to submit your comments TODAY regarding our rights to political speech.*
RedState.org has all the details.
Some comments from the "reform" group:
"Finally, we do not believe anyone described as a "blogger" is by definition entitled to the benefit of the press exemption. An individual writing material for distribution on the Internet may or may not be a press entity. While some bloggers may provide a function very similar to more classic media activities, and thus could reasonably be said to fall within the exemption, others surely do not . The test here should be the same test that the Commission has applied in other contexts - is the entity a "press entity" and is it acting in its "legitimate press function"?"
Follow RedState's links and do you part to keep our first amemndment rights.
*I just wanted to note that this posting is from me personally and may not necessarily reflect the editorial view of Rantburg or Fred Pruitt.
#1
I've done it and it's a good idea. Let these jerks know this isn't Europe.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
06/03/2005 16:12 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Even if blogging is not journalism, why would the FEC or any form of government be needed to regulate the forum? Will they regulate what I say to my mom on the phone as well?
Posted by: Super Hose ||
06/03/2005 16:14 Comments ||
Top||
#3
If John Kerry and John McCain have their well, they will do just that.
Posted by: too true ||
06/03/2005 16:16 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Thanks for the link - why should George Soros enjoy more rights than Glenn Reynolds, Roger Simon, Charles Johnson, Andrew Sullivan, Mickey Kaus, Dan Darling, etc.?
#5
What if the blog says in one story, for example, about the NCAA top ten in college football and in the next sez Hillary sux? Do FEC rules apply to it?
#6
Here's a link to some of the responses to the request for comments. Ironically one of the better ones was filed jointly by Kos and Atrios: credit where credit is due.
A blog post that sez "whatever you do, blog readers, do NOT go to georgewbush dot com, don't give them money, don't get your friends and family to vote for him."
#8
It's clear that our political system is awash in money and influence.
I don't know of a single approach to managing large amounts of money and attempts at influence that works better than freely letting it happen - and publicizing every detail.
They can work, but only until the Feds decide it's worth breaking through them. So expect to need to be open in opposition .....
Posted by: too true ||
06/03/2005 18:22 Comments ||
Top||
#11
From what I understand, most blogs are essentially on-line diaries. If the FEC wants to regulate a hundred thousand sites containing the angst-filled musings of spotty thirteen-year olds, I wish them joy of it. Some things just aren't worth doing.
Two Belfast men were charged Friday in the IRA-linked knife slaying of a Catholic man and the injury of his friend outside a pub earlier this year, the first breakthrough in a case that has overshadowed Northern Ireland's peace process for months. A 49-year-old man will face a charge of murdering Robert McCartney, while a 36-year-old man will be charged with the attempted murder of Brendan Devine, police said. The arraignment was set for Saturday in Belfast Crown Court.
McCartney's sisters — who have taken their campaign to the White House and the European Parliament — said they were stunned by the news — but emphasized that their mission for justice still had a long way to go. "We hope it will lead to further arrests, because there were more than two people involved. We still have a long way to go in terms of a trial and convictions," said Catherine McCartney. "We are happy this has happened, but we know it is by no means over."
The Irish Republican Army initially denied involvement, then admitted its members committed the attack after facing public pressure from McCartney's five sisters and fiancee. Since then members of the IRA and its allied Sinn Fein party have faced criticism internationally for allegedly covering up evidence and refusing to cooperate with the police investigation.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2005 12:47:39 PM ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
WASHINGTON — Canadian fighter jets are scrambling to intercept a Virgin Atlantic flight from London's Heathrow Airport to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport that is sending out a hijack code, FOX News has confirmed.
Virgin Atlantic Flight 45 has been diverted to New Brunswick, Canada. According to the Virgin Atlantic Web site, the flight departed London at 9:35 a.m. local time and was scheduled to arrive at JFK at 12:12 p.m. EDT.
Contact has been made by the pilot, who says everything is fine, U.S. homeland security officials said, yet the flight continues to issue the hijack code, 7500.
#1
The fighter jets fly along side the plane in question and the pilots are able to see both the pilots in the cockpit, as well as the passengers. No one looked particularly alarmed, the aviation source told FOX News.
I think I might look somewhat alarmed if I looked out the window and saw a bunch of F-16s making strafing runs at my flight.
#2
I'd not be alarmed if nothing else was going on to indicate a problem. But I'd have my camera out for some great stories after landing.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
06/03/2005 11:05 Comments ||
Top||
#3
The lovely Patti Ann Brown just reported on the uneventful landing. She's wearing a nice sweater, her hair is perfect, and she looks happy, but properly concerned. All is well.
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/03/2005 11:53 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Heh ... it was an Airbus.
Virgin Atlantic spokeswoman Brooke Lawer said the transponder alert was a "false alert." The Airbus A340-600 aircraft was carrying 273 passengers and 16 crew.
figures.
Posted by: too true ||
06/03/2005 12:06 Comments ||
Top||
#7
It just occurred to me that if a hijacked plane was diverted to Canada, what if the jihadis decided to take out the first Canadian building they saw, can you imagine the screaming from the i-hate-america freaks?
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
06/03/2005 12:31 Comments ||
Top||
#8
LaR, the plane was intercepted and escorted down by (presumably) Canadian F-18s. Not likely they would have had a chance.
Posted by: too true ||
06/03/2005 12:36 Comments ||
Top||
#9
I posted something similar at LGF and would like some Rburger responses as well:
Doesn't make more sense if you are AQ (or any terrorist) and want to replicate 911 to originate here and not overseas? More fuel for one. Who would think they would go from here to Paris to seed terror since the Frenchies, Brits, Germans have more of the outspoken radicals and notorious mosques. Seems everyone is also alert to all these no fly lists and diverts to Bangor and Halifax. Never hear of any domestically originated flights having similar diversions. I don't know but we seem fixated on the one direction when in 911 it all originated here on the east coast to take advantage of full fuel supply.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
06/03/2005 14:18 Comments ||
Top||
#10
Turf issues. We control all the flights that originate here, so security must be OK. They aren't meeting our high standards abroad (/sarcasm), so it's more likely a terr could comandeer a plane coming from overseas. It's all been bullshit since the heroic passengers of Flight 93 showed the Terrs why they will never again succeed with this tactic, at least on a plane with 50% Americans.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
06/03/2005 14:23 Comments ||
Top||
#11
You're assuming that the intent is to crash the plane again. A more likely scenario is to hijack it, issue demands and then slit throats one at a time in front of cameras.
#12
Doesn't matter what they do, terrs take a plane, the passengers will crash it.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
06/03/2005 14:40 Comments ||
Top||
#13
American passengers will crash it, Mrs. D. -- no guarantee that people from the rest of the world will share our sensibility in this matter. And much more likely that flights originating outside the U.S. will have a high proportion o' them there furriners. ;-)
Notorious Chechen militant leader Shamil Basayev has claimed responsibility for the electricity blackout in Moscow on May 24 â 25 and the fire that broke out in one of the capitalâs oldest theatres on the night of May 27.
Some observers say this is proof that rebel fighters are successfully carrying out a threat to move their military activities outside Chechnya. Others say it suggests the fighters are under extreme pressure, in particular from the so-called Kadyrovtsy, the armed militia loyal to pro-Moscow deputy prime minister Ramzan Kadyrov.
In statements published on the main Chechen Islamist website Kavkaz Centre, Basayev claimed that the disasters in Moscow at the end of May were no accident, but were carefully planned and executed acts of sabotage by Chechen fighters.
Basayev boasted, âOur diversionary groups have dealt a significant blow to the life support system of the Russian Empire. The success of the special operation has exceeded our expectations. Right now we are collecting information about the consequences of our attack on central Russia.â
A subsequent statement promised new attacks on Russian territory. It said, âAs we promised after the despicable murder of ex-president of the Chechen republic [Zelimkhan] Yandarbayev in 2004, we will do everything we can to bomb, blow up, hunt down, burn, set off gas explosions and [start] fires all over Russia.
âToday we have in our ranks, thanks to Allah, Muslims of many different nationalities, including Russians, who are on the path of jihad, as well as a number of non-Muslim sympathisers who are their assistants, and our capabilities are growing from one day to the next.â
The head of the pro-Moscow State Council of Chechnya, Tais Jabrailov, described Basayevâs claims as being a PR stunt. âIt used to be [Chechen commander] Salman Raduev who claimed responsibility for all that went on in the world. Now Basayev has taken over this role,â said Jabrailov.
âBasayev wants the attention of the leaders of international terrorist networks so that he can attract more funds for his illegal armed groups.â
However, there have been predictions that Basayev, who is now undisputedly the most powerful Chechen rebel leader after the killing of former pro-independence president Aslan Maskhadov in March, is planning a summer campaign of attacks.
On April 15, Chechnyaâs chief prosecutor Vladimir Kravchenko said, âThe fighters are planning to make themselves heard and make use of the injections of cash which, unfortunately, they continue to receive. They are calling this summer âthe summer of fireâ.â
Two weeks later, Radio Liberty broadcast an interview with Chechen field commander Dokku Umarov, in which he announced the fightersâ intention to âcarry military actions over onto the territory of Russiaâ. Around the same time, Abdul-Khalim Saidulayev, the Muslim cleric named as successor to Maskhadov, announced the creation of a united âCaucasian Frontâ to stretch across the North Caucasus.
This Caucasian Front would include all the republics and regions of the North Caucasus, as well as âIchkeriaâ â as the rebels call Chechnya itself.
The last few months have indeed seen an upsurge of violence in Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachai-Cherkessia between militants and the security forces.
