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Belgium to Block Turkey Plan
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Page 1: WoT Operations
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Afghanistan
'Mystery' Afghan troops attack target outside US airbase
Mystery Afghan troops slugged out a pre-dawn battle against an unknown target Saturday outside Bagram air base, the headquarters of an international military coalition in Afghanistan, the U.S. military said. A press statement issued from Bagram said around five Afghan men were seen directing mortar fire away from the base, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP). "A Bagram air base security post reported an estimated five local nationals carrying mortars at approximately 5:00 am (0030 GMT) this morning, north of the base," the statement said. "The locals fired four mortar rounds, directed away from the base between 5:00 and 8:00 am. Security personnel fired a mortar illumination round in response and the firing stopped."
Sounds like Hek's men, since they seem to have gotten turned around in the dark. Y'just can't get good help these days...
The statement said there were no injuries or damage from the firing.
Since they were firing in the wrong direction...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 02/09/2003 08:14 am || Comments || Link || [336069 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Sorry, is this story saying that they pointed the mortar the wrong way?


They had three hours to figure out where the airbase was and still got it wrong?


Amazing...
Posted by: Tony || 02/09/2003 11:19 Comments || Top||

#2  The Panjiris never did have a real high opinion of Hek's men. Just another example.
Posted by: Dishman || 02/09/2003 11:35 Comments || Top||

#3  Everything they knew about geography and direction-finding they learned in a Madrassah.

"Allah will direct the mortars! Allahu Akhbar! Oh crap! Runnnnnnn......"
Posted by: Frank G || 02/09/2003 11:53 Comments || Top||


Arabia
Kuwaiti Denies Killing U.S. Contractor
A Kuwaiti civil servant who previously admitted killing one U.S. computer contractor and injuring another claimed that authorities forced him to confess, his lawyer said. Sami al-Mutairi, 25, on Saturday denied the Jan. 21 shooting of the two computer contractors near a U.S. military camp in Kuwait, counsel Mohammed al-Mutairi said. The judge approved a prosecution request to extend al-Mutairi's detention for two weeks. Badi al-Ajmi, a Kuwaiti detained over allegations he supplied al-Mutairi with the AK-47 assault rifle used in the attack, also claimed his confession was made under duress.
"Nope. Nope. Wudn't us."
Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 02/09/2003 09:18 am || Comments || Link || [336078 views] Top|| File under:


Europe
Dutch schools back ban on veils
All Amsterdam high schools, barring one, have agreed to ban wearing face covering veils because they limit communication in the classroom, the regional Parool newspaper reported in its Friday evening edition.
Sounds like good sense, so there's probably something wrong with it...
The decision of the Amsterdam school boards will affect 33,000 students. Islamic schools are also supporting the ban and only one high school said it needed more time before taking a decision. The general ban on the chador and niqaab - both face covering veils worn by Muslim women - came after the ROC trade school in Amsterdam came in conflict with four pupils who started attending classes with the veils last year.
"We report. You roll your eyes."
Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 02/09/2003 07:57 am || Comments || Link || [336070 views] Top|| File under:


India-Pakistan
Gunmen Kill Four Hindu Men in Pakistan
Gunmen shot and killed four Hindus who were legally selling liquor in Quetta, police said Sunday. The gunmen rode up to the victims' store on a motorcycle late Saturday, spraying the area with bullets. A Muslim man was also killed and another Hindu was wounded. While liquor is illegal for Muslims in Pakistan, licenses to sell liquor are available. But alcohol can be sold only to non-Muslims, roughly 5 percent of Pakistan's 140 million people.
Now 139,999,996. "If they neighbor offend them, kill him and everyone around him." It's in the Koran someplace. You could look it up...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 02/09/2003 09:43 am || Comments || Link || [336071 views] Top|| File under:


Sirajul Haq urges Doctors community not to make medical profession means to economic prosperity
Senior Minister NWFP Mr. Sirajul Haq has said that medical profession is a sacred job and advised the doctors community not to make it a means to their economic prosperity rather they should consider it as a means to win the approval of Allah Almighty.
Money is so crass, isn't it? And people who have it always seem to piss it away on things like groceries. Better just be be a good Islamist and pray and read the Koran, and let the holy men and politicians worry about the money...
This he said while addressing the convocation of Khyber Medical college at Peshawar University on Saturday. Staff and students of the college, parents and medical graduates of the academic session 1999 and 2000 were also present on the occasion.
"You've worked hard to become physicians. You should be proud of your accomplishments. We just don't want to pay you."
Mr. Sirajul Haq said that the relation between a doctor and a patient was based on love for humanity and those who served humanity was the best of human beings. He urged the doctors to deal patients with affection in order to reduce their sufferings. He said that we as a nation were confronted with many challenges as imperialistic courses wanted to destroy us.
"That's why we don't want to pay you. We need the money to fight imperialists."
Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 02/09/2003 08:43 am || Comments || Link || [336074 views] Top|| File under:


7 Pakistani killed by Iranian border force, 37 arrested
As many as seven Pakistanis were killed by Iranian security forces for illegally entering into Iranian territory's Jashak area adjacent to Mand, Balochistan. According to reports coming from across the border, the Iranian security forces arrested 37 other Pakistanis who were sneaking into Iran illegally. All the 42 people were on their way to Dubai. Reports say that the Iranian forces cautioned the 42 men to halt but when received no response opened indiscriminate firing on them as a result seven out of 42 were killed while others were arrested. It is reported that the persons who have been killed belong to NWFP.
"Mahmoud, those border guards said to stop."
"Just ignore them, Ahmed. We're Pashtuns. We don't have to listen to what they say."

All were believed to be in search of livings and better future. The trend to cross into Dubai through Iranian territory has gained momentum in the last couple of months.
Like, since the elections? Wassamotta? No better future to be found in an Islamic paradise?
Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 02/09/2003 08:32 am || Comments || Link || [336074 views] Top|| File under:


Iraq
Man in Munich Speaks Sharply, French Surrender
From Reuters.

France Denies Secret Franco-German Iraq Plan
Sun February 9, 2003 09:46 AM ET

PARIS (Reuters) - The French Foreign Ministry said on Sunday there is no secret Franco-German plan to disarm Iraq, only proposals made to the U.N. Security Council by Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin to intensify weapons inspections.
"France confirms that there is no secret Franco-German plan for the disarmament of Iraq," Foreign Ministry deputy spokesman Bernard Valero told Reuters by telephone.

"There are, on the other hand, known proposals which were announced publicly by the foreign minister in the Security Council on February 5, aimed at reinforcing the United Nations inspection programs."

This is in reference to yesterday's Der Spiegel article about a UN occupation of Iraq, keeping Saddam in power while thousands of inspectors in blue helmets play Keystone Kops music
Posted by: John Bragg || 02/09/2003 07:47 pm || Comments || Link || [336087 views] Top|| File under:

#1  It depends what the meaning of "is" is.

