T. ALBANS BAY, Vt. â The hunterâs prey darted into the shadows, just out of reach of Henry Demarâs gun.
"Come on, stand up and be counted," Mr. Demar whispered excitedly. "There was a ripple that came out of the weeds. Thereâs something out there."
Dressed in camouflage, gripping his .357 Magnum, Mr. Demar was primed to shoot. But this time, no such luck. With a flick of its tail, his quarry â a slick silvery fish â was gone.
Fish shooting is a sport in Vermont, and every spring, hunters break out their artillery â high-caliber pistols, shotguns, even AK-47âs â and head to the marshes to exercise their right to bear arms against fish.
It is a controversial pastime, and Vermontâs fish and wildlife regulators have repeatedly tried to ban it. They call it unsportsmanlike and dangerous, warning that a bullet striking water can ricochet across the water like a skipping stone.
But fish shooting has survived, a cherished tradition for some Vermont families and a novelty to some teenagers and twenty-somethings. Fixated fish hunters climb into trees overhanging the water (some even build "fish blinds" to sit in), sail in small skiffs or perch on the banks of marshes that lace Lake Champlain, on Vermontâs northwest border. This my first attempt at posting, this explains the "Dean scream" must be a fish shooting call.
Posted by: bruce ||
05/12/2004 7:16:58 PM ||
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He real men, like in New Hampshire, and use the proper equipment.
Posted by: ed ||
05/12/2004 22:44 Comments ||
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#2
I remember a story from years ago about a guy who used a rod and reel to "fish" for rats off a highway overpass near Dallas.
He would bait the hook with cheese, cast it into the tall weeds nearby and reel in the struggling rodent.
He said they put up a much better fight than the local game fish. He did not say how well they fried up.
FIRST it was Elvis, who it was claimed, hailed from the tiny Aberdeenshire village of Lonmay. Then last month legendary country and western singer Johnny Cash was shown to have descended from the family of an ancient Scots king.
Now one of the most powerful politicians in the world has joined the club. Colin Powell, the four-star general who led 28 nations to victory as the architect of operation Desert Storm in the first Gulf War, is laying a claim to Scottish ancestry.
The Scotsman has learned that the US Secretary of State has petitioned the Heraldry Society of Scotland for a coat of arms to mark his Scottish genealogy.
The coat of arms will contain symbols including the crest of the head of an American bald eagle, below an escrol with the motto "devoted to public service".
Peter Drummond Murray, the editor of the Double Tressure, the annual journal of the Heraldry Society of Scotland, said the Lord Lyon intends to present the arms in Washington, probably in September, but details have not been finalised.
Mr Drummond Murray said: "The grant was originally made to his father several months ago, and so, of course, General Powell inherits it. The Register General of Jamaica was very happy about working on the ancestry of General Powell.
"They are very proud of him, and you would be very hard-put to think of anybody who has done as well as him."
Arguably the worldâs most famous living soldier, General Powell had the coat of arms created for him after petitioning the society on the advice of his US army colleague General Jack Nicholson, whose ancestors came from Arran.
As arms cannot be granted directly to non-British subjects it will be given to his father, Luther, who is a citizen of Jamaica and therefore of the Crown.
Luther Powell was born in the British Commonwealth colony of Jamaica in 1901, and the Secretary of Stateâs mother Maud McKoyâs family originally hailed from Scotland.
One of the duties of the Court of the Lord Lyon is to establish rights to arms and pedigrees, which, when satisfactory evidence is produced, results in a judicial "interlocutor" granting warrant to record in the Public Register of All Arms and Bearings in Scotland, or in the Public Register of All Genealogies and Birthbrieves in Scotland, the particular coat of arms and genealogy which have been established.
Contrary to popular belief, there is no such thing as a family coat of arms; a coat of arms at any one time is the property of only one individual and all progeny must have a different version. In times past it was used to denote identity or, if it was on a piece of property, it revealed ownership.
The swelling interest in Scottish ancestry reflects a growing trend in tracing familial roots which experts say is providing a significant boost to Scottish tourism, as access to comprehensive records tempts the Scottish Diaspora back to discover their predecessors.
Elizabeth Roads, Lyon Clerk at the Court of the Lord Lyon, the heraldic authority for Scotland, said about 120 to 150 Grants of Arms are made each year. As well as individuals these include corporations such as schools and bowling clubs, companies and those that are re-recording arms that have existed for a long time.
Mrs Roads said: "Everyone is aware of the American Diaspora but Americans in particular seem to have a desire to learn about their ancestral roots which perhaps people here donât feel the same need to know about. So certainly there has been a lot of genealogical resurgence, as it were, particularly in North America."
The National Archives of Scotland says it has experienced a resurgence in genealogy; last year nearly 6,000 people visited its searchroom to look at material such as wills, and church and property records.
Romilly Squire, the chairman of the Heraldry Society of Scotland, added: "Genealogy is, I believe, the second most popular subject on the internet these days, after the obvious one. Over the last 30 years it has been growing in popularity and in more recent years it has become a great deal easier for people to trace their ancestry from a distance. It has always been reasonably easy in Scotland because we keep good records back to the start of 1855 which was the start of Statutory Registration.
"America was a colony up until 1783, and if an American can trace their descent back to an ancestor who was living in the US before the revolutionary war, or back to an ancestor who was born in Scotland, then they can petition the Court of the Lord Lyon to grant arms to that ancestor. Then, as a direct descendent of that individual they can then have their own version of that coat of arms."
General Powellâs coat of arms contains symbols including the Azure, which shows "two swords in saltire, points downward, between four mullets Argent in a chief of the second a lion passant Gules".
The swords are a reference to his military career, as are the stars. The lion is intended as an allusion to Scotland, and the eagle is also a reference to the badge of the 101st Airborne Division, in which General Powell served and later commanded. The honorary Knight Commander of the most Honourable Order of the Bath is also included.
James Wilson, chief executive of Glasgow-based Pandaprint which undertakes printing work for the Heraldry Society said: "It is very strange when we look at our mailing list for the society to see the name of the most famous soldier in the world."
After playing a pivotal role as the first to broadcast photographs of Iraqi prisoner abuse which U.S. military officials feared would lead to death of Americans overseas, CBS News has declined to show the beheading of an American civilian killed in an apparent retaliation for the Iraqi images. The decision--made first by the staff of the CBS Evening News, including managing editor Dan Rather--now an official news division policy, came on the same night that the network announced it was going to air footage of an American casually talking about killing Iraqi prisoners on tonightâs 60 Minutes II program. CBSâs choice not to air the decapitation of Nick Berg in its entirety provoked much outrage from its viewers, who faulted the network for igniting a global firestorm over American misconduct while declining to show the murderous actions of Americaâs enemies. "After watching it [...] I can see why the media does not want you to see it," said a poster at FreeRepublic.com, a conservative bulletin board site whose members deluged the CBSâs switchboards with hundreds of calls Tuesday evening."It would instantly turn public opinion in favor of a fast and furious escalation of the effort in Iraq."
Posted by: Jeff Jonns ||
05/12/2004 4:32:46 PM ||
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Dan Rather had better have himself cremated when he dies because if he doesn't I am going to find out where he is buried. Then I'm going to buy a 40 ounce bottle of good old American malt liquor, hop into my pickup truck, and drive there. Along the way I shall consume said bottle of beer so that when I arrive "little" Secret Master will be locked n' loaded, so to speak. Then I shall water the petunias on his headstone.
#6
All that coffee is gonna be hard on the kidneys, though...
The secret will be to work in shifts. I don't think it will be that hard to keep it soggy with 100 million people working at it.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/12/2004 18:50 Comments ||
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#7
Question? My understanding is, it's against Geneva Conventions to show pictures of prisoners. Did Rather and CBS break this code by releasing those pictures?
It seems the military is taking the heat when it really was CBS that released those pics. Kinda like those Arab stations releasing those pics of our captures soldiers and citizens.
Are citizens of a company held to the same standards for the Geneva Conventions as our military?
I really don't know -- but I'm willing to vote "Yes."
#8
CBS , Rather Inc. has their own agenda. Following in Walter's footsteps, Dan has picked up the banner for the far left anti war minority in this country. I expect nothing less from these people who perpetrate 1/2 truths and a distinctly biased coverage to their news. They are shallow people looking for the next ratings war to hang their hat on and purport to say they are a News Organization. They betray our countries values, our troops and have the gall to say they support our men and women overseas, in harms' way, at war time. They bring nothing to the table except a negativity to anything good that has been done in this war against the Islamofacists. They are nothing more than complant link to the Al-Jizz trash and their news reporting does nothing for this nation' security.
Posted by: Bill Nelson ||
05/12/2004 19:57 Comments ||
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#9
Did Rather and CBS break this code by releasing those pictures?
Almost certainly.
But, to quote a favorite comedian, "they adhere to the journalist code that your right to know supercedes your right to exist".
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/12/2004 20:56 Comments ||
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Yemeni authorities foiled a terrorist plot to assassinate the U.S. ambassador in Sanâa last year, Yemenâs interior minister said Wednesday. Interior Minister Rashad al-Eleimi, addressing parliament, said that 195 terrorist suspects are in Yemeni custody for the bombing of the USS Cole, the French oil tanker Limburg and an assassination attempt against U.S. Ambassador Edmund Hull.
Yemen had never previously made public such a plot. Al-Eleimi didnât elaborate. But an Interior Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that the plotters were arrested before they could carry out their plan, in the second half of last year. He gave no further details. A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Sanâa referred all questions about the alleged plot to the Yemeni government. Al-Eleimi said 43 of the terrorist suspects have been referred to the state prosecutor for possible charges.
Seventeen U.S. sailors were killed when the USS Cole was bombed in October 2000 as it refueled in the southern port city of Aden. The bombing was blamed on the al-Qaida terror network. In 2002, one Bulgarian crewman was killed in a suicide attack by a small boat on the Limburg off the Yemeni coast, spilling 90,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Aden.
An al-Qaeda spiritual leader jailed in London authorised the collective suicide of seven terrorists in Spain as they were being besieged by police on April 3, investigators said Monday.
Police investigations show that the terrorists called a Jordanian jailed in London three times before committing suicide.
The terrorists made the phone calls to get the authorization to kill themselves as they were being cornered by police, investigators said.
The phone calls show that the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, which is believed to have carried out the Madrid attacks, had links with extremists in other countries, according to police sources.
After getting permission to blow themselves up, the terrorists purified themselves with holy water from Mecca and dressed in white clothes they made from curtains in the flat.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/12/2004 6:05:46 PM ||
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dressed in white clothes they made from curtains in the flat.
Wednesday, May 12, 2004 Posted: 10:26 AM EDT (1426 GMT)
BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) -- Brazilâs President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, said on Tuesday his nation planned to form a "strategic relationship" with China in areas like technology and defense. If that "strategic relationship" includes the export of processed fissile material, Brazil had better be prepared for an economic boycott or worse.
Lula, Brazilâs first elected leftist president, made the comments ahead of a May 23-27 state visit to China. "The two countries are determined that relations are strategic relations, not only based on trade, but on technology, defense and culture," Lula told reporters. Since Lula took power 16 months ago, he has made 29 trips abroad and gained a name as a spokesman for developing nations.
His foreign minister, Celso Amorim, has led poor nations against rich nationsâ farm subsidies in global trade talks. Lula said he hoped the China relationship would help Brazil gain a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. He saw closer ties with China and nations like India, South Africa and Russia aiding Brazilâs battle to break down farm subsidies that price its farm products out of some markets.
"Brazil has sufficient force alongside these partners, to speak on equal terms with those that always determined trade logic in the economic world," Lula said. U.S. pressure for a slowdown in the Chinese economy to prevent it overheating should not hurt relations with Brazil, Lula said. Ship them some of your advanced centrifuges that have 30% better efficiency and letâs see who starts to "overheat."
China represents a major market for Brazilian farm exports and is set to be Brazilâs No. 2 trading partner in 2004. Lula said the Chinese hoped to invest in Brazilian infrastructure projects, agribusiness and areas like space exploration and technology. Some 421 businessmen, five state governors and eight ministers of state will accompany Lula to China.
- EMPHASIS ADDED - Whoâs paying for that massive political junket? A trip to China for 435 people should rack up a cool million pretty easily.
#1
Brazil is an arms exporter, and China needs another supplier besides Russia. Besides, there is reportedly already a discreet relationship. This just brings trade into it.
HAVANA : Cuba's communist government called a mass protest against the United States, and increasingly is putting the population on a war footing amid new US moves aimed at speeding the end of President Fidel Castro's rule. Friday's protest will take place along Havana's famous Malecon waterfront boulevard, where the US Interests Section section is located, said the Communist Party's official newspaper, Granma. Last week, US President George W. Bush endorsed measures to tighten the US embargo against Cuba by restricting Cuban-Americans' cash remittances to relatives on the island and limiting family visits between the United States and Cuba to one every three years. The remittances are a pillar of the Cuban economy worth some 1.2 billion dollars a year.
No money for you
The plan also involves the use of US military aircraft to broadcast pro-democracy radio and television programs into Cuba. The United States has had a comprehensive economic embargo clamped on Cuba since 1962. Cuban dissidents have harshly criticized the new measures.
I thought the dissidents were in prison? Oh, these would be "official" dissidents.
Elizardo Sanchez Santacruz, who leads the National Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, called them "counter-productive." Meanwhile, the Cuban government -- which long has contended the United States could invade, but stepped up warnings of the potential for a US military move after the US-led invasion of Iraq -- is readying Cubans for the possibility of war.
Trouble at home? Just hit the "US-Invasion" macro key.
"The fundamental work is to continue perfecting the tactics, the techniques, the methods and the principles of jung the war of all people," the government said in a statement Monday. Since last year's US-led war in Iraq, city militias have trained during "defense Sundays."
The island of 11.2 million people, which is larger than Portugal (roughly the size of the US state of Virginia) put in place plans for the evacuation of children and the elderly and created 1,400 Defense Zones with militia brigades comprised of people unable to join regular forces. Militias are armed with small anti-aircraft rocket launchers, while fields have been littered with landmines, which the government calls "the weapon of the poor."
That'll help with the farming.
Cuban authorities say their strategy is to involve the enemy in a long conflict, "an inferno worse than Vietnam."
Someone has been listening to Kerry.
Cuba has also countered the United States' tougher economic sanctions by imposing tough new austerity measures on its people, including a sharp reduction in sales at stores that accept dollars and a push for greater self-sufficiency. "Days of work and sacrifice await us, but so do glory and victory for our heroic fatherland," the communist government said Monday.
They must go to the same journalism school as the Norks.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/12/2004 3:11:48 PM ||
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I don't know allot about Cuba. I know we could steam roll them in a few days but what do you think the average people would do? Would they resist, welcome, or make a mass exodus to Florida? Any ideas out there what would happen if we went in?
I don't think we will - Castro will die in the near future. What do you think will happen after that? I'm think his bro Raul will take over and try to prove he's a bad ass. Any ideas about this scenario too?
Posted by: Yosemite Sam ||
05/12/2004 15:33 Comments ||
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#2
No way we should invade Cuba. It's too good of an example of the wonders of Communism for the rest of the Western hemisphere.
"See? You too can live in a poverty-stricken police state run by a multi-millionaire who wears 1950s combat fatigues."
Posted by: Patrick Phillips ||
05/12/2004 15:36 Comments ||
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#3
This is right out of Tinhorn 101. When your country's gone to shit, look to the Great Satan. If it wasn't for them, everything would be great here, right, El Jefe?
#4
Funny thing is that there is more poverty and homelessness in the USA (over 15 million people are homeless or survive below the poverty line) than the entire populaton of Cuba (under 12 million people) - why not just invade New York?
Time will prove that it was your own money hungry , capitalistic multi-nationals who enticed a bunch of un-educated, nomadic tent dwellers to carry out their insurace scam and bomb the city with guided planes.
#7
Isn't Yorgo that guy with the funny legs in "Manos, The Hands of Fate"? I saw that on MST3K once.
Posted by: Cthulhu Akbar ||
05/12/2004 16:09 Comments ||
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#8
whoa yorgo - there's a strectch
did you see black helicopters abover your house last night? do you stay up long nights serching the sky for the appoarching 12th planet?
Posted by: Dan ||
05/12/2004 16:11 Comments ||
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#9
Yorgo: Let me explain this thing called percentages to you. In the US, less than 1% (according to your own numbers) live in poverty. In Cuba 99% live in poverty. Which is a good deal for Castro, but not so good for the other eleven million or so. I know I'm feeding the troll, but I couldn't resist.
#10
Cuba, Cuba... isn't that one of those dinky Carribbean island mini-nations, like Haiti and Puerto Rico, with a perennially broken economy only kept up by all the ex-pats sending money home? Still run by that doofus with the raggedy beard and old green set of fatigues...damn, he's still around? Well, the ol' dance card is pretty full right now, I kinda think the cunning plan is to let it collapse of its' own accord. But you can always re-submit your request next quarter, maybe we'll get around it it sooner.
#11
For your information, Cuba has a higher literacy rate than any other counrty in the western hemisphere as well as the lowest infant mortality rate in the same area. They have the best trained doctors in the world. Nobody goes hungry, everybody has decent clothes to wear and, in spite of the vile US embargo, the Cuban people are frequently seen smiling and singing in the streets. If you Yanks want a REAL Viet Nam, try to take Cuba. I am a proud Canadian and have been to Cuba on many occasions (my country lets me travel wherever I want).
Posted by: duke ||
05/12/2004 17:13 Comments ||
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#12
How nice for you, Duke, sweetie--- your parents must be very proud.
#13
Actually the US infant mortality rate is 6.75 per 1000 live births versus 7.15 for Cuba. And this is assuming that Cuba isn't lying about their rates like every other known totalitarian state. Also, the US, Canada, and Cuba all have 97% literacy rates (making the same assumption as above). Source for the above: CIA World Factbook.
BTW, we in the US don't have to sing and dance in the streets because we have _homes_ to entertain ourselves in.
#14
We'd much rather invade Canada. All those precious ice wells just for the taking, so us southern imperialists can cool our mint julips. Run along sonny and lick something cold and metallic.
Posted by: ed ||
05/12/2004 17:52 Comments ||
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#15
Uh, comments by space aliens and Canadians aside, from what I gather Castro is a pussy cat compared to Raul, the man who WILL definately take over Cuba once his brother dies. Expect a crack down on.... is there anything left to crack down on in Cuba?
#16
Isn't Yorgo that guy with the funny legs in "Manos, The Hands of Fate"?
That was Torgo, the world's worst sidekick.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/12/2004 18:22 Comments ||
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#17
Duke: Yes, Cuba is so much better than everywhere else that people build makeshift rafts in Florida and row themselves across the straits just to get there.
[/sarcasam]
Sgt. Mom: You're deadly. Remind me to stay on your good side.
Posted by: Mike ||
05/12/2004 18:30 Comments ||
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#18
Its kind of nostaligic to deal with the communists again. Harkens back to a simpler, safer time.
Your country also bends you over on a regular basis while you beg for more (but hopefully this will change in June).
Duke, from one Canadian to another: go f*ck yourself.
Posted by: Rafael ||
05/12/2004 19:04 Comments ||
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#22
Amen Mike! How many Americans defected to Cuba over the past 50 odd years? Thatâs all the truth you need to know! Oh and Duke how many former Canadians now make their home in the USA? A lot more than the other way around!
Why don't we get any truly good trolls to play with? The only ones with persistence are insane--quite possibly of the criminal variety. Murat used to put up a good fight, but even he has lost his spirit.
Alaska Paul: Can you issue a fatwa and summon us up a better class of trolls?
#25
So, Duke, lemme see if I understand your position. You are basically saying that "a boot stamping on a human face--for ever" is OK by you as long as the face has a government-provided dental plan?
Posted by: Darth VAda ||
05/12/2004 19:59 Comments ||
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#26
I'd be sure to rely on the CIA for factual information. I doubt that the US has anywhere close to a 97% literacy rate. If it does, it only applies to one syllable words, like the ones that dickweed president of your uses (or, more aptly, misuses). Duke
Posted by: duke ||
05/12/2004 20:00 Comments ||
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#27
"Don't feed the trolls" - "you'll never win an argument with an idiot" words to live by, even though I've transgressed at times too....
I see the pressure more as trying to pry Chavez's lips from Fidel's ass. Make Fidel worry about home control, and he's less likely to notice our efforts at bringing democracy to Venezuela - after all, Cuba's got no oil... heh heh
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/12/2004 20:05 Comments ||
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#28
"If you Yanks want a REAL Viet Nam, try to take Cuba."
>your joking, right? And if we wanted a close to home replay of France in 1940 bending over in 20 min's we'd just roll north ay?
"I am a proud Canadian and have been to Cuba on many occasions (my country lets me travel wherever I want)"
>and if it wasn't for us you'd prolly be a proud Soviet right now Douche, er, I mean Duke. On second thought, I was right the first time - you are a douche - one syllable I know......how poetic.
#29
WHEREAS the troll situation at Rantburg as of late has amounted to a few emaciated bottom feeders
WHEREAS even the sink trap for the the last three days has caught less trolls than manatees that exist today in Wales, Alaska
AND WHEREAS many Rantburgers hunger for the mouth watering and lip smacking satisfaction derived from hammering trolls like a bored cat plays with a mouse, then
THEREFORE let a new troll named OGROY arise from the slimy depths of Isengard Cyberspace and entertain harass the multitudes of Rantburgers.
By the powers invested in my by the Great Poobah of Sebastopol and by various passages of the Satanic Verses as well as the hardware section of an old and venerated Sears Catalogue, I set my hand and seal this 13th day of May, 2004 AD (that'll get em poppin') 0056 GMT.
OGROY!! I GIVE YOU LIFE! NOW GET YOUR ASS OUT THERE!!
How's that?
Posted by: Alaska Paul in Nome ||
05/12/2004 20:59 Comments ||
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#30
I don't know AP... Too many WHEREASes, not enough fire and brimstone, (or Death to Infidels or whatever riled up Islamofundos wail about). Put yourself in Tater's shoes. How would he express it?
#31
15 million homeless and living below the poverty line is 15 million homeless and living below the poverty line - they are people not percentages!
99% of the populaton of cuba live in poverty? Let's get real here - it's all relative - if 99% live in poverty the reality is that 99% is the accepted norm. You're comparing oranges with apples.
The inability of, what appears to the rest of the world to be, the majority of US citizens to see that everyone on this planet has feelings (when they get stomped on it hurts them just as much as it hurts an American who gets stomped on) and deserves to live a life of their own choosing even if that is a life based on spiritual principles rather than materialistic greed - is the major cause todays woes. Rather than build a house your government would prefer to develop depleted uranium missiles with which to blow one up. Stange that there appears to be no money to build homes and feed the needy but an endless supply of funds to blow the crap out of people whose only crime is to live in a country that chooses to reject multi-national capitalism. Go figure..
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/12/2004 22:12 Comments ||
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#33
...chooses to reject multi-national capitalism.
LMAO! That's the funniest thing I read all day.
"Hey Jose, we need your expertise in our company. It's a good position with a competitive salary. You'll have enough money to send all your kids to college."
"Naaaah. Today I have chosen to reject multi-national capitalism. Maybe tomorrow."
Posted by: Rafael ||
05/12/2004 22:25 Comments ||
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#34
Hey yogy and douche I feel your pain.Wait for it here comes the tear,idiots.
#35
Yorgo, Cuba didn't choose to reject "multinational capitalism" and that's because the people of Cuba, living as they do in a dictatorship, aren't actually allowed to choose anything.
What you mean is that CASTRO chose those things you like, and the Cuban people were at one time foolish enough to believe him and give him the power which he will hold onto until the day he dies -- and woe unto him who chooses to disagree with him.
I'm allowed to go to the USA and shout out "Bush is a fascist and a fucking moron". Do you think similar sentiments regarding Fidel are likely to be allowed to be shouted out in Cuba?
Trolls: FOAD. If you're going to waste Fred's bandwidth, the least you can do is hit his tipjar. And not for 50 cents, either; fork up some real money.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/12/2004 22:43 Comments ||
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#37
AP, I'm having a rethink. I like the general thrust of the fatwa. Maybe it was the reference to Sebastopol that set me off. That's real close to Marin County. Makes me think of hot tubbing liberal (valueless modern not classical kind) idiots and John Walker Lindh.
Is this an interactive process? Are the faithful allowed to comment on the quality of the fatwa, or do we just take what gets handed to us?
#38
I'd like to see you someplace where GWB is talking and yell that out and see how free you are to do so - like you wouldn't get jumped on by about 700 security goofs, huh? The USA is a country that has the greatest written constitution - by the people for the people! Yet the majority of you have absolutely no understanding or appreciation of it. You allow a bunch of money hungry zealots lead you, like lemmings, from one war to another. Naturaly their bank managers love them and it's not their kids getting shot at.
And now, despite the protection offered yopu by your own constitution, you've allowed an uneducated, alcoholic, whoes never been able to hold down a job become the mouthpiece of your system's abusers and should you dare to voice an alternative opinion you can - each one of you, without question - be detained without charge or right of redress indefinitely. And that's the freedom you try to now force on the rest of the world!
