Bin Laden and Qaeda in the Mid-90s

Some excerpts regarding bin Laden activity in the mid-90s from Steve Colls excellent book Ghost Wars:

...Murad confessed that he had been working with Yousef on multiple terrorist plots: to bomb up to a dozen American commercial airliners flying over the Pacific, to assassinate President Clinton during a visit to the Phillipines, to assassinate the Pope when he visited Manila, and to hijack a commercial airliner and crash it into the headquarters of the CIA.

Yousef, who is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's nephew, lived in a bin Laden funded safe house in Pakistan and had in his possession, when arrested in 1995, the business card of a bin Laden relative.

Another excerpt:

In August 1994 three hooded North Africans killed two Spanish tourists in a Marrakesh hotel. The attackers and their handlers had trained in Afghanistan. Bombings of the Paris Metro later that year were traced to Algerians trained in Afghan camps. In December 1994 four Algerian terrorists from the Armed Islamic Group hijacked an Air France jet. They planned to fly to Paris and slam the plane kamikaze-style into the Eiffel Tower. French authorities fooled the hijackers into believing that they did not have enough fuel to reach Paris, so they diverted to Marseilles where all four were shot dead by French commandos. In March 1995, Belgian investigators seized a terrorist training manual from Algerian militants. The document explained how to make a bomb using a wristwatch as a timer, and its preface was dedicated to bin Laden. In April, Filipino guerrillas swearing loyalty to the Afghan mujahedin leader Abdurrab Rasul Sayyaf sacked the Mindanao island town of Ipil. They killed sixty-three people, robbed four banks, and took fifty-three hostages, killing a dozen of them. On June 26, 1995, Egyptian guerillas with the Islamic Group, equipped with Sudanese passports, unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in Ethiopia. A month later a member of the Egyptian extremist group al-Jihad said in a published interview that bin Laden sometimes knew about their specific terrorist operations against Egyptian targets. On November 13, 1995, a car bomb loaded with about 250 pounds of explosives blew up near the three-story headquarters of the office of the program manager of the Saudi Arabian national guard in Riyadh. Five Americans died, and thirty-four were wounded. Months later one of the perpetrators confessed in a Saudi television broadcast that he was influenced by bin Laden and the Egyptian Islamist groups, and that he had learned how to make the car bomb because of "my experiences in explosives which I had during my participation in the Afghan jihad operations." One week after the Riyadh bombing, Islamist terrorists drove a suicide truck bomb into the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad, killing fifteen people and injuring eighty.

9/11 didn't come out of nowhere. Looking at the record of terrorist atrocities carried out worldwide after the Afghan Arabs ended their jihad against the Soviets, and the increased importance of bin Laden, I can't keep myself from thinking again about what might have been in those documents that Sandy Bergers stuffed in his socks at the Archives.

Again from Ghost Wars:

He [bin Laden] did not behave like a typical underground terrorist leader. He was accessible and visible in Khartoum during these years; he was certainly not trying to hide.

What Berger was hiding is anyone's guess, but examining terrorist activity from the mid-90s onward and holding it up next to the Clinton administration's reaction, it's more than likely the documents clearly inicated an unwillingness to take terrorism and bin Laden seriously. "Yeah, we know about bin Laden and we know where he is and we could easily get him, but it's not our problem."

Possible Prisoner Swap

It's been reported that Israel is considering a prisoner swap to get back captured soldier Gilad Shalit who was captured by militant Palestinians last year. Egypt is brokering a deal between the Israeli government and Hamas, that may include the release of 450 Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel.

One of the Palestinians who may be included in the release is Marwan Barghouti, a important political figure and bomb maker convicted of assisting in a rash of suicide bombings in 2001 and 2002.

The Jerusalem Post has a rundown of six of the top terrorists on the release list.

Prisoner swaps like this inevitably cause much more harm than good. Aside from the outright imbalance inherent in swapping 450 mostly dangerous individuals for one soldier, these situations make a clear cut case for the dangers of encouragement that go along with negotiating with terrorists. It is only reasonable to expect the militants to take more prisoners in order to facilitate more swaps. Who could blame them? They'd be stupid not to.

Americans have the Iran-Contra affair to look at. Despite some success in getting Hezbollah to release hostages, more were taken in their place. And Israel has its own long, sad history of botched prisoner swaps to look to.

Nonetheless an ineffective, beleaguered Olmert government seems to be making the same old mistakes and creating more problems:

1. Getting one soldier back to his family, yes, but at the same time making other Israeli patrols more attractive targets for cross-border raids.

2. Legitimizing a Hamas government that continues to refuse recognition of Israel, has taken no real steps to control terrorism in the Palestininan territories, and at the very least tolerated the hostage taken while, more likely, helped facilitate them.