Or "secret". Now that it's been leaked...
Posted by: someone || 02/09/2003 17:46 Comments || Top||

#2  My guess:Someone in the German Foreign Ministry wanted to derail the plan by leaking it to Der Spiegel.Maybe there are friends out there after all.
Posted by: El Id || 02/09/2003 18:22 Comments || Top||

#3  The British papers are taking this initiative quite seriously. It looks like a proposal will be made on 2/14 by the French and Germans.

The question is whether it is merely tripling the inspectors + U2 flights, or involves a tough sounding, coercive inspections regime (blue helmets, etc.).

If the latter, Blair will pay a huge political price for rejecting it. So will Bush for that matter.

This puts the French in the drivers seat. They either get their way -- making France a big player and isolating the US as the warmonger -- or weaken the leaders of the coalition politically by providing a credible-sounding alternative to war. In either case, they ingratiate themselves to the Axis of Evil.

I think we should coopt this initiative and insist on a role in the UN force, essentially making it a mandate to occupy Iraq.

Posted by: JAB || 02/09/2003 20:16 Comments || Top||

#4  At the UN, we will never get what we want in a resolution. France's position on how to deal with Iraq is ulterior motives at its worst. They have seen the evidence and they are playing footsie with Saddam for their own political and economic benefit. We can play all kinds of games with them, but if the Blue Hats get in there, our goals of reforming Iraq will go down the drain. I am very worried about this little game of France's. Do we have any good juice on them to shut down their dirty little game, or dow we take the heat and go and do what is right? If we appease these slimes, we are going to get it back in spades from Saddam or one of his chem/bio licensees.
Posted by: Alaska Paul || 02/09/2003 20:43 Comments || Top||

#5  We will have to take the major role in any UN military action in Iraq. No one else has the logistics or the men. It'll be our guys under some Frog general. Hah, like that will ever happen!
Posted by: Chuck || 02/09/2003 20:49 Comments || Top||

#6  Colin Powell could get away with rejecting it, not as Secretary of State, but as Colin Powell. "I could not in good conscience order my soldiers to perform that mission."
Posted by: Dishman || 02/09/2003 21:04 Comments || Top||

#7  An incredibly bad plan, if you want Sammy disarmed. If, on the other hand, you'd like a chance to clean up the traces of your governmental involvement in sanction-busting as well as set a trigger force in place. "Lightly armed" - that means no armor, guys. A bad situation waiting to happen. Or happen again - anybody remember Somalia?

Oh, and dishman - they're no longer Colin's troops. They work for Don Rumsfeld.
Posted by: mojo || 02/09/2003 22:03 Comments || Top||

#8  The euro-crats have made it clear that they cannot tolerate and will stop at nothing to see that their enemy is stopped before it can take the kind of decisive swift action that will cost them both prestige and power.

Who's their enemy?, its us.

Saddam and the rest of worlds tyrants have nothing to fear from the europeans. They are too busy stopping the big bad USA to put a stop to the forces of evil.
Posted by: Frank Martin || 02/09/2003 22:03 Comments || Top||


Iran denies shelling Ansar positions...
Iran Sunday denied reports that it had shelled positions of the Ansar al-Islam, an Iraqi Kurdish rebel group accused of links with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. "This report is false, even though the government of the Islamic republic disapproves of the Ansar," said foreign ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi.
Guess they didn't hit anything...
The Ansar is a "suspect organization" but Iran "does not engage in punitive actions against groups based abroad", said Asefi. Sources in northern Iraq had told AFP that the Iranian army shelled Ansar positions on Wednesday night ahead of a Thursday deadline set by Britain and the United States.
A deadline. I like deadlines...
The group, a hardline breakaway from the longstanding Islamic Movement of Iraqi Kurdistan, controls a small pocket of territory in the mountains above the town of Halabja, close to the Iranian border. The territory lies outside the no-fly zone over northern Iraq patrolled by British and US warplanes since the aftermath of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, but the Western allies had reportedly warned Iran that they would mount air strikes against the Ansar if it failed to act.
So if the Medes and Persians didn't shell them, that means we should just go ahead and whack the bastards, right?
Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 02/09/2003 10:16 am || Comments || Link || [336084 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Where will Ansar flee to when the U.S. or U.S. backed Kurdish forces come into the area? Iran will not want to be seen as being a haven for fleeing terrorists (again). Neither will Syria.
Posted by: Anonymous || 02/09/2003 19:33 Comments || Top||

#2  Ansar's ducked over the border before. However, if Iran is serious...


I say we bomb like crazy and then turn the Kurds loose on them. They owe them for the massacre a few motnhs ago.

Posted by: Chuck || 02/09/2003 20:52 Comments || Top||

#3  Read the "Kurdish Leader Is Assassinated in Militant Raid" article in NYT.
The description had the marks of an Al-Qaeda hit almost exactly like the one on Ahmed Shah Masood on 9/9/01. Too bad the victim didn't put 2+2 to realize he was being set up. Even his bodyguards got knocked off.
Posted by: Tresho || 02/09/2003 21:36 Comments || Top||


U.S. troops already in northern Iraq...
The Turkish, American, Kurdish meeting in Ankara was attended by Mr. Jalal Talebani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Prime Minister of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan (DPK) Nechirvan Barzani and US Special Envoy for Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad.On the instance of Ankara, Sanan Ahmad Aqa, the leader of Iraqi Turkoman Front (ITC) was also present, but did not intervene in the debate.

The two Kurdish groups represented at the talks have already declared they have no intention of declaring an independent Kurdish state and expressed their strong opposition to the entry of Turkish forces in their territories, saying they want to be a part of a united Iraq and have a say on how the country is run from Baghdad. "We regard the Americans as liberators and our neighbours as looters", the New York Times quoted a Kurdish source.

There is also an ongoing debate on the status of Kirkook and Mosul. Turkey says the area is dominated by Turkomans and should not fall under the jurisdiction of the Kurds. According to the Turkish press, Turkey and Kurdish forces have agreed to not enter Mosul and Kirkuk in a possible war, leaving the United States the responsibility for security of the oil producing cities. "If Kurdish groups attempt to claim Mosul and Kirkuk, Turkey will have the right to intervene in the region", the press said.

