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Politics : America Under Siege: The End of Innocence -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (11940)	12/18/2001 8:58:43 PM
From: aladin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27666

Len, So wars with the natives two centuries ago put us on an equal footing with lunatics today? Your argument has been used to justify IRA terrorist activity. Cromwell was evil, point blank evil, but does it justify a nail bomb at Harrods in the 1970's? Again your arguments fail for lack of proportion. The native american fiasco and slavery occurred before most of our ancestors moved to this country. Even the WASP's I know who could have had ancestors involved deplore that part of our history. John

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (11940)	12/18/2001 10:26:41 PM
From: lorne	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 27666

FBI: Taking Out Bin Laden Won't Be Enough to Destroy Al-Qaida By Carolyn Skorneck Associated Press Writer Published: Dec 18, 2001 WASHINGTON (AP) - Destroying the al-Qaida terrorist organization will take a lot more than capturing or killing Osama bin Laden, FBI officials told Congress on Tuesday. Bin Laden is an extraordinarily charismatic man who "gets down in the dirt with the troops" and puts himself at risk, defectors say, but his death or capture won't knock out the terror group that has spread its tentacles worldwide, said Thomas Wilshere of the FBI. "To disrupt and dismantle the organization, we have to go beyond the leader and dig down to middle management," J.T. Caruso, acting assistant director of the FBI's counterterrorism division, told the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee's terrorism panel. Even if 30 percent of its capability were gone, the remaining 70 percent would still pose a huge danger, he said. "There's going to be a stuttering in the organization's momentum," Caruso said. "Will that stuttering turn into a pause? I don't know." Michelle Flournoy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said al-Qaida was "akin to a multiheaded hydra." Cutting off the head would not keep the rest from operating, she said. An estimated 70,000 to 80,000 people moved through the al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan before heading to far flung countries around the globe, said Wilshere, deputy section chief of the FBI's international terrorism operational section. Many, he said, have probably had "their late teen adventure" and have gone back to real life, grown up and are no longer interested in creating mayhem, but some may well have chosen terrorism "as a way of life." Asked by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the subcommittee chairman, if any set up training camps in the United States, Wilshere said some members of al-Qaida had looked at the possibility but then "found it more benign in Europe." Some who committed terrorist acts against U.S. and British citizens in Yemen were themselves British citizens who were trained in Britain, Wilshere said. But the more advanced training, he said, was conducted in Afghanistan and South Lebanon. Larry Johnson, deputy director of the State Department's office of counterterrorism from 1989-1993, urged the Bush administration to crack down on Lebanon. "Apart from Afghanistan, there is no other country in the world, not one, that has as many terrorist training camps, as many activist terrorist groups, and terrorists that have killed - until 9/11 - more Americans than any other group in the world," Johnson said. In addition to the 1983 terrorist bombing that killed 241 Marines, terrorists in Lebanon kidnapped and killed CIA Station Chief William Buckley in 1984, and Marine Col. William R. Higgins, who disappeared in 1988 while serving with a U.N. peacekeeping force, said Johnson, who worked for both the first President Bush and President Clinton. "The list goes on," he said. "And we've allowed Lebanon a pass. That must come to an end. Because what we've learned ... is that these groups, without the sponsorship of a state, cannot function." Although Iraq has been identified by President Bush and other senior administration officials as a potential target in the war on terrorism, no one mentioned Iraq at the hearing until Boxer specifically asked about it. Flournoy said she had not seen any evidence that directly tied Iraq to the Sept. 11 attacks, and she cautioned that an attack on Iraq could cost the United States the support of valuable members of the anti-terrorist coalition. She suggested the United States finish the war on al-Qaida first. Johnson called Iraqi-sponsored terrorist groups the inept "Wile E. Coyote" of terrorists. ap.tbo.com