Monday, June 23, 2003

Taking his eye off the ball

Reuters:

The United Nations will issue a report next week showing Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda militant network has some 800 members ready to strike economic or tourist targets, a French consultant to the report said on Monday.

Roland Jacquard, head of the International Observatory on Terrorism, said bin Laden sent this "third generation of al Qaeda" from Afghanistan before U.S.-led forces toppled Kabul's Taliban leadership in November 2001.
"The report of the U.N. Security Council...which will appear next week, will show that a third generation of al Qaeda is forming," Jacquard told France 2 television.

It would show "that before September 11, Osama bin Laden anticipated the American attack and sent out about 800 fighters from Afghanistan, all top officers of al Qaeda.

"They are people with solid intellectual and paramilitary training and they have spread out to several countries where they can act on their own orders," he said.

Jacquard said it was becoming increasingly difficult for intelligence services to track these al Qaeda members, whom he described as extremely dangerous. He said they had apparently picked economic and tourist sites as their next targets.

Thailand had recently arrested suspected militants in possession of the radioactive material cesium, he said.

"If they had mixed this with any kind of explosive, that would have produced one of those famous 'dirty bombs' the Americans are so afraid of," he added.

Al Qaeda, which is blamed for the September 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States, is also suspected of links to recent suicide bombings in the Saudi Arabian city of Riyadh and in Casablanca, Morocco.

Heck, it's a UN report by a Frenchman. What, me worry?

Of course, I'd be a lot less worried about dirty bombs if I knew our container ports and our cities were secure, which they aren't, since aWol isn't spending the money to get that job done (and they're Blue states anyhow)....

And I'd be a lot less worried if Ashcroft's current Exhibit A wasn't an Ohio truck driver who was going to take down the Brooklyn Bridge with an acetylene torch...

Apparently aWol's knees aren't so good, lately. Hope he can run for the bunker the rest of us don't have....