Contract with Al Qaeda

**Shek** · 02-06-2006, 23:23 PM

I don't know if this is funny or actually plausble enough on some points to where it really isn't funny . . .

Quote:

http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1305

2006 Democrat Contract With Al Qaeda

I was listening to Rush Limbaugh today on my way to an afternoon meeting and he kept going on and on about the ‘Terrorist Bill of Rights’, which I thought was exactly what the Democrats seem to represent these days.

So, in a blatant rip-off of Rush’s excellent analogy, and another rip-off from the 1994 Congressional Republican Contract With America, I decided to save the liberal Democrats some time and create for them ‘The 2006 Congressional Democrat Contract With Al Qaeda to provide the same clarity of purpose and promise the Republicans provided America back in 1994.

This 2006 Congressional Democrat Contract With Al Qaeda lays out what the Democrat Party promises to do if they are given majorities in Congress this fall:

As Democrat Members of the House of Representatives, and as citizens seeking to join that body, we propose not just to change current policies, but even more important, to restore the bonds of trust between the people and their elected representatives.
That is why, in this era of official evasion and posturing, we offer instead a detailed agenda for national renewal, a written commitment with no fine print. We call this our Contract With Al Qaeda”

This year’s election offers the chance, after 4 years of one-party control, to bring to the House a new majority that will transform the Nation’s policies towards Al Qaeda. That historic change would be the end of government that is too focused in Iraq, too intrusive, and too obsessed with possible terrorist attacks. It can be the beginning of a Congress that respects the privacy of all peoples, including members of Al Qaeda here in the US.

On the first day of the 104th Congress, the new Democrat majority will immediately pass the following major legislation, aimed at restoring the pre 9-11 mirage of security and world harmony and ending this Administration’s policies for National Security:

FIRST, we will finally kill the Patriot Act so that no member of Al Qaeda will fear using our libraries to access international websites, access their email, or do basic research on major US installations and population centers. We will guarantee full privacy due anyone who makes it to our shores without question. In addition, we will roll back all provisions that put terrorism on an equal footing with Drug Traffickers and Organized Crime, which we understand greatly insults members of Al Qaeda who consider themselves above drug lords.

SECOND, We will enact legislation to release all Al Qaeda members now held in custody in the GITMO Gulag, while providing legal counsel to all who have been unfairly detained during this unfortunate international misunderstanding between Al Qaeda and America. We will ensure all detainees have options for bail and parole so they can continue with their life’s efforts while the legal issues surrounding their detention are worked out. Every ex-detainee will be provided the services of an ACLU lawyer.

THIRD, we will pass legislation ensuring that all Al Qaeda members will be free from government monitoring of their phone calls and emails with comrades back home monitored without probable cause. Probable cause will not include the normal desire to call home to friends and family. We see this act as protecting US citizens and Al Qaeda alike from warrantless surveillance.

FOURTH, as part of our revamping of immigration laws, we will ensure Al Qaeda members are treated the same as any other illegal immigrant now in America. We will provide you amnesty, a driver’s license, health care and education support once you are able to sneak past our borders.

FIFTH, as with warrantless electronic surveillance and in anticipation of pending civil lawsuits, we plan to pass legislation that bans warrantless searches of person and luggage at airports and other major transportation centers. It makes no sense to allow random searches of travelers if we are going to end targeted surveillance of communications. And we find both actions to be religious profiling and against the common sense norms of all liberal Americans.

SIXTH, Also, in line with the unfair targeting of Al Qaeda communications and persons travelling, we plan to submit legislation ending the practice of no-fly lists. This practice is biased towards people with common names and has limited the rights to travel of nuns and babies in the past.

SEVENTH, in an effort to demonstrate our sincere apologies for the actions of President Bush towards Al Qaeda, we plan to return the State of Iraq to the despot dictator of Al Qaeda’s choice by calling for the immediate withdrawal of our military forces to the safety of European soil. We encourage Al Qaeda to do what they please with the Iraqi people.