Meanwhile, the Iranian news agency IRNA, quoted Thursday Mohammad Hadji Mahmood, the Secretary general of the Kurdistan Socialist Democratic Party that between 700 and 1,000 US troops are already in northern Iraq, "with some 50 more arriving each day". He also confirmed the preparation of three landing strips in the region, near the enclave's main cities of Erbil, Dohuk and Sulaymaniya.
I've got a bad feeling about the Turks with regard to the Kurdish and Turkoman areas...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 02/09/2003 10:09 am || Comments || Link || [336073 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Yep, this is the one thing that could hose the entire plan. The Turks decide to do a territory grab, the Kurds object violently, their cousins inside Turkey rise up, and in the resulting fracas, Sammy wiggles off the hook. You don't suppose Sammy is promoting this stuff behind the scenes?
Posted by: Steve White || 02/09/2003 12:59 Comments || Top||

#2  They'll wait until Saddam's dead,like all good... you know.
Posted by: El Id || 02/09/2003 15:47 Comments || Top||


Belgium Continues Blocking Turkey Plan
Belgium will continue blocking NATO efforts to plan for Turkey's defense against potential attacks from Iraq, Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel said Sunday. Michel urged the United States to give U.N. inspectors more time and resources to search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and backed a reported French-German plan to send U.N. peacekeepers there. France, Belgium and Germany are the only three of NATO's 19 members who don't back preparations to defend the country. They argue it is premature to start the military planning while U.N. efforts to avert war continued. "There are 16 (NATO) countries willing to back the United States, and follow the case for war. We are not there yet," Michel said on a Sunday talk show on VRT television.
"And we never will be."
Under a so-called "silence procedure" agreed upon Thursday, military planning would begin automatically to deploy early warning planes, missile-interceptor batteries and anti-germ warfare units to Turkey — unless any of the allies raises an objection by 10 a.m. Monday. "We are now busy with France and Germany to write a letter to state out our veto right," Michel said.
Toldja so.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 02/09/2003 09:30 am || Comments || Link || [336119 views] Top|| File under:

#1  We're witnessing the end of NATO here. The invocation of Article V (attack on one is an attack on all) by the US and the subsequent recognition that is was an empty Article utterly dismayed me.

I wonder what would have happened had the Soviets rolled over the German plains in the 70's-80's and the US had decided to renage on Article V "Alright Ivan, just let us get our troops out and Berlin is yours, ok?"

Perhaps Belgium has got some nasties to hide (as do the French and Germans) in Iraq?
Posted by: Tony || 02/09/2003 11:33 Comments || Top||

#2  I doubt whether Belgium has anything to hide. Belgium has ceased to exist as independent country. It's nothing but the second vote of France in the EU, the UN etc...
Posted by: Peter || 02/09/2003 12:32 Comments || Top||

#3  I agree with Belgium. It is about time the EU stood up for itself!

As an American, I don't always trust what Washington D.C. does elsewhere in the world. The federalization of authority in the EU will offer a counterbalance to any arrogant moves around the world by my guys and gals.
The U.S. needs Europe for economic reasons, so NATO must continue.
Posted by: Bruce || 02/09/2003 13:51 Comments || Top||

#4  NATO has been dead for 12 years. This is just confirmation of it. It's time for something new. Mind you, there are probably some in France who disagree with their country's stance, and those should not be forgotten when the crap really hits the fan in Europe one day.
Posted by: Rw || 02/09/2003 14:08 Comments || Top||

#5  Bruce, you're absolutely right, Bush is not trustworthy. In fact, you should go to Iraq right now and prove Saddam doesn't have WMD yourself. And you might as well stay there to protect some buildings. I mean, after all, they wouldn't bomb you would they? Oh wait... the gummint can't be trusted.. better stay home.
Posted by: yeah right || 02/09/2003 14:18 Comments || Top||

#6  Belgium is French in everything but name. We should just give them an enema for what they did in the Congo. Central Africa is screwed big time primarily because of these clowns and their colonial policies. There was, what, something like 12 high school grads in the Congo when they gave it independance.
Posted by: Chuck || 02/09/2003 20:56 Comments || Top||


Kurdish Political Leader Killed in Iraq
Gunmen posing as defectors from an Islamic extremist group killed a political leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and two other Kurdish officials, a party commander said Sunday. The commander blamed the Ansar al-Islam organization for the Saturday night attack on Gen. Shawkat Haji Mushir, a member of the political leadership of the party, which controls the eastern section of the Kurdish autonomous region of northeast Iraq. Sheik Jaffar Mustafa, party military commander of the town of Halabja, said the three attackers also killed Hekmat Osman, security chief of the Sirwan district, and Sardar Qafoor, military commander of Sirwan district. Three civilians — a man, a woman and a child — were also killed. Mohamad Tawfiq, security chief of Halabja, was seriously injured, and six civilians and three other Kurdish soldiers also were hurt, he said.
That accomplishes a several purposes at once. Not only do a few important Kurdish figures get knocked off, but the snuffies also ensure that any subsequent defectors from Ansar will be viewed with suspicion and maybe get their necks stretched just on general principles. And of course a hit on the Kurds is — just by coincidence, of course — to Sammy's advantage.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 02/09/2003 09:23 am || Comments || Link || [336089 views] Top|| File under:

#1  A lot of people are wondering why Ansar hasn't been daisy cut yet. I'm one of them. Some people say that the PUK wants to take care of them during the general conflict. Others say that we are hoping to get intel out of Ansar proving the Saddan-AQ link. A few other theories exist. None convincing.
Posted by: mhw || 02/09/2003 10:27 Comments || Top||

#2  As long as they are in Iraq, they can be monitored and eventually hit. Once hit, they will move to Pankisi Gorge and will disappear.
Posted by: Anonymous || 02/09/2003 21:22 Comments || Top||


Iraq hands over documents after 'detailed' discussions
Iraq has handed over more documents to chief weapons inspectors during a second round of crucial disarmament talks in Baghdad, a United Nations source said. Hans Blix, in charge of a hunt for chemical, biological and ballistic weapons, and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the UN nuclear watchdog, met for two-and-a-half hours of talks with an Iraqi monitoring team led by presidential adviser Amer al-Saadi. Dr Blix and Dr ElBaradei were handed documents relating to the nuclear field, a UN source said, adding that discussions focused on chemical and biological weapons. "The discussions were very detailed," the source said.
That means they had to tell the Iraqis exactly what they wanted an explanation of. That, and that alone, would be discussed. Sammy's boyz still aren't disarming...
He said documents would be assessed in coming days. "It is too early to judge" the significance of the documents, he said.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 02/09/2003 09:08 am || Comments || Link || [336066 views] Top|| File under:


Govt ignoring casualty predictions: Labor
Australian Labor Party foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd says the Federal Government has underestimated the likelihood of civilian casualties in the event of war. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer says the impact on Iraqi civilians would be low because the US would use precision-guided weapons. Mr Rudd says Mr Downer has ignored UN reports predicting tens of thousands of casualties and millions of refugees. "I'd like Mr Downer to respond to the claims by the United Nations that the impact on Iraqi civilians is likely to be huge - deaths, casualties as well as refugees which Australia will also face as a challenge in our own region," he said.
Dont't forget the puppies, kittens, and baby ducks. They'll be decimated. Tusk. Tusk.
Mr Rudd called on Mr Howard to outline plans for accepting refugees if there is war in Iraq.
"And I don't want you to do anything else until it's ready. Have it on my desk by October 1st, okay?"
Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 02/09/2003 08:59 am || Comments || Link || [336071 views] Top|| File under:


Howard calls for Iraq vote allowing force
Australian Prime Minister John Howard says he wants a new clear-cut UN Security Council resolution on Iraq for enforcement of all elements of a disarmament resolution, including the threat of military action. Mr Howard is in Washington for an official visit that will include talks with President George W Bush. It is the first time Mr Howard has detailed what he expects from a new Security Council vote. "At this stage, I think I want (a resolution) that gives full authority to enforce the conditions of Resolution 1441," he said. A new resolution, he says, is unnecessary but would result in more countries committing military forces. "It would bring forth the greatest level of support and commitment and involvement."
It's good to have the support, but even if there was a new resolution this afternoon, the same people saying it's necessary would be demanding yet a third resolution, after appropriate discussions, of course. They could find room for it on their calendars, oh... sometime next year.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 02/09/2003 08:53 am || Comments || Link || [336068 views] Top|| File under:

#1  "It would bring forth the greatest level of support and commitment and involvement."

