August 8, 2008, - 10:47 am
Ten Years Ago Yesterday, Our Embassies Blown Up By Al-Qaeda
By Debbie Schlussel
**** SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE ****
In the midst of far “more important” stories, like the corporate Chi-Comm fraud known as the Olympics, America seems to have forgotten an important and sad anniversary, the bombings of two U.S. embassies by Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda in East Africa.
On August 7, 1998, bombings at American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed more than 200 people and wounded 5,000 in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam (which ironically means “House of Peace”).
Although a U.S. citizen–former Bin Laden secretary Wadih El-Hage–was convicted in the bombings, the main plotter of the attacks, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed a/k/a Haroun Fazul, has never been caught.
And another American, Sami Al-Arian associate Tariq Hamdi, provided the satellite battery which enabled Bin Laden to enact the attacks. Hamdi roamed freely around America for years–helping Sami Al-Arian and appearing as a “Middle East Journalist” on Peter Jennings’ ABC Newscasts post 9-11. He was allowed by U.S. authorities to flee the country before they dared indict him. When they finally did indict him in 2005, he was working for “the new Iraq” in Switzerland. From my August 8, 2005 column on Jennings:
According to prosecutors and documents in the 1998 trial of the Bin-Laden bombings of U.S. Embassies in Africa (the 7th anniversary of which was yesterday), Hamdi provided Bin Laden a satellite battery instrumental in those bombings. He’s also an unindicted co-conspirator with Islamic Jihad frontman Sami Al-Arian, who employed him at his Islamic “charity” fronts at the University of South Florida. Hamdi was also an employee of a Saudi-funded charity raided by Customs agents for allegedly laundering billions to Qaeda through the Isle of Man.
U.S. Customs Service agents were investigating and building a case against Hamdi, but when Customs was dumped and became ICE, that–like many important terrorism investigations–was dumped, too.
Yes, little has been done by America–though the Clintons did far more than the Bush Administration–to locate and go after those who mass-murdered Americans and African locals who helped America at our embassies.
Now, go back to the Olympic hype . . . so you can watch the Arafat-T-shirt-wearing Palestinian Olympic team win zero medals.
**** UPDATE: Here is a pic of the mural that bombing victims and their relatives put up, yesterday, to mark the embassy bombing in Kenya. I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, Bin Laden is in the middle of all these pics of injured humans, and that’s good since he caused death and destruction. But, on the other hand, he’s a star in it, as if honored. I also wish they had the guts to put an Islamic crescent in there, which, frankly, should be more prominent than Bin Laden. He’s the man, but not the ideology, behind the attacks. That ideology will long survive him and lead to more bombings.
What do you think of the mural?
This is a valuable reminder of the 10th anniversary of this terrorist event, & so far I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere else. It is much more important than the Olympic fraud.
Bush’s behavior and pandering to the Chinese is disgraceful. His pro forma complaint about lack of rights is an insult to all of is. He doesn’t really mean it any more than his pro forma statements against gay marriage, the Shiavo murder, or any other events where he has so much contempt for us that he thinks we will be happy forever with a stupid pro forma statement.
And all the terrorist countries (sic) besides the Palestinians that are there!
c f on August 8, 2008 at 12:26 pm