Saturday, July 23, 2005
Thanks for Darfur program
Thank you for the program on Darfur Friday morning [7/22]. I rearranged my schedule to stay and listen to it. I am glad that you added the chap from southern Sudan because those issues need to be aired and as your speakers said, are somewhat related too. I felt the information presented by the primary speaker was given at a level that was a bit too basic/shallow, and only the answer to the final question really got into the nitty gritty details that someone who follows the news could be enlightened by more in depth background. Still it was a good 'effort' using your resources at hand. Another suggestion for a speaker who is fairly 'local' and might be persuaded to discuss the subject on your broadcasts, is Sam Laki, who teaches at Central State University and hails from southern Sudan.
As regards the question that the speaker could not answer, Osama bin Laden was NOT in Sudan at the time of the attack. I was in Khartoum at the end of September 1999, one year after the attack, and there were many wanting to engage me in WHY this was done!! people who were educated, working at Ministry level were horrified and disgusted by such aggression from the US, which they all had admired.
August 20, 1998, the al-Shifa ("Health") pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, Sudan, was destroyed in cruise missile strikes launched by the United States in retaliation for the August 7 truck bomb attacks on its embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, in which 225 people were killed and a further 4,000 wounded
The administration of President Bill Clinton justified the attacks, dubbed Operation Infinite Reach, on the grounds that the al-Shifa plant was involved in producing chemical weapons and had ties with the violent Islamist al Qaeda group of Osama bin Laden, which was believed to be behind the embassy bombings. The August 20 US action also hit al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, to where bin Laden had moved following his May 1996 expulsion from Sudan.
The Khartoum attack was noted for its outstanding precision, as successive missiles all but levelled the al-Shifa works with minimal damage to surrounding areas. But the factory is today widely thought to have had no connections with weapons-related activity or with bin Laden.
--Dorothy B.
As regards the question that the speaker could not answer, Osama bin Laden was NOT in Sudan at the time of the attack. I was in Khartoum at the end of September 1999, one year after the attack, and there were many wanting to engage me in WHY this was done!! people who were educated, working at Ministry level were horrified and disgusted by such aggression from the US, which they all had admired.
August 20, 1998, the al-Shifa ("Health") pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, Sudan, was destroyed in cruise missile strikes launched by the United States in retaliation for the August 7 truck bomb attacks on its embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, in which 225 people were killed and a further 4,000 wounded
The administration of President Bill Clinton justified the attacks, dubbed Operation Infinite Reach, on the grounds that the al-Shifa plant was involved in producing chemical weapons and had ties with the violent Islamist al Qaeda group of Osama bin Laden, which was believed to be behind the embassy bombings. The August 20 US action also hit al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, to where bin Laden had moved following his May 1996 expulsion from Sudan.
The Khartoum attack was noted for its outstanding precision, as successive missiles all but levelled the al-Shifa works with minimal damage to surrounding areas. But the factory is today widely thought to have had no connections with weapons-related activity or with bin Laden.
--Dorothy B.
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