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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neeka who wrote (35216)	3/17/2004 11:11:22 PM
From: KLP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793838

Unfortunately, I have to nominate another as #2... Best thing we could do is find them all, and put in a BIG sack..(make up your own scenario from here.... Here's an interesting article about my nomination for #2... Maybe Kerry and Dean should spend a little time doing some reading for a change....... OBL #1 Ayman al-Zawahiri #2 Abu Mu'sab al-Zarqawi #3 newyorker.com THE MAN BEHIND BIN LADEN by LAWRENCE WRIGHT How an Egyptian doctor became a master of terror. Issue of 2002-09-16 Posted 2002-09-09 >>>>>>clip from article In June of 2001, two terrorist organizations, Al Qaeda and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, formally merged into one. The name of the new entity—Qaeda al-Jihad—reflects the long and interdependent history of these two groups. Although Osama bin Laden, the founder of Al Qaeda, has become the public face of Islamic terrorism, the members of Islamic Jihad and its guiding figure, Ayman al-Zawahiri, have provided the backbone of the larger organization's leadership. According to officials in the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., Zawahiri has been responsible for much of the planning of the terrorist operations against the United States, from the assault on American soldiers in Somalia in 1993, and the bombings of the American embassies in East Africa in 1998 and of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen in 2000, to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11th. Bin Laden and Zawahiri were bound to discover each other among the radical Islamists who were drawn to Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979. For one thing, both were very much modern men. Bin Laden, who was in his early twenties, was already an international businessman; Zawahiri, six years older, was a surgeon from a notable Egyptian family. They were both members of the educated classes, intensely pious, quiet-spoken, and politically stifled by the regimes in their own countries. Each man filled a need in the other. Bin Laden, an idealist with vague political ideas, sought direction, and Zawahiri, a seasoned propagandist, supplied it. "Bin Laden had followers, but they weren't organized," recalls Essam Deraz, an Egyptian filmmaker who made several documentaries about the mujahideen during the Soviet-Afghan war. "The people with Zawahiri had extraordinary capabilities—doctors, engineers, soldiers. They had experience in secret work. They knew how to organize themselves and create cells. And they became the leaders." The goal of Islamic Jihad was to overthrow the civil government of Egypt and impose a theocracy that might eventually become a model for the entire Arab world; however, years of guerrilla warfare had left the group shattered and bankrupt. For Zawahiri, bin Laden was a savior—rich and generous, with nearly limitless resources, but also pliable and politically unformed. "Bin Laden had an Islamic frame of reference, but he didn't have anything against the Arab regimes," Montasser al-Zayat, a lawyer for many of the Islamists, told me recently in Cairo. "When Ayman met bin Laden, he created a revolution inside him." >>>>>>>> more con't at link above