Stories from 2001-12-08

"The Pentagon has confirmed a 15,000 lb. 'Daisy-cutter' bomb has been dropped at the Tora Bora cave complex, after a reported sighting of Osama bin Laden. US forces deployed the weapon, its most powerful conventional bomb, due to claims senior al-Qaida leaders — including bin Laden — had been seen at a cave entrance." [more]

"The only foreigners not sweeping into Kabul so far are those from the U.S. government. Diplomats from other key countries are in town to set up embassies, but American diplomats are conspicuously absent.
The tardiness of the American diplomats is one of several signs that Washington risks repeating its mistake of a decade ago, when it won the war against the Soviet invaders of Afghanistan and then betrayed the Afghans by walking away from them. Americans point fingers at other countries for allowing Afghanistan to become a terrorist haven, but it was Americans who abandoned the Afghans to the feuding factions whom they had armed and whose fundamentalist Islamic passions they had ignited." [more]

"If they do manage to catch [the Qaeda fighters], the United States then has to decide what to do with them. So far senior figures in the US administration, from President George W Bush downwards, have avoided spelling out exactly what should happen to Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban leader Mullah Omar. They also have not said publicly how more junior commanders would be treated as well. The US may have decided what to do, but every option seems fraught with difficulties." [more]

"The Justice Department has asked a federal appeals court for a broad ruling to authorize the use of secret evidence in cases in which it is trying to detain or deport immigrants it contends are in the country illegally. For national security reasons, the government argues that it should share secret evidence with only immigration judges and not with the immigrants and their lawyers." [more]