investments of 26 people or organisations suspected of mainting contact with bin Laden's organization, and in particular at the Dubai Islamic Bank. "Relations between the Emirate and Saudi Arabia have always been very close," according to sources, "princes of reigning families, having recognized the Taliban regime, often travelled to Afghanistan. One of the princes of a ruling family regularily went hunting on the land of bin Laden, whom he had known and visited for many years." There are daily flights between Dubai and Quetta by both Pakistan and Emirates Airlines. As to private planes from Saudi Arabia or from the Emirates, they regulariy fly to Quetta, where their arrival is rarely registered in airport logs. While he was hospitalised, bin Laden received visits from many members of his family as well as prominent Saudis and Emiratis. During the hospital stay, the local CIA agent, known to many in Dubai, was seen taking the main elevator of the hospital to go to bin Laden's hospital room. A few days later, the CIA man bragged to a few friends about having visited bin Laden. Authorised sources say that on July 15th, the day after bin Laden returned to Quetta, the CIA agent was called back to headquarters. In late July, Emirates customs agents arrested Franco-Algerian activist Djamel Beghal at the Dubai airport. In early August, French and American authorities were advised of the arrest. Interrogated by local authorities in Abu Dhabi, Beghal stated that he was called to Afghanistan in late 2000 by Abou Zoubeida, a military leader of bin Laden's organization, Al Qaeda. Beghal's mission: bomb the US embassy on Gabriel avenue, near the Place de la Concorde, upon his return to France. According to Arab diplomatic sources as well as French intelligence, very specific information was transmitted to the CIA with respect to terrorist attacks against American interests around the world, including on US soil. A DST report dated 7 September enumerates all the intelligence, and specifies that the order to attack was to come from Afghanistan. In August, at the US Embassy in Paris, an emergency meeting was called between the DGSE (French foreign intelligence service) and senior US intelligence officials. The Americans were extremely worried, and requested very specific information from the French about Algerian activists, without advising their counterparts about the reasons for their requests. To the question "what do you fear in the coming days?", the Americans kept a difficult-to-fathom silence. Contacts between the CIA and bin Laden began in 1979 when, as a representative of his family's business, bin Laden began recruiting volunteers for the Afghan resistance against the Red Army. FBI investigators examining the embassy bombing sites in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam discovered that evidence led to military explosives from the US Army, and that these explosives had been delivered threee years earlier to Afghan Arabs, the infamous international volunteer brigades involved side by side with bin Laden during the Afghan war against the Red Army. In the pursuit of its investigations, the FBI discovered "financing agreements" that the CIA had been developing with its "arab friends" for years. The Dubai meeting is then within the logic of "a certain American policy". (c) Le Figaro 2001 * Reprinted for Fair Use Only

13136: By Аналитик ЦГЭ on Четверг, Ноябрь 01, 2001 - 21:47:

The creation called Osama By Shamsul Islam Reprinted from 'The Hindu' (India) September 27, 2001 [Posted 27 September 2001] ======================================= THE UNPRECEDENTED deaths and destruction in two cities of the U.S. on September 11 has stirred the conscience of the world. It was the most lethal, ruthless and daring terrorist strike on the nerve centre of the world's most powerful nation today. The U.S., which promises to guarantee security to the world, was found wanting in checking the terrorist strikes at home for more than 40 minutes when the terrorists had the free run of its major airports, highjacking not one or two but four domestic planes to be used as flying bombs. It did not take long for the U.S. establishment to identify the culprits who masterminded these terrorist acts. These were the `evil' forces of `Islamic terrorism' led by Osama bin Laden. The mainstream U.S. media went on to explain these terrorist attacks in the context of the `clash of civilisations' thesis of Samuel Huntington. There were urgent calls for "forming a global alliance that will use all tools - diplomatic, political, economic, educational, investigative, and where appropriate, force - to pursue and root out the terrorist criminals and their supporters...'' But it is really surprising that the U.S., mecca of information technology with its super computers and all kinds of data bases, should be so greatly short of memory about Osama bin Laden. The media in the U.S. these days is full of biographical sketches of Osama bin Laden in which he appears on the world scene in 1990 opposing the Gulf War and then is shown growing into an anti-West monster, finally, targeting