Osama bin Laden is trying to use this as a bargain chip, claiming that the U.S. will "have no peace" until all Israelis are gone from the land. He also claimed this is a war between the world and all muslims. I think Osama bin Laden is wrong, we'll have peace after we finish off him and his freaks. So basically he is fried in the brain and doesn't realize that the U.S. is going in to finish him off. But Osama bin Laden pratically admitted it, saying it was "god's will" to fly those planes into those buildings.
yea, they were saying on the news ....he all but said "I did it!"....clearly the speach caused those questioning his involvement to now know his involvement to be true...
Did anyone catch Osama bin Stupid's younger brother denouncing and disowning him? Apparently he is a law student at Harvard. I had no idea.
Yeah Doc, Osama bin Laden has something like, I think 50 brothers and 50 sisters, no lie! And his mother, brothers, and many others live in the U.S. and they denounced him. Not only did they denounce him, but they said that if he had anything to do with the attacks then by Islamic law states he should be put to death, and they said he would deserve it. Strong words.
Sorry, for so many nearly back-to-back messages, but I'm posting for people like haven who are at work and can't keep up with the latest news. Apparently Pakistani leaders are set to make an official announcement about the attacks soon. (please be supportive...) The city of Kandahar had a second wave of attacks that hammered it even worse than the first wave according to CNN. Missles being fired are crossing Pakistani airspace with their support/permission to land in Afghanistan. Taliban officials are saying that 10000 troops are amassing on the borders of Uzbekistan and will enter if Uzbekistan supports the US/British attacks. Taliban condemns attacks as terrorist attacks (you have effin' got to be kidding me) Kabul and Kandahar are being targeted by the US attacks. Cruise missles led attacks from US and British ships. Attack started at 11:45am (I've also heard 12:45am) Eastern time. Early attack included 15 bombers, 25 carrier aircraft, and 50 cruise missles
France, Canada, Germany, and Australia just pledged forces to help the U.S. and Britain fight in this upcoming battle. And something interesting that I didn't pick up on, and Afghanistan expert said that Osama bin Laden never ONCED mentioned Afghanistan in his demands and ramblings, so he isn't acting as a guest but as an invader.
Taliban defense minister is apparently is stating that a plane has been shot down. No confirmation whether it's American or British or if it's even true.
So far the U.S. denying the report that a plane has been shot down. They said they haven't gotten any information about a plane going down. As confused as they are, the Taliban's army probably accidently shot down their own planes or something.
I'd like to point out something that apparently no one has noticed: these fools (Taliban) apparently did not follow the Gulf War or Kosovo on TV. They were studying the Koran instead of studying their enemies. They really do not understand how we operate. They have announced that they are sending 8,000 fighters towards Uzbekistan in order to attack our forces there. The idiots don't realize that they've just told us where 8,000 of their fighters can be found and killed. They are apparently reinforcing their forces arrayed on the front line against the Northern Alliance. Again, they have just told us where to put our high explosives. Had they watched the Gulf War or Kosovo, they would know that in order to survive a US air attack they must disperse their forces, and do it discretely. Instead, they are massing them and announcing it to the world. Any tank they deploy is about to become a 3-man coffin. Fools. Soon to be dead fools.
RM, Rumsfeld announced that humanitarian flights had begun 25-30 minutes previous to his release. That likely means that the Taliban no longer has any aircraft with which to threaten the unarmed C-17s doing the drops. It's interesting to note that the Taliban has announced (in apparent triumph) that while our weapons hit the C3 facilities at their airports, we "missed" the runways. The idiots don't seem to understand that that was intentional - we intend to use those runways ourselves...
I wish we had named this response "Allah's Revenge!" I'd like to see how "Been Leaden" would have spun that.
That's an interesting point treeman about the planes, didn't think of that! You seem to be on the ball, keep us updated! I assumed they still had planes or something because they said the humanitarian supplies wouldn't be dropped until tomorrow on one report, but now your report makes sense. It also makes sense why anti-aircraft artillary were among the first attacked. Now they're telling us where their troops are? And leaving huge chunks of them? The military of Afghanistan don't realize that 1.) They're not just fighting the Northern Alliance and 2.) We're not Russia. They may have kicked Russia's @ss, but the U.S. will through them like a hot knife through butter if they keep pulling the stunts that they have been pulling. Afghanistan is so far over their heads and out of their league right now it's laughable. Should have just handed bin Laden over. bin Laden could give two craps about them either.
RM: The Taliban really doesn't understand what it's gotten itself into. That realization brings a smile to my face... I saw an interview with a journalist who has apparently spent the past several years with the Taliban's highest leadership, and when the interviewer asked him what these people were really like, he answered that they were "stupid, brutal, ignorant people who really have no idea what is going on around the rest of the world." He said that mullah Omar could "quote any line of the Koran, but couldn't point on a map to where France was"... They apparently really didn't see the Gulf War. Aren't they in for a surprise...
