A FORMER Middle Eastern diplomat who is seeking political asylum in Britain has claimed that three British tourists killed in Yemen were the victims of Islamic terrorists with direct links to one of the country's most senior army leaders.
Ahmed Abdullah al-Hasani alleges that members of Al-Qaeda have infiltrated the highest ranks of Yemen's military and security forces and were also behind the bombing of the American warship USS Cole, in which 17 sailors died.
Al-Hasani, who was head of Yemen's navy at the time of the Cole bombing, arrived in Britain with his family 11 days ago. He flew into Heathrow from Damascus, the Syrian capital, where he was Yemen's ambassador.
His claims, which are unverified, are likely to be of interest to western intelligence agencies and attempts to debrief him are already thought to have begun.
Al-Hasani, 57, fell out with Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, over alleged discrimination towards southern Yemenis and fears he will be assassinated if he goes home.
Last week, he suggested that Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, the president's half-brother and an army commander, may have been linked to the kidnapping of 16 western tourists in December 1998.
The tourists were taken hostage by a group called the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army, who used them as human shields during a botched rescue attempt by the Yemeni authorities. Three Britons — Ruth Williamson, Margaret Whitehouse and Peter Rowe — and an Australian were killed in the shootout.
"Two days before the killings, members of the terrorist group were in al-Ahmar's house in Sanaa (the Yemeni capital)," claimed al-Hasani. "They were also in telephone contact with Sanaa just before the shootings."
American press reports say al-Ahmar is a former ally of Osama Bin Laden and helped him to recruit Yemenis to fight Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The fighters later set up terrorist training camps in Yemen.
Al-Hasani claims the perpetrators of the USS Cole attack in October 2000 "are well known by the regime and some are still officers in the national army".
This weekend, the Yemeni authorities dismissed al-Hasani's claims. "All these allegations are untrue and groundless," said a government spokesman. "This man is making these allegations in order to legitimise and give significance to his claim of asylum."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/08/2005 00:16 ||
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Report of U.S. Secretary of State on international terrorism said the Yemeni government is still unable to stop channeling different kinds of support to terrorists. Although al-Qaeda Organization in Yemen has become less active, there is a series of attempts and plots that target western interests, added the report. It pointed out that theYemeni government never took any procedures to restrict activities of Sheikh Abdulmajeed al-Zindani, nor prevent him from traveling abroad, or freeze his assets according to UN Sanctions Committee that blamed al-Zindani last February for having the will to support al-Qa'eda Organization.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/08/2005 00:00 ||
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The arrest in Switzerland earlier this week of former Russian Nuclear Energy Minister Sergei Adamov has nothing to do with cooperation between Russia and Iran in nuclear engineering, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Assefi has said in a statement.
"Russo-Iranian cooperation in the nuclear sector is fully transparent in nature, and is done within the framework of international rules and regulations," Assefi told a news conference Sunday. He assured the press that in Iraq's nuclear projects, there had not been a single deviation from the peaceful vector.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry's statement comes after reports by Western news media that the United States was demanding Adamov's extradition allegedly to interrogate him on Iran's nuclear programs (it will be remembered that Washington suspects Tehran of developing nuclear weapons). The ministry spokesman dismissed the reports as groundless rumors.
Russian specialists are completing the construction in Iran of the first reactor for the Bushehr nuclear power plant; it is to be commissioned in 2006.
Adamov, 65, who was Russia's Nuclear Energy Minister in 1998 through 2001, was detained in Bern on May 2. The arrest warrant had been issued by a Pennsylvania district court. The man is currently in Swiss custody pending extradition. It is known that Adamov actively lobbied for the "Bushehr project."
American authorities have charged Adamov and a business associate of his, U.S. national Mark Kaushanski, with misappropriation of $9 million granted by the U.S. Energy Department for the improvement of Russia's nuclear security systems. If convicted, Adamov will face a prison sentence of up to 60 years and a $1.75 million fine. The Russian ex-minister denies any wrongdoing.
The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) prevented a series of terrorist attacks using virulent poisons, which were masterminded by Jordanian Abu Mujahid, a spokesman for the federal troops in the North Caucasus told Itar-Tass on Thursday. "Leaders of illegal armed groups were planning acts of terror in large cities in the North Caucasus. To this end, they had the necessary substances supplied from abroad," spokesman Ilya Shabalkin said.
Jordanian Abu Mujahid, an emissary of the international terrorist networks Brother Muslims and al Qaeda, controlled several Wahhabi groups in Ingushetia in Chechnya. He arrived in Chechnya from Jordan in 1992. "This mercenary, hiding from law-enforcement bodies, can use ID papers under the name of Samir Tovbulatov. His wife is a cousin of Arab mercenary Abu al-Walid, who was destroyed in an operation by federal forces in 2004. It underscores his belonging to a group of the most odious terrorist leaders who came to Chechnya from abroad, the spokesman said.
Law-enforcement bodies found out that the attacks using toxic substances were to have been carried out by a Wahhabi group led by Alash Daudov, 45. In the early 1990s, he served at a Grozny police station. He later became an ardent supporter of Wahhabism and joined illegal paramilitary groups. Daudov is personally involved in organizing the hostage taking raid into the Dubrovka theatre in Moscow in October 2002. He purchased a Volkswagen mini-bus for taking the terrorists to the theater.
Continued on Page 49
This article starring:
ABU AL WALID
Chechnya
ABU MUJAHID
Chechnya
ALASH DAUDOV
Chechnya
Ilya Shabalkin
SAMIR TOVBULATOV
Chechnya
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/08/2005 00:34 ||
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The main organizer of a thwarted terrorist attack that intented to employ poisonous substances was Abu Mujahid, a foreign mercenary from Jordan, the press center of the federal forces in the North Caucasus told Interfax on Thursday.
Abu Mujahid is an emissary of the international terrorist organizations Muslim Brothers and al-Qaeda and actually leads several Wahhabite cells in Ingushetia and Chechnya, the press center said.
"He began his criminal activities in 1992, when he arrived in Chechnya from Jordan," it said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/08/2005 00:33 ||
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Another long article in the Atlantic Monthly on extracting intelligence information. It focuses on WWII Marine Major Sherwood F. Moran, who successfully extracted information from Japanese prisoners by treating them humanely. His techniques are now being reviewed by Marine interrogators in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moran's modus: Every soldier has a "story" he desperately wants to tell. The interrogator's job is to provide the atmosphere that allows the prisoner to tell it. Another good Sunday read.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/08/2005 12:37:58 AM ||
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#1
Major drawbacks to the methods recommended. It assumes a POW, not an irregular. It assumes a rational opponent, not an islamic fundamentalist. It assumes a modern out look on life, not a 9th century one.
The "story" these soldiers want to tell is seething hatred and the destruction of the infidel, the subjugation of the dhimmi.
(unlike the uninformed conscripts these tactics are aimed at, these guys are highly indoctrinated volunteers)
Problems unsolved by the Moran methodology:
1) time sensitivity of the intel: thsi procedure takes time. And in many cases, time is not on our side (ex: car bombings, leadershi target locations).
2) Utility of the information is hard to gauge - they can simply feed you what they want. The Terrs deveop "capture" stories to be used in these conditions.
3) Visceral hatred of the sort the Muslims have is makes them immune to the "nice guy7" strategy. These peopel believe us to be evil - and if we are bing nice its because Allah is forcing us to, or else we are laying a trap for the true beleiver. These guys simply will not bind in a fashion described in the article.
In sum - wrong war, wrong opponent and wrong types of info for these sorts of techniques for anything other than peripheral players. Perhpas at the edges this wil help. But I dont expect much.
#3
We have to remember that the standard Japanese soldier was supposed to suicide to avoid capture so the people who surrendered were the soft ones (or they had been knocked unconscious, and then they tried to suicide when dicovering they were prisonners) and the psychic damage for having broken bushido made them easy targets.
What works against conscripts doesn't necessarily work against volunteers who have a genocidical hate against you.
#4
The MSM/LLL cabal just keeps searching for the best apology they can find for how awful we are as modern day Americans. It is really beyond their egos and liberal Eastern Establishment Elite education to understand we are at war for our very survival as a civilization. They just keep hoping and wishing that there is a better more humane way to convince these poor backward people that we mean them no harm.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
05/08/2005 8:52 Comments ||
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#5
We,the western world, guage humane treatment of people by the way societys treat their women. It's a simple premis that ever the liberals agree to. I reccommend we allow the interogators to treat them just as their society allows them to threat their women. So if you think we are tough on them just ask an Afghan woman what techniques her husband uses on her and lets be fare about this.
