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This reminds me of the story of John Dillinger, who was a most wanted
man.
It was said when he robbed a bank he would stay "Stick Them Up" because
this was a masoic distress call and he wanted to tease Hoover.
Now - when Dillinger was gunned down it was said well they never knew a
bank robber who foreclosed a mortgage on a widow and her orphaned
children.
Now bin Laden is a creature of the news media and he is now a national
idol to many.
Personally I believe the Mossad pulled off the World Trade Center
job.....but what I find strange here, is how Osama bin Laden the boogie
man did it - this man who lives in caves with bats and moles, this six
foot six Arab......
So when they brought in John Dillinger he was still a hero but the
strangest thing - the autopsy report showed the man lying dead on the
coroner's slab, had brown eyes, and Dillinger's eyes were gray.....the
height was not the same and maybe the Lady in Red - well it made a nice
story.
Many people still love Jesse James and they remember the guy named Ford
too - the dirty little coward who shot Mr. Howard ( the name Jesse used
no doubt taken from the Howards of Virginia)......
Anyway, here is story on Osama bin Lade the worlds most wanted man, with
no home but a cave with the bats and moles.
He has been blamed for many things but when he says I did not do this
one or that one, I believe in him only because I still remember the USS
Liberty.
Saba
Taliban: Bin Laden's location known
The Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, right, speaks
to reporters Sunday in Islamabad.
September 30 — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says he has no reason
to believe the Taliban.
NBC, MSNBC AND NEWS SERVICES Sept. 30 — The Taliban's
ambassador to Pakistan said Sunday that Osama bin Laden was under the
Taliban's control and being hidden for his own safety. So far, there has
been no response from bin Laden to the Taliban's request that he leave
the country, the ambassador said.
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"OSAMA IS in Afghanistan, but he is at an unknown place
for his safety and security," the ambassador, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef,
told Reuters. "Wherever he is, he's in a secret place, but that doesn't
mean that he is out of the control of the Islamic Emirate of
Afghanistan. He's in a place which cannot be located by anyone."
He said also bin Laden had been given the edict by a
council of religious elders asking him to leave the country but had not
responded to it.
"The ulema [council] recommendation was handed to him.
... It has reached him," said Zaeef, who spoke in the Pashto language.
"There has been no response."
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told NBC News that
the United States had no reason to believe the statement.
"Of course, it was just a few days ago that they said
they didn't know where he was, so I have no reason to believe anything a
Taliban representative has said," Rumsfeld said on NBC's "Meet the
Press."
Rumsfeld said the Taliban had made no move to comply with
President Bush's demand that it surrender bin Laden and leaders of his
al-Qaida organization. The White House said the demand was repeated
Sunday.
TALIBAN MAY PAY PRICE
White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card said Sunday the
United States wanted the Taliban out of power if it continued to support
terrorists, as the Bush administration believed it did.
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"If they are going to be associated with these terrorist
acts, they should not be in power," Card said on "Fox News Sunday."
"The president has said we're not negotiating," Card
said. "We've told the Taliban government what they should be doing.
They've got to turn not only Osama bin Laden over but all of the
operatives of the al-Qaida organization."
With the United States massing troops, planes and ships
within striking distance of Afghanistan, military and political analysts
have speculated that the U.S. government is planning to topple the
Taliban.
Asked whether the Taliban would pay the price if it did
not comply with U.S. demands and give up bin Laden, Rumsfeld said: "I
would think that that ought to be self-evident at this point."
The United States has vowed to track down bin Laden —
its chief suspect in the devastating Sept. 11 attacks on New York and
Washington — and punish his Taliban protectors.
Bush met with his top security and intelligence advisers
this weekend to work on their strategy. The U.S. military has moved more
equipment into Central Asia and called military reservists to active
duty.
Bush and his aides also have been meeting with foreign
leaders to generate support for what he terms an international campaign
against terrorism and possible military action.
In a setback, a Saudi official said Sunday that no troops
would be allowed to use bases in his nation, an important U.S. ally, to
launch attacks on Arabs or Muslims.
"We will not accept in our country even a single soldier
who will attack Muslims or Arabs," the defense minister, Prince Sultan,
was quoted as saying in an interview published in the
government-controlled Okaz newspaper. His comments, however, may have
been for domestic consumption, and U.S. officials have said the two
sides were still negotiating.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
•Taliban says it knows where bin Laden is •Ashcroft says more
terror attacks are likely •Investigation focuses on Europe, Mideast
•Shelton: Coalition reaches 100 or more nations •New details of
tightly coordinated hijackings emerge •Relief supplies sent into
Afghanistan •Contacts: How to help
TALIBAN CRITICISM
During a meeting with reporters in the Pakistani capital,
Islamabad, Taliban ambassador Zaeef slammed the United States for
refusing to negotiate with the Taliban. He said Washington could break
the stalemate if it were willing to provide proof of bin Laden's role.
Reports from Islamabad on the Taliban's statements regarding Osama
bin Laden's location
"The position of the two countries is very different," he
said. "They are thinking of direct attack. We are thinking of
negotiation. They have provided no evidence, but they want the man."
