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Politics : The Truth About Islam -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lorne who wrote (4955)	2/23/2007 7:22:55 AM
From: lorne	Respond to of 20106

Taliban Recruiting Hundreds of Suicide Bombers for Major Attack on NATO Forces in the Spring: Al-Jazeera Reports February 23, 2007 memri.org The following are excerpts from Al-Jazeera TV reports on Taliban military plans. The reports were aired on February 21 and 22, 2007. To view this clip visit: memritv.org Reporter: "The fighters of the Afghan Taliban movement are in a real race against time. The spring offensive - for which the movement is preparing by means of training, surveillance, and reconnaissance, and with which the NATO forces threatened [the Taliban] - is imminent, according to the movement's leaders. This is a diligent movement, which operates at night more than by day, away from any surveillance or reconnaissance. The movement's leaders said that the attack would include all of Afghanistan, but that it would focus on the south, in order to take control of entire cities." Mullah Dadallah (translated into Arabic): "There are 6,000 Taliban mujahideen ready to fight in the spring campaign, and the number will rise to 10,000. The greater the number of Jewish and Christian forces fighting us, the more this will encourage the people to join us." Reporter: "The Taliban says it has obtained a new anti-aircraft weapon, but it did not go into details. As proof, it presented Al-Jazeera with footage showing what they say is a U.S. military helicopter burning after being downed, in Kandahar about two months ago." [...] Reporter: "In a noteworthy development, the Afghan Taliban movement presented what it called its 'new weapon,' which will confront NATO's lethal weapons. This is the weapon of suicide operations. Taliban military commander [Mullah] Dadallah used this gathering to recruit over 500 suicide bombers for the coming spring campaign, which he promised would be bloody. He stressed that the Taliban is capable of multiplying their numbers." Mullah Dadallah (translated into Arabic): "Praise be to Allah, who gave us this great power of self-sacrifice, among Arabs and non-Arabs. Our preparations for the war in the field of self-sacrifice activities are not enough by themselves. These operations are not sufficient to defeat them. The weapon of devotion is still the most important. In addition, we must remember our martyrs and their blood, which they sacrificed for a greater cause." Reporter: "One of the suicide bombers summed up for Al-Jazeera the reasons for carrying out this act. He denied that poverty or depression, or any other of the reasons given by commentators, had led to his decision." Suicide bomber (translated into Arabic): "I understand what a self-sacrifice operation means. I am an educated student from a well-off family. I have no mental problems or anything like that. I could complete my studies and become a doctor." Reporter: "The suicide operations that the movement is preparing for include the use of car bombs and motorcycle bombs, as well as the explosive belts worn by suicide bombers. All the movement's leaders and fighters whom we met emphasized that this year will be the decisive one in favor of the Taliban. One of them proudly told us that Afghanistan is the graveyard of the empires - from the Mongols and the British to the Russians - and that now, NATO's turn has come."

To: lorne who wrote (4955)	2/23/2007 8:08:49 AM
From: GROUND ZERO™	Respond to of 20106

Nothing about the police arresting the guy for first degree murder, I suppose they gave him a medal instead... GZ

To: lorne who wrote (4955)	2/23/2007 9:24:01 AM
From: DeplorableIrredeemableRedneck	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20106