EIGHTH, we will submit and pass legislation that will mandate any questioning by US agents of Al Qaeda members to (a) be done in the presence of an ACLU lawyer, (b) never last more than 30 minutes, (c) be done indoors, in climate controlled conditions, (d) include an offering of proper food and beverage and (e) require every question to use the word ‘please’.

NINE, we promise to immediately begin impeachment of Al Qaeda’s most dangerous enemy, the Imperial President W Bush, and we will promise to not stop our efforts until we have removed this thorn in Al Qaeda’s side - even if we have to make up scandals to get it done.

We the undersigned candidates of the Democrat National Party do swear that if elected, and given control of the House of Representatives and the Senate, we will enact the above Contract With Al Qaeda.

Posted by AJStrata on Monday, February 6th, 2006 at 9:27 pm

**Julie** · 02-06-2006, 23:39 PM

I don't think it's funny.

KPR · 02-06-2006, 23:55 PM

We need a contract on Al Qaeda.

Bluesman · 02-07-2006, 13:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Julie

I don't think it's funny.

Of COURSE it's funny. But it's not really a surprise that you don't see it. Mark Steyn explains that particular phenomenon better than I can:

Quote:

SteynOnAmerica

THE HUMORLESS LEFT

It was a good start to the year for Sgt Leslie Turner who was awarded 30,000 pounds in an out-of-court settlement after suing Scotland Yard. Sgt Turner was the first black police officer in London’s Metropolitan Police to be made a Royal bodyguard. It was his job to guard HRH The Duchess of Cornwall – that’s Camilla, the Prince of Wales’ new missus, though in some sort of Britannic Teresa Heinz-type arrangement she doesn’t use the moniker “Princess of Wales”. Anyway, Sgt Turner ceased being a Royal bodyguard last spring and subsequently brought his suit for “racial discrimination”. Here’s the wrinkle: He claims he was over-promoted only because he was black.

If he’d been a white copper, he’d have been given a job commensurate with his abilities and he’d have done it fine and been happy in his work. Instead, because he had the misfortune to be a black copper, his politically correct superiors singled him out for a job for which he was unqualified, thus leading to misery and dissatisfaction. The "affirmative action" turned out to be incredibly unaffirmative: In discriminating in favor of him because he was black, they in effect discriminated against him, also because he was black. That, at any rate, is what his lawyer argued, and it worked.

With hindsight, it seems amazing that no such case has yet been brought in this great Republic, where affirmative action is so much more advanced. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow-PUSH could have a sister Rainbow-PULL organization: twice the shakedowns! One week you’re jumpin’ up and down outside Texaco or Wal-Mart shouting “No Justice, No Peace” because they’re not promoting enough blacks. Then, a month later, you’re back demanding they cease over-promoting blacks: “No Demotion, No Peace.” And the settlement wouldn’t be a footling thirty thousand quid, either.

So racial discrimination has now reached the blissful state of global warming: As the eco-crowd solemnly warn us, if it’s too hot, that’s a sign of global warming; if it’s too cold, that’s also a sign of global warming. If you’ve got too few blacks in senior management, you’re a racist; if you’ve got too many blacks in senior management, you’re also a racist.

Occasionally I get asked by a reader what it will take to finally scuttle contemporary western progressivism. And, having mulled it over for a few years, I’m convinced the left will be done in by its humorlessness. By comparison, as we can see from the Arab street's loony tunes jumping up and down over the Danish cartoons, Islam seems to have done a much better job than Stalin ever managed in persuading its populations to take everything so damn seriously. But it's a tougher sell to western multiculti types. Aside from those employed by the grievance-mongering industry, I don’t believe there’s many people who can read a report that affirmative action discriminates against black people without having a massive guffaw along the way. And that’s the problem: there’s gazillions of people who are pro-affirmative action, pro-abortion, pro-environment, pro-“peace”, pro-pretty much the entire lefty agenda, but they’re also pro-having a laugh, and that’s increasingly difficult when the left requires you to take everything so seriously.

