Stable Afghanistan Guarantees Prevention Of 9/11 Type Attacks, US Ambassador

Rayen Crocker, US ambassador to Afghanistan says for prevention from similar attacks like 9/11, it is necessary to keep on serious fight against Taliban.

Rayen Crocker, US ambassador to Afghanistan says for prevention from similar attacks like 9/11, it is necessary to keep on serious fight against Taliban. Crocker also has said what US needs is patience and strategic tolerance for winning a long war and such mission requires further time and sources. US ambassador also asserted related to faults and mistakes done during the war in Afghanistan admitted that mistakes can be avoided in future. He also said after his country leaves Afghanistan, billions dollars will be spent by US in improvement of good-governance and enforcement of Afghan security forces. In an interview with Reuters on the threshold of 10th anniversary of 9/11 attacks, US ambassador said what we need is patience and showing strategic tolerance for winning the long war and for this, further time and resources are needed. The ambassador to Afghanistan, who witnessed the 9/11 attacks in New York, has be engaged in diplomatic missions in the countries where there is fight against terrorism. Meanwhile, the US ambassador to Afghanistan intended that setting a stable Afghanistan is the guarantee for prevention from attacks as 9/11 and said Taliban are strict, so we have to keep on fighting against them because if we say that our mission is completed, the Taliban will soon get back.

Saudi Arabia: The Teflon kingdom

http://www.vancouversun.com
Late in the day of Sept. 11 10 years ago, someone asked me who I thought the United States would blame for what had just happened in New York and Washington.

Without thinking about it too much I replied: "They'll attack Afghanistan, but they should bomb Riyadh."

A decade later I don't see much reason to change my off-the-cuff judgment that it is in the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh, that the real source of global Islamic radicalism and support for terrorism is to be found.

And it is not just that the Saudi royal family and government have financed and encouraged the worldwide export of their brutally puritanical Wahhabist form of Islam.

Members of the Saudi royal family and government were directly involved in financing and facilitating the 9/11 attacks on the U.S.

Three senior royal princes have been named by one of bin Laden's lieutenants as key supporters of al-Qaida and the attacks on New York and Washington.

All three died within one week in July 2002. The implication is that they were put to death by Saudi authorities in an attempt to placate the U.S. administration and minimize damage to relations with American officials.

Details of the Saudi involvement with al-Qaida, bin Laden and 9/11 were first set out by author Gerald Posner in his 2003 book Why America Slept. Many other writers, journalists and filmmakers have added details to the Saudi charge sheet since then.

A new book examining the relationship between Saudi Arabia, the Sept. 11 terrorists and the Bush White House, The Eleventh Day, by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, has just been published. One of the things this book takes a close look at is the 28-page section of the 2004 Congressional Joint Inquiry into the attacks, which was censored on the orders of president George W. Bush.

Several newspapers have reported that blanked-out sections of the 396page report dealt with Saudi involvement in the attacks. The censorship of those 28 pages is being continued by the administration of Barack Obama.

Bob Graham, the co-chair of the Congressional committee, is quoted by Summers and Swan as telling them his panel found "that the Saudis were facilitating, assisting, some of the hijackers. And my suspicion is that they were providing some assistance to most if not all of the hijackers. It's my opinion that 9/11 could not have occurred but for the existence of an infrastructure of support within the United States."

Financial support for bin Laden and his terrorist objectives by elements within the Saudi royal family and government was well known before the 2001 attacks. The CIA noted bin Laden's transition in the 1990s from an ally in the war against the occupation by the Soviet Union of Afghanistan to a freelance sponsor of jihadist terror against the U.S.

But when in 1996 the CIA set up its first unit dedicated entirely to bin Laden and al-Qaida, it got absolutely no cooperation from the Saudi General Intelligence Department, then headed by Prince Turki al-Faisal.

A former head of intelligence for the Taliban, al-Qaida's hosts and protectors in Afghanistan in the 1990s, has testified that in 1998 Prince Turki did a deal with bin Laden.

In return for bin Laden's agreement not to attack Saudi targets, the Saudi government would provide funds for the Taliban and not seek bin Laden's extradition.