the U.S. on `Black Tuesday'. However, it may be news to many ears that Osama's journey as a terrorist did not start in 1990-1991. Any honest biographical description of Osama should not overlook his activities in the 1980s when he was deputed by the CIA to Afghanistan to finance and oversee the resistance to the Soviets. He was groomed as a theocratic-terrorist by the U.S. openly. In fact, there is lot of weight in the thesis that the modern Jehadi-Islam is a byproduct of intrigues by the West to keep the Islamic world under its suzerainty, devoid of any kind of democratic processes. And also to use it as a whipping boy occasionally whenever attention needs to be diverted from issues raised by anti-globalisation campaigners. The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), which has a long tradition of opposing the Taliban regime and paying for it with blood, raised this issue in its September 14 press statement. While condemning the terrorist attack, the statement went on to underline the fact that "the people of Afghanistan have nothing to do with Osama and his accomplices. But unfortunately we must say that it was the Government of the United States who supported Pakistani dictator Gen. Zia-ul-Haq in creating thousands of religious schools from which the germs of Taliban emerged. In the similar way, as is clear to all, Osama has been the blue-eyed boy of the CIA''. How the U.S. and the CIA created Osama and his network has been well-documented in the book "Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia'' by Ahmed Rashid who is the Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review and The Daily Telegraph of London. This book which has been published by the Yale University Press clearly shows who in reality created Osama. Ahmed Rashid in his superb expose is able to present the factual linkages between the U.S. and the `monster' which it created. Some of the excerpts are too revealing too be missed. In 1986, CIA chief William Casey had stepped up the war against the Soviet Union by taking three significant, but at that time highly secret, measures. He had persuaded the U.S. Congress to provide the Mujaheddin with American-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to shoot down Soviet planes and provide U.S. advisers to train the guerrillas. The CIA, Britain's MI6 and the ISI (Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence) also agreed on a provocative plan to launch guerrilla attacks into the Soviet Socialist Republics of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the soft Muslim underbelly of the Soviet state from where Soviet troops in Afghanistan received their supplies. Casey was delighted with the news, and on his next secret trip to Pakistan he crossed the border into Afghanistan with President Zia to review the Mujaheddin groups. "Thirdly, Casey committed CIA support to a long-standing ISI initiative to recruit radical Muslims from around the world to come to Pakistan and fight with the Afghan Mujaheddin. Washington wanted to demonstrate that the entire Muslim world was fighting the Soviet Union alongside the Afghans and their American benefactors.'' The book also goes on to show in graphic detail how harmless madrassas were turned into factories for breeding religious guerillas. "... between 1982 and 1992, some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 43 Islamic countries in the Middle East, North and East Africa, Central Asia and the Far East would pass their baptism under fire with the Afghan Mujaheddin. Tens of thousands more foreign Muslim radicals came to study in the hundreds of new madrassas that Zia's military government began to fund in Pakistan and along the Afghan border. Eventually more than 100,000 Muslim radicals were to have direct contact with Pakistan and Afghanistan and be influenced by the jihad... "In camps near Peshawar and in Afghanistan, these radicals met each other for the first time and studied, trained and fought together. It was the first opportunity for most of them to learn about Islamic movements in other countries, and they forged tactical and ideological links that would serve them well in the future. The camps became virtual universities for future Islamic radicalism''.Interesting details of Osama's recruitment by the CIA for jehad in Afghanistan are also available in this book. "Among these thousands of foreign recruits was a young Saudi student, Osama Bin Laden, the son of a Yemeni construction magnate, Mohammed Bin Laden, who was a close friend of the late King Faisal and whose company had become fabulously wealthy on the contracts to renovate and expand the Holy Mosques of Mecca and Medina. The ISI had long wanted Prince Turki Bin Faisal, the head of Istakhbarat, the Saudi Intelligence Service, to provide a Royal Prince to lead the Saudi contingent in order to show Muslims the commitment of the Royal Family to the jehad. Only poorer Saudis, students, taxi drivers and Bedouin tribesmen had so far arrived to fight. But no pampered Saudi prince was ready to rough it out in the Afghan mountains. Bin Laden, although not a royal, was