Anti-Taliban fighters discovered low-grade uranium, cyanide and other poisonous chemicals in an underground al Qaeda storage facility near the Kandahar airport after they captured it two weeks ago, a senior Afghan commander and senior U.S. officials said. U.S. officials said they have concluded that al Qaeda intended to use the non-weapon-grade Uranium-238 found in the complex to make "dirty bombs," which use conventional explosives to spread radioactive material over a wide area.
That's the side Johnny Jihad is on. The charge against him should be treason and the sentence should be death. Period.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
12/22/2001 ||
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The World Bank and United Nations said in a report unveiled in Brussels that Afghanistan would need $9 billion in aid over the next five years to rebuild after two decades of war.
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12/22/2001 ||
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President Pervez Musharraf says he's "reasonably sure" that Osama bin Laden has not escaped to Pakistan and that there's a "great possibility" that the al-Qaida leader is dead. Musharraf said Pakistan would hand bin Laden to the United States if he's caught. On the other hand, "My personal feeling is that Osama bin Laden has left for Pakistan," Haji Musa, a commander whose forces are deployed at Tora Bora said.
Unless he's now out of Pakistan and back in... Yemen? Gosh. I wonder who they were chasing there? Y'don't suppose...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
12/22/2001 ||
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Indian and Pakistani troops exchanged small arms and machine gun fire along the border as tension mounted. But a senior Indian defence official said the exchange of fire along the border in the rebellion-torn Jammu and Kashmir was routine in the circumstances and not alarming.
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12/22/2001 ||
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Pakistan's air force chief said Pakistani forces are ready to give a matching response to any misadventure by India along their common border. "There is nothing to be worried about -- Pakistan's armed forces are fully prepared," Air Chief Marshall Mushaf Ali Mir said. "We are fully prepared and can take any challenge."
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
12/22/2001 ||
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President Musharraf accused India of acting rashly and arrogantly but said he would not retaliate after New Delhi announced the recall of its ambassador from Pakistan. "We regret the very arrogant and knee-jerk response of the Indian government," Musharraf said. Asked if Pakistan would retaliate, Musharraf said, "No."
Not by withdrawing its high commissioner, anyway. He's still not taking this seriously.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
12/22/2001 ||
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Iraq said it could resist any U.S. military attack in the "war on terrorism." "We are confident of our capability of resisting any kind of aggression," Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz told reporters after opening an international poetry festival in Baghdad. That's what they said the last time, too. Remember the "Mother of All Battles"?
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
12/22/2001 ||
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Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's security cabinet decided in a telephone vote to prevent Arafat from traveling to Bethlehem from his West Bank headquarters in Ramallah, Sharon's office said in a statement. "The cabinet made its decision based on the fact that Arafat is not acting to dismantle Palestinian terror organizations and to prevent terror against Israel from Palestinian Authority areas,'' the statement said. Arafat told Voice of Palestine radio he would go to Bethlehem "even if I have to walk there on foot.''
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12/22/2001 ||
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An uneasy calm has prevailed in Jabaliya, where inter-Palestinian fighting left the six dead and many turned their anger on Israel, saying the clashes were the work of "mercenaries" from the Jewish state. "We deplore the deaths of those who fell to the hands of mercenary traitors, who infiltrated our ranks via the enemy," cried a member of Fatah via a loudspeaker as he drove through the streets.
Yeah. That's it. It hadda be the Jews. Palestinians certainly aren't given to spontaneous rioting and trading gunfire for fun. Nope.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
12/22/2001 ||
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After two days of internal Palestinian fighting, thousands of mourners attended funerals for six of those killed. The six separate funerals in and around Gaza City all took place without incident. Chairman-for-Life Yasser Arafat's recent call for an end to attacks against Israel, followed by a crackdown carried out by the Palestinian security forces, led to violence that left seven Palestinians dead and nearly 100 injured. Hey, pretty neat! A call for the end of violence causes an outbreak of violence that leaves seven dead.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
12/22/2001 ||
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Georgian police and security services arrested Armenian national Eduard Kazaryan in the Samtskhe-Javakheti region in southern Georgia where many ethnic Armenians live. Kazaryan had with him one plate of low-grade uranium-235 which he had smuggled from Armenia and intended to sell in Turkey for $7,000.
