The official story goes that Badawi and his accomplices purchased a small boat, loaded it with 500lbs of explosives and some ready-made suicide bombers who then drove it alongside the Cole while it was docked and...Kaboom. To the left is a photo of the damage to the USS Cole.
Note the lack of blast damage to the ship around the hole that we are told was caused by 500lbs of conventional explosives. For some reason, that hole reminds me of a WWII movie? Hang on, it's coming back to me, yes, I can see it now, a white trail rocketing towards a ship, just below the surface of the water. Then an explosion at the water line and a relatively neat round hole in the hull. Yes indeed, military explosives are so very efficient. But no, my eyes must be deceiving me, it was a dingy-load of fertilizer that did it.
As it turns out, unnamed "officials" at the time of the attack on the Cole were also fairly skeptical of the official story, and were more inclined to think that the damage done to the Cole was the result of military hardware:
Officials said examination of the Cole indicated that the explosive used was even more sophisticated than initially thought. The penetrating force and the damage deep in the interior strongly suggested that the bomb was a "shaped charge," designed to focus the explosion rather than allow it to spread in all directions, as with a typical truck bomb, officials said.Despite this, the image of a bunch of wild-eyed "terrorists" sitting atop 500lbs of cow manure in a dingy, and somehow slinking up to the side of the Cole undetected, persisted and was successfully implanted in the minds of the world's citizens. How could such a thing have possibly happened? Well, initially by way of good old-fashioned lies:
"With every piece of information, it becomes a more sophisticated operation," one official said.
The officials have not disclosed the specific type of device used, though the use of a directed explosive led to speculation that the device operated like an warhead. Such a device is a more sophisticated weapon than those used by most terrorist organizations, and possibly came from a military stockpile.
Adm. Vernon Clark, the chief of naval operations, had argued that because the small boat was involved in the mooring, the crew of the Cole "had no reason to suspect . . . that there was anything to be suspicious about," as he put it in an interview on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" last week.Later however, other Navy officials made a fool of the good Admiral by reporting that the Cole had been berthed for more than 90 minutes before the explosion occurred, leaving no apparent reason as to how the alleged boat bombers could have got so close to the ship. That is, if there were any boat bombers at all.
"The reason that a ship, a small boat like this, could get in this proximity to the USS Cole is that it was part of the party, the support party that was assisting the ship in tying up to their berthing position," Clark said in an interview with CBS News.
The BBC also reported on the type of explosives used stating that: "the [Yemeni] president said samples of explosives taken from the destroyer had been identified by US investigators as of a type available only in Israel, the USA, and two Arab countries" (two Arab countries that get it from the US or Israel) .
The Yemeni President, Ali Abdallah Salih, further stated: "we believe Israel might be involved in such incidents."
Not long thereafter however, the Yemeni President seemed to fall in line with the official story and claimed that Yemeni officials had "found the boat" (amazingly durable these dingys) and various other pieces of evidence that proved that a group of al-Qaeda terrorists carried out the attack. Yemeni officials even stated that the "terrorists" had tried to bomb the destroyer USS 'The Sullivans' while it was in the same Yemeni port earlier in 2000, but on that occasion, the terrorists' dingy full of fertilizer sank before they could carry out their misguided attack. A core benefit of the attack on the Cole is to found in the fact that then Defense Secretary William S. Cohen used it to further establish Bin Laden as arch terror chief. Cohen stated: "investigators were looking at anti-Western guerrilla groups, including exiled Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden."
Further investigations into the Cole attack eventually turned up a group of likely suspects, many of whom were veteran Muslim fighters of the war in Afghanistan and Bosnia where they had essentially been recruits of the CIA. Coincidence?
The success of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 and the international jihad against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan promoted by the covert action division of the USA's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with the help of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan, led to many negative consequences, which ultimately contributed to the Pakistan-Afghanistan region emerging as the epicentre of punishment terrorism of the most ruthless kind motivated by pan-Islamic ideas.With all of the above in mind, consider the following information culled from news reports since the attack on the Cole:
[...] to rally round the Muslims of the world against the USSR, the CIA consciously encouraged religious fanaticism and pan-Islamism. The intelligence agencies of the US and the West European countries encouraged jobless Muslims in many countries to go to Pakistan, undergo military training in the newly sprung-up Wahabi-Deobandi madrasas and join the Afghan Mujahideen. Between 6,000 and 10,000 Muslims, the majority of them Arabs, went and fought against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan, with Saudi Arabia funding them, the ISI training and motivating them and the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies equipping them.