However, Andrei Mikhailov, an officer with the FSB intelligence service, told IWPR that he regarded the latest statements as evidence of weakness rather than strength amongst the rebels. âAfter the killing of Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen separatists could no longer carry out a single manoeuvre,â he said.
âNow they have no single leader - the new âpresident of Ichkeriaâ, Abdul-Khadim Saidulayev, does not even have the doubtful legitimacy accorded Maskhadov. Bit by bit, they are losing the support of the population of Chechnya, without which it is almost impossible to wage a partisan war. It is this which is pushing them to announce the creation of all possible âfrontsâ and attempts to unleash military action outside Chechnyaâs borders.â
Mikhailov said the fighters had lost most of their leadership and were now broken up and isolated.
Pro-Moscow Chechen security boss Ramzan Kadyrov is also talking with confidence. With several thousand men under arms at his disposal, he has been organising military operations against the rebels in the mountains over the last few months, with Russian forces playing only a supporting role.
The burden of the fighting has fallen on the Kadyrovtsy as well as two other nominally pro-Moscow GRU military intelligence battalions, headed by Sulim Yamadayev and Said-Magomed Kakiev and thus known as âYamadayevtsyâ and âKakievtsyâ.
Kadyrov has accused the rebels of taking shelter in neighbouring republics and, in particular, in Dagestan.
âWe have got these devils on the run here, and now, realising that they will no longer get anywhere here, they hide in Dagestan,â he said. âBecause they realise that here there are real men, who wonât let them wreak havoc any longer. But over there they feel safer, because the police in Dagestan simply donât dare touch them.â
However, others warn that it would be premature to write off Basayev, who has also claimed responsibility for the attack on the Moscow theatre in 2002 and the Beslan school seizure last year.
âThe events of recent years clearly demonstrate that we should take Basayevâs pronouncements seriously,â said Chechen political commentator Murad Nashkhoev.
âIn 2003 he announced the start of âOperation Boomerangâ, after which suicide bombers carried out a series of large scale terrorist acts in Chechnya, its neighbouring regions, and Moscow. I think the creation of a Caucasian Front and the idea of transferring military actions onto Russian territory are his idea. This means he has the necessary resources, both in terms of manpower and of money.â
Nashkhoev said Basayev and his comrades had been âforced into a cornerâ and knew there was little chance of negotiations, so were attempting more desperate measures.
âEvery war has different components, a military aspect, a political aspect, an information components and support from the public. During the first Chechen war of 1994-6, the Chechen side had all these components,â said Umar Baisayev, a human rights monitor with the Memorial organisation in Grozny.
âNow the situation is far more complicated. The people of Chechnya are frightened and are unable to express their opinions; there is still an information blockade in the republic, and pro-independence representatives abroad have not managed to change western public opinion. But whether or not Basayev and Saidulayev will achieve peace by taking the fighting into Russia is difficult to say.
âIn my opinion, as long as Putinâs team remains in power, the war in Chechnya is unlikely to end.â
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
06/03/2005 12:58 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Whether or not Putin is in power has little to nothing to do with peace in Chechnya so long as Old Nasty Basayev is gimping on this earth. He's sounding kinda desperate these days though. Bragging about Blackouts and theatre fires is kinda pathetic after you've made it known to the world that you've got little problem with killing schoolchildren. He's got nothing to show for his efforts and there is no conceivable happy ending to it now for him. Another murderous freak who wants to rule a happy and peaceful "caliphate" he's going to forge through the intentional and carefully premeditated killing of civilians, including children. He should have stuck to growing his beard, praying, and fixing computers.
A SUSPICIOUS package has been found at Parliament House in Canberra. An ACT police spokesman said officers were at the scene inspecting the package, which was found at the loading dock in the car park of the parliament complex. Some suspicious powder is understood to have come from the parcel.
"We're working to try and determine what it's about," the spokesman said. The loading dock has been sealed off and emergency services are at the scene.
The incident follows Wednesday's terror threat to the nearby Indonesian embassy, where staff were quarantined after the delivery of a threatening letter containing white powder.
EFL: WASHINGTON — The American head of Amnesty International admits his group did not pick the best analogy when it compared detainee conditions at Guantanamo Bay to the Soviet-era "gulag" forced-labor system.
"There are only about 70,000 in U.S. detention facilities, and to the best of our knowledge, they are not in forced labor, they are not being denied food. But there are some analogies between the gulags and our detention facilities," William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said in an interview with FOX News. "The U.S. is running an archipelago of detention facilities — many of them secret facilities — around the world and people in those are being disappeared into them ⊠they are being held incommunicado."
"70,000"? Damm, I knew we were good, but not that good!
Posted by: Steve ||
06/03/2005 16:22 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Hearing from some of your donors maybe, Sgt. Schultz?
#4
how many of the 70,000 are in Iraq? Which are held under different legal status than those in Gitmo, Bagram, Diego Garcia, etc. I really dont think the numbers we've picked up in Afghanistan, or have had turned over in other places, comes close to that. Forex, Paki has only turned over 700, and they have to have turned over more than most. So most non-Iraq detainees would be from Afghanistan, and Im sure its not close to 70,000.
#6
I believe there are less than 10,000 prisoners held in 3 US run prisoner camps in Iraq. I don't have a clue to how many the Iraqis hold. But what do one or two zeroes mean in the context of the glorious socialist revolution? What is the name of the Law that states "Unless explicitly denied by charter, all organizations will over time come under the control of the hard left."
Posted by: ed ||
06/03/2005 17:01 Comments ||
Top||
#16
Didn't they have a gulag down in the Galapagos somewhere. Species held against their will and forced to evolve or somethin'.
For AI to say that 'gulag' is not the best analogy
is to simply splash about in the puddle they created when they pissed away all their moral authority with the initial accusation.
#17
Ths is what the left has to overcome if they want to even think of reaching American voter in the near future. They see Kerry, Dean, and Jimmuh towing the international line like with Amnesty and the average American won't follow their warped logic. There are not 70,000 prisoners in U.S. Custody, even f you add up all the bad guys from the WOT. Unlike the civilized countries in the un we don't normally mistreat prisoners. People who do mistreat prisoners in this country get sent to jail. Amnesty had a good mission and during the cold war they were a good weapon of the west, bt now that dog has turned on us and maybe it s time to put it down. I think the only country that have anything close to a gulag system would be China and Cuba. Maybe amnesty should go visit them and compare what we have at gitmo.
#20
I think the smart money realizes that it is a waste of money to give to AI, when no one in the US is going to listen to them now. New Coke had millions behind it and look what it got them.
WASHINGTON — Canadian fighter jets are scrambling to intercept a Virgin Atlantic flight from London's Heathrow Airport to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport that is sending out a hijack code, FOX News has confirmed.
Virgin Atlantic Flight 45 has been diverted to New Brunswick, Canada. According to the Virgin Atlantic Web site, the flight departed London at 9:35 a.m. local time and was scheduled to arrive at JFK at 12:12 p.m. EDT.
Contact has been made by the pilot, who says everything is fine, U.S. homeland security officials said, yet the flight continues to issue the hijack code, 7500.
Stuck button, or something else?
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
06/03/2005 10:49 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Looks like mine's a duplicate posting of this story. Sorry.
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
06/03/2005 10:52 Comments ||
Top||
#6
How do you MISTAKENLY dial in a hyjack transponder code??? Back in the day you needed 4 individual thumbwheel switches. Code 7777 or sumthin. Not easy to do accidently.
Posted by: Dave ||
06/03/2005 12:20 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Could be a programming or electronic error in the Airbus transponder.
Or not. Isn't there also a hidden emergency switch/button for this similar to the ones on buses etc?
Posted by: too true ||
06/03/2005 12:25 Comments ||
Top||
#8
Having just looked it up, the hijack code is 7500. Like all (IFF) transponder codes it is set using 4 octal switches, with each having positions 0-7. The first switch must be set to 7, the second to 5, and the third and forth each to 0.
I'm generally in favor of arming pilots, but if this one can't properly set an IFF code there's no way he should be trusted with a gun, (or for that matter an airplane). Could this have been a test (as in a probe) of how we would react?
Posted by: Dave ||
06/03/2005 12:42 Comments ||
Top||
#9
Dave, I'm familiar with the older transponder rotary settings, but I also thought at least some commercial planes were now equipped with an instant button that triggered the transponder code electronically.
#11
"but I also thought at least some commercial planes were now equipped with an instant button that triggered the transponder code electronically."
I've heard of several proposals for such "panic buttons" including one to auto land the aircraft in "safe" mode, but unlike (say) cockpit door proposals, I've yet to hear of any real world implementation of the panic button idea.
Posted by: Dave ||
06/03/2005 13:16 Comments ||
Top||
#12
I'm generally in favor of arming pilots, but if this one can't properly set an IFF code there's no way he should be trusted with a gun, (or for that matter an airplane). Could this have been a test (as in a probe) of how we would react?
Dave, I dunno. I imagine (if this had been real and the pilot was under stress) it would've taken a LOT longer to dial in the right code (4 different number wheels) than it would be to cap a jihadi. I'd still rather have the pilot armed.
Posted by: BA ||
06/03/2005 14:19 Comments ||
Top||
A suicide bomber set off an explosives belt among a crowd of Iraqis late Thursday, killing 10 and wounding 11, officials said today, and a Shiite religious leader was gunned down, bringing the toll to 44 in a day of bloody insurgent attacks across a wide swath of the embattled country.
The suicide blast late Thursday occurred in Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, as followers of a religious group gathered for twice-a-week ceremonies.
Earlier in the day, a motorcycle suicide bomber and three car bombings claimed at least 33 lives and wounded dozens in central and northern Iraq.
