Read This

[SteveStromberg]

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - A senior official of the Islamist militant group Hamas, echoing calls by Taliban clerics in Afghanistan (news - web sites), urged Muslims on Friday to unite against any U.S. retaliation for the terror attacks in New York and Washington.

In Cairo, the spokesman of Egypt's largest Muslim fundamentalist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, defended the Taliban's threat of revenge for any U.S. action against Afghanistan and urged Washington to show restraint.

``I join the cause for Muslims to be united in order to deter the United States from launching war against Muslims in Afghanistan,'' the Hamas official, Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, said in response to the calls by clerics in Kabul.

``It is impossible for Muslims to stand handcuffed and blindfolded while other Muslims, their brothers, are being attacked. The Muslim world should stand up against the American threats which are fed by the Jews,'' Rantissi told Reuters.

Taliban clerics used Friday prayers to urge Muslims around the world to unite against the United States if it attacked Afghanistan, and threatened revenge ``by other means'' in the event of such attacks.

The United States says Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), who lives in Afghanistan as a ``guest'' of the Taliban, is a prime suspect in Tuesday's attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center in New York and damaged the Pentagon (news - web sites) in Washington, killing thousands.

Hamas has carried out a series of suicide attacks in Israel during the nearly year-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation, killing scores of Israelis.

The Palestinian Authority (news - web sites), led by President Yasser Arafat (news - web sites), had no comment on the Taliban's call for Muslim unity.

In Lebanon, Hamas representative Osama Hamdan said of the Taliban's call ``It is their right to demand that no steps be taken until the facts are clear. This is a natural right. When the facts become clear then it's another story.''

EGYPTIAN GROUP DEFENDS TALIBAN

In Cairo, Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Mamoun Hudaibi defended the Taliban position. ``What else can they say when the United States is threatening to bomb them?'' he asked.

While stating that Tuesday's terror attack on the United States ``contradicts all human and Islamic values,'' Hudaibi condemned all forms of terrorism.

``We don't advocate terrorism, whether it's from people or governments,'' he said. ``We hope that the United States itself does not take terrorist steps,'' he added.

Some Palestinians in Gaza voiced fears the United States would attack Afghanistan and punish an entire nation for the attacks.

``The Taliban should not be used as a scapegoat. The United States is behaving like a wounded and bleeding lion that wants to hit everywhere and anything,'' said Fares Abbas, 25, a Gaza taxi driver.

Gaza shopkeeper Hani Aoudi, 45, said: ``As Arabs and Muslims condemned the terrorist attack on the United States, they have to warn the United States against any attack of madness on Afghanistan or elsewhere.

``The United States must wait for the result of the investigation and then decide through the United Nations (news - web sites) and not alone as usual,'' he said.

In Beirut a man giving his name as Hussein said Israel had killed thousands of Arabs and Muslims over the years ``but we haven't seen the United States move at any point...to stop Israel.''

Now the United States wants Muslims to join it in fighting Muslim Afghanistan ``for the sake of one terrorist who does not speak in the name of Arabs or Muslims,'' he said.

[SteveStromberg]

Published Friday, September 14, 2001


Hijackers believed to have had helpers in Florida
MANNY GARCIA, DANIEL de VISE AND ANDRES VIGLUCCI
aviglucci@herald.com

The five Florida men suspected as hijackers in Tuesday's terrorist attacks may have received help from local associates who provided cash and other support as they prepared for the deadly assaults, federal investigators believe.


A law enforcement source familiar with the investigation said agents believe at least 12 people in South Florida might have been involved in the plot. That includes the five hijacking suspects, all of whom died in Tuesday's crashes.

The FBI on Thursday released from questioning one man whom agents had flown from Vero Beach to Miami. Adnan Bukhari insisted he was not involved in the plot and passed an FBI-administered polygraph test showing ``no deception,'' two sources familiar with the investigation said.

But the investigators broadened the scope of the probe to anyone possibly connected to the suspects, questioning other local pilots and flight students of Middle Eastern origin who might have known the five men.

After three days of frenetic work, investigators have developed this picture: Most of the Florida suspects lived like college students and had little or no history of employment -- yet could somehow afford expensive flight training, some of it costing as much as $25,000, and paid for many expenses in cash.