Only Yankies bleed....
Good one!
Leaders of Germanyâs ruling coalition called for the resignation of US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld today, warning the West would be held collectively accountable for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.
But no members of Chancellor Gerhard Schroederâs centre-left government joined in the chorus urging Rumsfeld to step down.
Franz Muentefering, chairman of Schoederâs Social Democrats, and the SPDâs foreign policy expert in parliament, Gernot Erler, said Rumsfeld should leave office.
Erler told German Radio it was ââcompletely warrantedââ for Rumsfeld to resign. ââIn any case the whole chain of command has to be held accountable,ââ Erler said.
Muentefering, speaking on N24 television, said:ââI know that if this involved Germany I would see to it that a personnel change would be made.ââ The leader of the SPDâs junior coalition partners, the Greens, had demanded Rumsfeld quit last week.
The remarks from the SPD and Greens leaders are a break with the usual diplomatic protocol of not interfering in the internal politics of a close ally, although neither Schroeder nor Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer have made any comments on Rumsfeld.
Rumsfeld has taken responsibility for the abuse of prisoners by U S troops and offered his ââdeepest apologyââ, but said he would not resign just to satisfy his political enemies.
#1
And I demand that German leaders be gassed and burned in ovens. I hear it's an old German custom.
Posted by: ed ||
05/12/2004 20:07 Comments ||
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#2
Thanks for your opinion.
Now "Hau ab".
Or, as we used to say in joke German, "fick auf".
Posted by: Carl in N.H. ||
05/12/2004 20:25 Comments ||
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#3
"Germanyâs ruling coalition says Rumsfeld should go"
Sounds like an excellent reason to keep him.
Posted by: Kathy K ||
05/12/2004 20:26 Comments ||
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#4
First of all, greetings to the RB crowd. I have not left, just was away for a while.
I won't comment on the SPD that has sunk so low that the only thing they can get some applause with is lashing out against America.
Let me offer you my opinion about Abu Graib. I'm certainly not amused with these pictures: They damage the American cause and should never have been published. From what I understand the abuses have been investigated and measures are going to be taken, so that's fine.
There may have been incidents that are inexcusable, but let me tell you this: I know what torture is, and you have seen anything remotely on TV that would qualify. Too bad the Soviets didn't have digital cameras in 1946. Too bad that Saddam's thugs didn't use them in Abu Graib until early 2003. Would have been educating to compare.
The affair is vastly overblown. Yes these pictures don't play well in the Arab street but I guess the only picture that WOULD play well there is a public hanging of Bush or some US city going up in smoke.
As long as the Arab world doesn't rise up to protest that a defenseless innocent man is decapitated to the words of "Allahu akbar" I don't think "excuses" or "apologies" are rank very high on the to do list. There is nothing to argue with people like that.
As for Donald Rumsfeld: He's the finest and most competent defense secretary that the U.S. has had since WW2. And unlike most of the Democrat senators he knows what War on Terror truly means. There is absolutely no reason to blame him for sitting on the photos. This is a war going on. A secretary of defense isn't supposed to release anything that helps and comforts the enemy.
Posted by: Rafael ||
05/12/2004 21:22 Comments ||
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#9
Willkommen zuruck, TGA! (Vergeben Sie mir bitte mein schlechtes Deutsch; ich wohne da vor viele Jahre.)
If the German "leaders" want Rumsfeld gone, he must be doing a GREAT job.
Keep it up, Rummy! Drive the foreign and domestic LLL nuts. :-p
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/12/2004 21:23 Comments ||
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#10
"Leaders of Germany?s ruling coalition called for the resignation of US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld today... And America should pay attention to this because...? "...warning the West would be held collectively accountable for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners." And the SPD will be held collectively accountable for f***ing up Germany. ------- TGA, welcome back-- you've been missed.
Posted by: Old Grouch ||
05/12/2004 21:33 Comments ||
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#11
Holy Crap Rafael! From the same link:
It would seem that Mr. Cohn-Bendit (Greenâs Chairman in the European parliament; Fischer is Greens) already has a distinguished career as an author of controversial texts. In 1975 he published a book entitled "The Big Bazaar." The following passages from his book have repeatedly raised allegations that he sexually abused small children:
From the chapter "Little Big Men" pages 139 to 147: "My constant flirt with all children soon took on erotic characteristics. I could really feel how the little girls of five years had already learned to turn me on. It is hardly believable. Most of the time I was pretty disarmed. (â¦)
It happened to me several times that some of the children opened the flap of my pants and started to pet me. I reacted differently based on the circumstances, but their wish caused a dilemma for me. I asked them: âWhy donât you play with each other, why have you chosen me and not the other children?â But when they insisted I petted them nonetheless."
Please don't tell me he runs a day care in his spare time.
Weren't both Cohn-Bendit and Fischer Red Brigades sympathizers/supporters in the late 60s?
Posted by: ed ||
05/12/2004 21:36 Comments ||
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#12
TGA: What everyone else said.
"Germany?s ruling coalition says Rumsfeld should go" -- *yawn* Who cares?
"Rumsfeld says Germany?s ruling coalition should go" -- now that would be something to pay attention to!
Posted by: Mike ||
05/12/2004 21:37 Comments ||
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#13
Thank you all, it's good to be back!
Barbara and Mike, that would mean that Germany actually HAS "leaders" or a "ruling coalition". It's incredible how they have been messing up this country for 5 years now. Please just ignore what they say. I do.
#14
You are never too old. Drop by anytime, the beer is on us.
Posted by: Mike ||
05/12/2004 21:58 Comments ||
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#15
Come on over, TGA, even if it's only for a visit.
Richmond's got some great micro-breweries downtown.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/12/2004 22:09 Comments ||
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#16
Welcome back TGA.
Posted by: Mr. Davis ||
05/12/2004 22:21 Comments ||
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#17
We can laugh all we want to, but the media has obviously made it their number one priority to rid themselves of Rumsfeld.
Just today, I saw on PBS a "panel" discussion of independents, republicans and democrats. They were obviously picked because they had one thing in common - they all said someone up the chain of command must pay. It was pure planned propaganda designed to "lead" the audience into believing this was what we all agree on.
Army and Navy Times had an "editorial" that implied Rumsefeld was to blame. Note that the Times are owned by Gannett and run by civilians. I'm guessing Gannett told the Times to run it. And though the military simply dismisses the Times Journal as meaningless, the propaganda effect of saying that "Army Times said it" is useful for the population as a whole.
Even here on rantburg we had a troll who claimed her husband served in "Nam" and she put out the idea that if the poor little prison guards were going down -then higher ups better damn well go with them. We rantburgers understand that either her husband was an animal - or he would understand that the actions of these guards were not a failure of leadership, but an act of sadistic men.
I could go on. It reminds me of before the war, when the media was likewise willing to single mindedly pull out all stops to achieve a goal. They failed then and they most likely will fail again - but the fact that they are willing to attempt it shows that, for whatever reason, they are hanging their hat on this issue.
Expect this drumbeat to continue and continue and continue and continue. Don't underestimate them. They actually were able to get the Democrats to say that sexually harrassing an intern was a "private matter".
We are losing the propaganda war in this country. If Americans allow the media to play these games - at the expense of our security we will fail. Somehow Americans need to fight back and win this propaganda war. We are losing it. It is the biggest battle we face today.
Posted by: B ||
05/12/2004 22:24 Comments ||
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#18
I've been fascinated by the people who cite the Taguba report as evidence that the abuse was wide-spread. The report actually concludes the exact opposite.
It's also interesting that the appendices to the report haven't been leaked. Considering one of them is the psychologist's opinion that the abuse was carried out by a small unsupervised group, I don't think that's an accident.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/12/2004 22:32 Comments ||
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#19
Robert - of course it's no accident. It never is, if the LLL is involved.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/12/2004 23:19 Comments ||
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"Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam." So declares Oriana Fallaci in her new book, La Forza della Ragione, or, "The Force of Reason." And the famed Italian journalist is right: Christianityâs ancient stronghold of Europe is rapidly giving way to Islam.
Two factors mainly contribute to this world-shaking development.
The hollowing out of Christianity. Europe is increasingly a post-Christian society, one with a diminishing connection to its tradition and its historic values. The numbers of believing, observant Christians has collapsed in the past two generations to the point that some observers call it the "new dark continent." Already, analysts estimate Britainâs mosques host more worshippers each week than does the Church of England.
An anemic birth rate. Indigenous Europeans are dying out. Sustaining a population requires each woman on average to bear 2.1 children; in the European Union, the overall rate is one-third short, at 1.5 a woman, and falling. One study finds that, should current population trends continue and immigration cease, todayâs population of 375 million could decline to 275 million by 2075.To keep its working population even, the E.U. needs 1.6 million immigrants a year; to sustain the present workers-to-retirees ratio requires an astonishing 13.5 million immigrants annually.
Into the void are coming Islam and Muslims. As Christianity falters, Islam is robust, assertive, and ambitious. As Europeans underreproduce at advanced ages, Muslims do so in large numbers while young.
Some 5% of the E.U., or nearly 20 million persons, presently identify themselves as Muslims; should current trends continue, that number will reach 10% by 2020. If non-Muslims flee the new Islamic order, as seems likely, the continent could be majority-Muslim within decades.
When that happens, grand cathedrals will appear as vestiges of a prior civilization â at least until a Saudi style regime transforms them into mosques or a Taliban-like regime blows them up. The great national cultures â Italian, French, English, and others â will likely wither, replaced by a new transnational Muslim identity that merges North African, Turkish, subcontinental, and other elements.
This prediction is hardly new. In 1968, the British politician Enoch Powell gave his famed "rivers of blood" speech in which he warned that in allowing excessive immigration, the United Kingdom was "heaping up its own funeral pyre." (Those words stalled a hitherto promising career.) In 1973, the French writer Jean Raspail published Camp of the Saints, a novel that portrays Europe falling to massive, uncontrolled immigration from the Indian subcontinent. The peaceable transformation of a region from one major civilization to another, now under way, has no precedent in human history, making it easy to ignore such voices.
There is still a chance for the transformation not to play itself out, but the prospects diminish with time. Here are several possible ways it might be stopped:
Changes in Europe that lead to a resurgence of Christian faith, an increase in childbearing, or the cultural assimilation of immigrants; such developments can theoretically occur but what would cause them is hard to imagine.
Muslim modernization. For reasons no one has quite figured out (education of women? abortion on demand? adults too self-absorbed to have children ?), modernity leads to a drastic reduction in the birth rate. Also, were the Muslim world to modernize, the attraction of moving to Europe would diminish.
Immigration from other sources. Latin Americans, being Christian, would more or less permit Europe to keep its historic identity. Hindus and Chinese would increase the diversity of cultures, making it less likely that Islam would dominate.
Current trends suggest Islamization will happen, for Europeans seem to find it too strenuous to have children, stop illegal immigration, or even diversify their sources of immigrants. Instead, they prefer to settle unhappily into civilizational senility.
Europe has simultaneously reached unprecedented heights of prosperity and peacefulness and shown a unique inability to sustain itself. One demographer, Wolfgang Lutz, notes, "Negative momentum has not been experienced on so large a scale in world history."
Is it inevitable that the most brilliantly successful society also will be the first in danger of collapse due to a lack of cultural confidence and offspring? Ironically, creating a hugely desirable place to live would seem also to be a recipe for suicide. The human comedy continues.
#1
Prediction: The two most important European capitals thirty years from now will be London and Moscow. As odd as it may sound, these will probably become the repository of western civilization as the rest of the continent goes dark.
Gives one a hollow feeling when you consider things like JSF and NATO.
Posted by: Douglas De Bono ||
05/12/2004 19:33 Comments ||
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#2
We need to nuke the Arab/Islamic countries! And tell the Euros to start making babies!
-AR
Posted by: Analog Roam ||
05/12/2004 20:51 Comments ||
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#3
the most brilliantly successful society
Is this guy talking about Europe? That hasn't been true of it for almost 100 years.
Posted by: Mr. Davis ||
05/12/2004 23:18 Comments ||
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#4
Eurabia, that is how we should now address Europe.
If you have been to the UK in the last 5 years you will see a population that is Hindi Moooslim and a bunch of confused crackers. Political Correctness is just bizarre in the UK and the Christian population is being run over by the politics.
I think Moscow is a good call, but I would say Rome as the other if you had to pick two. Only because the Italians are pretty sick of the Mooslims, they are growing less and less tolerant of there culture and the threat to Christianity.
Bulgarian investigators have detained and then released a suspect in connection with the March Madrid bombings that killed nearly 200 people, the country's top investigator said said on Wednesday.
"We detained a person in connection with the attacks in Madrid, and this person has been released. The person was not directly engaged in the attacks," Angel Alexandrov, head of Bulgaria's National Investigation Office, told Reuters.
Alexandrov said his office had detained the suspect to investigate possible links with the attackers, who detonated bombs on four packed commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 people and injuring 1,900.
He said the suspect had spent time in Spain, but he refused to give any further information, including gender, nationality, or when the suspect had been brought in.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/12/2004 6:10:32 PM ||
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SOFIA, Bulgaria - A person suspected in the Madrid train bombings in March that killed 191 people has been detained in Bulgaria, a senior official said Wednesday. "We have detained one person whom we suspect of involvement in the bombings," said Angel Alexandrov, the chief of the National Investigation Service. He refused to reveal details about the date of the arrest or the identity and nationality of the detainee, citing ongoing investigations.
Bulgaria, huh? Nice central location with islamic related conflicts all around.
Additional: Earlier in the month Spanish media reported that Bulgarian arms trafficker has sold submachine guns to the Islamic terrorist that executed the March 11 terror acts in Madrid. It was also announced that Spain is investigating the deadly blast in cooperation with Bulgaria, UK, Belgium, Germany, France, Tunisia and Morocco.
So it may be a supplier that got busted.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/12/2004 1:19:01 PM ||
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Serbian customs officers have seized 1,315 fake passports purporting to come from several European countries including Belgium, it was reported on Wednesday. Serbian news agency Tanjug said the customs officials made the find during a raid on a vehicle in the Bulgarian town of Lkw, just over the border from Serbia.
Hummm, guess they are flexible when it comes to borders.
Aside from forged Belgian passports, the haul also included fake travel documents claiming to have been issued in Italy, Portugal, Spain, Denmark and Greece, Tanjug added. A large number of fake driving licences were also found. The documents were destined for the European Union, where they would have sold for EUR 1,000 to EUR 5,000 apiece, Tanjug said.
"Papers, get your papers here! Can't get to the infidels without papers!"
The United States has expressed particular concern about the number of forged and stolen Belgian passports available on the black market.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/12/2004 11:55:14 AM ||
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#1
When the RB database is searchable again (fie on you, trolls), I had posted an expatica article about the award Belgium won for their new biometric passports, and how unforgeable they are. Guess they need to doublecheck that.
Hat tip - Drudge.
For a generation, Tom Brokawâs outstanding anchoring, reporting and interviewing--and his integrity and impartiality (cough cough has anyone seen my lips...) --have set a low standard for all of us at NBC News. As he prepares to turn the Nightly News anchor chair over to Brian Williams, Tom remains a symbol of the very best of what we do. Which is hating (and spreading hate of) the United States of America.
Today, I am delighted to be able to tell you that NBC News will have the benefit of Tomâs talents for many years to come. Tom has agreed to a long-term contact that will keep him at NBC News through 2014. He will be anchoring and producing documentaries on a wide range of issues for NBC âMinistry of Truthâ News and for other NBC properties. And heâll participate in the coverage of major news events as an analyst.
This is terrific news for the NBC News family and for our millions of viewers. Please join me in congratulating Tom on this exciting new chapter in his career at NBC News. Or until NBC news get sent to a long-deserved position in the dumpster......
#1
Don't worry, boys, we won't have to put up with him until 2014. According to the guys on Coast to Coast AM, the Mayan Calender, and supposedly the world, runs out at 2012.
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
05/12/2004 16:10 Comments ||
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#2
I can imagine the board meeting now:
"OK, everyone. Our profession is rated one of the least trustworthy in the nation, and it's sinking fast. Our ratings are tanking, and we're losing money hand over fist. Any suggestions?"
"How about we stick with the same formula?"
"BRILLIANT! Quick! Give our lead anchor a ten-year contract!"
And so the gentrification of the press continues. They'll keep getting more and more out of touch with their audience the longer they depend on the Media Monks instead of clearing them out and letting new voices in.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/12/2004 16:26 Comments ||
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EFL
Prime Minister Paul Martin says he believes Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and theyâve fallen into terroristsâ hands. Martin said the threat of terrorism is even greater now than it was following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, because terrorists have acquired nuclear, chemical and biological weapons from the toppled Iraqi leader. Quick, SOMEBODY pinch me!
"The fact is that there is now, we know well, a proliferation of nuclear weapons, and that many weapons that Saddam Hussein had, we donât know where they are," Martin told a crowd of about 700 university researchers and business leaders in Montreal. "That means terrorists have access to all of that." I need to borrow luckyâs foil hat with the big eye holes.
#3
It's becoming clear from the undertones you hear from our leaders that they are expecting an attack. Not that it should surprise anyone - it's so obvious that it is inevitable, but we've become almost complacent to the threat and hope springs eternal.
I feel sad. We've tried so long and hard to make this a better world. I guess we were foolish to think that our generation was the one that managed to rise above human nature. In fact, if you step back and look at it, it almost seems silly that we thought we had managed to do so. But in American, we ended slavery, gave women rights, ended hunger and raised the standard of living for the common man above what was once only afforded to royalty.
I guess the bottom line is that reality sucks. Human nature hasn't changed. We just managed to live our younger years during a golden age. I'm very, very sad to say that it appears to be over and thanks to fanatical Islam, human nature will again rule the day and human nature is cruel.
Posted by: B ||
05/12/2004 13:02 Comments ||
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#4
It's becoming clear from the undertones you hear from our leaders that they are expecting an attack.
After what happened in Spain and with our election coming up?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/12/2004 13:24 Comments ||
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#5
Gloomy B.
We just managed to live our younger years during a golden age. I'm very, very sad to say that it appears to be over and thanks to fanatical Islam
Don't get sad, get even. Kill all the f'er Islamofacists.
#6
Golden age? over a million people slaughtered by Pol Pot and friends in Cambodia? Cultural Revolution in China? Atrocities by both sides in Latin America? Nuclear balance of terror? No, my younger years were NOT spent in a golden age. If anything, it was the events of 1989 that PROMISED a golden age, but the more far seeing already saw that Islamism threatened that.
The '89 WAS A MIRACLE, it was the great transformation that every realist political scientist said simply COULD NOT happen, and yet human will, and the yearning of the human heart for freedom achieved it. At every low moment it is necessary to recall those days, the triumph of hope and liberty over darkness and despair - remember the Gdansk shipyards, the velvet revolution, and the fall of the Berlin wall. This force will NOT be stopped.
BTW, remember when we discussed who might be the administrator for post-war Iraq? remember i suggested Vaclav Havel. Does anyone think that wouldnt have been a wiser choice than Paul Bremer?
#8
B: I hear you. But the world has been going like this for eons. It's our turn to step up to bat, is all. And those come-and-go "golden years" are worth preserving for future generations, don't you think? Why should we have been the only ones to have all the fun--I mean, "it's only rock and roll, but I like it . . ."
Besides. Facist Islam sucks. The neo-nazis of Islam need to be eliminated. They've been hurting kids/women for far too long, and are now trying to bring their sh-t to the rest of us. Well, you know what? We're the lucky ones. We're get to be the ones to make them wish they'd never been born.
If some attack happens, it will only serve to galvanize the fence-sitters--sooner or later.
#9
B, I fear you are right. There is real war looming on the horizon. Not the fight with one hand behind your back stuff like we are seeing now but the real deal. It will coarsen all of our lives.
Posted by: remote man ||
05/12/2004 13:59 Comments ||
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#10
I guess what makes me gloomy is that we can all see the future here. It's like a car wreck in slow motion. There will be a collision. They have swerved into our lane and people will die. The only question now is who is going to survive.
Sigh. Sorry. But it's sometimes you just gotta face the facts.
As for me, I'm going to go enjoy this beautiful day. To heck with Islam or car accidents. Each day is a gift and I'm thankful for each and every moment I've been granted in this paradise called America.
I suggest we all do the same.
Posted by: B ||
05/12/2004 14:08 Comments ||
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#11
I believe that terrorism will be, for our generation, what the Cold War was to generations that preceded us," he said. "I don't think we're out of it yet."
Martin disagreed with former prime minister Jean Chretien, who publicly blamed poverty for terrorism and the Sept. 11 attacks. "The cause of terrorism is not poverty, it is hatred."
If more people see the light, like Paul Martin, we may win without being coarsened.
#12
I agree with you partly LH. Inside the bell jar of the developed world, it's been a golden age: pestilence, famine, war, and oppression are no more. Outside the First World, life is lived much as it has been since man first turned to agriculture with some amelioration of the worst effects due to Western agriculture and medicine.
The good news is that the boundaries of the First World are expanding. The bad news is that the Third World oppressors are willing to fight to maintain the status quo.
#13
The good news is that the boundaries of the First World are expanding
beyond what was conceivable a few years ago. Not only in Eastern Europe, but in South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Mexico. In India, for G-ds sake. In southeast asia it reached the borders of Islam - Malaysia, Indonesia, Phillipines, Thailand. As it has in the Med - Morocco, Tunisia, etc. The spread of liberal capitalist democracy has reached and clashed with the civilization least able (for reasons of shame) to copy it - Islam. This war is NOT the siege of the West - it is the siege of the last bastion of reaction. And many within that bastion look for change, even if they are uncertain about the good will of the West.
EVEN IF there is another, far deadlier terrorist attack on the West, it will be necessary to keep that larger picture in mind, and not give in to despair, and to the two seemingly opposite, but in fact related counsels of despair - to surrender, or to lash out.
#14
We still have lots of strategic vulnerabilites. If the Islamists ever really read their Lenin, they will realize that they must strike at the Gulf oil (contra OBL's stated wishes) in order to provoke real exploitable dislocation there. France, Spain, Scandinavia, and the Low countries aren't behaving like rational actors anymore. I really believe that a nuke in Toulon coupled by an uprising by disaffected mujiroon (immigrants) would topple the whole mess. Places like Morocco and Indonesia have western-oriented (coopted might be a better word) elites, but 80-90% of the people are not benefitting from Westernization in a direct manner and are being aggressively prostletyzed by the Salafists.
Everyone here agrees on the goal: rule of law and universal suffrage across the globe (other than that, folks can choose thier own way). Most of the debate is how aggressive to be in pursuing those goals and what tools to use. I personally don't think that the current effort in Iraq wil result in a-rule-of-law democracy. Our efforts in Latin America are perhaps most illustrative of what confronts us. We really didn't start to get serious about democracy there until the 1950's when we started building roads and began institutions like the School of the Americas (yeah it turned out a couple of bad apples, but it is probably the number one reason why LA colonels hardly ever overthrow their governments anymore). We're doing OK, but we still have tons of corruption, racism, oppression, and assholes like Lula and Chavez.
A lot of folks say Islam needs to have a reformation. Well after the Reformation comes the 30 years war and the Hugenots and the Counter-Reformation. Maybe this will all happen on Internet time. I don't know. All I know is that if we're going to stick our noses in there, we better convince all of the players that we are the biggest, baddest mofo in the game.
I know that in the end we win. Winning more quickly and in a decisive manner saves lives.
#15
I'm very, very sad to say that it appears to be over and thanks to fanatical Islam
Get ready.....
Posted by: Yosemite Sam ||
05/12/2004 14:57 Comments ||
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#16
"As for me, I'm going to go enjoy this beautiful day. To heck with Islam or car accidents. Each day is a gift and I'm thankful for each and every moment I've been granted in this paradise called America. I suggest we all do the same."
RIGHT ON, B! B: About the "car wreck." I think we'd best have George Bush driving our car, in the event of the inevitable.
From Liberalhawk: "This war is NOT the siege of the West - it is the siege of the last bastion of reaction. And many within that bastion look for change, even if they are uncertain about the good will of the West. EVEN IF there is another, far deadlier terrorist attack on the West, it will be necessary to keep that larger picture in mind, and not give in to despair . . . "
Well, so far so good, Liberalhawk.
" . . . and to the two seemingly opposite, but in fact related counsels of despair - to surrender, or to lash out ."
You lost me, there.
If something major comes down, I agree with 11A5S: " . . . we better convince all of the players that we are the biggest, baddest mofo in the game. . . . Winning more quickly and in a decisive manner saves lives."
What kind of "lashing out" do you oppose Liberalhawk? These guys are playing for keeps. Shouldn't we? They don't give a rat's ass about your values.
