So there would be no crime if those addictive drugs were legal?
there would be a great deal less crime, yes. as a matter of fact it would reduce "drug related" crime a great deal. where you are getting "no crime" is beyond me though.
A while back you admitted you use marijuana along with some prescription drugs...correct?
and this is a lifestyle?
and what constitutes "use"?
every day? no, I don't.
occasionally? yes.
as much as most people drink alcohol? no....absolutely not.
most of the time, I take no drugs at all. for instance, I never take aspirin or any painkillers.
the question is, why do you care what I do or do not put into my body as long as I'm not doing anything to you?
for that matter, why is it anyone else's fucking business in the first place?
there would be a great deal less crime, yes. as a matter of fact it would reduce "drug related" crime a great deal.
So the people who are involved in drug related crime would no longer steal to support their habit or be violent while under the influence just because their drug of choice would be legal?
So the people who are involved in drug related crime would no longer steal to support their habit
no more than people steal to, say, support their cigarette or alcohol habits.
the crime rate that comes with the gangs and dealers would be gone.
or be violent while under the influence just because their drug of choice would be legal?
last I checked, being violent was against the law.
I'm not advocating repealing the laws against assault and battery anymore than you are advocating outlawing milk drinking because someone commited a crime after drinking too much of it.
For the same reason that many care about drunk drivers.
so, you are advocating outlawing drinking?
I'm not advocating getting rid of laws against driving while impaired.
For the same reason people care about smokers raising their insurance rates.
so, you are advocating outlawing tobacco?
what's next after that?
too many cheeseburgers will have a negative impact on those insurance rates too you know.
I mean, are you seriously talking about making things against the law in order to keep your insurance rates down?
Ekeus theorizes that Saddam decided years ago that keeping mustard gas and other poisons in barrels was unstable and corrosive, and also hard to conceal. Therefore, rather than store large stocks of weapons of mass destruction, he would adapt the program to retain an infrastructure (laboratories, equipment, trained scientists, detailed plans) that could ``break out'' and ramp up production when needed. The model is Japanese ``just in time'' manufacturing, where you save on inventory by making and delivering stuff in immediate response to orders. Except that Saddam's business was toxins, not Toyotas.
The interim report of chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay seems to support the Ekeus hypothesis. He found infrastructure, but as yet no finished product.
By Douglas Farah and Dana Priest Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, October 14, 2003; Page A01
Saad bin Laden, one of Osama bin Laden's oldest sons, has emerged in recent months as part of the upper echelon of the al Qaeda network, a small group of leaders that is managing the terrorist organization from Iran, according to U.S., European and Arab officials.
Saad bin Laden and other senior al Qaeda operatives were in contact with an al Qaeda cell in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in the days immediately prior to the May 12 suicide bombing there that left 35 people dead, including eight Americans, European and U.S. intelligence sources say. The sources would not divulge the nature or contents of the communications, but the contacts have led them to conclude that the Riyadh attacks were planned in Iran and ordered from there.
Although Saad bin Laden is not the top leader of the terrorist group, his presence in the decision-making process demonstrates his father's trust in him and an apparent desire to pass the mantle of leadership to a family member, according to numerous terrorism analysts inside and outside government.
Like other al Qaeda leaders in Iran, the younger bin Laden, who is believed to be 24 years old, is protected by an elite, radical Iranian security force loyal to the nation's clerics and beyond the control of the central government, according to U.S. and European intelligence officials. The secretive unit, known as the Jerusalem Force, has restricted the al Qaeda group's movements to its bases, mostly along the border with Afghanistan.
Also under the Jerusalem Force's protection is Saif al-Adel, al Qaeda's chief of military operations; Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, the organization's chief financial officer; and perhaps two dozen other top al Qaeda leaders, the officials said. Al-Adel and Abdullah are considered the top operational deputies to Osama bin Laden and his second-in-command, Ayman Zawahiri, who communicate with underlings almost exclusively through couriers.
The presence of Saad bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders in Iran has become part of a debate within the governments of the United States and Saudi Arabia over the best way to reduce Iranian support for terrorism. U.S. officials have sent stern warnings to the government of President Mohammad Khatami that Iran's harboring of senior al Qaeda operatives would have repercussions for a nation the Bush administration has labeled part of the "axis of evil."
Intelligence officials believe that although the State Department is eager to renew talks with Iran on a variety of issues, primarily its nuclear program, it is not clear whether that nation's civilian government could deliver its end of any bargain, especially if it entailed turning over al Qaeda leaders.
"Iran will continue to pursue an asymmetric strategy in which they court Western acceptance, while maintaining their surrogate leadership roles within the Islamic extremist community," a U.S. intelligence analysis says.
Similarly, Saudi Arabia, which in recent years has tried to thaw relations with its larger and more powerful neighbor across the Persian Gulf, is trying, unsuccessfully, to persuade Iran to extradite Saad bin Laden and others suspected in the Riyadh bombing. Saudi officials estimate there are as many as 400 al Qaeda members there.
"Those people are in Iran and somebody must be helping them. The question is who?" Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador, told the San Francisco Chronicle last month. "This is the problem with Iran. The people who we can deal with can't deliver, they can't lead eight ducks across the street. And the guys who can deliver, they're not interested."
As a child, Saad bin Laden was at his father's side in Afghanistan in the mid-1980s when Osama bin Laden formed the al Qaeda network. The younger bin Laden was groomed to take a leadership role in the terrorism organization. He is fluent in English and is computer-literate, two qualities rare among al Qaeda leaders and assets that have enhanced his importance beyond his family name.