"If they attack without any evidence or unless this case
goes through the proper court process, any attack will be a terrorist
attack," he said.
Zaeef's remarks were the first time that a Taliban
official has publicly acknowledged that bin Laden was under the
Taliban's control since the September attacks. First, the Taliban
claimed that bin Laden was missing, and then later it said it had
delivered a message from the Afghan clergy asking him to leave the
country voluntarily.
However, the previous statements did not make it clear
whether bin Laden was under Taliban control or simply hiding out
somewhere with his thousands of followers in the al-Qaida terrorist
organization.
The Taliban did not indicate bin Laden's whereabouts, nor
did it say whether he was in custody.
However, sources with knowledge of the Taliban said there
were "indications" that he was in the Bagran district of Helmand
province, about 100 miles northwest of Kandahar, a few days after the
attacks.
The area, which is lined with mountains, is easily
defended and close enough to Kandahar, the seat of the Taliban
authority, to enable the religious militias to keep in touch with bin
Laden.
WARNINGS TO THEIR PEOPLE
The leader of the Taliban told his people not to worry
about U.S. attacks because Americans were cowards.
"Americans don't have the courage to come here," Mullah
Mohammed Omar said in an interview broadcast by Taliban-controlled Kabul
Radio. He urged Afghans to remain calm and go about their business
without trying to flee cities that might be targets of U.S. air strikes.
However, hundreds of thousands of refugees have been on
the move inside Afghanistan, and the United Nations has warned of a
burgeoning humanitarian crisis, with food stocks dwindling and the start
of the harsh Afghan winter only six weeks away.
PAKISTANI INTERVENTION
Pakistan has been trying to convince the hard-line
leadership that it risks its very survival by refusing to surrender bin
Laden, a move the Taliban say would conflict with Afghan customs and its
interpretation of Islamic tenets.
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf told CNN on Sunday
that hopes were dim that the Taliban would hand over bin Laden.
However, he said that while two Pakistani missions to
the Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, had failed to persuade the
movement to surrender bin Laden, the door remained open to more
discussions.
"We haven't been able to succeed in moderating their
view," he told CNN.
Friday, a formal refusal by the Taliban to hand over bin
Laden scuttled a last-ditch effort by senior Pakistani religious leaders
to avert U.S. military retaliation against the radical Islamic
government.
BIN LADEN DENIALS
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In a separate development, a Qatar-based TV station, Al
Jezeera, reported that bin Laden had denied for a second time his
involvement in the attacks and said he did not support killing innocent
men, women and children.
The last statement contradicts previous statements
attributed to bin Laden that all Americans and Jews should be killed.
He also reportedly said, "There are places under the flag
where jihad activities are taking place, from Kabul to Chechnya and
extending to Palestine, Bosnia, Sudan, Burma, Kashmir, and many other
countries." Al Jezeera also quoted bin Laden as saying that a jihad
would continue, even in his absence.
Printable version
ALTERNATIVE GOVERNMENT?
In a separate development, representatives of Afghan
forces fighting the Taliban began meetings in Rome on Friday with aides
to their nation's exiled king and consultations with the king himself,
Mohammed Zahir Shah, were expected over the weekend.
The 86-year-old king is seen by some, both in Afghanistan
and abroad, as being a possible unifying figure for the country should
the hard-line Taliban regime fall in the wake of a U.S. military strike.
Omar warned Shah not to meddle in Afghanistan's affairs,
saying the exiled former monarch should live out the rest of his days in
peace.
"Forget Afghanistan, you won't be able to solve the issue
of Afghanistan in your lifetime," the reclusive Taliban leader said in a
speech broadcast on Voice of Shariat radio on Sunday night.
"How dare you think you can return to Afghanistan backed
by the United States. How are you going to rule the country? How can you
think of such things?" he said in the speech in which he spoke in the
Pashto language.
Newsweek: The Once and Future King?
PREPARATIONS FOR CONFLICT
• Afghanistan's tumultuous history
Sensing it is only a matter of time before the United
States uses its military might to strike at Afghanistan, foreign relief
organizations in Pakistan geared up to cope with an influx of up to 1
million refugees from the impoverished, war-torn country.
The first of several planeloads of food being flown to
Afghanistan's neighbors by the World Food Program was taken by trucks
across the border into Afghanistan on Saturday. The Red Cross said
Sunday one of its trucks with medical supplies had reached Kabul on
Saturday.
Kabul Radio denied reports of food shortages in the
capital and major provinces. A broadcast monitored Thursday in Islamabad
quoted senior municipal officials as saying there was enough food in
markets and assuring residents "we have sufficient stocks available in
Kabul and other provinces."
Printable version
MSNBC.com's Preston Mendenhall, The Associated Press and
Reuters contributed to this report.
America on Alert Watch MSNBC for round-the-clock updates
•E-mail your comments for our next Town Hall Meeting on tracking the
terrorists, Monday at 9 p.m. ET Stay tuned for complete coverage -
including live reports from New York, Washington D.C., Afghanistan,
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