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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Patricia Trinchero who wrote (198388)	10/31/2001 11:12:40 PM
From: RON BL	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

This lady wont forget BC Bin Laden Terror Widow Blames Clinton In the wake of Osama bin Laden's murderous attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the widow of a sailor who died in the bombing of the USS Cole says she blames ex-President Clinton for not stopping the Mideast madman after he bombed other U.S. facilities in the 1990s. "Each time these events happened and it was all words and nothing ever happened," said Sharla Costelow, wife of Chief Petty Officer Richard Costelow, who died aboard the Cole as it refueled in Yemen on Oct. 12, 2000. Mrs. Costelow delivered the stinging indictment to WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg last week, in an a gut-wrenching interview that has been completely overlooked by the mainstream media. The Navy widow listed the ways in which she thought the ex-president was partly responsible for her husband's death. "I think I would start with the fact that Clinton downsized our military so much that we no longer had ships to come and fuel our ships. This is something that my husband and I discussed many times, relying on other countries to do it," Costelow told Malzberg. She also blamed the ex-commander in chief for ignoring warnings that U.S. ships were on bin Laden's target list. "I didn't realize this until after it had happened," she told the WABC host, "that bin Laden had given [a message] to bomb one of our ships in the year 2000, and we didn't heed that warning. Worse than that, we sent one of our destroyers all alone into a terrorist harbor with no protection, no security, no safety zones whatsoever." The bin Laden terror victim said Clinton was also clearly wrong in removing Yemen from the list of nations that sponsor terrorism. "This never should have happened when Yemen still had terrorist activity going on, and certainly knowing the connection that bin Laden had there." Mrs. Costelow said she thinks the ex-president should be held accountable for such an egregious national security failure. "My husband, a communications expert, worked for Clinton," she told Malzberg. "He was a very hard worker and dealt with White House communications and saved the government a lot of money. I know if my husband made a mistake that could have jeopardized President Clinton's security ... my husband would have been held accountable. I just expect the same of him [Clinton]." "It was completely preventable and it never should have happened," she added. Besides his wife, Sharla, Chief Petty Officer Costelow left behind three young sons - Dillon, 14, Brady, 6, and Ethan, 4. Contributions to the Costelow children's memorial trust fund should be sent to: Memorial Fund NFCU-Costelow Family Patuxent River MSC 22598 MacArthur Blvd. California, MD 20619

To: Patricia Trinchero who wrote (198388)	10/31/2001 11:37:14 PM
From: RON BL	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

THURSDAY NOVEMBER 01 2001 'I dream only of having my hand again' FROM ANTHONY LOYD IN GOLBAHAR KARIMULLAH is an Afghan who does not want to relate his war story. In a land where everyone is quick to tell their tale, his silence makes him unique. He stood alone in the narrow midday shadows of the hospital courtyard when I saw him yesterday, a mix of glittering fury and blank despair. He had hobbled into the Red Crosss orthopaedic centre in Golbahar on Saturday. Even among the other amputees, his injuries stood out. Mines can take off both legs and both arms, or the limbs of one side, or, more often, just a single leg or foot. Karimullah's injuries, however, had a different cause. When, reluctantly, he had finished accounting for the loss of his left foot and right hand there was nothing to do but leave the man to his blade-eyed stare. The son of Tajik parents, now 26 years old, he fled Kabul when the Taleban arrived in 1996. Moving north to a village in Northern Alliance territory with his wife and two children, he found work in a vineyard. But he lost his job and home to a Taleban advance in 1998. He joined the Mujahidin. A shell hit his post on the Samali Plain in 1999. It killed four of his comrades. Karimullah escaped to a Pashtun village whose inhabitants handed him over to the Taleban. Tried by a "military tribunal" in Kabul, after torture he was sent to the city's Pulecharkhi jail for having served with the Alliance. "I had been there 12 weeks when three Talebs came into my cell," he said. "They called my name out and said I was to be released." Baffled but relieved, Karimullah was led to a Datsun pick-up. "They began driving me to the Ghazi stadium," Karimullah said. "I was silent at the beginning, but as we neared it I asked, 'What is this? What of my release?' They told me, 'Wait you will be released'." The Datsun drove into the centre of the stadium. Karimullah recalls thousands of faces staring at him in silence from the stands, and between 10 and 14 mullahs on chairs in a line in the middle of the field. He was pulled from the truck and told to lie spreadeagled on the grass. "The mullahs didn't even ask my name or speak to the crowd. Seven doctors approached me. They wore grey uniforms, surgical masks and gloves. I could see one was crying. They injected me. After five minutes my body was numb though I was still conscious. Then they put clamps on my hand and foot and began to cut them off with special saws. There was no pain but I could see what they were doing." I asked him if he stared at the sky. He told me he was transfixed by the sight of his foot being removed. "There was a sigh and murmur from the crowd when they finished. It had taken about five minutes. Taleban guards threw me into the back of the pick-up. One was crying too. Nothing was said. Even now I am unaware why I was chosen for amputation". He was taken to Kabul's Wazir Akbar Khan hospital. After a week eight of his former prison guards visited him. They brought him apples and 600,000 afghanis (£10). “They apologised. They told me they had not known what would happen. I threw the money and apples back at them. I screamed that they had told me I would be released and instead had taken my foot and hand for nothing. They left.” On the tenth day he was discharged. A taxi took him to his parents’ home. They had no idea what had happened to him. Karimullah’s eight-year-old sister, Razia, answered the taxi-driver’s knock on the door. She burst into tears when she saw her brother sprawled in the back of the cab. Worse was to follow. “My mother had been ill for some time so was very weak. When she saw me, she collapsed. She regained consciousness for a few hours, but then had a heart attack and died. “I thought the worst day of my life had been in the stadium. Coming home was worse. Her name was Masherin. She was 42.” He became a beggar, his mutilation carrying with it the stigma and shame of the punishment normally meted out to a thief. Then, a few weeks ago, a cousin, a Mujahidin commander, got a message through the lines offering him help. Borrowing a spare prosthetic leg from a mine victim in Kabul, Karimullah limped northwards for days, crossing the front with other refugees.The Red Cross is preparing a prosthetic leg for him, but some scars cannot be repaired. “I am finished. I have no future,” Karimullah said. “I have had everything taken from me by the Taleban. Before they came to Kabul I was a student in the tenth grade, an educated man with some chances before me. “Someone told me a rich Pashtun had committed a crime and paid the corrupt mullahs to use a prisoner of war for public amputation instead of himself. I don’t know if it’s true. But I hate them. “I dream only of having my hand again so I could carry a gun and go to the front line and kill and kill. I’d kill them all, every Taleb and every mullah.”