Note: I don't think many people understand just how unique America really is. Our values, our progress, our way of life should not be bartered away at the price of "peace" or complacency. More resources should be diverted to smoking out the guys responsible for organizing this stuff--the power behind the "throne" of Islamic terrorism. And we better learn Israel's lesson, but quick. I also think its a really bad idea to underestimate barbarians. They don't have much to lose, and each "victory" no matter how small, bolsters their low sense of self-esteem. Except for the leaders, we're dealing with uneducated morons here. I'm not making a slur, I'm just reporting the facts--lower I.Q.'s, lack of education.
(Hey--anybody find it interesting that we haven't heard from "Antiwar" or "Gentle" about how "sad" it is that the Islamofascists want to use WMD's ?)
#18
1. What if a French city is nuked, there is a rebellion of immigrants
Well first, i have a hard time seeing a UNITED rebellion of muslim immigrants in France. For all the Islamic radicalism there, and antisemitism, its also a fact that a number of muslim immigrants are anti-Islamist, as witness the support of some, and apathy of others, wrt to the anti-Hijab law. And why should other Frenchmen just collapse?? They have every incentive to crush any such rebellion, and hold their society together. First world nation states simply dont collapse like that. Look at Russia, belarus, etc - look at how resilient the states are. France would suspend civil liberties to be sure, but collapse? no.
No benefits to ordinary folks in Indonesia? I dont think so. Up to 1998, there was widespread rise in real wages there, IIUC. After 1998 there was a reversal, that hit some people pretty hard, but still left them better off than in say, 1965. Look at the current election campaign there - the biggest threat to Sukarnoputri is NOT the Islamists, its supporters of a party affiliated with the old (secularist) military regime. Not to say Salafism hasnt grown there, but its only one force in society.
As for Latin America, Im afraid I dont see that we were really pushing for democracy before the late '70s. And from 1979 on theres a rapid expansion of democracy.
I also dont see Lula as entirely negative. He hasnt moved aggressively to reverse free market reforms, and i dont see that hes moved at all against democracy. Hes not our pal, but then neither is France. The spread of democracy and the market doesnt ALWAYS mean the spread of friendship for the US.
Even Chavez has faced distinct limitations - and Venezuala is one country that doesnt remember a recent dictatorship, like Brazil and Argentina. And you dont have to be a Marxist to recognize the exceptionally severe class problems Venezuala has.
Time frame - im not sure. Not as fast as eastern europe, certainly, the preconditions arent there in most places. But stabilization, and progress at something like one country every two or three years making a significant jump towards the future should be acheivable. The literacy rates, levels of urbanization, etc are more favorable than in 17th c western europe. And the impacts of trade, media contagion, etc. far greater.
Posted by: Yosemite Sam ||
05/12/2004 15:37 Comments ||
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#20
and to the two seemingly opposite, but in fact related counsels of despair - to surrender, or to lash out ."
You lost me, there.
If something major comes down, I agree with 11A5S: " . . . we better convince all of the players that we are the biggest, baddest mofo in the game. . . . Winning more quickly and in a decisive manner saves lives."
What kind of "lashing out" do you oppose Liberalhawk? These guys are playing for keeps. Shouldn't we? They don't give a rat's ass about your values.
Lashing out - massive retaliation, dropping our values and the laws of war, targeting civilians, turning a war over a civilization into a clash of civilizations.
These guys - you mean the radical Islamists? Yup, theyre playing for keeps all right. But they cant win if they dont have the rest of the muslim world actively on their side. And they have failed in their attempts to get that THUS far. Their goal, from 9/11 onwards has been to get that. Now there are two ways to get that. A. By showing the US to be weak. B. By showing the US to be anti-muslim. The soviets in afghanistan managed to show themselves BOTH weak, AND anti-muslim, and so lost entirely. SO FAR we have managed to be neither. TO surrender is to become the weak horse and invite disaster. To lash out at all muslims, is to show the muslim world that we are their enemies whatever they do, and so they might as well join AQ. Both are strategies that result from despairing in our ability to change the muslim world, in forgetting that we have friends (and neutrals) in the muslim world.
The AQ strategy, as I see it, is to make it difficult for us to thread the needle. That was the logic of 9/11 - either the US does nothing effective, and looks weak, or it lashes out by sending 100,000 troops into Afghan and bombing the place to smithereens, resulting in a national uprising, more US troops and more collateral damage, and finally an uprising across the muslim world. Bush was SMART enough to see that, and to go with a small attack, using mainly special forces working with afghans on the ground, and precision air power. Thus we could win, being feared WITHOUT being hated. And Bush stuck to it even when others termbled at Quagmire(TM) The more we can stick to this strategy, the better off we are.
#21
Why should France just collapse? They seemed to do a pretty good job of it in 1940. Read Schirer's The Collapse of the Third Republic or Horne's To Lose a Battle if you want a good understanding of the weaknesses of French society and martial prowess during that period. Do those weaknesses still exist? As recently as the fall of the 4th Republic, Algeria, and the Nato pull out, they still did.
There are direct and indirect benefits of Westernization. Rising wages are good. But if you cannot invest them or be safe against hyperinflation or have upward mobility, then you aren't really getting the full benefits. These are precisely the weaknesses in a proto-capitalist state that facists are able to exploit. Hitler's and Mussolini's promise was to protect the average Joe against the hazards of a corrupt and incompetently admistered market economy. We don't call them Islamo-Facists for nothing, LH.
LH, there are severe class problems everywhere in Latin America. My advice to you: go ride a third-class bus between two LA towns and see how the mestizo conductor and driver treat the indio passengers. Then go to the chic, tony, westernized shopping district in a big LA city and see how the criollo customers treat the mestizo store clerks.
#22
1. France collapsed in 1940 when several German divisions crossed it. Maybe they could have fought on - not everyone thinks Shirer is an accurate historian - but in any case even a nuke on a French city wouldnt be the equivalent of what they faced in 1940. Even if you assume (which I do not) that French society is in the same state that it was in in 1940.
As for Algeria, IIRC they withdrew from ALGERIA - France itself did NOT collapse, by any means.
Re - the problems of transition - yup, I agree, and that is whats happening. But there is a light beyond, and I think thats already in sight in some places. I would also suggest that the US will not allow the modernizing muslim govts to be Weimared - we will support them financially and politically. Of course if the counsels of despair are folllowed, and we cease to draw distinctions among muslim states, I might be wrong. I would also suggest that modern day states will use Keynsian solutiuons that even the German Socialists were afraid to use in the 1920's.
Class problems in LA - yup, I dont disagree. My sense is that it has been even more rigid in Venezuala then elsewhere, and is aggravated by an oil based economy.
#23
"Except for the leaders, we're dealing with uneducated morons here. I'm not making a slur, I'm just reporting the facts--lower I.Q.'s, lack of education."
That statement is wrong and dangerous thinking! The guys who trained to fly jet airliners into a building were not necessarily dumb people.
It is dangerous thinking to subscribe to a comparison that if only we "educate" them they will join the modern world and stop killing us.
That is a disingenious argument that sounds awfully like "well they are poor and that causes them to hate us, etc, etc...."
The real cure will be a true battle against Islam. We are not ready for that yet and are still in denial.
When the President (someday 15 - 20 years from now or whenever) comes out and says: "We are no longer tolerant of Islam. It has proved itself to be not a "religion of Peace" but a religion of death. And like extremist cults, we will take action to eradicate it."
We are still a long way from that point, but it will be inevitable.
Surprising? No. We (The West) learned that lesson 1000 years ago and rolled back Islam with the Crusades.
The modern day Crusades has started. One of these years we will come to grips with it.
Posted by: Dan ||
05/12/2004 18:14 Comments ||
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#24
LH: Re: Algeria. I dunno, allowing a few million of your countrymen to be ethnically cleansed from a country they'd been living in for a few generations is close enough for me to call it collapse.
Only a fool would suggest that we should treat all muslim countries alike. I always find it amusing when you attack me for using general terms like Dar al Islam. Phrases like that contains a lot of data points, yes. But until they wire our minds into the net and I can send you terabyte datastructures with a few gigabytes of analysis attached, I'm going to have to use the vague generalizations of written language.
#25
Dan - I'd say that America took one big step coming to grips with it today. The Berg video and the terrorists playing with Israeli soldier's body parts sunk in to all but the the tin-foiled who can't get enough support for even one radio talk show (other than tax funded NPR).
I'd suggest that the AG photos have backfired on our enemies. They have juxtaposed the outrage of AG against the lack of it for the total barbarity that we face. The damage is done and I fear the consequences and what it means for the future. I really do.
Posted by: B ||
05/12/2004 23:00 Comments ||
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Boston residents got more than they bargained for this morning when their copy of the Globe came complete with graphic photos depicting U.S. troops gang-raping Iraqi women.
Problem is the photos are fake. They were taken from pornographic websites and disseminated by anti-American propagandists, as first reported by WND a week ago.
WND contacted the Globe to question staff about the photos.
Asked whether the photos were the same as the porn photos WND already investigated, reporter Donovan Slack said, "I have no idea. Iâm surprised the editor even decided we should write about it."
She added: "Oh my God, Iâm scared to answer the phone today."
"Itâs insane," said Slack. "Can you imagine getting this with your cup of coffee in the morning? Somehow it got through all our checks. Our publisherâs not having a very good day today."
Slack sent the photos to WND, which immediately confirmed they were the same porn photos reported on last week.
Responding to an e-mail request from the Globe, WND furnished the true source of the photos, and walked Slack through the "Sex In War" site over the phone, so she could see the photos matched.
Iâll take the âFive days for $15â deal," Slack quipped, adding, "This is ridiculous. Iâll be working at Penthouse soon."
The photos accompanied an article about Boston city councilor Chuck Turner, who distributed the graphic photographs yesterday at a press conference with activist Sadiki Kambon. Turner told reporters the photos showed U.S. soldiers raping Iraqi women
"The American people have a right and responsibility to see the pictures," Turner said.
Kambon, who is director of the Black Community Information Center, said at the news conference he received the photographs by e-mail from Akbar Muhammad, a representative for the Nation of Islam.
The Globe was provided with a statement by Muhammad who wrote, "There arenât any doubts in my mind about the reports on torture of Iraqi prisoners. All you have to do is look at the pictures of Saddam Hussein after his capture when he was being examined on television across the world. He appeared to be drugged and unaware that he was being filmed to be humiliated and disgraced in front of the entire world."
As WND previously reported, the pornographic ârapeâ images were carried, among other venues, on the website for the Committee for the Defense of Saddam Hussein.
In the letter given to the globe, Muhammad termed reservists, "raving beasts," and added, "I was fortunate enough to make copies of the pictures before they became unavailable on the Internet."
The pictures are still on the porn site "Sex In War" and appeared in several Arabic newspapers.
Muhammad also called for the resignation of Rumsfeld.
Turner and Kambon told the Globe they donât know where or when the photos they distributed yesterday were taken. But Turner said they came from a "very legitimate person."
"We cannot document their authenticity," he told reporters. "But you have the ability to do that."
The Globe published the photos despite the fact a skeptical Slack had raised serious doubts about them and was not able to verify their authenticity. Slack was assigned to report on the press conference and did not approve of the photos being published. The photos were approved for publication by three Boston Globe editors.
In the article the Boston Globe ran with the photos, Slack underscored her skepticism: "The images, depicting men in camouflage uniforms having sex with unidentified women, bear no characteristics that would prove the men are U.S. soldiers or that the women are Iraqis. And there is nothing apparent in the images showing they were taken in Iraq. Unlike the photographs widely publicized last week, the images appear to have been taken outdoors in a sandy area with hills in the background."
A source with the Globe said the controversy already had reached the president of the New York Times, who reportedly is furious. The Boston Globe is owned by the New York Times Co.
Turner said he and Kambon were distributing the photos to force the Bush administration to release additional documentation of abuses, which Turner said are not limited to the prison, west of Baghdad.
At the time of publication of this report, Turner and Kambon were not available for comment.
#2
You know what is really missing here? Kerry....he hasn't started another commission to trash the current Vets as he did the Nam Vets in 1971. Of course he is a shallow man and would rather let other's do his work for him.
Posted by: Bill Nelson ||
05/12/2004 20:01 Comments ||
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#3
The American media has now reached its own Tet. Their coverage of the jail story is a disaster, an unmitigated disaster.
#4
Kerry doesn't need to do anything; the press and his buddy Ted are doing it for him.
The two local "politicians" who pulled the stunt, and the editors of the Boston Glob who fell for it should be shunned, BTW. They should lose their jobs, never be hired again, and anyone who sees them should spit on them. Make them miserable as an example for others.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/12/2004 20:19 Comments ||
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#5
Turner and Kambon told the Globe they donât know where or when the photos they distributed yesterday were taken. But Turner said they came from a "very legitimate person."
Would an RoPer lie? All according to their book:
By Muhammadâs order when he sent secretly by night Kabâs brother, to go to Kab
He beguiled (lied) him and brought him down (killed) with guile.
Ibn Sa'd's Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir provides us with yet another interesting artifact related to this story. From the Tabaqat, vol 2, page 37: "Then they cut his head and took it with them. ..... they cast his head before him [Muhammad]. He (the prophet) praised Allah on his being slain."
Posted by: ed ||
05/12/2004 20:28 Comments ||
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Posted by: ed ||
05/12/2004 20:30 Comments ||
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#7
Kambon, Turner and Muhammed are enemy agents and terror-inciting traitors. How much of this depravity and barbarism are we going to tolerate from the enemy within?
This is the breaking point, civil war NOW!
#8
Howie Carr had Chuck Turner on during the 6:00 hour. Turner absolutely refused to apologize for these pictures, even though he admitted he never verified their authenticity.
Wish I could get a link of these pics - Turner stated that he didn't think the girls in camoflague were porn queens because they were 'persons of color'. What a fuckin' racist.
#9
Raj
Holy jumping Jesus on a pogo-stick! How stupid is this bastard Turner? How stupid are the Bostonians who vote for him? Even Jihad Unspun admits that the pictures are fake for chrissakes.
#10
Chuck's actually not stupid, but him and Sadiki are true believers from way back. It's all they know and it's made them what they are. They never met a white man they didn't hate, a black man they didn't think they couldn't scam, and a government buck they wouldn't take even though, of course, they despise "The Man". All this story need is Derrick Z. Jackson as the Globe reporter and you'd have the trifecta.
Posted by: ed ||
05/12/2004 22:19 Comments ||
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#14
The American media has now reached its own Tet. Their coverage of the jail story is a disaster, an unmitigated disaster.
heh! You know, Robert, you are right on! The Globe's reputation is shot and it took a big chunk of the rest of the media down with it.
I still worry about their impact - as we all should - but they did us all a favor by showing just how little we can trust them. Woo Hoo! Major victory in the propaganda war.
Posted by: B ||
05/12/2004 23:10 Comments ||
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"If America has reached a point where only one person has the ability in our great democracy to manage the Pentagon and to continue or to put in place a better policy even, weâre in deeper trouble than you think," Kerry told broadcaster Don Imus. "I donât accept that. I just donât accept that. I think thatâs an excuse. The fact is that we need a change in policy."
Asked who he would put in place as defense secretary, Kerry first named McCain, R-Ariz., and then listed Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., Warner, R-Va., and William Perry, who served as defense secretary under President Clinton. I really do think he has flipped!
"There are any number of people who are unbelievably capable. This notion that we have to continue with a policy thatâs wrong and taking us down the wrong track is absurd," Kerry said.
Kerry had called for Rumsfeld to resign months before the Iraq prison abuse scandal, citing what he said were numerous miscalculations in the prosecution of the war in Iraq.
#2
NB: Excepting Perry, he listed Senators. Kerry clearly believes Senators are somehow special.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/12/2004 18:22 Comments ||
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#3
oh the irony. Kerry slanders McCain and the rest of the US military in the 1970's and now he says he wants McCain to be his defense sec.
Come on McCain - show some pride here.
Posted by: B ||
05/12/2004 18:57 Comments ||
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#4
Worrying thing about these Senators. They've all been senator all their lives! Running huge departments of government requires some management and budget skills. These guys? They have all only managed their senatorial staffs.
Who among them have experience managing more than 20 people and budgets of trillions of dollars? This is a major concern I have about Kerry... and even more scary, whom he would appoint to those all important cabinet positions. More senators with no management skills? Or knowledge learned through a business/service environment?
#5
I don't know about Arizona and Michigan, and don't have time to look it up, but VIRGINIA HAS A DEMOCRAT GOVERNOR. If Virginia's Senator Warner were to take it, Virginia's Governor Warner (no relation, thank goodness) would appoint a Democrat to the Senate.
Of course, Kerry would never think of something like that, would he?
*crickets chirping*
I've got a better idea - Kerry should resign - not only because he's a tin-plated jerk but also because he's not representing the people of his state while he runs for President - and let the Governor of Massachesetts appoint a replacement.
Anyone want to guess why he won't?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/12/2004 19:38 Comments ||
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#6
Well, Neville Chamberlain's dead, and he was British, so I guess that leaves him out.
#7
McCain's media minute was shot down with Berg's execution. He does best when portraying the "Left's favorite Republican War Hero Who's Not Afraid To Criticize Republicansâ¢"
straight talk? Gimme a break. He had his chance on Imus to rebut Red Ted's hammering on the military and passed. What a media whore
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/12/2004 21:27 Comments ||
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#8
Warner should ask for an apology.
Posted by: Mr. Davis ||
05/12/2004 23:19 Comments ||
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Remember Billy, the introspective, mystical Indian? Sonny Landhamâs running for the State Senate in Kentucky. Looks like a mixed bag with repect to his issues, but, hey, power to him.
Last Friday, Senator Mark Dayton (D., Minn.) angrily accused General Myers of improperly "suppressing" the news by appealing to 60 Minutes II to delay broadcasting the photos from Abu Ghraib prison for fear of retribution against Americans in the hands of terrorists in Iraq. Americans like Nick Berg. General Myers rightly bristled at the ignorant criticism, explaining that he knew the pictures would eventually be made public, but the timing was particularly sensitive. He obviously made his case to the satisfaction of CBS; the network responsibly held off broadcasting the pictures until they were going to be made public elsewhere. Unlike Senator Dayton, General Myers operates in the real world and bears the direct responsibility for American lives. With apologies flying all over Washington, perhaps Senator Dayton could offer his to General Myers. Continue
#2
The guy is just a trust fund baby anyway
(Of Dayton-Hudson/Target/Mervyn's fame). He never did anything worthwhile with his life. Now he's used his money to get him into office so now he can spread his 5th columnist fantasy ideology. Minnesota is supposed to be an intelligent state.
Posted by: Old Guy ||
05/12/2004 17:35 Comments ||
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#3
I apologize for this moron (who is my senior Senator). I did not vote for him, but Rod Gramhams ran a horrendous campaign and the liberal papers ripped him apart.
Whenever Mark opens his mouth, nothing but gobblygook comes out.
I think he has gained rank of the second dumbest person in the senate. Right between barabar Boxer and Patty Murray.
Posted by: Douglas De Bono ||
05/12/2004 19:36 Comments ||
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I read earlier today heâs submitted an 800 page transcript for his book. Guess he can use his time in other ways now.
By MADISON J. GRAY
Associated Press Writer
May 12, 2004, 10:31 AM EDT
NEW YORK -- Former President Clinton lent his support Tuesday to two interest groups that have sharply criticized President Bush while raising money to help Democrat John Kerryâs White House bid.
Until the Clintons decide to stab him in the back...
Clinton, along with AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, spoke at an Apollo Theater event held by the MoveOn.org voter fund and Voices for Working Families.
Clinton criticized Bush on his economic policies, particularly his tax cuts, and said the president had reduced after-school programs and the number of police on streets.
Both of which used to be local priorities. Nope, no mission creep here...
"You have to believe that your children and grandchildren will live in an America that will be shaped by whether we ratify the course for wrong, or go back to mine! the one thatâs worked for eight years."
With Republicans in the Legislature for six of those eight years; your only claim to fame is that you werenât allowed to expand the federal government like your wife wanted with the 1993 health care clusterfuck of a massive new entitlement.
MoveOn.org is a San Francisco-based lunatic fringe depot advocacy group started in 1998 that claims about 2 million online members. Itâs been accused by Republicans of violating campaign finance laws while raising unlimited amounts of "soft money" -- corporate, union or unlimited donations -- to run ads critical of Bush.
Voices for Working Families, a Washington, D.C.-based group, has undertaken a nationwide campaign to increase voter registration in targeted states, especially among minorities and women.
Core Dem consituencies, little surprise there.
Richardson, who has been mentioned as a possible Kerry running mate, sits on the groupâs board.
"Please, please, Monseiur Kerry, pick me!"
MoveOn officials have said their donations are legal and arenât being used to buy access or influence. Open up the books for audit, if you have nothing to hide...
Groups like MoveOn, the Media Fund and America Coming Together have raised more than $25 million for advertisements that criticize Bushâs policies. Republicans contend the groups are "shadow parties" created by Democratic supporters to raise soft money.
Wes Boyd, a founder of MoveOn.org, said those accusations are unfounded and that what they are doing is legal.
Prove it.
"The Republican National Committee has been trying to intimidate opponents of the Bush agenda," said Boyd who maintains his group is nonpartisan. "Those charges are ridiculous."
Youâre nonpartisan. Day is night. White is black...
Arlene Holt-Baker, president of Voices for Working Families, also balked at the RNC allegations.
Love those dual last names, surest sign of pretension as Iâve ever seen, like they could hobnob with real bluebloods like Cabot-Forbes...
"Our work is transparent," she said. "We are not a shadow for any party. We do everything within the law." She said the movement aims to register 800,000 voters by November.
Registration is one thing, getting them to the polls is sonething else entirely.
Federal Election Commission lawyers on Tuesday recommended that the agency delay a decision on new donation and spending limits for tax-exempt groups like these.
Until after the election, Iâm sure.
A spokeswoman for the RNC, Heather Layman, called support for Kerry through such groups "ironic."
Since his wife has all that money and all that...
"Kerry supported the Campaign Reform Act, but now heâs the biggest beneficiary of fund-raising from these groups," she said.
"I was for the Campaign Reform Act before I was against it!"
THE events in Abu Ghraib prison shamed America and our military. The mistreatment of prisoners is utterly unacceptable. And we havenât accepted it.
As a nation, weâve taken responsibility for the tragic actions of a few. Our military has been investigating the misdeeds for months. The initial report was brutally frank. Thereâs no hint of a whitewash. The guilty parties will be called to justice.
Even given the strategic damage done by those horrid photos, the fact is that we Americans can be proud our system does not tolerate such behavior. Itâs an exception, far from the rule. Weâre genuinely shocked that even a few of our soldiers could behave so grotesquely.
Now consider our loudest critics, those governments expressing outrage over the crimes weâve been investigating of our own volition.
Start with the Arab world. There is no Arab country - none - in which prisoners arenât treated immeasurably worse than the victims of the sadists in uniform at Abu Ghraib. The torments inflicted on our prisoners came as a shock to us. In the Middle East, torture and even murder remain business as usual behind prison walls.
Can anyone imagine Egypt, or Syria, or Iran, or Saudi Arabia or even Turkey holding public, televised hearings to grill senior government officials about conditions in their prisons? And prisoners of their militaries are unmentionable. Can any reader name one Middle Eastern state, other than Israel, in which prisoners have any real hope of redress?
Would any of the worldâs enthusiastic critics of America like to spend time behind bars in any state between Morocco and Pakistan? Without excusing the behavior of those renegade military police in Iraq, isnât there some slight difference between humiliating enemy prisoners and torturing oneâs fellow citizens to death?
And letâs not leave our sanctimonious European friends off the hook. When French intelligence agents blew up a Greenpeace vessel not so long ago, it was treated as little more than a case of littering in the Bois de Boulogne. And when, almost 50 years after the events, a retired French general published a book admitting the extent of French torture and extra-judicial murders in Algeria, the French governmentâs first impulse was to prosecute him for telling the truth.
Asia? How many public investigations have there been into the Indian militaryâs extra-judicial killings in Kashmir? What of those Indonesian generals who barely got a tap on the wrist for the atrocities of East Timor? Of course, the Chinese Peopleâs Army is a model observer of human rights . . .
As an American, I want my country to be held to higher standards - we can live up to them. Proudly. But we donât need any more hypocritical charges from states with no standards at all.
The international media have been no better. Itâs certainly fair to criticize America. Our systemâs robust enough to stand up to even the most bigoted scrutiny. But when stations from al-Jazeera to CNN International cover the misbehavior of a few U.S. prison guards with more fervor and airtime than they did Saddamâs mass murders (or the ongoing crimes in virtually every other state in the Middle East), then, as an American, all I can do is to tune them out.
All those who opposed the removal of Saddam, from the BBC to Egyptian state television to The New York Times, act as though the events in Abu Ghraib prove that they were right all along.
No. They werenât right. And no amount of disingenuous "reporting" or feigned shock on the part of newsreaders can change the fact that America behaved nobly and bravely in Iraq - or that we continue to struggle to do the right thing, if sometimes ineptly.
Weâve made mistakes. Weâll make more. Weâre human. But itâs never a mistake to fight for freedom. If the Iraqis make a mess of their one great chance, it wonât be our fault. But it will be the fault of those regional governments and the global media who encourage anti-American hatred at every opportunity, pretending that terrorists are freedom fighters.