Report: U.S. hunted al-Qaida from Ethiopia Ethiopian official denies New York Times’ report, says story is a ‘fabrication’ msnbc.msn.com MSNBC News Services Updated: 47 minutes ago ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - An Ethiopian official denied Friday a report in the New York Times that U.S. troops used Ethiopia as a staging ground for attacks against al-Qaida leaders in Somalia last month. “This is simply a total fabrication,” Bereket Simon, special adviser to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, told The Associated Press. The Times report, published Friday, cited unnamed American sources officials from several U.S. agencies with a hand in Somalia policy as saying the U.S. soldiers used an airstrip in Ethiopia to mount strikes against Islamic militants in Somalia. Officials were quoted as saying the clandestine relationship with Ethiopia also included significant information-sharing on the militants’ positions and information from U.S. spy satellites with the Ethiopian military, the newspaper reported. Members of a secret U.S. special operations unit, Task Force 88, were deployed in Ethiopia and Kenya and ventured into Somalia, the officials added. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to discuss details of the operation with the Times, but the paper said some officials agreed to provide specifics because they considered it an relative success story. They said the campaign disrupted terrorist networks in Somalia and led to the death or capture of several Islamic militants. Support for incursion into Somalia The mission was in support of Ethiopian troops’ recent drive to enter Somalia to help the government oust the militant Islamist movement. According to the Times, Washington resisted an official endorsement of the Ethiopian invasion, but U.S. officials from several agencies said the Bush administration decided last year an incursion was the best way to remove the Islamists from power. The dead and captured do not yet include some al-Qaida leaders such as Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam, whom the United States has hunted for their suspected roles in the attacks on the Kenya and Tanzania embassies in 1998. U.S. officials earlier acknowledged two airstrikes over Somalia in January, but had given few details. The strikes were reported to have been conducted by U.S. forces based in another Horn of Africa country, Djibouti, though officials had not confirmed that. U.S. ships had also patrolled off Somalia’s coast in search of al-Qaida members thought to be fleeing Somalia following Ethiopia’s December invasion. Foreign troops threatened Meanwhile, Uganda’s top defense officials arrived in Somalia ahead of a planned African Union peacekeeping deployment, a day after Islamic extremists threatened suicide attacks against Ugandan and other foreign troops, officials said Friday. Uganda’s Defense Minister Crispus Kiyonga and Chief of Defense Forces Aronda Nyakairima said their forces would help train a national army and provide security to Somalia’s transitional government, a Somali government minister said. “We expect the troops to be here in two weeks,” Hassan Abshir Farah, who represented the Somali government at one meeting, told The Associated Press. Talks were held in the southern town of Baidoa on Thursday. The five-member Ugandan mission then traveled to the restive capital, Mogadishu, on Friday for further talks with Deputy Defense Minister Salad Ali Jelle to assess bases for the AU peacekeepers, their arrival date and stabilization of the country, Jelle said. AU officials say they have more than $70 million through donations from the European Union, United States and Britain to pay for the Somali peacekeeping mission. “The African Union will reimburse each troop-contributing country for the costs incurred for their troop deployments,” Assane Ba, spokesman for the AU’s conflict prevention department, said from its headquarters in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. The AU peacekeeping force is planned to reach a level of 8,000 troops. The government, backed by Ethiopian troops, drove out a radical Islamic movement that had gained control of the capital Mogadishu and most of the south. The U.N. Security Council on Tuesday unanimously approved its deployment. Ethiopian troops have started to pull out, to be replaced by the peacekeeping force, which will have to confront the growing violence that has plagued Mogadishu since the interim government took over. An advance team of Burundian peacekeepers was scheduled to begin arriving Friday but defense official’s have been unwilling to comment on the deployment. Somalia still mired in chaos Insurgents have staged near-daily attacks since the Islamic militants were driven out, with Mogadishu’s civilian population bearing the brunt of the violence. Hundreds of families have begun fleeing the coastal city of 2 million people, and hospitals are struggling to cope with the daily influx of wounded. Somalia has not had an effective national government since 1991, when warlords overthrew a dictator, carved the capital into armed, clan-based camps, and left most of the rest of the country ungoverned. A transitional government was formed in 2004 with U.N. help. Weakened by clan rivalries, it struggled to assert authority, leaving a vacuum the Islamic movement moved to fill. The Islamic movement chased the warlords from Mogadishu last year and was credited with restoring order in areas of southern Somalia it controlled. But some Somalis chafed at its fundamentalist version of Islam and the U.S. and the Somali government accused it of harboring al-Qaida suspects. The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.