But since nobody gives a rats ass about their allies anymore, it won't happen.

The US should f**k Saddam for no other reason than to set the precedent. Some faggots around the world seem to have been asleep during the cold war. Now they come out and think they can play with the big boys? Don't think so. A bit off topic, sorry... I got pissed off.
Posted by: yeah right || 02/09/2003 14:33 Comments || Top||


Perv and Jacques chat on Iraq...
President General Pervez Musharraf has expressed the hope that all options for a peaceful resolution with regard to the Iraq crisis would be exercised in the present standoff. The President said this while talking on telephone to the French President Jacques Chirac on Saturday. The President emphasized the need for taking all measures under the relevant UN resolutions as Pakistan believed in the supremacy of the United Nations and felt that the United Nations' Security Council was the correct forum to take decisions. He also discussed the situation arising out of a possible war in Iraq and its fallout in the region.
He means like making dictators wobble on their thrones...
The President underscored the importance for ensuring the territorial integrity, sovereignty and unity of Iraq and welfare of its people in any eventuality. General Musharraf also stressed upon the need for greater and pro-active cooperation from Iraq with the UN inspection team so that the process of its disarmament could proceed unhindered and smoothly and war averted.
Pakland has its own problems with territorial integrity. If the jihadis end up starting a war between it and India, Sind, Punjab and Kashmir could end up being part of India, and NWFP and Balochistan could become part of Afghanistan. Perv and Qazi and Fazl and Sami would all have to find jobs, if they didn't end up getting their necks stretched.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 02/09/2003 08:37 am || Comments || Link || [336083 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Pervez better realize soon that the Jihaddis are the big bad nasty parasite that will eventually kill its host. If he does not rein them in, they will keep pushing and a war with India will start, turning Pak into a Roentgen soup bowl when the real big bombs fall. A nutcase on a nerve can do big things. Take a look at the start of WW1.
Posted by: Alaska Paul || 02/09/2003 15:06 Comments || Top||

#2  I don't think India would want Punjab either, they really aren't much better than NWFP when it comes to madrassa zombies
Posted by: Paul || 02/09/2003 19:23 Comments || Top||


German FM pleads against Iraq war with Rumsfeld
The Munich Conference on Security on Saturday, February 8, turned into a direct face-off between the United States calling for precipitating a military action against Iraq and its staunch sceptics in the European continent.
They mean Germany...
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer strongly defended his country's defense of Saddam Hussein opposition to war on Iraq, saying the UN weapons inspectors should be given more time to conduct their mission in Iraq, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.
"How much more time?"
"How 'bout another twelve years?"

Warning against the logic of military build-up, the senior German official said that he was simply not convinced by the U.S. case for strikes against the Baghdad regime and warned against any unilateral action. "We must exhaust all possible means in order to resolve this crisis," he told the Munich Conference on Security, an annual gathering that draws a who's who of international foreign policy and defense figures.
Seems like we already have...
The world needed political alternatives every bit as much as muscle, Fischer said. "The deciding question is whether the risk is already so great that it justifies a war," he said — and on that point, Germany was of a different opinion to the United States.
That's because the Fritzies prefer verbiage to doing anything of substance...
The German minister was speaking at the high-level security conference moments after US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made an equally impassioned plea for the world to "unite behind action". Rumsfeld said before the high-powered audience that world must be "prepared to use force if necessary" to disarm Iraq, and blasted NATO allies for what he called failing to act to protect Turkey against attack.
Since he won't do it himself, if it's necessary, then we have to do it for him. The Fritz's don't seem to think it's necessary.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 02/09/2003 08:19 am || Comments || Link || [336074 views] Top|| File under:


The Iraq Bush will build
Long article from the Guardian.

In the early evening the citizens of the southern Iraqi city of Basra like to walk along the banks of the Shatt al-Arab waterway. Tall palms sway in the breeze that comes off the muddy brown water. Children run between the statues of war heroes. This is one of the fabled cities of the Middle East.
But only a few hundred yards from the waterside, the real face of Basra the Beautiful, as the fading postcards on display in the lobby of the city's only hotel call it, is revealed. In the back streets, mangy dogs forage in piles of rotting rubbish, effluent courses down gutters hacked in the muddy streets, and families of 20 are crammed into three-room houses. In these homes, away from prying ears, two questions are being asked: What happens in the war? And what happens afterwards?

Most people know the answer to the first. Even Saddam Hussein admits the technological superiority of the forces ranged against him will make meaningful resistance hard.
Actually he hasn't, but continue.
There is little incentive to fight for even the officers of the elite Republican Guard, let alone the conscripts who will face the Joint Direct Attack Munitions and the Apaches with weapons as old as Iraq's tourist literature. But the answer to the second? Even those charged with orchestrating Iraq's post-Saddam future have little idea.

Every Thursday morning for many weeks the inner circle of President George Bush's administration - Condoleezza Rice, his National Security Adviser; Colin Powell, the Secretary of State; Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary; senior figures from the CIA - have gathered in the White House's Oval Office for a progress meeting on the 'war on terror'. There was one question an increasingly frustrated Bush asked every week: once the allies had got rid of Saddam, 'what do we do with Iraq?' He has been getting conflicting answers. Infighting within the administration continues. However, a scheme, finally, has been thrashed out.

The plan is in three stages: first, US-led military rule; second, a transitional phase with an American military governor ruling alongside a civilian leader appointed by (or at least acceptable to) the international community; and, finally, handover to a regime sympathetic to and nurtured by Washington.

Initially, the model for post-war Iraq was that of Japan's reconstruction under General Douglas MacArthur. But State Department experts felt this would be too brazenly colonial and cause resentment throughout the Arab world. However, although the MacArthur-style scheme has been discarded, a key resource for the planners is the archives of the denazification of Germany.