The strikes were the latest in a series of assaults that began Sunday and that appear to be in response to an ambitious counterinsurgency effort led by the Iraqi government, in which tens of thousands of Iraqi security forces have been assigned to police the streets of Baghdad.
Much of the violence earlier in the week unfolded in western Baghdad, but most of the deadly attacks on Thursday took place outside the capital, as the insurgency, largely led by Sunni Arabs, appeared to be seeking to apply pressure to the Shiite- and Kurdish-led government.
The religious leader, Sheik Ali Abdul Hussein, 53, was killed by two gunmen in a passing car as he left Al Zahra mosque in Basra, in southern Iraq, where he served as the imam.
The American military said Thursday that three soldiers died Wednesday in separate incidents in northern and western Iraq.
In the capital, officials on a Shiite-led committee of the National Assembly overseeing the writing of a constitution met Thursday with frustrated Sunni leaders to discuss how Sunnis might play a bigger role in the process. Since a visit last month by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Shiite officials have been saying they intend to broaden Sunnis' role in the process in hopes of calming the insurgency and drawing more Sunnis into the political system.
Contributing to ongoing tensions, Sunni Arabs have accused a Shiite militia of assassinating Sunni Arab clerics. But in an interview with The Associated Press, Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, who once played a leading role in the militia, the Badr Brigade, denied the claim, which he said had been investigated.
Mr. Jabr also said that more mosques and clerics from the Shiite majority had been attacked than those belonging to the Sunni minority, and that 80 percent of the roughly 12,000 Iraqi civilians killed in the past 18 months were Shiites.
In the deadliest single attack on Thursday, insurgents gunned down nine people in a bazaar in Huriya, a northwestern Baghdad neighborhood. The insurgents drove up in three sedans and opened fire at shoppers, an Interior Ministry official said. It was not known why this particular market was attacked.
On Thursday morning, a car bomb exploded outside a restaurant in the town of Tuz Khurmato, about 60 miles south of the contested city of Kirkuk, killing at least 8 people and wounding 22 others, the Interior Ministry official said. The bomb was aimed at a convoy of bodyguards assigned to protect Rowsch Shaways, a deputy prime minister and a senior member of one of the two main Kurdish parties. Mr. Shaways who was not with the convoy at the time.
The Army of Ansar al-Sunna, a militant group active in the north, posted an Internet message claiming responsibility.
In Kirkuk, a suicide car bomb exploded near a convoy carrying foreign oil workers as it entered a compound that houses oil technicians, killing an Iraqi child standing nearby and injuring 11 other people, the Interior Ministry official said.
Also in the morning, a suicide car bomb exploded in the city of Baquba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, next to a convoy carrying Hussein Alwan al-Tamimi, the deputy chief of the provincial council, killing Mr. Tamimi and three of his guards and injuring four policemen, the Interior Ministry official said.
Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the group led by the militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility on the Net for the latest attack.
Far to the north, in the beleaguered city of Mosul, a suicide motorcycle bomb exploded at 3:45 p.m. on Thursday at a traffic light in the city center, killing at least 7 people and injuring at least 10 others, said Mishal Rahoo, an employee in the local health department.
The explosion took place near the headquarters of the Mosul police force, which may have been the target. Though suicide car bombs have been common in Iraq, the use of motorcycles for such a purpose is rare.
A roadside bomb blast in Mahmudiya, a town in the Euphrates valley south of Baghdad, killed three people and wounded three others, and in southern Baghdad, insurgents attacked a police patrol with a car bomb and gunfire, killing a female bystander and injuring another civilian and a policeman, The Associated Press reported.
Among the American casualties on Wednesday, one soldier died of injuries from gunfire near Ramadi, in Anbar Province, the military said Thursday. Another was killed by a roadside bomb near Ramadi, and a soldier in Kirkuk died of injuries not related to combat, a military spokesman said, adding that American officials had begun an investigation.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
06/03/2005 12:51 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
People setting off bombs in crowds and gunning down clerics isn't "unrest", it's terrorism.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
06/03/2005 13:00 Comments ||
Top||
Indonesian police named a prison warden and a captured convict on Friday as suspects in twin bombings in an eastern Christian town which killed 22 people.
They are among 13 people detained in the wake of the blasts in the Central Sulawesi town of Tentena last Saturday, the worst bombing since the 2002 Bali blasts.
"There are now two suspects. One is a prison warden and the other is someone who was supposed to be in jail," national police chief General Da'i Bachtiar told reporters, adding it was unclear what their motive might have been.
The warden, head of the main jail in the Muslim town of Poso, had residue of a chemical substance on his clothing similar to that found at the Tentena bomb site, Bachtiar said.
The captured convict had been serving time in the jail after being linked to a murder case, deputy national spokesman Soenarko Artanto said. He was arrested near Tentena shortly after the bombings, police have said.
Police were investigating the possibility that one or both bombs were assembled inside the Poso prison, after finding materials for crude bombs such as cylinders and wires inside the facility, Bachtiar added.
Indonesia has said the Tentena attacks bore the hallmarks of Jemaah Islamiah, a group linked to al Qaeda and blamed for several attacks on Western targets in Indonesia.
Security experts have said local Islamic radicals were more likely responsible.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
06/03/2005 12:54 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
An Indonesian prison chief and one of his inmates have been charged over a bombing in an eastern Christian town, which killed 21 people.
Indonesia's national police chief, General Da'i Bachtiar, says there is strong evidence the two men were involved in the attack on a busy market place in the Sulawesi town of Tentena.
They have been named as Hasman - the head of the prison in the nearby Muslim-dominated town of Poso - and Abdul Kadir, said to be a government official jailed for embezzling state funds intended for the victims of religious conflict.
Local officials have said the bombing could have been politically motivated to justify a strong military presence in the area, or an attempt to divert attention from a corruption scandal.
June 3, 2005: Three more government employees, including a school headmaster, were killed in the south by Islamic terrorists. Police have concentrated on the many Islamic schools suspected of harboring Islamic terrorists. These schools are often subsidized by foreign (usually Saudi) charities. Islamic militant propaganda comes from Saudi Arabia as well, and this has become an issue between the government of Thailand and Saudi Arabia.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/03/2005 09:11 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
Edited for length
Speaking at a meeting of the Foreign Correspondents' Association of Sri Lanka at Colombo on May 26, 2005, Hagrup Haukland, the chief of the Norwegian-led military mission, which monitors the three-year-old ceasefire between the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), confirmed the allegation of the Sri Lankan Government that the LTTE had constructed an airstrip near Iranamadu in the Wanni area under its control in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. He said: "We have seen the airstrip while flying in a Sri Lankan military helicopter." However, he did not comment on the other allegation of the Government that the LTTE has acquired at least two aircraft which looked like the Czech-built Zlin Z-143.He said that his mission had been denied access by the LTTE to verify the Government charges that the LTTE possessed at least two light aircraft. Haukland said an air capability would "mean a hell of a lot" to the LTTE. Asked what would happen if the Sri Lankan military were to bomb the airstrip, he said: "If the air force bombs the air strip, then it will be war. If bombs fall, we pull out... it is not a ceasefire anymore. If the Tigers fly, it will be a violation of Sri Lankan airspace and also of international law because the air space is a matter only for the Sri Lankan government."
The LTTE's plans to acquire an air-mounted capability for suicide missions against Government personalities and ground infrastructure were known for nearly 15 years. The Western and Indian intelligence agencies had detected its instructions to its followers in countries such as the UK and Switzerland to join the local flying clubs and learn flying. They had also noticed that its cadres in West Europe and Canada were buying a large number of expensive technical books relating to flying and that they had been making enquiries in Europe about the availability of microlite aircraft and the price. They were closely monitoring its efforts in order to prevent it from acquiring any aircraft. The fact that it had hoodwinked them and succeeded in acquiring some aircraft and having it smuggled to the areas under its control---possibly in a dismantled condition---became evident on November 27, 1998, when its Voice of Tigers clandestine radio station, in a broadcast on a function held in the Wanni area in memory of its cadres killed in terrorist operations, claimed that aircraft of the "Air Tigers" had sprinkled flowers from the air on the memorial. It did not specify the number and whether they were fixed-wing planes or helicopters.
While the LTTE's acquisition of an air-mounted capability for suicide terrorism is thus old news, it needs to be added that it has not so far used the aircraft, in a conventional or unconventional manner, either for suicide missions or in its operations against the Sri Lankan security forces before the ceasefire came into force in 2002. During its various rounds of fighting against the Sri Lankan security forces before 2002, it was totally relying on conventional anti-aircraft weapons and surface-to-air missiles for bringing down aircraft of the Sri Lankan Air Force.. By 2001, the LTTE had exhausted its holding of anti-aircraft ammunition and missiles and started facing difficulties in procuring replenishments. These difficulties increased after the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US, when the US intelligence started closely monitoring the movements of LTTE ships in order to prevent their being used for the clandestine transport of arms and ammunition or for the movement of men by the Al Qaeda and its associates in the International Islamic Front (IIF)⊠It needs to be mentioned here that ever since the LTTE acquired a shipping capability for clandestine gun-running, there had been innumerable occasions when its gun-running missions were foiled on the high seas or near Sri Lankan coastal waters. In all these instances, action was initiated by the Navies of India and/or Sri Lanka. To my knowledge, there has not been a single instance in which other powers---either in Asia or Europe, including East Europe or the US---had thwarted a single gun-running mission of the LTTE---either by preventing it from clandestinely procuring arms and ammunition or smuggling them by sea to northern Sri Lanka. From this, it would not be wrong to conclude that the silence and inaction of many external powers have contributed to the LTTE's emerging as the most ruthless non-jihadi terrorist organisation of the world with a capability for sea and air mounted suicide missions.