While those photos from Abu Ghraib are disgusting, itâs far more appalling that so much of the world doesnât want a free Iraq to succeed, that jealousy of the United States is so great that TV commentators, heads of state and many a common citizen would gladly write off the 25 million people of Iraq just to give America a black eye.
But black eyes heal. Much more quickly than the scars left by institutionalized torture and murder, state oppression, decades of censorship, imprisonment without hope of trial, religious bigotry and ethnic cleansing. That, too, is a lesson of Iraq.
Even human-rights advocates seem vastly more concerned with sticking it to America than with the suffering of millions of prisoners in countries that wouldnât let foreign activists near their prisons. Attacking America makes headlines. Taking on the government of Egypt gets you nowhere. In the quest for renown, justice falls by the wayside.
Human-rights critics were in Iraq because we let them in. Perhaps they should try Saudi Arabia next.
The headlines now wounding us will not soon go away. The media, foreign and domestic, will twist every drop of blood from this story of an American misstep. But no matter how much more there is to come, we Americans will admit our errors and fix them. Then weâll move forward, no less determined to do the right thing.
How many other nations in the world could claim as much?
Ralph Peters is the author of "Beyond Baghdad."
Posted by: tipper ||
05/12/2004 11:54:00 AM ||
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Mark Steyn
âJust look at the way US army reservist Lynndie England holds the leash of the naked, bearded Iraqi," writes Robert Fisk, famed Middle East correspondent of the London Independent.
"Take a close look at the leather strap, the pain on the prisonerâs face. No sadistic movie could outdo the damage of this image. In September 2001, the planes smashed into the buildings; today, Lynndie smashes to pieces our entire morality with just one tug on the leash."
Hmm. Sounds like Fiskieâs the one straining at the leash here. You can practically hear him panting. Down, boy.
For a week now, readers have been e-mailing me crowing that I havenât got the guts to confront the truth about Abu Ghraib prison. As one correspondent put it, "I was looking forward to reading about how the moronic lefty press should instead be praising those heroic American soldiers bringing freedom, and saving us from those barbaric Arabs. I thought at least that youâd say that youâd have done the same thing in their position."
Well, no, actually. Making a homoerotic pyramid of fetching young Iraqi men naked with their bottoms in the air is not my idea of a good time, unless itâs 48 hours from the Turner Prize deadline at Londonâs Tate Gallery and Iâm all out of ideas for this yearâs installation.
So I didnât write about it last week, because I didnât have anything much to say. Iâm revolted by the abuse of prisoners, but evidently not as revolted as Fiskie and Co., so best to let âem off the leash and go capering round the yard.
And now that they have, let me say this: As a political scandal, itâs already over. Historians will disagree about the precise moment it turned into a damp squib. Perhaps it was when Democratic blowhard Joe Biden demanded of Don Rumsfeld: "What did he know and when did he know it?" Or perhaps it was when the Democratsâ leader in the Senate, Tom Daschle, launched into a long, whiney complaint about why he and his colleagues hadnât been kept informed by the Pentagon. "Why were we not told in a classified briefing why this happened, and that it happened at all?" he huffed. "That is inexcusable; itâs an outrage."
Got that? To Senator Daschle, the outrage isnât the Iraqi buttock mountain or the dog shots, but the fact that the Pentagon had had the appalling lese-majeste not to inform the Senate grandees about it before it turned up on TV. The Democrats have become so formulaic in their Bush-bashing they canât recognize a real scandal when it drops in their lap.
When youâve got a bunch of shocking pictures, and darker rumours about rape, murder and corpse mutilation, how dumb do you have to be to start talking about breaches of Senate process (Daschle) and reciting tired old cliches from Watergate (Biden)?
Congratulations to the Senate Dems for making a very particular and graphic scandal sound like all the other dead horses theyâve been flogging for the last year. On Friday, when they pulled the defense secretary in for the full Senate grilling and demanded to know why he hadnât resigned, Rumsfeld seemed positively affable about entertaining the proposition.
AS WELL he might. According to that dayâs polls, 69% of Americans want him to stay on as defense secretary. In other words, half the folks planning to vote for John Kerry donât want Rummy to quit.
They understand, even if Ted Kennedy and The New York Times donât, that the ritual sacrifice of one of Bushâs key lieutenants is a concession to Americaâs enemies for no good reason.
Itâs all very well for Robert Fisk to assert breezily that one West Virginia woman walking a naked Muslim man round like a dog "smashes to pieces our entire morality." Heâs an anti-American reporter for a left-wing British newspaper. But Democratic Senators tread that path at their peril. The recent spate of embittered memoirs by disaffected treasury secretaries, terrorism bureaucrats and foreign service diplomats is one thing: theyâre anti-Bush, anti-Rummy, anti-Condi.
But, when you start bandying around speculation on widespread systemic torture authorized all the way up the chain, thatâs not anti-Bush but anti-military. Senate Democrats may be high on Vietnam analogies, but when they start impugning the integrity of the US armed forces, the American people are never going to follow them.
Besides, in the broader sense, whatâs going on in those pictures is as problematic for Dems as it is for Bush. Fisk thinks itâs your basic clash of cultures: "Could neo-conservative Christianity â Lynndie is also a churchgoer â have collided so violently, so revoltingly, so obscenely with Islam?"
"Neo-conservative Christianity"? What the heck is that? I thought all we sinister neocons were Jews.
The reality is that Lynndieâs appetites owe less to her churchgoing than to her embarking in Iraq on an affair with her comrade (and accomplice) Spc Charles Graner. (Private England is four months pregnant with Granerâs child.) Graner was formerly a Pennsylvania prison guard and has a history of domestic violence. Rather than concocting fictional demographics â West Virginia trailer-park neoconservative Christians â Bush-bashers might at least try to retain some tenuous grip on planet earth.
In contrast to hyperventilating Kennedys, the American people seem to be able to distinguish between the actual, specific abuse, which is wrong and should be punished, and the attempt to burden it with some highly selective generalized significance, which is rightly seen as a lot of baloney.
In that sense, I deeply regret President Bushâs apology. Iâm often dismissed as a Bush apologist, but I decline to be a Bush apologist for the Bush apology.
If he wanted to apologize, he should have apologized to Ahmed bin Jihad, or whoever the fellow in the dog collar is, and left it at that. But to be coerced into apologizing more generally is very foolish. What happened at Abu Ghraid is terrible because itâs an offense to American values, not Arab ones.
Itâs ridiculous to insist that America has to apologize to Arab thugocracies in which whatâs merely simulated in those photographs is done for real every day of the week.
As for the allegedly seething Arab street, my advice to it would be to lay off the interviews, or at least not to respond to the pictures by saying things like, "They wanted us to feel as though we were women, the way women feel, and this is the worst insult, to feel like a woman."
When you imply that being an Arab woman is analogous to perpetual degradation, you remind Americans that being "insensitive" to certain cultures is not necessarily a bad thing.
Posted by: tipper ||
05/12/2004 3:57:52 AM ||
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Well, I think that we Americans have self-flagellated enough for everyone over the Iraqi prisoner treatment. Jeeze Louise! We whip ourselves collectively more than Shi'ites! We recognize the problem of prisoner mistreatment and we will correct it. That is what we do, we make bad mistakes and we correct and make it better, painful as it is. Too bad most arab countries do not do that. They just fulminate.
Now back to real evil. Everyone seen the snuffy video of Mr. Berg? It is absolutely sickening. THAT VIDEO should be REQUIRED VIEWING for Kennedy, Fisk, and all the pompous asshats playing dogpile on our military and President Bush. It should be required viewing for the American public, and while you are at it, throw in Spain, France, and the rest of the EU to boot. That is a free preview of what is in store for the civilized world if we try appeasement and lose the WoT or the WoI (Islamofascism).
The only good that will come out of this video record of murder is that it shows the world what we (and I mean the whole world) are up against.
Follow the money where the guys that do this stuff get their resources and it comes back to Saudi money. Follow the Chechian terrorists and you see Saudi money. Check out the Pack Land madrassas and you find Saudi money. We must quit fighting our own money for a start.
Sweet dreams, everyone. I hope that we wake up out of this nightmare soon.
Posted by: Alaska Paul in Wales, Alaska ||
05/12/2004 5:12 Comments ||
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The Media is already trying to bury Berg's Decapitation news as they always do with any news that might make muslims and their appeasers look bad.
But there is something that we can ALL do about it and it is very simple: E-mail the websites, listed below, where the video of Nick Burg's decapitation can be watched and ask all of your friends to send those links to everyone they know and so on, and so on....
Americans need to understand the evil they are up against.
Websites showing Berg's decapitation:
Internet Haganah is hosting the video at three of their mirror sites:
#5
This rates as most rational analysis of the prisoner abuse story I have seen, and I agree that Bush's apology was a serious mistake.
The system is working to rectify the actions of individuals stepping over the line. So what exactly is the problem? Becuase I don't see one. As .com pointed out the Arabs will seethe because its a Tuesday.
Posted by: Phil B ||
05/12/2004 11:46 Comments ||
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#6
if you don't comment first, the post goes into the Editor Limbo til they make sure it's not crap/Boris spam
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/12/2004 11:47 Comments ||
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One of the regular commenters at SSDB suggested that we round up some military women who can point and snicker at a naked Robert Fisks' endowments, such as they are. I am almost tempted, actually.
#14
C_L : I wouldn't be surprised if Steyn parouses this and other blogs. Remember we are usually sympathetic, and if there was any criticism, he would take it as constructive. Also, We might have a lead on something he would like dig into and expand on. He probably uses all sources.
#15
Anyone see the Ajami column in todays WSJ? He wants to know why Bush apologized to King Abdullah, for crying out loud. We owe apologies to IRAQIS, NOT to non-Iraqi arabs - are we accepting the subordination of Iraq to the Arab world, AGAIN? He raises more questions about Brahimi, and applauds Sistani and the Shiite leaders for resisting Brahimi.
#16
why wouldn't he read rantburg? It never sleeps, it has insight you can't find anywhere else and it's one of the few interactive blog's that follows the WOT as no other site can.
Mark is a great writer. I could only hope that one day a comment from me would inspire him enough for him to put it forward as an idea of his own.
Go Mark.
Posted by: B ||
05/12/2004 13:59 Comments ||
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Speaking of Rantburg (and maybe why tipper had trouble posting - note that i had trouble accessing the site earlier today -) :
"30 rants, 140 comments. 2378 people are online at 14:15"
Is that a record?
#18
Mark Steyn does read blogs.I wouldn't be at all surprised if he reads Rantburg.
Posted by: Kathy K ||
05/12/2004 15:28 Comments ||
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What "heroic" fighters for the "Allah," god of War, these horrid little pukes are! (Yawn) Bet they got totally off on it. "Another victory for the dickless wonders of the universe." Even if the Berg was a US soldier, it would be bad enough. But, I mean, how easy is it to nab a civilian from an Iraqi street? Bet it only took one of them.
ALERT: These guys (and all the rest like them) do this stuff because they LOVE to do this stuff. That's it. Plain and simple. It has nothing at all to do with politics or ideologies. It's just gang "turf war" sh-t. If we weren't there, they'd find another excuse, and would fight among themselves. It's been going on for centuries.
I'll keep sayin' it . . .
All Islamic pseudo-men need to die.
Right on, BigEd (#10)! Ha! Too true!
And #1 Alaska Paul: I heard that the Arabs had kind of a "big deal" attitude about Abu G. They were more impressed that President Bush--the most powerful man in the world--would take time to apoligize for the actions of a few miscreant soldiers, and would make it known to the world that the guilty will be punished. NO MORAL GROUND LOST THERE. They thought GW was cool. Me too.
#20
Sgt. Mom: I'm not military, but I used to work for the Army, so I guess I would count for half. Can I come and snicker if I promise not to point? :-p
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/12/2004 23:33 Comments ||
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A U.S. Army enlisted man, Specialist Ryan Anderson, shared his plans to join al Qaeda and attack U.S. forces in Iraq with a Montana woman posing as a Muslim sympathizer, she told a military court on Wednesday. Anderson was troubled at the prospect of fighting "on the wrong side" as his unit prepared to ship out to Iraq last February, Shannen Rossmiller, a judge from Conrad, Montana, who joined a private group monitoring Muslim extremists, said. She testified at the start of a two-day hearing to determine if Anderson should go before a court martial, where he could face the death penalty if convicted.
Rossmiller said she contacted Anderson by email after reading a posting on the web site www.bravemuslims.org reading "...soon, very soon, I will have an opportunity to take my own end of the struggle." Anderson, who called himself Amir Abdul Rashid, feared he would be killed before he could correct the "mistake" of joining the U.S. military and was troubled by the prospect of facing "a brother" on the Muslim side, Rossmiller testified. Rossmiller said she reassured him: "It's never too late to do Allah's will."
Anderson, 26, is a tank crew member from Lynnwood, Washington, near Seattle, who converted to Islam and has written several letters to newspapers strongly opposing gun control. Rossmiller said she found Anderson's personal profile posted on a web page, which showed a photo of a man wearing a red headscarf and toting a military rifle. She became interested in extremists after the Sept. 11, 2001, hijack attacks in the United States and began to spend several hours a day monitoring web traffic. She later formed a private, nonprofit group performing "counterintelligence" called "Seven Seas," with a web address of www.7/seas.net. Group members contacted the Department of Homeland Security or the FBI when they encountered potentially dangerous people, Rossmiller said. Undercover agents posing as al Qaeda operatives later contacted Anderson, who passed on diagrams of M1A1 and M1A2 Abrams battle tanks with instructions on their vulnerabilities, military prosecutors have said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/12/2004 6:02:27 PM ||
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And our favorite Muslim Chaplin (Yee) was there too....
More info at this Seattle KOMO TV News story: (EFL)
Among those at Anderson's hearing was Capt. James Yee, a Muslim chaplain at Fort Lewis who until recently was embroiled in an investigation of suspected espionage at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.
Wednesday's proceeding at this Army base south of Tacoma was an Article 32 hearing, similar to a preliminary hearing in civilian court. After hearing the Army's evidence against Anderson, the investigating officer, Col. Patrick J. Reinert, will recommend whether he should face a court martial. Reinert's recommendation will go to the base commander at Fort Lewis, Lt. Gen. Edward Soriano, who will decide whether Anderson will be tried.
Anderson was arrested after Army investigators alleged he gave information to undercover U.S. agents, apparently believing they were part of al-Qaida.
Initially, he was charged with four counts of trying to communicate with terrorists. The Army added a fifth charge last month, which was not disclosed to the media until Wednesday. It alleges that at one point, Anderson told undercover military personnel: "I wish to desert from the U.S. Army. I wish to defect from the United States. I wish to join al-Qaida, train its members and conduct terrorist attacks."
Posted by: jawa ||
05/12/2004 19:44 Comments ||
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If the military has the case, they need to make an example of this guy and go for the death penalty. Except it will be under the UCMJ and an execution would be done without a snuffy video, unlike the Jihadis.
I also hope that Muslims in the military, especially these so-called chaplains, are vetted. The tribal loyalty of the muslims threatens the military's mission, and cannot be ignored.
Posted by: Alaska Paul in Nome ||
05/12/2004 20:38 Comments ||
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From today's New York Post - an editorial that really needs to be tattoooed on some foreheads in Washington and LLL circles:
What cruel, sick bastards. Indeed, you can't get much more barbaric than the filmed beheading of 26-year-old Nick Berg that splashed across a terrorist group's Web site yesterday. In case the world needed a reminder of why America is waging its War on Terror, it got one yesterday.
It's hard to imagine the terror that must have filled Berg in those final moments as he realized his hooded captors really were going to kill him. It wasn't enough that they slaughtered the young Philadelphia businessman like a sheep and held his severed head aloft as if it were a trophy. No, they filmed the whole thing for the world to see.
Soldiers don't behave like that. Only cowards and thugs do. Now it's time to ratchet up the response to this war. Forget Abu Ghraib. The abuse committed there by a handful of soldiers was not typical; nor is it acceptable. But the beheading of Nick Berg is par for the course for al Qaeda.
Of course, the terrorists of Muntada al-Ansar, an al Qaeda offshoot, claimed they were acting in retaliation for the Abu Ghraib abuses. Bull. There were no known abuses at Abu Ghraib when Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and Italian hostage Fabrizio Quattrocchi were murdered by Islamic terrorists. And the events at Abu Ghraib had not yet come to light when frenzied crowds in Fallujah burned and mutilated the bodies of four Americans and strung them from a bridge.
No, the massacre of Nick Berg had nothing to do with Abu Ghraib. Instead, this slaying was about the war against the West in general - and America, in particular. Indeed, the beheading may have been carried out personally by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a top aide of Osama bin Laden.
Some people - some Americans - have forgotten about 9/11. That attack should have been enough to justify all-out war. But the hand-wringing over the war in Iraq - and over even the modest steps America took to defend itself, like the Patriot Act - suggests that folks truly have lost sight of what the war is about. Yesterday they got a shocking reminder. And now they know: This war cannot be waged with half-measures. It can end only with the total annihilation of those who practice butchery and barbarism. Those who have set as their goal the destruction of America. There is no negotiating with such people. There can be no compromise with those who mean to destroy us.
Yesterday, the White House promised to "pursue those responsible and bring them to justice." That's the least of it. America has to come out swinging. And not stop until every last one of the savage thugs is dead. If that means a resumption of major combat in Iraq, so be it. Would it mean another division or so of combat troops to get the job done? Turn to our garrisons in Europe, or Korea, to get them. In sufficient numbers to get the job done. To hell with political sensitivities in the region. To hell with negotiating with radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Najaf and the Sunni insurgents in Fallujah. To hell with handing Saddam Hussein over to Iraqis, as some want to do, and risking some reverse - perverse - kangaroo trial that results in his survival. Evil, cutthroat terrorists need to be eradicated.
Let's face it: This is a job that's going to take overwhelming - yes, brutal - force. There is simply no "nice" or painless way to accomplish this. As yesterday's slaughter showed (yet again), the enemy is bound by no moral compunctions. America won't go that far. But it had better steel it's backbone and get ready to fight like it means it. It's the only way to win this war.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
05/12/2004 1:28:48 PM ||
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I would start by taking our 35,000 troops out of S. Korea, along with our 100,000 in Germany, and bring them to the front.
Stop giving money to Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Pakistan, Palestinians, etc. They display no civilized behavior. If they want the money, they have to behave as humans. We need the money we are freely giving away. I'm tired of funding the UN, Germany and these terrorist regimes. Take the gloves off indeed.
Posted by: jawa ||
05/12/2004 19:48 Comments ||
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Fred, Steve, & Steve: Please consider allowing at least a limited "Steyn/Lileks/VDH exception" for this piece by Wretchard, which makes what I think is an important point. EFL, mainly to eliminate long quotes from Andrew Sullivan, the WaPo ombudsman, and a CENTCOM press release.
Andrew Sullivan suggests that the mainstream media publish pictures of an American hostageâs severed head in order to balance, among other things, the slide show presentations depicting the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. . . . And yeah, why not. If Michael Getler, the ombudsman of the Washington Post can assert that "the reality of war in all its aspects needs to be reported and photographed. That is the patriotic, and necessary, thing to do in a democracy" there is no logical reason why the video showing the Al Qaeda decapitating a screaming Nick Berg shouldnât be given the same treatment. That is, unless the Getlerâs premise was false in the first place. . . .
The fallacy in Getlerâs premise was the claim that the Abu Ghraib photographs were simply a factual documentation of an abuse which the public had the right to know about. The existence of the abuses had been known from January, from CENTCOM itself. . . . What was new about the May coverage was that the press had pictures of the Abu Ghraib abuses and was in a position to project, not a new set of facts, but a new set of powerful emotions upon the public. Getlerâs claim is really an assertion of the right to invoke outrage, disgust and hatred at a specific act and its perpetrators, and those who may have been indirectly responsible for it. By taking this logic to its limit, Sullivan claims the same right: to unleash a symmetrical set of set emotions at another group -- and demonstrates the absurdity. For it must either be correct to publish both the Abu Ghraib and Berg photos or admit partisanship. Surely, if it is acceptable to run the risk of tainting the entire US military with the brush of Abu Ghraib then there can be no harm in coloring all Muslims with the hues of Al Qaeda. But this is madness.
The Belmont Club predicted that "the sad balance of probability is that Abu Ghraib will be displaced from the front pages by the next terrorist outrage, the next Bali, the next Madrid, the next 9/11 until we find ourselves wondering why it upset us at all" -- and the process has already begun. People who only yesterday were beating their breasts at infamy of the 800th MP brigade will be calling for a MOAB to dropped on Fallujah tomorrow. And to the inherent madness of war we will add another lunacy: strategy by manic-depression. âAre we feeling generous today toward the enemy? Or do we want to get some aggression off our chests? Hmm?â
This is what comes of asserting the right to unleash emotions disconnected from rational perspective as "patriotic". This is what comes of not sticking to facts and they are these. The enemy has attacked America on its own soil and therefore must be defeated utterly. Members of the US military have committed a court-martial offense and therefore they must be punished severely. Any withdrawal from Iraq will not bring safety from enemy action inasmuch as they attacked Manhattan and Washington DC nearly two years before OIF. Any withdrawal from Iraq without first setting up a stable and responsible government there would result in a bloodbath beside which the massacre of the Shiâites and the gassing of the Kurds by Saddam would be a pale moonlit shadow. Therefore we must persist until victory.
And the final fact is this. The only exit from warâs inhumanity is through the doorway of victory. For while it may be mitigated, controlled and reduced to a certain extent fundamentally "war is cruelty, and you cannot refine it", though victory can end it. While it continues, as many in the Left who long for a 21st century Vietnam hope, it will unleash unpredictable forces which no one can control. Those who delighted in discovering the photographs at Abu Ghraib little imagined Nick Bergâs video. And while we can safely grant Andrew Sullivanâs plea and publish both, for reasons the media imagine are laudable, it is what comes next that I am afraid of.
Posted by: Mike ||
05/12/2004 2:14:54 PM ||
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The video of the beheading of Beck does not need to be shown. You don't need to really see it for it to make you physically ill, and to paint a picture of the Islamists.
Close your eyes and complete the picture. You can see the "inspirational leader" bin Laden, declaring the religious duty of all Muslims to kill innocent Americans wherever they are found, men in caves planning murderous attacks, embassies blown up, and children with bombs strapped to them. With your eyes closed, you can call back images of commercial planes, flown by suicidal fanatics but occupied by ordinary Americans, flying into tall buildings and see the buildings come down. You can see school busses, cafes, hotels, and train stations torn apart and strewn with body parts of innocence. Horrific images of severed heads, charred corpses hanging from girders and bodies drug through streets of cheering people chanting Allah Akbar - God is great. With eyes still closed, you can see and hear calls for more deranged killing by black hooded terrorists and bearded, robed clerics from Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Palestinian territories, Africa, Indonesia, France, Sweden, London, and even from America.
This picture makes some seek peace at any price, a peace that can never truly be. For others, for the vast majority of Americans, the pictures harden the resolve to eradicate the ideas that have made the picture a reality of our time.
Posted by: Rock ||
05/12/2004 15:21 Comments ||
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To eradicate the ideas, we are going to eradicate a great many of the perps. But you are right, I hope it serves to harden the resolve. I fear that the resolve of a great number of Democrats is about as hard and serious as ice cream.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld defended military interrogation techniques in Iraq on Wednesday, rejecting complaints that they violate international rules and may endanger Americans taken prisoner. Rumsfeld told a Senate committee that Pentagon lawyers had approved methods such as sleep deprivation and dietary changes as well as rules permitting prisoners to be made to assume stress positions.
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also noted that the rules require prisoners to be treated humanely at all times.
But Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill. said some of the approved techniques "go far beyond the Geneva Convention," a reference to international rules governing the treatment of prisoners of war.
Got a reference for that, Dick? My read of the GC doesn't have it.
Rumsfeld spoke after two weeks of controversy provoked by photographs of American military personnel abusing prisoners in Iraq. An American was beheaded in a videotaped execution posted to a militant Islamic web site on Tuesday - a killing that captors said was revenge for the abuse of Iraqis in the Abu Ghraib prison.
It was because he was an American!
Durbin noted that one American GI was missing in Iraq, his whereabouts unknown. Given the circumstances, he asked Rumsfeld, "wouldn't it help if there was clarity from you and from this administration that we would abide by the Geneva Convention when it comes to civilian and military detainees unequivocally?"
Expanding his question to include detainees in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, he asked whether such a declaration would "also serve to help American prisoners" held captive. Rumsfeld replied that the Geneva Convention applies to all prisoners held in Iraq, but not to those held in Guantanamo Bay, where detainees captured in the global war on terror are held. He said the distinction is that the international rules govern wars between countries but not those involving groups such as al-Qaida. "Terrorists don't comply with the laws of war. They go around killing innocent civilians," Rumsfeld added.
Too bad Rummy has to explain the obvious.