close enough to the royals and certainly wealthy enough to lead the Saudi contingent so when Bin Laden decided to join up, his family responded enthusiastically. He first traveled to Peshawar in 1980 and met the Mujaheddin leaders, returning frequently with Saudi donations for the cause until 1982, when he decided to settle in Peshawar. In 1986, he helped build the Khost tunnel complex, which the CIA was funding as a major arms storage depot, training facility and medical center for the Mujaheddin, deep under the mountains close to the Pakistan border.'' The book also demolishes the CIA claim that after 1990 there were no contacts with Osama. Surprisingly, just a few weeks before the U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa, the book tells us, "the Saudi conundrum was even worse. In July 1998 Prince Turki had visited Kandahar and a few weeks later 400 new pick-up trucks arrived in Kandahar for the Taliban, still bearing their Dubai license plates''. This all shows that any meaningful fight back against world terrorism today will have to begin from the backyard of the U.S. (The writer is Reader, Department of Political Science, Satyawati College, University of Delhi.) Original URL http://www.hinduonnet.com/stories/05272524.htm (C) 'The Hindu' 2001 Reprinted for Fair Use Only

13137: By Аналитик ЦГЭ on Четверг, Ноябрь 01, 2001 - 21:50:

24 REASONS TO OPPOSE NATO: ======================================= [Note from Rick Rozoff at emperors-clothes.com: Richard Sanders is the coordinator of the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Race [COAT] and is organizing the "No to NATO: Festival of Creative NonViolence" in Ottawa, Canada on October 6th to protest the NATO PA meeting there from October 5-8. The following compilation of reasons to oppose NATO is the most comprehensive and convincing I've ever seen, and I would strongly encourage all friends of peace and international justice to contact Richard and offer assistance. And please pass this on to friends and other contacts.] In preparation for COAT's "No to NATO: Festival of Creative NonViolence" (on Oct. 6, in Ottawa), I've produced a tentative list of "REASONS TO OPPOSE NATO." Please feel free to suggest additional reasons or ways to improve the list. This is a draft. - Richard Sanders, Coordinator, Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT) ==================================== 24 REASONS TO OPPOSE NATO: (1) NATO is a creature of the Cold War and should be abolished, not expanded. (2) NATO's official military doctrine reserves for itself the right to use nuclear weapons despite the fact that in 1996 the World Court made such use, or threat, illegal. NATO's "first use" nuclear weapons policy means it is willing to use nuclear weapons even when none have been used against them. The use of nuclear weapons contravenes International Humanitarian Law because civilian deaths would be massive and indiscriminate. NATO's nuclear weapons also pose the risk of environmental catastrophe, including the global holocaust of "nuclear winter." NATO's nuclear weapons policy also contravenes the Nonproliferation Treaty (to which all NATO members are signatories) that requires all states to press quickly to abolish nuclear weapons. NATO member states (US, UK and France) now have more than 9,000 nuclear warheads in active service, about 60% of the world's nuclear arsenal. These three NATO states have committed some of their nuclear weapons to NATO for its use in war. NATO itself maintains between 60 and 200 nuclear weapons at airbases in Western Europe. NATO's nuclear weapons and the threat of their use are a means of coercion and intimidation, especially against states that do not possess these weapons. (3) NATO's powerful core members (the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, Holland, Belgium and Spain) have a long history of controlling vast empires. Former colonies of these NATO countries -- today's Third World -- still suffer from tragic economic inequalities resulting from hundreds of years of imperialism imposed by nations that are now members of NATO. Transnational corporations controlled by economic interests in NATO countries continue to dominate these former colonies under a neoliberal economic system now labeled "corporate globalization." (4) According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, about 80% of the world's total military equipment was produced by NATO members in 1996. The following NATO members are among the world's top ten military producers: the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, Italy and Canada. The U.S., U.K. and France alone contributed about 70% of world's total arms production for that year. (5) After the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, NATO became increasingly irrelevant and needed a reason for its continued existence. NATO therefore escalated its efforts to foment ethnic wars in the Balkans in order to create excuses for its own military interventions in the region. NATO's interventions -- so-called "humanitarian wars" -- were then sold to the public as a means of settling