For example, the other morning I found a ton of e-mails in my in-box from aggrieved lefties citing a small Associated Press story called “Bush Awards Purple Hearts To US Troops” as evidence of how much neocon draft-dodging chickenhawks hate the troops. It seems the President had a visible scar on his forehead and made a throwaway self-deprecating reference to it. “As you can probably see I was injured myself,” he said, “not here at the hospital but in combat with a cedar. I eventually won.” “I continue to fail to see how any soldier, anywhere, can stand this man, who repeatedly trivializes who they are and what they do,” huffed the blogger at No Capital. “To his sociopathic mind, that brush scratch=an injury sustained in Iraq,” raged another.

It’s a good rule of life not to get stuck in the role of the guy saying “That’s not funny, okay?” I picked up a copy of The Globe And Mail in Montreal a week ago, and found a big story headlined “Why Are Liberals Laughing? Brokeback Mountain has unleashed another round of lame - and homophobic - jokes, writes Liam Lacey.”

And he does, exhaustively. He doesn’t like Jay Leno joking about Sir Elton and his new groom honeymooning on Brokeback Mountain, or Craig Ferguson in cowboy get-up describing one gun as “great” and the other as “fabulous”, or the “Saturday Night Live” synopsis of the film (“for once, the good guys get it in the end”), or Letterman’s Top Ten Signs You’re A Gay Cowboy (“Instead of a saloon, you prefer a salon…”), or Nathan Lane’s musical version (Oklahomo!).

Read ‘em and weep along with poor Liam Lacey. “A tragic love story about the consequences of bigotry, Brokeback Mountain is a liberal cause célèbre… Here is the movie that affirms the entertainment industry’s reputation for tolerance and social progress. But it’s followed all-too-quickly by the side-of-the-mouth wisecracks.”

And we can’t have that, can we? I’m reminded of Dean Martin’s old gag, “How do you make a fruit cordial?” Wait, never mind… Whatever their merits, these jokes aren’t “homophobic”. They’re not “afraid” of gayness, they just think it’s a hoot. If I were Camille Paglia, I’d argue that the very lameness of the gags is in a sense subverting their intent, transforming them into an ironic comment on the lumpen insecurity of hetero-defensive male culture.

But, as I’m not, I’ll just say that, a few years ago, the idea that the left could make homosexuality as plonkingly earnest and solemn as feminism would have seemed incredible. If Cole Porter came back today, he’d be straight. For the culture to exempt certain groups from being the butt of the joke is one of the cruelest things you can do to anyone. If I were gay, I’d get Sgt Turner’s lawyer and sue over it.National Review, January 14th 2006.

Document copyright Steynonline.com. All rights reserved.

**Lunatock** · 02-07-2006, 14:24 PM

The joke would be on anyone who agress with number seven. The Shia in southern Iraq win the numbers game, and have more loyalty to the Iranian Mullahs than Al-Qaeda has with every person/group in Iraq. A

nd A/Q's popularity has gone in one direction, down.

**Julie** · 02-07-2006, 15:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bluesman

Of COURSE it's funny.

No, it's not Bluesman. The more we ignore Al Qaeda, the less known they will be.

The more light shed upon them, the more notorious they become.

They are in the news on a daily basis, and they love it. Circulations like the ones posted only feeds their frenzy.

Al Qaeda is like racism....if you stop making it a subject, it will stop existing.

**Shek** · 02-07-2006, 16:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Julie

No, it's not Bluesman. The more we ignore Al Qaeda, the less known they will be.

The more light shed upon them, the more notorious they become.

They are in the news on a daily basis, and they love it. Circulations like the ones posted only feeds their frenzy.

Al Qaeda is like racism....if you stop making it a subject, it will stop existing.