Yet Saad has only recently emerged as an important target for the CIA, FBI and other organizations trying to disrupt the terrorist network. It has only been since his arrival in Iran in the past year that he has assumed a more active role in directing al Qaeda, and that he has been identified as a senior leader. Before that, analysts said, he often sat with his father in leadership meetings but seldom spoke and was not given a voice in deliberations.
Many experts believe, for example, that he also had direct involvement in coordinating a series of bombings on May 16 that killed 45 people in Casablanca, Morocco.
Kenneth Katzman, a terrorism analyst for the Congressional Research Service, said Saad "is touted as his father's stand-in. Because his father is incommunicado, a lot of people are looking to Saad to give them direct instructions."
While there is broad agreement that Saad bin Laden's role within al Qaeda has grown increasingly important in the past six months, not everyone agrees he is now a senior operational commander. One U.S. intelligence official said Saad is "more of a player than most of the offspring, but not that significant." Osama Bin Laden has more than two dozen children with five wives.
But European intelligence officials and independent analysts said Saad bin Laden, while not the most important al Qaeda leader, is helping to make key operational decisions and is an important part of al Qaeda's logistical network. Some analysts believe he was very close to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, who was captured in March.
"Saad is capable of mounting operations against the West because he knows the West very well," said Rohan Gunaratna, director of terrorism research at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore. "Saad has been very close to his father, almost functioning as his bodyguard."
Saad bin Laden is one of the eldest sons of bin Laden and his first wife, Najwa Ghanem, a Syrian who is also the terrorist leader's first cousin. The couple had 11 children, but Osama bin Laden has taken at least four other wives and divorced one, according to biographies in the Arab media and U.S. officials. Islam allows men to take as many as four wives at one time.
Born in Saudi Arabia, Saad bin Laden spent time with his father in Afghanistan during the war against the Soviet occupation. His father returned to Saudi Arabia in 1989, but left in 1991 to settle in Sudan. Again, Saad accompanied him. When bin Laden returned to Afghanistan in 1996, so did Saad.
According to one terrorism expert, Osama bin Laden was filmed in Afghanistan admonishing al Qaeda members not to expect their children to take leadership positions in the movement unless the children were willing to work hard for the cause. Bin Laden then singled out Saad for praise as a hard worker and said he was proud of his son.
Gunaratna said that an analysis of bin Laden's satellite telephone calls from 1996 to 1998 showed that more than 10 percent were placed to Iran, demonstrating the ongoing contacts with Iran during that time.
Officials said there is also evidence that another key liaison between the hard-line Iranian factions and al Qaeda is Imad Mugniyah, one of the world's most wanted terrorists.
Mugniyah, a Lebanese national and senior Hezbollah leader, is responsible for the kidnapping and murder of several Americans, as well as the hijacking of aircraft and the bombing of U.S. military barracks in Beirut in the 1980s, according to the FBI and CIA. Before Sept. 11, 2001, he was responsible for the deaths of more Americans than any other terrorist.
According to court testimony of former al Qaeda operatives, Mugniyah met bin Laden several times in Sudan in the mid-1990s and agreed to train al Qaeda combatants in the use of explosives and other techniques in exchange for weapons.
A description of Mugniyah's ongoing role was provided to authorities by a member of the Jerusalem Force who defected to Britain earlier this year. In a February interview with the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sarq al-Awsat, the defector said Mugniyah remained in Iran and had personally "planned the escape of dozens of al Qaeda men to Iran."
The defector, Hamid Zakiri, said Mugniyah served as "a liaison officer with Dr. Zawahiri and with commanders of other fundamentalist organizations."
Zakiri said that among those Mugniyah aided were bin Laden's youngest wife, Amal al-Saddah, and her infant child, whom he provided with safe passage from Afghanistan through Iran to her homeland of Yemen as the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan began.
European intelligence sources said that much of Zakiri's information had been verified.
Research editor Margot Williams contributed to this report.
Syria Calls up Reserves, Fears US-Israeli Military Pincer
DEBKAfile Special Intelligence Report
October 14, 2003, 12:28 PM (GMT+02:00)
Will not give up swordplay with Washington
Monday, October 13, the New York Times revealed that the first Israeli air raid inside Syria in three decades had altered “a crucial convention of the Arab-Israeli conflict.” The raid took place Sunday October 10 over Ain Sahab, 15 km northeast of Damascus, the day after a savage Palestinian suicide attack in Haifa claimed 20 Israeli lives. The paper quotes western diplomats and Arab analysts as predicting that “the Sharon administration now plans to treat the Syrian regime in Damascus much as it has treated the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat: subjected to military attack, “... cut off and ultimately isolated.”
According to one Damascus source, Syria is meeting this threat by secretly calling up 300,000 reservists to beef up its standing army of roughly the same number. This figure, in the view of DEBKAfile’s military sources, is implausibly high. A large call-up was certainly staged after the Israeli raid. But in Syrian terms, 50,000 men would be the more realistic figure, plus standby orders to tens of thousands more.
In general, the attempt to depict Syria as another of Ariel Sharon’s victims fails to take account of the “victim’s” proactive role in the Iraq war in support of Saddam Hussein. It ranges from the asylum granted Iraqi political and military elite to the smuggling of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction out of the country several weeks before the war in March and after it began. In between, Bashar Assad has deployed thousands of Syrian combatants in Iraq as well as Hizballah, Palestinians and any other Arabs willing to fight American troops in Iraq.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that by now Syrian combatants often outnumber Iraqi guerrillas in such embattled towns as Baghdad, Balad, Falluja, Ramadi, Baquba and the environs of the northern town of Mosul.