conflicts between ethnic groups. NATO's real purpose is to expand the colonial spheres of influence of its member states and their corporate allies. (6) NATO waged a war of aggression against Yugoslavia that was illegal under its own Charter and various international laws. (7) NATO forces used 1,200 warplanes and helicopters to fly 35,000 combat missions against Yugoslavia. It dropped 20,000 bombs and missiles containing 80,000 tons of explosives on that country. Contrary to international law, NATO targeted civilian infrastructure, including over 1,000 targets of no military significance, such as: schools, hospitals, farms, bridges, roads, railways, waterlines, media stations, historic and cultural monuments, museums, factories, oil refineries and petrochemical plants. (8) NATO's illegal bombing campaign severely impacted the health of Yugoslavia's civilian population. Thousands of civilians were killed, at least 6,000 were injured and countless others, especially children, suffered severe psychological trauma. (9) According to the UN Environmental Program, NATO's bombing campaign triggered an ecological catastrophe in Yugoslavia and the surrounding region. (10) In its war against Yugoslavia, NATO used weapons that are prohibited by the Hague and Geneva Conventions and the Nuremburg Charter, such as depleted uranium missiles that are radioactive and highly toxic weapons with long-term, life-threatening health and environmental consequences, and anti-personnel cluster bombs designed to kill and maim (that contravene the "Ottawa Process on Landmines" because many "bomblets" do not explode during initial impact). NATO continues to stockpile these prohibited weapons for use against civilian populations in future wars. (11) After its bombing of Yugoslavia, NATO refused to disarm the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) as required by United Nations resolution 1244. Instead, NATO converted the KLA into the Kosovo Protection Force supposedly to maintain peace and order in NATO-controlled Kosovo. Under the watchful eye of 40,000 NATO troops, the revamped KLA terrorists ethnically cleansed the area of 250,000 people who were not of Albanian heritage (as well as some ethnic Albanians loyal to Yugoslavia). During NATO's occupation, 1,300 citizens have been killed and another 1,300 have been reported missing. Kosovo's remaining minorities have no freedom of movement, live in ghettoes and face frequent terrorist attacks and property destruction. (12) NATO appointed Agim Ceku, an alleged war criminal, as commander of the Kosovo Protection Force. Ceku, an Albanian Kosovar, led the Croatian army's "Operation Storm" that ethnically cleansed the Serbian population from their ancestral lands in Croatia. If the Hague were to pursue an indictment of Ceku, and other such terrorists, it would be a major embarrassment to their NATO bosses. (13) As an occupying colonial power, NATO forces helped to enforce the cancellation of election results in Bosnia, shut down the offices and transmission towers of media stations that were critical of NATO's presence and seized the assets of political parties that refused to cooperate with them. (14) The exploitative behavior rampant in military culture is exemplified by the actions of NATO troops based in the Balkans. For example, NATO troops fuel the demand for prostitution in both Bosnia and Kosovo. The women who service NATO troops live in deplorable conditions and are frequently held against their will by local captors. When evidence of UN or NATO involvement in this trade has surfaced, implicated officers have been discharged and sent home but no criminal proceedings have ever been initiated against them. (15) NATO has been a prime source of destabilization in Macedonia by giving military assistance to Albanian terrorists there. The London Times (June 10, 2001) reported that NATO's appointee to the Kosovo Protection Force, Agim Ceku, sent 800 KLA troops to Macedonia to aid the nascent Albanian insurgency there. This June, NATO troops intervened to evacuate KLA fighters when Macedonian forces closed in on the rebels near Aracinovo. German media reports state that NATO's evacuation was ordered because 17 former U.S. military personnel -- hardened by years of Balkan fighting and working for a private U.S. mercenary group -- were among the KLA terrorists. NATO has also used diplomatic means to pressure the Macedonian government to succumb to Albanian demands. (16) NATO's aggressive policy of expansion into Eastern Europe severely threatens international stability. With NATO's annexation of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland now complete, Albania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia have declared an interest in joining the NATO juggernaut. NATO has also set its sights on penetrating even further into former Soviet spheres of influence by trying to encompass Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and the Ukraine. NATO's intention to press beyond the former borders of the Soviet Union is dangerously confrontational and risks provoking war with Russia. (17) NATO's