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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PartyTime who wrote (4468)	2/28/2004 6:15:32 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 173976

<font color=brown>Party Time, I believe the article posted by AS is from AOL's New Service and is not linkable. Here's a similar article......it does not look like it was posted on this thread yet and there is a link. The GOP pundits are loving it. They feel that the capture of OBL will reverse Bush's slide in the polls and insure his winning in November. Do you or others agree with that POV? Just curious.<font color=black> ********************************************************* New U.S. Effort Steps Up Hunt for bin Laden By DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC SCHMITT Published: February 29, 2004 WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 — President Bush has approved a plan to intensify the effort to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, senior administration and military officials say, as a combination of better intelligence, improving weather and a refocusing of resources away from Iraq has reinvigorated the hunt along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The plan will apply both new forces and new tactics to the task, said senior officials in Washington and Afghanistan who were interviewed in recent days. The group at the center of the effort is Task Force 121, the covert commando team of Special Operations forces and Central Intelligence Agency officers. The team was involved in Saddam Hussein's capture and is gradually shifting its forces to Afghanistan to step up the search for Mr. bin Laden and Mullah Muhammad Omar, the former Taliban leader. After a visit to Pakistan earlier this month by the the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, American officials say, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan appears to be far more seriously committed to tracking down Al Qaeda and Taliban militants along the semiautonomous border region. "Two assassination attempts close together tends to be life-focusing," said one senior official who is overseeing the new drive, referring to the December attacks on General Musharraf. Mr. bin Laden and his deputies have painted General Musharraf as a lackey of the United States, and many officials here believe that Al Qaeda had a role in the assassination attempts. General Musharraf has told the United States, the senior official said, that "he is now willing to be even more helpful" in tracking down Qaeda and Taliban militants in the region where Mr. bin Laden is still believed to be hiding. Under the new plan, officials say, the 11,000 American forces in Afghanistan are changing their tactics. Rather than carrying out raids and returning to their bases, small groups will now remain in Afghan villages for days at a time, handing out various forms of aid and conducting patrols. By becoming a more permanent, familiar presence, American officials say, they hope to be able to receive and act on intelligence within hours. Such a technique helped them to capture Mr. Hussein. "We're trying to transplant some of the lessons of the Saddam capture," one senior official said. "This is different territory, and our targets are presumed to be moving around. But one lesson we learned in Iraq is that, by analogy, there are only a limited number of places that someone like Saddam or bin Laden feel comfortable." Similarly, Task Force 121 and the Pakistani forces are focusing on Mr. bin Laden's support network, hoping it will crack as Mr. Hussein's did. With a great deal at stake strategically, symbolically and politically, Mr. Bush and his national security team have repeatedly met in recent months to refine the new approach, and it appears to have been approved in the last two months. White House officials will not say exactly when, emphasizing that the hunt for Mr. bin Laden never stopped, though clearly the effort lost momentum. Much of the timing now is driven by the weather: as winter snows melt, troops can navigate in the high mountain passes and trails where many Qaeda and Taliban members are believed to be hiding. When that moment arrived last year, many of the forces and American intelligence operatives now engaged in Afghanistan were tied up in the Iraq. But presidential politics are also at play. Though the White House denies that Mr. Bush is letting the election influence strategy, some of his aides have privately spoken about the obvious advantages of going into the last months of the election campaign with both Mr. Hussein and Mr. bin Laden in custody. On Friday, Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat and the front-runner in the Democratic race, appeared to try to inoculate his campaign from the possibility of Mr. bin Laden's capture, while at the same time faulting Mr. Bush for failing to put together an effective search strategy far earlier. Continued 1 \| 2 \| Next>> nytimes.com.

To: PartyTime who wrote (4468)	2/28/2004 8:43:01 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 173976

Bin Laden arrest claims 'false': Pentagon The US military has dismissed as "false" an Iranian report that Osama bin Laden had been arrested in Pakistan. "It's wrong, it's inaccurate, it's false," US Defence Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said. The external Pashto-language service of Iranian state radio broadcast the report Saturday quoting an "informed source". The report, which could not be independently verified, said the arrest took place "some time ago" but gave no further details. It claimed US officials were keeping news of the arrest secret and were likely to announce it later in the year in order to help US President George W Bush's re-election chances in November. "The capture of the Al Qaeda leader was made some time ago, but Mr Bush is intending to announce it at the time of the American presidential election," the report said. The report said US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's visit to Afghanistan during the week was intended to follow up on bin Laden's purported arrest. Meanwhile, Mr Bush has stepped up the effort to capture bin Laden, using techniques used to capture fallen Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the New York Times has reported. At the same time Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf's resolve to find bin Laden was sharpened after two attacks, perhaps by Al Qaeda. "Two assassination attempts close together tends to be life-focusing," a senior official in charge of the new effort told the Times. A covert commando team of Special Operations forces and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers involved in Saddam's capture is heading the effort to track down bin Laden, the Times said. "With this guy holed up, the more time that goes by, the more likely it is he'll make a mistake," a senior Pentagon official told the paper. Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmud Kasuri told reporters he could not confirm the reports carried by "international media," and Pakistan's military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan told AFP, "this report is not correct". Foreign ministry spokesman Masood Khan also told AFP, "there was no report of bin Laden's arrest from the tribal areas of Pakistan". Bin Laden is wanted in the United States for a series of terrorist acts, including the September 11, 2001, attacks in Washington and New York and is arguably the world's most wanted terrorist. Pakistan, a key US ally in war against terrorism, has arrested more than 500 Al Qaeda suspects who fled Afghanistan in the wake of US-led attacks which ousted the hardline Taliban regime in late 2001. abc.net.au