Osama bin Laden, then a blue-eyed boy of the CIA, played an active role in the training and motivation of these mercenaries and led them to battle against the Soviet troops. In addition to the Arabs, jobless Muslims from the Jammu & Kashmir State of India, Bangla Desh, the Arakan area of Myanmar, Southern Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia were also encouraged by the CIA to join this mercenary brigade. Fourthly, faced with the increasing difficulties encountered by its Slav troops in countering the CIA-instigated pan-Islamic mercenaries, Moscow started sending to Afghanistan the Muslim members of its Armed Forces recruited from the Central Asian Republics (CARs), Chechnya and Dagestan. These troops got infected by the pan-Islamism of the CIA's mercenaries.
[...] a number of new pan-Islamic organisations of Wahabi-Deobandi-Ahle Hadith orientation sprang up in Pakistani soil and these were given the leadership role by the US for leading the mercenary brigade to battle. The most important amongst them were the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Harkat-ul-Jihad-Al-Islami (HUJI) and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET). The HUM and the HUJI were born out of the SSP and shared its anti-Shia orientation. All these organisations were favoured by Zia and his ISI. The HUM, which produced some of the best fighters of the Afghan war, was favoured by the CIA and got the lion's share of the Stinger missiles, explosives and other equipment. Towards the end of the 1980s, the HUM and the HUJI merged to form the Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA) and separated again in 1998 after the USA designated the HUA as a foreign terrorist organisation under a 1996 law in October,1997. The Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM) was formed in the beginning of 2000 by a split in the HUM. After the withdrawal of the Soviet troops in 1988, the USA lost interest in Afghanistan and left the mercenary brigade in the lurch.
Promises made to these jobless Muslims at the time of their recruitment that after the war in Afghanistan was over, they would be helped to re-settle in the USA with lucrative jobs were not kept up. Some of these mercenaries went back to their country of origin and joined the fundamentalist groups in fighting against their Governments (examples: Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt). Others stayed behind and were diverted to J&K by the ISI. The HUM and the HUJI were used by the ISI to rally round the dregs of the war of the 1980s and divert them to India. They did so very successfully. But, at the same time, they promoted jihad in Chechnya and Dagestan in Russia, Xinjiang in China, in the newly-independent CARs, in Bangladesh, in the Arakan area of Myanmar and in the Southern Philippines. The HUJI took over the leadership of the jihadi elements in Bangladesh and the HUM in the rest of the world, including the USA. HUM cadres fought actively against the US Marines in Somalia.
Not having learnt any lessons from the sequel to its policy of encouraging fanaticism and pan-Islamism in Afghanistan and despite the humiliation inflicted on the US troops in Somalia by the HUM in 1993, the CIA asked the ISI to divert part of the dregs of the HUM and the HUJI to Bosnia to assist the Muslims there in their fight against the Serbs.
The USA was aware of the presence and activities of bin Laden in Afghan territory since July 1996, but did not move vigorously against him as long as it was hopeful of getting the assistance of the Taliban for the construction of the oil and gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan through the Herat area of Afghanistan by UNOCAL, the powerful American company. It moved seriously against bin Laden only after UNOCAL withdrew from the project and after he had formed the International Islamic Front and issued in 1998 his first fatwa against the US
"Six Yemeni suspects in the bombing of the USS Cole have been identified by sources close to the investigation, who say they share a background as fighters in the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Jamal al-Badawi, the most senior of the 6 suspects jailed in Yemen told investigators he received telephone instructions for the Oct. 12 bombing from a man in the United Arab Emirates, the Yemeni sources said.. Al-Badawi said he had met the man in Afghanistan during the war but had not seen him since, the sources said."So we have a mastermind of the Cole bombing - "al Nashari", who is "chief of operations in the Persian Gulf " no less, or so we are told. Al Nashari was in fact captured in 2002 for his alleged part in the Cole attack. During his trial in 2004 defence lawyers presented evidence that the then Yemeni Foreign Minister had given al Nashiri a high level security clearance:
"Investigators in Yemen say they hold six suspects in the bombing of the USS Cole. All six are said to be Yemeni veterans of the Afghan war against the Soviets. The main suspect was identified as Jamal al-Badawi.""The network also said another suspect, Jamal al-Badawi, admitted to investigators he trained in bin Laden's guerrilla camps in Afghanistan and was sent with bin Laden's forces to fight in Bosnia's civil war. ABC News said the suspects' stories provide the first direct links between bin Laden and the Cole bombing." Jamal al-Badawi, regarded as the most senior of the Cole suspects who have been arrested, told investigators that he received telephone instructions for the bombing from Mohammed Omar al-Harazi in the United Arab Emirates. Badawi said he had originally met Harazi in Afghanistan during the war.