A second Democrat, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, said that a report issued in March by Human Rights Watch "corroborated such things" as sleep deprivation, prisoners kept naked in sleeping cells or forced to stand or kneel for hours. The report covers prisoners held in Afghanistan, he said, adding it "appears to be exactly the same technique" as was employed in Iraq.
Rumsfeld and other Pentagon officials have said the abuses in Abu Ghraib were unauthorized actions taken by a handful of personnel, and Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who investigated the mistreatment, testified to that effect before a Senate committee on Tuesday.
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt announced that two more American soldiers have been ordered to stand trial in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal although no date for the courts-martial was set. Sgt. Javal Davis, 26, of Maryland and Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II of Buckingham, Va., were ordered to undergo a general court-martial, Kimmitt said. Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits, of Hyndman, Pa., goes on trial May 19 before a special court martial, which cannot levy as severe a sentence as a general court-martial.
Taguba told the Senate Armed Services Committee that military police who acted improperly did so "of their own volition." But several senators questioned whether low-ranking soldiers would have created the sexually humiliating scenarios by themselves. "It implies too much knowledge of what would be particularly humiliating to these Muslim prisoners," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. "And that is why, even though I do not yet have the evidence, I cannot help but suspect that others were involved, that military intelligence personnel were involved, or people further up the chain of command."
"I have no evidence but I'll flap my gums at a Senate hearing none the less!"
Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., challenged Taguba on his statement that Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who headed the 800th Military Police Brigade at the prison, bore responsibility for a breakdown in discipline that led to abuse.
Taguba testified that orders were issued taking tactical control of the Abu Ghraib facility away from Karpinski and giving it to Col. Thomas M. Pappas, commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade."It was clear that he was directed to be the forward operating base commander there for security detainees and force protection," Taguba said. "However, General Karpinski challenged that and she noted that in her recorded testimony." Taguba said the order placing Pappas in charge of prison policy where Karpinski's MPs worked created a confusing situation and was contrary to Army doctrine. Nonetheless, he found that Karpinski retained overall responsibility for the MPs in her brigade and assigned much of the blame for the abuse to inadequate leadership on her part.
Since she was the commanding officer.
Asked to put in simple words how the abuses happened, Taguba said: "Failure in leadership, sir, from the brigade commander on down. Lack of discipline, no training whatsoever and no supervision. Supervisory omission was rampant."
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/12/2004 12:23:09 PM ||
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Rummy is right that rough (but reasonable)methods are valuable for interrogation, as we all know. Thats another reason Abu Graib was bad news - we dont want to lose valuable methods, because some idiots (im still not clear which idiots) took it too far.
I am moving away from position on dumping Rummy
A. Biggest problem is that it might take too long to confirm a successor, and the next two to 4 months are too important to go with just an (overstretched) acting SecDef
b.No obvious candidates - Id luv McCain, but thats not politically realistic. Only real choice who could get confirmed quickly is Sen. John Warner, (R-Va)
c. So far the seething about Abu Graib has come most from Europe, secondarily from the arab world, and lastly from Iraq. As long as the Iraqi street isnt seething, it may not be worth the interegnum at DoD to sac Rummy.
d. The Berg beheading has begun to change the subject - at least enough to focus on real responsbility for Abu Graib - and to let real advances on the ground come back to the fore.
e. Remaining concerns - the handover on June 30. A government consisting 100% of 'technocrats', largely Sunni Arabs, and subordinate to outside Sunni Arab states, would be a defeat for democratization, and could lead to more dissension within Iraq. Better outcome would be a balance with some representation for Iraqi political parties, especially the Kurds, but also the Shia.
Hugh Hewitt asked the big question tonight: of the worldâs billion-plus Muslims, how many support the butchers who hacked the head off the Pennsylvania contractor? One percent? Ten? Either number stands for a lot of people. I was walking Jasper Dog while listening to the show, and a few thoughts popped up.
There are five reactions one could have to such acts, committed by a coreligionist: Endorsement, Indifference, Denial, Rejection, Participation.
Denial: Iâm sure youâve heard this before: âIslam is a religion of peace.â But those people committed horrible violence in the name of Islam. âThen they are not true Muslims. No Muslim could do this.â Rinse, repeat. Itâs the theological equivalent of putting your hands over your ears and humming loudly.
Rejection: This would be speaking out singly or in concert with fellow Muslims, denouncing the acts without making the entire peroration an elaborate plinth on which to place the word âBUT.â
Indifference: Iâm a Muslim in Indonesia. I work in a bank. Iâm not particularly devout. I like a beer on a hot day, and you know what? Theyâre all hot days. Some guys slit someoneâs throat in Iraq. I think thatâs wrong and I think thatâs stupid. And what do you expect me to do about it?
Endorsement: Iâm not sure what constitutes endorsement â silent pleasure among others not of the faith, chortling delight when youâre with friends. Or perhaps nothing more than thanking Allah when you hear certain things have been done in Allahâs name, and never acting or speaking a way that supports the jihadistâs cause.
Participation. Itâs obvious what this means.
Hereâs the crux: of these five aspects, four assist the jihadists in one form or another, and the fifth â Rejection â all too often takes a passive form. Hugh had a Somali Muslim on his show from Minneapolis; they spoke for almost 40 minutes, and the guyâs heart was in the right place. He sounded like a decent fellow. He said the Imam of his mosque regularly preached against the nutball Islamists. One hundred million more like him, please. But where are the rallies and marches outside the Saudi embassies demanding an end to funding extremism?
CAIR issued a rote condemnation of the beheading today. Fine. Then CAIR does this:
One overt political note was sounded as U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Seattle, was introduced and given CAIR's public-official-of-the-year award for his support of the Muslim community. Before giving McDermott his plaque, Samia El-Moslimany, CAIR vice chair, announced "tremendous news." She told the crowd that the King County Democratic Party, meeting earlier in the day elsewhere within the Convention Center, had voted into its platform a commitment to "withhold U.S. tax dollars from Israel while it is in violation of international law." "This is a memorable day," said El-Moslimany.
Whether the platform demands that the US should withhold tax dollars from the Palestinian Authority until Arafat holds an actual election, I donât know. The article concluded:
Atefeh Naeemi, a young Iranian-born American, compared the pressures currently facing her community to those faced by African Americans in Jim Crow days and Japanese Americans during World War II. "Maybe this is the Muslim-American time to be tested," Naeemi said.
Heâs right. More than he knows.
The West doesnât have the power to change Islam; it only has the power to destroy it. We have a lot of nukes. We could kill everyone. We could just take out a few troublesome nations, kill millions, and irradiate Mecca so that the Fifth Pillar is invalidated. The hajj would be impossible. Every pilgrim a martyr. I donât think weâll do either; God help us if we do, but inasmuch as we have the capability, itâs an option. But it would be a crime greater than the crime that provoked such an act, and in the end that would stay our hand. They know we wonât do it.
Strong horse, weak horse.
There is another path, of course. Simply put: if a US city is nuked, the US will have to nuke someone, or let it stand that the United States can lose a city without cost to the other side. Defining âthe other sideâ would be difficult, of course â do you erase Tehran to punish the mullahs? Make a crater out of Riyahd? These are exactly the sort of decisions we never want to make. But letâs say it happens. Baltimore: fire and wind. Gone. That horrible day would clarify things once and for all. Itâs one thing for someone in a distant city to cheer the fall of two skyscrapers: from a distance, it looks like a bloody nose. But erasing a city is a different matter.
Everyone will have to choose sides. That would be one possible beginning of the end of this war.
Thankfully, itâs not the only one. There are a dozen other scenarios, half of which we canât imagine: the unknowns we donât know, as a wise man said. But half the battle will occur in places we cannot reach or observe. A minimal-casualty defeat of the Islamists will require the help of Islam. I'd like to think that will happen on its own, without some exterior catastrophe to force the issue. For that matter I'd like to think I'll win the Powerball. Every time the jackpot goes over 200 million, I buy a ticket. Every time I lose. I'm always disappointed, of course. But never surprised.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/12/2004 11:36:33 AM ||
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If the Islamonazis manage to get a nuke and use it against us, we need to immediately drop a precise answering tactical nuke on Mecca. Period. End of sentence. No discussion. Vaporize the black rock.
I'd say we should let it be known we'll do this if they nuke us, but I'm pretty sure they (a) won't believe us and (b) won't care.
Oh, yes, and (c) the Democrats will object and whine that we should just understand the "root causes" of their attack.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/12/2004 23:57 Comments ||
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A United States proposal for regional cooperation to combat sea piracy and terrorism threats in Asia-Pacific waters was received coolly yesterday by some Asean countries, an Indonesian official said.
Speaking after a meeting of senior officials from the 23-member Asean Regional Forum (ARF), he said that representatives of these countries felt that South-east Asia should take the lead in dealing with the regional issue.
The forum includes the 10 Asean states among its 23 members.
Indonesia and Malaysia had a different proposal which they announced during a preparatory forum in Yogyakarta for next monthâs regional security meeting.
They said a seminar would be held in Kuala Lumpur before the end of the year to address the maritime scourge.
US officials, led by Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, were careful to not step on regional toes.
They made the point that Asean on its own was capable of keeping the region safe and downplayed concerns that Washington wants to deploy troops here.
Mr Kelly was quoted by The Jakarta Post as saying: âThere are lots of strange stories. We have no intentions in the Malacca Straits.
âIt is an international straits with a lot of Singapore, a lot of Indonesia and a lot of Malaysia in it.â
Asean secretary-general Ong Keng Yong told The Straits Times that through the Yogyakarta discussions this week, the Americans were âdiplomaticâ.
âThey were quite open and accommodating. They did not approach this with the idea that their proposal is the one that has to be accepted.
âThey were open to Aseanâs suggestion on how these kinds of threats can be handled,â he said.
Yet American unilateralism has been heavily criticised by some Asean leaders in recent years, and it became clear yesterday that some feathers were ruffled anyway.
Mr Marty Natalegawa, spokesman for Indonesiaâs Foreign Ministry, said: âThese types of proposals should be initiated and led by countries of the region.â
He said Indonesia âhas appreciationâ for Washingtonâs proposal, but added: âWe are keen to avoid the impression that ours is a region in need of dire help, one that needs an external fire brigade to put out our fires for us. We are not that desperate.â
Indonesian officials also clarified that maritime security is âa central, major componentâ of the Asean Security Community idea that Jakarta proposed during a meeting of the regional association last year in Bali.
The threat from maritime security problems is clear.
Pirate attacks decreased worldwide in the first three months of this year, with the International Maritime Bureau office in Kuala Lumpur reporting 79 compared to 103 during the same period last year.
But Indonesiaâs high seas remained the worldâs most pirate- infested waters, and hijacks in the Straits of Malacca jumped from three between January and March last year to eight this year.
Singapore Defence Minister Teo Chee Hean last month said security along the straits, through which some 50,000 ships - carrying around a quarter of the worldâs trade and about half its oil supply - pass yearly, was ânot adequateâ.
The fear expressed by officials is that terrorists may hijack a ship at sea and use it to carry out attacks in major seaports in the region, disrupting economic and political stability.
Mr Ong said: âAsean countries have always been addressing this issue, but would like to intensify their cooperation.
âRegional countries have to take primary responsibility for this problem, but also be open to cooperation with other interested states.â
#1
Coordinated ship hijackings and using them to sink other ships in and around the Straits of Singapore is one of my top 3 predictions for the next 6 months. Its just too tempting a target and Malaysian and Indonesian security is lax (to almost non-existent). Here is a nice graphic that shows the choke points.
Posted by: Phil B ||
05/12/2004 20:53 Comments ||
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#2
Why would they want to do that and divert shipping south to Australia? Indo and Malay pirates have little pirate mouths to feed, ya know.
Posted by: ed ||
05/12/2004 21:08 Comments ||
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#3
Here is the money quote:
They said a seminar would be held in Kuala Lumpur before the end of the year to address the maritime scourge
That means they will talk about it within 7 months. Unfortunately, they learned these bad habits from the UN. If they are unwilling to clean out the trash in the Straits of Malacca, then maybe it should be bypassed until they do. Maritime insurance rates will take care of this problem in this area if the region does not get its act together.
Posted by: Alaska Paul in Nome ||
05/12/2004 21:17 Comments ||
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#4
I believe the only viable alternate route is a couple of thousand miles longer and just doesn't have the infrastructure. Block the Straits of Singapore and there will be massive disruption for months.
Posted by: Phil B ||
05/12/2004 22:14 Comments ||
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#5
Who suffers? The Japanese. We should tell ASEAN that if they don't want to handle it, the JDF should. We should offer our ally the necessary logistical support.
Posted by: Mr. Davis ||
05/12/2004 22:26 Comments ||
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East Timorâs Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri on Wednesday accused a detained Australian journalist of inciting angry mobs to burn down his house during anti-government riots in 2002.
Julian King, 43, who was arrested last Thursday, denied the allegations and said he was "being framed," according to his lawyer, Pedro de Oliveira.
King will face a preliminary court hearing next week, court officials said. Police said they were questioning him for alleged subversion and illegal possession of ammunition.
Alkatiri accused King of taking part in riots that rocked the East Timorese capital in December 2002. Ten buildings were ransacked and torched by the mobs, including Alkatiriâs home.
The violence was the worst since Indonesian troops and their militia proxies withdrew in 1999, destroying as much of the country as they left.
"Julian King is a provocateur. He was one of the first to enter my house during the rioting and urged the mobs to burn it down," Alkatiri told The Associated Press.
"He has continuously abused our tolerance of journalists and has an agenda to subvert the government," Alkatiri said.
King, a Sydney native and former correspondent with the Reuters news agency who now works regularly for Australian television, has lived in the country for four years.
Oliveira said King was "being framed by authorities because of his highly critical stance of government policies. He is innocent."
The arrest came just a week after the Paris-based group Reporters without Borders lauded the fledgling nation for having one of Asiaâs freest media.
Attacks on journalists are "extremely rare" in the former Indonesian province, and the countryâs press legislation is "among the most liberal in Asia," the group said last week.
SUSPECTED links between Jemaah Islamiah, the terror group responsible for the Bali bombings, and the Madrid train bombers are being investigated by British police.
If confirmed, the news would add credence to claims by terror experts that the Madrid bombers may have trained in JI-linked terrorist camps in central Indonesia.
The British investigation was launched after Spanish news agency Efe reported that seven Islamic terrorists involved in the Madrid train bombings telephoned a JI operative and a jailed radical Muslim cleric in London's Belmarsh prison shortly before they blew themselves up last month.
Surrounded by police in a flat in Leganes, south Madrid, on April 3, the terrorists reportedly placed three calls to the phone of Britain's suspected al-Qa'ida chief Abu Qatada, and also made calls to Indonesia to "someone in the milieu" of JI spiritual leader Abu Bakar Bashir.
The men, mostly from Morocco, who soon afterwards blew themselves up, were reportedly seeking authorisation to commit suicide, the report said.
Police traced the calls when they analysed terrorists' mobile phone records.
The alleged leader of Spain's al-Qa'ida cell, Abu Dahdah, visited Poso in central Indonesia in May 2001 according to a recent report by JI expert Sidney Jones, director of the Jakarta office of the International Crisis Group.
In an interview in March, Ms Jones told The Australian there was "clearly close contact" between al-Qa'ida and JI and that Spanish al-Qa'ida operatives were trained in terrorist camps in Indonesia.
"It goes back to at least late 2000, maybe before," she said. "The whole reason that Poso came to international attention was because Spanish authorities arrested al-Qa'ida operatives who said they had been trained in Poso."
Indonesian police found two copies of the Koran in Spanish, another Spanish book and 26 Spanish business cards in raids on JI's bomb factory in Semarang in central Java last year.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/12/2004 6:04:07 PM ||
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BEIRUT (Reuters) - The United States, battling a prisoner abuse scandal and insurgency in Iraq, could not have chosen a better worse time to slap new sanctions on Syria, Arabs whined said Wednesday. Many warned that the sanctions, welcomed only by Syriaâs justified arch-foe Israel, would only fuel anger against America. "If they are having such trouble in Iraq, they should at least appease calm down Iraqâs neighbors," said Mohamed al-Sayed Said of Egyptâs al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Wife Beating Studies.
"Whoever is ruling Syria would be foolish not to toe the line try harder to embarrass the Americans in Iraq. Anyone seeing his regime so severely undermined and humiliated would have no option but fold like a house of cards to try and spoil it for the Americans in Iraq." Labeling Syria "an unusual and extraordinary threat," President Bush Tuesday signed an order imposing sanctions long in the pipeline on Damascus for backing anti-Israeli groups and allowing anti-American insurgents to cross the Syrian border into Iraq. Damascus has repeatedly threatened said the sanctions would only harm the handful of American firms in Syria and would not persuade it to end backing for terror groups it defends as legitimate resistance.
Many Arabs said the widely-expected move was the latest in a series of Middle East policy escalations mistakes driven by Washingtonâs necessary support blind bias toward democratic Israel, the only country in the region to routinely kill terrorists welcome the sanctions. "This is an important decision that proves, once again, the resolve of the United States to wage all-out war -- not just against terrorist groups, but also against the countries that harbor them," the Israeli foreign ministry said in a statement.
NO EFFECT
The sanctions ban exports except for food and medicine, freeze assets of Syrians and Syrian entities suspected of links to terror or weapons of mass destruction and ban Syrian flights to and from the United States. Bush will consider further sanctions unless Damascus ends its support for anti-Israeli militant groups such as the Palestinian Hamas and Lebanonâs Hizbollah, pulls its troops out of Lebanon, ends development of forbidden weapons and cooperates fully with U.S.-led efforts to stabilize Iraq.
"(The sanctions) are only going to increase repercussions for supporting terror tension in the region, and we have not gotten enough of that," Kuwaiti Islamist parliamentarian Nasser al-Sane told Reuters. "Because Syria is an Arab terror facilitator country thereâs going to be an Arab knee jerk reaction sympathetic to Syria, because its a member of the Arab terror family this is only going to increase the penalties conflict." Damascus, which bitterly opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, has described the sanctions as economically damaging "unjust and unwarranted." It says it has done absolutely nothing its best to control the border but would still pursue a policy of terrorism "dialogue" with Washington.
"When they say the Syrians should be more careful about the border, they forget to mention chemical attacks on Jordan that they (the Americans) are on the other side. Why arenât they doing a better job?" an Arab League saboteur official said. "I donât think this is the right amount of pressure approach. The right approach is through appeasement dialogue, especially since they have recently indicated they have seen the Syrians assist terrorists cooperate." Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, whose country is under heavy political and military influence from Hizbollah Syria, said the sanctions were expected "wrong in both content and timing" and were further proof that Washington pandered to Israeli interests.
"This decision poses the question of whether the series of mistakes the American administration is committing in the region will lead to more tensions, escalation and feelings of kicked @ss injustice on the Arab side," he said in a statement. Some dismissed the sanctions as little more than symbolic, given Washingtonâs economic and political ties with Damascus. "The American pressure on Syria is a long-term plan and this is part of it," said Saudi political analyst Abdullah al-Otaibi. "U.S. image in the Middle East is already distorted in the Arab press bad," said another Gulf analyst. "It just solidifies the Arab conviction that Israel and their nuclear weapons is running the show in the Middle East."
#3
"It just solidifies the Arab conviction that Israel is running the show in the Middle East."
Boy, they have this fixation on Israel, don't they? These arabs do not have the ability to look inward and fix their mistakes. In the end, that will be their fatal flaw. They will need to hit and stay at rock bottom for a while before they or at least a few of them have the sense to crawl out of their holes, instead of digging them deeper. Insh'allah, MoFo....
Posted by: Alaska Paul in Wales, Alaska ||
05/12/2004 16:39 Comments ||
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#4
Ah, the lovely blue glow of Cherenkov radiation above the glassy craters...
#5
in the arab it is never a good time - screw 'em...tighten the screws on syria..either she plays ball or plays ball with the marines..
Posted by: Dan ||
05/12/2004 18:40 Comments ||
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#6
Excellent move. Perfect. Consider the recent record:
1. We kick the living shit out of the Fallujans, and their outside support evaporates. Then, when it's to OUR advantage we bring in a basically toothless force of Iraqis in to calm the place down...while not giving an inch of true strategic territory.
2. Our actions in Fallujah, where we showed no hesitation about killing our enemies as well as a willingness to negotiate with the Sunnis, frighten the Shiites (who desperately want us to back them in their quest for power) and causes the Shiites to dump Sadr...whose "rebellion" has simply collapsed.
3. Turn up the pressure on Syria. And they're quealing.
Yes. No more screwing around with these miserable bastards and their allies in Syria and Iran. Make them pay, make them pay dearly.
#7
Finally! Something I can agree with the Arabs on. The U.S. did choose a bad time to impose sanctions on Syria. It should have been done long before now.
What? That's not what they mean?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/12/2004 19:46 Comments ||
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More Syrians are going to the mosque, more women are wearing the hijab and underground womenâs religious discussion groups are mushrooming even though they are banned. The austere Wahhabi brand of Islam practised by Osama bin Laden is also growing more popular and clerics are calling for jihad in Iraq and Palestine. So when the Baâathists eventually do fall, the Wahabis will be in a good position to take advantage of the power vaccum. And I bet they donât think to highly of Assadâs Alwati Islamic sect.
In April last year, Asif Muhammad Hanif, a British Muslim who had studied Islam and Arabic in Damascus, blew himself up in an Israeli pub in Tel Aviv. After the bombings in Turkey last year against British and Jewish targets, Syria expelled 22 Turks, three of whom had been studying at the Abu Nour foundation. Sheikh Kuftaro said the foundation and other Islamic institutes could not be held responsible for the actions of every person that once attended the school. Although this has also been the official line, in March Syria announced it would no longer allow new foreign students to register at the Islamic schools, a sign that that the authorities are worried. For now, the regime is still tolerating the growing Islamist trend in Syria as it diverts peopleâs frustrations towards the outside world - specifically the Israelis and the Americans. At a time when Damascus is facing intense pressure to reform and Washington has just slapped sanctions on Syria, the regime can also hold up its Islamists as a more unruly alternative to the Baath regime and hope it will be able to keep them under its control. Well, itâs worked so well for other Muslim countries...
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
05/12/2004 2:28:54 AM ||
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#1
About those sanctions against Syria. What may that portend?
Is Syria allied with the cut throats?
Cut Throats, is there nothing they can't take issue with. Local paper's headline reports that Berg was killed as payback for Abu Garbage prison porn. No he was killed to help jump start the total war on Islam.
#2
I think this analysis is from someone who's gone to Syria at the wrong time:
- A lot of Saudis pour into Damascus as the weather warms up - thus more hijabs. Truth is that there has been a slow uptick in hijab wearing over the years but it's no epidemic and it's mostly among older women probably going through the emotional changes that older women go through.
- Bashar relies on the radicals as his ultimate check against the Ba'thists. Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah has publicly declared his willingness to fight for Bashar on the streets of Damascus. Remember also that Bashar served a brief apprenticeship in Lebanon during the Israeli withdrawal and believes that Hezbollah can get real results in any policy area. Bashar's mentor is the old Syrian 'wali' of Lebanon, Ghazi Kanaan, the Syrian paymaster for Hezbollah.
Make no mistake - Hafez crushed the Syrian MB in Hama and then turned the leftovers to his will. Bashar is giving them free reign abroad, or perhaps his opponents in country are happy to direct them into Iraq, but Syria is no hotbed for the Ikhwan the same way Egypt is.
A Bahamian bank controlled by a controversial Islamic financier in Switzerland set up a highly secretive line of credit for a top associate of Osama bin Laden as part of an elaborate scheme to finance attacks by Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, according to a newly disclosed U.S. Treasury document.
In a January 2002 letter to Swiss authorities, a senior Treasury official privately spelled out the U.S. governmentâs case that the Bahamian bankâone arm of an international financial network known as Al-Taqwa (Arabic for âFear of Godâ)âhad a lengthy history of âfinancing and facilitating the activities of terrorists,â including providing millions of dollars in funding for Al Qaeda and Hamas.
The Treasury letter, and another one involving Saudi businessman Yassin A. Kadi, provide a revealing new window into the murky world of terror financeâat least as viewed by U.S. counterterrorism officials. Based largely on secret intelligence sources, the Treasury documents attempt to show how Kadi and Al-Taqwa and its founder, Youssef M. Nada, used concealed bank accounts, complex land deals and other hard-to-trace methods to steer large sums of money to terrorists.
The letters were recently obtained by Ron Motley, the lead lawyer in a massive lawsuit against Saudi business figures and others accused of complicity in the financing of the September 11 attacks. In a little-noticed court filing on Monday, Motley placed the documents in the public recordâa move that seemed to startle at least one defense lawyer who noted that such private âgovernment-to-governmentâ communications are almost never made public.
The letters were written by Treasury in an effort to persuade the Swiss to take legal action to shut down the operations of suspect organizations. The most significant of the letters involves Al-Taqwa and its founder, Nada, an Egyptian-born businessman based in Switzerland who has long been a prominent figure in the world of Islamic finance and who has consistently denied any involvement in the financing of terrorism.