#6
OS, thanks for the comment, I posted this because I figured you'd weigh in. I'm certainly no expert in interrogation, intel, military matters (in fact, not much of anything!). I found the article interesting because it offers a contrast between what worked in WWII and what we're faced with today. The article's basic mistake is, as you noted, that the averaged Japanese soldier in WWII isn't at all, psychologically speaking, like the average jihadi today.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/08/2005 14:05 Comments ||
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#7
Also working in to the equation was that a Japaneese soldier who was captured was extrememly likely to talk simply because he considered himself dead and no face was left to be lost.
TEHERAN — Iran threatened yesterday the possibility that it might break off negotiations with the European Union over its sensitive nuclear activities if the talks do not bear fruit. "We told the Europeans that, if the negotiations did not bear the expected results, their continuation was useless," Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi was quoted by state television as saying.
He was speaking in New York on the sidelines of the UN conference on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Kharrazi pointed to an agreement reached in November with the Europeans, adding that "if the negotiations did not bear any results at the end of three months, it would be stopped, and today we are at this stage." "Our threats in connection with enrichment are not hollow and we will soon make a decision," Kharrazi said.
So will the Americans and the Israelis.
Kharrazi criticised the slow pace of the negotiations and lack of any tangible results. Also, contrary to what he said the Westerners claim, Iran is "able to face crises."
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/08/2005 12:14:58 AM ||
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Syria said Saturday there is no activity to the Taliban movement or al Qaeda network over its territories and pledged meeting all commitment to the United Nations.
Minister of Interior Brigadier General Ghazi Kanaan told visiting delegation of the UN committee on sanctions related to al-Qaeda and Taliban movement," There is absolutely no activity to al-Qaeda network and the Taliban over the Syrian Arab Republic territories."
According to SANA, he noted that security circles in Syria are verifying any link or activity as well as any incident inside the Syrian territories regarding these two organizations.
Kanaan clarified that Syria is meeting its pledges toward the UN and the UN Secuirty Council resolutions. "Syria is committed to the UN and the UN Security Council resolutions because of eagerness to its national security as well the international security and peace," Knaan was quoted as saying.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/08/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
Only when the get the craving for some of Mom's zatar.
#2
Of course the Syrians - great humanitarians that they are - have no connection with the terrorists trying to destroy America and the West and take over Iraq.
Nothing to see here, move along....
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/08/2005 1:29 Comments ||
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It could well be that the terrorists in Syria are not A-Q. Just like the Shoho, Ryujo, Junyo, and Hiyo had nothing to do the Pearl Harbor strike. That doesn't mean they weren't targets.
Prominent Lebanese opposition lawmakers have demanded President Emile Lahoud's resignation, with at least one directly blaming him for an overnight bombing in a Christian area north of Beirut that injured 24 people. The calls followed a parliamentary session during which Lahoud, in a message read by the speaker, urged lawmakers to draw up an election law acceptable to all Lebanon's disparate factions for polls that are supposed to start on 29 May.
Opposition lawmakers, led by Druze leader Walid Jumblat, accused Lahoud of presiding over security agencies that they blamed for Friday night's bombing in the Christian port city Junyah, 15km north of Beirut. Jumblat said he had warned Christian opposition partners to force Lahoud, a Christian, to resign, but his call had been previously rejected. "He (Lahoud) stayed and now he is playing with us by outbidding on sectarian issues and by bombs," Jumblat alleged.
Opposition lawmakers from across Lebanon's religious divides backed Jumblat's call. "We consider him (Jumblat) a principal partner in the building of a new state, which should be bringing down Emile Lahoud after the parliamentary elections because he is the head of the security regime," said Christian lawmaker Nayla Muawad, widow of President Rene Muawad who was slain in 1989.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/08/2005 00:00 ||
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The Hezbollah resistance group said yesterday it expected to engage in heated debate over demands to disarm after Lebanon's elections, but insisted it would keep its weapons as long as Israel posed a threat to the country. "I don't think the Lebanese government would just confront and say 'I demand you deliver your weapons'," Hezbollah's deputy chief Sheikh Naim Kassem told Reuters in an interview. "I expect that soon after the election there will be an internal discussion about the weapons ... calmly inside closed rooms," he said. "I think the discussion on Hezbollah's weapons with many Lebanese sides is going to be a heated one but I can't anticipate what the result is going to be".
Kassem, who reiterated the group's position that it would not disarm as long as Israel posed a threat, said the group's arms were needed to protect Lebanon. "We believe that the arms are a need for Lebanon, to defend it in the face of the Israeli danger... That is what we are going to discuss with others," he said. Kassem said that even if all Arab countries, including Lebanon, signed a peace treaty with Israel, the group which was instrumental in ending Israel's 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon would never recognize the Jewish state. "(Palestinian) land should return to its real people. We will say no to re
Posted by: Fred ||
05/08/2005 00:00 ||
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A UN Security Council resolution demanding the disarmament of Lebanese militias does not apply to the Hizbollah guerrilla group but the group will be disarmed, Lebanon's new prime minister, Najib Mikati, said on Friday. The disarming of Hizbollah, however, "would have to be in the context of a Lebanese framework," Mikati told Arab-language reporters after meeting with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. "They will. I said it," he said in Arabic when asked if the group would be disarmed. But "in our terminology, Hizbollah is not a militia. It is a resistance (group), and we believe that there is a difference between a resistance and a militia," Mikati told Reuters in English. "To a certain extent," he said, without elaboration, when asked if that meant the resolution did not apply to Hizbollah.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/08/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
Yeah, they're a "resistance group" as long as they're squating in Lebanon and "resisting" the Israelis.
As soon as they start "resisting" Mikati, however.... ;-p
Watch yo' back, Bub.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/08/2005 14:11 Comments ||
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PAKISTAN Embassy in Washington has protested against a highly derogatory cartoon appearing in the rag called The Washington Times that ridicules beyond imagination the country's role in the war on terror. Pakistan's Charge d'Affaires has rightly termed the cartoon (which shows a US soldier patting a dog that hold Abul Farraj Al Libbi and saying 'Good boyâŠnow let's go to find bin Laden') as an insult to 150 million people of Pakistan.
Americans are known for taking refuge behind the lame excuses to justify their arrogance. In this case too, they would, most probably absolve themselves of the responsibility by describing it an action by a section of the free Press. However, Press freedom doesn't mean a licence to carry out vile attacks against a nation, society, State or its leadership. Cartoons are meant to be taken in a lighter vein but the impression conveyed by this particular cartoon is unacceptable by any standard. Can Americans themselves endure this much insult? Every Pakistani is shocked at the outrageous act of The Washington Times, which would surely deepen the anti-American feelings in Pakistan. This offending attempt on the part of the newspaper sends shockingly wrong message to other countries especially those who consider themselves to be some sort of ally of the only superpower. Pakistan has been extending crucial cooperation to the United States in the war against terrorism and successes of Washington in Afghanistan owe much to this collaboration. Had it not been Pakistan's active cooperation, the Americans were destined to face humiliation in the treacherous mountains of Afghanistan. However, our policy-makers too have to be blamed for inviting such kind of insults. From the day one, for Americans, Pakistani cooperation in the war against terrorism is taken for granted. We have been urging our strategists not to show undue haste in accepting all sorts of demands put forward by the United States. The way we have been succumbing to every just or unjust demand has lowered our prestige and stature in the eyes of those who consider themselves as masters of the world. Pakistan needs to review its policy, as even official protest would prove to be a futile exercise.
Posted by: john ||
05/08/2005 16:13 ||
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#1
"Cartoons are meant to be taken in a lighter vein but the impression conveyed by this particular cartoon is unacceptable by any standard. Can Americans themselves endure this much insult?"
What's your friggin' little problem here? We have to put up with Ted Rall. You don't.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
05/08/2005 18:52 Comments ||
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#2
It may be interesting to see Pakiwaki political cartoons ... for a comparison.
#3
I was thinking the same thing, Sobiesky. Certainly you don't have to search long to find similar "insults" pointed our way. Thing is, we're like, "whatever".
On the other hand, who is this Garner moron, anyway? What's the point of the cartoon, other than to be patronizing?
Posted by: ed ||
05/08/2005 19:33 Comments ||
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#6
a f*&king crazy rat
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/08/2005 20:08 Comments ||
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#7
So they object to our editorial cartoons, and I object to their citizens beheading innocent American journalists like Danny Pearl. I guess we've got a lot to learn about each other.
From last month's Atlantic Monthly, a piece on fuel consumption by the military in Iraq and the potential problems of trying to maintain that. EFL.