According to US officials, Harazi, who sometimes uses the names Abdul Rahman Hussein al-Nashari or al-Nassir, is a cousin of the suicide bomber who blew up the US embassy in Nairobi in 1998. He had been a regular visitor to Aden but disappeared four days before the attack on the USS Cole.
Cole Attack Suspect 'Had Top-Level Security ClearanceNow let's think about this. A known terrorist was given a high level security clearance by the Yemeni government which facilitated him in planning the attack on the Cole. Which would mean that the Yemeni government was openly siding with anti-American terrorists. The strange thing is that in the aftermath of the attack on the Cole, the American government did not accuse the Yemeni government of supporting terrorism but instead called it a "partner in the war on terror". To make matters worse, and as we have seen, the Yemeni president initially came out and blamed Israel for the attack.
Khaled Al-Mahdi, Arab News
SANAA, 26 August 2004 A lawyer defending five Yemenis charged with the October 2000 attack on the warship USS Cole told a court in Sanaa yesterday that authorities had granted a security clearance to the main suspect in the attack.
The lawyer, Abdul-Aziz Al-Samawi, presented a document to the court giving the suspected mastermind of the attack Abdul-Raheem Al- Nashri a permit to pass military checkpoints without being subjected to inspection.
Al-Samawi said the laissez passer was issued by the office of the former Interior Minister Hussein Muhammad Arab.
Al-Nashri and five other Yemenis were charged with the attack when the trial began on July7 . Five of the suspects were present in the court, while Al-Nashri is being tried in absentia.
Al-Nashiri is also suspected of involvement in attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998 that killed224 people, and in the October 2002 attack on the French supertanker Limburg off south Yemen in which one Bulgarian crew member was killed and 12 were wounded.
Washington has accused Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden of ordering the attack. Bin Laden applauded the bombing in remarks broadcast on Al-Jazeera TV in February2001 but denied his involvement.
A logical explanation for this is that the Yemeni government gave free pass to the "terrorists" because said terrorists were working (either consciously or unconsciously) for the CIA and/or the Israeli Mossad and the Yemeni government was instructed to allow these terrorists to do their jobs, their job being to create the appearance of a terrorist attack on the USS Cole. I say "appearance" because it is quite clear that a dingy-full of fertilizer with a couple of Jihadists perched on top definitely did NOT do the damage to the USS Cole.
Unfortunately, al-Nashari has never been available to give evidence at the trials that have taken place since his capture and therefore never had a chance to tell us who he really works for. The reason is that the CIA have disappeared him into one of their black holes of rendition. How unfortunate for the rest of us who would like to know what is really going on behind the "war on terror". Yet how fortunate for the American and Israeli governments who seem to have an awful lot to hide.
So we are left then with al Nashari's protege, the abovementioned al-Badawi.
Mystery man al-Badawi
Fortunately, Badawi was recaptured in May 2003. Then, in September 2004, along with his disappeared mentor al Nashari, Badawi was sentenced to death by a court in Yemen for his alleged part in the bombing of the Cole. Badawi's lawyers successfully appealed, and in February 2005, his sentence was commuted to 15 years in jail.
Then, Badawi escaped again last week.
USS Cole plotter escapes prisonThis time, there seems little doubt that he had inside help
Sunday, February 5, 2006;
(CNN) -- Interpol has issued "an urgent global security alert" after 23 "dangerous individuals" -- including a man identified as the mastermind of the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 -- escaped from a Yemeni prison.
The international crime-fighting organization said Sunday at least 13 of the 23 who escaped Friday were "convicted al Qaeda terrorists, some of whom were involved in attacks on U.S. and French ships in 2000 and 2002."
"Al Qaeda terrorists have been deemed a serious threat to the entire world community by the U.N. Security Council, by Interpol and by a wide range of countries," Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble said in the statement.
They escaped via a 140-meter (150-yard) -long tunnel "dug by the prisoners and co-conspirators outside," Interpol said.
"Their escape cannot be considered an internal problem for Yemen alone."
Among the escapees was Jamal Ahmed Badawi, considered the mastermind behind the attack on the USS Cole on October 12, 2000.
Al-Qaida escapees may have had inside helpGeez! You'd think the US military would keep a better eye on these evil terrorists that are threatening all of our lives.
By AHMAD AL-HAJ
Associated Press
2/7/2006 SAN'A,
Yemen - Investigators are looking into the possibility that Yemeni intelligence officers helped 23 al-Qaida prisoners - including a militant convicted in the 2000 USS Cole bombing - escape from an underground prison beneath a heavily guarded security headquarters, officials said Monday.