Until recently, Syria could bank on immunity from American military retribution, mainly because the Bush administration was reluctant to apply force against a second problematic Arab country after Iraq. In mid-April, George W. Bush actually called off an American military operation against Syrian military targets when US special forces were already poised ready for action across the Iraqi-Syrian border. Instead, he dispatched secretary of state Colin Powell to Damascus with a 10-point ultimatum. President Assad half-heartedly complied with only a small part. The US secretary declared at the time he would never forget how the Syrian president lied to him when he promised in mid-2002 to halt the flow of illegal Iraqi oil exports through Syrian ports. Nonetheless, Washington continued to engage the Syrian government in quiet diplomacy and oral rebukes.
Getting away with flouting Washington’s key demands encouraged the Syrians to believe they could keep going – even when the White House lifted its objections to sanctions under Syrian Accountability act legislation currently before Congress.
Damascus was only persuaded that the rules had changed by the Israeli air raid against a Palestinian site inside Syria, which the Assad regime believes could never have taken place without Washington’s consent. The Assad regime took it as a last American warning through a third party and the potential precursor of a two-pronged military threat posed turn, turnabout, by the Americans and the Israelis.
The Bush administration began to lose patience with Syria last month when US special forces -operating in the Sunni Triangle of central Iraq and among the Iraqi-Syrian tribes facilitating the smuggling of men and arms through the al Qaim border district - discovered vast sums of cash being pumped from Syrian banks to the anti-American guerrilla forces killing American troops day after day. This was followed by the uncovering of the “Syrian spy ring” at Guantanamo Bay. Caught wrong-footed, Damascus responded with its routine fulsome promises and half- if not quarter-measures.
As DEBKA-Net-Weekly revealed in issue 127 on September 26, high sources at the Radwa presidential palace were on the telephone to the White House with magnanimous offers of assistance for American efforts in the Middle East, especially Iraq. The offers came in two forms:
A. The disclosure of $700 million of Saddam Hussein’s money on deposit in banks in Damascus and Aleppo – mostly Aleppo. (Until now, Damascus flatly denied Aleppo banks were being used by the deposed Iraq president and his supporters as their main conduit for bankrolling the Iraqi guerrilla campaign against US forces.) The Syrians were willing to transfer Saddam’s hidden stash to Baghdad for the use of the Iraqi Governing Council – a policy about-turn of 180 degrees. It meant that Damascus was offering to be the first Arab government to recognize the American occupation of Iraq and the US-appointed provisional government.
B. Syrian special security and military intelligence teams to operate alongside US forces in northern and central Iraq on two missions: 1. Aid in sealing the Iraqi-Syrian border against the passage of Islamic guerrilla fighters into Iraq. (Until now, the Syrians pretended to have deployed three brigades of special forces for this purpose but in reality ordered them to facilitate the transit in collaboration with the Syrian-Iraqi tribes of the border regions) 2. Positioning in the central Sunni Triangle to assist American forces in their hunt for Saddam Hussein.
On the face of it, this offer is astonishingly forthcoming. No other Middle East or Muslim party has so far offered to help nail Saddam – excepting Turkey, and then only recently. Yet, according to our sources in Washington, the White House gave it a cool reception, curtly promising to respond after due consideration.
Damascus believes the Israeli air raid was the first half of the American response while the other half came in the form of Washington-sourced media reports alleging that Saddam’s deposits in Syrian banks were closer to $3 bn than $700 million. Those reports are taken to indicate that the Americans are onto the Syrian game of concealing the full scope of Saddam’s fortune – either for safekeeping in case the deposed Iraqi ruler ever returns or for themselves as a parting “bonus” for the services they rendered him.
But beyond the disposition of funds and despite Syria’s bountiful offers, Washington strongly suspects Assad means to continue his double game which consists of a paltry measure of cooperation with US forces in Iraq coupled with all-out collaboration with Saddam’s loyalist forces.
For Bashar Assad’s latest proposals to win serious attention in Washington and military restraint on the part of Israel, Damascus would have to come through on six principal issues:
1. To deliver the Syrian intelligence controller running the “Syrian spy ring” at Guantanamo Bay led by army chaplain Capt. James Yousef Yee and air force translator Ahmad Al-Halabi.
2. To round up all the suspects in this affair and produce them for unrestricted interrogation by US investigators.
3. To name the end-recipient of the intelligence stolen by members of the spy ring, whether Saudi Arabia, al Qaeda or any other foreign intelligence services. Washington will not be fobbed off with anything short of Syria coming completely clean on this.
4. A commitment to stop harboring al Qaeda and other Islamic and Arab terrorist organizations.
5. A promise to cut off aid to Saddam Hussein’s supporters in all its forms - combatants, weapons and funds.
6. To level with the United States on the quantities and hiding places of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction which Syrian military engineering units transported through Syria between January 10 and March 10.
Since the likelihood of the Bashar government ever coming through on any of these points is nil, the frictions between Washington and Damascus are expected to be long-lived and the border tensions between Jerusalem and Damascus unabated.
Apparently, few paid attention to the interim report of David Kay, the man Bush put in charge of preparing the report on Iraq's weapons program. Kay recently briefed congressional intelligence committees about his -- so far -- three-month-long search and examination. What he disclosed clearly demonstrates the validity of the war and confirms the president's arguments.
The explosion that blasted a CIA vehicle outside Beit Hanoun just after an official US embassy convoy entered the northern Gaza Strip through the Erez checkpoint represents a dangerous escalation of Palestinian terrorist aggression. It is a milestone, akin to the August 19 suicide strike against UN headquarters in Baghdad which claimed 24 lives including special UN representative in Iraq Sergio Vieira de Mello. He was the linchpin of American efforts to restore normalcy to the country. Since then, the security situation in Iraq has deteriorated disastrously as international bodies assisting those efforts quietly withdraw themselves and their services from Iraq.