``Somebody other than these guys was paying the bills,'' said a U.S. Justice Department source familiar with the probe.

The investigators also searched a Deerfield Beach motel where two central suspects in the probe, Mohamed Atta, 33, and Marwan Alshehhi, 23, may have lodged as recently as Monday night.

More details about Atta and Alshehhi emerged from German police, who said the two had been students at a university in Hamburg before coming to the United States sometime in the past year.

Police searched a Hamburg apartment they said had been rented until February by Atta, Alshehhi and an unidentified third man. In connection with their investigation, the Hamburg police also took into custody a Moroccan man who worked at the city's international airport. They declined to disclose his name. They also were looking for another man believed to have been involved in the attacks.

The German police described Atta and Alshehhi as citizens of the United Arab Emirates who had been enrolled in the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg, where Atta founded an Islamic student group.

``It's highly likely that the clues needed to solve this mystery lie in student circles in Germany,'' the country's top prosecutor, Kay Nehm, said at a press conference.

Late Thursday, German federal investigators shut down the campus computer network, searched a room rented by the Islamic student group that Atta founded, and were combing through the group's computer.

In addition, FBI agents are studying records that tie at least two of the Florida suspects to Saudi Arabian Airlines and FlightSafety International, a flight-training school in Vero Beach. The link: One suspect said he was an engineer for the Saudi airline, and a second gave an airline post-office box as an address. Agents reportedly are interviewing three Saudi Arabian flight engineers studying for pilot licenses.


ON PAPER TRAIL

The investigators pored through financial records Thursday, searching for leads that might ferret out the suspected hijackers' funding source. They were building exhaustive financial profiles of the suspected hijackers and everyone possibly connected to them. Among the records being subpoenaed: cellular phone call lists, credit card invoices, apartment rental receipts, checking account records, vehicle ownership, mail drop rental contracts and searches of the mailboxes themselves.

``We're retracing where they lived and how they lived,'' said a federal source.

They were also racing to find additional people connected to the suspects who may have had flight training but were not on Tuesday's fatal flights.

Investigators say Atta and Alshehhi had the necessary training to at least steer the airplanes that slammed into the World Trade Center in New York on Tuesday. Both men had lived and trained at flight schools together up and down the state. Both had commercial pilot licenses.

Atta, of Coral Springs, and three other Florida suspects -- Waleed Al Shehri, 25, Abdulatif al-Omari, 31, and Wail M. Al Shehri, 28 -- were passengers on American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to hit the trade center.

Alshehhi, of Hollywood, was on United Airlines Flight 175, the second aircraft to strike the center.

A Vero Beach man, Amer Mohammed Kamfar, was being sought by the FBI for questioning.


MOTEL SEARCHED

A tip led agents to a Deerfield Beach motel, where Atta and Alshehhi may have stayed Monday. Federal agents and crime-scene specialists from the Broward Sheriff's Office converged on the Panther Motel, 715 South A1A, Thursday afternoon.

FBI agents walked the transient beach neighborhood, showing photos of four Arab men who, they said, could have been in the area on Monday.

Joe Carroll, 33, a neighbor, said two of the photos were of Atta and Alshehhi. Agents were asking hoteliers if any of the men -- or anyone with an Arabic name -- had stayed at their properties between August 23 and September 10.

The owners of the Panther, Diane and Richard Surma, would not answer reporters' questions.


Another tip took investigators to Daytona Beach, where three men who appeared to be Middle Eastern criticized the United States hours before the attack in a conversation with fellow patrons at a sports and nude bar, bragging, ``America is going to see blood, just wait until tomorrow.''

Pink Pony owner John Kap said he dismissed the Monday-night incident as beery bar banter -- until he heard the news about the jet attacks the following morning.

FBI officials wouldn't comment on the tip, but Kap said he turned over individual credit card receipts for each of the men, their driver license information, a Koran the men left behind and a business card one of the men slipped to a woman working at the bar.

Kap refused to name the men or indicate where they lived, but he said the FBI told him the information ``was one of the most substantial leads they had.''