As it was with post-war Germany, it will be unfeasible to purge Iraq of all members of the Baath Party, Saddam's political vehicle. 'Millions of people are complicit. If they were all rounded up, the administration of the country would collapse. These are people who will be needed in any post-war situation,' Daniel Neep, of the Royal United Services Institute in London, said.
Sounds like George Patton's complaint after the war, too many Nazis rounded up and no one left to run Germany. Turned out he was wrong, and this is prolly wrong too. Round 'em up and make 'em sweat a while.
The US military governor of Iraq is likely to be Tommy Franks, the general due to head the attack on Iraq. This is not entirely the promotion it seems: Rumsfeld is known to dislike Franks for his strategic conservatism.
Don: "Congrats, Tommy, I've appointed you to a five year term as governor-viceroy of Iraq."
Tommy: "With all due respect Mr. Secretary ..."
Don: "Shaddup or I'll make it ten years."

The first phase, US-led military rule, would last between six and 18 months after the war. It would be policed by armies from the 'coalition of the willing', including a big British contingent.
The Brits know the place pretty well, we should let them lead.
The second phase is seen as being a kind of international civilian administration, backed by a diminished military presence. Here, the inspiration being worked on is the protectorate in Kosovo.
Bad idea. Keep phase I in place until the Iraqis are ready to handle it. Otherwise the Kruds and the Shi'a will get crazy ideas into their heads about splitting off.
But if the Americans are hoping for a broad, UN-led international coalition to take on the task of running Iraq, the United Nations is dreading the role. Officials at UN headquarters speak about having to 'clean up the mess ' at the end of a war which may not have been sanctioned by the Security Council.
If they don't sanction it, they won't have anything to worry about. We won't let them in afterwards. This will really upset the French since all their oil contracts will go poof.
'In American logic, the UN seems to have an advisory role when it comes to making war, the easy part; but becomes essential when it comes to making peace, i.e. the difficult part,' said one official.
Don't be too sure of that.
There is bitter argument over who should be the prospective civilian governor, or 'High Representative', to rule alongside an American during the second phase. The Americans want an American. The veteran peace-broker George Mitchell, with his experience in Ireland and the Middle East, is a front-runner. But the Bush administration sees Mitchell, a Democrat, as too much of a dove. It favours Norman Schwarzkopf, who led coalition forces in the first Gulf war and is now, as a civilian, a vigorous campaigner for the Bush family.
Heh, ‘Stormin' Norman’? That would really pin some ears back.
But most Security Council members would prefer an appointment from a European Union country to counter American influence. The UN is determined, in the face of fierce US opposition, that Iraq's top civilian 'must' be a Muslim. Lakhdar Brahimi, the veteran Algerian diplomat who brokered peace in Afghanistan, is a possibility.
The UNSC had better give us 10 votes and no veto then, or they can wish for anyone they want; it won't happen.
The third phase of reconstruction is the most controversial and least planned: the establishment of a pro-American Iraqi government, ideally within two years, that eschews the nation's recent past and, of course, weapons of mass destruction. The latter is more controversial than it sounds, as chemical weapons have been a corner-stone of Iraqi military strategy for two decades.
It won't be anymore.
Reconciling Iraq's powerful Sunni Muslim minority, its poor Shia majority and its semi-autonomous Kurds will be hard. So, too, will it be to convince Iraqis that the government is ruling in their best interests and is not a US puppet.
Let's see: we'll make sure the bandits are put down, the Iranians keep out, the oil money gets spent on rebuilding the country, the worst of the Baathist pigs swing from a rope — what's not to like if you're an Iraqi afterwards?
Dick Cheney, the US Vice-President, and the Pentagon have long been pushing for a robust role for the Iraqi National Congress (INC), a motley collection of exiled leaders led by Ahmed Chalabi. But the CIA and State Department distrust the INC, regarding it as self-serving and lacking credibility among Iraqis. They're right They want to build a government from people now in Iraq once reconstruction is under way.

The State Department is hoping to reassure former Baath party figures by stressing that it wants to prosecute only a dozen or so leading figures in the Saddam regime, while setting up a truth and reconciliation commission along South African lines to deal with amnesty for the rest.
We should prosecute the top thousand or so. And anyone with the rank of "General."
The key unknown for the third stage is the state of Iraq after the war. A document prepared for the State Department predicts 'disruption of law and order, the food distribution systems and emergency healthcare'. Fear would be 'widespread,' says the government report. So, experts say, would 'score-settling'. A secret UN memo, leaked to the press, forecasts 'devastation'. Injuries and trauma could, says the report, 'devastate' the population, with up to 500,000 needing treatment. 'The outbreak of disease, in epidemic if not pandemic proportions, is very likely.' The last Gulf war triggered an exodus of 1.5 million refugees. Aid agencies are warning of a humanitarian catastrophe. The current strategy is to try to contain refugees within the region.
I think this won't be as bad as they make it sound, but we'd better have a plan.
So where does Britain fit into this? Whitehall has identified several risks in a post-Saddam scenario in addition to the outbreak of bloody civil war along ethnic lines or, if the planned 'smart bombing' campaign misses its targets, devastating damage to Iraq's infrastructure. Planners fear retreating Iraqi soldiers will ignite oil wells as they did in Kuwait 12 years ago, and, if Saddam deploys chemical weapons, the poisoning of land and people on a massive scale. British planners are also concerned that Washington and London are committed to a lengthy, difficult and hugely expensive peacekeeping operation after the fighting.
The oil trust will pay for it as part of the security we provide to the new Iraqi state. Think of it as a service charge.
Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, the Chief of Defence Staff, is understood to have told Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon that it would be unreasonable to expect Britain to take the lead for much longer than a few months. 'We simply do not have the people to provide long-term support,' said one defence source.
We should get the East European axis of eagles prepared to help -- the Poles, Romanians and Hungarians for starters. It would be good training for their troops to work with ours, and they can participate in something that will pay dividends in their future dealings with us.
Downing Street appears to be listening: sources say that, while the commitment of troops will be 'more than six weeks, probably more than six months', there are no plans for an extended stay. In a signal that Washington understands the problem, Bush has begun in domestic speeches to warn that American troops will take longer than they expect to get home. But there are no other candidates for leading the peacekeeping operations. British planners talk privately about the Jordanians or the Turks taking the lead. Experts say that either idea is a non-starter.
Neither of these; they definitely have their own plans.
One answer may be using carrot rather than stick. Last November the Ministry of Defence sent a group of defence intelligence officers to Washington. They recommended flooding the country with aid in the crucial first two months after the toppling of Saddam. An intensive outpouring of food, welfare assistance, healthcare, educational opportunities and help with agriculture might convince the Iraqis that life under a Western puppet regime was preferable to any alternative. Establishing 'safe havens' within which NGOs can start work would be a priority for advancing troops.