expansion into Central and Eastern Europe is a means of integrating the military forces within those countries under NATO (and largely U.S.) control As military units within NATO, the armed forces of new NATO member states must submit to demands for standardization of military training, weapons and other military equipment. Requirements that new members standardize their military equipment to NATO's exacting specifications is a tremendous boon to U.S. and European military industries that profit greatly from these expanded export markets. (18) New NATO member states may also lose sovereignty over other important aspects of their armed forces, such as the command, control, communications and intelligence functions, which also risk being subsumed under the auspices of NATO standardization. (19) The reasons for NATO's expansion eastward are largely economic. For instance, NATO's military access and control over Eastern Europe helps Western European corporations to secure strategic energy resources such as oil from the Caspian Sea and Central Asia. The U.S. and Western European corporations will greatly benefit from NATO's control of the oil corridor through the Caucasus mountains. NATO wants its troops to patrol this pipeline and to dominate the Armenian/Russian route to the Caspian Sea. The Caucasus also link the Adriatic-Ceyhan-Baku pipeline with oil-rich countries even farther east, in the former Soviet Central Asia republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Billions of dollars in oil may someday flow through these corridors to Western Europe for the benefit of Western-based oil companies. (20) NATO's growth is not only a provocation to Russia, it also threatens the security of China and other Asian states that may respond in kind by increasing their military spending, thus diverting resources from the essential needs of their citizens. NATO's expansion may eventually provoke an anti-NATO alliance in Asia, further destabilizing peace and leading to possible future wars. (21) As part of the "NATO Defence Capabilities Initiative," NATO member states have committed themselves to increase their military abilities for "power projection, mobility and increased interoperability." This will require significant additional military expenditures. European NATO countries have already increased their expenditures for military equipment by 11% in real terms since 1995. Meanwhile, military budgets in the U.S. and Canada have also increased over the past two years. The military budgets of NATO countries amounted to about 60% of the world's total military spending (US$798 billion) for the year 2000. Rather than focusing on such genuinely humanitarian priorities as providing food, housing, health care, education, environmental protection and public transportation for their populations and the rest of the world, NATO is intent on increasing their military budgets for future interventions even farther afield. (22) The testing and training conducted by NATO to prepare for war, also has numerous negative impacts on people and the environment. NATO's war preparations include military exercises, the training of pilots and the testing of weapons and warplanes. For instance, low level flight training areas and bombing ranges in Nitassinan threaten the traditional lifestyle of many in the Innu Nation. Their unceded territory in Quebec and Labrador is being turned into a military wasteland by NATO test flights. NATO nations also carry out dangerous bombing practices on Vieques Island, off Puerto Rico. (23) In the late 1940s-early 1950s, at the bidding of the CIA, NATO helped to set up secret paramilitary, anti-communist cells in at least 16 European states. Originally called Operation "Stay Behind," this network of guerrilla armies was created to fight behind the lines in case of a Soviet invasion. It was codified under the umbrella of the Clandestine Co-ordinating Committee of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (which became NATO). These clandestine armies were condemned by the European Union in a resolution (Dec. 22, 1990) that blamed the CIA and NATO for their 40 year role in overseeing this covert operation. Widely known by the code name for the Italian campaign (i.e., "Operation Gladio") these organizations, which the EU feared may still have been operating in 1990, were accused of illegal interference in political affairs, conducting terrorist attacks, jeopardizing democratic structures and other serious crimes. (24) Key NATO representatives have interfered with internal electoral/political developments in Europe. Although recent elections in Albania were fraught with irregularities and fraud (ballot box stuffing, ghost voters, selective disenfranchisement) NATO General Secretary George Robertson pronounced the election fair and legitimate. Earlier this year, another NATO spokesperson openly threatened that if the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (the party of former premier Vladimir Meciar) entered a coalition government, Slovakia would not be welcomed into NATO or allowed early European Union membership.

