{"article":{"id":11346,"heading":"WWIII Has Begun","author":"BBC","created":"2001-10-08 14:40:57","modified":"2001-10-08 21:53:59","last_modified":"Tue, 09 Oct 2001 04:53:59","article":"

BBC. 7 October 2001. US begins attack.

The United States has begun its military operation in Afghanistan.

\"We are beginning another front in our war against terrorism,\" White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

There were reports of loud explosions in the Afghan capital Kabul and electricity supplies are also said to have been cut in the city.

US President George Bush is to address the nation shortly, and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair will speak immediately afterwards.

Meanwhile, the Taleban says it has sent 8,000 troops to its border with Uzbekistan, which has given the US access to an air base for its anti-terrorism campaign.

The US administration has repeatedly rejected Taleban offers to bargain over the fate of its guest, Saudi-born militant Osama Bin Laden.<\/p>\n","contact":"","link":"","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/plain","summary":"October 7, 2001","numcomment":5,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/","filesize":null,"article_url":"\/news\/2001\/10\/11346.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[{"id":11347,"heading":"it was nice knowing all of you","article":"So now the B boys are dropping bombs over Kabul. What's a young leftist supposed to do? Ignore the crap happening in our country and protest against the bombing of another country? Or take the humanitarian way out and join the countless protests\/rallies\/demonstrations\/beatings that will start once people wake up and leave our orovincial worries for another day? I don't know about others, but I'm glad to do both. I just hope people don't lose sight of the problems already existing here while protesting the problems that are to come.","author":"leftist latino","parent_id":11346,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2001-10-08 15:17:03","modified":"2001-10-08 15:40:38","fileurl":""},{"id":11353,"heading":"where are the protests?","article":"Where and when are the Protests being held in LA? Is there one tonight?","author":"Dr. Vest","parent_id":11346,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2001-10-08 16:14:59","modified":"2001-10-08 17:00:02","fileurl":""},{"id":11356,"heading":"protest tonight at 5 at the federal bldg","article":"protest at 5 at the federal bldg in westwood","author":"me","parent_id":11346,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2001-10-08 18:11:27","modified":"2001-10-08 18:55:30","fileurl":""},{"id":11358,"heading":"Don't be Cunning","article":"Don't expect the world to be blind that USA is the #1 sponsored of terrorism in middle east.Billion of dollars been sponsored to the Israeli to ensure a free flow of unjust to the Palestinien people.Please don't be so cunning,we are not deaf and we are not blind.Don't think everyone will be blind folded by USA unjust treatment to the other's for so long.Why only USA life is worth while others is not.This kind kind of dirty ideology stick like glue in those blind patriotic American mind.That why there's no peace on earth.","author":"r@z@k","parent_id":11346,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2001-10-08 18:16:22","modified":"2001-10-08 18:55:30","fileurl":""},{"id":11370,"heading":"Robert Fisk: Our friends are killers, crooks","article":"\r\n07 October 2001\r\nAlmost four weeks after the crimes against humanity in New York and\r\nWashington, we are playing politics on the hoof and allying ourselves to\r\nsome of the nastiest butchers around.\r\n\r\nMr Blair may believe that \"the values we believe in should shine through\r\nwhat we do in Afghanistan\" but few of our \"friends\" in the region have many\r\nvalues, and some of them have a lot of blood on their hands. For as we\r\nsearch for facilities and jumping-off points and air space and access -- and\r\nwe are now creating policies by the day -- we are being asked to forget a\r\nlot of recent history.\r\n\r\nFirst out of the memory goes Chechnya. The savage repression of this Muslim\r\nrepublic -- complete with mass executions, mass rape and mass graves -- was\r\nthe brainchild of Vladimir Putin, the former serving KGB officer into whose\r\nsoul Mr Bush believes he peered in Slovenia.