snip, snip>>Follow the passports: 18 out of the 19 hijackers were Egyptian; 1 was Saudi. The smart money points to one of the Middle East's most venerable militant Muslim organizations, Gama'at al-Islamiyya, or the Islamic Group. Founded by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, currently serving a life sentence for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Gama'at al-Islamiyya is best known for the November 1997 massacre of 62 tourists at the Temple of Luxor in Egypt and the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981. Though the Islamic Group is composed of numerous splinter cells whose ideology varies, they share a common aim: the replacement of the secular government of Hosni Mubarek by an Islamic theocracy. The Islamic Group resents the U.S. for propping up the Mubarak government!
as well as Israel.<<snip, snip
This is precisely what I said three weeks ago, two weeks ago, a week ago, and just the other day. And over the past three days, using mainstream and establishment sources on the Internet, I concluded with a list of groups that include this one. What stood out was: the way they went after civilians and killed a lot; the victims were not just acceptable 'collateral damage' in a messy show of force (like the African embassy bombings), but the main target.
I think the theory Colin Powell is going on is OBL, Inc. has become a network of networks, enabling others to globalize their efforts. So he wants to cut the head off of the octopus.
Still, as I also said, if police work is called for, then the trail starts in the US, goes back to W. Europe, and ultimately to the pro-US, moderate Arab states (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt). This is why I oppose the focus on Afghanistan for the distraction that it is. The most immediate linkage should be how all this plays into the hands of those who want to scuttle the 'peace process' in Israel-Palestine while taking on 'moderate' Arab governments, like Mubarek's. That doesn't eliminate OBL, but he is in Afghanistan with bad kidneys. It certainly doesn't fit with the main plans of the Taleban which, if anything, must have been an Sunni Islamic arc of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Indian Kashmir.
A real reckoning will have to concentrate on (1) the trail back to the Arab states and (2) the total failure of the State Dept. and the national security establishment to deal with any of this.
Charles Jannuzi