13138: By Аналитик ЦГЭ on Четверг, Ноябрь 01, 2001 - 22:06:

President Bush, Al-Qaeda, and Alcohol by Gary North It is clear that President Bush regards his campaign against Al-Qaeda's terrorism as defining his Presidency. There are many other terrorist groups, such as the Irish Republican Army and Islamic terrorists operating out of Pakistan in Kashmir, but Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda are the focus of his concern. ("Al-Qaeda" means "the base.") His speech before Congress set forth an all-or-nothing strategy. He said that he will not relent in his pursuit of the accomplices of those men who he said had attacked the nation on September 11. He defined his new foreign policy clearly: those who harbor terrorists √ Al-Qaeda terrorists √ are against the United States. He has adopted the "unconditional surrender" military policy that was first articulated and applied in American history by the North during the American Civil War, and was continued by Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman in World War II. America abandoned unconditional surrender in Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War. Now Mr. Bush has returned the nation to the older policy. Unconditional Force The strategy of unconditional surrender has to be fought with unconditional force. When a President allows an enemy no conditions for surrendering, his goal is total victory. Total victory leads to total aggression. In the Civil War, this meant that the Union's military terrorized civilians in the South who were perceived as giving aid and comfort to enemy military forces. During World War II, the tactics of total war became familiar on all sides. (I recommend the 1989 book Total War, co-authored by my former teaching assistant colleague, R. John Pritchard.) We are now seeing the familiar tactics associated with the strategy of unconditional surrender: war on civilians. Wherever Osama bin Laden is, he is not likely in Kabul, where our planes are bombing daily. He is not in any city. He is one of those caves where the President said in his speech to Congress that we will chase him out of. Bin Laden is not going to be hit by cluster bombs √ "land mines from the sky" √ which our planes are dropping on civilian urban areas. A cluster bomb contains 200 "bomblets" that scatter over a large area. Unexploded cluster bombs on the ground act as land mines when touched. These cluster bombs are yellow. So are the food packages that we are dropping into Afghanistan. This has created a major public relations problem for the United States in Afghanistan. The military is now broadcasting radio messages in the local languages, telling people to be careful when they pick up anything yellow. I wonder: How many Afghans have radios? I hope they all listen to the right station. As for Mullah Omar, who leads the Taliban, one of our unmanned reconnaissance Predator aircraft had him and his convoy in its sites, but the micro-managing Air Force general back at Florida's Mac Dill Air Force Base refused to allow an immediate attack because his Judge Advocate General √ a lawyer √ refused to approve it. After all, no one was sure that Omar was in the convoy. Omar got away. (This story was reported by Seymour Hersh in the September 22 issue of The New Yorker.) So, it's total war on civilian-occupied areas in Afghanistan, but it's limited war inside Air Force law offices in Florida. CMA is still the supreme tactic among senior military officers, no matter what the President's official strategy is. Al-Qaeda In a September 23 e-mail report by James Joseph Sanchez, a Ph.D. in Middle East studies, the author describes the Al-Qaeda network, which is interlinked with many legal Islamic organizations worldwide. Despite uninformed gloating, Al-Qaeda ["The Base"] and the Taliban are not isolated, either geographically (even if Afghanistan is landlocked) or politically. Leaving aside the question of the Taliban's well-known, direct ties with the vast smuggling trade between Europe and South Asia, the Taliban and especially Al-Qaeda have a vast support infrastructure throughout the "North" (that is the "West" plus Russia and Eastern Europe). And despite the incessant chatter about Osama Bin Laden's putative $350 million fortune, it is clear that in addition to, but isolated from, the military infrastructure of Al-Qaeda, in Europe there is a parallel infrastructure that is a source of money, recruits and technology for Al-Qaeda. . . . (Since I assume that addressing the underlying problems that create the environment out of which groups like Al-Qaeda is politically impossible, it seems likely that successors to