Taliban training Yanks, Brits for suicide missions

Taliban training Yanks, Brits for suicide missions
'We will destroy their cities as they have destroyed ours'
Posted: May 14, 2007
9:18 p.m. Eastern

© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

The Taliban leader who was killed during an American helicopter attack in Afghanistan's Helmand Province was training both Americans and Brits to carry out suicide terrorist attacks on their homelands, according to a report from ABC.

The network said it had obtained a television interview with Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah that was taped just 36 hours before his death on Saturday.

Excerpts were being aired on "World News with Charles Gibson."

"We will be executing attacks in Britain and the U.S. to demonstrate our sincerity," he said on the tape made by an Afghan interviewer, "to destroy their cities as they have destroyed ours," Dadullah said.

He didn't specify how many were under training, or give other details.

"This is our religious and moral duty to train suicide bombers against the nuclear power of the infidels, and they will be used when they are needed, whether they are one, 10 or 20."

A senior U.S. official told ABCNEWS.com that the intelligence reports recently had confirmed Dadullah's statement that U.S. citizens were being trained in Taliban and al-Qaida camps.

"The number is small, not large, but even once is dangerous," the official said.

WND already has reported on several situations, including one of a Houston man allegedly being trained in Somalia for a global jihad against America.

It was just a day and a half after the taping that U.S. forces executed a helicopter assault on the hiding place concealing Dadullah, and his bullet-riddled body was put on display by Afghan officials to confirm he was dead.

Military officials had been tracking Dadullah from Pakistan into Afghanistan, they reported.

"His ego probably got the better of him," aid ABC News counterterrorism consultant Alexis Debat. "The U.S. and Pakistan have done an excellent job of intercepting the couriers moving taped messages from al-Qaida and Taliban leaders. This is why we have not seen Osama bin laden in some time."

Dadullah has been described as a senior lieutenant of Taliban chief Mullah Omar. His full name was Dadullah Akhund, and he was known as "Dadullah the cripple" because he lost a leg while fighting the Soviet army nearly 30 years back.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force issued a statement blaming him for the deaths of "many Afghans through many means," including suicide bombers.

WND reported just a few days earlier on a drill to review what would happen in America should a nuclear bomb explode.

The most recent test by the U.S. Joint Forces Command speculated on the explosion of a 10-kiloton nuclear bomb in Virginia.

Later this year, team members also plan to work with city officials in Portland, Ore., and the Oregon National Guard in an exercise designed to prevent, prepare for and respond to large-scale terrorist attacks involving weapons of mass destruction.

One nuclear terror expert said recently the chances of a detonation in the U.S. in the next decade are 50 percent.

And Vice President Dick Cheney said the threat of nuclear terrorism is very real.

"The fact is that the threat to the United States now of a 9/11 occurring with a group of terrorists armed not with airline tickets and box cutters, but with a nuclear weapon in the middle of one of our own cities is the greatest threat we face," he said. "It's a very real threat. It's something that we have to worry about and defeat every single day."

A study, meanwhile, has concluded the U.S. was woefully under-prepared to respond, particularly if the event took place in a major population center.