One does not know clearly whether the LTTE procured the planes in its holding before or after 9/11. It is a serious development whenever they were procuredâŠIf the LTTE had hoodwinked the intelligence agencies of the world after 9/11, it should be equally easy for other terrorist organisations such as the Al Qaeda and the other members of the IIF to similarly hoodwink them for procuring and transporting weapons of mass destruction (WMD) material to areas of intended use. The reluctance and the failure of the international community to act against the LTTE have serious implications for the so-called war against terrorism. The Sri Lankan Government cannot escape a major share of responsibility for this state of affairs. Its failure to take up the matter with the monitoring mechanism set up by the Security Council after the passage of Resolution 1373 and complain not only against the LTTE, but also against the countries which have been turning a blind eyes to the LTTE's gun-running and the supine attitude of the Norwegian-led monitoring mission towards the LTTE have contributed to the emergence of the world's first terrorist Air Force.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
06/03/2005 00:04 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Paul, may I ask you something re the Tigers. 10 years ago or more I read an article that referred to an Australian woman, a nurse, surname of Wilby, first name could be Ann. She was the wife/partner of the man who was their main ideologist. Forget his name. The article stated that she was the driving force in the Tigers taking an ever harder, more violent line. If you or anyone at the Rant Corp have any info I would appreciate it.
#2
Adele Ann is the Australian born wife of the Tigers main ideologue, a Marxist turned Tamil Facist called Balasingham, I believe she was a primary supporter for the involvedment of women in suicide bombings and other Tiger actions.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
06/03/2005 1:46 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Some googling turned up this article in the Bulletin, apparently her real name is Adele Wilby and she fell in with the Tigers after meeting up with the dreamy Mr Balasingham in a London University.
I wonder just how many Third World terrorists/insurgents didn't graduate from a top of the line western university.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
06/03/2005 2:01 Comments ||
Top||
#6
A couple thoughts - without taking anything away from the potential danger here, aerobatic birds are expensive, demanding, and tough to maintain. The 'Tigers' will spend more time keeping the birds hidden than doing anything with them, assuming the Sri Lankans don't take them out long before that.
And secondly, that Norwegian is one of the biggest jackasses I've ever seen. The 'Tigers' haven't stopped shooting, and they are obviously planning something rather bigger than a mere gunfight - but stopping them from doing so would make it "not a ceasefire anymore."..dear God, what an ass.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
06/03/2005 7:27 Comments ||
Top||
#8
From this, it would not be wrong to conclude that the silence and inaction of many external powers have contributed to the LTTE's emerging as the most ruthless non-jihadi terrorist organisation of the world with a capability for sea and air mounted suicide missions.
Nice to see the foreign MSM can't see the hypocrisy/irony of 2 different views even within 1 sentence. They conduct(ed) suicide bombings, but are non-jihadi? WTF?
Posted by: BA ||
06/03/2005 9:20 Comments ||
Top||
#9
The Tamil Tigers are overwhelmingly Hindu with a small but significant Christian presence within its membership.
Muslim Tamils have remained loyal to the Sri Lankan state and have avoided participating in the Tiger's insurgency.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
06/03/2005 9:39 Comments ||
Top||
#10
Consider me enlightened, Paul. Not much up on that area of the world. I just assumed they were moose limb, as most of SE Asia is (at least a lot of the island chains are).
Posted by: BA ||
06/03/2005 10:00 Comments ||
Top||
#11
Intersting that the Tamils are Christian and Hindu with a Marxist backdrop and yet the suicidal nature of their assaults. The Viet Cong where Communists with suicidal tendencies and the Japanese were faciousts with the same nature. The Germans also committed suicide en masse at the end of WW II. The psychology of dying to win is inherent in many genre not just Jihadists. The common denominator is the same in all cases. Negotiations with fatalists will never work. The only way to defeat these movements is utter destruction of their leadership and collective punishment of their grassroot support.
#12
Planes like that are very expensive to maintain. Some parts needing maintainence/replacement every 40-100 hrs. These guys sound like they blew their wad on the planes. How the hell are they going to keep them running? Do they know that they don't run on regular unleaded? I read once al-qaida had a jet for a short time in their hayday, I think it made 2 flights fefore it went down. :)
U.S. intelligence and foreign allies have growing evidence that wanted terrorists have been residing in Iran despite repeated American warnings to Tehran not to harbor them. The evidence, which stretches over several years, includes communications by a fugitive mastermind of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing and the capture of a Saudi militant who appeared in a video in which Osama bin Laden confirmed he ordered the Sept. 11 attacks, according to U.S. and foreign officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because much of the evidence remains classified.
Saudi intelligence officers tracked and apprehended Khaled bin Ouda bin Mohammed al-Harbi last year in eastern Iran, officials said. The arrest came nearly three years after the cleric appeared with bin Laden and discussed details of the Sept. 11 planning during a dinner that was videotaped and aired across the world. The capture was a coup for Saudi Arabia, which spent months tracking him and setting up the intelligence operation that led to his being taken into custody in exchange for eventual amnesty.
The officials said interrogations of al-Harbi, who is now in Saudi Arabia, have yielded confirmation of many al-Qaida tactics, including how members crossed into Iran after the U.S. began military operations to rout al-Qaida and the Taliban from Afghanistan. Al-Harbi is believed to have been paralyzed from the waist down while fighting in the 1990s alongside Muslim extremists in Bosnia and Afghanistan, and he surprised intelligence officials when he appeared in the December 2001 video with bin Laden. "Everybody praises what you did," al-Harbi said on the tape.
U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies also have evidence stretching back to the late 1990s that indicates Ahmad Ibrahim al-Mughassil remains hiding in Iran. He is wanted as one of the masterminds of the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Americans. Al-Mughassil, who also goes by the alias Abu Omran, has been charged as a fugitive by the United States with conspiracy to commit murder in the attacks and has a $5 million bounty on his head. U.S. authorities have long alleged the 1996 bombing was carried out by a Saudi wing of the militant group Hezbollah, which receives support from Iran and Syria.
Intelligence agencies gathered evidence, including a specific phone number, as early as 1997 indicating al-Mughassil was living in Iran, and have other information indicating his whereabouts. U.S. officials have not publicly discussed the Saudi capture of al-Harbi or their evidence on al-Mughassil's whereabouts, but have increasingly raised questions about Iran's efforts to turn over other suspected terrorists believed to be under some form of loose house arrest.
Nicholas Burns, State Department undersecretary for political affairs, told Congress last month that Iran has refused to identify al-Qaida members it has in custody. "Iran continues to hold senior al-Qaida leaders who are wanted for murdering Americans and others in the 1998 East Africa Embassy bombings and for plotting to kill countless others," Burns said.
Top administration officials have repeatedly warned Iran against harboring or assisting suspected terrorists. U.S. intelligence this week has been checking some reports, still uncorroborated as of Friday, that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaida's leader of the Iraqi insurgency, may have dipped into Iran, officials said.
On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned countries in the Middle East not to help al-Zarqawi. "Were a neighboring country to take him in and provide medical assistance or haven for him, they, obviously, would be associating themselves with a major linkage in the al-Qaida network and a person who has a great deal of blood on his hands," Rumsfeld said.
The U.S. and foreign officials said evidence gathered by intelligence agencies indicates the following figures are somewhere in Iran:
⢠Saad bin Laden, the son of the al-Qaida leader whom U.S. authorities have aggressively hunted since the Sept. 11 attacks.
⢠Saif al-Adel, an al-Qaida security chief wanted in connection with the deadly 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa.
⢠Suleiman Abu Ghaith, the chief of information for al-Qaida and a frequently quoted spokesman for bin Laden.
U.S. and foreign intelligence officials say they believe those three are under some form of house arrest or surveillance by Iranian authorities.
Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East analyst at the Congressional Research Service, said the conditions that some of suspected terrorists are living under are unclear. Katzman said it's possible they are being held in guarded villas and he doubts any detention is uncomfortable. "I think that Iran sees these guys as something of an insurance policy," he said. "It's leverage."
Rasool Nafisi, a Middle East analyst who studies conservative groups in Iran and travels there frequently for research, said Iran has returned some lower-rank operatives to their home countries but probably is keeping higher-ranking operatives as a bartering chip. "Remember, Islamic tradition is very much based on haggling," Nafisi said. "Everything is negotiable, and you haggle for everything. If I were the Iranian government, I'd be very happy to have them and to use them in future negotiations with the United States."
Is making this public now a political move on the US's part, connected to the Iran nuke situation?
BAALBEK, Lebanon - Two rival Lebanese clans clashed with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns in eastern Lebanon on Friday over prolonged feuds, wounding one man and prompting army intervention, a security source said. The 90-minute firefight between the al-Jaafar and Zeiter Shi'ite Muslim clans in the ancient town of Baalbek was only ended when army units deployed in the area. One man was caught in the crossfire and suffered serious wounds. He was rushed to a hospital in Beirut.
Parliament member Ghazi Zeiter blamed the clashes on past killings and disputes between the two clans.
Somebody's great-grandpappy stole another guys favorite goat a hundred years ago. Can't forgive sumthin like that
Clashes between the two clans last year killed at least four people on both sides before reaching a Syrian-brokered settlement. International pressure forced Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon in April after the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.
See, if the Syrians hadn't been forced out, this wouldn't have happened. It's Bushitlers fault!