The Department of Defense now has about 27,000 vehicles in Iraq—and every one of them gets lousy gas mileage. To power that fleet the Defense Logistics Agency must move huge quantities of fuel into the country in truck convoys from Kuwait, Turkey, and Jordan. All that fuel gives American soldiers a tremendous battlefield advantage (in communications, mobility, and firepower, among other things). But overseeing and carrying out this process requires the work of some 20,000 American soldiers and private contractors. Every day some 2,000 trucks leave Kuwait alone for various locales in Iraq.
In addition to the challenges posed by the volume of fuel needed, the Army's logisticians must deal with the sheer variety of fuels. Although the Pentagon has tried to reduce the number of fuels it consumes, and now relies primarily on a jet-fuel-like substance called JP-8, the Defense Energy Support Center is currently supplying fourteen kinds of fuel to U.S. troops in Iraq.
In short, the American GI is the most energy-consuming soldier ever seen on the field of war. For computers and GPS units, Humvees and helicopters, the modern soldier is in constant need of energy: battery power, electric power, and petroleum. The U.S. military now uses about 1.7 million gallons of fuel a day in Iraq. Some of that fuel goes to naval vessels and aircraft, but even factoring out JP-5 fuel (which is what the Navy primarily uses), each of the 150,000 soldiers on the ground consumes roughly nine gallons of fuel a day. And that figure has been rising.
Some of the rise in consumption is due to the insurgents' use of improvised explosive devices, which account for about 30 percent of all American combat deaths since the occupation began. Cheap, easy to use, and highly effective, IEDs have forced the Americans to add armor to their fleet of Humvees in Iraq. A fully armored Humvee weighs more than five tons—and requires a larger engine and heavier suspension than the non-armored model.
The added armor will help protect U.S. soldiers from IEDs and snipers—but it also means higher fuel consumption for their vehicles. Which means, in turn, that more tanker trucks will have to be driven into Iraq—and those trucks will provide more targets for the insurgents, who have become skilled at attacking them. It's difficult to guard them all. It's a vicious cycle: attacks on convoys produce a need for more armor, which produces a need for more fuel, which produces larger convoys, which produce more targets for attack. Over the past six months the Army and the Air Force have had to specially train more than 1,000 additional soldiers to perform convoy security. One tank commander, who returned from Iraq last spring, told me that he had been so concerned about his supply lines that he had stationed sentries at one-mile intervals along the highway in his sector.
Logistics is an old and critically important issue in war. During World War II the German general Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps was stymied in North Africa by a shortage of fuel for its tanks. A lack of gasoline also halted the gallop across France of General George Patton's Third Army in the summer of 1944. The Third Army had about 400,000 men and used about 400,000 gallons of gasoline a day. Today the Pentagon has about a third that number of troops in Iraq—yet they use more than four times as much fuel.
Given that the longer the fuel supply lines, the greater the vulnerability for our military, logic would suggest we try to reduce our fuel requirements. But over the past several decades the Pentagon has bought billions of dollars' worth of tanks, trucks, and other vehicles with little or no consideration to their fuel efficiency. In decades past, U.S. Army logisticians assumed that 50 percent of the tonnage moved onto a battlefield was ammunition, 30 percent was fuel, and the rest was food, water, and supplies. Today the fuel component may be as high as 70 percent, according to a study done in 2001 by the Defense Science Board.
The insurgents' tactics may not stop the flow of motor fuel to American troops, but they are part of the broader war that is forcing the United States and its allies in Iraq to defend every pipeline, every refinery, every tanker truck, and every fuel depot. Even in peacetime that's a difficult task.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military in Iraq is in a bind. It has no choice but to continue fortifying its vehicles with armor and pumping imported fuel into, for example, the Bradley fighting vehicle (which gets less than two miles per gallon) and the M1 Abrams tank (less than one mile per gallon). But all the fuel demanded by those armaments and vehicles creates logistical and military headaches. The tank commander I spoke to told me that soldiers on the ground are beginning to see that "the more fuel-efficient we are, the more tactically sound we are."
But U.S. military commanders seem not to see that connection. At the conclusion of its study the DSB recommended that the Pentagon make fuel efficiency a key consideration when buying new weapons systems. The Joint Chiefs of Staff dismissed the proposal in August of that year.
Richard Truly, a former astronaut who recently retired as the head of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, chaired the DSB study. "The thing we were trying to get across was that this doesn't have anything to do with moral values," Truly told me. "It has to do with running the goddamn military with as little fuel as possible and showing the advantages to the warfighter himself—so that instead of having ten fuel trucks, you can have five." Unfortunately, Truly says, the prevailing wisdom at the Pentagon is that "fuel efficiency is for sissies."
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/08/2005 12:51:10 AM ||
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#1
sumthin teribly rong ifn we not haver nuff fuel in iraq.
#3
I'm not sure what to think about this article. A very close friend, Sgt. Hank Harvey, has been in Iraq for the last year on convoy duty. I e-mail him regularly. What he tells me is for the first 6 months he was there his convoy, including fuel trucks, had to run a gauntlet of fire from the moment they left until they reached their destination. Literally driving 80 miles an hour without lights at night. He told me there was a big drop-off in convoy attacks during the 7th month and for the last 5 months the convoys are almost never attacked. He said some of the initial "attacks" were no more than a single individual stepping out to fire a few rounds from an AK and some of them were more organized. He attributes the drop in convoy attacks to increased air protection and increased depletion of insurgents. It's easier for them to attack civilian targets. It's still no pic nic over there but not nearly as bad as the media make it out to be. He said that really pisses him off because it causes undue worry by his family here. Just my $.02 worth.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
05/08/2005 8:19 Comments ||
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#4
...a jet-fuel-like substance called JP-8...
Huh? JP-8 is jet fuel.
If the author made this simple mistake (and his editor didn't catch it) in the second paragraph how many other errors are there in this article?
#5
The atlantic monthly is again looking for a reason to be criticaln no suprise here. The title should say "oh My God Those wastefull soldiers and how they trade fuel for safety!" Fuel consumption is a logistical issue that the combat development folks should be aware of but not overly concerned with. Winning our wars and the safety of your soldiers should be the only two real concerns. The Pentagon staff bases decisions on compromise, the last thing I want is energy conservation having any vote when it comes to lethality and survivability of a system. Tell that astronaut to go bact to what he does best, be a spaceman and let the pentagon get back to winning our wars.
Horses, lot's and lots of horses. That's the ticket or shank's mare and live off the ground. Sure.
"If wishes were horses, we'd all be eating steak." - Jayne Cobb.
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
05/08/2005 12:29 Comments ||
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#8
Reminds me of the discussions about fire control. Iraqi and some coalition forces are discovering that logistics efficiency translates directly into both survivability and lethality. Re fuel: one milblogger noted that it was a serious problem having to stop so frequently to refuel up-armoured Humvees. There's almost no upside to waste, in any case, and big bonuses in flexibility and striking power from being efficient.
Posted by: Brian H ||
05/08/2005 12:49 Comments ||
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#9
I'd have to agree that fuel efficiency is for sissies. In battle, you need big-time power and big-time acceleration, for those moments when you need to get out of craters or power out of an area in a hurry. That means lousy fuel efficiency. That means having gas-guzzling tractor-style engines. Can't really be helped.
U.S. and Iraqi forces have captured or killed hundreds of followers of Iraq's most wanted terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in recent months, including 20 top lieutenants and other senior members, the U.S. military said Friday. U.S. forces believe they just missed capturing al-Zarqawi himself during a Feb. 20 raid that netted two of his associates and a computer believed to belong to him. The claim came amid a surge in insurgent attacks that have taken more than 270 lives since Iraq's first democratically elected government was sworn in April 28.
The February raid took place west of the capital, between Hit and Haditha, near the Euphrates river, according to Friday's statement. Al-Zarqawi managed to escape as coalition forces closed in on his vehicle, but an aide who sometimes acted as his driver was apprehended, the military said. The Iraqi government previously identified the driver as Ahmad Khalid Marad Ismail al-Rawi, also known as Abu Uthman. But the U.S. military said that driver was captured in an earlier raid and identified the one seized Feb. 20 as Mahir Sabah Injil Hinaydis al-Unayzi, also known as Abu Usama.
The U.S. military quoted al-Unayzi as saying during questioning: "Zarqawi became hysterical. Zarqawi did not know where he was because he demanded repeatedly 'Who lives in this area? What sub-tribe is here?'"