3. Releasing a number of dangerous militants back into Gaza where they are more free to create terror plots against Israel than they were before the 2005 pullout.

Hopefully Olmert hasn't reached the point of political desperation where he's willing to try anything. He ought to listen to the concerns of the analysts and terror victims' family members who have enough hindsight to recognize a bad deal when they see one.

Secret Maybe, But A Hot Story

ABC's Brian Ross and Christoper Isham have reported that U.S. officials are secretly supporting Pakistani militant group Jundullah in its cross-border attacks on Iran. The attacks, which have resulted in killings and kidnappings, are targeting at destabilizing the Iranian regime.

Ross and Isham have an interesting story there. The problem is that if it's true, they've also exposed a covert operation that can only be hindered by worldwide attention.

Way to go fellas. Journalists first and Americans second. Or third or fourth...

Forget the Easter Bunny, We've Got Ahmadinejad

The inevitable happened today when Ahmadenijad announced he's releasing The 15 tomorrow. He said it's his Easter gift to the British.

It remains to be seen what long term impacts the affair will have. What will the British sailors and marines say on their return? Exposing Iranian duplicity and heavy handedness versus praising them for being good hosts and "pardoning" their offense would result in two very different outcomes. I'm also eager to hear exactly what type of deal was cut in order to spring the hostages.

The sight of one of the marines personally thanking Ahmadinejad and using other kind words with him is upsetting, but I'm going to continue to give the British the benefit of the doubt since they are still in Iranian custody. I'll wait to hear what they have to say when they get home. But I know for sure that if it was me standing at arms length from Ahmadinejad, the Revolutionary Guard better make sure to keep me away from sharp objects.

The impression I'm getting from the whole episode right now is that it's a win for Iran. The West looks weak and Ahmadinejad looks more influential than ever. It's great that the sailors are free and that the standoff was resolved before escalating into something ugly, but it was handled badly.

And Ahmadinejad also looks pretty magnanimous by giving us all such a nice Easter gift after we completely forgot to get him anything for Ramadan last year. Wait, scratch that. We did give him a Democrat House and Senate.

Mossad Assassination

Who has been fighting Middle Eastern terrorist networks for a solid 40 years?

The Israelis.

No one knows as much about the tactics, goals, and ideologies of radical Muslims and Arab nationalists as these people. It only makes sense to take a hint from them and pay attention to their policy formulation during the current difficulties with Iran.

How is Israel handling the Iranian threat?

One example is right here.

The two month old story almost slipped through the cracks, but it looks like Mossad killed an important Iranian nuclear scientist. It's very reminiscent of Israeli behavior before they destroyed Iraq's Osirak nuclear facility in 1981.

It looks like the Israelis are taking the Iranians for their word. It's time we started doing the same.

Time to Examine Strategy

What has been made perfectly clear this week is that a majority of our Congressmen and Senators are displaying a fundamental misunderstanding of what's going on in the Muslim world. But also, at the same time, Islamic militants have shown a very thorough understanding of how our society works and how they can go about defeating us without actually fully facing our military.

Here's a simplified flow chart of the Islamists strategy:

1. Carry out small acts of violence that capture attention---> 2. Feed the story the Western media which is looking for any type of bad news to get ratings and reflect badly on the Bush administration---> 3. Allow this media to dramatize and inundate Americans with the stories, which will end up convincing them the fight his hopeless and really has nothing to do with their own security---> 4. The American people and a few politicians remain uninformed about the severity of the threat, forget what happened five years ago, and lose their will. The rest of the politicians actually do realize the threat, but care more about positioning themselves politically than taking care of the country--->5. Finally, (thankfully we're not quite here yet) we throw in the towel in the war on terror, no longer proactively engage terrorist infrastructures overseas, let the Iranians do whatever they want, and allow militant Islam to expand in ferocity and influence.

This will only lead to even more radicalization of the 1.3 billion Muslims in the world and we'll end up with a devastating clash of civilizations.

Saddam Cont'd

Mark Eichenlaub gave me a link to his posting about a Greek news article describing Saddam practically using the Athens and other embassies as weapons depots for possible terrorist activities.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Greece's geographical sandwiching between the Middle East and Europe has long made it fertile ground for launching terrorist attacks aimed at the West. Modern Islamic terrorists are unlikely to overlook that fact, and rumors of a terrorist weapons stockpile in Athens makes good sense.

You can read the post at Regime of Terror.

Don't miss the rest of Mark's blog either. It's a great compilation of oft overlooked news stories and other purported evidence linking Saddam and terrorism. The implications could be stunning if even a fraction of the assertions are true.

And PA people in District 10 ought to be highly interested in the December posting about Chris Carney's Saddam-Qaeda comments when he was a Pentagon terrorism analyst.