The Palestinian assault on an American convoy in the Gaza Strip had the same objective.
Despite official denials, the convoy was carrying members of John Wolf’s monitoring team appointed by the US President to bring some normalcy to Palestinian-controlled areas and start defusing Palestinian-Israel warfare. Clearly, the Palestinian attack aimed at undermining not only the American initiative but also the efforts of diplomats and aid workers posted in region by the United Nations and Europeans, who of late are avoiding contact with Yasser Arafat and threatening to sever ties with him altogether. Now, their representatives and staff will almost certainly emulate their colleagues in Iraq and quietly pull up their stakes in the embattled country.
Arafat, despite his grave health condition, is still up to concocting one of his famous smoke-and- mirrors stratagems. Brandishing an olive branch to conceal the gun, he assigned one of his top disinformation experts, Yasser Abd Rabbo, to the task of luring a group of Israeli left-wingers into the web of deceit which has become known as the “Geneva Accords”. At the very moment that attention focused on the debate aroused by this “peace” initiative, he struck an official American target in the Gaza Strip with swift, dramatic effect as the next stage in his coming terror campaign.
Aware he may not have much time left to develop this campaign, he has removed the gloves and is striking out simultaneously in three directions:
1. Against Israel. Wednesday, the 21st victim of October 4 Palestinian suicide attack in a Haifa restaurant died of his wounds.
2. Israel Arab citizens are being increasingly drawn into acts of terror.
3. Strikes against US targets in Palestinian-controlled regions and Israel.
The Beit Hanoun attack Wednesday required a high class of advanced, precise intelligence and logistic preparations that could not have been assembled overnight. The assailants were fed their data on American CIA movements in Gaza by the same foreign intelligence agents who supply the pro-Saddam guerrillas in Iraq.
The convoy consisted of three armor-plated vehicles with two Palestinian police escort cars. The bombers detonated their charge precisely to hit the one carrying CIA guards, the last in line.
Fox TV’s Col.(ret.) David Hunt described it as a Chevy Suburban with level 5 armor built to stand RPG hits to the doors and landmine explosions from the bottom. He estimated the landmine that struck the car as between 30 and 50 pounds, similar to the devices used against coalition forces in Iraq. It is possible that an RPG was fired first to crack the heavy armor and make the vehicle susceptible to the landmine. An Associated Press reporter spotted a wire and switch leading from the scene of the attack to a concrete building.
An Israeli tank force entered the northern Gaza Strip to restore order and take command of the highways.
The offer by Palestinian leaders including Arafat to probe the assault jointly with American investigators went down as arrant cynicism. No one doubts any longer that Arafat’s hand stirs the terrorist pot in Israel and Palestinian regions, be the perpetrators Palestinian, Hizballah or al Qaeda, any more than an inquiry is needed to establish who is behind the guerrilla terrorist operations carried by Saddam’s men and al Qaeda in Iraq.
It is clear that Arafat is determined to go out on a blaze of Palestinian terror – not just against Israelis but Americans too. The State Department's first reponse was to order Americans to leave the Gaza Strip and exercise extreme caution in the West Bank
• "Is it your impression that the U.S. has or has not found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with the al-Qaida terrorist organization?"
• "Since the war with Iraq ended, is it your impression that the U.S. has or has not found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction?"
• "Thinking about how all the people in the world feel about the U.S. having gone to war with Iraq, do you think the majority of people favor the U.S. having gone to war?"
My response to "how all the people in the world feel" is that a lot of them are welcome to go to hell.
The newspaper, which receives funding from the Pentagon, also said that a third of the respondents complained that their mission lacked clear definition and that they would characterize the war in Iraq as having little or no value.
So 2/3 of the respondents believe that their mission is clearly defined and the war in Iraq has value? fold, thanks for your support. You are helping to undermine public confidence in the military and what for? Simply because you hate GW. Seems to me you are getting very close to giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
People create their own crime.
Follow the law.
A while back you admitted you use marijuana along with some prescription drugs...correct?
so, the crime that the prohibition creates is of no concern to you?
So there would be no crime if those addictive drugs were legal?
I see.
A while back you admitted you use marijuana along with some prescription drugs...correct?
double post
there would be a great deal less crime, yes. as a matter of fact it would reduce "drug related" crime a great deal. where you are getting "no crime" is beyond me though.
and this is a lifestyle?
and what constitutes "use"?
every day? no, I don't.
occasionally? yes.
as much as most people drink alcohol? no....absolutely not.
most of the time, I take no drugs at all. for instance, I never take aspirin or any painkillers.
the question is, why do you care what I do or do not put into my body as long as I'm not doing anything to you?
for that matter, why is it anyone else's fucking business in the first place?
there would be a great deal less crime, yes. as a matter of fact it would reduce "drug related" crime a great deal.
So the people who are involved in drug related crime would no longer steal to support their habit or be violent while under the influence just because their drug of choice would be legal?
the question is, why do you care what I do or do not put into my body as long as I'm not doing anything to you?
For the same reason that many care about drunk drivers. For the same reason people care about smokers raising their insurance rates.
no more than people steal to, say, support their cigarette or alcohol habits.
the crime rate that comes with the gangs and dealers would be gone.
last I checked, being violent was against the law.
I'm not advocating repealing the laws against assault and battery anymore than you are advocating outlawing milk drinking because someone commited a crime after drinking too much of it.
so, you are advocating outlawing drinking?
I'm not advocating getting rid of laws against driving while impaired.
so, you are advocating outlawing tobacco?
what's next after that?
too many cheeseburgers will have a negative impact on those insurance rates too you know.
I mean, are you seriously talking about making things against the law in order to keep your insurance rates down?