In the letter dated Jan. 4, 2002, George B. Wolfe, then Treasury's deputy general counsel, tells Switzerlandâs deputy chief federal prosecutor, Claude Nicati, that money âpours inâ to branch offices of the Al-Taqwa network in Lugano and Malta from Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates for bin Laden. It alleges that, as late as September 2001, Nada and a business associate, Ali bin Mussalim, provided âindirect investment services for Al Qaeda, investing funds for bin Laden, and making cash deliveries on request to the Al Qaeda organization.â
The most startling allegation is that Nadaâs Bank Al-Taqwa âappeared to be providing a clandestine line of credit for a close associate of bin Laden,â according to the Wolfe letter. âThis bin Laden lieutenant had a line of credit with a Middle East financial institution that drew on an identical account number at Bank Al-Taqwa. Unlike other accountsâeven accounts of private banking customersâthis account was blocked by the computer system and special privileges were required to access it.â Noting that âno identifiable names were associated with the account,â the letter calls the circumstances surrounding the account âhighly unusualâ and suggests that they were created âto conceal the association of the bin Laden organization with Bank Al-Taqwa.â
A legal source familiar with the investigation into Al-Taqwa said that another U.S. intelligence document states that the Al-Taqwa account was originally set up for Mamdouh Mahmoud Salim, a one-time member of Al Qaedaâs governing Shura Council who was captured in Germany after the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa and has been awaiting trial while in prison in the United States ever since.
After Salimâs arrest, other Al Qaeda figures continued to access the account, the legal source said.
The Wolfe letter also reveals for the first time that the government of Jordan had accused Bank Al-Taqwa of financing a terrorist network linked to bin Laden that was involved in plotting terror attacks at Western and tourist targets in Jordan during the millennium celebrations. Jordanian authorities have recently alleged that Abu Moussab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born terrorist leader who this week apparently claimed credit for the gruesome beheading of U.S. businessman Nicholas Berg in Iraq, was a leader of the cell that plotted the Jordanian millennium attack.
In addition, the letter notes that one of Al-Taqwaâs board members, Ahmed Huber, had confirmed that he had met with members of bin Ladenâs organization in Beirut and had defended the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Huber, a notorious Swiss Holocaust denier and far-right activist, is described in the Wolfe letter has having âextreme anti-Israel views.â The letter also states that another Al-Taqwa board member, Ahmed Idris Nasreddin, has supported an Islamic center in Milan that the U.S. government believes may be Al Qaedaâs âmost important base in Europeâ and which was linked to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, among other terror plots.
In interviews with NEWSWEEK, Nada, Huber and Swiss lawyers for both Nada and Nasreddin have adamantly denied any connection to the financing of terrorism. (Contacted by NEWSWEEK this week, Nada declined to comment on the Wolfe letter on the grounds that he had not seen it.) Their lawyers also note that, for all the U.S. allegations about their clients, none of them have been charged in any criminal case brought by the Justice Department or any other foreign government.
The same goes for Kadi, a prominent Saudi businessman who, in a Nov. 29, 2001, letter to the Swiss written by then Treasury general counsel David Aufhauser, is described as having âa long history of financing and facilitating the activities of terrorists and terrorist-related organizations, often acting through seemingly legitimate charitable enterprises and businesses." Kadi was the founder of Muwafaq (âBlessed Relief") Foundation, an Islamic charity that âemployed or served as coverâ for a number of Islamic extremists connected with bin Laden and other terror groups, according to the Aufhauser letter. A lawyer for Kadi, whose assets have been blocked by the Treasury Department in the United States, said that the businessman is in the process of presenting evidence to U.S. officials challenging the allegations against him.
U.S. counterterrorism officials have privately acknowledged their frustration in pursuing cases against both Al-Taqwa members and Kadi as well as numerous other targets in terror-finance investigations. âIntelligence is one thing, but gathering the evidence to support these allegations is another story,â said one former top U.S. law-enforcement official who worked on terror-finance cases. Still, the Justice Department is not done trying. In a recent court hearing, Gordon Kromberg, the senior federal prosecutor in charge of a long-running probe into Islamic charities based in Northern Virginiaâincluding some whose directors have been associated with Nada and Kadiâsaid that his case was proceeding. âWe expect them to be charged,â Kromberg said in a court hearing, referring to the Islamic charities that have been targets of the investigation. âThere will be indictments coming.â
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/12/2004 6:14:21 PM ||
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U.S. soldiers backed by tanks and helicopters battled fighters loyal to a radical cleric near a mosque in this holy city Wednesday, hours after Iraqi leaders agreed on a proposal that would end his standoff with the U.S.-led forces. As many as 25 insurgents were killed, the coalition said. The cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, urged fighters in Karbala to resist U.S. troops, comparing their struggle to the Vietnam War. "I appeal to the fighters and mujahedeen in Karbala to stand together so as none of our holy sites and cities are defiled," al-Sadr said, speaking at a shrine in Najaf, where he is holed up. "We are prepared for any American escalation and we expect one." Asked how long his forces can fight, al-Sadr said: "Let remind you of Vietnam. We are an Iraqi people that has faith in God, and his prophet and his family. The means of victory that are available to us are much more than what the Vietnamese had. And, God willing, we shall be victorious." It was the first time al-Sadr had appeared before reporters since his militia, Al-Mahdi Army, launched attacks on coalition troops in Baghdad and several other cities in early April. He said American forces were fighting Islam, and not terrorism in Iraq, and he referred to the abuse of Iraqi detainees by U.S. troops at Saddam Husseinâs notorious Abu Ghraib prison. "Look at what they have done. Look what the torture they have committed against our detainees.
How many heads did we cut off again? I forget...
Could anyone who came to rid us of Saddam do this?" al-Sadr said in what was described as an open letter to the American people. The new U.S.-appointed governor of Najaf, Adnan al-Zurufi, said Wednesday he believed his American backers will give another week to efforts to find a peaceful end to the standoff in Najaf before resolving it by force. "If you assess U.S. military movements in terms of territorial gains, then U.S. forces a week from now will enter certain areas of the city that will in turn make the prospect of a peaceful settlement very weak," al-Zurufi said.
Posted by: Sam ||
05/12/2004 2:32:40 PM ||
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#1
"How many heads did we cut off again?"
Well, there were all those in Fallujah, plus Abu Ghraib, plus, lessee...Najaf Karbala and Kut... carry the one...
I get a grand total of zero, but I may have double counted one or two here and there.
Of course, if you use non-Western mathematics you may get a different result.
#2
Sounds like Tater's been listening close to the Donks and their dhimmi-media enablers. Even with the Berg murder, the Democrat-Media complex has not backed off one bit. If they keep this up, the real America is going to rise up and rip some new bungholes in these idiots. I know it's somewhat OT, but Kennedy yesterday just blew me away. He might as well sport a black turban from here on out.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
05/12/2004 17:05 Comments ||
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Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist leader allegedly claiming responsibility for the graphic beheading of a U.S. civilian in Iraq, is adopting an increasingly public and influential role in the decentralized world of Islamic militants, U.S. officials and terrorism experts say.
Wonder if he's having dreams of being Head Turban?
Can't do it. He's not a Soddy. Best he can hope for is Grand Vizir...
On Tuesday, an Islamic Web site released a video titled "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Shown Slaughtering an American," which chronicles the beheading of Nicholas Berg.
On some sites it's also reportedly titled, "Sheikh Abu Musab al-Zarqawi slaughters an American infidel with his own hands",according to one translation.
In the most gruesome moments, five men disguised by head scarves and ski masks shout "Allahu Akbar!" â or "God is great." As recently as March, U.S. officials said al-Zarqawi's modus operandi was not to make taped public pronouncements nor to claim credit for attacks. But that changed five weeks ago when he released what is believed to be his first audiotape â a 33-minute recording in which he called on Sunni Muslims in Iraq to "burn the earth under the occupiers' feet." Then, he claimed responsibility for the attacks on the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad and an Italian police station in Nasiriyah, among others. At least two other tapes involving al-Zarqawi, including the beheading, have followed.
It's almost like he's in charge, or want's to be.
It was unclear whether al-Zarqawi, thought to be an ally of Osama bin Laden, though running his own "Zarqawi network," was shown in Tuesday's video, or whether he was simply claiming responsibility for ordering the execution.
I'd say ordering
The authenticity of the tape, found on a Web site known for carrying militant Islamic messages, also could not be verified Tuesday.
I think that's pretty clear now.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a U.S. intelligence official said authorities were still reviewing the tape to glean information. For some time, the intelligence community has been paying attention to al-Zarqawi, also known as Ahmed al-Khalayleh. The Jordanian has been described as an al-Qaida associate, a senior operations planner and, in Iraq, a leader of a network targeting Americans. A specialist in poisons, he spent time in Afghanistan's camps alongside al-Qaida fighters and other militant Muslims. And, over the years, al-Zarqawi also is thought to have developed ties to terrorist groups ranging from Iraq's Ansar al-Islam to Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
He seems to be Operations Director - Europe/Middle East.
Senior U.S. officials view him as evidence of an evolution under way, as the al-Qaida organization and its affiliates â under siege by the United States â devolve into a more diffuse, less centrally organized network of militants who follow al-Qaida ideology. At a recent congressional hearing, the State Department's counterterrorism director, Cofer Black, named the Zarqawi network on a short list of threats to the United States and its allies as this decentralization takes place. "Literally scores of such groups are present around the world today," Black said. Black said jihadists view Iraq as a "new training ground to build their extremist credentials and hone the skills of the terrorist."
We should make it a place for them to get dead...
Another U.S. official, also speaking Tuesday, said al-Zarqawi had increased the size of his network and his capabilities in Iraq, giving him increasing opportunities to carry out his operations. Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corp. think tank, said he believed al-Zarqawi was after power.
Dreaming of that turban, maybe he knows Binny won't be needing it.
"He is not competing with al-Qaida, but he's emulating it," he said.
He's not competing because he's a senior member.
Last month, al-Zarqawi was sentenced to death in absentia in Jordan for masterminding the 2002 murder of Laurence Foley, a diplomat and administrator of U.S. aid programs in Jordan. Now believed to be in Iraq, al-Zarqawi is thought to be behind at least a dozen high-profile attacks there that have killed hundreds.
He was thought to be in Fallujah, but he's most likely slipped away.
The United States is offering a $10 million reward for information leading to his death or capture.
Need to raise that price, he's more dangerous than Binny.
We need to put a dedicated kill squad on his case. If we don't have one, ask the Israelis if we can borrow one.
Abu Musab Zarqawi, the one-legged Jordanian behind the horrific beheading of a U.S. hostage, has emerged as one of the most dangerous terrorists in the world â and could soon eclipse Usama bin Laden in importance. The slaughter of American Nick Berg was just the latest in a massive series of bloody and spectacular attacks on U.S. and Western interests in Iraq and Europe that have been attributed to the shadowy al-Tawhid network commanded by Zarqawi. With bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, on the run, Zarqawi, who operates separately from al Qaeda, has increasingly taken up the global jihad banner.
Why do they keep saying he's not al-Qaeda?
He has backed up his bid to become the next bin Laden with a massive string of deadly bombings in Iraq and fiendish chemical and poison plots in Europe and the Middle East. Lately, he's been making a series of bin Laden-style statements to Arabic TV stations calling for a religious civil war and the assassination of top U.S. military and civilian leaders in Iraq.
"He is clearly the most active terrorist in the world right now, and what you are seeing is a rise in his stature as well as a rise in his ego," said Jonathan Schanzer, a terrorism analyst for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (search).
"Bin Laden and Zawahiri are hiding out in caves in Waziristan [northwestern Pakistan], so he is going for spectacular operations to seize the spotlight. This is a man who is committed to the utopian vision of the demise of the West and the rise of a radical Islamic world, and he sees Iraq as the main theater of operations to accomplish that goal." More:Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a U.S. official said that authorities were still reviewing the tape to gather information. Among other facets being examined, the official noted that the tape's posted name refers to al-Zarqawi as a ``sheikh'' - an Arab title of respect frequently reserved for religious elders or leaders, not seen in previous public references to him.
If that is the correct translation, Abu just got a promotion. Or gave himself one.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/12/2004 1:25:48 PM ||
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#1
This animal doesn't deserve a trial. Quick execution as you would a rabid animal. I really hope that Dubya let's loose the dogs soon on these animals.
Posted by: Bill Nelson ||
05/12/2004 14:32 Comments ||
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#2
Wonder if he's having dreams of being Head Turban?
Can't do it. He's not a Soddy. Best he can hope for is Grand Vizir...
Sounds like Zarqawi is running for the title of King Sh-t.
Posted by: Alaska Paul in Wales, Alaska ||
05/12/2004 15:12 Comments ||
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#3
"He is clearly the most active terrorist in the world right now, and what you are seeing is a rise in his stature as well as a rise in his ego," said Jonathan Schanzer,
well this is good news, as that rise in ego normally correlates with beginning of their fall.
Posted by: B ||
05/12/2004 17:23 Comments ||
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#4
I hope Zarqawi is in the running for head corpse.
#5
Incredibly, Zarqawi is actually even more stupid than bin Laden when it comes to strategic thinking.
He single-handedly neutralized the Arabs' greatest victory of the war -- the prison scandal -- by beheading Nick Berg.
The man is a real genius.
Unfortunately for the world, his stupidity and lack of vision means he will do something again. Something very bad, because he clearly thinks he will get away with it and that it will further divide us....Very wrong, very dangerous, and very, very stupid.
#6
RMcLeod---I had the same thought today. Here the media is having a sh-tfest with the pics against GWB and the military, and these guys go for the juggler, literally, and destroy the propaganda advantage they have. They did the same with attacks in Turkey and esp Saudi Arabia. In a terrible way they will help accellerate our cause. It ain't pretty, though.
Posted by: Alaska Paul in Nome ||
05/12/2004 21:27 Comments ||
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#7
AP and RMcL: shut the circus down in one day, didn't he? CBS and the WaPost will continue to try and give CPR to the "Abu Graib crisis", but to Americans (excluding the media above) it's a done deal..
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/12/2004 21:39 Comments ||
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The savage beheading of Nick Berg, a 26-year-old American civilian somewhere in Iraq last week by a group of five masked men, brings to mind Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was butchered under similar circumstances in early 2002.
Pearl was murdered by a group of Pakistani jihadi terrorists belonging to the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen-Al Alami and Jaish-e-Mohammad. All are members Osama bin Ladenâs International Islamic Front, whose worldwide activities are now being co-ordinated by Pakistanâs Lashkar-e-Tayiba.
The modus operandi is similar and the denunciation of not only President Bush, but also Pakistanâs military dictator Pervez Musharraf by the killers in their statement read out before beheading Berg, is an indicator of Pakistani jihadi involvement in the killing.
The video-recording of the beheading as displayed on the jihadi web site linked with Al Qaeda was titled âAbu Musab al-Zarqawi shown slaughtering an American.â But reliable sources in Karachi, who had seen the video, say the murder has the clear fingerprints of the three organisations which kidnapped and killed Pearl.
If Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was indeed the person who did the beheading, it proves that these three Pakistani organisations are working in tandem with Abu Musabâs outfit.
Since the beginning of last year, jihadis of these three organisations as well as of Lashkar-e-Tayiba and the dregs of Al Qaeda, particularly its Chechen component, have been moving into Iraq in small groups or in ones and twos through Saudi Arabia as well as possibly Iran. Their objective: to participate in the jihad against the US and bring about its defeat just as they believe they brought about the defeat of the erstwhile USSR in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
These movements to Iraq started during the Haj pilgrimage before the US-led invasion of Iraq last year. Many members of the Harkat and other organisations went to Saudi Arabia under the garb of pilgrims and then crossed into Iraq. More went after the US-led occupation of Iraq, particularly during the recent Haj pilgrimage.
Of the organisations from Pakistan presently operating in Iraq, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is strongly anti-Shia with many years of close association with Abu Musab. The Harkat and Jaish too have a strong anti-Shia streak. The Lashkar-e-Tayiba, however, avoids anti-Shia rhetoric and attacks.
There are conflicting accounts of Abu Musabâs jihadi career. Abu Musab is his kuniyat(assumed name). Al-Zarqawi means from Zarqa, which is a town in Jordan. Abu Musab thus means âfather of Musab of the town Zarqa in Jordan.â
His real name is believed to be Ahmad Fadil Al-Khalailah, which means Ahmad, son of Fadil of al-Khalil, the name that Arabs use for the Israeli town of Hebron. His family apparently migrated to Jordan from al-Khalil (Hebron) and he was born in Zarqa. He also uses the kuniyats Abu Ahmad, Abu Muhammad and Sakr Abu Suwayd.
He fought against Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the late 1980s. After the Soviets withdrew, he returned to Jordan and tried to organise a movement against King Hussein. He was arrested by the Jordanian authorities and jailed for seven years. After his release, he took up residence in Europe and then returned to Afghanistan in 1998.
He was associated with an organisation called the Jamaat al-Tawhid waâl-Jihad [Unity and Jihad Group], whose objective was the overthrow of the monarchy in Jordan and the proclamation of an Islamic Caliphate. The Al Tawhid is believed to have a presence in Europe, independent of Al Qaeda, particularly in Germany, the UK and Spain. It is not known to be a member of the IIF.
On April 23, 2002, German authorities arrested Shadi Abdalla, Mohamed Abu Dhess, Aschraf al-Dagma, Ismail Shalabi and Djamel Moustfa on charges of belonging to al-Tawhid and planning to carry out acts of terrorism in Germany.
The German account of Abu Musabâs jihadi career, according to which he had visited Iran in the past, contradicted the perception of him as anti-Shia. The Jordanian authorities have linked him to Al Qaedaâs Millennium bombing plot targeting the Radisson SAS hotel in Amman as well as other American, Israeli, and Christian religious sites in Jordan and to the October 28, 2002, assassination of US diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman.
Some reports projected him as a close associate of bin Laden, but others claimed that before 9/11, he had his own training infrastructure, independent of Al Qaeda, in Herat in the Kandahar-Jalalabad region of Afghanistan.
His name did not figure often in the accounts of the jihad of the 1980s against the Soviet troops. But it did post-1998, when he was reported to have brought a number of Jordanians to Afghanistan for training, initially in bin Ladenâs training camp and subsequently in his own.
Whenever he visited Pakistan on his way to and back from Afghanistan, he used to stay with Lashkar-e-Jhangvi leaders in Jhang in Punjab and in Karachi.
He was a close personal friend of Maulana Azam Tariq, former head of the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, the Lashkar-e-Jhangviâs political wing, who was assassinated last October.
In his address to the UN Security Council in February 2003, US Secretary of State Colin Powell, said: âIraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lieutenants. Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan war more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialties, and one of the specialties of this camp, is poisons. When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training camp, and this camp is located in northeastern Iraq.â
He then described a camp producing ricin and other poisons, operated by the âradical organization Ansar al-Islam that controls this corner of Iraqâ and added: âHe traveled to Baghdad in May of 2002 for medical treatment, staying in the capital of Iraq for two months while he recuperated to fight another day. During his stay, nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there.
âThese Al Qaeda affiliates based in Baghdad now coordinate the movement of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network, and they have now been operating freely in the capital for more than eight months. Iraqi officials deny accusations of ties with Al Qaeda. These denials are simply not credible. We know these affiliates are connected to Zarqawi because they remain, even today, in regular contact with his direct subordinates, including the poison cell plotters. And they are involved in moving more than money and material.â
Libya, which has sentenced to death five Bulgarian nurses, has imposed a travel ban on six more Bulgarian doctors on charges they wrongly treated their patients, an official said Wednesday.
The names of four of the medics are not known yet, Deputy Foreign Minister Gergana Grancharova said.
She said they reportedly were from the team of Prof. Peter Chervenyakov, a Bulgarian surgeon.
In an interview for the Sofia daily 24 Chasa Chervenyakov said Libyan authorities were investigating a case from last January, in which he made a life-saving operation to a woman, who had been suffering from acute abdominal infection after giving birth by a Caesarian section.
The sixth Bulgarian medic to be imposed a travel ban in Libya is Dr. Anton Botev, also under investigation about the death of a car crash patient, who has been brought clinically dead to a hospital, where he was on duty last Apr. 26.
Last Friday a Libyan court sentenced to death five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor on charges of intentionally infecting with the HIV virus more than 400 children at a local hospital.
The United States and the European Union have denounced the verdict citing its sheer discrepancy with evidence by the worldâs leading AIDS experts, who had testified the Bulgarians didnât cause the infection as it had existed before the hospital hired them.
The Bulgarians are appealing the verdict.
A small faction in Bulgariaâs parliament on Wednesday urged the government to clearly warn the countryâs citizens of the risks they stand by travelling to Libya.
A declaration by the âNew Timeâ faction said each day brought evidence of rising anti-Bulgarian sentiments in Libya and lack of guarantees for the rights and safety of thousands of Bulgarian specialists working there.
Chervenyakov told 24 Chasa that the woman in his case survived thanks to his operation, but a relative of hers launched a legal action against the Bulgarian medical team, which earlier carried out the caesarian.
Chervenyakov said the patientâs condition before the operation was critical, because Libyan doctors had put her a wrong diagnosis and treated her by a wrong medicine.
Libya has employed for decades thousands of foreign professionals _ medics, engineers, IT specialists for lack of its own qualified personnel. Thousands of Bulgarians have worked and are still working there for payment, which is higher than at home.
The troubled Russian province of Chechnya is now in effect being run by the son of Akhmad Kadyrov, the leader who was assassinated at the weekend, an aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday. However, Ramzan Kadyrov will not be able to run for president himself because he is three years under the legal minimum age of 30, said Aslambek Aslakhanov, who advises Putin on his native Chechnya. Ramzan Kadyrov was summoned to Putin's side shortly after his father died in a bombing Sunday, and has been made first deputy to the acting Chechen president, Sergei Abramov -- a 32-year-old accountant who was previously Chechen prime minister.
Ramzan Kadyrov used to head his father's security service in Chechnya, where Moscow has been fighting separatists for a decade, and many analysts have been expecting him to step into his father's shoes. "He is an outstanding figure in Chechnya, he is the de facto leader," Aslakhanov told reporters. "He has authority. It is hard for Abramov ... he knows about finances but does not have enough experience of political authority." But he dismissed speculation that the Kremlin would find a way to let the younger Kadyrov, a bearded boxer aged 27, stand for president in an election set for Sept. 5. "According to the constitution he will not be president, because he is too young ... It is not realistic to hold a referendum to change the constitution," he said. Aslakhanov said he expected Kadyrov to maintain his father's line of refusing to negotiate with rebels on any topic but their surrender. "I do not think Ramzan will depart from the principles laid down by his father," he said. Aslakhanov, who is widely respected in Chechnya for his outspoken criticism of human rights abuses, has also been linked to the presidency. But he dismissed the idea, saying, "I have never had any presidential ambitions."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/12/2004 6:18:06 PM ||
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Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB) of so-called Bangla Bhai has been active underground for the last six years to establish a Taliban-like rule, although the Islamic militant outfit has grabbed the limelight only recently.
The JMJB idealises extremist Islamic leaders and scholars, follows the militant ideals of the routed Taliban of Afghanistan and spearheads a movement based on jihad, JMJB leaders and other people in the northwest told The Daily Star.
To reach their goal, the JMJB with three tiers of workers trained about 10,000 full-time activists across the country and spends up to Tk 7 lakh on them a month.
The activists have orchestrated over 100 operations in different regions, which came to be known as vigilante activities of different hues, including murders and attacks on people who they believe have committed crime. The outfit is blamed for killing at least five people and torturing several others since April 1.
Although the local administration is apparently in the dark about their activities, their 'crusade' against underground outlaws, popularly known as Sarbaharas, in Rajshahi, Natore, Naogaon and Bogra hit sharp media attention in April.
The revelation of both their presence and locations has annoyed the JMJB leaders. The leaders, talking to The Daily Star at the office of the Kachari Koalipara union parishad chairman in Bagmara upazila in Rajshahi, apparently hid a lot of information about their organisation.
They say their organisation is headquartered in Dhaka but declined to give the address. "We don't want to disclose where our head office is. When the time comes, we will inform you," Bangla Bhai said.
The leaders, who declined to name other top leaders and give their addresses, identified themselves with different names and designations to different people.
Bangla Bhai who leads the outlaw cleansing gave conflicting information about himself to different people. In April, he introduced himself as "Azizur Rahman" to journalists. Later it was said his real name is Omar Ali Litu. When the correspondent of The Daily Star asked him his name, he suggested he read newspapers to know it. On insistence, he said: "I am Siddiqul Islam."
On why he assumed different names, he said: "Siddiqul Islam is my real name. Journalists fabricated other names."
Bangla Bhai says he was born to Nazir Hossain Pramanik of Kannipara village in Gabtoli upazila in Bogra. He claimed to journalists he graduated from Rajshahi University in 1995 with a master's in Bangla. But a crosscheck with the university shows there was no student named Azizur Rahman at the Bangla Department in 1995. Asked again, he said: "I studied Bangla at Azizul Haq University College affiliated with Rajshahi University."