Parliamentary elections are now taking place by region, phased over four weekends.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/03/2005 13:35 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Devillance has to be one of the alltime greatest names for a feud participant.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
06/03/2005 16:18 Comments ||
Top||
Syria's official press named five men whom the authorities said were responsible for the murder of a Kurdish religious leader, Sheikh Mohammad Maashuk Khaznawi, who went missing last month. "Security forces arrested two members of this gang which carried out the crime of kidnapping and assassinating Sheikh Khaznawi," who was buried Wednesday, said the Tishrin government daily. It named them as Yassin Matar Hindi, 43, a Damascus employee of the state electricity authority, and Mohammad Matar Abdullah, 36, prayer leader of a mosque in Hassakeh, northeast Syria.
Three other members of the gang are on the run, it said, giving their names as Ismail Kadri Malla, also from Hassakeh, Samir Tlaigeh from Aleppo, north of Damascus, and Said Haidaleh from Deir Ezzor. On Wednesday, the Interior Ministry said all five had been arrested. Despite the official version, Amnesty International said Khaznawi was "at least the sixth Syrian Kurd to have died as a result of torture and ill-treatment since March 2004." The 46-year-old religious leader "died on May 30, 20 days after he 'disappeared,' apparently detained by Syrian military intelligence at an unknown location," the rights group said. It called for Syrian authorities to launch "an immediate, independent investigation".
On the other hand, given AI's recent pronouncements on nearly every subject under the sun, I'd consider the matter far from settled.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2005 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
George Foreman and his brothers George Foreman, and ....
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/03/2005 0:23 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Heh, Frank - read your post and flashed back on an episode of Taxi. One character introduces himself as "Bill, Bill Board. And these are my brothers, Clip and Switch..."
#3
Reminds me of the great Coral Gables HS and U of Miami football player "Pat" Rule. Real given name Golden. His dad was talked out of naming him Slide.
TEL AVIV, June 2 - Syria test-fired three Scud missiles last Friday, including one that broke up over Turkish territory and showered missile parts down onto unsuspecting Turkish farmers, Israeli military officials revealed Thursday.
These were the first such Syrian missile tests since 2001, the Israelis said, and were part of a Syrian missile development project using North Korean technology and designed, the Israelis contend, to deliver air-burst chemical weapons. The missiles included one older Scud B, with a range of about 185 miles, and two Scud D's, the Israelis say they believe, with a range of about 435 miles.
Little was especially startling about the tests, Israeli officials said, except the embarrassment to Turkey - a member of NATO - and the timing, during the Lebanese elections.
The timing isn't startling at all.
The Israeli military officials said they interpreted the launchings as a gesture of defiance to the United States and the United Nations by the Syrian president, Bashir al-Assad, who has been pushed in a humiliating fashion to remove Syrian troops from Lebanon since the assassination of the anti-Syrian politician, Rafik Hariri. "This is really putting your fingers in the eyes of the Americans, saying, 'I'm not dancing to your flute,' " a senior Israeli military official said. "The tests are probably needed for the missile project, but this is Bashir taking a risk here and sending a message."
Snort. As if GWB worries about a Scud launch.
Israeli officials, who are familiar with the intelligence but asked that their names or departments not be identified, decided to publicize the tests in part because they were puzzled by the American silence about them, and because Israel sees them as part of a troubling pattern of behavior by Mr. Assad. The Israeli officials say they are disturbed by Mr. Assad's recent actions, including the missile tests and the killing of an anti-Syrian journalist, Samir Kassir, in a car bombing on Thursday outside his home in Beirut. Mr. Kassir openly blamed Syria for the death of Mr. Hariri.
Israeli officials say Syria continues to have intelligence agents in Lebanon, even though all uniformed military personnel have left. The officials say Syria continues to support terrorism in Iraq as well as sponsoring Islamic Jihad, which has been trying to smuggle suicide bombers into Israel, including a cell that intended to blow up two buses in Jerusalem on Thursday.
Syria also played host to a May 22 meeting of Farouk Kaddoumi, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, with the leaders of all the militant Palestinian factions and publicized the meeting, the senior Israeli official said. "Kaddoumi wants to derail Abu Mazen," the common name for the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who has called for an end to violence against Israeli civilians, the senior official said. "The message from Syria to the Palestinians is not to stop shooting," he said.
Syria is doing all this, he added, "when everyone is trying to tell Syria to stop being out of step in the region, and U.S. messages to Assad are clear."
If he doesn't get it we could make sure he gets it.
All the missiles were launched from northern Syria, near Minakh, north of Aleppo, the Israeli officials said. One was sent about 250 miles to southernmost Syria, near the Jordanian border. The one that broke up was fired southwest toward the Mediterranean, over the Turkish province of Hatay, the ancient Antioch, and shed debris over two villages there. The Israelis said they had film of the launching and breakup.
Deliberately fired over the Turks, eh?
In Washington, the Turkish ambassador, Osman Faruk Logoglu, said there were no casualties in the incident on May 27. The Syrian ambassador was asked to explain and "said that during a military exercise, there was a technical mishap," Mr. Logoglu said, "and that the Syrian government was sorry about this."
But the Israelis noted that the test was the first time Syria had fired a missile over another country - a member of NATO - when Damascus could easily have moved its mobile launchers to the center of the country to avoid flight over Turkey altogether.
As it is, now the Turks are on notice that the Syrians have a bunch of cheesy, inaccurate missiles that don't hold together during flight.
The Israelis also noted that Mr. Assad planned to convene a national conference of his Baath Party on Monday, and might have wanted to send a signal of defiance and technological prowess to his domestic audience as well.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/03/2005 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
woot! 1 of 3 erection fail? Manliness not established, pencil-neck!
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/03/2005 0:04 Comments ||
Top||
#2
"Israelis say"!? But we dont have the word of Syrian and Turkish embassador confirming it?
In Washington, the Turkish ambassador, Osman Faruk Logoglu, said there were no casualties in the incident on May 27. The Syrian ambassador was asked to explain and "said that during a military exercise, there was a technical mishap," Mr. Logoglu said, "and that the Syrian government was sorry about this."
Turkish ambassador confirming and quoting the Syrian ambassador.
Read much?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
06/03/2005 7:31 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Didn't Saddam lob a couple of scuds at us during the first gulf war? Since Russia broke up 1991 I'm guessing that there havent been any major technological breakthroughs in the used missile market. They sucked 14 years ago, and patriot missiles are considered antiques these days. I dont even think Turkey would be afraid of a scud attack, much less the Israelis.
#5
Yeah, I know I wouldn't fear them much if they were trying to fire them SW toward the Med and they ended up flying over Turkey. Although, keeping neighbor countries "on their toes" with missiles that mis-fire/directed could make for interesting diplomacy in the near future in that area. Not familiar w/ distances in that area (.com, you there?), but could a "misdirected" SCUD-D (435 mile range) fired from southern Syria actually reach the magic kingdom, and more specifically, the black rock, say during next year's hajj? If so, we may see Israel Syria mis-firing again next year, eh?
Posted by: BA ||
06/03/2005 8:47 Comments ||
Top||
#6
they don't have to be good to accomplish their intended mission if they can carry and vaguely deliver air-burst chem weapons
Posted by: too true ||
06/03/2005 9:24 Comments ||
Top||
Nice pic at the link of all the Burkha Babes lined up with their Korans and "Down With Bush" sign. It was 93 with 77% humidity in Dhaka this afternoon. Those black bags must've just soaked up the heat. I hope the ladies had a great time...
#4
"Bush and Sharon, be aware and behave properly, otherwise you will see devastating Muslim human waves on your capitals," Moulana Muhiuddin Khan, chief of Jamiaat-e-Ulama-e-Islam, told a rally before leading a protest march.
Okay, bring them on. Cheaper than Dirt had an ammo sale recently and I'm well-stocked.
I've really had it - you wanna come, come - and I and my friends will meet you with a few devastating waves of our own.
#5
whenever I see those women I think of Night of the Living Dead.
They look like condemned prisoners, walking somewhere between the light and the dark. It's downright creepy that they are forced to live in the dark shadows while life bustles on about them.
#6
The citizens need some circus to distract them from the realities of their lives.
"...you will see devastating Muslim human waves on your capitals..."
More likely we will see devastating waves of alpha and beta particles, gamma and x- rays, and neutrons on Muslim capitals. Thank goodness for our Cold War arsenal legacy -- we may need it to subdue these brain-fried lunatics.
Posted by: Tom ||
06/03/2005 19:40 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Gawd, what will they do when they find out about the urine?
Algerian police on Thursday arrested five men suspected of belonging to an Islamic militant group that has staged a series of ambush attacks against Algerian military convoys and police road blocks over recent weeks. The men were picked up in the province of Boumardas, some 54 kilometres east of the capital Algiers, a police spokesman said. The authorities believe those arrested belong to a cell of the radical Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which allegedly masterminded the ambush attacks.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
06/03/2005 13:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
Gunmen on Friday killed a city council official in Kirkuk, a contractor renovating a mosque in Samarra and a man standing outside a Baghdad hospital, while several car bombs that targeted U.S. convoys in the capital wounded six civilians, authorities said. Gunmen killed Brig. Sabah Qara Alton, a Turkman official at Kirkuk City Council, after he left a mosque in the ethnically mixed northern city following Friday prayers, police Capt. Sarhad Talabani said. Earlier in the day, gunmen killed Razzouq Mohammed Ibrahim, an Iraqi contractor in charge of renovating a mosque in western Samarra, and stole his car, police Lt. Qassim Mohammed said.
Two Iraqi civilians, including a child, were killed early Friday when their car swerved into a U.S. Bradley fighting vehicle near Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said. Insurgents fired mortars at the Baghdad Medical City complex shortly after midday, damaging the roof of a building. They then shot and killed an Iraqi man standing outside the complex, U.S. military spokesman Maj. David Abrams said.