The likely costs of aid for Iraq are still being calculated. The US Congressional Budget Office estimates a peacekeeping force of 75,000 to 200,000 would cost between $17 billion and $46bn a year. Britain expects to contribute 5 per cent of the international bill. Given the parlous state of the oil infrastructure, it will be years before revenues from Iraq's own resources will be able to defray any costs. Yale economist William Nordhaus says that, even if the oilfields are intact and Iraq can produce three million barrels a day - its previous maximum - swiftly, this would produce only 'around $25 billion a year at prevailing oil prices'.
As long as everyone behaves, that should be enough to cover our direct costs and the rebuilding.
Much depends on Iraq's neighbours. A steady flow of high-grade intelligence from Tehran proved unexpectedly helpful during the 2001 war in Afghanistan. But the Iranians' reward was to be lumped in with North Korea and Iraq in Bush's 'axis of evil' speech. Britain has been trying to soothe injured Iranian feelings ever since. Last week Iran's Foreign Minister, Kamal Kharrazi, slipped into Downing Street for an audience with the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. They assured him there would be no redrawing of Iraq's borders to Iran's disadvantage. But other regional powers, such as the Jordanians and the Saudis, are still uneasy.
You don't say. Can't imagine why.
Last week negotiations continued between US envoys, who want to use southern Turkey as a launchpad for 20,000 to 80,000 troops, and the Turks. Istanbul wants to pour its own troops into northern Iraq in the event of a US attack. The Kurds are horrified at the thought of a de facto occupation. And no one can predict what will happen in Israel.

All Washington's calculations depend on a quick war and an easy victory. 'There's an assumption that the Americans will be greeted as liberators, and very little consideration of the deep anti-American sentiment as the result of 10 years of poverty due to the sanctions', one UN official said.
This fellow is talking through his hat. We'll be liberators, all right.
'No decisive policy is without its risks,' retorted a senior US official.

Posted by: Steve White || 02/09/2003 02:07 am || Comments || Link || [336080 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Yes we will be liberators to most of the Kurds and Shia. However, a big question mark is the Sunni center of the country.

In some towns in the Sunni center, the number of Baathist thugs who deserve capital punishment is pretty low and the number of people who hate Saddam is high. However, in other towns, a majority of the male adults are on Saddam's payroll in one way or another.
Posted by: mhw || 02/09/2003 14:06 Comments || Top||

#2  MB likes the thought of Stormin' Norman; she had the same thought last week. As to those grifting on Saddam's payroll: they'll just have to learn what unemployment really means, the poor dears!
Posted by: MommaBear || 02/09/2003 15:22 Comments || Top||

#3  they want a muslim - you could of course have someone who is BOTH a muslim AND an AMERICAN. thsi fellow Khalilzad, who was our point man on Afgan politics, and is now Admin point man on Iraq politics - a long time Bush loyalist, very adroit, and definitely a MUSLIM. Somehow thats not what the UN people have in mind, i suspect.

If it cant be an American (and i suppose a Kuwait is out), how about an Afgan???
Posted by: liberalhawk || 02/10/2003 8:48 Comments || Top||


Southeast Asia
Philippine troops bump off eight Abus...
Philippine troops pursued groups of Abu Sayyaf rebels deep in the jungles of a southern island Sunday, after killing at least eight the day before, officials said. Soldiers clashed with the guerrillas and shelled their mountain hide-outs Saturday in the town of Patikul, officials said. The artillery fire reverberated across the nearby capital, Jolo. Six rebels were wounded in the fighting. Hospital and drug stores were being guarded in Jolo, anticipating the guerrillas would seek medical help, army Col. Alexander Aleo said. The assaults in recent weeks were part of a military offensive dubbed "End Game" against a large Abu Sayyaf faction in Sulu.
Even though this isn't much more than the background noise of antiterrorism, it's still nice to know that eight more Abus are decomposing.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 02/09/2003 09:39 am || Comments || Link || [336072 views] Top|| File under:


Indonesia: Thousands of protesters rally against US plan in Iraq
Wearing white clothes, thousands of supporters of Indonesia's Justice Party (PK) staged a rally on Sunday morning to protest US-led plan to attack Iraq. Carrying banners, which some reading "Save Peace and Humanity" and "Stop War on Iraq", the demonstrators started the march in the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle, Central Jakarta, where the British embassy is located. President of the party, Hidayat Nurawahid, said that the demonstration was an attempt to stop US-led plan to attack Iraq. "It seems that US President George W Bush is afraid of losing face if he fails to attack Iraq," he was quoted by Antara as saying.
It seems that Sammy is afraid of losing face if he actually disarms...
The protesters later headed to the United Nations office and the United States embassy. El shinta reported that the US embassy has increased security officers to guard the building. Hidayat has guaranteed that the demonstration would end peacefully. "None of our supporters are allowed to litter the road," he said, adding that the protesters would end the demonstration by holding mass prayer in nearby Istiqlal Mosque.
Very appropriate...
Indonesia, the world's most populous anti-American Muslim country, has repeatedly opposed the plan attack against Iraq whithout the U.N.'s permission approval.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 02/09/2003 08:23 am || Comments || Link || [336070 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Reminder: Muslims treat the U.N. as a defacto legal authority. Their de jure authority is the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The OIC mentality is as follows: defend self-determination where Muslim insurgents are in the minority, and defend territorial integrality where Muslims are the majority, viz insurgent "kufr." Keep the U.N. but kick the Islamo-fascists out.
Posted by: Anon || 02/09/2003 14:06 Comments || Top||


International
Free the French Colonies
OK, these are not news and comments, but no one speaks about this so please read and tell me if it is not interesting:
The United Nations are violating their Charter because they do support and/or ignore the existence of a French Empire that violates the right of People to self determination.
France has colonies in
Southern America, that is French Guyana
Pacific Area, that is:New Caledonia and French Polynesia
All these colonies and other small islands and territories all over the world are called by France DOM/TOM, Departments and Territories Overseas. This is just an elegant name for COLONIES.
Moreover, France keeps troops, without any U.N. mandate, in many Countries in Africa, not only in the Ivory Coast. These troops protect the large French interests in the COTTON production in Africa. The Countries of Africa compelled by France to produce low cost cotton are not allowed to diversify their sources of income and are not allowed to produce even the food needed for their own inhabitants.
No other Country in the world is allowed to such an old fashioned style of IMPERIALISM.
The point here is not to answer angrily to the French weasels politics, the point is to ask to the U.N. to abolish immediately the French Empire, free the peoples subject to the French Imperialism. Why the U.S.A. does not propose this to the Security Council TOMORROW morning?
Posted by: Poitiers || 02/09/2003 11:35 am || Comments || Link || [336084 views] Top|| File under:

#1  At what cost? The French economy is in the toilet. The oil shock from this war will push them over. Then you'll have angry, anti-American Frenchies changing their worthless Euros for bread in lengthy lines...Just remember that imperialism=>statism=>fascism and somewhere in that mix will be a Franco-American conflict a little more serious then screwing us over at the UN...
Posted by: Brian || 02/09/2003 12:02 Comments || Top||

#2  A FRANCO-American conflict? A Franco-AMERICAN conflict? As in shooting? With guns? That's a pretty funny idea. How about the first Americans to land on the French coast give the French army a .38 caliber stern look?

