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Gold/Mining/Energy : ARAKIS: HIGH RISK OIL PLAY (AKSEF) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Link Lady who wrote (9096)	9/7/1998 12:27:00 AM
From: LARRY LARSON	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9164

Hi Kids- Potent Washington Post article: Intelligence Lapse? Sunday, September 6, 1998; Page C06 THE UNITED States reserves the right to strike back against terrorists, and rightly so. When it can, the government seeks to bring suspects to justice and try them in courts of law, with evidence openly presented; such a process is underway in connection with the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. But sometimes, as President Clinton said in explaining U.S. missile attacks on targets in Afghanistan and Sudan, it's not possible to play by those rules. Whether in prospective self-defense or in response to what amounts to acts of war, U.S. military action is justifiable. But in exercising that right, you don't want to get your facts wrong. That is why the possibility of an intelligence failure in the choice of targets in Sudan is so awful to contemplate. At this point, we certainly do not know that chemical weapons or their precursors were not being produced at the Sudan factory; and there is no question that Sudan's regime has harbored and encouraged terrorists. But enough questions have been raised, and the administration's story has been often enough revised, to warrant further inquiry. In the beginning, you may recall, the administration alleged a close financial link between anti-American terrorist Osama bin Laden and the Sudan factory. Now it seems far less sure of such a connection. U.S. officials depicted the factory as secret and closely guarded; in fact, it has now been established, it was rather lightly guarded, visited by engineers from many countries, well-known to the public. The administration didn't know that the factory produced useful medicines. But no one now disputes that, whatever else it was doing, the plant was making anti-malaria drugs and other valuable and innocuous pharmaceuticals. The U.S. decision seems to have been based on the evidence of a single soil sample, obtained from outside the factory, that contained more than a trace of a precursor of the deadly VX agent. That may be compelling. But how could the CIA not have known more about the factory -- not have known what so many ordinary citizens apparently knew? Some officials reportedly pointed to a search of the factory's Internet site that listed no products for sale. We can only hope that, if the administration could speak more openly, it could make a more persuasive case. At a minimum, there is room here for congressional intelligence committees to inquire further. c Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company