Continued on Page 49
This article starring:
ABU MUSAB AL ZARQAWI
Al-Qaeda in Iraq
ABU OSAMA
al-Qaeda in Iraq
ABU TALHA
al-Qaeda in Iraq
ABU UTHMAN
al-Qaeda in Iraq
AHMED KHALID MARAD ISMAIL AL RAWI
Al-Qaeda in Iraq
Brig. Gen. Don Alston
MAHIR SABAH INJIL HINAIDIS AL UNAIZI
al-Qaeda in Iraq
Abu Uthman
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/08/2005 00:56 ||
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#1
Article: In the February raid, Al-Zarqawi grabbed his American-made rifle and an unknown amount of U.S. dollars and fled, according to the driver's account.
#2
U.S. forces believe they just missed capturing al-Zarqawi himself during a Feb. 20 raid that netted two of his associates and a computer believed to belong to him.
When a suicide bomber struck historic Khan El-Khalili bazaar April 7, killing three tourists and wounding 18, Egyptian officials called it an "individual act."
Last weekend, authorities described two more attacks near two other tourist sites, the Egyptian Museum and the Citadel, as the work of "an isolated group."
First, a terror suspect exploded a bomb, killing himself, while fleeing police. Less than an hour later, his sister and fiancee fired on a tourist bus, then killed themselves. Those attacks wounded four tourists and three Egyptians.
The Interior Ministry quickly identified the perpetrators of all three incidents as a small cell from a poor section of Cairo.
Yet many Egyptians wonder if this is the start of a new wave of terror. Others fear such attacks may stop Egypt's tentative steps toward democracy, a key element of U.S. plans to reform the region.
"We must expect this terrorism ... from the Islamist groups," says Negad Borai, a human rights lawyer and democracy advocate. "We must look at the Islamic methodology, which encourages these actions.
"But if you close the peaceful route for change, you will open the violent route for change."
The latest attacks -- following the bombings of Sinai tourist resorts in October -- come amid unprecedented political activism, including weekly demonstrations for the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak.
Mubarak, who has ruled for 24 years, surprised political foes in January by supporting multi-candidate presidential elections this fall. But the road since then has been rocky.
Last week, Egyptian authorities identified another wanted terrorist -- Mohammed Yousri Yassin, 17, brother of the man who blew himself up near the Egyptian Museum. That led to headlines as in a daily independent Arabic newspaper, Masri Al-Youm: "Will Mohammed Yousri appear with another bomb?"
Nabil Sharif El-Din, a former state security officer who tracked Islamists for 15 years, offers an ominous answer: "There is a new generation of Islamists in Egypt," distinct from such traditional groups as Gama'a Islamiya or Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Both battled the Egyptian regime in the 1980s and '90s. Both denounced last month's attacks.
Gama'a Islamiya led a bloody 1997 attack in Luxor that killed 58 tourists and six Egyptians. It declared a cease-fire after many of its leaders were imprisoned.
Egyptian Islamic Jihad split apart in the 1990s. One of its leaders, Dr. Ayman Zawahiri, and his followers joined Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, while others remained in Egypt and called a truce.
"This new generation is important because it is not an organization, and that makes it harder to deal with," says El-Din, now a journalist who runs a liberal Web site, ELAPH.
Many Egyptians squarely blame the government for the latest attacks. Unemployment is estimated at 17 percent, 50 percent of Egyptians live on less than $2 a day, and a large percentage of the populace is young -- a potentially explosive mix.
A newspaper published by the Al Ghad political party, headed by populist presidential candidate Ayman Nour, blames terrorism on political repression that has "wounded large parts of the Egyptian people." Other Egyptians point to the age of last month's attackers -- all in their teens or early 20s -- and their impoverished slum life as factors.
"There are millions just like them, inhabiting the depths of poverty and hopelessness, suicidal and desperate," journalist Hani Shukrallah wrote in Al-Ahram Weekly. He said the "utter misery of their lives" is illustrated by the Yassin family's address "on Sharia Al-Magary -- or Sewage Street."
"They have real hardships," says Dr. Bahgat Korany, who directs Middle Eastern studies at American University in Cairo. "Many of these people don't have jobs, and they can't make ends meet." He believes "a favorable context" to jihadist actions "allows more people to come together in this way."
Increased terrorism would further damage the economy, especially the vital tourism sector. In 2004, Egypt collected $6.5 billion from a record 8.1 million tourists; tourism dollars earned at historic landmarks are the only income for millions of Egyptians.
Attacking that industry was a prime Islamist tactic of the '90s, aimed at weakening the government and agitating tourism workers. A year after the Luxor massacre, tour guides sat on near-empty Nile cruise ships, begging this journalist to encourage tourists to return.
So far, the impact of recent attacks is unclear. Several European tourism companies are putting Cairo tours on hold but still sending tourists to the Sinai.
Many Cairenes were surprised that the two women involved in last weekend's tourist bus attack were completely veiled in black, including the face veil or niqab. After firing on the bus, one woman shot her companion in the head before killing herself.
Niqab-clad women often unveil only in front of husbands or family, and frequently pass through security checks untouched. Now, pressure to search niqab-clad women is likely, and "this could lead to more friction and lack of trust," Korany says.
Although other women have participated in terror attacks, this was the first instance of women committing suicide here, according to El-Din, the former terrorist-hunter.
Cairo's press called the incidents "suicide attacks," unlike terrorism in Iraq or Israel, which it usually labels as acts of "martyrdom."
El-Din blames such media "incitement" for helping to create hostility toward the United States and Israel while diverting public attention from domestic problems.
"The government loves America in the shadows, but not during the day," he says. "They don't mind taking the money from America but can't have America leading the political reforms.
"The media say they love the continuing 'martyrdom' operations in Iraq and in Palestine. ... So why can't there be 'martyrs' in Egypt?" he asks derisively. He sees "no difference between what happens in the heart of Cairo and what Zarqawi does in Iraq."
Shukrallah, the editorial writer, blames the political and intellectual classes of the government as well as the opposition for contributing "to the Yassins' murderous choices by waxing poetic or rationalizing away the equally murderous choices of bin Laden and the video-butchers of Iraq." He accuses both of leaving "millions of young Egyptians prey to the Internet-disseminated drivel of militant Islamism."
"The media says the problem is America, the problem is Israel, Iraq," says El-Din. "No, the problem is here in Egypt."
The government-sponsored National Council on Human Rights recently reported cases of torture in prisons or police stations -- a contention of independent human-rights groups for years -- and warned some people turn to terrorism as a result.
Other government critics suggest the mastermind behind April's attacks was avenging a cousin's death in police custody.
Meanwhile, police made hundreds of arrests in the attackers' slum neighborhood.
Korany says Mubarak's government is divided between reformers and proponents of the status quo. The recent attacks will reinforce the latter, he predicts, but "not stop those who push for reform."
Some observers say the attacks, and the protests for political change, should be a wake-up call for the government to solve Egypt's problems.
Last week, however, police arrested more than 200 members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, including spokesman Dr. Essam el-Erian, during demonstrations throughout the country. The Al Ghad party claims police attacked its presidential candidate and his supporters 50 miles north of Cairo, killing one and injuring 20.
If the government does not change such tactics, El-Din predicts more terrorist attacks "and maybe lots more people will die."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/08/2005 00:42 ||
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Insh'allah. What happens is as Allah wills it...like losing all those wars to Israel. ;-)
The Government of Somaliland in north-eastern Somalia has accused the United States of violating its air space.
The accusation follows another that US Marines landed in the area looking for terrorists last week.
Authorities in Somaliland - a self declared region in northern Somalia - say a United States helicopter entered their air space last week without permission.
They claim the crew took photographs of the port, airport and coastguard base at the town of Berbera.
Residents still say US Marines landed and showed them pictures of wanted terrorists, reports the United States has denied.
US officials say the reports have confused military exercises conducted off neighbouring Djibouti 400 kilometres away, but Somaliland plans to lodge a formal complaint.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/08/2005 00:40 ||
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And we demand compensation! Ponies for all! And, um, stables, yeah stables for all the ponies! And, er, big screen TVs! And refrigerators! With freezers as big as the ones the Soddy's have! Oh, and some of that 'lectricity stuff!
Okay, um, we'll like work it all out and send you a list. Come again, soon.
As the voice of the Taliban on American television, Noorullah Zadran came to his calling with impeccable credentials. With a flowing black beard, Ivy League degree and sonorous command of English, he projected the cultured face of a true believer.
Zadran smiled serenely into a PBS camera in August 1998, hours after Cruise missiles rained on Osama bin Laden's bases in Afghanistan in retaliation for the bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa. "We would like to see hard evidence," he said, "to convince us they were terrorist camps." Bin Laden, he insisted, was "the guest of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, with the understanding that no act of terror would be initiated from our soil."
