Here's yet another scrap that prompted me to be doubtful about the official "bin Laden story":
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
LATEST SITREP ON U.S. EMBASSY BOMBINGS IN AFRICA
From the ERRI Watch Center
NAIROBI (EmergencyNet News) - Investigators on Monday were focusing on finding some answers at a crime scene guarded by armed U.S. Marines and hidden from public view by black fabric. The nearly simultaneous blasts at the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, the were said to be sophisticated attacks and suspicion has turned to the usual suspects: Islamic terrorists.
The death toll is about the same as was reported on Sunday, at least 200 dead in Nairobi and nearly 5,000 injured; at least ten dead in Dar es Salaam and 74 injured.
Israeli media was reporting on Monday that investigators suspect the bombers used the Czech-manufactured Semtex, which is much more powerful than more traditional explosives such as TNT. The investigators, who were not identified, said use of the plastic explosive, which is favored by the Irish Republican Army, implies a big organization, or even a state, plotted the attack because Semtex is not readily available. But since the downfall of the Soviet bloc, Semtex has been easier to acquire on the international arms market. Experts say the vehicle bomb probably contained as much as 600 pounds of explosives.
In Nairobi, rescue teams were working to clear debris from the badly damaged but still intact ground floor of the Ufundi Cooperative building adjacent to the embassy, hoping to reach buried survivors. There were reports that two women in that area, Rose and Jane, were still alive. A Red Cross spokesman said, "Rose last spoke at 3 p.m. Sunday afternoon. Since then, we've heard nothing. ... She may be asleep. She may be unconscious. So you live in hope. Jane hasn't been heard of for much, much longer."
Using a 150-ton crane, drills and blowtorches, an Israeli team was trying to free the women from the rubble in the collapsed Ufundi Cooperative building. On Sunday, Israeli rescuers found a mother and son in a building near the Nairobi embassy. They were alive and well. But the rescuers also brought out a dead woman.
The United States is a favorite target of militant Islamic fundamentalists, such as the exiled Saudi financier Osama bin Laden, one potential suspect. Another favorite target -- Israel -- on Sunday offered the help of Mossad and other intelligence agencies to find who was responsible for the bombings. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said early signs were that the attacks were the work of "international terrorism centered on Islamic fundamentalism."
The Washington Post was reporting on Monday that an unidentified U.S. Embassy official was saying the vehicle apparently containing the bomb first drove to the embassy's main entrance but was sent by guards to the rear, where the bomb exploded.
The Post also reported that at least one hand grenade was used to kill guards at the rear entrance. The main bomb exploded after that attack.
A Nairobi newspaper quoted a man who works for the Kenyan environment ministry as saying he saw two men drive a yellow pickup truck to the back of the embassy and jump out brandishing machine guns. The witness said, "One man ran back into the vehicle as the other sprayed bullets into the American Embassy."
The Sunday Times of London, meanwhile, quoted Kenyan police superintendent Mike Harries as saying witnesses saw a suicide bomber drive a pickup truck into the car park behind the embassy and sit there quietly until the blast.
A security camera placed on top of the U.S. embassy in Tanzania may have filmed the sequence of events leading up to the blast. Attention would also focus on a blue, water-delivery tanker, possibly carrying the bomb, which drew up to the embassy gates in Dar es Salaam just before the explosion.
A U.S. diplomat said the water tanker was thrown through, or over, the embassy gates by the blast and up against the front wall of the building. Both the driver and his assistant were killed in the explosion. One survivor said late on Sunday that the embassy had its own supply of water and would deliver water from a storage tank inside the compound to embassy residences around the capital.
By the end of Sunday around 100 U.S. personnel from the FBI, the Marines and other counterterrorism experts arrived in the Tanzanian capital. More were due to arrive on Monday.
(C)Copyright, EmergencyNet NEWS Service, 1998. All Rights Reserved. Further redistribution without permission is prohibited by law.
Excerpted from:
emergency.com
The bold passage in the above article is quite instructive for it seems to indicate that the direct perpetrators of the bombings either were on some spoof job --think of the shooting at the US embassy in Moscow during the Kosovo war-- or were clueless about what was really going on.... Anyway, in either case, they got disposed of in the blast by their commanditaires.
Hence my theory purporting that those Muslim underlings were manipulated by French mercenaries in a scheme to destabilize the US diplomacy in Central Africa. The Israeli collusion was a cinch from the moment that Israeli PM Netanyahu was scrambling to alienate the Arab/Palestinian lobby from the US. Besides, Netanyahu owed the French a favour for the Carlos snatch: as Israel's PM, Benyamin Netanyahu eventually avenged himself for his brother Nathan's death in the Entebbe raid....
Finally, there was no point for both the Israelis and the French to fear anything from the media's "investigative" slant: from New York to Paris to Tel Aviv to Atlanta (CNN), the same Muslim-bogey oldie would be put on the air, without a shadow of dissent.
Today, confronted with a much more fainthearted White House as regards Africa, France can heedlessly sneak back into Central Africa, using Belgium's wire Foreign Minister as a diplomatic Trojan Horse.... (Most of Belgium's African stakes resided in the Soci‚t‚ G‚n‚rale de Belgique conglomerate which, last year, became a fully-owned subsidiary of French Suez-Lyonnaise group).
Gus. |