That strategy didn't work too well before 9/11, now did it?

Bluesman · 02-07-2006, 16:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Julie

No, it's not Bluesman. The more we ignore Al Qaeda, the less known they will be.

The more light shed upon them, the more notorious they become.

They are in the news on a daily basis, and they love it. Circulations like the ones posted only feeds their frenzy.

Al Qaeda is like racism....if you stop making it a subject, it will stop existing.

You're completely mad.

That is a patently ridiculous claim. If I understand you correctly, we should not respond at all to their incredibly wide-spread and sophisticated information operations campaign. That if we completely cede that part of the battlespace to them - the most important, indeed the DECISIVE part - they would just have no voice at all, and having no voice, they would just lose interest in that which they kill and die for, and the goal upon which their entire program is aimed at becomes unimportant to them.

While I would agree with your implicit point that the MSM is helping them and hurting us with each mention they make of aQ and when they compare our war efforts with theirs (This IS part of your point, right? I'm not reading too much into that bilge you just slung in here, am I? /sarc), it is CRAZY to claim that aQ is fed by our attention to it. Remember, 9/11 was allowed to happen because we DID ignore aQ; they gathered strength and planned and practiced and recruited, secure that we weren't paying attention to them.

So, ignoring them is CRAZY.

So, I think I'll just go ahead and laugh at aQ AND the Left. Both groups are crazy as rats in a coffee can.

Bluesman · 02-07-2006, 16:10 PM

Beat me to it, shek.

**Shek** · 02-07-2006, 16:25 PM

Julie,

This is OBL's fatwa issued prior to the African embassy bombings, prior to when AQ even hit the Western MSM's radar screen.

Furthermore, you fail to realize that even if the Western world were to "ignore" AQ that Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, and Al fill in the blank will still continue to broadcast inflammatory pieces that are anti-Western, anti-US, anti-Semetic, anti-fill in the blank. The only effect that ignoring AQ would do would be to provide them with a moral and propaganda victory.

Quote:

http://www.ict.org.il/articles/fatwah.htm

Text of Fatwah Urging Jihad Against Americans
Published in Al-Quds al-'Arabi on Febuary 23, 1998

Statement signed by Sheikh Usamah Bin-Muhammad Bin-Ladin; Ayman al-Zawahiri, leader of the Jihad Group in Egypt; Abu- Yasir Rifa'i Ahmad Taha, a leader of the Islamic Group; Sheikh Mir Hamzah, secretary of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan; and Fazlul Rahman, leader of the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh

Praise be to God, who revealed the Book, controls the clouds, defeats factionalism, and says in His Book "But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)"; and peace be upon our Prophet, Muhammad Bin-'Abdallah, who said "I have been sent with the sword between my hands to ensure that no one but God is worshipped, God who put my livelihood under the shadow of my spear and who inflicts humiliation and scorn on those who disobey my orders." The Arabian Peninsula has never--since God made it flat, created its desert, and encircled it with seas--been stormed by any forces like the crusader armies now spreading in it like locusts, consuming its riches and destroying its plantations. All this is happening at a time when nations are attacking Muslims like people fighting over a plate of food. In the light of the grave situation and the lack of support, we and you are obliged to discuss current events, and we should all agree on how to settle the matter.

No one argues today about three facts that are known to everyone; we will list them, in order to remind everyone:

First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.

If some people have formerly debated the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it.

The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, still they are helpless. Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, in excess of 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.

So now they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.

Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there.

The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.

All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on God, his messenger, and Muslims. And ulema have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries. This was revealed by Imam Bin-Qadamah in "Al- Mughni," Imam al-Kisa'i in "Al- Bada'i," al-Qurtubi in his interpretation, and the shaykh of al-Islam in his books, where he said "As for the militant struggle, it is aimed at defending sanctity and religion, and it is a duty as agreed. Nothing is more sacred than belief except repulsing an enemy who is attacking religion and life."