If it's no one's business what you use crabs, why did you post it?...DUH!
you asked.
and when someone starts telling lies about you, sometimes it's a good idea to set the record straight, even if it is none of their fucking business.
I didn't ask what you used you dope. You volunteerd it.
"Most of the time, I take no drugs at all"...Not taking your diabetes medication?
didn't ask?
of course you didn't!
don't need it anymore...why?
You're becoming more wacked as the days go by crabs...Sheeeeesh!
Better inform the medical world of how you managed to rid yourself of diabetes.
btw fold, you're up to untruth #20.
it was just the Atkins diet. My doc prescribed it and sure enough, it worked. I am fairly certain that my doctor is a part of the medical world.
Hey crabs, I heard that the Atkins diet could do that. I'm glad to have verification of it.
Ekeus theorizes that Saddam decided years ago that keeping mustard gas and other poisons in barrels was unstable and corrosive, and also hard to conceal. Therefore, rather than store large stocks of weapons of mass destruction, he would adapt the program to retain an infrastructure (laboratories, equipment, trained scientists, detailed plans) that could ``break out'' and ramp up production when needed. The model is Japanese ``just in time'' manufacturing, where you save on inventory by making and delivering stuff in immediate response to orders. Except that Saddam's business was toxins, not Toyotas.
The interim report of chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay seems to support the Ekeus hypothesis. He found infrastructure, but as yet no finished product.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/charleskrauthammer/ck20031010.shtml
Bin Laden Son Plays Key Role in Al Qaeda
By Douglas Farah and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 14, 2003; Page A01
Saad bin Laden, one of Osama bin Laden's oldest sons, has emerged in recent months as part of the upper echelon of the al Qaeda network, a small group of leaders that is managing the terrorist organization from Iran, according to U.S., European and Arab officials.
Saad bin Laden and other senior al Qaeda operatives were in contact with an al Qaeda cell in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in the days immediately prior to the May 12 suicide bombing there that left 35 people dead, including eight Americans, European and U.S. intelligence sources say. The sources would not divulge the nature or contents of the communications, but the contacts have led them to conclude that the Riyadh attacks were planned in Iran and ordered from there.
Although Saad bin Laden is not the top leader of the terrorist group, his presence in the decision-making process demonstrates his father's trust in him and an apparent desire to pass the mantle of leadership to a family member, according to numerous terrorism analysts inside and outside government.
Like other al Qaeda leaders in Iran, the younger bin Laden, who is believed to be 24 years old, is protected by an elite, radical Iranian security force loyal to the nation's clerics and beyond the control of the central government, according to U.S. and European intelligence officials. The secretive unit, known as the Jerusalem Force, has restricted the al Qaeda group's movements to its bases, mostly along the border with Afghanistan.
Also under the Jerusalem Force's protection is Saif al-Adel, al Qaeda's chief of military operations; Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, the organization's chief financial officer; and perhaps two dozen other top al Qaeda leaders, the officials said. Al-Adel and Abdullah are considered the top operational deputies to Osama bin Laden and his second-in-command, Ayman Zawahiri, who communicate with underlings almost exclusively through couriers.
The presence of Saad bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders in Iran has become part of a debate within the governments of the United States and Saudi Arabia over the best way to reduce Iranian support for terrorism. U.S. officials have sent stern warnings to the government of President Mohammad Khatami that Iran's harboring of senior al Qaeda operatives would have repercussions for a nation the Bush administration has labeled part of the "axis of evil."
Intelligence officials believe that although the State Department is eager to renew talks with Iran on a variety of issues, primarily its nuclear program, it is not clear whether that nation's civilian government could deliver its end of any bargain, especially if it entailed turning over al Qaeda leaders.
"Iran will continue to pursue an asymmetric strategy in which they court Western acceptance, while maintaining their surrogate leadership roles within the Islamic extremist community," a U.S. intelligence analysis says.
Similarly, Saudi Arabia, which in recent years has tried to thaw relations with its larger and more powerful neighbor across the Persian Gulf, is trying, unsuccessfully, to persuade Iran to extradite Saad bin Laden and others suspected in the Riyadh bombing. Saudi officials estimate there are as many as 400 al Qaeda members there.
"Those people are in Iran and somebody must be helping them. The question is who?" Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador, told the San Francisco Chronicle last month. "This is the problem with Iran. The people who we can deal with can't deliver, they can't lead eight ducks across the street. And the guys who can deliver, they're not interested."
As a child, Saad bin Laden was at his father's side in Afghanistan in the mid-1980s when Osama bin Laden formed the al Qaeda network. The younger bin Laden was groomed to take a leadership role in the terrorism organization. He is fluent in English and is computer-literate, two qualities rare among al Qaeda leaders and assets that have enhanced his importance beyond his family name.
Yet Saad has only recently emerged as an important target for the CIA, FBI and other organizations trying to disrupt the terrorist network. It has only been since his arrival in Iran in the past year that he has assumed a more active role in directing al Qaeda, and that he has been identified as a senior leader. Before that, analysts said, he often sat with his father in leadership meetings but seldom spoke and was not given a voice in deliberations.
Many experts believe, for example, that he also had direct involvement in coordinating a series of bombings on May 16 that killed 45 people in Casablanca, Morocco.
Kenneth Katzman, a terrorism analyst for the Congressional Research Service, said Saad "is touted as his father's stand-in. Because his father is incommunicado, a lot of people are looking to Saad to give them direct instructions."
While there is broad agreement that Saad bin Laden's role within al Qaeda has grown increasingly important in the past six months, not everyone agrees he is now a senior operational commander. One U.S. intelligence official said Saad is "more of a player than most of the offspring, but not that significant." Osama Bin Laden has more than two dozen children with five wives.
