This:
George Bush, born in 1946, 43rd president of the United States (2001- ), who took office after one of the closest and most disputed elections in U.S. history and launched a war against terrorism after a devastating terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. Bush was reelected in 2004, defeating Democratic opponent John F. Kerry by sweeping the South and winning the key battleground state of Ohio.
When he took office, Bush, son of former president George Herbert Walker Bush, became the first son to follow his father into the White House since John Quincy Adams followed John Adams in the early 19th century. Bush, a Republican, was also the first presidential candidate since Benjamin Harrison in 1888 to win the electoral vote, and thus the presidency, while losing the nationwide popular vote. Bush lost the popular vote to Democratic candidate Al Gore by more than 500,000 votes out of more than 105 million cast nationwide. However, he secured a 271 to 266 victory in the electoral college when, after five weeks of legal wrangling, Gore failed to overturn election results that gave the state of Florida, with 25 electoral votes, to Bush.
As president, Bush faced the challenges of global terrorism. After the September 11 attacks, he declared a war against terrorism, pledging to defeat those who threatened the security of the United States. Bush led a coalition of countries into Afghanistan to topple the Taliban government, which had harbored al-Qaeda, the international terrorist network responsible for the September 11 attacks. In a controversial decision, he also directed a U.S. invasion of Iraq to remove President Saddam Hussein from power. Bush alleged that Hussein was an ally of al-Qaeda and possessed weapons of mass destruction that represented a growing threat to the United States. But after the invasion no weapons of mass destruction were found, and in September 2003 Bush told a group of reporters there was “no evidence” that Hussein was linked to the September 11 attacks. Domestically Bush confronted a slowing economy, and he successfully advocated for tax cuts in an effort to stimulate economic growth.
Osama:
Osama bin Laden, born in 1957, Saudi Arabian multimillionaire and founder of the al-Qaeda terrorist network, which was responsible for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States. In 1999 the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) placed bin Laden on its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list in connection with the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Little is known in the West about bin Laden’s life. He inherited his great personal wealth from his father, whose construction company prospered through close connections with the Saudi royal family.
Bin Laden first came to international attention in the 1980s in Afghanistan for his role in the Afghan resistance to Soviet occupation forces. The Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan in 1979. During his youth bin Laden had embraced fundamentalist Islamic teachings, and he regarded the Soviet invasion as an unforgivable assault on Muslim land. To aid the resistance, bin Laden provided funds and supplies, built guerrilla training camps, trenches, and roads, and recruited and transported large numbers of military volunteers from Arab nations. The United States also aided the Afghan rebels who fought the Soviet invaders. In 1988 near the end of the war, bin Laden established al-Qaeda (Arabic for “the Base”), an organization that, according to U.S. officials, connects and coordinates fundamentalist Islamic terrorist groups around the world.
After Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia. In the following year Iraq invaded Kuwait, and the United States responded by organizing an international coalition against Iraq in what became the Persian Gulf War. During and after this war Saudi Arabia’s ruling monarchy allowed the United States to station troops in Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden was angered by the presence of the U.S. military, which he considers an enemy of Islam, near Mecca and Medina, Saudi cities that are two of Islam’s holiest sites. He led criticism of the Saudi monarchy and in 1992 left Saudi Arabia for Sudan, where a fundamentalist Islamic regime had taken power. Two years later, the Saudi government revoked his citizenship and froze his assets in Saudi Arabia.
Many veterans of the Afghan war, who had become known as Arab Afghans, joined bin Laden in Sudan. There he formed several businesses, including a road-construction company, and reportedly set up training camps and strengthened the international structure of al-Qaeda with help from the Arab Afghans. In 1996, under pressure from the U.S. and Saudi governments, Sudan expelled bin Laden, and he went into hiding in Afghanistan.
In 1996 bin Laden issued the first of several calls for a jihad, or holy war, against the United States and its presence abroad. According to the U.S. State Department, al-Qaeda has stated its goals as driving U.S. forces from the Arabian Peninsula, overthrowing the Saudi government, and supporting Islamic revolutionary groups around the world. Bin Laden denounces U.S. activities in the Middle East—such as its leadership in the Gulf War and its support of Israel—as a continuation of the Crusades. In that series of wars during the Middle Ages, Western Christians sought to capture the Holy Lands from Muslims. United States officials believe that al-Qaeda funds and coordinates terrorist cells (small teams responsible for preparing and executing terrorist acts) in dozens of countries around the world.
Al-Qaeda’s first confirmed attack was the bombing in 1995 of a joint Saudi-American military training center in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, which caused the deaths of five Americans. This attack was followed by the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 and a suicide bombing in 2000 of the USS Cole. Officials of the U.S. government named bin Laden as the primary suspect behind the hijacking of airplanes that were deliberately crashed into the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., and the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 2001. The United States invaded Afghanistan shortly after the attack and ousted the Taliban government that sheltered bin Laden and al-Qaeda. However, bin Laden eluded capture. In 2002 an audiotape believed to have been made by bin Laden took responsibility for the September 11 attacks.
In October 2004, shortly before the U.S. presidential election, bin Laden appeared in a videotape delivered to the al-Jazeera television network. In it, bin Laden warned the American people, “If you play havoc with our security, we play havoc with yours.” Bin Laden said he was motivated to attack the World Trade Center towers because of the U.S. alliance with Israel. “The events which affected me directly go back to 1982…when America gave the Israelis the green light to invade Lebanon.…As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me that the unjust should suffer the same—that the towers in America must be destroyed so that America gets a taste of what we went through, so that it will stop killing our children and women.”
Thats it son!
Count Dracula
2006-09-22 01:13:12
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answer #1
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answered by The False Prophet 2
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