A suicide car bomber wounded nine Iraqi soldiers and two women after attacking an Iraqi army checkpoint near the U.S. 42nd Infantry Division base in Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, police Capt. Hakim al-Azawi said. Police also pulled the body of a man, who had his hands bound and was shot in the head, from the Tigris River, he added. Car bombs targeted U.S. military convoys in the capital, one of which wounded six Iraqi civilians in western Baghdad, police Capt. Mohammed Abbas said. Another blast damaged an American tank, but caused no U.S. casualties, the military said. In Baghdad, men in three speeding cars sprayed gunfire into a crowded market in the northern neighborhood of Hurriyah, killing nine people, the interior and defense ministries said. Two other Baghdad attacks killed four people and injured three.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2005 12:50:48 PM ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
The commander of a pro-government Afghan militia force was killed by a roadside bomb on Friday in an attack blamed on Taliban insurgents.
It was the latest in a wave of bomb attacks that have killed and wounded dozens of people in Afghanistan in the past few months.
Shadi Khan, the former chief of Deshu district police in the southern Helmand province, was killed and two of his bodyguards were wounded when his car was hit by the blast, said Haji Mohammad Wali, spokesman for the provincial governor.
He blamed Taliban insurgents but drug running and tribal and factional rivalry are known to have caused violence in the province in the past.
Two Afghan deminers were killed and five wounded by a roadside bomb in Helmand on Wednesday. They were the fifth deminers to be killed in two weeks.
Twenty people, including the police chief of the capital, Kabul, were killed by a suicide bomber in nearby Kandahar province on Wednesday. The Kandahar governor blamed the al Qaeda militant network.
In a separate attack, an energy official in Zabul province, also in the south, was killed in a Taliban ambush on Thursday night as he was transporting electrical equipment, a provincial official said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
06/03/2005 12:53 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A suicide bomber blew himself up at a gathering of Sufi Muslims north of Baghdad, killing 10 people in the latest attack by Iraqi insurgents on religious sects they disapprove of, officials said on Friday. The bomber detonated his explosives on Thursday evening in a house near the town of Balad as Sufis gathered for a religious ceremony, Interior Ministry officials said.
Sufis follow a form of Islamic mysticism that stresses the need for a personal experience of God. Some conservative Muslims consider them emotional or even heretical.
Both Sunnis and Shi'ites hate them, it's one of the few things they agree on.
Sectarian tensions have long been building between Iraq's Shi'ite majority and the Sunni Arab minority that dominated during the rule of Saddam Hussein. But until Thursday's blast, Iraq's small Sufi community had been spared major attacks.
Religious strife in Iraq has been stoked by the killing of dozens of Shi'ite and Sunni clerics in recent months. A leading Sunni group has accused the militia of one of Iraq's main Shi'ite parties of being behind the killings of Sunni clerics, but other religious leaders have called for calm.
On Thursday evening, two gunmen shot dead Ali Abdul-Hussein, the imam of a Shi'ite mosque in the southern city of Basra, as he stood outside his house, police and relatives said.
In Kirkuk, where ethnic tensions have been building between Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen who all lay claim to the strategic oil city, gunmen killed a leading Turkmen official in a drive-by shooting as he left Friday prayers, police said. The victim, Brigadier General Sabah Qaratun, worked for Kirkuk's local government and was a member of a leading Turkmen party. Over the past month leading officials in all three ethnic communities have been assassinated in the city.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/03/2005 11:40 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm?
Looks like another case of Not Muslim Enough, Muldoon. Write it up.
BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) - Gunmen have assassinated a Shi'ite cleric in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, police and relatives said on Friday.
They said Ali Abdul-Hussein, the imam of a Shi'ite mosque in Basra, was shot outside his house on Thursday night by two gunmen who then escaped in a car.
Dozens of Shi'ite and Sunni clerics have been assassinated in recent months, and some religious groups say the killings are an attempt to provoke sectarian civil war in Iraq.
No! Ya think?
Posted by: Steve ||
06/03/2005 11:38 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
I think this story has already been run about 5 times this week. They all look the same to me.
Dacoit killed in "encounter" with cops
CHITTAGONG, June 2: An alleged dacoit was killed in a shootout between police and his accomplices at Udayan area in Khulshi thana of the city on Thursday, reports UNB. The deceased was identified as Md Hasan alias Mohammoidya, 32, an accused of a case of looting Tk 30 lakh of Islami Bank and another case of snatching Tk 24 lakh from a businessman recently.
Police arrested Hasan from Agrabad area on Wednesday morning.
"Morning Hassan, nice day, ain't it? Enjoy it while you can"
On the basis of his confession...
Ouch! Say...are those Craftsman brand pliers?'
they went to a hill at Khulshi area to arrest his accomplices. As they reached the spot the cohorts of Hasan opened fire on them..
Yar, we're the Dread Cohorts of Hassan! Die, coppers!"
forcing the law enforcers to fire back.
BANG! BANG! BANGBANGBANGBANG!
Hasan was caught in the shootout while trying to flee and died on the spot.
"Feet don't..ouch..ouch....rosebud!"
Over 100 rounds of bullet were exchanged during the gunfight, police said. They said Hasan wanted in six criminal cases.
Well, not any more
Another case closed! RAB saves the day again!
Ansar commander gunned down
Some unidentified assailants gunned down an Ansar and VDP commander in broad daylight in the city's Hajaribagh area on Thursday. The dead was identified as Insaf Ali (50), Ansar commander of Ward No 48 and police informer.
Police informer is an official job title? Who knew?
Police and witnesses said a group of terrorists numbering five to six pounced on Ali as soon as he came out of his Shantanghar residence at about 7:45 am.
I guess they knew...
The gangsters fired gunshots indiscriminately, leaving Ali dead. At least six to seven bullets pierced through his chest, mouth and back.
That sounds like pretty discriminate shooting to me
Hit by bullets, the victim fell on the ground in a pool of blood. Immediately, the bullet-riddled Ali was taken to the Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH), where the attending doctors declared him dead.
"He's dead, Jim"
When contacted Hajaribagh police station on Thursday afternoon did not say anything about the motive of the grisly murder. Local people suspected that Ali, also security in-change of a local shopping complex, might have been killed as he was a police source.
Well, duh!
The victim was father of five children — four daughters and a son. A case was filed with Hajaribagh police in this connection, but none was arrested so far.
RAB arrests 14 criminals, in Ctg
CHITTAGONG, June 2:—Members of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) here arrested 14 terrorists from separate raids in different places of Chittagong and Cox's Bazar districts during the last 24 hours, reports BSS. The anti-crime elite force also seized two Light Guns, two cocktails and some alcohol, a RAB press release said today.
"Drinks all around!"
The arrested person are: Mohamad Nurul Islam, Mohammad Jamal Uddin, Nurul Afsar alias Rubel, Alamgir Rusel, Zia Uddin Bablu, Jamshed Alam alias Bhuttu, Iqbal Hossain, Sheikh Zahed Hossain, Mosharraf Hossain, Nurul Huda, Shamsul Huda alias Arif, Manju Meah, Mohammad Ershad and Mohammadullah.
The separate teams of RAB nabbed the terrorists for their alleged involvement in various crimes after conducting the drives in city's Agrabad, old Railway station, Port Colony and Mirshrai upazila of the district and sadar thana of Cox's Bazar district during the period. The LGs and cocktails were recovered from the possession Islam, Jamal and Rubel, the Press release added .
Soon to be appearing on a slab in a morgue near you. Check your local listings.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/03/2005 09:21 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
The anti-crime elite force also seized two Light Guns, two cocktails and some alcohol, a RAB press release said today.
Light Guns, cocktails, and alcohol. A bad combination. Let this be a lesson all you kids out there.
June 3, 2005: Although car bomb attacks during May occurred at slightly below the level in April, overall the number of violent attacks by anti-government forces averaged slightly higher, increasing from about 55 to 60 a day. Terrorist attacks against Iraqis increased in May, when the deaths from these attacks killed (at an annual rate) 31 per 100,000 Iraqis, compared to 14 per 100,000 in April. In addition to the 434 dead civilians, the government reported that 297 terrorists and anti-government fighters were killed in April. The Iraqi army suffered 85 dead (compared to 87 for U.S. troops), while 151 policemen were killed.
During Saddam's rule, the annual death rate from his terrorism varied from 10-20 a year. In 2003, the rate was 15, and has been increasing since then. Even so, Iraq is not the most violent place on the planet. That dubious distinction still belongs to South Africa, where civilian deaths from criminal violence are still over 50 per 100,000 per year. In Colombia, where for years the death rate was over, it is declining and is now down to 22. In the United States, the current rate is between 5-6 per 100,000. In many European countries, it is half that. Most other Middle Eastern countries have a rate of 5-10.
The terrorists have followed the path of least resistance. Thus they avoid attacking American troops, and concentrate more on easier targets, like Iraqi police and civilians. Attacking mosques has become a favorite tactic, although this enrages the more religious Iraqis, who are the very people the al Qaeda terrorists are doing all this for. While the mosque is usually, but not always, a Shia one, that makes little difference to most Iraqis. The mosque attacks, more than anything else, have turned Iraqis against the terrorists.
The terrorists have further angered another group they depend on, the Sunni Arabs, by stepping up their terrorism against Sunni Arab leaders. Sunni Arab tribal chiefs have been under a lot of pressure from al Qaeda, especially since the chiefs have expressed a willingness to work with the government. Kidnapping and murdering Sunni Arab chiefs has intimidated some of the Sunni Arabs but, to the surprise of the al Qaeda foreigners, it has mobilized many Sunni Arab tribes to declare war on the terrorists. This was one reason why American marines returned to parts of northern Iraq last week, to help out some Sunni Arab tribesmen who were fighting groups of foreign terrorists.