\r\n\r\nMr Putin's assault on Grozny was timed to bring him the Russian presidency,\r\nand within weeks his indisciplined troops had turned the rubble of Chechnya\r\ninto something approaching Afghanistan. Mr Putin now seems our strongest\r\nally in the \"war against terror\". And why not, when he is himself such a\r\nmaster of terror?\r\n\r\nSecond out of the memory goes the nasty little dictatorship run by the Saudi\r\nroyal family whose religious \"mouttawa\" police taught the Taliban how to run\r\ntheir Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue.\r\n\r\nWe should forget that women are not even allowed to drive a car in Saudi\r\nArabia, we must ignore the weekly head-choppings outside mosques, the\r\ncountry's disgraceful and unfair judicial system -- everything, in fact,\r\nwhich might remind us of Saudi Arabia's carbon copy, the Taliban, whose\r\ndestruction we are now seeking.\r\n\r\nThen we must turn our attention away from the not terribly democratic regime\r\nof General Pervez Musharraf. Only a little while ago, the general was the\r\nPakistani army commander who overthrew the democratically elected -- though\r\ncorrupt -- government of Nawaz Sharif. Indeed, General Musharraf was rather\r\nkeen to hang Mr Sharif until President Clinton dropped by Islamabad early\r\nlast year to condemn Osama bin Laden and appeal for Sharif's life.\r\n\r\nOnly a few weeks ago, the general appointed himself president. And while the\r\nworld tut-tutted then, it now respectfully accords General Musharraf the\r\ntitle of \"president\" too.\r\n\r\nFourth down the memory hole goes our new friend Uzbekistan whose President\r\nIslam Karimov currently holds 7,000 political prisoners in his jails. There\r\nis no free press, no political opposition.\r\n\r\nMikhail Ardzinov, one of the few human rights activists in Uzbekistan -- who\r\nwas brutally beaten by Karimov's secret police two years ago -- now says\r\nthat although America had promised not to sell out human rights to get\r\nKarimov's friendship, \"We know that the tone will change now\". Too true.\r\nKarimov has promised that his air space can be \"used in the fight against\r\nterrorism for humanitarian and security aims\".\r\n\r\nAnd this is not the moment to remind anyone that Uzbekistan has its own\r\nreasons to destroy the Taliban -- not just because the Taliban has been\r\nexporting its revolution over the Afghan-Uzbek border, but because President\r\nKarimov wants to run an oil pipeline through Afghanistan to a Pakistani\r\nport, a project that will help to fund his bankrupt police state (as well as\r\na few American oil companies).\r\n\r\nOne of Karimov's allies is the anti-Taliban war criminal Abdul Rashid Dustum\r\nwhose men went on a rampage of rape in Kabul in the early Nineties and who,\r\nfor several months, went to fight for the Taliban after receiving a massive\r\nbribe for his change of allegiance. So it's amnesia too for the anarchy and\r\nmass human rights abuses perpetrated when the Northern Alliance -- our\r\nfriends in northern Afghanistan -- ruled Kabul. We must remember with sorrow\r\nits former leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud, a genuine patriot murdered by Arab\r\nsuicide bombers on 9 September, but we must forget his colleague Rasoul\r\nSayaf whose men used Shia women as sex slaves in the early Nineties.\r\n\r\nNow it's true that Churchill, when told in 1941 that Germany had invaded the\r\nSoviet Union and that Stalin was now his ally, announced that if Hitler\r\ninvaded Hell, he would at least make \"a favourable reference\" to the Devil\r\nin the House of Commons. But we're not making any references at all to our\r\n\"friends\" in the region. We have drawn the shining bright sword and have no\r\ntime to worry if the hands we shake are covered in blood.\r\n\r\nThis is a war of democracy versus evil, according to President Bush. It's\r\njust that there's not an awful lot of democracy around.\r\n","author":"r@z@k","parent_id":11346,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2001-10-08 21:53:59","modified":"2001-10-08 22:22:55","fileurl":""}]}