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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: greenspirit who wrote (80329)	3/7/2003 11:00:46 PM
From: tekboy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

unfortunately, very very few professionals think that Iraq was connected to either of those incidents. McVeigh is generally agreed to have been a domestic nut, and the first WTC crowd, although originally thought of as pickup freelancers, now seems in retrospect to be an early example of Sunni Jihadism of the al Qaeda variety. Thus the key thing to know about Ramzi Yousef is not anything that Laurie Mylroie has written, but rather that he was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's nephew... tb@beatingadeadhorse.com

To: greenspirit who wrote (80329)	3/9/2003 3:06:19 AM
From: Dayuhan	Respond to of 281500

This "investigative work" has gotten ahold of a few real threads and tied them up with a whole lot of bull. Some of it is really ridiculous, for example the allegation that "Cebu is also the territory of the Islamic terrorist group Abu Sayyaf", which is wildly off base. These people may be "Middle East experts", though I have my doubts, but they clearly don't know squat about the Philippines. Anything Edward Angeles said is meaningless; the man was the ultimate unreliable source. It's been whispered around here, though, that Yousef and McVeigh were together on a flight to Davao, which would be interesting if it's true. I think it not at all unlikely that McVeigh learned something about bomb-making here, though I think it most unlikely that any conspiracy or Iraqi intelligence control was involved. The inevitably cited "links" among these individuals and groups are a lot more tenuous than some would like us to believe. I was able to track down and converse with some pretty reliable Mindanao sources, and learned some interesting things. First, Hamsiraji Sali, the source cited by the Washington Times piece as evidence of an Iraqi connection and the one who claimed that the Davao bombing was Abu Sayyaf work, is - and the source on this is very good - an intelligence asset, certainly being worked by Philippine military elements and possibly by US control as well. His connection to the Abu Sayyaf is actually quite tenuous. Sort of a resurrected Edward Angeles, and I wouldn't guess that he can expect a long or peaceful life. Exactly who is pulling his strings at any given moment is not certain; around here the left hand often doesn't know what the right is doing, and the two are not infrequently working to opposite purposes. The Davao bombing appears to have been the work of the Pentagon Gang, a dirty-tricks-for-hire outfit that has done jobs for both the MILF and the military. That adds up; it's very much their style, but it is again uncertain who paid for it. Some military factions and political figures are placing the blame on the MILF. I'm not so sure, and I'm beginning to think that military involvement, which I initially thought unlikely, is a real possibility. The military is claiming that the bomber was a man named Montasser Sudang, who was killed in what the military claims was a premature detonation, rather than a suicide bombing. They say Sudang was an MILF member, which seems unlikely: people in Sudang's home town vehemently deny that he was involved in any such thing. They say he was at the airport to meet his cousin, who has been confirmed as a passenger on a flight that arrived minutes before the blast. He also brought 29 relatives with him (that's common here), several of whom, including children, were killed in the blast. Looks to me to have all the classic setup elements, including a very conveniently dead prime suspect. It's tangled, and there's a lot that I don't know. The more I learn, though, the less I like it. I don't think the US deployment here was motivated by or is intended to have any real effect on all these shadowy comings and goings: it is confined to a very limited area, a very long way away from the places where the things discussed in the article happened. Some interesting conversations yesterday; learned a bit. Still processing the implications.