But European intelligence officials and independent analysts said Saad bin Laden, while not the most important al Qaeda leader, is helping to make key operational decisions and is an important part of al Qaeda's logistical network. Some analysts believe he was very close to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, who was captured in March.
"Saad is capable of mounting operations against the West because he knows the West very well," said Rohan Gunaratna, director of terrorism research at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore. "Saad has been very close to his father, almost functioning as his bodyguard."
Saad bin Laden is one of the eldest sons of bin Laden and his first wife, Najwa Ghanem, a Syrian who is also the terrorist leader's first cousin. The couple had 11 children, but Osama bin Laden has taken at least four other wives and divorced one, according to biographies in the Arab media and U.S. officials. Islam allows men to take as many as four wives at one time.
Born in Saudi Arabia, Saad bin Laden spent time with his father in Afghanistan during the war against the Soviet occupation. His father returned to Saudi Arabia in 1989, but left in 1991 to settle in Sudan. Again, Saad accompanied him. When bin Laden returned to Afghanistan in 1996, so did Saad.
According to one terrorism expert, Osama bin Laden was filmed in Afghanistan admonishing al Qaeda members not to expect their children to take leadership positions in the movement unless the children were willing to work hard for the cause. Bin Laden then singled out Saad for praise as a hard worker and said he was proud of his son.
Gunaratna said that an analysis of bin Laden's satellite telephone calls from 1996 to 1998 showed that more than 10 percent were placed to Iran, demonstrating the ongoing contacts with Iran during that time.
Officials said there is also evidence that another key liaison between the hard-line Iranian factions and al Qaeda is Imad Mugniyah, one of the world's most wanted terrorists.
Mugniyah, a Lebanese national and senior Hezbollah leader, is responsible for the kidnapping and murder of several Americans, as well as the hijacking of aircraft and the bombing of U.S. military barracks in Beirut in the 1980s, according to the FBI and CIA. Before Sept. 11, 2001, he was responsible for the deaths of more Americans than any other terrorist.
According to court testimony of former al Qaeda operatives, Mugniyah met bin Laden several times in Sudan in the mid-1990s and agreed to train al Qaeda combatants in the use of explosives and other techniques in exchange for weapons.
A description of Mugniyah's ongoing role was provided to authorities by a member of the Jerusalem Force who defected to Britain earlier this year. In a February interview with the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sarq al-Awsat, the defector said Mugniyah remained in Iran and had personally "planned the escape of dozens of al Qaeda men to Iran."
The defector, Hamid Zakiri, said Mugniyah served as "a liaison officer with Dr. Zawahiri and with commanders of other fundamentalist organizations."
Zakiri said that among those Mugniyah aided were bin Laden's youngest wife, Amal al-Saddah, and her infant child, whom he provided with safe passage from Afghanistan through Iran to her homeland of Yemen as the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan began.
European intelligence sources said that much of Zakiri's information had been verified.
Research editor Margot Williams contributed to this report.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
Syria Calls up Reserves, Fears US-Israeli Military Pincer
DEBKAfile Special Intelligence Report
October 14, 2003, 12:28 PM (GMT+02:00)
Will not give up swordplay with Washington
Monday, October 13, the New York Times revealed that the first Israeli air raid inside Syria in three decades had altered “a crucial convention of the Arab-Israeli conflict.” The raid took place Sunday October 10 over Ain Sahab, 15 km northeast of Damascus, the day after a savage Palestinian suicide attack in Haifa claimed 20 Israeli lives. The paper quotes western diplomats and Arab analysts as predicting that “the Sharon administration now plans to treat the Syrian regime in Damascus much as it has treated the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat: subjected to military attack, “... cut off and ultimately isolated.”
According to one Damascus source, Syria is meeting this threat by secretly calling up 300,000 reservists to beef up its standing army of roughly the same number. This figure, in the view of DEBKAfile’s military sources, is implausibly high. A large call-up was certainly staged after the Israeli raid. But in Syrian terms, 50,000 men would be the more realistic figure, plus standby orders to tens of thousands more.
In general, the attempt to depict Syria as another of Ariel Sharon’s victims fails to take account of the “victim’s” proactive role in the Iraq war in support of Saddam Hussein. It ranges from the asylum granted Iraqi political and military elite to the smuggling of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction out of the country several weeks before the war in March and after it began. In between, Bashar Assad has deployed thousands of Syrian combatants in Iraq as well as Hizballah, Palestinians and any other Arabs willing to fight American troops in Iraq.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that by now Syrian combatants often outnumber Iraqi guerrillas in such embattled towns as Baghdad, Balad, Falluja, Ramadi, Baquba and the environs of the northern town of Mosul.
Until recently, Syria could bank on immunity from American military retribution, mainly because the Bush administration was reluctant to apply force against a second problematic Arab country after Iraq. In mid-April, George W. Bush actually called off an American military operation against Syrian military targets when US special forces were already poised ready for action across the Iraqi-Syrian border. Instead, he dispatched secretary of state Colin Powell to Damascus with a 10-point ultimatum. President Assad half-heartedly complied with only a small part. The US secretary declared at the time he would never forget how the Syrian president lied to him when he promised in mid-2002 to halt the flow of illegal Iraqi oil exports through Syrian ports. Nonetheless, Washington continued to engage the Syrian government in quiet diplomacy and oral rebukes.
Getting away with flouting Washington’s key demands encouraged the Syrians to believe they could keep going – even when the White House lifted its objections to sanctions under Syrian Accountability act legislation currently before Congress.
