Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Monday, October 02, 2006
Radio station apologizes for skit (Muslims Offended!)
Top 40 radio station KDWB-FM in the Twin Cities has apologized for an on-air comedy skit called "Muslim Jeopardy."
The skit included an announcer using a fake South Asia accent introducing contest categories such as "infamous infidels" and "potent portables," according to the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, which said it had received complaints about the skit.
The skit also included a threat to behead a female host when she got an answer wrong, CAIR said.
The sad smile of a dying soldier (Canadian, U.S. Troops: 'band of brothers' against the Taliban)
May we have swift victory over a ruthless enemy.
But the Taliban haven't abandoned Pashmul -- only disappeared from sight. Soldiers say the insurgents appear to have dug into the road's thick dust, which resembles brown talcum, and set up several explosives -- perhaps an anti-tank mine combined with smaller bombs -- and rigged them to detonate under slight pressure.
"When we went through, the first two guys didn't hit it," said Cpl. Blois, who was walking at the patrol's tail end.
"The explosion went off, and my immediate thought was it was the section commander who hit it, because he was the very first guy in the patrol," he said.
In fact, the commander was unhurt, but in the haze of dust and lingering shock of the blast it was difficult for the survivors to tell who had been injured.
"I didn't get hit with anything," Cpl. Blois said. "So I just started yelling people's names, and guys started to respond."
One of those who didn't answer right away was Cpl. James Miller, of Hamilton, Ont., who was partly deafened by the blast.
"Miller didn't respond but he came out of the smoke and dust, and he was really disoriented. You could tell he was pretty messed up."
Cpl. Blois paused. "Klukie's name? There was no response."
Trailing behind the Canadian patrol, about 200 metres south, was a team of U.S. soldiers who specialize in clearing mines. Cpl. Blois threw off his heavy backpack and ran toward them for help.
"They saw me coming, and they just started running," he said. A U.S. medic joined the Canadian corporal and they started sweeping the dense foliage of grape trellises, searching for the missing soldier.
"The blast threw Klukie about 50 metres off the road," Cpl. Blois said. "He landed in the vineyard. I think he must have hit one of the walls. He was laying on his back when the American medic and I found him.
He continued: "We immediately started working, without saying anything to each other. He put a tourniquet on his right leg, which was almost completely gone. I put tourniquets on his arm and his other leg.
"You could tell he couldn't hear anything, but he could recognize me, you know. I was looking right at him. He couldn't say anything. I was just telling him to keep fighting, you know, keep fighting, keep fighting."
Pte. Klukie's friends say he was a big, well-built soldier in peak physical shape, who dreamed of joining the elite JTF2 special forces. But the blast that went off under his feet was probably enough to destroy a vehicle, never mind a man.
May we have swift victory over a ruthless enemy.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Focus: Chilling message of the 9/11 pilots
A long and important read. Here's a snippet:
A long and important read. Here's a snippet:
The tape not only features Atta and Jarrah. It also gives a rare and intriguing sight of Bin Laden with his inner court.
It opens with 100 or so Al-Qaeda hardcore members sitting on the ground in the open air, obviously expecting something to happen. Among them are several children.
A very tall man surrounded by three armed bodyguards arrives in a sedate, presidential manner. It is Bin Laden, dressed in white from head to toe with an all-enveloping, light brown robe. He looks serene as he makes his way to a makeshift podium and beings to speak into a microphone.
The date recorded on this section of the video is January 8, 2000. That makes the occasion Eid ul-Adha, the end of Ramadan.
There are a few recognisable faces among the audience, including Ramzi Binalshibh, Atta’s Hamburg flatmate who was later to become the co-ordinator of the September 11 attacks. And among the bodyguards is Abu Jandal, who was the only one with the authority to put two bullets in Bin Laden’s head if he was about to fall into enemy hands.
In the background are the tall mud-red walls of an impressive compound. It is clear that the location is part of a complex of about 80 buildings called Tarnak Farm in the desert near Kandahar airport. It was Bin Laden’s clan base during his Afghan sojourn — where he lived with his family and the inner core of Al-Qaeda.
American intelligence knew all about Tarnak Farm. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, “CIA officers were able to map the entire site, identifying the houses that belonged to Bin Laden’s wives and the one where he himself was most likely to sleep”.
Less than two years before the video was recorded, the CIA had a plan to work closely with some of the local tribes to grab Bin Laden as he slept. It was a clear-cut, well rehearsed “perfect operation”, according to Michael Scheuer, who ran the CIA Bin Laden unit at the time. But it was never executed and there is still controversy in America about who cancelled it.
TEN days after Bin Laden’s Eid speech, according to the date on the film, Atta and Jarrah read their martyrdom wills to the camera. This proof of their presence in Afghanistan at that time is just about the final main piece of the jigsaw: Atta, the man who decided zero hour on September 11 is for the first time on video, getting ready to record his “martyrdom” will.
Investigators have pieced together most of Atta’s life from his childhood as the son of a lawyer in Giza, northern Egypt, to the moment he boarded flight 11 — except for an unexplained absence from Hamburg in early 2000. The date on the tape perfectly corresponds with this.
Those who have been closely following the story had little doubt where Atta had been. Binalshibh told me, “Afghanistan, what else?” when I asked him during a secret meeting four years ago. But in their painstaking efforts to find the proof that connected the dots, US investigators and, especially, their German counterparts, have struggled with little more than circumstantial evidence and presumed facts.
This played nicely into the hands of conspiracy theorists, both in the Muslim world and in the West. Now the investigators have the proof, and only the flakiest of anti-American fantasists can go on claiming that Bin Laden, Atta, Jarrah and co had no hand in September 11.
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