In addition, the tens of millions of dollars in Saudi government money being channelled to bin Laden every year would continue.

By late morning on Sept. 11, 2001, it had been established that the attacks on New York and Washington had the hallmarks of a bin Laden, al-Qaida operation. And by the end of the next day, American officials knew that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis.

This created panic among the many members of bin Laden's family and the royal family who were in the U.S. at the time. For reasons that have never been adequately explained, the Bush administration allowed four planes to take the Saudis out of the U.S. while all regular flights were still grounded. How many people on these planes might have been useful for American investigators to question and why they were not has never been made clear.

Among those to flee was well-known horse racing enthusiast and owner of Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner War Emblem, Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz.

After senior bin Laden aide Abu Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan in 2002 he named Prince Ahmed as one of three Saudi princes who had actively supported the 9/11 attacks.

Soon afterward, in July 2002, all three died within a week. Prince Ahmed is said to have died of a heart attack following stomach surgery. Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki bin Abdullah al-Saud supposedly died in a car crash while speeding to Prince Ahmed's funeral. And Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir, we are told, died of thirst. By this time the FBI had retraced the steps of the hijackers' lives in the U.S. before the terrorist attacks. The stories of two in particular showed clear involvement by elements in the Saudi government.

Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, part of the team that crashed American Airlines flight 77 into the Pentagon, arrived in Los Angeles in January 2000.

Over the next 20 months they received Saudi government money and support through two Saudi officials. They were Fahad al-Thumairy, a diplomat appointed by the Saudi ministry of Islamic affairs to liaise with American Muslims, and Omar al-Bayoumi, an employee of the subsidiary of the Saudi Civil Aviation Administration.

Also involved in supporting the two hijackers was Anwar al-Awlaki, the New Mexican-born Islamic lecturer now hiding in his family home country, Yemen, who acts as an online recruiter for al-Qaida.

He inspired Fort Hood gunman Nidal Malik, the "Christmas Day Bomber" Umar Farouk, and wouldbe Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad.

Some of the money paid to Mihdhar and Hazmi while they prepared for 9/11 even came through Princess Haifa al-Faisal - the wife of longtime Saudi ambassador to Washington, and close personal friend of both George W. Bush and then CIA director George Tenet, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan.

Prince Bandar is the son of the Saudi Crown Prince and is now the country's defence minister.

jmanthorpe@vancouversun.com



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‘Altaf’s address waste of time’

All the political parties except the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) described Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) chief’s video address on Friday a non-event and a waste of time.
Altaf Hussain, during almost four hours of address — the longest in Pakistan’s political history and shown live on all private channels — actually revealed nothing except for allegations without any proof that the Awami National Party (ANP) received money from the US to win general elections in 2008, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) workers were heavily armed and the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) was running an underground armed group called ‘Thunder Squad’.

All three named parties, however, scoffed at the allegations saying the accusations coming from the MQM chief were meanningless when everyone knows who started extortion rackets, ran death squads, grabbed lands and killed own supporters in Karachi if they dared to speak against the party leader.

PML-N leader Ahsan Iqbal said that Altaf wasted valuable time of the entire nation through his irrelevant tirade with no evidence and did not respond to the allegations made on oath by Dr Zulfiqar Mirza that really prompted him to address the people.

The ANP, for so long a coalition partner along with the MQM in Sindh and at the centre, said that the address was a sheer waste of time that had no substance whatsoever and Altaf appeared mentally sick.

“The MQM chief is feeling insecure and the noose around him is tightening in connection with the assassination of Dr Imran Farooq,” declared ANP Senator Zahid Khan when asked to comment on MQM leader’s outburst and his accusation that Asfandar Wali Khan received millions of dollars from the USA.

Not to anyone surprise Altaf did not utter a single word against the Pakistan People’s Party, President Asif Ali Zardari, whom he called brother, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and former senior provincial minister Dr Zulfiqar Mirza, the man who opened the Pandora’s box and alleged that the MQM and Altaf were foreign agents and working for the disintegration of Pakistan.

When asked what was his comment on Altaf’s address, Dr Mirza told newsmen that it was an entertainment show with some song and dance number and never answered my accusations.