Until the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks proved his assurances hollow, Zadran seemed to speak with authority. Appointed seven years ago as first secretary of the Taliban's diplomatic mission to the United Nations, the Afghan-born, naturalized U.S. citizen had gone from cab driver to the regime's second-highest ranking official in the U.S. Behind his diplomatic pose, though, was a hidden pursuit. Zadran, 53, had avoided prison in a federal smuggling case by turning FBI informant. For three years, he offered intelligence on the Taliban's hierarchy and terrorist operations in Afghanistan even as he served as the regime's American representative.
Continued on Page 49
This article starring:
ABDUL HAKIM MUJAHID
Taliban
Berhanuddin Rabbani
Dr. Esmat Nawabi
Jack Cloonan, a retired FBI expert on Al Qaeda
Jared J. Scharf, a tax attorney
Mary Jo White, a former U.S. attorney
New Haven FBI Agent Kenneth Grey
NURULLAH ZADRAN
Taliban
Ravan Farhadi, Afghanistan's current U.N. ambassador
Richard Ware Levitt, then Zadran's lawyer
Sharif Ghalib
SHARIF GHALIB
Taliban
Stephen Miller, the federal prosecutor
Zaka Carvan
Taliban
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/08/2005 00:26 ||
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#3
As the article says, I don't think all these terrorists can really be classified as "Number 3's", at some point it starts getting ridiculous.
IMO, if there is a "Number 3" within the organisation, it should probably consist of the head of the military committee, which was Mohammad Atef before he was killed during the Afghan war.
Guys like Abu Zubeida and al-Libi are just other important people who are worth catching, regardless of how much influence they hold in the extremely decentralised al Qaeda heirarchy.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
05/08/2005 8:15 Comments ||
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#4
I would describe most of them as looking and smelling like Number Two.
In Washington last week, the White House suddenly found itself under pressure, even from some usually friendly Republicans, over its demurral in helping to bring an indicted war criminal to justice. Former Liberian President Charles Taylor has been living the high life in Nigeria since 2003, when he was forced out of the Liberian capital of Monrovia as part of a U.S.-brokered deal--despite the fact that a special United Nations-backed court had indicted him as a war criminal. Now Taylor is making trouble once again, the court says, meddling in the outcome of the upcoming Liberian elections and plotting to assassinate the president of Guinea.
So when Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo came calling at the White House last week, Republicans, Democrats, and some of the nation's major newspapers called on President Bush to demand that Nigeria turn Taylor over to the court. For the Bush administration, it was a delicate dance with a fragile ally; at the end of the day, there were vague commitments by Bush and Obasanjo to work together to hold Taylor accountable. Behind the scenes, though, there was a lot more going on--in particular, a raging debate over the extent of al Qaeda's influence in West Africa and the question of whether U.S. law enforcement agencies are taking the issue seriously.
President Bush summoned Obasanjo to the Oval Office last Thursday, ostensibly to discuss bilateral issues--Nigeria is one of America's biggest sources of oil, and Obasanjo has taken what the Washington Post called "modest but praiseworthy" steps to fight corruption there. Taylor, however, was clearly the elephant in the room. He is believed to have been involved in stoking civil wars in Liberia, Guinea, Ivory Coast, and Sierra Leone. In March 2003, the U.N.-backed body, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, indicted him for leading a civil war there in which his forces allegedly raped, dismembered, and killed tens of thousands of innocents in their bid to control the country's vast diamond mines. In August 2003, American officials helped broker a deal that allowed Taylor safe passage to Nigeria in order to stabilize the chaotic situation in Liberia. At the time, the officials vowed that the Liberian strongman would be brought to justice later. Obasanjo, however, has been reluctant to hand Taylor over to the U.N.-sponsored court without evidence of Taylor's continuing criminal behavior. A host of close observers, meanwhile--including many on Capitol Hill--believe the Bush administration has not pushed Obasanjo hard enough.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/08/2005 00:18 ||
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THE capture of a supposed Al-Qaeda kingpin by Pakistani agents last week was hailed by President George W Bush as "a critical victory in the war on terror". According to European intelligence experts, however, Abu Faraj al-Libbi was not the terrorists' third in command, as claimed, but a middle-ranker derided by one source as "among the flotsam and jetsam" of the organisation.
Al-Libbi's arrest in Pakistan, announced last Wednesday, was described in the United States as "a major breakthrough" in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.
Bush called him a "top general" and "a major facilitator and chief planner for the Al- Qaeda network". Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, said he was "a very important figure". Yet the backslapping in Washington and Islamabad has astonished European terrorism experts, who point out that the Libyan was neither on the FBI's most wanted list, nor on that of the State Department "rewards for justice" programme.
Another Libyan is on the FBI list — Anas al-Liby, who is wanted over the 1998 East African embassy bombings — and some believe the Americans may have initially confused the two. When The Sunday Times contacted a senior FBI counter-terrorism official for information about the importance of the detained man, he sent material on al-Liby, the wrong man.
"Al-Libbi is just a 'middle-level' leader," said Jean-Charles Brisard, a French intelligence investigator and leading expert on terrorism finance. "Pakistan and US authorities have completely overestimated his role and importance. He was never more than a regional facilitator between Al-Qaeda and local Pakistani Islamic groups."
According to Brisard, the arrested man lacks the global reach of Al-Qaeda leaders such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden's number two, Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the mastermind of the September 11 attacks, or Anas al-Liby.
Although British intelligence has evidence of telephone calls between al-Libbi and operatives in the UK, he is not believed to be Al-Qaeda's commander of operations in Europe, as reported.
The only operations in which he is known to have been involved are two attempts to assassinate Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, in 2003. Last year he was named Pakistan's most wanted man with a $350,000 (£185,000) price on his head.
No European or American intelligence expert contacted last week had heard of al-Libbi until a Pakistani intelligence report last year claimed he had taken over as head of operations after Khalid Shaikh Mohammad's arrest. A former close associate of Bin Laden now living in London laughed: "What I remember of him is he used to make the coffee and do the photocopying."
What is known is that al-Libbi moved from Libya to Pakistan in the mid-1980s before joining the jihad in Afghanistan. He married a Pakistani woman and is said to specialise in maps and diagrams. He is thought to have joined Bin Laden in Sudan with other Libyan nationals in about 1992 and to have become Al-Qaeda's co-ordinator with home-grown Pakistani terrorist groups after 9/11.
Some believe al-Libbi's significance has been cynically hyped by two countries that want to distract attention from their lack of progress in capturing Bin Laden, who has now been on the run for almost four years.
Even a senior FBI official admitted that al-Libbi's "influence and position have been overstated". But this weekend the Pakistani government was sticking to the line that al-Libbi was the third most important person in the Al-Qaeda network.
One American official tried to explain the absence of al-Libbi's name on the wanted list by saying: "We did not want him to know he was wanted."
Whatever his importance, al-Libbi is the sixth Al-Qaeda figure to have been caught in Pakistan, suggesting that the country is now the organisation's centre of operations. The interior minister, Aftab Khan Sherpao, conceded that Bin Laden and his deputy might be hiding in a Pakistani city.
"But the capture of al-Libbi will have made them very apprehensive. Whether big fry or small fry, they're on the run, I can tell you that."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/08/2005 00:13 ||
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TRANSLATION FROM EUROTRASH: "Please, dear God, this guy knows where the bodies are buried here, don;t interrogate him too hard..."
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
05/08/2005 2:09 Comments ||
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Fred made the following comments the other day and I just want to echo him on this one:
One thing we have been missing, except here at Rantburg, is any kind of real assessment by the press of what makes up the Bad Guy organization. Even here, for fear of becoming too repetitive, I haven't been diligent in pushing my observation that the Bad Guyz are controlled by a cross between SPECTRE, the Council of Boskone, and The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu. When we were kids -- those of us over a certain age, anyway -- you could tell the bad guys when you went to the movies or watched the teevee. They wore black hats and usually were the uglies. If you grew up reading Dick Tracy comix, you knew Pruneface and Flat-top weren't on the side of truth and goodness. Pirates, as everybody knows, had peg legs and eye patches and made people walk the plank. Even today, if you go to a Star Wars movie, you've got no real doubt as to who the bad guys are.