Kap said the three men had stopped by the bar -- a sports bar and adjoining strip club -- about 10 p.m. They sat at the bar, racking up tabs of $40 to $80, and slipped back to watch

[SteveStromberg]

http://www.rense.com/general13/within.htm

[Leland Pate]

I hope you all realize that this exact type of thing is precicely what they want.

It is easier to vent frustration and make sharp remarks over the net. And people do.
It is very very easy to step over bounds. Or to bee taken as stepping over bounds. When we type you cannot see a person/lifestyle/background/environment...you see no gesture or emotion. I believe that this type of medium is very bad at transmitting emotion and opinions on topics like these.
I agree with a little of what everyone here has said. My opinion does not matter and I won't stir this mess anyfurther by adding my personal views.
I ask you to not generalize,
understand that emotions run high,
we are all changed...some for worse some for the better,
Myself being one of the younger members on this board expect more from you guys.
I'm supposed to be the hotheaded youngster reving to be unleashed against our foes.
I don't think some of you know how corny you appear on the screen with some of the ridiculous things that have been said.
On BOTH sides.
This is what they want people. To tear us apart and destroy the way we live.
Let's not let them do it.

I love all of you guys... even if some of you are a bit cooky and others are bleedin' heart liberals...

[patalive]

Lee, you might be a young kid, but from this old fart's viewpoint, you are blessed with a very mature mind and soul. Outstanding comments!
-
Steve, with all due respect for your right of free speech, rather than using valuable bandwidth posting the full text of articles, perhaps a short summary of the article, your comments on the article and a link to the full text might be more useful. Thanks much.
-
Chuck
83SC

[SteveStromberg]

IMMIGRATION
FAILURE LED TO TERROR
SHUT THE DAMN BORDERS NOW

By: Todd Brendan Fahey

The Pros will see the recent events of terror as a legitimization of all sorts of human intelligence-gathering devices: from face-surveillance cameras in airports, shopping malls, stop lights and schools, to calls for stronger e- and telephone-gathering technology. Unfortunately, what is truly at-bottom of this latest catastrophe is unbridled immigration and a failure of America to police America against its "enemies, foreign and domestic."

Here we have possibly 50 suspects, all of Middle Eastern descent, and no administration or immigration authority has yet to come forward to declare the reasons why such individuals were on U.S. soil to begin with. This is obviously not to say that no violence against Americans comes by the hand of fellow Americans; it is to say, however, that Americans did not take the lead role in the World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings, and the hijackings that preceded the events. The pain was delivered (as is the best Intelligence now) by non-Americans, of a particular religious persuasion--a very narrow one, to be sure, but not an unpopulous one--upon Americans, for the purpose of humiliating and terrorizing the United States of America.

We must, therefore, know in detail WHY it was that these individuals were in the U.S. (their own stated reasons, on, say, airport arrival cards and any immigration records they might have signed); HOW they became settled here (who were their guarantors of employment or relatives having been declared on these various forms); WHERE they came from (birth place, previous employment and education, and nation of emigration).

Prior to exterminating any who performed strategic assistance to any of these individuals (that is the retributory goal), we must seek prevention. It has been this writer's opinion for many years, that the U.S. should restrict immigration to only the most select pool of applicants yearly, and who have bonafide offers of employment, from a bonafide tax-paying American corporation (so as to be nominally culpable, should the green-card holder "go bad"), and that all such immigrants should be subject to police department screening, at their and their employer's expense, so as not to further burden the U.S. taxpayer. Further, no immigrant not-yet-naturalized as an American citizen should receive employment at any position which requires taxpayer subsidization, and none should be allowed to occupy any position requiring security clearance.

Contrary to the inane scribbling on the plaque of the Statue of Liberty (a French sentiment, not anything the Founders ever imagined): "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses," I say, Shut the borders now, and deport on their government's dime all illegal immigrants. Case-by-case, and with the cooperation and financial guarantees of relatives, foreign corporations and/or governments, we will be able to resume an immigration policy that is in our nation's best interest. We are a sovereign Republic and owe clear passage to no one.