On that basis, and in compliance with God's order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims

The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies--civilians and military--is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God, "and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together," and "fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in God."

This is in addition to the words of Almighty God "And why should ye not fight in the cause of God and of those who, being weak, are ill-treated and oppressed--women and children, whose cry is 'Our Lord, rescue us from this town, whose people are oppressors; and raise for us from thee one who will help!'"

We -- with God's help -- call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan's U.S. troops and the devil's supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson.

Almighty God said "O ye who believe, give your response to God and His Apostle, when He calleth you to that which will give you life. And know that God cometh between a man and his heart, and that it is He to whom ye shall all be gathered."

Almighty God also says "O ye who believe, what is the matter with you, that when ye are asked to go forth in the cause of God, ye cling so heavily to the earth! Do ye prefer the life of this world to the hereafter? But little is the comfort of this life, as compared with the hereafter. Unless ye go forth, He will punish you with a grievous penalty, and put others in your place; but Him ye would not harm in the least. For God hath power over all things."

Almighty God also says "So lose no heart, nor fall into despair. For ye must gain mastery if ye are true in faith."

**Shek** · 02-07-2006, 20:38 PM

History can provide some powerful lessons, if we choose to learn them.

Quote:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editor...ml?id=95001493

The enemy in this war is not "terrorism"--a distilled essence of evil, conducted by the real-world equivalents of J. K. Rowling's Lord Voldemort, Tolkien's Sauron or C. S. Lewis's White Witch--but militant Islam. The enemy has an ideology, and an hour spent surfing the Web will give the average citizen at least the kind of insights that he might have found during World Wars II and III by reading "Mein Kampf" or the writings of Lenin, Stalin or Mao. Those insights, of course, eluded those in the West who preferred--understandably, but dangerously--to define the problem as something more manageable, such as German resentment about the Versailles Treaty, an exaggerated form of Russian national interest, or peasant resentment of landlords taken a bit too far. In the reported words of one survivor of the Holocaust, when asked what lesson he had taken from his experience of the 1940s, "If someone tells you that he intends to kill you, believe him."

The choice is to ignore AQ and OBL or believe him when he says he wants to kill us!

troung · 02-08-2006, 01:52 AM

Quote:

No, it's not Bluesman. The more we ignore Al Qaeda, the less known they will be

We did that before...

It didn't work...

**Julie** · 02-08-2006, 09:23 AM

And, I do not recall videos from Osama being aired before 9/11 either, because alot of people did not know who "al qaeda" was. 9/11 was his opening act and try-out for stardom, if you want to give them a part in the play, and call them a star now, that is up to you. But I'm not going to do it because it will be giving him EXACTLY what he wants.

**Shek** · 02-08-2006, 09:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Julie

And, I do not recall videos from Osama being aired before 9/11 either, because alot of people did not know who "al qaeda" was. 9/11 was his opening act and try-out for stardom, if you want to give them a part in the play, and call them a star now, that is up to you. But I'm not going to do it because it will be giving him EXACTLY what he wants.

100% Wrong. In fact, I would state that a lot of people knew of Al Qaeda prior to 9/11, and if they didn't know of Al Qaeda, then it was because they were completely ignorant of international affairs, to include US foreign affairs. A fair statement would be that a lot of people just didn't realize how potentially deadly they could be prior to 9/11.

Next, there was this 1997 interview on CNN:
http://news.findlaw.com/cnn/docs/bin...nintvw-cnn.pdf

There was this 1998 interview that first aired on ABC:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...interview.html

There was this 1999 interview that appeared in Time:
http://www.time.com/time/asia/asia/m...11/osama1.html

I'm sure that there are more, but this is what I came up with in the first two minutes of looking for more "opening acts." Not to mention the 1998 African embassy bombings or the 2000 attack on the USS Cole.