Yet here we are, fighting a war to the death -- also a point not being pushed -- with an enemy largely consisting of Dick Tracy characters and (in some cases literally) pirates. We've got one-eyed Mullah Omar, peg-leg Basayev, and pruneface al-Libbi. Khalid Sheikh Mohammad looks like Vanessa del Rio's true love, fergawdsake. Nobody's walked the plank lately, but lots of people have had their heads cut off. We seem to have a lot more emotional reaction to the Katyn Forest massacre than the mass graves, still being filled, mind you, in Iraq. And we do have the Bad Guyz own words to dispell any lingering doubts that they're simply misunderstood or that they're somebody we could negotiate with, meet halfway. We've got one such article today, from Pakland. Yet this isn't a picture the media's painting. To me, that's where they're really falling down, and it's the weakest part of the entire war effort. We're fighting against characters who'd make good cartoons, complete with fanatical minions, and we're worried about their "civil rights."
I'm with him on this one. Anybody who has examined the villain's gallery we've come to know and love over the last 4 years can't help but notice the more obvious similarity to some of the more colorful characters from popular fiction than any kind of historical parallel like the Soviet Bloc or the Nazis. I'm too young for Dick Tracy, so let me use Hydra or Cobra from my own youth. More to the point, not only do these guys look like comic book villains (all we need is for someone to show up in Darth Vader or Dr. Doom armor), they also kind of talk like them if you read over the Milan wiretaps that Alphabet City found or the various speeches, communiques, and rants that read like self-parodies if they didn't involve people's heads getting chopped off in the process. I've talked with people in law enforcement about this and they told me that mobsters used to talk like regular people, then they started trying to sound like The Godfather and today they want to sound like the cast of The Sopranos. So you figure people like Zarqawi grew up with the cartoon concept of what terrorists looked, acted, and sounded like, so that's what they became.
Near as I can tell, the Bad Guys more or less consist a vast insidious conspiracy, which may be one of the reasons why they believe that there's an opposite number running our side. At the top of it all, we have a nefarious meglomaniac who even went to the point of pseudo-faking his own death and then staging his return at the height of the US presidential election. If that isn't something out of a bad Hollywood script, I don't know what is. But there's even more to it than that, and I'm just talking about Binny here. His mentor, Abdullah Azzam, died under mysterious circumstances, and he even opted talking with his minions Darth Sidious style, with a hood covering his head back when he was "dead" according to Ghailani and KSM. He's also got an evil sidekick in Ayman, who is also his stalwart lover companion as they go about their plotting.
But wait, it doesn't end there! We have criminal masterminds (Dawood Ibrahim) running the South Asian equivalent of Black Sun, a rogue intelligence agency with entirely too much power (the ISI), a state that looks like something dreamed up by Machiavelli on his darker days (Pakistan), the Council of Boskone in the Soddy elite, a religious conspiracy for world domination in the Supreme Council of Global Jihad that looks like something dreamed up out of the worst anti-Catholic or Masonic conspiracy theories (pick your poison), and a whole host of exotic henchmen every bit as evil as anybody who was ever dreamed up by George Lucas, Jack Kirby, or Stan Lee. We have our own Count Dooku working out of Chechnya at the behest of an evil master, fergawdsakes! What more do you want?
Fred and I have discussed on occasion why the government seems to want to isolate the population from the war as much as possible. I think it's a bad idea and still do, even more with everything I've find out about the Bad Guys over the last year or so. All the same, one of the reasons why I can't help but wonder why the government doesn't explain the way stuff is to the general public is because of just how ridiculous an enemy we're up against. Based on everything we've learned over the last couple of years, you don't get the picture of a ruthless and determined adversary out to destroy our way of life so much as you do the plot of a really, really bad novel.
Just my $0.02.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/08/2005 00:00 ||
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I want to know why we don't have a massive funding of propaganda to destroy the basis of the Muslim Faith. The muslim paranoia at a certain writer mentioning the Satanic Verses in novel was enough to drive them so far over the edge that they demanded a world wide hit order sanctioned by Allen.
This should point the way. There is a huge plot hole in the religion there. I have posted An Atheist's Guide to Mohammedanism repeatedly just for that reason. It needs to be done.
I know that Bush is afraid to go there as he doesn't want it done to other faiths including his own. BUT ... It is time to do it!
The American Atheist group has made a good start at Fisking the religion.
example:
As is necessary for foundation myths of virtually all religions, the first followers of the new faith had to endure persecution, fleeing to Christian Ethiopia around the year 615. While those Muslims-in-the-making were out of town, Mohammed and the disciples who had stayed with him in Mecca were confined under siege - to be starved into submission.
Just in the nick of time, Mohammed received a revelation that helpfully clarified the theopolitical questions at issue for the Meccan guardians of the gods in the Kaâaba. When Mohammed had reported that Allah was the only god in town, it turned out that he hadn't received the entire satellite transmission. Perhaps Gabriel had mumbled and Mohammed missed part of the message. Wouldn't you know? The three favorite goddesses of Mecca - al-Lat, al-Uzzah, and al-Manat - were also real! This saved Mohammed's neck and all body parts attached thereto, and the exiles were able to return from Ethiopia. Later, when it was safe to do so, this all-important revelation was expunged from the Qurâan and it was explained that the revelation had come from Shaitan (Satan), not Allah. Thus began the legend of the "Satanic Verses," which more than a thousand years later was to prompt the Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa of death against the novelist Salman Rushdie.
To draw attention to the Satanic Verses is to galvanize a still-raw nerve in the body politic of Islam.
To draw attention to the Satanic Verses is to galvanize a still-raw nerve in the body politic of Islam. The Satanic Verses are an acute embarrassment to Mohammedan authorities because they imply that it was Satan, not Allah, who had saved their prophet's life. If Allah was the only god, and if he had previously selected Mohammed to be his last and greatest mouthpiece on this planet, why didn't he save his own appointed prophet? Why would the god of evil want to save his enemy's ambassador? Might not there be more Satanic Verses in the Qurâan â verses that have never been recognized as the handiwork of the prince of devils? Who knows what evils yet may lurk in the Book of Books?
A. â âI began from the idea that the language of the Koran must be studied from an historical-linguistic point of view. When the Koran was composed, Arabic did not exist as a written language; thus it seemed evident to me that it was necessary to take into consideration, above all, Aramaic, which at the time, between the 4th and 7th centuries, was not only the language of written communication, but also the lingua franca of that area of Western Asia.â
....
Rigorous scientific research of their faith needs to be done and the plot hole blasted into their reading space, their radio and tv space, their movie space everywhere.
#2
It my possibly work on some, 3dc, but the faith of majority can't be shredded without replacement. Perhaps conversions to other religions--Christianity may be best because of some surface commonalities--may work.
There may be some common denominators discerned on this site and an approach that would facilitate trend towards conversions may be, possibly, devised.
No, I am not a Christian, nor member of any other religion, I am an agnostic.
#3
Marvel fanboy! Bin Ladin is much closer to Lex Luthor and al Qaeda is a good match with the Secret Society of Super Villains/Legion of Doom.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
05/08/2005 8:12 Comments ||
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#4
I agree with 3dc, it's one thing to talk about destroying Islam as a religion, but most people are very attached to their religion of birth. In times past when a King would convert, his subjects would be expected to follow, but nowadays it would take generations of missionary work, and other religions have loopholes and contradictions that can be explioted just like Islam can.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
05/08/2005 8:12 Comments ||
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#5
"Based on everything we've learned over the last couple of years, you don't get the picture of a ruthless and determined adversary out to destroy our way of life so much as you do the plot of a really, really bad novel."
I disagree; I most certainly do get the picture of a ruthless and determined adversary out to destroy our way of life. What I don't get is a picture of an adversary that is ruthless, determined and competent. But that's the nature of Islam, the world's most prolific producer of hateful, murderous, fanatical fuckups.
And it isn't just the last couple of years, either: it's been obvious for a very long time that "there's something about Islam."
Even the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 was "same shit, different day" at the time it happened; by then, we'd already endured more than a decade of airplane hijackings, bombings and assassinations by various spawn of the Cult Of The Sick Puppy, and their bullshit was getting old even before the Ayatollah clawed his way to power.
Yes, the gang we are fighting right now seems a bunch of clowns, sometimes too absurd even for a bad comic book; but don't underestimate the malignant intent of the creed that spawned them.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
05/08/2005 8:48 Comments ||
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#6
"I want to know why we don't have a massive funding of propaganda to destroy the basis of the Muslim Faith. [...] I know that Bush is afraid to go there as he doesn't want it done to other faiths including his own. BUT ... It is time to do it!"
There are several good reasons why we're not doing this; but whatever concerns Bush may have about Christianity being subjected to the same treatment are not among them.
First, trying to talk people out of their religious beliefs by arguing that they're somehow "wrong" or "incorrect" is almost always an utter waste of time; in fact, it usually ends up backfiring-- badly-- because for every person you persuade to abandon his faith, you cause a dozen more to harden their beliefs in defense.