During his marathon address Altaf also criticised the judiciary claiming that it was powerless to get any of the dozens of verdicts implemented and urged the army and Inter Services Intelligence to stop the genocide of Urdu speaking population in Karachi.

JI Karachi chief Mohammed Hussain Mehanti told newsmen that MQM chief was confused and did not know what was he talking about and worth not even mentioning when all and sundry were aware of the party and its working.

khaleejtimes.com

Obama, Bush, Clinton Remember Sept. 11

VOA.COM
Former U.S. presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and Vice President Joe Biden, are in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, for a ceremony dedicating a memorial to the victims of United Flight 93, which crashed into a field during the September 11th, 2001 attacks.
The memorial being dedicated is made of white stone and commemorates the efforts by passengers and crew of Flight 93 to overcome their hijackers and force the plane to the ground.
During the ceremony, the names of the 40 victims were read out, one by one, accompanied by chimes.
In Washington U.S. President Barack Obama is marking the 10th anniversary of the attacks with tributes to the first responders, the military and the thousands of people who lost their lives.
During his weekly address Saturday, Mr. Obama spoke of the acts of heroism a decade ago in New York at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon outside Washington and on United Flight 93.
Later in the day, Mr. Obama and his wife Michelle visited Arlington National Cemetery, where hundreds of thousands of members of the U.S. military are buried. A White House official said the president and his wife believe it is important for all Americans to honor those who have served in the military since September 11, 2001.
The Obamas were visiting a section of the cemetery containing the graves of soldiers killed in the past decade's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Karachi:Supreme justice

Editorial:http://www.thenews.com.pk/images/h1_11.jpg
A week of hearings of the Karachi suo motu case has ended and here is what we have learnt so far: the police are heavily politicised, with 40 percent of the force having political affiliations; the Sindh inspector general’s hands, according to himself, are tied and he cannot even authorise the transfer of police officials; The Rangers and the police blatantly resist cooperating with each other; political parties, in the words of the chief justice himself, seem to have morphed into militant groups; the party with more than 50 seats in the provincial assembly says it is ‘powerless’; the provincial government has the capacity but not the will to protect the lives, property and dignity of citizens; the situation in Karachi is worse, says DG Rangers, than that in Waziristan; and basically, all said and done, Karachi, and by extension Pakistan, are in dire straits. What lies ahead?

As Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry has warned, the fundamental rights of the people of Karachi need to be protected and the Constitution implemented “or else the army will have to come in”. As we well know, and as the CJ has reminded us, the protectors of the national interest always use the crutch of the ‘doctrine of necessity’ and step in on the pretext of saving the country from collapse. The court has taken long strides in blocking army interventions in the future with the July 31, 2009 decision that reads that “any action of the armed forces undertaken without the direction by the federal government shall be unconstitutional, illegal, void ab initio and consequently of no legal effect.” The Supreme Court has done its work; now, it’s time for the government to step up and take responsibility to restore order.

At the very least, every political party and each political leader or activist who has indulged in, or even flirted with, militant politics – and a lot have – should examine their consciences. In many countries, violence of the kind we have seen in Karachi would shock the political class into collective determination to change. It is a measure of how damaged Pakistani politics has now become that it is hard to expect any such thing. A responsible government would not treat violence of the kind Karachi is experiencing with this level of indifference. There have to be collective and creative political responses. Because the public is tired of the chaos. And the public chooses the government. Be careful what you wish for.

Afrasiab wants MQM declared terror-outfit

President of Awami National Party (ANP) Khyber Pakthukhwa Afrasiab Khattak said Saturday the government and Supreme Court should declare the MQM a terrorist organisation and put restrictions on it, Geo News reported.

Speaking during a news conference Khattak responded to the allegations MQM chief Altaf Hussain leveled against the ANP. Khattak said the ANP was not the creation of the mafia or a gang and that Hussain’s hands were soaked with the blood of Pakhtuns.

Speaking on the carnage, which took place in Karachi on May 12, 2007, Khattak said the situation in the city would not improve unless there was an investigation into incidents, which took place on that day. He added that they would not be satisfied until those behind the carnage were caught.

Khattak added that Hussain had no answer to accusations made against him and his party by Zulfiqar Mirza.