U.S. denies report of bin Laden�s capture
Iran radio claims al-Qaida leader caught �a long time ago�TEHRAN, Iran - Pentagon and Pakistani officials on Saturday denied an Iranian state radio report that Osama bin Laden was captured in Pakistan�s border region with Afghanistan �a long time ago.�
The claim came at a time when Pakistan�s army was hunting al-Qaida suspects in a remote tribal region along the border with Afghanistan, believed to be a possible hiding place for the al-Qaida leader.
There have been reports that military forces believed they had identified bin Laden�s general location and had him encircled, but Pakistani officials have denied any specific knowledge of bin Laden�s whereabouts.
Iran�s state radio, quoting an unnamed source, said that U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld�s visit to the region this week was in connection with the arrest.
�Things are going well�
Larry Di Rita, the chief Pentagon spokesman who traveled with Rumsfeld this week to Afghanistan, denied the report. �I don�t have any reason to think it�s true,� he said Saturday.Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, also said he had no information to suggest bin Laden had been caught.
�Things are going well, and we believe we will eventually catch all the leaders of al-Qaida, but I know nothing of that report,� he said.
In Washington, another U.S. official, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, also denied Saturday that bin Laden was captured.
Carried by external serviceThe report was carried by Iran radio�s external Pushtun service. The director of Iran radio�s Pushtun service, Asheq Hossein, said he had two sources for the report that bin Laden had been captured.
Iranian state radio quoted its reporter as saying the arrest happened a long time ago.
�Osama bin Laden has been arrested a long time ago, but Bush is intending to use it for propaganda maneuvering in the presidential election,� he said.
Pakistani Army spokesman Gen. Shaukat Sultan also told the AP that the report was not true. �That information is wrong,� he said.
A Pakistani official said previously that members of al-Qaida are being sought in the border region, although bin laden was not a specific target.
Separately, Pakistani forces killed 11 people in an exchange of fire Saturday after a minibus failed to stop at a roadblock in a tribal region where the ongoing anti-terrorism operations have been taking place, an army spokesman told the AP. The shooting occurred a day after armed men and soldiers exchanged fire at a military compound in the region.
Journalist: �I never said this�
Speaking to the AP in Tehran, Hossein identified one of the sources for the bin Laden report as Shamim Shahed, editor of the English-language Pakistani newspaper The Nation in Peshawar. Hossein said Shahed told him Friday night that bin Laden was arrested �a long time ago.�But Shahed, who is The Nation�s Peshawar bureau chief and not its editor, denied telling the Iranian radio station that bin Laden had been captured.
�I never said this,� Shahed said in a telephone interview with the AP�s Islamabad bureau. �But I have for the last year been saying that he is not far away. He is within their (the Americans�) reach, and they can declare him arrested any time.�
Hossein said he had a second source for his report that bin Laden had been captured, but he declined to identify him except to say he was �a man with close links to intelligence services and Afghan tribal leaders.�
Homayoun Jarir, son-in-law of Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, said he could not confirm the report.
The Iranian news agency IRNA was first to report the capture of Saddam Hussein. IRNA also carried the state radio report about bin Laden�s capture and said it had contacted a radio announcer at the Pushtun service who confirmed the news.
yeah, we're gonna need some rescue one way or t'other.
we don't need to persuade Asians and Europeans that they may need to go beyond propping up our currency and actively stimulate our economy - they already know that if they don't help out here our economy will collapse, making an aggressive, nationalistic military empire virtually inevitable. the history of militarily powerful states failing economically is scary enough without anybody having to talk about it. and the world ain't outta the woods with the Former Soviet yet either.
but we do need to show them that we're not already a lost cause and that we won't just abuse their trust. if we can get rid of BushCo and RepubliCo by a sufficiently large margin over the next four years (thereby reassuring other countries that investing the US is moving away from fascism or theocracy rather than towards it), then suddenly preventing economic catastrophe in the US will become a high priority for nearly everyone.