"I enrolled at Rajshahi University. But I registered with the college because of various complications," he said without explaining the complications.
As Bangla Bhai was guarded about his school and college education, his senior leader Amir Mowlana Abdur Rahman who was also present during the interview said he (Bangla Bhai) studied at Tarafsartaj Senior Fazil Madrasa.
"I was a Bangla teacher at two top coaching centres in Dhaka. As my students did well in Bangla, the authorities of coaching centres called me Bangla Bhai," he said without naming the coaching centres.
Bangla Bhai denied his reported involvement with Bangladesh Chhatra League. "I supported it when I was in school. As a college student, I joined Islami Chhatra Shibir (an Islamist student organisation allied with Jamaat-e-Islami). When I finished my study in 1995, I quit Shibir because Jamaat accepted female leadership although it said it considered female leadership sacrilege."
Although newspapers portrayed him as the main leader of the anti-outlaw vigilante group, Bangla Bhai is one of the seven members of JMJB's highest decision-making body, Majlish-e-Shura. His party has however designated him as the commander of the anti-Sarbahara venture.
Rahman who heads the highest tier of JMJB moved from his Jamalpur home to Bagmara in Rajshahi after JMJB activities came to light.
The first tier of the outfit has activists called "Ehsar" who are recruited on a full-time basis and act at the directive of higher echelons, the amir said.
The second tier, "Gayeri Ehsar", has over one lakh part-time activists. The third tier involves those who indirectly cooperate with the JMJB.
"We divided Bangladesh into nine organisational divisions," Rahman said. Khulna, Barisal, Sylhet and Chittagong have an organisational divisional office each. Dhaka has two JMJB divisional offices and Rajshahi three.
Residents of Rajshahi, Naogaon and Natore say the Bangla Bhai group roamed around with firearms openly when the JMJB launched the anti-Sarbahara vigilante activities in April. They also wielded swords, other sharp weapons, hammers and hockey sticks. As newspapers exposed their movement, they started lying low.
Locals say they run training camps -- an allegation the JMJB denied. But the leaders admitted that their workers were given physical training and training on sticks for self-defence.
"We are called part of al Qaeda, Taliban or Islamic militant organisation. But we are not like that. We would like to serve people and serve them in line with Hilful Fuzul (a social organisation founded by Prophet Mohammad (SM) to serve the destitute). We try to awaken people's religious feelings to establish their links with the creator," Rahman says.
On why then the JMJB kept its activities under wraps, he said: "We did not want to declare our presence now. We did not want to take police help at the beginning. We wanted to establish the rights of the repressed people."
"Our workers were taking action against criminals with the help of local people. But local people are not enough to fight the underground outlaws," he justifies seeking police help.
The JMJB has strong bases in Khulna, Satkhira, Bagerhat, Jessore, Chittagong, Joypurhat, Rangpur and Bogra and spread its network to most madrasas and other educational institutions in the districts.
The JMJB amir worked at the Saudi embassy in Dhaka between 1985 and 1990. He studied at Madina Islamic University is Saudi Arabia and travelled to India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, among other countries. As recently as last year, he went to Pakistan.
"My travels abroad are no secret. We don't have links with any foreign organisation. Our funds do not come from overseas. We bear our expenses with the money of our workers and supporters," Rahman said.
"We don't have direct links with the Taliban either. The Taliban wanted to establish the ideals of Allah. They did their part with courage," he said.
Asked if the JMJB idealises the Taliban, he said: "Our model includes many leaders and scholars of Islam. But we will take as much (ideology) from the Taliban as we need."
He says his organisation is against the use of force. Nor does it want to go to power as a political party through elections. "If people of Bangladesh give us the responsibility of running the nation, we will accept it."
"We don't believe in the present political trend. We want to build a society based on the Islamic model laid out in Holy Quran-Hadith," Bangla Bhai said. Asked to clarify his model, he said, "Just wait and see."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/12/2004 6:07:32 PM ||
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Arab fighters among Mahdi army recruits
(Al-Mutamar) - A source in al-Husseini hospital in Karbala, who preferred to remain anonymous, said an Arab fighter - Syrian - was among those wounded in clashes between the Americans and the Mahdi army. Residents of the city confirmed the participation of Arab fighters in the clashes. One eye-witness noticed some 30 fighters with Arab complexion talking in non-Iraqi accents and dressed in Mahdi army uniforms wandering in the city. They came from Fallujah after the truce there. They hid themselves in empty areas like garages and squares with huge reeds.
(Al-Mutamar is issued daily by the Iraqi National Congress.)
How would you observe the complexion of 30 masked men? If they were unmasked and in one location why would they let a stranger check their complexion? Is he vending Avon or Clinique products in the neighborhood? It is interesting that the "source" doesnât identify them as Iranian. Maybe Iranian gunmen where a lighter shade of eye shadow.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
05/12/2004 5:11:36 PM ||
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#1
Super H - They got the yen for eyeshadow after seeing those panties on the prisoners heads.
EFL
NORTH DARFUR, Sudan â Racing across the desert in a Toyota Land Cruiser, the Justice and Equality Movement rebel corps looks much like any other rag-tag African militia: all dark glasses, antique-looking guns, and bravado.
But meet with their leaders under the trees of their base camp and a whole different picture emerges: The leadership is a group of thoughtful members of western Sudanâs intellectual community â professors, engineers, and other professionals who have become full-time soldiers to protect their people from genocide. âWe need to get our message out,â JEMâs vice secretary-general, Mohammed Saleh Hamid, said. âWe need help from the United States to stop Khartoum from killing our people and help us create democracy in Sudan. If they provide the ammunition, weâll change the government in Khartoum.â Good idea.
When rebel groups like the Sudan Liberation Army, the nationâs largest group with 13,000 members, and JEM â which has about 8,000 in its ranks â began attacking government targets to show they were serious about change, the president provided a brutal reply. Sudan air force planes bombed villages in Darfur. The government made an alliance with an Arab nomadic tribe known as the Janjaweed and had them drive Darfurâs black Africans out of the region.
Their effort to ethnically cleanse Darfur of its black Africans has been effective. A floating population numbering more than a million is drifting back and forth across the border between Sudan and Chad. Human rights officials say that more than 1,000 black Africans are dying a day in the violence. Not that anyone notices. I mean, naked pyramids!
Few details about JEMâs leadership or what it hopes to achieve in fighting the Khartoum government have been released.
The group has been linked, for example, to Hassan el-Turabi, a backer of Mr. bin Ladenâs. They claim that is misinformation from the Khartoum government. Mr. el-Tarabi fired one of the organizationâs key leaders in the 1990s, and they equate Mr. el-Tarabi with everything that is wrong with Sudanâs government.
âHe was part of the government that was marginalizing the outskirts of Sudan,â said the vice secretary general, Mr. Mohammed. âSudan became a terrorist state at a time when el-Tarabi was in power. We deny his thinking. We want to establish a new Sudan. That was the old Sudan.â
Arab media reacted cautiously Wednesday to the videotaped beheading of an American civilian by Islamic militants in Iraq, with some newspapers conspicuously playing it down or even ignoring it. The biggest pan-Arab satellite television channels broadcast an edited version of the gruesome video, not showing the actual killing of Nick Berg, 26, of West Chester, Pa., a Philadelphia suburb. The businessman was abducted in April. In one of the most explicit displays, Kuwaitâs Al-Siyassah daily ran a photo of a masked militant holding up Bergâs severed head.
The video of the execution was released on the Internet too late for some Middle East newspaper columnists to react to it. The killing, attributed to Abu Musab al-Zarqawiâs group, appalled many Arabs, including Iraqis who said described it as just the latest atrocity in a cycle of violence that is driving them to despair.
Some opinion-makers condemned the killing. âThis shows how base and vile those who wear the robe of Islam have become,â said Abdullah Sahar, a Kuwait University political scientist. Some said it surpassed the American militaryâs abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, which has been the top story for the past 10 days in the Middle East. âWe were winning international sympathy because of what happened at Abu Ghraib, but they come and waste it all,â said Abdullah Sahar, another political scientist at Kuwait University, referring to the Islamic militants responsible for the killing.
In the video, the masked militants said they were taking revenge on Berg because of the abuses at the Baghdad prison. Mustafa Bakri, editor of Al-Osboa weekly newspaper in Egypt, said Bergâs death will only hurt efforts to expose American offenses against Iraqis. âSuch revenge is rejected,â Bakri said of the execution. âThe American administration will make use of such crimes just to cover their real crimes against Iraqis.â Bakri spoke as he took part in a Cairo demonstration by about 50 Egyptian journalists and lawyers against American human rights abuses in Iraq.
Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, the big two satellite networks, aired carefully edited versions of the video. In Al-Arabiyaâs edit, a militant is seen drawing a knife and jerking Bergâs body to one side. The rest is not shown. âThe news story itself is strong enough,â said Jihad Ballout, spokesman for Qatar-based Al-Jazeera. âTo show the actual beheading is out of the realm of decency.â
Lebanonâs private Al Hayat-LBC station led its bulletins Wednesday with the video. Its news presenter said: âWe apologize to our viewers for not showing the entire tape because of the ugliness of the scene.â Kuwait state television broadcast the news of the execution late Tuesday but not the video. Iraqi newspapers reported nothing about the killing, although the story may have broken too late for them. Egyptâs leading daily, Al-Ahram, ignored the beheading Wednesday. Two other major pro-government newspapers ran news agency reports on their inside pages, without photos. An Al-Ahram editor, Ahmed Reda, said the news came too late Tuesday night for the paper to confirm the videoâs authenticity with the U.S. government.
Newspapers in Syria, where the government controls the press tightly, did not report it at all. A professor of journalism at the American University in Cairo, Hussein Amin, said the handling of the story by Egyptâs pro-government papers was political and appropriate. âI think that the government does not want to show this on the front page as a main item because it shows a very poor â poor is not the proper word; disgusting maybe is the better word â example of revenge,â Amin said. âThere is also the threat that it could be happening to other Americans. If they put it on the front page, (it could be seen as) they are favoring this kind of action.â
Jordanian newspapers, state television and radio reported Bergâs killing, but without commentary. Most Lebanese newspapers, such as the left-wing As-Safir, published the report and a photograph of Berg sitting in front of the militants. As-Safir ran the headline: âAl-Zarqawi slaughters an American to avenge Iraqi prisoners.â In many Arab newspapers, the beheading received less display than the news of Americaâs imposing sanctions on Syria and the killing of six Israeli soldiers in Gaza City.
Posted by: ed ||
05/12/2004 2:54:44 PM ||
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#1
Watched ABC news last night. They also refused to show even part of the video as they mentioned it on their way to the their extensvie coverage of the prison humiliation.
Last Friday my oldest uncle, along with his 16-year-old son, visited us, as he used to do this once every month. My uncle is a high school manager and a history teacher at the same time in the same school. I saw that he was wearing a nice suit that I havenât seen him wearing before. I said "Nice suit uncle. Is it new?"
He said "Yes, I bought it about a month ago".
"It must be expensive" I asked and he replied, "Yes it is, but your uncle now can afford it".
Some of the readers may remember me saying something about my uncle. Before the war he was in the same job and he was paid about 15 thousands Iraqi Dinars that was equal to about 7 US$ a month. His wife, who is also a teacher, was paid a little less than that. He has 5 children; one in primary school three in high school and a girl in college. Of course that salary couldnât help him support his family, yet he didnât quit it. He always hoped that things would change for the better. In order to meet life requirements and offer his kids a proper education, he had to work after school. He worked in every kind of business; a taxi driver, a grocer and opened a small shop for a while, but things didnât go quite well.
He had to sell his car first, then his âextraâ refrigerator then the only refrigerator then the TV and then and thenâŠ. The last time we visited him, I had to hold my tears when I entered his house. There was virtually no furniture there, no chairs, no TV no tables, as they sold them all, but what shocked me more is that there were no inside doors. He had to sell those too. I mean his house was literally bare. His kids were ashamed of showing because they had nothing proper to wear. It was amazing how he kept honest and didnât accept bribery from his rich studentsâ families.
Back to where I started, I asked my uncle: "How much do they pay you now? Iâve heard you get a raise."
He answered "Yes I did, I get paid 550 thousands Dinars now" (thatâs about 400$ a month).
"And what about aunt?" I asked, meaning his wife.
"She gets 450 thousands, as she has less years of service".
I said "Good for you! What does it look like now, your life?"
He said, "Uncle, (the word serves both sides) itâs unbelievable. Iâve refurnished my house fully and Iâm looking for a car, but Iâm not in haste as I canât drive now and I want it for Ibrahim (his son) as soon as he can get a driving license". His sons and daughters were always very polite and never asked for anything, they were very understanding to their fatherâs financial difficulties (the right word here should be EXTREME poverty) they were smart and well educated and never asked for something their father couldnât afford.
I said "You mustâve saved quite a good sum of money by now."
He answered "Not that much, Iâm trying to give my sons all that they were deprived of for all those years. Still they donât ask much and I still end up every month with extra money even though I donât touch my wifeâs salary". I must say here that life in Iraq is very cheap compared to most of the world, but that has become a common knowledge I suppose.
My young cousin is a religious Sunni who goes to the mosque and listens to the cleric there every Friday and believes whatever he says, as heâs still young. My uncle always teased his son about this but never prohibited him from doing that. We were talking about different stuff; the kidsâ needs, clerics, Americans and the increase in the average income of most Iraqis. My uncle had some unusual sense of humor that didnât fit quite well in his somewhat religious family. He winked at me and turned to his son and asked him "What do you think of the Americans?"
His son answered, "They are occupiers".
"So you think we should fight them?" his father asked.
Ibrahim said "No, but I donât like them".
My uncle said, pretending to change the subject "Do you like your new computer that no one shares with you?"
"Yes of course dad".
"Ok, are you satisfied with the satellite dish receiver we have or do you need a better one?"
"This one is fine but I heard thereâs a better one that gets more channels"
"ok Iâll get you that next week". Then he said, "Is there anything else youâd like to have son?"
"No dad I have all that I need".
"Ok but how about a car?"
Ibrahim was astounded and said "Really? a..a CAR.. for me!?".
"Of course for you! Iâm too old to drive now and my eyes are not that well and you are the older son. So whom else would it be for!?"
"Oh, dad that will be great! When will that happen?"
"Just finish your exams and youâll have it".
"I will dad".
"Are you happy now son?"
"Yes dad, sure I am!"
"Then why do you hate the Americans you son of a b***h!? I couldnât get you a bicycle a year ago, I could hardly feed you and your brothers and sisters. You didnât know what an apple or a banana tasted like, I couldnât buy you a damned Pepsi bottle except in occasions, and now you can have all that you wish, and a car of your own! Who do you think made that possible!?"
My cousinâs face turned red and didnât answer as we laughed and I said "What do you think Ibrahim?"
He said, "Well itâs true but itâs our money. They are not giving us a charity" and I said "Of course itâs our money, so letâs forget the Billions of dollars they are giving to rebuild Iraq and the efforts they are doing to cut down our debts and lets talk about our money. Why didnât your father, I, my brothers and all the Iraqis have anything worth mentioning before the Americans came?"
He said, "Because Saddam used it to buy weapons and build palaces".
"There you have it Ibrahim, but Americans are not touching our money. Can you tell me whoâs better; the âoccupiersâ who are helping us or the âpatriotâ who did all that you know to us?"
He said in a faint voice "They are better than Saddam but still they are not Muslims".
"So do you want them to be Muslims?"
"I wish they were."
"Will you fight them to that?"
he said, "No, of course not. I donât like fighting."
We didnât want to pressure and embarrass him further and didnât go further, as heâs still young but heâs smart and good-natured and will get it soon.
#1
This brought tears to my eyes. Hopefully, that father will keep his son, and the boy won't be stolen by the (no doubt) Saudi-funded crap he's getting at the mosque.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/12/2004 16:21 Comments ||
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#2
Yeah, lets see what they get if Sadr and his men were their govt., or Al-Qaida...because that is what will happen if we leave.
The coalition leaving Iraq would be disastrous for the 'west', but for muslims even more disastrous.
The dictators and mullahs would feel they could do anything to the people of their nations and there wouldnt be a damn thing ANYONE could or would do about it, because the people like it like that.
They like war, they like Jihad, they like hating the infidel, they like excusing other Muslims of any atrocity and blaming their problems on the infidel.
They would suffer immensely..and you know what the west would say, 'you brought it on yourself', and we would be right.
You had a chance, we did everything you wanted, we ended Iraq sanctions, we got rid of Saddam, we gave you everything you needed to start a free democracy, and you chose not to.
We died for you, we gave much.
We would never forget. We would go on protecting ourselves, but as far as trying to free Muslims or help them have a better life, never again.
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanonâs Hizbollah guerrilla group condemned Wednesday the beheading of an American hostage by Iraqi militants as an ugly crime that flouted the tenets of Islam."Hizbollah condemns this horrible act that has done very great harm to Islam and Muslims by this group that claims affiliation to the religion of mercy, compassion and humane principles," the Shiâite Muslim group said in a statement.
Hizbollah said Bergâs killing had diverted the worldâs gaze from an escalating furor over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by occupation soldiers."The timing of this act that overshadowed the scandal over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in occupation forces prisons is suspect timing that aims to serve the American administration and occupation forces in Iraq and present excuses and pretexts for their inhumane practices against Iraqi detainees."
Posted by: Yosemite Sam ||
05/12/2004 3:44:50 PM ||
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#1
In other words the murder itself is ok. Its the timing of the murder which they condemn.
After all their U.S. 5th column friends (media, Kennedy, Kerry, etc.... ) haven't finished hyping the treatment by a few idiots into a major war crime by Bush and company yet.....
#2
Yeah CrazyFool, and next they'll be saying it wasn't Islamic people at all who did it. It was Bush people dressed up as Iraqi terrorists. And the pathetic things will believe it, too.
OOOOPS!!! After a rereading of the above, we see that Hizbollah said the killing of Berg "evidences" "suspect timing that aims to serve the American administration and occupation forces in Iraq and present excuses and pretexts for their inhumane practices against Iraqi detainees"
Told ya.
And according to Hizbollah, Islam is: "the religion of mercy, compassion and humane principles," so of course no Muslim could've EVER done such a thing.
#6
Like I care what Hezbollah says about this. I think they're miffed because they didn't come up with the idea first.
Posted by: Douglas De Bono ||
05/12/2004 19:38 Comments ||
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#7
DDB, you're so right! They're pissed off b/c they have never thought to FILM their murders. BTW, no one has commented on Hizbollah's comment of "...horrible act that has done very great harm to Islam and Muslims by this group that claims affiliation to the religion of mercy, compassion and humane principles." In other words, if it hadn't done great harm to the "religion of mercy", then go forth and slash more throats!
Posted by: BA ||
05/12/2004 20:17 Comments ||
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The journal gave an insight into Iraqi life
The Baghdad Blog, a book based on an online diary written by an Iraqi man about life during the conflict there, is to be made into a film. Media group Intermedia is searching for a scriptwriter to adapt the book by the man, who calls himself Salam Pax. "Heâs like a Nick Hornby in the middle of a war," Scott Kroopf, chairman of the companyâs film division, told film industry website ScreenDaily.com. Salam Paxâs diary, Dear Raed, became an internet sensation during the Iraq war.
I want Fred to get a deal then too!
Posted by: Yosemite Sam ||
05/12/2004 3:13:04 PM ||
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Ugh.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/12/2004 15:24 Comments ||
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A suspected Taliban assailant tossed a grenade into a Belgium-based aid groupâs office in eastern Afghanistan, shattering windows but causing no injuries, an Afghan police official said Wednesday. The attack on the office of Solidarity Afghanistan occurred Tuesday in Jalalabad, capital of Afghanistanâs eastern Nangarhar province, said Jalalabad Police Chief Haji Ajab Shah. The grenade went off before the office had opened and no one was inside, Shah told The Associated Press by satellite telephone. There was no claim of responsibility. But Shah said "everybody knows that Taliban and al-Qaida do these things." Remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaida are believed to be active in southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan, where theyâve been blamed for attacks on government security forces and aid workers. Shah said the Belgian aid group helps build village roads in Nangarhar, which borders Pakistan.
Nick Berg was "a small (telecommunications) business owner from Pennsylvania, who went to Iraq in December to help rebuild the countryâs infrastructure." Just picked up and left to go pull maintenance jobs around Iraq. On his own, not working for any corporation, which is very unusual.
"Friends and family of Berg said he was a "free spirit" who wanted to help others â working in Ghana, in one example..."
"Mr Berg was apprehended by Iraqi officials near the northern city of Mosul on March 24, according to his father, who claims that he was then interrogated by FBI agents. Mr Berg was released on April 6, a day after his parents filed a lawsuit in federal court naming defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld as a defendant, and claiming that their son was being unlawfully held. They last heard from him on April 9."
The US strongly suggested to him that he should leave the country.
One month later he was kidnapped and killed.
He had been "trying to leave Iraq", according to his parents, while just coincidentally hanging out near some of the most violent parts of the country.
**Flashback**
[From "The Israeli Spy Scandal"]
Israel set up government subsidized telecommunications companies which operate in the United States. One of these companies is Amdocs, provides billing and directory assistance for 90% of the phone companies in the USA.
Amdocsâ main computer center for billing is actually in Israel and allows those with access to do what intelligence agencies call "traffic analysis"; a picture of someoneâs activities based on a pattern of who they are calling and when.
Another Israeli telecom company is Comverse Infosys, which subcontracts the installation of the automatic tapping equipment now built into every phone system in America.
Comverse maintains its own connections to all this phone tapping equipment, insisting that it is for maintenance purposes only. However, Converse has been named as the most likely source for leaked information regarding telephone calls by law enforcement that derailed several investigations into not only espionage, but drug running by a major Israeli ecstacy ring as well.
Yet another Israeli telecom company is Odigo, which provides the core message passing system for all the "Instant Message" services..."
Can we PLEASE have a moratorium on the unsourced stories?
Oh, and "The Israeli Spy Scandal" is from the "whatreallyhappened" site, an antisemitic conspiracy nutzoid cesspool. Naturally they'd be trying to find a way to slander a murder victim.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/12/2004 13:36 Comments ||
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#5
China's Huawei Technologies is an up-and-coming provider of networking equipment, with $4B in sales. The company is run by an ex-PLA officer and has received substantial funding from the PLA. Is it possible that every router or switch sold by Huawei contains Trojan horse code that can be turned on by the Chinese military to tap into sensitive network traffic on a worldwide basis? Sure. But for some reason, people have seen fit to focus on the activities of Israeli companies, rather than that of Chinese companies. Note that China's foreign policies contributed to the deaths of 100,000 GI's during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and its sales of weaponry to the al Qaeda and the Taliban were calculated to help Muslims defeat the US in Afghanistan.
By the way, it is a fallacy of logic to assume that just because China spies on the US, Israel does not. Plus, I must object to the assumption that the murder of Nick Berg would be any the less loathsome were he an Israeli spy. Even if the US had advised him to leave Iraq and he continued to put himself in harm's way out of duty. But why, I ask, are you so grievously offended at the suggestion that he was a spy?
#9
1) Not his "place of employment", it is *his* business. 2) He went to Iraq as an individual, not as an employee of a company, which is quite unusual for any contractor. 3) He has traveled to other 'difficult' destinations before, for whatever reasons. 4) He was detained by the FBI, though a statement has now been released that it was "Iraqi authorities" that detained him, which goes against his statement, according to his parents. 5) After his release, it was suggested that he leave the country immediately. He remained for an entire month. His parents said that he "was trying to leave." 6) What does a guy have to do to be a spy around here? Show their "official spy ID card"?
If the above does not suggest to you, by a preponderance of the evidence, that he was engaged in activities so outrageously unlike any other legitimate contractor in Iraq, that his motivations should be questioned, then you are either blithely unaware of what spies are and do, or you are in denial.
Once again, this in no way impugns his character, celebrates or apologizes for his murder or his murderers. So why, exactly, do you so vehemently object to the supposition?
#10
Anonymoose: If the above does not suggest to you, by a preponderance of the evidence, that he was engaged in activities so outrageously unlike any other legitimate contractor in Iraq, that his motivations should be questioned, then you are either blithely unaware of what spies are and do, or you are in denial.
He is unlikely to have been a spy because an an espionage operation, the whole setup stinks. The guy goes around openly proclaiming his Jewish faith by wearing a kipah wherever he goes. This is not what Mossad agents do, especially in places like Iraq, where Zionist conspiracy theories abound. Israel has plenty of brown-skinned Arabic-speaking Sephardic Jews from Iraq who can blend in like natives - it doesn't have to send non-Arabic-speaking lily-white Ashkenazic Jews like Berg who stick out like sore thumbs into a war zone like Iraq. Berg sounds like an idealist who decided to do some kind of freelance Peace Corps effort in Iraq, without realizing that enough of the locals are unfriendly to make any such venture hazardous.
#11
(#10) Nice, Zhang Fei! "The guy goes around openly proclaiming his Jewish faith by wearing a kipah wherever he goes. This is not what Mossad agents do . . ."