Most Sunni Arabs still want Americans out of the country, not because the Americans are "evil occupiers," but because U.S. troops are interfering with Sunni Arab efforts to regain control of the country, and the oil money. But more and more Sunni Arab leaders are now taking the longer view. Wait out the Americans, who they admit cannot be beaten, and are not going to be forced out. But eventually the Americans will leave, and then the Sunni Arabs will, well, they have a planâŠ
Meanwhile, the government's week long "Operation Lightning" in and around Baghdad has led to the death of 28 terrorists and the arrest of over 700 people on suspicion of aiding or participating in terrorism. Interestingly, suicide bomb attacks are now largely happening outside of Baghdad, in Sunni Arab areas in northern Iraq. Most of the suicide bomb workshops are now in smaller towns central Iraqi towns, and they don't want to risk trying to get through the tighter security around the capital.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/03/2005 09:04 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Most Sunni Arabs still want Americans out of the country, not because the Americans are âevil occupiers,â but because U.S. troops are interfering with Sunni Arab efforts to regain control of the country, and the oil money. But more and more Sunni Arab leaders are now taking the longer view. Wait out the Americans, who they admit cannot be beaten, and are not going to be forced out. But eventually the Americans will leave, and then the Sunni Arabs will, well, they have a planâ¦
Yep, we'll leave. And if history is any indication of when that will be, check with the Germans, the Japanese, the S.Koreans. Now we will quit faster than that if you were French, though in that case we did abandon our war dead who still reside in cemetaries across their country. However, don't worry, you can act just like the French too when the immedate threat is no longer at your throat.
#2
An interesting turn of events is that the only thing the bad boyz have in quantity any more is hot bodies. Increasingly strained for equipment, explosives and money, they are more than willing to sacrifice the stupid to "the cause". In fact, they may be intentionally culling them, as they are expensive to maintain.
#4
When we identify these websites, couldn't we launch a full on blog assault and crash the servers? Think of the number of readers on LGF, Powerline, and other pro-freedom blogs...that's a lot of muscle. Is that illegal?
#5
Technically, it might be illegal (here in the States), but if it resides on a foreign server, I dunno about int'l law on that. I don't see GWB or Karl Rove letting the Freepers, LGFers, Powerline'rs and Rantburgers go before the ICC on this matter though, if it saves some of our boyz!
Posted by: BA ||
06/03/2005 9:59 Comments ||
Top||
#6
We'd probably all be on an FBI watchlist for accessing terrorist sites (we are probably on one anyway for not being multilateral enough in our dialogue). Isn't anyone out there a hacker? Why don't you steal their credit card numbers or something?
#7
Jack Coughlin was on Howie Carr's radio show Wednesday hawking his new book. Asked about Iraqi snipers, he says "they're pretty good, trained by al-Queda". Pressed further by Howie on the issue he responds "Well, we're still around and they're not" - best laugh of the day! Semper Fi.
MOSUL, Iraq, June 2 (UPI) -- An Iraqi posed as a farmer and gave poisoned watermelons to U.S. soldiers stationed near Mosul, it was reported Thursday. The man was arrested by police after several of the solders and security forces got sick after eating the melons, the BBC said. U.S. military officials in northern Iraq said the man drove around to military checkpoints and offered the melons to thirsty troops.
Military sources did not reveal how many soldiers were stricken by the poisoned fruit, but they said all had recovered -- although the BBC said it was being reported elsewhere that one person died. The melons were being tested in Baghdad to determine what poison had been injected into them.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/03/2005 08:29 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
I suspect the perp is a volunteer for a modified suicide operation. An Islamic "true believer". Fulfill his wish to romp with the 72 virgins in heaven: Summary execution preceeded by a relatively short, albeit robust, interrogation.
Posted by: Mark Z. ||
06/03/2005 8:57 Comments ||
Top||
#2
I think we're missing a good source of interrogators. There are a lot of older women who wouldn't mind getting a piece of the action - and giving these murderous barbarians a piece of their mind, at great length.
heh ...
Posted by: too true ||
06/03/2005 9:29 Comments ||
Top||
#3
i recall hearing from some Israelis over 20 years ago a story about a watermelon some guys found on the beach, which had a bomb inside that killed them.
#5
Mr. Wife once told me that in the most interesting countries (of which Iraq is clearly a member), the water is so unhealthy that you don't ever want to eat something that's been washed. He tried to stick to the local bread, fruit which he peeled himself, and cooked dishes that didn't contain meat. Melon rinds are not very edible, compared to what's inside, so I am willing to believe the melons were indeed tampered with.
#8
#2 I think we're missing a good source of interrogators. There are a lot of older women who wouldn't mind getting a piece of the action - and giving these murderous barbarians a piece of their mind, at great length.
What you do is tell the female interrogator that the prisoner they are about to "interview" said she looked fat in those fatigues.
30 minutes later she will have his 'nads on a length of safety wire and a 30 page statement.
#9
#2 I think we're missing a good source of interrogators. There are a lot of older women who wouldn't mind getting a piece of the action - and giving these murderous barbarians a piece of their mind, at great length.
Already been done. video of an Iraqi woman identifying her son's murderer in a lineup. She makes the big bad terrorist *cry*.
A new online posting purportedly by the Al Qaeda group in Iraq has declared the creation of a new cell of suicide bombers called the "Al Bara Bin Malek Brigade", and claimed it has already carried out a number of unspecified attacks. It wasn't possible to verify the authenticity of the four-minute-audio tape by a man claiming to be Abu Doujana al-Ansari, the purported head of the group.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2005 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
I am a law enforcement officer. working for the counter terrorism Div. I would like to know why this picture is posted with this article. Is there any connection to this article and the new
tarcy
#3
Please denote irony with the appropriate opening and closing tags please.
Posted by: Howard UK ||
06/03/2005 5:10 Comments ||
Top||
#4
The picture could actually have been taken in Bradford UK.
(Apologies for appalling English in previous.)
Posted by: Howard UK ||
06/03/2005 5:12 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Tarcy, thank you for the work you do, which has kept you too busy to visit Rantburg until now. Fred has a vast collection of illustrations which he attaches to some of the posted articles as a shortcut to indicate his opinion. The news provides a great many people, groups and actions that he does not think highly of at all. However, often the illustrations do not connect to the articles in a direct, or factually informative way.
#6
Ironic pictures accompanying articles is a Rantburg thing. Watch out for the dog with its paws up against the wall, its my all time favourite (although the fat lady comes a close second). I must have seen it 50 times and it still raises a smile.
#7
phil_b, couldn't agree more about the puppy frisk pic. This story should realy make our military recruiters realize things could be worse. How would you like to see the recruit requriements (say three times quickly) for the Al Bara Bin Malek Brigade.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
06/03/2005 7:15 Comments ||
Top||
#8
I used to come here for the articles. Now I visit for the pictures. First time I have seen the rocketman. LMAO Hahahahahahah
Posted by: john ||
06/03/2005 12:28 Comments ||
Top||
#9
Suicide bomber pic from 4 years ago. 3rd one down.
http://www.zianet.com/tedmorris/dg/war.html
(some of the other photos may not be work safe)
Posted by: Dave ||
06/03/2005 12:59 Comments ||
Top||
#10
Fred, since you posted this a midnight (when most of us are getting in our 3rd hour of sleep - not our 3rd birdbath martini)you should have pasted the "put your coffee down" warning on the headline.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
06/03/2005 14:26 Comments ||
Top||
#11
A new online posting purportedly by the Al Qaeda group in Iraq has declared the creation of a new cell of suicide bombers
Well, yeah. It's not like you're gonna have any veterans.
A joint search operation by the Army, paramilitary forces and the political administration in North Waziristan led to the arrest of two local Al Qaeda suspects on Thursday, said a senior government official. North Waziristan Chief Administrator Capt (r) Muhammad Tariq Hayat told Daily Times by phone from Miranshah that no foreign suspects were found during the search operation conducted with tribal elders' cooperation. Capt Hayat said two local suspects were detained after security agencies reported the presence of "suspected people" in the Hasukhel area near Mir Ali town. The lady police were also used during the operation.
Wearing burkas again, the Bad Boyz were?
Capt Hayat said the local tribal elders cooperated with the security forces when they surrounded the area at 2:00am on Thursday. The military is suspecting that terrorists might have fled to North Waziristan after it had busted their strongholds in South Waziristan.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2005 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
"Hi, big boy, is that an AK47 in your pocket, or are you excited by the textile workmanship in my Burqa?"
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/03/2005 0:21 Comments ||
Top||
Three masked men with assault rifles shot dead a tribal elder in North Waziristan before fleeing, an intelligence official said on Thursday. Malik Sahkhi Marjan, 45, was killed instantly in the assault on Wednesday at a friend's pharmacy store in a bazaar in Alwara Mandi, a small market town near North Waziristan, the official said. No one claimed responsibility, but the official suspected militants carried out the attack.
It's starting to look like it's open season on tribal elders...
What's the bag limit?
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2005 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
Multan Police on Thursday claimed to have arrested an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist from Bosan Road and recovered arms from him. "We have arrested Alisher alias Amir Hamza, who got arms training in Afghanistan and took part in militant activities in Afghanistan and Kashmir," Nizam Shahid Durrani, a superintendent of police, told reporters on Thursday. He said Hamza took refuge in Wana after the fall of Taliban and then he returned to Multan. Mr Durrani, who is also an investigating officer, claimed that he (Hamza) had provided logistic support to Al Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan.
