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Strategies & Market Trends : Ask DrBob -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stan_hughes who wrote (44212)	9/20/2001 3:01:11 PM
From: mike60613	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 100058

<<OT - Somebody scooped the infinitejustice.com address>> 'Infinite Justice' May Not Stand, Pentagon Says By Jim Wolf WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The initial code name for the Pentagon (news - web sites)'s response to last week's attacks on the United States, Operation Infinite Justice, will likely be changed to avoid offending Muslims, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Thursday. The issue arose at a Pentagon briefing when a reporter told Rumsfeld that several Islamic scholars had objected to the name on the grounds that only God, or Allah, can mete out infinite justice in their view. ``I understand. I understand,'' Rumsfeld replied. ``And obviously, the United States does not want to do or say things that create an impression on the part of the listener that would be a misunderstanding, and clearly that would be.'' The defense chief acknowledged that ``someone, somewhere'' had dubbed some preliminary aspect of the Pentagon's military preparations Infinite Justice. The code name was passed on to reporters by defense officials on Wednesday along with news of deployments of U.S. warplanes to within striking distance of Afghanistan (news - web sites). On Sunday, President Bush (news - web sites) off a flap when his reference to a ``crusade'' against terrorism angered many in the Muslim world with its connotation of Christian invasion of Islamic lands. The White House later said it regretted the remark. ``Obviously the 'crusade' term is problematic and 'infinite justice,' if it's translated as ultimate justice, that's the prerogative of God,'' said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations. ``We're debating linguistics when we should be debating the real issues,'' he said in a telephone interview. ``The real issues are what's important and coming to some just solution on all the issues involved and getting rid of terrorism. That's what's important, more than the terminology involved.'' The United States is demanding, among other things, that the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan hand over Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), suspected by Washington of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks by hijacked aircraft on the Pentagon and World Trade Center that left some 6,000 people dead or missing. Whether the name Infinite Justice will stick, ``given what you've said and what I was aware of, I just don't know the answer. But I doubt it,'' Rumsfeld told the reporter who cited Islamic scholars. ``I don't think it can be said often enough that this is not an effort that is aimed at any religion or any people particularly, or even the people of a country,'' he said earlier in the briefing. Earlier this week, Bush paid a visit to a major mosque in Washington to make a similar point and to blast any backlash against Arab-Americans. Hijackers of the airliners used in the attacks -- and one that crashed in rural Pennsylvania -- are believed to be mostly if not entirely from Arab countries.