The prisoners escaped Friday, apparently by digging a tunnel some 180 yards long that emerged at a mosque, the security officials said.
It was not the first major prison escape for al-Qaida militants. At least four members of the group broke out of a prison at Bagram, the main U.S. base in Afghanistan in July. Among them was Omar al-Farouq, a top leader of al-Qaida in Southeast Asia.
An investigation headed by the Yemeni interior minister has begun questioning intelligence officers, government and security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to divulge details on the probe.Among the 22 other "al-Qaeda" militants that escaped with Badawi last week was one Fahd al-Quso, who had also escaped and been re-captured with Badawi in 2003.
"It couldn't have happened without the coordination of high ranking officers in the intelligence," said one official. He pointed to possible militant infiltration of the intelligence agency, saying hundreds of Yemenis who fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s against Russian occupation were given jobs with the security forces when they returned.
"It is no surprise that many of these former fighters are sympathetic to al-Qaida," he said.
Yemen's interior ministry confirmed in a statement that the convicts escaped from the headquarters for the political security forces. It gave no further details.
The prison was underground in the headquarters, one of the most heavily guarded buildings in the capital. The compound is surrounded by a high wall and armed guards, and all roads leading to it are blocked to vehicles.
The 23 militants, all of them convicted members of al-Qaida, were kept in the same cell, the officials said. [...]
Barbara Bodine - complicit in fake terror attacks
You see, Fahad al-Quso, like Badawi, was originally arrested in December 2000 by Yemeni authorities who claimed he too was involved in the attack on the Cole. O Neill was aware of this and was desperate to interview the man, who he believed had important information to divulge. Yet due to the fact that he had been effectively barred from Yemen by his own government, O Neill could do nothing. The really interesting point here is that the CIA already knew that, in addition to being involved in the USS Cole bombing, al-Quso had been at a January 2000 meeting in Malaysia with two other alleged members of al-Qaeda by the names of Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar. You probably don't remember these two names, and you really aren't meant to, but if you were to ask Dick Cheney, for example, he would tell you that those two "al-Qaeda" members were two of the alleged hijackers of Flight 77 that is alleged to have hit the Pentagon on September 11th 2001. For some reason however, the CIA refused to provide O Neill with the information about the Malaysia meeting, information that would probably have allowed him to connect the people involved in the attack on the Cole to preparations for the 9/11 attacks.
Unable to take the obviously deliberate attempts to block his investigations, O Neill resigned from the FBI in mid 2001. He was offered and accepted a job as security chief at the WTC in New York. He started work on the 34th Floor of the WTC North tower on September 10th 2001. He escaped the initial impact of Flight 11 into the North tower, but was apparently killed in the collapse while helping in the rescue attempt.
What a tangled web they weave.
The FBI was eventually allowed to interrogate Al-Quso themselves. Guess which date they were permitted re-entry to Yemen? September 12th 2001. At the interrogation, al-Quso admitted the January 2000 Malaysia meeting with the two alleged Flight 77 hijackers. One investigator called the missed opportunity of exposing the 9/11 plot through al-Quso's connections mind-boggling. Indeed, it is almost impossible for anyone to understand how the US government could take measures to actually facilitate the preparations for the 9/11 attacks while at the same time claim to be fighting terrorism. What is needed, obviously, is a restructuring of our understanding of the nature of the "war on terror", because the understanding provided to us by the US government simply doesn't make sense.
Coming back to the present, when they heard of the escape of these two "key members of al-Qaeda", a few American politicians were understandably a little nonplussed by the contrast between the US government's claims about fighting terrorism and how easily they seem to allow these same terrorists to escape custody. One Senator, Russ Feingold, wrote Secretary of State Condi Rice a couple of days ago to express his dismay:
U.S. Sen. Feingold: Letter to Rice on Yemen Prison EscapePretty strong words. We can only imagine the stream of expletives that Senator Feingold would direct at Condi if he knew that, in July last year, four other "al-Qaeda terrorists" escaped custody, but this time they escaped from a high security US military base in war-torn Afghanistan:
"Al-Badawi's success in twice escaping Yemeni custody not only calls into question our security and counter-terrorism relationship with Yemen, but it also raises the question of whether or not we have in place the right partnerships and relationships to ensure that known al-Qaida operatives are successfully detained and prosecuted.
Senator Feingold is asking for a classified briefing detailing what is known thus far about all of the suspects, the circumstances surrounding their detention and escape, current Yemeni and international efforts to find and detain them, and their possible current whereabouts and activities. In addition, I request information about the extent to which the U.S. monitored these detainees prior to their escape, about what actions were taken to prevent a repeat of the escape in 2003, and about the assurances, commitments, and cooperation that the U.S. had received from the Yemeni government with respect to prosecuting those responsible for the attack.