Such is a time for reevaluation of our immigration policy, not a plea for political correctness and "tolerance." The Intelligence community has failed utterly in its gathering and reporting mechanisms, and must now be held accountable and made now to justify their own worth to U.S. taxpayers. It has been said, of radical Aztlan activists, that there are potentially 20 million foot soldiers of Hispanic extraction ready to do the bidding of another sort of intifada. We have seen that it only takes 50 or so to do a hideous day's work.

[SteveStromberg]

http://web.nps.navy.mil/~library/tgp/tgp2.htm

[SteveStromberg]

http://www.citizensoldier.org/

[nostatic]

One of the most important aspects of intelligence gathering is determining the veracity of the information, and considering the source.

Just because it's on the web doesn't mean it is based in fact. You can post as many links as you want...at this point you taint pretty much any source you offer. Maybe take a break, eh?

[Saffs]

Very well put, Leland. Thankyou.
I guess that's why you're doing the job you're are doing, and we are not.


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'75 911S Targa
'81 BMW Alpina C1 2.3

[larkja]

I have been here, maybe, 6 months and I am disappointed at the personal comments against some of the members. Also, if you want to get upset, focus your anger in the correct direction. Here's my take:

1. For the past 8 years, our immigration policy has really been a non immigration policy which is why so many questionable individuals were here and still are. If you are upset, focus your anger on changing this policy. Call your representative and require more thorough checks for individuals that want to come into this country. If they are found to associate with an anti-democracy group, don't let them in.

Some of you might call this racist or prejudicial - you would be wrong. I am an American and a Patriot, and I love this country. This country has afforded me the freedom and success to raise a family in relative peace. It upsets me that some group wants to destroy this.

2. Ensure all immigrants speak our language, know the Bill of Rights (how many of you can name all 10?), and pledge allegiance to this country and our flag. Anybody not willing to do this - bye, bye, deport their @ss.

3. Mandate the language of our country be English. I'm tired of walking into the DMV and seeing tests and documents printed in 10 different languages. I have travelled quite a bit and spent some time living in Sweden. Before I went, I studied the language and spoke it when I was there. By not speaking the language, you will never connect with the country and culture. The Swedish people were so happy I learned their language they went out of their way to be more friendly to me.

Same goes in this country. Wouldn't you be more willing to help a foreigner if he/she was trying to speak our language?

Okay, I'll stop my rant but, as I said, if you want to affect a positive change, pressure our legislators to put our country first.

Thanks
Jim

[island911]

Originally posted by nostatic:
One of the most important aspects of intelligence gathering is determining the veracity of the information, and considering the source.

Just because it's on the web doesn't mean it is based in fact. You can post as many links as you want...at this point you taint pretty much any source you offer. Maybe take a break, eh?

Beyond the veracity of the information, we all (those of us in the communication age) are constantly are exposed to more information than we have time to ingest. Thus the popularity of "sound bites" and pictures.
Jerry Seinfield would say "leave the stage on a high note"
Forest Gump would say " an' tha-ats oll I have ta say 'bout tha-at"

---

'81 SC COUPE

[Jack Olsen]

Maybe it's time to move the discussion of terrorism somewhere other than the Porsche 911 Technical Forum. Steve has every right to post his viewpoints for anyone who wants to read them. I, for one, have no interest in his perspective -- but would be happy to see him have the freedom to express his opinions in a forum more appropriate for it.

I've been very impressed by the level-headedness of a lot of the board members, during a time when it's been very difficult to do that. I've also been very alarmed by some of the members with more extreme views that this national scare has brought out of the board's woodwork.

Leland, John Walker, Saffs, Old Skul, and others -- guys with obviously different political vantage points -- have all shown a lot of intelligence and wisdom. No coincidence, I think, that they're also regular and helpful posters on this board.

Some of the other voices that have come out of this have had a largely negative impact. I'm sorry of we're losing Stef (a Porsche employee) because of kneejerk hysteria and schoolyard chest thumping.

Everybody's got a right to speak, but I think the time has come to get this forum focused back on 911 technical issues. There is no shortage of forums elsewhere on the net for the representatives of the fringe right to vent their views.

(The fringe left, it seems, is a group that doesn't drive 911s.)

------------------
Jack Olsen
My Rennlist page • My Pelican Gallery page • My Porsche Owners Gallery page

[This message has been edited by JackOlsen (edited 09-16-2001).]