Dateline MANILA, Philippines Mar 16, 2005 — The brutal Abu Sayyaf group repeatedly has been declared a spent force, only to bloodily resurrect itself the latest time in a botched jail break that left 27 dead and sparked fears of retaliation by al-Qaida-linked terrorists.
“Phillipine Militants Threaten Retaliation”
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=584883
Ah yes, our old friends from Abu Sayyef, “al-Qaida linked” terrorists if we ever saw them. Reading about them again this week inspired me to dig up this item from two years ago, “Is Iraq ‘Outsourcing’ Violence?” Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2003, p. A 15. I remember talking about it on the air back when I had the Saturday night show. I found the crumpled dead tree version in a file.
While surfing around to see if I could find it on line, I found this excellent summary in a posting from someone named RG Providence:
“It [the WSJ article] describes the case of Abdul Karim Jassim Bidawi, who upon his arrest in the Phillipines began eating the memory chip from his cell phone. Obtained from the chip were the names of 9 suspected Iraqi intelligence agents and ties to Iraqi diplomats including one the Phillipines had expelled from the country for his work with Abu Sayyaf. Some of the numbers also just happened to be on another cell phone recovered by Zamboanga authorities last October. Where did that phone come from? It was wired to a bomb in a catholic shrine which failed to detonate.
Among his terrorist activities, Bidawi was involved in the plot to blow up several transpacific flights in the 90's and assassinate the Pope, both conceived by al Qaeda leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. KSM is also the MASTERMIND OF THE 9/11 ATTACKS, and his nephew Ramzi Yousef was convicted for the '93 WTC bombing. This means we have Hussein controlling Iraqi diplomats and Iraqi agents who work with Bidawi who answers to the 9/11 mastermind, KSM. So can you really be sure there's no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda? Give me a break. Connections among terrorists are complicated, but this is exactly the kind of "connecting the dots" people complained the CIA wasn't doing in 2001.”
http://www.command-post.org/oped/2_archives/001760.html
Precisely.
Posted by teri at March 16, 2005 07:57 PM