"In Afghanistan, the search for the four al-Qaida members who escaped (from a US military base) in July continues, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Mike Cody said. In a video believed filmed in Afghanistan and broadcast in October on Al-Arabiya, the four claimed they picked a lock and timed the escape for a Sunday when many of the Americans on the base were off duty."Doesn't it just make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside to know that the US government has spent billions of US taxpayers money hunting down evil Islamic terrorists only to allow them to escape from US military jails with a hair pin?
Perhaps if Senator Feingold was appraised of the full details of what goes on behind the smokescreen of the phony "war on terror" he would eventually come to the conclusion that the US government has no more interest in successfully detaining and prosecuting "al-Qaeda terrorists" than it has in successfully detaining and prosecuting any other government employee - because that is exactly what your average "al-Qaeda terrorist" is.
More than likely, you have forgotten this story:
FBI Admits: No Evidence Links 'Hijackers' to 9-11And this one:
After seven months of non-stop declarations by U.S. government spokesmen that there exists solid proof tying 19 Muslim men to plotting the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, FBI Director Robert Mueller has now admitted quite the opposite. That 19 Muslim men who have apparently disappeared have been named as the hijackers is not in doubt. What is in doubt is whether those 19 men were actually plotting anything, either individually or together. The amazing possibility remains that others carried out the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, using the identities of the 19 Muslims who have been assigned guilt in the tragedy.
Mueller made this claim despite the fact that in the immediate wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, a variety of U.S. officials and media sources speciously announced, almost instantaneously, that there was firm evidence not only that these 19 Muslim men were agents of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network but that they were indeed the individuals who hijacked the doomed flights on Sept. 11. Mueller seems to forget that early government and media reports loudly hyped discoveriesletters and other documentsin the luggage and personal belongings of the presumed hijackers which proved that they were on a mission for Allah, etc etc. Now Mueller's comments seem to contradict everything that's been said.
Give Him an "F" in the War on TerrorAnd this one:
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
George Bush, the man whose prime campaign plank has been his ability to wage war on terror, could have had Osama bin Laden's head handed to him on a platter on his very first day in office, and the offer held good until February 2 of 2002. This is the charge leveled by an Afghan American who had been retained by the US government as an intermediary between the Taliban and both the Clinton and Bush administrations.
In a lengthy interview and in a memorandum Kabir Mohabbat has given us a detailed account and documentation to buttress his charge that the Bush administration could have had Osama bin Laden and his senior staff either delivered to the US or to allies as prisoners, or killed at their Afghan base. As a search of the data base shows, portions of Mohabbat's role have been the subject of a number of news reports, including a CBS news story by Alan Pizzey aired September 25, 2001. This is the first he has made public the full story. [...]
Interview With Author Craig UngerOf course, the US government will attempt to explain away these events with stories of lax security, but rather than accepting incredible stories of incredible incompetence as an explanation for such incidents, why don't we just digest all that I have presented here and come to the obvious conclusion - that US and Israeli intelligence agencies employ, manipulate and coerce patsy Islamic radicals to take the fall for "terror" attacks that US and Israeli intelligence agencies carry out themselves.
Aired October 20, 2003
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: One of the little publicized stories in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 was how the Bush administration helped Saudi citizens leave the United States, including relatives of Osama bin Laden and the Saudi royal family. Writer Craig Unger of "Vanity Fair" says there's much more to this than meets the eye, the details of which appeared in the October issue of "Vanity Fair."
The magazine article is just part Craig Unger's upcoming book, "House of Bush, House of Saud," due to be released next spring. He's joining us now live from New York.
It is a complex relationship between these two families, but give us the gist. What is your worst case fear, based on the quick exodus, if you will, of relatives of Osama bin Laden, and Saudi royal family members in the United States in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, even though 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis?
CRAIG UNGER, "VANITY FAIR": Right. Well, I think the key question is, why did the Saudis get a pass? That is, immediately after any murder, whether it is a commonplace murder or a horrible national tragedy like 9/11, one of the first things you would do would be to talk to the friends and relatives of the perpetrator. In this case, Osama bin Laden. And 140 Saudis, including roughly 24 members of the bin Laden family, left in the days following that without being seriously interrogated. [...]
Think WTC 1993
Think US embassy bombings
Think USS Cole
Think Bali bomb
Think 9/11
Think Madrid Train Bombing
Think London Tube Bombings
Think Palestinian 'Suicide' Bombings
They all bear the hallmarks of US Israeli and British intelligence agency false flag terror Ops. It's time to wake up and smell the cordite.
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