Do you have time to respond to #8? Because I'm curious. And that was "predictable" (oops) wild card . . . why don't people care about China? Sometimes makes Islamofascism look tame by comparison.
#12
#9 - Why object? Because it still reads to me as a "he had it coming" story. Sorry. It does. Send it back to re-write if you don't like my assessment.
#13
This poor kid was so innocent it hurts me. As I understand it, he truly believed the US was there to build a better Iraq and he wanted a bit of adventure, profit and to be a part of history.
His actions would be pretty consistent with that explanation; they'd be pretty inconsistent with the actions of a spy. In fact, they'd be the actions of a pretty incompetent spy. Yet, anon, you'd rather choose to believe he's an incompetent spy more than you'd choose to believe he's merely an innocent who could not fathom the depths depravity of the ROP.
Using your loose logic framework, where connections can be made between two data points for whatever reason, I therefore conclude that YOU must be a spy. Why? Because you are shifting suspicion onto Berg. And if you deny it, that proves it!!!
#14
So why, exactly, do you so vehemently object to the supposition?
Because it makes sense only to an idiot?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/12/2004 17:00 Comments ||
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#15
Zhang Fei: that is the first mention of his wearing a kipah I have heard, source? This, other than the demand for sources from me seems to be the first non-judgemental or ad hominem post yet, and a good point.
Crawford seems to be in an utter denial mode, though. To test: Crawford, does Israel 1) Possess nuclear weapons, which they deny? 2) Does Israel have a ballistic missile facility called "Jerico II", which they deny? 3) Does Israel have a stated policy of assassination of Hamas leaders, which they don't deny? 4) Does Israel have an intelligence organization popularly known as "MOSSAD"? 5) Are you capable of answering these questions, or can you only spew invective, mis-state information, and make crude efforts to change the subject? 6) Will you now accuse me of making an ad hominem attack against you for accusing you of making ad hominem attacks against me?
#16
See Kesher talk - not sure about the kippah, but he was apparently wearing Tzitzit (a fringe at the edge of ones garment, associated with observant, usually orthodox - though Berg was Conservative - Jews) he was clearly NOT hiding his jewishness at all.
#18
Moosy, why would you expect "non-judgemental" responses? You posted crap, it got the appropriate response.
What the hell is the point of your questions? I'm not denying anything; I have no doubt Israel has agents in Iraq; they'd be stupid not to. What I think is idiotic is your argument:
1. Berg owned a telecommunications business.
2. Berg was Jewish.
3. Some people think some Israeli telecommunications companies are used by the Mossad.
4. Therefore, Berg was an Israeli agent.
It's utter bullshit. You're taking two very broad facts and an unsubstantiated accusation and trying to make a conclusion from it.
Point by point:
1. "Berg owned a telecommunications business". What type of business? Did he write telecomm software? Maintain phone switches? Resell equipment? Design office/building wiring plans? Do office/building wiring? How many employees did he have? Was he the sole employee?
"Telecommunication business" covers an immensely broad range. It's like saying "food service business" -- a term that includes fast food joints, five-star restaurants, chef supply companies, produce distributors, and frou-frou boutique farms.
2. "He was Jewish" Yeah, so? That alone was excuse for the jihadis, even if he had just stayed at home. This is pertinent only because you use it to link him to Israel.
3. "Israeli telecomm companies may be used by Israeli intelligence" And US intelligence has used mining companies; does that mean all US mining companies are involved in intelligence work? Or how about Italian restaurants? The mob's used them as fronts; does that mean all Italian restaurants are mob fronts?
More important, from the latest story you linked to, it appears Berg was working with microwave relay towers or something like them. The Israeli firms you're using as your link are telecommunications services companies, doing billing and data processing. Yes, they're both "telecommunications", but they're as different as night and day.
4. "Therefore Berg was an Israeli agent". You make this leap because you apparently want to; as I've pointed out, your "evidence" is so thin it's pathetic.
More important, you want us to believe that Israel sent an agent to Iraq who:
o Was a poor fit for the region, as he didn't look like the natives and barely spoke the native language, even though more appropriate agents were available.
o Openly professed his Judaism in a country that believes all sorts of bizarre conspiracy theories about Jews.
o Visited his brother-in-law's brother while in-country.
It makes no sense, and makes less sense the more we learn.
(And I REALLY don't get the point of your questions. What's the point of them?)
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/12/2004 18:49 Comments ||
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#19
I think the most important thing is not whether he is an Israeli spy or not, but whether the people who held him thought he was.
#20
They'd think I'm an Israeli spy, and I'm not Jewish and have never been to Israel. They see Israeli spies behind everything, even the stuff they did themselves.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/12/2004 21:04 Comments ||
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#21
True.
I'm just wondering if the Iraqi police worked with the jihadis to murder him.
If so, it sure is disheartning, but I guess I shouldn't think that Iraqi's will be any different that their Jew-hating Muslim brethren.
#22
Crawford, first of all, I didn't even mention that he was a Jew in the original piece. You are the one who seems fixated on that, *and* that it somehow has some bearing on this situation.
"Some people" who think that certain telecom businesses were funded in the US with the express purpose of espionage include the FBI. They busted them along with the several dozen "Israeli Art Students" ring, though they remain in operation.
You seem utterly transfixed with ONLY TWO of the many factors taken into account. This effort, to first underdefine my argument, then "refute" it *because* it is underdefined, is pretty silly.
Lastly, you probably didn't even notice the "Other Odd Stuff" link I posted above. It, along with lots of other very bizarre and paradoxical news items, have been coming through the major news services for the better part of a day now.
Add to it that bizarre, tasteless and funky video of his execution, which itself is full of weirdness, like that screaming woman's voice possibly dubbed on after it was shot.
The bottom line is that you say the supposition that he might have been a spy for Israel is crap. Do you think it is crap because he may have been a spy for Israel? Would it have been any different if he had been a Jewish spy for France? Or a Catholic spy for France?
I am still convinced, and possibly the FBI in Iraq were suspicious, that Nick Berg may have been a spy. Taking all of the above mentioned factors into account, not just the select few that you want to take into account, the theory is a reasonable one.
I donât have a URL but I donât see any good analysis on this and I wonder if anyone else has.
al-Zarqawi doesnât need much money for video and he doesnât need much money for food and I think he probably has plenty of stockpiled bombs.
However, he needs money, probably a lot of money, to pay his lackeys enough to avoid them going to the coalition for the reward money; he also probably needs to bribe whoever he is staying with to keep quiet. Even more, he needs real money not the old dinar. Its not easy to get lots of money in Iraq these days for al Q on its own because of all the currency and banking controls. There must be:
1. couriers (we apparently caught a few of these but they either didnât know where al-Z was or didnât tell us soon enough)
2. sources giving to couriers - do some rich Saudis still contribute to this kind of thing even with the heat they must be feeling these days; could Iran be risking totally ticking off the Shia or Iraq by funding this guy; could he have gold bars stolen (or donated) from the Baathists; could their be a rouge leftist coalition in the west that is donating in the hopes of killing Americans?
#3
Ledeen Feb. 2003 article:
Important orders came via courier from Iran, as did money and forged documents. And, on at least three known occasions, the head of Zarqawi's German operation traveled to Iran to meet with Zarqawi in order to get instructions.
Read the whole thing. A lot of interesting stuff.
I also remenber reading a few days ago a Zarqawi meatbomb was arrested (a year ago?) in Germany and was turned to give testimony against other terrorists. He said that mosques in Europe were collecting cash and couriers were smuggling it to Al Qaeda, Al Taweed (Zarqawi), and Palestinian groups. Then of course there is the traditional Middle East mosque and charity funding .
Posted by: ed ||
05/12/2004 13:40 Comments ||
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#4
Ed/Dutchgeek
I think the situation is a bit different today than when Ledeen wrote his article (which was before the ouster of Saddam after all). I don't doubt that mosques collect money and some of the money thus collected goes to terrorism. I don't doubt that Al Q makes $ off drug sales. However, shipping currency to Iraq isn't the same now as it was back then. For one thing Saddam's not in charge. For another thing the currency itself has changed. The banking system in Iraq has some semblance of controls and there are people on the border watching for currency and drugs both going in and going out. By the way, using internal Iraqi drug sales to finance terrorism ops is very, very risky since dopers talk easily.
More importantly, in 2003, Al Z didn't have as heavy a cost problem (the cost of contented lackeys); the reward for capturing him is pretty recent.
#2
I wonder how much gun sex was going on during the car swarm that followed the explosion, and whether those stray bullets are responsible for the death of a salesman.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/12/2004 13:10 Comments ||
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#3
Death of a Salesman?
Arthur Miller play redux a la Gaza?
Posted by: Alaska Paul in Wales, Alaska ||
05/12/2004 15:04 Comments ||
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Violence has flared for a second day in the northern Nigerian city of Kano despite a huge security presence. Riots spread to suburbs not secured by police, after an overnight curfew was lifted. Police say 10 people have died but other reports have higher figures. Thousands of people have fled their homes after Muslim youths went on the rampage burning homes and vehicles.
They are demanding that the government take action after a massacre of Muslims last week by a Christian militia.
"Yeah, we hold the franchise on massacres around here!"
Islamic leaders in the mainly Muslim town of Kano have joined Nigeriaâs president in urging calm. More than 10,000 people have been killed in ethnic, religious and political violence in the country since the end of military rule in 1999.
Eyewitnesses say that large mobs of young men were specifically targeting Christians, however this was denied by Kanoâs police commissioner.
That makes him either a gutless political hack or a member of the ROP.
But thousands of Christians have been fleeing Kanoâs suburbs, including Sharada industrial district, seeking safety. "Many people have been killed in Sharada, but we have not been able to bring out their bodies, because we had to look to our own lives," 37-year-old foundry worker Joshua Adamu told AFP news agency.
The mob violence was sparked by a peaceful protest on Tuesday against the recent killing of hundreds of Muslims at the hands of Christian militants in central Plateau State. The demonstration was called to issue a seven-day ultimatum to President Olusegun Obasanjo to deal with the situation or face the consequences. Tension has spread to other parts of the mainly Muslim north.
In Kaduna, security has been beefed up, with some 40 different groups holding discussions about security with the state governor.
In Bauchi State, the governor has assured Christian groups of their safety after leaflets were distributed given them until Friday to leave the state.
"thar ain't room in this state for youse infidels, ya'll better git while the gittin' good!"
President Obasanjo told Muslim clerics in the capital Abuja. "I will appeal to you to restrain our Muslim brothers... because if you go for an eye for an eye, this country will be bloody." A leading Kano Muslim cleric, Ibrahim Kabo, has urged the federal government to prevent further killings of Muslims in Plateau. Mr Kabo warned that if the government did not act, Muslims would "have no option but to defend themselves".
Helen James, aged 40, said that their housing estate had been "totally burned."
"My husband and his brother have been badly hurt, they have so many knife wounds in their back. They have been taken to the hospital. We donât know whether they are dead or alive," she wept.
Reuters news agency reports that some members of the Christian minority gathered in the central Sabon Gari (foreignersâ town) district and burned a mosque in retaliation for the burning of several churches by Muslims on Tuesday. "A lot of people in Sabon Gari are armed with guns and machetes daring the Muslim militia to attack," eyewitness Jackson Kentebe said.
"Bring it on!"
"Everywhere, people have taken the laws into their own hands," said Abdul Damini Daudu, a police official. Nigeriaâs combined Christian and animist communities are roughly equal in size to its Muslim population, with the Christians living predominately in the south.
TOKYO â Japan is keeping a close watch on the Netherlands after Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende suggested Tuesday his government may consider pulling Dutch troops from Iraq in the wake of the killing of a Dutch soldier there.
Dutch troops are in charge of the security in the southern Iraqi city of Samawah, where 550 Japanese troops have been deployed for humanitarian assistance. mmmhhh, well the Duth could stay till june 30, stay ofcourse in 3feet thick walled bunkers, they are not that chicken.
Posted by: Murat ||
05/12/2004 8:32:16 AM ||
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#1
Hey, at least they're not trying to keep Iraq a violent hell hole like the Turks are.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/12/2004 11:48 Comments ||
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#2
Move the Japanese to Free Kurdistan. There will be plenty of Kurds willing to provide security.
Posted by: ed ||
05/12/2004 12:06 Comments ||
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#4
That's right Docob, and Turkey was backstabbed by the EU after supporting their cause over ours.
Posted by: Charles ||
05/12/2004 12:35 Comments ||
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#5
notice the change in tone here, Murat? Remember how rantburger's used to give Turkey the benefit of the doubt? Used to say their military will step in, used to say they are more "modern" than other Islamic countries. Used to say how "democracy" works in Turkey.
Notice how you don't hear that anymore?? Now they just think you are another Islamic sink hole...not as bad as the others..but given time I'm sure your country won't disappoint. At least I think that's true, since I've only started paying attention to your country since 911 and you are the only Turk I know.
I said long before your country stabbed us in the back, that I could see it coming. I think I saw it because I didn't have the same preconceived notions as those who remember the Turkey that was more secular and less fanatically Islamic than it is now. Thus, I could see the back-stab coming from a mile away.
Just FYI, this change in tone you see, on rantburg, in Lilkes, and creeping it's way into polite society repesents America as a whole. You see our media and read our papers and think that we are the same America we used to be - just like some rantburgers still think Turkey is the same old Turkey it used to be. But we've both made permanent changes of attitude.
The American people are one, maybe two steps away from giving up, forever on being "Mr. Nice Guy". So preen prattle, shame and blame while you still can...I assure you that when you use up the goodwill of our nation, you will not be entitled that luxury anymore. Enjoy.
Posted by: B ||
05/12/2004 12:44 Comments ||
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#6
Agreed, Charles ... I use France as shorthand for Old Europe, but now that Spain seems to have (re)joined that club as well I guess I'd better start casting a wider net
#8
I used to think Turkey was a stronger NATO ally than the likes of Denmark and Norway, and when all the fuss was underway last year I didn't really worry about it too much. I figured that after all the stupid negotiating over the troop passage was done Turkey would be right there with the US.
I was wrong and I'm not going to forget that.
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
05/12/2004 13:20 Comments ||
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#9
"Used to say their military will step in, used to say they are more "modern" than other Islamic countries. Used to say how "democracy" works in Turkey. "
Ah, the ability to hold contradictory opinions at the same time. If the military had stepped in, it would be *then* that they wouldn't have been any more modern or any more democratic than other Islamic countries. The fact that the military didn't "step in" (aka impose the kind of pro-US dictatorship that some people over here prefer over democracy) is *itself* the reason that Turkey is better than most other Muslim countries.
A democratic Iraq won't necessarily follow US orders either. Not even when you really *really* want them to do so. You may one day ask a democratic Iraq, "Let our troops pass through in order to invade Iran", and they may say "No". And the ability to say "no" will be be a *good* thing, even if it is inconvenient for the USA.
And Charles, EU hadn't promised anything to Turkey regarding her role in Iraq, so it hardly backstabbed her. At most it seems that some individual French (and perhaps other) politicians had promised things they didn't have any authority or right to promise. Learn to distinguish between EU as a whole, its individual member states, and individuals within those member states.
#10
Aris, we weren't asking anyone to follow orders. We were asking them to honor an alliance that has lasted nearly 60 years.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/12/2004 20:26 Comments ||
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#11
Robert> I know. And for that they may be called ungrateful or even backstabbing, if you wish. But it has nothing to do with how functional their democracy is, nor how much of an Islamic hellhole or not they are.
#12
Turkey needed the US in case the USSR (Russia their traditional enemy for hundreds of years) were to invade. The US needed Turkey to contain the USSR and keep them out of the Mediterranean. After the USSR broke up, the rationale of the alliance disappeared (much like the rest of NATO).
Posted by: ed ||
05/12/2004 20:55 Comments ||
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#13
Aris, as usual - you write before you read. Or maybe you just didn't understand my point.
I'll keep it short since you don't seem to be able to digest more than one or two sentences. Americans are just now beginning to grasp the barbarian nature of what we are up against. The concept used to be foreign to us and we have had a hard time grasping it. It's beginning to sink in now and we have changed. We have misjudged others, but they have misjudged us. We are mighty. When our goodwill is exhausted - which it will be after one or two more events - the rest of the world will feel our mighty, mighty wrath.
I am sad today. I am sad that the barbarians have stripped of us of our blissful ignorance - but I am sadder at the prospect of what awaits the world once our goodwill is exhausted.
Enjoy what's left of it while it lasts. This war hasn't even started yet.
Posted by: B ||
05/12/2004 22:40 Comments ||
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I have just received an e-mail from Army Spc. Joe Roche, who was briefly able to take a break from the thick of the fighting against Al-Sadrâs forces in Iraq to tell us what he is seeing and experiencing.
...
I ask that the American people be brave. Donât fall for the spin by the weak and timid amongst you that are portraying this battle as a disaster. Such people are always looking for our failure to justify and rescue their constant pessimism. They are raising false flags of defeat in the press and media. It just isnât true. snip
Now we today are in a climactic battle against him and his militia. When the remnants of Saddamâs regime were in full uprising in Fallujah, Sadr thought his time had come to make his bid for total power and to oust the US from Baghdad. He was very wrong.
It has been subtle and very well done by our leaders. You should be proud. It would have seemed impossible to have achieved our four main goals against Sadr even just a few months ago. Now today, despite the message of the pessimists who are misleading you into despair, we are have scored all the victories needed to bring this battle to a close. First goal was to isolate Sadr. Second was to exile him from his power-base in Baghdad. Third was to contain his uprising from spreading beyond his militias. And the last goal was to get both his hard-line supporters to abandon him, and to do encourage moderates to break from him. This has been done brilliantly, and now we are on the march in a way that just months ago seemed impossible to do. Sadr is losing everything.
Goal one: His so-called Mahdi Army militia is fighting alone. We are out defeating them day and night, and all the time we find them exposed and vulnerable. The people of Baghdad, Karbala and Najaf are not supporting him. His forces are isolated.
Goal two: His one-time powerbase, Sadr City in Baghdad, has been lost. Sadr has been exiled from there, and we have him on the run. He is trying to cloak his presence and activities in Najaf and Kut as planned, but that is damage control on his part. Yes we confront pockets of his followers. Just a couple days ago, I had to maneuver around such a crowd of 300 in Sadr City. The point is, though, we operate in Sadr City, and his followers are merely trying to raise the lost cause of his. It is perhaps better to understand why he is able to mobilize groups like this by seeing him as a mafia leader who is just sacrificing his own people in a mad last plunge to grab onto power. He is no different from any other thug in the world who manipulates and betrays his followers for his own lost cause. The critical thing to see, however, is that in Baghdad, Sadr is gone. He has been effectively exiled and we are destroying his one-time properties of power and abuse there.
Goal three: Other Shia leaders are breaking from him now in large numbers. The overall Shia leader of Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has left Sadrâs call for jihad and uprising to flounder on deaf ears. Bremmer and Gen. Abizaid stunned the overall Shia community by negotiating a calm in Fallujah. That has tail-spinned Sadr and his efforts to intimidate Iraqâs Shia leaders. They see the US hand is strong, and that therefore they are making a mistake in kowtowing to Sadrâs terror and violence.
Sadr is now running scared in Najaf. This is great. The Iraqi people of Najaf are offended by this Baghdad thug coming to their city and trying to hijack them into conflict with us. His militias have moved into Karbala too, and the same sentiment is being expressed by the people there. Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia are occupiers of those cities, and are insulting the most sacred sites of Shia Islam daily in their actions. Sadrâs forces have stockpiled weapons in mosques and schools, and he continuously is going into the Imam Ali Mosque to call for jihad against us. This is offending Iraqâs Shia leaders very much, and the Shia people are not following.
Our units, in fact, are operating w/in 500 meters of the most sacred Shia religious sites in these cities, and you should notice that the local people are not resisting. This is what the pessimists amongst you are preventing you from understanding. Something like this would have been impossible before Sadr and his militia thugs went into there to hijack Iraqi Shia Islam. The people of Najaf and Karbala know we are not there to conquer and occupying the religious sites; we are there to liberate them from this would-be tyrant who is trying to hijack them. His uprising has been contained, despite Sadrâs desperate efforts to expand.
Goal four: Now Sadrâs patrons and mentor in Iran are breaking from him. Grand Ayatollah Hossain Kazzam Haeri in Qom, Iran, is no longer backing him and has instead made it clear that Sadrâs uprising is not sanctioned. Haeri is his mentor, and was a close intimate to Sadrâs respectable father. The Teheran Times has run stories that are largely exaggerated, but still are making clear that Sadrâs uprising is counter to Iranian interests and does not have the support of even one of Iranâs grand statesman, Hashemi Rafsanjani.
In lieu of this, Sadr has exploded increasingly desperate and offensive. On Friday, he offended perhaps the whole Muslim world when he issued a fatwa (a religious edict) that if his forces in Basra capture a female British soldier, they can keep her as a slave. And as I pointed out already, his militia thugs in Najaf and Karbala are keeping weapons in mosques and schools. snip
Donât be seduced by those who would rather that we sit back and just enjoy the freedoms past generations of Americans have sacrificed to gain for us. This is our time to earn it. I remember President Bush saying after the September 11th attacks: "The commitment of our Fathers is now the calling of our time."
Posted by: Mr. Davis ||
05/12/2004 11:41:05 AM ||
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Great post. The lesson to be learned here is, despite all the media doom and gloom, our forces and leaders work up a new plan, and keep on task to its successful conclusion.
It was the same thing during the assault phase, when the media were saying all is lost because of attacks on our convoys. Our forces saw the problem and corrected.
If we heeded seriously the media hysteria, we would all be indulging in Jim Jones Kool-Aid.
Posted by: Alaska Paul in Wales, Alaska ||
05/12/2004 12:17 Comments ||
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#2
I knew sadr was done once we started to hear stories about the public rejection of him weeks ago in Najaf.
Regarding Fallujah I gotta say I disagreed with the plan there to hand control to this Iraqi militia... but it's been suprisingly quiet there. The question is are they just regrouping for another uprising or have they decided that the price is to high and the alternative (to submit) isn't so bad. We'll see over the coming months. Time is on our side though... as Iraq becomes more autonomous and the population more content with the growing economy the support for these thugs will continue to drop. It's a tough balance we need to strike and I'm willing to wait to see how Fallujah plays out before yelling and screaming that the admin blew it...
There are forces (Iran and maybe the UN/EU) that are trying to get Sadr a deal where he pretends to disband his troops in return for a postponement of his arrest (or even better terms).
#4
Fallujah is still very much a work in progress. Until the "Fallujah Brigade" rounds up the heavy weapons and arrests those Darwin Award candidates who were stupid enough to pose for pictures while mutilating the bodies of Americans, the Marine cordon should stay in place.
As for Sadr's Mehdi Army, their ongoing role as live targets in the Marine and Army Sniper Shooting Range has to be truly depressing. Constant unanswered attrition can break the will of even the most fanatical groups. Also the implication of the increasing willingness of US forces to take mosques under fire coupled with the complete destruction of said mosques when the munitions cached within detonate is not lost on the Grand Ayatollahs. They're going to cut their losses and very soon Sadr is going to wake up dead.
#5
It has indeed become clear that we are having great success in countering Sadr and his "army" of thugs. Dealings with the Shia leadership with real popular support has been brilliant. And now this email confirms what has been evident for a while; a great victory is being achieved at the very time the presstitutes are wallowing in defeatism. There are lots of details added by our brave soldier that I did not know. What a terrific post!
#6
Don't miss the real point of Fallujah: we demonstrated to the Shia that we WOULD negotiate with the Sunnis, on our terms. That definitely changed the state of play.
They began to wonder whether letting Sadr go too far would lead the US to ally ourselves with their Sunni enemies, thereby denying them their rightful place as the majority "party" in Iraq.
It was great move by us, even if Fallujah eventually goes up again. Oh, and there was the little thing of us basically slaughter those who stood against us in Fallujah. We had the power and we used it, first to wipe them out, then to negotiate on OUR terms.
Sadr is also an annoying usurper, that's helped too. But it was Fallujah that changed things.
We're not as "stupid" as our enemies think...but let them continue to think that...their funeral.
Government forces killed a top militant leader during a raid early on Tuesday on his hideout in Jammu and Kashmir, police said. Identified by police as Shakeel Ansari of the Hizbul Mujahideen, the largest Kashmiri militant group, he put up a brief gunfight in Pandachh, a village on the outskirts of Srinagar, according to K Rajindra, a senior police officer. Rajindra said Ansari was the second top militant leader to be killed by security forces in less than a week. Paramilitary forces claimed to have killed Abdul Rashid, a top military commander of the group, last Thursday. Ansari was Rashidâs deputy, Rajindra said. However, the police claim could not be independently verified. Last week, Hizb said Indian forces had killed Rashid in a fake encounter after capturing him. Authorities denied the charge and said he was killed during a raid at a home on the outskirts of Srinagar.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
05/12/2004 2:30:15 AM ||
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a day's work, a day's pay, but a little bonus for this one ;-)
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/12/2004 22:10 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
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