Available Today
Never Miss an Appointment, or an At-Large Terrorist, Again
By Al Kamen
Friday, January 19, 2007; A17
Tired of all the cuddly baby polar bears, redwoods, waterfalls and other standard glossy photos on those daily planners you got for Christmas? Want a little something different to jump-start your day?Then how about having your morning java looking at mug shots of Osama bin Laden and other wanted terrorists and learning how to recognize whether that muscle weakness is from yesterday's workout or perhaps botulism poisoning.
Yes, it's the National Counterterrorism Center's 2007 daily planner, "the largest since the calendar first appeared in a daily planner format in 2003," the introduction says.
No. 1 terrorist bin Laden -- with a $27 million reward "for information leading directly to" his being taken out of business -- is of course still there.
In fact, pretty much all the most-wanted folks are still there, year after year, including Faker Ben Abdelaziz Boussora, still with the $5 million reward offer, still with those "prominently protruding ears and . . . believed to have a serious pituitary gland illness."
A notable exception is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed in a U.S. airstrike on June 7. But "despite the turnover in leadership," the calendar notes in an excellent turn of phrase, "as of October 2006 [al-Qaeda in Iraq] had claimed over 5,000 attacks . . . with no evidence of a change in strategy or tactics." And there are reports that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, wanted for the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, may have been taken out in recent U.S. airstrikes in Somalia.
Osama is still listed as living in Pakistan, maintaining his trim 160-pound figure. His deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is still hanging out in Afghanistan. And Mullah Omar, who seems to be giving e-mail interviews to journalists these days, insists that he is in Afghanistan, but the Afghans claim he's on the lam in Pakistan.
The NCTC is a great planning guide. Those who have it, for example, know there's a big three-day weekend coming up to celebrate Feb. 3, 2000, which is when "Syria and Sudan sign agreement on fighting terrorism in compliance with Arab Antiterrorism Convention" and the landmark Feb. 5, 2001, accord signed by Algeria and France "to cooperate in fighting terrorism." So you can take that Monday off.
The beautiful calendar "is designed for anyone concerned with terrorism or threat: law enforcement, intelligence, military, security personnel, contingency planners, or simply citizens concerned by terrorist threats," the introduction says.
But the public can get only the electronic version. That's at http://www.nctc.gov. You can download it even in northwestern Pakistan.
It's available to others at undisclosed locations.