And second, embarking on a propaganda campaign to destroy the basis of Muslim faith is going to instantaneously, and unanimously, convince one and a quarter billion people that we are at war with the very basis of their existence. We're the most powerful nation on earth, but I don't think that even we are powerful enough to deal with that much enmity all at once, except by means so horrific that they are presently beyond contemplation.
Right now, the best course of action is very likely the one we've been taking: making an all-out effort to determine whether Islamic/Arabic culture can be somehow de-toxified by the introduction of consensual governance and the prosperity which usually follows in its wake.
It will either work, or it will not. I have my doubts, but I think we need to carry on longer before we give up.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
05/08/2005 12:18 Comments ||
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#7
I beg to differ somewhat in this respect: Compare the way the Far left talks with the way the Islamists talk, and you'll see similarities that would curl your hair.
The United States government cannot embark on an information crusade against Islam because that is contrary to the First Amendment: The genius of the American religious experience is that the constitution forbids that the Government be used as a tool of a specific religious establishment to enforce its will on other religions, forcing the issue into the public square of debate. This accorded well with the nature of the Majority Religion, Christianity, because the New Testament is replete with examples of non-violent prostelization, in which verbal arguments, rather than weapons, were the primary means of persuasion. Things went downhill in the 4th century AD after Christianity was made the official state religion, a situation not corrected until after the Reformation about 12 centuries afterwards. Contrast this with Islam, in which the concept of Jihad, holy war, is not some spiritualized concept applied as a metaphor for the struggle between righteousness and sin within the human soul, but has been concretely and actually implemented as physical warfare.
Part of the problem comes from the legacy of communism and leftism: A patently peaceful religion, christianity, has been maligned as a violent, conspiratorial, warmongering entity. Suddenly, there arrives on the scene a TRULY violent, conspiratorial, warmongering religion, and there are no categories left to classify it. Its literature is FULL of literal battles and teachings that make no sense outside of actual physical bloody battlefields in which real people get wounded and DIE. If one keeps calling Bush Hitler based on flimsy, strained, and patently ridiculous analogies, what do you call someone who actually FITS the description in numerous points?
In Europe, the Reformation gave cover to political liberalizing movements and trends by destroying the authority of the then reigning neo-theocracy. (My apologies to the Roman Catholics visiting the board, but there's no avoiding the truth. However, things are better now, and only liberals and leftists can't handle the concepts of repentance, reform, and forgiveness that are implemented outside of their political control and independently of them.) The reverse needs to be done for Islam, where political liberty must come first to stop Islamists from using force to impose their doctrine on others. When force is taken out of the picture, then other competing religions can come in, make their case, and show the difference between TRUE World Religions, and a warrior-based religion that bears more of a similarity to the War-God Religions of ancient Sumer, Nineveh, and the Vikings.
#8
To me the interesting issue is what happens when the Iraq war veterans come home and have some time to process the information they've picked up. For example, that Army officer cradling the dying Iraqi girl in the photo last week is likely to have a really serious attitude about the bad guys. And eventually some of these 25 year-old Marine lieutenants and 30 year-old Army captains with real Silver Stars are going to leave the service and enter politics ("Hey, I ran Al-Anbar Province for a year, how tough can Philadelphia be?") In other words: we're about to have two or three hundred thousand young men and women circulating in society who have first hand knowledge that the enemy is not Blofeld.
Posted by: Matt ||
05/08/2005 15:55 Comments ||
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Thousands of pro-Taliban tribesmen rallied against Pakistan's hunt for Al-Qaeda-linked militants on Friday and torched effigies of US President George W Bush, witnesses said.
About 5,000 people attended the rally, called by the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) party to call for an end to the "illegal military operation", they said.
"Down with the United States," shouted the protestors in Miranshah, the main town of the tribal North Waziristan region which border Afghanistan.
The rally took place just two days after Pakistan announced the capture of Al-Qaeda number three Abu Faraj al-Libbi.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/08/2005 00:00 ||
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AMMAN/DAMASCUS - Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah arrived on Saturday on a visit to Jordan after earlier talks in Damascus and Egypt. Upon arrival in Amman, the Saudi underboss prince, who is also his kingdom's ruling cheese regent, met with Jordan's King Abdullah. "The king and the crown prince underscored the importance of resuming talks on the Syrian and the Lebanese tracks so as peace be comprehensive and durable," a joint statement issued on the talks said.
The two monarchs reaffirmed that "a just solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which involves the setting up of an independent Palestinian state, provided the sole way for re- establishment of peace and maintaining security and stability in the Middle East".
And killing all the Joooos, as a matter of course.
The two monarchs also "considered the roadkill map, which provided for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, represented a basis for a just solution that guarantees rights of all parties".
The prince, who discussed the Palestinian-Israeli peace efforts last week during a meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush, briefed the king on the U.S. position. "During the talks, the king thanked Saudi Arabia for the support and assistance it had been extending to Jordan with the aim of spurring the kingdom's process of economic development," the statement said.
It alluded mainly to an oil grant of 50,000 barrels of crude per day, which the Riyadh government had been extending to the Hashemite kingdom since the start of the U.S.-led war on Iraq in March 2003. The extension of the grant, which reportedly expired at the end of April, was high on the agenda of the talks, according to official sources.
"Please don't cut us off!"
The crown prince's trip coincided with the arrival in Jordan of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani on a two-day state visit.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/08/2005 00:00 ||
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Pakistani Taliban veterans, once held in a notorious Afghan jail where hundreds of their comrades died, were part of a foiled plot to assassinate President Pervez Musharraf, intelligence officials said on Saturday. Despite official denials that any fresh attempt to kill Musharraf had been uncovered during a series of al Qaeda linked arrests over the past couple of weeks, intelligence officers insisted nearly a dozen people detained had planned a hit.
Musharraf narrowly survived two al Qaeda inspired attempts on his life in December 2003, and another plot against him was thwarted in the southern port city of Karachi in early 2002. On Monday, Pakistani security forces, acting on information from U.S. agents, caught Libyan Abu Faraj Farj al Liby. President George Bush described Liby as one of Osama bin Laden's top generals, and his capture fired up hopes that investigators might soon zero-in on the al Qaeda leader or his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri.
Pakistan says Liby planned the attacks on Musharraf. Though Liby is still being interrogated, sources say it was the recapture last week of Mushtaq Ahmed, who escaped custody in December after being sentenced to death for his role in one the assassination attempts that unleashed the follow-up arrests.
When the arrests took place remains hazy. But ten suspects, said to have been targeting Musharraf, were seized close to the eastern city of Lahore sometime in the last two weeks. On Friday, security forces caught four al Qaeda-linked suspects in Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province (NWFP), intelligence sources said. Liby and up to four other accomplices were run to ground elsewhere in NWFP, and eight more were caught in the province.
Its own ranks decimated in the last four years, al Qaeda has increasingly relied on Pakistani militants who share its world view to act as foot soldiers. "There's a lot of individuals now locked in a grim personal struggle for revenge," said a retired Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul, a former head of Pakistan's military intelligence, who believes his successors made a tactical error in breaking up militant organisations they once held some sway over.
Intelligence officials said several suspects arrested near Lahore belonged to Sunni Muslim militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, and some were once prisoners of feared Afghan commander General Abdul Rashid Dostum after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Al Liby's network recruited several Pakistani Taliban released by Afghanistan, who returned home embittered by what they saw as Musharraf's betrayal of the Islamist cause. "They were from the second batch of prisoners freed from Afghanistan's Shiberghan prison," one official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. "On their return to Pakistan, they were jailed here for a few weeks and then cleared and freed by the agencies," he said.
A suicide car bomber in one of the attacks on Musharraf was a Kashmiri who had been Dostum's prisoner, according to sources. Dostum, a military adviser to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, was cited for war crimes by rights groups, after hundreds of Taliban fighters reportedly perished -- suffocated inside sealed shipping containers -- at Shiberghan prison. Dostum survived a Taliban suicide bomb attack in January.
This article starring:
ABU FARAJ FARJ AL LIBY
al-Qaeda
AIMAN AL ZAWAHRI
al-Qaeda
General Abdul Rashid Dostum
MUSHTAQ AHMED
al-Qaeda
RETIRED LIEUTENANT GENERAL HAMID GUL
al-Qaeda
Jaish-e-Mohammed
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/08/2005 00:11 ||
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Intelligence officials who have been questioning Abu Faraj al-Libbi, the senior al-Qa'eda suspect arrested last week, have cast doubt over claims by the Pakistani prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, that the interrogation is "proceeding well".