For more "acts" in the OBL show, here's a Flash presentation on AQ operations:
http://billroggio.com/flashplayer.ph...da&w=640&h=480

Dr. Cohen's piece was fully on target - an hour on the internet reveals the main thrust of the goals of "The Base." He's not looking for stardom. Heck, as a multi-millionaire, he could just buy airtime or start his own satellite channel if that was what he wanted. No, what he wants to do is to kill Americans, Jews, and Westerners so that a worldwide Caliphate can be re-established with himself as the Caliph.

Isolationism is a losing strategy - no matter what the Western media does, the Middle Eastern media will continue to broadcast AQ material on their sat channels, and Middle Eastern regimes will still deflect anger from their own governments towards the West, providing the free recruiting strategy that OBL needs to continue his global jihad. Ignoring AQ in the press is like the ostrich sticking his head in the sand - it may make him feel better, but it doesn't stop the cheetah from hunting him down and killing him.

**Shek** · 02-08-2006, 10:09 AM

http://www.oldamericancentury.org/do...20-clinton.htm

Quote:

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release August 20, 1998

ADDRESS TO THE NATION BY THE PRESIDENT

The Oval Office

5:32 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon. Today I ordered our Armed Forces to strike at terrorist-related facilities in Afghanistan and Sudan because of the imminent threat they presented to our national security.

I want to speak with you about the objective of this action and why it was necessary. Our target was terror. Our mission was clear Ñ to strike at the network of radical groups affiliated with and funded by Osama bin Laden, perhaps the preeminent organizer and financier of international terrorism in the world today.

The groups associated with him come from diverse places, but share a hatred for democracy, a fanatical glorification of violence, and a horrible distortion of their religion to justify the murder of innocents. They have made the United States their adversary precisely because of what we stand for and what we stand against.

A few months ago, and again this week, bin Laden publicly vowed to wage a terrorist war against America, saying Ñ and I quote Ñ ÒWe do not differentiate between those dressed in military uniforms and civilians. TheyÕre all targets. Their mission is murder and their history is bloody.Ó

In recent years, they killed American, Belgian and Pakistani peacekeepers in Somalia. They plotted to assassinate the President of Egypt and the Pope. They planned to bomb six United States 747s over the Pacific. They bombed the Egyptian embassy in Pakistan. They gunned down German tourists in Egypt.

The most recent terrorist events are fresh in our memory. Two weeks ago, 12 Americans and nearly 300 Kenyans and Tanzanians lost their lives, and another 5,000 were wounded when our embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam were bombed. There is convincing information from our intelligence community that the bin Laden terrorist network was responsible for these bombings.

Based on this information, we have high confidence that these bombings were planned, financed, and carried out by the organization bin Laden leads.

America has battled terrorism for many years. Where possible, weÕve used law enforcement and diplomatic tools to wage the fight. The long arm of American law has reached out around the world and brought to trial those guilty of attacks in New York and Virginia and in the Pacific. We have quietly disrupted terrorist groups and foiled their plots. We have isolated countries that practice terrorism. WeÕve worked to build an international coalition against terror.

But there have been, and will be, times when law enforcement and diplomatic tools are simply not enough, when our very national security is challenged, and when we must take extraordinary steps to protect the safety of our citizens. With compelling evidence that the bin Laden network of terrorist groups was planning to mount further attacks against Americans and other freedom-loving people, I decided America must act.

And so, this morning, based on the unanimous recommendation of my national security team, I ordered our Armed Forces to take action to counter an immediate threat from the bin Laden network. Earlier today, the United States carried out simultaneous strikes against terrorist facilities and infrastructure in Afghanistan. Our forces targeted one of the most active terrorist bases in the world. It contained key elements of the bin Laden networkÕs infrastructure and has served as a training camp for literally thousands of terrorists from around the globe. We have reason to believe that a gathering of key terrorist leaders was to take place there today, thus underscoring the urgency of our actions.

