06/28/2002
EDITORIAL NUMBER=0-09972

BUSH ON TERRORISM WAR

Suleiman Abu Ghaith (PRON.: Rhy-ight), described as a spokesman for the al-Qaida terrorist network, has reportedly threatened the United States. On an audio recording broadcast by Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite television station, he purportedly said al-Qaida’s "security and military bodies are now monitoring, investigating and observing new American targets."

He also admitted al-Qaida’s responsibility for the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and for the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, an American ship visiting Yemen. The audio tape also said al-Qaida was responsible for the April explosion of a tanker truck outside a synagogue in Tunisia. Seventeen people, including twelve German tourists, were killed in that terrorist attack.

Abu Ghaith’s reported remarks highlight what is already known: the war against global terrorism is a new kind of war. It has placed many Americans on the front lines. More than three-thousand were killed when the al-Qaida terrorists struck on September 11^th, 2001.

The best way to fight terrorism, said President George W. Bush, "is to chase the killers down wherever they think they can hide, and bring them to justice." The U.S. is fighting people, said Mr. Bush, who send others to their deaths as suicide bombers, while Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants hide in caves. But however long it takes, said President Bush, "this mighty nation is going to track them down until we can say with certainty, our children and our grandchildren are free."

So far, approximately two-thousand-four-hundred terrorists and their accomplices have been captured -- in Afghanistan, in the United States, in Europe, Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. In the Philippines, a group of al-Qaida- linked Abu Sayyaf terrorists was tracked down in a boat fleeing Mindanao. Abu Sayyaf kidnaps people and holds them for ransom. Some are killed and even beheaded. As President Bush put it, "They’re nothing but cold-blooded killers. They may espouse some kind of doctrine," said Mr. Bush, but "they have no regard for innocent life."

As President Bush said, "History has given us an opportunity to lead the world...so that all freedom-loving people in every country could grow up in a peaceful environment, so children of all walks of life could grow up understanding what freedom means, in a peaceful way."