Our 13.5kg haul of Semtex – in 108 sticks – is one of the biggest ever seized from terrorists and could have potentially armed 30 suicide bombers.And chillingly the explosive, which we bought for £10,000, was of a form that doesn’t show up on metal detectors, making it much easier to smuggle into Britain….
…Posing as members of the Real IRA, we were also offered three shoulder-held missile launchers, an anti-aircraft gun, and enough machine guns, hand grenades and landmines to equip a small army.
We made our deal in Kosovo, a breeding ground for fanatics with al-Qaeda links.
Our contact was the deputy commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) Niam Behljulji, known as Hulji. The group were trained by Bin Laden’s men.
Astonishingly, we met him under the noses of the British Army and UN forces – who remain as peacekeepers following Kosovo’s bloody war with Serbia.
Hulji, is said to supply terrorists across Europe and has been accused of massacring Serbian women and children during the war.
He even posed grinning for a photograph, holding the severed head of one his victims.
The KLA was supported by the U.S. during the ’99 attack on Yugoslavia, despite terrorist status.
Curious Bush from the beginning of his term sought to free these fine folks from the interference of U.S. peacekeepers. Sure, let them flourish, I suppose. Rumsfeld championed the case as well in ’01 and most recently, ostensibly in a desperate attempt to find more boots for Iraq, is doing so again. [2]
Shouldn’t the Bush administration be learning a lesson from this foreign policy experiment gone bad instead of repeating the same mistakes? Unless fighting terrorism isn’t their objective after all.
Seymour Hersh on yet another failed experiment applied in Iraq.
Unless fighting terrorism isn’t their objective after all.
Right, that’s only the excuse.
Last night, during the Dem debate in New Hampshire, the moderator Ted Koppel chastised a couple of the candidates for being naive about the importance of controlling Iraq’s oil resources. He basically lent legitimacy to it being a vital reason for the continued occupation.
My how times change.