The officials say that al-Libbi, who is believed to be al-Qaeda's number three, has defied efforts to make him reveal valuable intelligence about its senior hierarchy, despite coming under "physical pressure" to do so.
More than a dozen low-key al-Qa'eda targets were arrested in Pakistan last week thanks to information stored on al-Libbi's satellite telephone. Yet early hopes among both American and Pakistani intelligence officials that he would tell them the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawihiri, were dashed.
One senior intelligence official told The Telegraph: "So far he has not told us anything solid that could lead to the high-value targets. It is too early to judge whether he is a hard nut to crack, or simply that he doesn't know more than he has told us."
Al-Libbi had been beaten and injected with the so-called "truth drug", sodium pentothal, said the official. "They have tried all possible methods, from the 'third degree' to injecting him with a truth serum but it is hard to break him," he said.
In time, the officials hope that al-Libbi, 28, will tell them about forthcoming attacks, al-Qaeda's funding and its sophisticated coded communications network.
Mr Aziz said yesterday: "Certainly al-Libbi is a senior member of al-Qaeda, and we were on the look-out for him for a while."
The Pakistanis believe that al-Libbi was behind attempts to assassinate their country's president, Pervez Musharraf, as well as Mr Aziz.
He is also believed to have been in charge of running al-Qa'eda"sleeper cells" in America and Britain. At least three UK-based militants are believed to have travelled from London to Pakistan for talks with al-Libbi about future attacks in Britain.
He was on the run for more than three years before he was captured in Pakistan's north-west frontier province after trying to flee security forces on a motorbike.
His choice of hideouts had become increasingly limited. He suffers from the skin condition vitiligo, which results in the loss of skin colour and which can become chronic in hot weather.
Although al-Libbi preferred to hide in big cities such as Karachi, where he could live in relative anonymity, the heat and humidity forced him to return to the tribal areas where a large number of security forces are concentrated.
Pakistan has ruled out his immediate extradition to the United States, and denies that American agents are present at his questioning.
A government minister, however, told The Telegraph last night that British intelligence officials may be allowed to join the interrogation.
"This would be done once we exhaust him completely and are satisfied that he is not preparing to commit a terror act in our country," the minister said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/08/2005 00:07 ||
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#1
It going to take a couple of weeks. Sleep cycle disorientation and near psychosis takes a while. And unlike the US, the Paks are not restricted form using it - along with stimulants and soporifics to alter the cycles, as well as scop' for interrogation.
I wouldn want to be thig guy - only place worse would be to let the Mossad have him. They'd break him so badly he'd never recover - and they'd never lay a finger on him. Its a big mind f**k - and they are the best.
#4
This is a hoot. Talking about interrogation methods from the 1940s, as if they are current practice. Heck, even the in 60s, the CIA was almost openly experimenting with dozens of new drugs, and that was 40 years ago. By now, sheesh.
Egypt has released 135 members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood detained in a crackdown after nationwide demonstrations, but more than 1,500 are still being held, security sources said yesterday. Police released 135 members of the group in El-Minya, about 220 km south of Cairo, the sources said. One source said more than 1,500 were still in detention, including senior Brotherhood member Essam Erian and three others who were detained at Erian's flat in Cairo on Friday. Another source said about 1,800 were still being held.
Hundreds of members and supporters of the Brotherhood were rounded up this week after the group staged protests across the country calling for reform. The Brotherhood and other opposition groups have been calling for change during increasingly frequent demonstrations, including seeking an end to emergency laws in place since 1981 and which give the statewide powers for detention.
Despite the opinions of al-Muhajiroun and the Zarqawi-flavored bad guyz, democracy isn't something that Islamists need fear; it's just another method of attaining power. It's liberty that's the Islamists' enemy, as the nutbag lieutenant colonel (retd) post from yesterday emphasizes.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/08/2005 00:00 ||
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HRW actually gives a rat's ass about brown people being murdered? Particularly by other brown people?
I don't think my heart can stand the sudden shock.
Did they at least manage blame it on the US? Wouldn't want to think they've lost their touch.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/08/2005 1:33 Comments ||
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I dunno. From the article, it sounds like they just want more "peacekeepers" to rape children. Nothing about actually fighting the genocidal groups.
#4
I thought it said HRC - figuring it was another cynical move by Hillary to appear tough....HRW is more surprising....... what, is "Abu-Grahib, the marathon", over?
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/08/2005 22:12 Comments ||
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Hundreds of Palestinians rejoiced in Gaza yesterday after receiving new homes funded by the United Arab Emirates to replace many Israel destroyed in raids to find militants in four years of violence. UAE Prince Abdallah Bin Zayed presented the keys of 700 new apartments to Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip, which officials said cost $55 million to build. The new neighborhood also has a school, a park, a medical clinic and a mosque.
Palestinian Vice Premier Nabil Shaath said half the residents had their homes demolished in Israeli raids since the start of a Palestinian uprising in 2000. Israel has said many of the houses had harbored militants who used them as gun nests. "Today is a happy occasion for every Palestinian whose home was destroyed and to every Palestinian who suffered the agonies of the occupation."
Posted by: Fred ||
05/08/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
The new neighborhood also has a school, a park, a medical clinic and a mosque.
Mosque: that's the place they keep the weapons, right?
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/08/2005 0:19 Comments ||
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55 M / 700 = 78,571.43 per unit. Living large by Paleo standards, aren't they? I'm confused - does Gaza have a suburb called Brookline? (It's a Mass. joke, guys).
Hope you guys have good insurance plans, heh.
When you see the Caterpillar dozers, the following dialogue from 'Animal House' is apropos:
#3
Finally another Arab country is assisting these people to get more modernized and settled down.
Posted by: bk ||
05/08/2005 10:14 Comments ||
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Raj, they have to account for shrinkage of the funding as it flows through various hands. Not to mention all the extra cousins hired to stand around wearing their most helpful expressions. Lots of large families to be fed, after all. ;-)
A BRITISH team helping to rebuild the Jenin refugee camp have abandoned the city after their headquarters was fired on by Palestinians demanding better homes.
The three-man delegation of technical experts, subjected to months of threats and intimidation, halted work after gunmen attacked the United Nations office and shot at the door and windows.
Paul Wolstenholme, project manager, Neil Johnston, construction manager and Mike Luffingham, design manager, expressed dismay at the violent response from the refugees. They had been provided with replacement homes featuring imported Italian marble kitchen tops, costing over £75 a metre, and ceramic tiles. The homes were built to European construction standards.
âYou wouldnât believe how good the properties are,â said Mr Johnston, 50. âThe finishing is fantastic.â
Jordan's King Abdallah yesterday pledged to help Iraqi President Jalal Talabani in his country's fight against "terror" as the neighbors sought to end a sharp rift over Jordanian involvement in insurgent attacks. Following talks with Talabani, on his first trip abroad since taking office last month, Abdullah stressed Jordan's determination "to place all its resources at Iraq's service particularly training security (Iraqi) personnel," said a palace statement. "Jordan will not accept any act which harms the Iraqi people and its political leadership."
Talabani was accompanied by Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a fellow Kurd, and ambassador Ata Abdul Wahab, who was returning to Amman after a six-week absence for consultations. The reported involvement of a Jordanian in a suicide bombing that killed 118 people in the Shiite city of Hilla in late February sparked a wave of demonstrations against the Sunni kingdom that saw Jordanian flags and portraits of King Abdullah torched. Jordan recalled its ambassador for consultations but sent him back even after Iraq announced it was withdrawing Abdul Wahab in a tit for tat move. Jordan "stands firmly next to Iraq in its struggle against terrorism, terrorists and all who support them," said the statement. Talabani, meanwhile, expressed "Iraq's determination to develop and reinforce relations between the
Posted by: Fred ||
05/08/2005 00:00 ||
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#2
ROFL! Oh baby, the stories the nurses in the Aramco Family Clinics can tell, lol! And remember, the goobers at Aramco are the creme de la creme - best educated, etc. Yagouv Average is utterly clueless - at least in Saudi WahhabiLand.
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.
Prominent Lebanese opposition lawmakers have demanded President 
The 
A UN Security Council resolution demanding the disarmament of Lebanese militias does not apply to the 
PAKISTAN Embassy in Washington has protested against a highly derogatory cartoon appearing in the rag called The Washington Times that ridicules beyond imagination the country's role in the war on terror. Pakistan's Charge d'Affaires has rightly termed the cartoon (which shows a US soldier patting a dog that hold Abul Farraj Al Libbi and saying 'Good boyâŠnow let's go to find bin Laden') as an insult to 150 million people of Pakistan.
Egypt has released 135 members of the banned 
Jordan's 