Bring a big table and chairs with you so you're comfortable when you sit down to dictate terms of surrender, on the beach. A nice umbrella table, if this happens in the summer.
Posted by: Patrick || 02/09/2003 17:59 Comments || Top||

#3  Don't shoot me! I just took a more liberal (and unrealistic) interpretation of a Den Beste post from recently where he describes all the ways that France, if their back was to the wall, would intervene against us. I also made no claims about the efficacy of the French military...without laughing uncontrollably.
Posted by: Brian || 02/09/2003 22:57 Comments || Top||

#4  Not to be critical, but the French are a nuclear-armed country...
Posted by: Gary Williams || 02/10/2003 0:49 Comments || Top||


Iran
Iran forced to choose lesser of two evils
US-led war threats against Iraq are facing Iran with a stark choice - accept the massive troop buildup on its borders of arch foe the United States or risk Iraq maintaining the capacity to repeat its chemical attacks of the 1980s. As the question weighs heavily, Iran's influential former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani voiced the Islamic republic's dilemma on Friday in a sermon at Tehran university. "We are clearly in favour of disarming Saddam of weapons of mass destruction and we are clearly opposed to US presence in the region," Rafsanjani said in a sermon to the faithful at the main weekly Muslim prayers.
Tough choice, isn't it?
But "the US presence is worse than Saddam's weapons of mass destruction," he charged, adding that Washington "is pressuring the countries in the region for cooperation (and) this is not acceptable from a civilised government."
Neither was gassing 100,000 Iranian troops. So shuddup.
"We believe that a regime like Iraq should not be allowed to have weapons of mass destruction, including chemical, biological and nuclear arms," said Rafsanjani, who heads the influential Expediency Council which arbitrates political disputes.
It's kind of funny, watching them wiggle like that...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 02/09/2003 09:56 am || Comments || Link || [336085 views] Top|| File under:

#1  So Mr. Rafsanjani heads the "Expediency Council." That name says so much about the Iranian government that I, for once, am speechless. They are so hosed.
Posted by: Mike Orris || 02/09/2003 12:25 Comments || Top||

#2  Well, Mr. Rafsanjani, things are tough all over. We don't want to go to Iraq, and we certainly did not want to get in bed with Pakistan in order to deal with Afghanistan and the Taliban and their guests. But sometimes you have to make a deal with the devil (or Great Satan) in order to prevent a greater evil. Speaking of which, we would sure appreciate if you slow down on the Beshehr reactor, it makes us and our friends nervous. Have a nice day.
Posted by: Alaska Paul || 02/09/2003 14:34 Comments || Top||

#3  heh heh ...nice letter Paul. I would propose that we have Rumsfeld deliver that instead of Powell. That'll twist their turbans
Posted by: Frank G || 02/09/2003 18:35 Comments || Top||


Lawyer: Iranian Scholar May Get Reprieve
Iran's Supreme Court has reviewed the death sentence of a professor accused of questioning the rule of hardline clerics and likely will set it aside, the professor's lawyer said Saturday. But clerics warned they would execute Hashem Aghajari themselves if his death sentence is overturned. Aghajari, a history professor at Tehran's Teachers Training University, was convicted of insulting Islam and questioning clerical rule during a June speech. He asked why only clerics were authorized to interpret Islam and argued that each new generation should be able to interpret the faith.
Nope. Nope. Couldn't have that. Sounds too much like individual liberty. Why, it's next thing to Protestantism. Who's this guy think he is? Martin Luther?
Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 02/09/2003 09:47 am || Comments || Link || [336088 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Well then, the clerics have made clear (as was already obvious) that they were above the "law" such as it exists...paving the way to future Mussolini-style streetlight decorations (I hope)
Posted by: Frank G || 02/09/2003 12:27 Comments || Top||

#2  Maybe he should nail 98 feces to the mosque door...
Posted by: mojo || 02/09/2003 21:56 Comments || Top||


Killing sharks will not guarantee public safety: lobby group
The Humane Society says efforts to catch the shark responsible for a fatal attack on Queensland's Gold Coast yesterday are pointless. Nets and baited drum lines will remain in Burleigh Lake after examinations of three bull whaler sharks caught on Saturday night failed to find any human remains. The society's director, Michael Kennedy, says although a death is regrettable, killing a handful of sharks will not guarantee public safety.
It won't make the public any less safe, will it?
He also says sharks numbers are under threat and this sort of action will only make the situation worse. "If you look at the examples of Perth and Adelaide in the last year or so when there were fatalities from shark attacks, that both the authorities and the public in those cases showed restraint, there wasn't a mad rush to retribution," he said.
Kinda takes your breath away, doesn't it? He forgot to add that the latest victim was just an old man, he would have died soon, anyway.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 02/09/2003 09:13 am || Comments || Link || [336072 views] Top|| File under:


Middle East
Arafat gives blessing for Middle East peace talks
Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians are to resume on Monday.
Oh, Christ! It's the peace processor again...
The go ahead for the talks was agreed on at a secret meeting last week between Israel's newly re-elected Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, and the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Assembly, Ahmed Qurei. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has given his blessings to the talks although the Israelis have made it clear that replacing him is part of their plan.
It's secret, so don't tell anybody, okay?
Mr Arafat said the Palestinians were prepared for any talks which might lead to peace. Mr Sharon's chief of staff Dov Weisglass, who will lead the Israeli negotiators at Monday's meeting, is in Jordan to discuss the ceasefire proposal with Jordan's Foreign Minister. Israel's proposal calls for security co-operation to resume gradually in various parts of the occupied territories with the Palestinian Authority assuming responsibility for stopping attacks on Israel, in return for a withdrawal of Israeli troops.
Yeah, yeah. Been there, done that. Yasser will tell his boyz to try and stop Hamas and Jihad from killing Israelis at random, if only for awhile, and they'll ignore him. He'll make some token gestures to stop them, and then there'll be a few shootouts between PNA and fundo gunnies...

