they were informed but let it happen. MOSSAD TOLD them, too. Here: read.Copyright 2001 The Jerusalem Post The Jerusalem Post September 17, 2001, Monday SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 3 LENGTH: 391 words HEADLINE: Mossad warned CIA of attacks - report BYLINE: Douglas Davis BODY: LONDON - Mossad officials traveled to Washington last month to warn the CIA and the FBI that a cell of up to 200 terrorists was planning a major operation, according to a report in the Sunday Telegraph here yesterday. The paper said the Israeli officials specifically warned their counterparts in Washington that "large-scale terrorist attacks on highly visible targets on the American mainland were imminent." They offered no specific information about targets, but they did link the plot to Afghanistan-based terrorist Osama bin Laden, and they told the Americans there were "strong grounds" for suspecting Iraqi involvement. A US administration official told the paper that it was "quite credible" that the CIA did not heed the Mossad warning: "It has a history of being over-cautious about Israeli information." But the official noted that "if this is true, then the refusal to take it seriously will mean heads will roll." In another development, the Sunday Times reported that an account at a branch of Barclays Bank in the London district of Notting Hill was used by a suspected bin Laden lieutenant to finance and disseminate Bin Laden's fatwas (religious rulings) and to maintain contacts with various elements in bin Laden's global network. The account was held by Saudi dissident Khalid al- Fawwaz, who is currently being held in custody awaiting the outcome of extradition proceedings to the United States on charges of conspiring with bin Laden to murder Americans. The Barclays account is understood to form part of a web of bank accounts and front companies used by bin Laden to underwrite his Al Qaida terror network. Court documents link Fawwaz to a Bin Laden fatwa calling for the death of American civilians "anywhere in the world they can be found," which was faxed directly to him by Bin Laden. Fawwaz was personally appointed by bin Laden to set up and run the London-based Advice and Reformation Committee. The organization was ostensibly dedicated to war-relief work, but British and US officials now believe it was in fact a component in Bin Laden's terror network. Fawwaz is also thought to have been directly involved in the terrorist cell that perpetrated the simultaneous bombings of the US embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi in 1998. More than 200 people died in those attacks. ---------- This following article suggests that the US takes a "war on drugs" seriously. This is not true. It did not make a single move against the Burmese military junta when it had the chance, at the recent "Opium Olympiad" wherein the UNSCounsil awarded an "Olympic Truce" and allowed the junta not only to send an apartheid team to the Games. But also provifde the host nation with almost 90% of its heroin. Australia has a major heroin problems, and also a problem with its bent parliamentarians?? US CA: Column: Bush's Faustian Deal With The Taliban Copyright: 2001 Los Angeles Times Author: Robert Scheer Note: Robert Scheer Is a Syndicated Columnist. BUSH'S FAUSTIAN DEAL WITH THE TALIBAN Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation still takes seriously. That's the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today. The gift, announced last Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, in addition to other recent aid, makes the U.S. the main sponsor of the Taliban and rewards that "rogue regime" for declaring that opium growing is against the will of God. So, too, by the Taliban's estimation, are most human activities, but it's the ban on drugs that catches this administration's attention. Never mind that Osama bin Laden still operates the leading anti-American terror operation from his base in Afghanistan, from which, among other crimes, he launched two bloody attacks on American embassies in Africa in 1998. Sadly, the Bush administration is cozying up to the Taliban regime at a time when the United Nations, at U.S. insistence, imposes sanctions on Afghanistan because the Kabul government will not turn over Bin Laden. The war on drugs has become our own fanatics' obsession and easily trumps all other concerns. How else could we come to reward the Taliban, who has subjected the female half of the Afghan population to a continual reign of terror in a country once considered enlightened in its treatment of women. At no point in modern history have women and girls been more systematically abused than in Afghanistan where, in the name of madness masquerading as Islam, the government in Kabul obliterates their fundamental human rights. Women may not appear in public without being covered from head to toe with the oppressive shroud called the burkha , and they may not leave the house without being accompanied by a male family member. They've not been permitted to attend school or be treated by male doctors, yet women have been banned from practicing medicine or any profession for that matter. The lot of males is better if they blindly accept the laws of an extreme religious theocracy that prescribes strict rules governing all behavior, from a ban on shaving to what crops may be grown. It is this last power that has captured the enthusiasm of the Bush White House. The Taliban fanatics, economically and diplomatically isolated, are at the breaking point, and so, in return for a pittance of legitimacy and cash from the Bush administration, they have been willing to appear to reverse themselves on the growing of opium. That a totalitarian country can effectively crack down on its farmers is not surprising. But it is grotesque for a U.S. official, James P. Callahan, director of the State Department's Asian anti-drug program, to describe the Taliban's special methods in the language of representative democracy: "The Taliban used a system of consensus-building," Callahan said after a visit with the Taliban, adding that the Taliban justified the ban on drugs "in very religious terms." Of course, Callahan also reported, those who didn't obey the theocratic edict would be sent to prison. In a country where those who break minor rules are simply beaten on the spot by religious police and others are stoned to death, it's understandable that the government's "religious" argument might be compelling. Even if it means, as Callahan concedes, that most of the farmers who grew the poppies will now confront starvation. That's because the Afghan economy has been ruined by the religious extremism of the Taliban, making the attraction of opium as a previously tolerated quick cash crop overwhelming. For that reason, the opium ban will not last unless the U.S. is willing to pour far larger amounts of money into underwriting the Afghan economy. As the Drug Enforcement Administration's Steven Casteel admitted, "The bad side of the ban is that it's bringing their country--or certain regions of their country--to economic ruin." Nor did he hold out much hope for Afghan farmers growing other crops such as wheat, which require a vast infrastructure to supply water and fertilizer that no longer exists in that devastated country. There's little doubt that the Taliban will turn once again to the easily taxed cash crop of opium in order to stay in power. The Taliban may suddenly be the dream regime of our own war drug war zealots, but in the end this alliance will prove a costly failure. Our long sad history of signing up dictators in the war on drugs demonstrates the futility of building a foreign policy on a domestic obsession. >>
