NYPost

By ALY SUJO

October 21, 2002 -- Recent terrorist attacks around the world may be a warm-up for a "spectacular event" against American interests, U.S. intelligence officials say.

Al Qaeda prisoners have been warning investigators about a new attack that could follow last weekend's huge bombing in Bali, Indonesia, where nearly 200 people, most of them Australians, were killed.

A senior U.S. counterterrorism expert quoted in Time magazine said terror suspects under interrogation have been "talking about a spectacular event. And I don't think we saw that event in Bali."

French investigators say recent strikes were "starting to look like a campaign of terror rather than a series of dissimilar attacks."

Within two days last week, 10 people died in three attacks that took place in the Philippines: two in the southern city of Zamboanga, and one on a bus in Manila.

Yesterday, another bomb exploded near a crowded Roman Catholic shrine in the south, killing a soldier and injuring 18 people.

Security officials suspect the Zamboanga blasts may have been staged by the Abu Sayyaf - a terror group linked to al Qaeda - or by Muslim separatists. In a separate weekend attack in Pakistan yesterday, an explosion ripped through a crowded marketplace near a military base west of Islamabad, killing a girl and injuring 16 others.

U.S. security sources say they have clear evidence that al Qaeda, whose camps were destroyed after the Taliban's collapse in Afghanistan, have been re-establishing camps across the border in Pakistan.

"A lot just moved east," said one U.S. official. "[Al Qaeda] continue to recruit from the young, impressionable men in the area."

In Italy, authorities said they had arrested five Tunisians suspected of having terrorist connections, and investigators in Milan said there were indications that terrorist cells in Europe were involved in preparations for new strikes.

-- Anonymous, October 21, 2002

Answers

I guess we're gonna have to send our boys into Pakistan to clean house.

Hope they have enough 409.

-- Anonymous, October 21, 2002

how many are feeling like me, ..yes, war is hell, and all the stuff that goes with it....and I have empathy for those with husbands, sons, family in service to our country.........but I am SICK of living with the fear of what ifS... and worrying, ..so I am for HITTING and GETTING!!!! hit hard, as Dan says..GO FOR THE THROAT and DON;T let go, till there is no Suddam, no Terrorists, no more fear to leave the house.....this is NOT living!

but we have to go through channells..we have to be patient, while more people DIE! or go crazy from the fear that is engulf us all!

-- Anonymous, October 21, 2002

I hear that, SAR. Problem is we have to be careful what we do to who or whom.

When we bomb, we also have to go back and rebuild. If we bomb everything, we become what the terroists claim we are, mad with power infidels that will stop at nothing to control the planet.

But, what the hell, we couldn't do any worse than those morons anyway if we were ruling the planet, right?

-- Anonymous, October 21, 2002