Damascus was only persuaded that the rules had changed by the Israeli air raid against a Palestinian site inside Syria, which the Assad regime believes could never have taken place without Washington’s consent. The Assad regime took it as a last American warning through a third party and the potential precursor of a two-pronged military threat posed turn, turnabout, by the Americans and the Israelis.
The Bush administration began to lose patience with Syria last month when US special forces -operating in the Sunni Triangle of central Iraq and among the Iraqi-Syrian tribes facilitating the smuggling of men and arms through the al Qaim border district - discovered vast sums of cash being pumped from Syrian banks to the anti-American guerrilla forces killing American troops day after day. This was followed by the uncovering of the “Syrian spy ring” at Guantanamo Bay. Caught wrong-footed, Damascus responded with its routine fulsome promises and half- if not quarter-measures.
As DEBKA-Net-Weekly revealed in issue 127 on September 26, high sources at the Radwa presidential palace were on the telephone to the White House with magnanimous offers of assistance for American efforts in the Middle East, especially Iraq. The offers came in two forms:
A. The disclosure of $700 million of Saddam Hussein’s money on deposit in banks in Damascus and Aleppo – mostly Aleppo. (Until now, Damascus flatly denied Aleppo banks were being used by the deposed Iraq president and his supporters as their main conduit for bankrolling the Iraqi guerrilla campaign against US forces.) The Syrians were willing to transfer Saddam’s hidden stash to Baghdad for the use of the Iraqi Governing Council – a policy about-turn of 180 degrees. It meant that Damascus was offering to be the first Arab government to recognize the American occupation of Iraq and the US-appointed provisional government.
B. Syrian special security and military intelligence teams to operate alongside US forces in northern and central Iraq on two missions: 1. Aid in sealing the Iraqi-Syrian border against the passage of Islamic guerrilla fighters into Iraq. (Until now, the Syrians pretended to have deployed three brigades of special forces for this purpose but in reality ordered them to facilitate the transit in collaboration with the Syrian-Iraqi tribes of the border regions) 2. Positioning in the central Sunni Triangle to assist American forces in their hunt for Saddam Hussein.
On the face of it, this offer is astonishingly forthcoming. No other Middle East or Muslim party has so far offered to help nail Saddam – excepting Turkey, and then only recently. Yet, according to our sources in Washington, the White House gave it a cool reception, curtly promising to respond after due consideration.
Damascus believes the Israeli air raid was the first half of the American response while the other half came in the form of Washington-sourced media reports alleging that Saddam’s deposits in Syrian banks were closer to $3 bn than $700 million. Those reports are taken to indicate that the Americans are onto the Syrian game of concealing the full scope of Saddam’s fortune – either for safekeeping in case the deposed Iraqi ruler ever returns or for themselves as a parting “bonus” for the services they rendered him.
But beyond the disposition of funds and despite Syria’s bountiful offers, Washington strongly suspects Assad means to continue his double game which consists of a paltry measure of cooperation with US forces in Iraq coupled with all-out collaboration with Saddam’s loyalist forces.
For Bashar Assad’s latest proposals to win serious attention in Washington and military restraint on the part of Israel, Damascus would have to come through on six principal issues:
1. To deliver the Syrian intelligence controller running the “Syrian spy ring” at Guantanamo Bay led by army chaplain Capt. James Yousef Yee and air force translator Ahmad Al-Halabi.
2. To round up all the suspects in this affair and produce them for unrestricted interrogation by US investigators.
3. To name the end-recipient of the intelligence stolen by members of the spy ring, whether Saudi Arabia, al Qaeda or any other foreign intelligence services. Washington will not be fobbed off with anything short of Syria coming completely clean on this.
4. A commitment to stop harboring al Qaeda and other Islamic and Arab terrorist organizations.
5. A promise to cut off aid to Saddam Hussein’s supporters in all its forms - combatants, weapons and funds.
6. To level with the United States on the quantities and hiding places of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction which Syrian military engineering units transported through Syria between January 10 and March 10.
Since the likelihood of the Bashar government ever coming through on any of these points is nil, the frictions between Washington and Damascus are expected to be long-lived and the border tensions between Jerusalem and Damascus unabated.
Apparently, few paid attention to the interim report of David Kay, the man Bush put in charge of preparing the report on Iraq's weapons program. Kay recently briefed congressional intelligence committees about his -- so far -- three-month-long search and examination. What he disclosed clearly demonstrates the validity of the war and confirms the president's arguments.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/larryelder/le20031016.shtml
let's see...Bush put him in charge and he winds up supporting Bush?
the hell you say
crabs, it is clear you have a closed mind. If you were wise you would try to hide it occasionally.
I'm sure Crabby always does/says what his boss wants/tells him to. Therefore it's natural for him to think that everyone else would do the same.
whereas you would try to bust your boss....yea...I'm so sure.
I'm sure Crabby always does/says what his boss wants/tells him to.
I didn't know crabs was married.
and I'm sure you thought that Henry "war criminal" Kissinger was going to get to the bottom of 9/11 too.
whereas you would try to bust your boss....yea...I'm so sure.
You would blindly do what your boss tells you?
Henry "war criminal" Kissinger
You're just so extreme sometimes.
sometimes?
Americans Targeted in Gaza Like Baghdad
DEBKAfile Special Report
October 15, 2003, 2:45 PM (GMT+02:00)
The explosion that blasted a CIA vehicle outside Beit Hanoun just after an official US embassy convoy entered the northern Gaza Strip through the Erez checkpoint represents a dangerous escalation of Palestinian terrorist aggression. It is a milestone, akin to the August 19 suicide strike against UN headquarters in Baghdad which claimed 24 lives including special UN representative in Iraq Sergio Vieira de Mello. He was the linchpin of American efforts to restore normalcy to the country. Since then, the security situation in Iraq has deteriorated disastrously as international bodies assisting those efforts quietly withdraw themselves and their services from Iraq.