Our forces also attacked a factory in Sudan associated with the bin Laden network. The factory was involved in the production of materials for chemical weapons.

The United States does not take this action lightly. Afghanistan and Sudan have been warned for years to stop harboring and supporting these terrorist groups. But countries that persistently host terrorists have no right to be safe havens.

Let me express my gratitude to our intelligence and law enforcement agencies for their hard, good work. And let me express my pride in our Armed Forces who carried out this mission while making every possible effort to minimize the loss of innocent life.

I want you to understand, I want the world to understand, that our actions today were not aimed against Islam, the faith of hundreds of millions of good, peace-loving people all around the world, including the United States. No religion condones the murder of innocent men, women and children. But our actions were aimed at fanatics and killers who wrap murder in the cloak of righteousness; and in so doing, profane the great religion in whose name they claim to act.

My fellow Americans, our battle against terrorism did not begin with the bombing of our embassies in Africa; nor will it end with todayÕs strike. It will require strength, courage and endurance. We will not yield to this threat. We will meet it, no matter how long it may take. This will be a long, ongoing struggle between freedom and fanaticism; between the rule of law and terrorism. We must be prepared to do all that we can for as long as we must.

America is and will remain a target of terrorists precisely because we are leaders; because we act to advance peace, democracy and basic human values; because weÕre the most open society on Earth; and because, as we have shown yet again, we take an uncompromising stand against terrorism.

But of this I am also sure. The risks from inaction to America and the world would be far greater than action, for that would embolden our enemies, leaving their ability and their willingness to strike us intact. In this case, we knew before our attack that these groups already had planned further actions against us and others.

I want to reiterate: The United States wants peace, not conflict. We want to lift lives around the world, not take them. We have worked for peace Ñ in Bosnia, in Northern Ireland, in Haiti, in the Middle East and elsewhere. But in this day, no campaign for peace can succeed without a determination to fight terrorism. Let our actions today send this message loud and clear: There are no expendable American targets. There will be no sanctuary for terrorists. We will defend our people, our interests and our values. We will help people of all faiths, in all parts of the world, who want to live free of fear and violence. We will persist and we will prevail.

Thank you. God bless you, and may God bless our country.

If you didn't see President Clinton's address about the retalitory strikes against AQ/OBL following the African embassy bombings, it was reported the next day. For example, here's the CNN web article:

http://www.cnn.com/US/9808/20/us.strikes.02/

AQ and these strikes received even more press than normal because it came within days of Clinton's testimony that he did indeed stain Lewinski's dress, and the topic was in the paper for weeks because of the "tail wagging the dog" charges that arose in connection with the strike against AQ/OBL.

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KPR Regular Join Date: 02-03-06 Location: Home, Washington Posts: 123	We need a contract on Al Qaeda.

02-07-2006, 14:24 PM	#5 (permalink)
Lunatock Staff Emeritus Join Date: 08-03-03 Location: Southeast Pennsylvania Posts: 3,503 Country:	The joke would be on anyone who agress with number seven. The Shia in southern Iraq win the numbers game, and have more loyalty to the Iranian Mullahs than Al-Qaeda has with every person/group in Iraq. A nd A/Q's popularity has gone in one direction, down.

02-07-2006, 16:10 PM	#9 (permalink)
Bluesman WAB Bartender *Defense Professional* *Military Professional* Join Date: 11-24-04 Location: Vacaville, CA. Posts: 7,410 Country:	Beat me to it, shek.

02-08-2006, 09:23 AM	#13 (permalink)
Julie Moderator Join Date: 08-04-03 Location: Georgia, USA Posts: 6,525 Country:	And, I do not recall videos from Osama being aired before 9/11 either, because alot of people did not know who "al qaeda" was. 9/11 was his opening act and try-out for stardom, if you want to give them a part in the play, and call them a star now, that is up to you. But I'm not going to do it because it will be giving him EXACTLY what he wants.

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