Al-Qaeda will arise one after another, forever.) It is worth remembering than neither the UK nor the United States have ever succeeded in destroying an ethno-religious support network underpinning military-terrorist networks: dozens of such networks exist in both nations and even more in Canada. . . . Al-Qaeda, a loosely linked, worldwide military movement, is characteristically seen as having at its core the Afghan Arab veterans from the war against the Soviets. Numbering some 50,000, drawn from a dozen countries, the Afghan Arabs are far less numerous than the larger recruiting base from which the open support networks of Al-Qaeda and Taliban can potentially recruit from in the vast and rapidly growing Muslim community of the West, even leaving aside the intense and rather surprising drive to win religico-ideological converts. There is no way that the United States is going to stamp out the Al-Qaeda network in the narrow sense, let alone the broader Muslim network that Sanchez describes in detail. The more military pressure that we bring on Afghanistan, the more the Islamic world will provide volunteers to fight. This is now happening in England. In an October 30 article in the London Times, we read of the rage of young male Muslims in the town of Luton. THERE is a terrible, visceral rage among Luton's young Muslim brotherhood, a fury so powerful that already dozens of men, all British born and highly educated, have disappeared to fight for the Taleban. It has left parents terrified, the town's mosques full of loathing and yesterday, as The Times discovered first-hand, seen journalists and photographers physically attacked. . . Within a minute of arriving outside the mosque, this Times reporter and cameraman were set upon by a Muslim man, who had rushed, enraged, from a halal butcher shop. "You insult Islam, you corrupt Islam!" he screamed, smashing the camera to the ground and grabbing another photographer by the throat. "You don't understand how angry we Muslims are!" Five other Muslim men joined him, surrounding us, as he demanded the other camera. Their sense of fury was frightening. . . . "They want to die there," Mr Abdullah said. "These are well-educated people. They have families. I knew Afzal. He loved his wife. But you must understand: all Muslims in Britain view supporting the jihad (holy war) as a religious duty. All of us are ready to sacrifice our lives for our beliefs. I am jealous of Afzal. He has reached paradise." He continued: "There are people leaving all the time. Not just in Luton, but all over Britain. We, as Muslims, don't perceive ourselves as British Muslims. We are Muslims who live in Britain. All we want to do is go to Afghanistan to defend the honour and sanctity of Islam. Behind such talk, which dismays the elderly leaders of Luton's 22,000 Muslims, lurk the seductive, articulate disciples of Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad, leader of al-Muhajiroun, the British Islamist organisation that encouraged Mr Munir and Aftab Manzoor, the other dead man, to join the jihad. Sheikh Omar, who is under investigation for allegedly issuing a fatwa against the Pakistan President, General Musharraf, described the two men as "martyrs beyond a doubt". The organization identified in this article as being behind the Luton exodus, Al-Muhajiroun, is the one described in Sanchez's report. It is connected to the Al-Qaeda network. It has a Website: www.almuhajiroun.com. Sanchez writes: Al-Muhajiroun means the "Emigrants" and is explicitly an institution dedicated to the mobilization of Muslims in the North for (as it defines them) Islamic goals. Al-Mujahiroun was established in 1995, being a splinter group that broke off from Hizb-ut-Tahrir. The leader of Al-Muhajiroun is Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad. Al-Muhajiroun is quite open, completely legal and quite dedicated to the destruction of all governments and societies in the North and their replacement with Taliban-like regimes. Al-Muhajiroun operates within a vast network of organizations and in numerous ephemeral coalitions of organizations: while many of these groups are simply being used as camouflage by Al-Muhajiroun, the unbreakable lockstep between Al-Muhajiroun and the little known (but quite busy) Taliban Council of Europe reflects a genuine alliance. We know now that President Bush was putting together an anti-Taliban, anti-Osama bin Laden military coalition as early as March, 2001. Bin Laden (or someone) launched a pre-emptive strike on September 11. This persuaded the President to launch a direct military strike against an Islamic country. The jihad against the United