This article starring:
ALISHER ALIAS AMIR HAMZA
al-Qaeda
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2005 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
Police found a letter from the purported chief of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi claiming responsibility for this week's bombing at a Shia mosque and a shootout in Karachi that left five people dead, and warned of more attacks, officials said. The message was seized from the pocket of one of the attackers who was shot dead in an exchange of fire with police guards outside the mosque on Monday, said Manzoor Mughal, chief of Karachi police investigation department. Asif Chotto, reputed to be the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi head, made the claim, the police chief said. "Yes, we have found a letter and this is Asif Chotto's style to leave a signature" for an attack, he said. The three attackers were suspected to members of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which was banned in 2001 for its alleged involvement in the killing of Shias. Only one of the three survived.
This article starring:
ASIF CHOTTO
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2005 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
Insurgents killed 38 people in a series of rapid-fire attacks Thursday, including three suicide car bombings within an hour and a drive-by shooting at a busy Baghdad market that ratcheted up the bloody campaign to undermine Iraq's government. Iraq's interior minister, meanwhile, claimed the government offensive seeking to root out rebels in Baghdad had scored big gains, saying this week's sweep by Iraqi soldiers and police captured 700 suspected insurgents and killed 28 militants.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2005 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
Afghan police are hunting for those behind a suicide attack on a mosque that killed 20 people, as suspicion fell on Al-Qaeda. A suicide bomber detonated explosives in a crowded mosque in the southern city of Kandahar on Wednesday as mourners gathered to pay respects to an assassinated anti-Taliban cleric. Among those killed was the chief of police from the capital, Kabul.
Interior Ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal said the dead bomber was a foreign national, most probably Arab. He declined to speculate what group might be responsible saying an investigation was underway. But he said an increase in attacks, including bombs in the capital, showed the enemies of Afghanistan were getting desperate. "The enemies of peace and stability have been defeated in the front line of war and now they're focusing on soft targets, charity organizations, aid workers and religious scholars," he said.
There was no claim of responsibility for the attack, Afghanistan's first suicide blast at a mosque and the most serious in a recent spate of violence. The governor of Kandahar Province, Gul Agha Sherzai, said Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda was responsible. Asked what proof he had, he said the dead bomber appeared to be an Arab.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2005 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
KARBALA, Iraq - Police have arrested two former Baath party members accused of killing 43 Iraqi Shiites during the 1991 revolt against deposed dictator Saddam Hussein, a police source said on Thursday. "Adnan Nassar and Kazem al-Ukaili, accused of killing 43 inhabitants of Karbala during the Shiite uprising, were arrested by police," said General Abbas Fadel al-Hassani, head of the force in this city 110 kilometers south of Baghdad.
"The two men who had fled Iraq have admitted the crimes," he added.
Thought they'd forgotten about you two, eh?
Ukaili said that after Saddam's fall in April 2003, "relatives of the victims discovered reports written by these two people about crimes they had committed in the Baath party headquarters in Karbala."
"Nassar is accused of murdering 20 people and Ukaili of 23 others."
Worse than Gacy.
Meanwhile, a local government source near Nassiriyah, also in southern Iraq, said police had arrested the brother of the former Baath party chief of Diyala province -- north of Baghdad -- along with three other suspects. "Police arrested Anwar Abdel Karim al-Saadun in Al-Dabitiyah, south of Nassiriyah," he said, adding that Saddun was a low-ranking Baath party member. His brother, Abdel Baqi Abdel Karim, is on the US list of 55 most-wanted former regime figures and is still on the run.
"You'll be cutting a deal to spring me, right bro'? Bro'? Brother? ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/03/2005 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Huzzah! And Hurrah! and Hurray!! Let them be fairly tried by an Iraqi judge and a jury of their fellow citizens. And then let them be hanged in a civilized manner, rather than being turned over to the peepul to be lynched as they deserve.
#2
Trailing wife...you goin' soft on us? I'd like to seem 'em burned and hung from a bridge, but maybe that's reserved only for 'mericans?
Posted by: BA ||
06/03/2005 9:05 Comments ||
Top||
#3
"They're nothing but low-down, double-dealing, backstabbing, larcenous perverted worms! Hanging's too good for um. Burning's too good for um! They should be torn into little bitsy pieces and buried alive!"
Hanover Fiste
Posted by: Steve ||
06/03/2005 10:39 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Just watchin' your comments, TW! However, I do agree with you...personally, I wanna stay civilized in this battle, but I'm afraid we may have no choice but to go postal on 'em if it keeps up.
Posted by: BA ||
06/03/2005 14:11 Comments ||
Top||
#8
Darn it, BA! Now I'm going to have to reassess my entire self-image! And who, pray tell, is going to tell trailing daughter #1, whose secondary reason for getting that black belt was to protect me from mean people, and who tells her little friends how cute I am?
#9
Civilized my ass!! Somebody attacks me and my friends/ loved ones/ country I get "dirt dog mean". Been there. Civilized gets you dead.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
06/03/2005 19:33 Comments ||
Top||
#10
Deacon, those "progressives" aren't civilized, no matter how much they try to take possession of the term. They're just supercilious, pseudointellectual, bitchy wimps. In my considered opinion, civilized people try reason, then, should reason prove ineffective, they -- hopefully calmly and without anger -- eliminate the problem. Unfortunately, the only tools in my own little arsenal are tea and sweet reason (or not so sweet... I do have my moments), or erasure. Anything in between gives me nightmares. Silly and self-indulgent, I know, but there it is. So it's better if others with a larger range of tools handle the in-between bits, yes? With regard to the Islamofascists, or whatever we're calling them these days, we are still working on sweet reason. God rest their souls in hell if they push us to the "fry 'em up" stage. But even that isn't what we're capable of, were we to truly go postal on their asses.
#11
LH and I went at it over this very issue. We can all be pushed to respond in "uncivilized" ways - I'm closer to that edg than he is, admittedly, but I make no excuses, and when the time comes, Achmed will wish he had listened
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/03/2005 22:16 Comments ||
Top||
KHARTOUM - An Antonov passenger plane crashed as it was taking off in the Sudanese capital on Thursday, killing five people and injuring two others, a Sudanese civil aviation official said.
Shot down, sabotaged, or aircraft services provided by Air Ukraine?
Ahmed Mustafa Jaylani, head of internal flights in the civil aviation authority, told Reuters the plane was bound for el-Fasher in the Darfur region of western Sudan. "The aircraft crashed at the north end of the runway while taking off. There were 34 passengers on board and six crew," Jaylani said. "So far, we have five people dead and two injured that we know about."
The plane had originally be identified as a cargo aircraft.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/03/2005 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Maybe the CIA should replace the Ghost Jets with Antonovs?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Two Belfast men were charged Friday in the IRA-linked knife slaying of a Catholic man and the injury of his friend outside a pub earlier this year, the first breakthrough in a case that has overshadowed Northern Ireland's peace process for months. A 49-year-old man will face a charge of murdering 
June 3, 2005: Three more government employees, including a school headmaster, were killed in the south by Islamic terrorists. Police have concentrated on the many Islamic schools suspected of harboring Islamic terrorists. These schools are often subsidized by foreign (usually Saudi) charities. Islamic militant propaganda comes from Saudi Arabia as well, and this has become an issue between the government of Thailand and Saudi Arabia. 
BAALBEK, Lebanon - Two rival Lebanese clans clashed with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns in eastern Lebanon on Friday over prolonged feuds, wounding one man and prompting army intervention, a security source said. The 90-minute firefight between the al-Jaafar and Zeiter Shi'ite Muslim clans in the ancient town of Baalbek was only ended when army units deployed in the area. One man was caught in the crossfire and suffered serious wounds. He was rushed to a hospital in Beirut.
Syria's official press named five men whom the authorities said were responsible for the murder of a Kurdish religious leader, Sheikh 
Algerian police on Thursday arrested five men suspected of belonging to an Islamic militant group that has staged a series of ambush attacks against Algerian military convoys and police road blocks over recent weeks. The men were picked up in the province of Boumardas, some 54 kilometres east of the capital Algiers, a police spokesman said. The authorities believe those arrested belong to a cell of the radical 
Gunmen on Friday killed a city council official in Kirkuk, a contractor renovating a mosque in Samarra and a man standing outside a Baghdad hospital, while several car bombs that targeted U.S. convoys in the capital wounded six civilians, authorities said. Gunmen killed Brig. 
A new online posting purportedly by the Al Qaeda group in Iraq has declared the creation of a new cell of suicide bombers called the "
A joint search operation by the Army, paramilitary forces and the political administration in 
Three masked men with assault rifles shot dead a tribal elder in North Waziristan before fleeing, an intelligence official said on Thursday. Malik Sahkhi Marjan, 45, was killed instantly in the assault on Wednesday at a friend's pharmacy store in a bazaar in Alwara Mandi, a small market town near North Waziristan, the official said. No one claimed responsibility, but the official suspected militants carried out the attack.
Insurgents killed 38 people in a series of rapid-fire attacks Thursday, including three suicide car bombings within an hour and a drive-by shooting at a busy Baghdad market that ratcheted up the bloody campaign to undermine Iraq's government. Iraq's interior minister, meanwhile, claimed the government offensive seeking to root out rebels in Baghdad had scored big gains, saying this week's sweep by Iraqi soldiers and police captured 700 suspected insurgents and killed 28 militants.
Afghan police are hunting for those behind a suicide attack on a mosque that killed 20 people, as suspicion fell on Al-Qaeda. A suicide bomber detonated explosives in a crowded mosque in the southern city of Kandahar on Wednesday as mourners gathered to pay respects to an assassinated anti-Taliban cleric. Among those killed was the chief of police from the capital, Kabul. 