Sting operation? Or was there an ultimate customer he had in mind? Be nice to know.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
12/22/2001 ||
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American Airlines flight 63 from Paris to Miami made an emergency landing in Boston after a passenger attempted to ignite his shoes, which authorities said contained some sort of explosive. The incident began when a flight attendant smelled sulfur and asked the man what he was doing. He said he was 'wired.' Passengers and flight attendants tackled the man, and two doctors who were among the passengers sedated him. The man was then strapped to a chair with belts. During the melee, two flight attendants were injured -- one of them bitten by the man. The flight attendant was taken to a hospital, she said. The Boeing 767, carrying 185 passengers and 12 crew members, landed safely at Logan airport, escorted by two F-15 fighter jets. It was moved to a remote area of the runway. The man, about 28, was carrying a British passport that appeared to have been issued about three weeks ago in Belgium, and identified him as Richard Reid. He was traveling alone and had no checked luggage. Police took him into custody. Once he was removed, his shoes were X-rayed aboard the plane by a bomb squad. "They appeared to have wires and other things contained in them," a spokesman said, identifying the material as a detonation cord and some kind of explosives. The shoes were then taken to a field and "disrupted." Reuters reports "Reid" appeared to be an Arab traveling on a false passport. U.S. Immigration and Naturalization officials believed the man's British passport, issued three weeks ago in Belgium in the name of Richard Reid, was bogus. MSNBC says the shoe was full of C4, a moldable military plastic explosive. Someone must take it upon himself or herself to hit Mr. "Reid" very many times, while asking him some very detailed questions. The system would appear to be working, as he was subdued by the passengers and crew and there was a military escort just in case he did something rash. Funny shoes now have to be added to the terrorist "profile." Platform shoes would seem to have just gone out of fashion, at least on airlines. Never liked them anyway - looked like orthopaedic shoes, for people with both legs longer than the other. Sure will be interesting to see where "Reid" is really from - and who are his controllers. Still, it's an indication someone's still trying to conduct terror ops. Wonder what the significance is of the passport coming from Belgium - where Masood's assassin's passport came from. We can guess at the significance of an exploding airplane today, the day Karzai's inaugurated. And normal civvies like you and me don't have access to C4. It would also appear the networks have declared war on American Airlines. (Time to relook Flight 587.) If anyone's been feeling merciful toward the Bad Guys, you can stop now.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
12/22/2001 09:16 pm ||
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A senior Hamas leader, Abdul Aziz al-Rantissi has agreed in priniciple to be put under house arrest. Members of Fatah and Hamas brokered a potential solution to the standoff between Arafat's Palestinian Authority and Rantissi, whom security forces want to arrest.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
12/22/2001 ||
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Reacting to reports that the Pakistani government was under tremendous pressure to take action against Lashkar-e-Taiba, Yahya Mujahid, a spokesman of the group, said "the government will have to think a thousand time before taking any action because the people of Pakistan supported it". Stating that the US move would not have any affect on it, Mujahid said "Muslims will continue to support us. They think that we are fighting a holy war against the brutalities and terrorism."
This guy could have worked as a spokesman for the Taliban in the good old days, a month or two ago. Same ideas, almost the same phrasing.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
12/22/2001 ||
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Russian President Vladimir Putin and British Prime Minister Tony Blair hailed a landmark agreement to share anti-terror intelligence as a sign of improving links between Russia and the West.
This is new. This is significant. Times are certainly changing.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
12/22/2001 ||
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A treason case was registered against Maulvi Kafayatullah, a member of the Pakistan religious organization Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Fazlur Rahman group). Police in Quetta said Kafayatullah had been charged with making anti-government and pro-Taliban statements at a public rally. Kafayatullah has denied the charges, saying that he never spoke against the government.
Couldn't have been him. It was probably the Jews. They do that sort of stuff all the time.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
12/22/2001 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