States has now begun. The entire Islamic world has become a recruiting ground for this jihad. The President is about to receive a history lesson in Islamic studies. These radicals are part of a long tradition of Islamic war against the West. They do not forget. They do not forgive. This war will still be in operation long after Mr. Bush has joined his father in retirement. I don't expect it to end in my lifetime, or my son's lifetime. Guilt and Alcohol At some point, Mr. Bush may realize that he has bitten off far more than he or his successors can easily chew. At some point, he may realize that his military strategists' policy of bombing civilian areas has backfired. He may even conclude what is obvious to me: his military campaign in Afghanistan matches his own definition of terrorism. This is taken from Executive Order on Terrorist Financing: Blocking Property and Prohibiting Transactions With Persons Who Commit, Threaten to Commit, or Support Terrorism .... (d) the term "terrorism" means an activity that: (i) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure; and (ii) appears to be intended: (A) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (B) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (C) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, kidnapping, or hostage-taking. The word "or" indicates that not all three features must be present to define terrorism. One is sufficient. The President has admitted publicly that he had a major problem with drinking. He said that he quit drinking in 1986. He went cold turkey. This is not an easy thing to do. He did not attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, he says, unlike his predecessor as Governor of Texas, Ann Richards, and unlike the late Bob Bullock, the Lieutenant Governor of Texas under Bush, who was a good friend of Bush, despite being a Democrat. The President says that his conversion to personal faith in Christ got him sober and has kept him sober. Billy Graham was an instrument in his achieving sobriety. I have no reason not to believe Bush's testimony. I am quite serious about the following. He is now in a fearful position. What does an incumbent President do for help with this problem? What does a wartime President do? He perceives himself as a wartime President. If the pressure to start drinking again begins to get to him, does he start attending AA meetings? With how many Secret Service agents? "Hi, I'm George B., and I'm an alcoholic." "Hi, George!" This is not a joke. I am very serious about the implications of this affliction. Wartime leaders can carry on a war as alcoholics. Stalin was an alcoholic. So was Churchill. The best book I have ever read on alcoholism dealt with both leaders: James Graham's Engines of Rage, Vessels of Power: The Secret History of Alcoholism (1994). But every alcoholic is different. No alcoholic knows today what he will do tomorrow. This is why AA members adopt "one day at a time" as their recommended personal chronology. There is a reason for the biblical warning, "It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine; nor for princes strong drink: Lest they drink, and forget the law, and pervert the judgment of any of the afflicted (Prov. 31:4-5). I want President Bush to stop the bombing the afflicted. I want him to abandon his military strategy of unconditional surrender and his foreign policy strategy of "with us or against us." But if he re-thinks these strategies, he will face the problem of guilt. Christianity teaches that a man's guilt was taken care of judicially by Christ at Calvary, but this intellectual knowledge does not always produce spiritual peace. So, when I pray √ as I do daily √ that Mr. Bush would stop listening to the military strategists who designed this policy of bombing cities, I also pray that he will stay sober. The twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are not well known to the general public. The first three are the most famous. 1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol √ that our lives had become unmanageable. 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. It is the ones lower on the list that could, at some point, become a problem for the President. 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Conclusion President Bush needs our prayers, both to abandon his present military strategy and to deal successfully with his publicly confessed condition. We critics should not complain about his unwillingness to do the first if we are unwilling to give him support on the second. November 1 , 2001 To subscribe to Gary North's free e-mail letter, click here. © 2001 LewRockwell.com