I'm glad to see that according to CNN Chistianne Ammanpour? that we are avoiding the targetting of civilian targets such as bridges, and water supplies like we did in the Gulf War. I never could understand why we had to destroy the water and sewerage system of Iraq when we didn't even want to totally conquer them. This just led to many unnecessary innocent civilian deaths mainly children. For after all, Sadam can drink bottled water. What did the water and sewerage systems have to do with liberating Kuwait, protecting our access to oil or even preventing his development of weapon systems?
http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=98181 Robert Fisk: Our friends are killers, crooks and torturers 07 October 2001 Almost four weeks after the crimes against humanity in New York and Washington, we are playing politics on the hoof and allying ourselves to some of the nastiest butchers around. Mr Blair may believe that "the values we believe in should shine through what we do in Afghanistan" but few of our "friends" in the region have many values, and some of them have a lot of blood on their hands. For as we search for facilities and jumping-off points and air space and access -- and we are now creating policies by the day -- we are being asked to forget a lot of recent history. First out of the memory goes Chechnya. The savage repression of this Muslim republic -- complete with mass executions, mass rape and mass graves -- was the brainchild of Vladimir Putin, the former serving KGB officer into whose soul Mr Bush believes he peered in Slovenia. Mr Putin's assault on Grozny was timed to bring him the Russian presidency, and within weeks his indisciplined troops had turned the rubble of Chechnya into something approaching Afghanistan. Mr Putin now seems our strongest ally in the "war against terror". And why not, when he is himself such a master of terror? Second out of the memory goes the nasty little dictatorship run by the Saudi royal family whose religious "mouttawa" police taught the Taliban how to run their Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue. We should forget that women are not even allowed to drive a car in Saudi Arabia, we must ignore the weekly head-choppings outside mosques, the country's disgraceful and unfair judicial system -- everything, in fact, which might remind us of Saudi Arabia's carbon copy, the Taliban, whose destruction we are now seeking. Then we must turn our attention away from the not terribly democratic regime of General Pervez Musharraf. Only a little while ago, the general was the Pakistani army commander who overthrew the democratically elected -- though corrupt -- government of Nawaz Sharif. Indeed, General Musharraf was rather keen to hang Mr Sharif until President Clinton dropped by Islamabad early last year to condemn Osama bin Laden and appeal for Sharif's life. Only a few weeks ago, the general appointed himself president. And while the world tut-tutted then, it now respectfully accords General Musharraf the title of "president" too. Fourth down the memory hole goes our new friend Uzbekistan whose President Islam Karimov currently holds 7,000 political prisoners in his jails. There is no free press, no political opposition. Mikhail Ardzinov, one of the few human rights activists in Uzbekistan -- who was brutally beaten by Karimov's secret police two years ago -- now says that although America had promised not to sell out human rights to get Karimov's friendship, "We know that the tone will change now". Too true. Karimov has promised that his air space can be "used in the fight against terrorism for humanitarian and security aims". And this is not the moment to remind anyone that Uzbekistan has its own reasons to destroy the Taliban -- not just because the Taliban has been exporting its revolution over the Afghan-Uzbek border, but because President Karimov wants to run an oil pipeline through Afghanistan to a Pakistani port, a project that will help to fund his bankrupt police state (as well as a few American oil companies). One of Karimov's allies is the anti-Taliban war criminal Abdul Rashid Dustum whose men went on a rampage of rape in Kabul in the early Nineties and who, for several months, went to fight for the Taliban after receiving a massive bribe for his change of allegiance. So it's amnesia too for the anarchy and mass human rights abuses perpetrated when the Northern Alliance -- our friends in northern Afghanistan -- ruled Kabul. We must remember with sorrow its former leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud, a genuine patriot murdered by Arab suicide bombers on 9 September, but we must forget his colleague Rasoul Sayaf whose men used Shia women as sex slaves in the early Nineties. Now it's true that Churchill, when told in 1941 that Germany had invaded the Soviet Union and that Stalin was now his ally, announced that if Hitler invaded Hell, he would at least make "a favourable reference" to the Devil in the House of Commons. But we're not making any references at all to our "friends" in the region. We have drawn the shining bright sword and have no time to worry if the hands we shake are covered in blood. This is a war of democracy versus evil, according to President Bush. It's just that there's not an awful lot of democracy around.
That article is all over the place. It isn't the U.S. job to police all of these countries just because they want to destroy themselves. The U.S. wouldn't have even bothered with Afghanistan if they weren't harboring Osama bin Laden, so for that article to put the blame on the U.S. for not stopping all of these countries from destroying themselves is ridiculous. And the Northern Alliance isn't our friends necessarily, they're just a tool to be used to get what the U.S. wants. It just happens that the Northern Alliance goal coincides with one of our goals. The U.S. could deal with this with or without the Alliance, but they make the U.S. job much easier.
Hey boy, why don't you grab an AK and go help out your Taliban buddies, since you feel so strongly for them?
no i actually can't stand the taliban. i just blame the american, pakistani, and saudi governments for their existance. they didn't really help the afghani people that much nor did the northern alliance. nor do i like zahir shah much apparently neither did the afghanis after all they did kick him out.
There are no angels in Afghanistan boy, but the Northern Alliance will certainly be no worse than the Taliban. It will likely be a substantial improvement, especially with the US looking over their shoulders. The Taliban is not, however, a US or Saudi creation. Contrary to popular belief the US did not create them in the '80s - we more accurately created what is now the Northern Alliance. The Pakistani ISI (Interservice Intelligence) created the Taliban with the main purposes of gaining control over Afghanistan and drafting fighters for Kashmir. Many Taliban are not Afghani, either, but are Saudi, Egyptian, Yemeni, and Pakistani (to name the larger contingents). The Afghani people will be for the most part thrilled to see them gone.