The Palestinian assault on an American convoy in the Gaza Strip had the same objective.
Despite official denials, the convoy was carrying members of John Wolf’s monitoring team appointed by the US President to bring some normalcy to Palestinian-controlled areas and start defusing Palestinian-Israel warfare. Clearly, the Palestinian attack aimed at undermining not only the American initiative but also the efforts of diplomats and aid workers posted in region by the United Nations and Europeans, who of late are avoiding contact with Yasser Arafat and threatening to sever ties with him altogether. Now, their representatives and staff will almost certainly emulate their colleagues in Iraq and quietly pull up their stakes in the embattled country.
Arafat, despite his grave health condition, is still up to concocting one of his famous smoke-and- mirrors stratagems. Brandishing an olive branch to conceal the gun, he assigned one of his top disinformation experts, Yasser Abd Rabbo, to the task of luring a group of Israeli left-wingers into the web of deceit which has become known as the “Geneva Accords”. At the very moment that attention focused on the debate aroused by this “peace” initiative, he struck an official American target in the Gaza Strip with swift, dramatic effect as the next stage in his coming terror campaign.
Aware he may not have much time left to develop this campaign, he has removed the gloves and is striking out simultaneously in three directions:
1. Against Israel. Wednesday, the 21st victim of October 4 Palestinian suicide attack in a Haifa restaurant died of his wounds.
2. Israel Arab citizens are being increasingly drawn into acts of terror.
3. Strikes against US targets in Palestinian-controlled regions and Israel.
The Beit Hanoun attack Wednesday required a high class of advanced, precise intelligence and logistic preparations that could not have been assembled overnight. The assailants were fed their data on American CIA movements in Gaza by the same foreign intelligence agents who supply the pro-Saddam guerrillas in Iraq.
The convoy consisted of three armor-plated vehicles with two Palestinian police escort cars. The bombers detonated their charge precisely to hit the one carrying CIA guards, the last in line.
Fox TV’s Col.(ret.) David Hunt described it as a Chevy Suburban with level 5 armor built to stand RPG hits to the doors and landmine explosions from the bottom. He estimated the landmine that struck the car as between 30 and 50 pounds, similar to the devices used against coalition forces in Iraq. It is possible that an RPG was fired first to crack the heavy armor and make the vehicle susceptible to the landmine. An Associated Press reporter spotted a wire and switch leading from the scene of the attack to a concrete building.
The US cultural attaché rode in another vehicle. He was of no interest to the Palestinian bombers. They were after American security personnel. All the Palestinian terrorist organizations – from the al Aqsa Martyrs brigades to the Hamas – denied responsibility for bomb attack with one voice. American investigators who arrived quickly on the scene near Beit Hanoun were pelted with stones. They fired on the Palestinian mob and injured some. A similar incident occurred outside Gaza City's Shifa hospital where US officials attended injured and dead.
An Israeli tank force entered the northern Gaza Strip to restore order and take command of the highways.
The offer by Palestinian leaders including Arafat to probe the assault jointly with American investigators went down as arrant cynicism. No one doubts any longer that Arafat’s hand stirs the terrorist pot in Israel and Palestinian regions, be the perpetrators Palestinian, Hizballah or al Qaeda, any more than an inquiry is needed to establish who is behind the guerrilla terrorist operations carried by Saddam’s men and al Qaeda in Iraq.
It is clear that Arafat is determined to go out on a blaze of Palestinian terror – not just against Israelis but Americans too. The State Department's first reponse was to order Americans to leave the Gaza Strip and exercise extreme caution in the West Bank
Please respond to the following:
• "Is it your impression that the U.S. has or has not found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with the al-Qaida terrorist organization?"
• "Since the war with Iraq ended, is it your impression that the U.S. has or has not found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction?"
• "Thinking about how all the people in the world feel about the U.S. having gone to war with Iraq, do you think the majority of people favor the U.S. having gone to war?"
My response to "how all the people in the world feel" is that a lot of them are welcome to go to hell.
you are inviting a pre-emtive strike.
you are inviting a pre-emtive strike.
If that is what they want, I say bring it on.
Major Turdgison present and acocunted for.
There is no acocunting for you, crabs.
do ya thimk so, Turdgison?
The newspaper, which receives funding from the Pentagon, also said that a third of the respondents complained that their mission lacked clear definition and that they would characterize the war in Iraq as having little or no value.
So 2/3 of the respondents believe that their mission is clearly defined and the war in Iraq has value? fold, thanks for your support. You are helping to undermine public confidence in the military and what for? Simply because you hate GW. Seems to me you are getting very close to giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
87 billion dollars worth?
87 billion dollars worth?
There you go lying again. You should know what the money is for but you either are to damn stupid or you intentionally lie.
it was a question.
you say someone is giving aid and comfort to the "enemy", but you don't specifiy who that is.
it was a question.
It was a question based on a lie. Now the next question is: do you know it is a lie or not?
based on what lie?
notices you aren't addressing the issue.
based on what lie?
That the $87 million is supporting the enemy.
we waged war on a country, didn't we? if they aren't the enemy, who is?
we waged war on a country, didn't we?
No, we waged a war on Saddam's regime.
And now, we wage war in Iraq on...Saddaam's Regime???
In a way. By rebuilding the place and getting them back on their feet we can help to keep him out of power.
And I thought I was a cynic.
It worked in Germany and Japan, it can work in Iraq.
so...it wasn't a war on Iraq?
interesting
so...it wasn't a war on Iraq?
Does it matter?
you are the ones making the distinction