 |
|
 |
| [-] |
| [−] |
| [−] |
| [−] |
| [−] |
Prev | List | Random | Next |
From Baghdad, on September 11, 2007:
As I write it's 16:45 my time. In America it's Tuesday, September 11, 2007.
And it's 8:45. Six years ago that was the last minute of peace before the beginning of the war on terror.
Six years later, how many people know why Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States? It's not a difficult topic - he stated the reasons himself in his 1998 fatwa. Americans were in Saudi Arabia enforcing sanctions against Iraq. It's just that simple, boys and girls.
First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.That last was a reference to Bill Clinton's February "almost attack" on Iraq. His actual attack didn't come until later in the year, after Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act.If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.
Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.
But back to Osama, whose bold moves earned him earned him high praise in '98 from ABC TV's John Miller: "In America, we have a figure from history from 1897 named Teddy Roosevelt. He was a wealthy man, who grew up in a privileged situation and who fought on the front lines. He put together his own men - hand chose them - and went to battle. You are like the Middle East version of Teddy Roosevelt."
Osama was also convinced he could win because Americans couldn't sustain a battle.
There's a beautiful blue sky over Baghdad today.
Ramadan begins soon, too. Once the new moon appears in the sky...
September 11, 2008:
I missed the anniversary of the beginning of the war in Iraq this year:
August 7, 1990: US troops arrive in Saudi Arabia, launching Operation Desert Shield. Two naval battle groups, USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and USS Independence, are also in the area by August 8.So shame on me.Osama bin Laden is outraged by the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, considered the cradle of Islam, and begins to write treatises against the Saudi regime.
Sure, I could claim it started on August 2, 1990, when Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait, but what the heck - let's blame America first. Osama bin Laden certainly did.
And if you're like me, this date is seared, seared in your memory:
February 24, 1991: The ground portion of the war in Iraq begins. On February 26 Iraqi troops began retreating from Kuwait, setting fire to Kuwaiti oil fields as they flee. One hundred hours after the ground campaign started, President Bush declared a ceasefire; Kuwait had been liberated.And the world rejoiced. Within weeks Americans saw the Troops Come Home. Me? I had a similar feeling to the one I had in 2003 when I saw the small crowd gather in Firdos Square: This is not over.
Most Americans probably never knew the troops never really did come home from Iraq. (Who can blame them? There were parades on the TeeVee, fer chrissake.) From 1990 on, Americans remained in Saudi Arabia "enforcing the sanctions" and every once in a while making something in Iraq go "boom". In America, throughout the first decade of the war in Iraq the only thing that really went "boom" was the economy (except in '93 the World Trade Center...
Agents and bomb technicians of the ATF, FBI, and the NYPD Bomb Squad responded to the scene of the blast. An ATF bomb technician subsequently located a vehicle identification number on an axle found at the seat of the blast and believed it belonged to the vehicle that delivered the bomb. Identifying the vehicle led law enforcement officers to the Ryder truck rental where the vehicle had been rented by Mohammad Salameh, one of Yousef's co-conspirators....but they got the guys who did that. Of, then a building in Oklahoma that got everyone worried for a few hours about Muslim terrorists - but it turned out to be a stupid white guy).On March 4, 1993 authorities announced the capture of Salameh. The same day, Salameh's arrest led police to the apartment of Abdul Rahman Yasin in Jersey City, New Jersey, which Yasin was sharing with his mother, in the same building as Ramzi Yousef's apartment. Yasin was taken to FBI headquarters in Newark, New Jersey, and was then released. The next day, he flew back to Iraq, via Amman, Jordan.
By September 11, 2001 - over ten years after the start of the war in Iraq - it was at last obvious that the only choices for leaving Saudi would be through Baghdad or straight home.