I guess something good will come of it.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 02/09/2003 09:05 am || Comments || Link || [336070 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Boy, I like these "secret" links! Peace talks will be just Jesse James dandy. After all, we are all just marking time till the new moon shows up (so to speak).
Posted by: Alaska Paul || 02/09/2003 15:31 Comments || Top||


Caucasus
Afghan fighters rumoured to be hiding in Georgia
As attention shifts away from Afghanistan and its network of terrorist camps, the former Soviet state of Georgia finds itself increasingly the focus of an unwanted spotlight. Georgian officials have dropped their earlier denial that Chechen guerrillas found shelter in an area called the Pankisi Gorge. Moscow has long accused Tbilisi of allowing safe haven for rebels. The Kremlin's complaints are accompanied by a subtext that if the Georgians cannot get their house in order, then perhaps Russia should come do it for them.
As soon as they get their own house in order...
Now comes the further assertion that among the foreign fighters, who have been long suspected to be among the Chechens, are some Afghan mujahideen who maintain tentative links to Osama bin Laden. Philip Remler, US charge d'affaires in Tbilisi, said in an interview to a Georgian newspaper: "According to our information dozens of Afghan mujaheedin escaped from Afghanistan and came to the Caucasus. We know that some of them found shelter in the Pankisi gorge and have contacts with an Arab terrorist called Khattab, who is linked to Osama bin Laden," he said, as reported in Reuters and other agencies.
Uh... Philip? He's been dead since last April...
Valery Khaburdzania, Georgian state security minister, was reported as saying that Saudi and Jordanian nationals had been detained who were planning to set up a terrorist base in the gorge for attacks within Russia. He did not say if these included fighters from Afghanistan however.
The Soddies and Jordanians are enough, aren't they?
Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 02/09/2003 08:49 am || Comments || Link || [336071 views] Top|| File under:


Home Front
FBI's mosque-counting policy worries US Muslims
Agents in the FBI's 56 field offices will begin taking their own census of Muslims and their places of worship as part of the nation's anti-terrorism effort — a mandate that has ratcheted up the fear level in Central Florida's Muslim community. The FBI said mosques are included in the survey to protect the Muslim community from hate crimes. But civil-rights advocates in Central Florida and nationwide accused the government of profiling and said the FBI's plans are spreading fear throughout Muslim communities. "The impression it gives to the public is that you should be suspicious of every mosque you see because something bad could be going on there," said Omar Dajani, board member at the Arab American Community Center and an activist in Central Florida. "I appreciate everything the government does to protect the American public, but I disagree with some of the tactics used to achieve that goal."
Too bad. Have you thought about converting to some other religion? Maybe one that, as a matter of doctrine, doesn't call for the deaths of members of other religions and eventual world domination?
The New York-based National Conference for Community and Justice called the policy a "frightening example of inappropriate and misdirected religious profiling."
Not as frightening as 19 Islamists hopping planes and crashing them into large buildings because both planes and buildings were full of infidels. Not that was an example of profiling, wasn't it?
Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 02/09/2003 08:06 am || Comments || Link || [336070 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Until the American muslim community acknowledges that members of their religion did attacks against their countrymen, and vociferously denounce these attacks and the reasoning behind it, turn in the sleepers and fifth column agents hiding in the community - they will be questioned by fellow Americans as to patriotism and safety as co-citizens. CAIR and their ilk do nothing for them but create doubts. The next large attack on the U.S. by Al-Qaeda or other fundos will have drastic and ugly repercussions.
Posted by: Frank G || 02/09/2003 12:03 Comments || Top||


US tries to separate Sept. 11 hijackers' remains from victims'
Medical examiners are trying to separate the remains of the Sept. 11 terrorists from those of their victims, and to aid the effort, the FBI turned over DNA profiles believed to belong to the hijackers. Remains that match the hijacker profiles will be removed from the city's Memorial Park, where unidentified and unclaimed remains are kept, Ellen Borakove, spokeswoman for the medical examiner, said Friday. "I certainly do not want the remains of those barbarians intermingled with the innocent, wonderful people we lost on Sept. 11," said Jennie Farrell, a leader of the victims advocacy group Give Your Voice.
Good. At least some people aren't forgetting...
The massive effort to identify World Trade Center victims' remains is expected to continue for years. Of the 2,792 people listed as missing in the attack, the remains of 1,464 have been identified. Nearly 20,000 body parts were recovered in all, and most remain unidentified. Some may belong to the 10 hijackers who crashed two airliners into the World Trade Center's twin towers, experts say.
Those should be sprayed with disinfectant, wrapped in pigskin, and incinerated.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt || 02/09/2003 08:00 am || Comments || Link || [336083 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I honestly would have thought that the hijackers would have been incinerated by the jet fuel and the effects of crashing into the buildings at 500 mph. Hadn't occurred to me that parts of 'em would have remained. Since we have to deal with them somehow, Fred's idea is a good one. However, it would be better, instead of incinerating them, to return them -- wrapped in pigskin -- to their loved ones in Saudi-controlled Arabia.
Posted by: Steve White || 02/09/2003 12:54 Comments || Top||

#2  Sounds like a good idea to me,Steve.
Posted by: raptor || 02/10/2003 6:44 Comments || Top||


Middle East
How children are raised to be terrorists in Gaza
Long article from the Guardian; edited for length.

Ehab Abu Taha is offended when I ask if he throws bombs at the Israelis. Undernourished and chain-smoking, he looks 16. He tells me he is actually 23. It is not the idea that he might attack Israeli soldiers that bothers him, it's the fact that in the refugee camps of Rafah, the southernmost city of the Gaza Strip, hurling homemade grenades is something that 'kids do', not teenagers, and certainly not adults.
Maybe this is why they can never hit anything.
Ehab calls over a local child returning from one of the UN camp schools. He is a boy of about 10. He says he has thrown bombs four times at the Israelis. When we ask to see one of the crude steel pipes, he disappears and returns five minutes later with one hidden in his purple rucksack. It is a rusty tube, welded at both ends and drilled with a hole to take a rudimentary fuse. A device this size, says Ehab, costs 7 shekels (about £1). The best ones cost £1.50. It is a lot of money in a place where families struggle to raise the £70 a month they need to rent a house away from the danger of the front line, where every home is vulnerable to bullets and tank shells. So the boys scavenge for scraps of metal they can sell, under the sights of the Israeli guns, or run messages for the gunmen.
Typical terrorism: get the young ones involved early. Doesn't this violate a UN resolution or two?
Their game with the pipe bombs goes like this: at night they creep into the wrecked buildings on the front line close to the Egyptian border and into the no-man's land beyond. When they are close enough to the Israeli patrols, or the watchtowers that overlook the camp, the petrol-soaked fuse is lit with a cigarette. When it is almost burned down, they toss the cylinder. The timing is crucial and difficult to judge. Unlucky ones can lose a hand. Like Ehab, everyone I talk to insists that throwing bombs is a child's game: they make an impressive bang, but do little harm. The Israelis don't often bother firing back at the kids who throw them. It allows the kids trapped in the camp to let off steam, says one local father. The Israelis paint it differently. When it is reported on Israel Army Radio, it is called a 'terrorist' attack.
This about says it all.
There are other dangerous games these children play. The Israeli Army believes the Palestinian militants use children to spy on their positions and test settlement security fences to search out weak points. The army has accused them of attacking Israeli soldiers to lure them into ambushes. What the young boys of Rafah tell me hints that some of this is true.

Throwing bombs is an initiation into Gaza's violent adult world: of Hamas and Islamic jihad, and of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade. Last month, not far from Rafah, one of the sorties reached its frightening conclusion. Two boys, armed with knives, the youngest just 13, were shot as they infiltrated the settlement at Netzarim in the north of the Gaza Strip. It drew widespread attention, even from an Israeli media accustomed to violence. What has happened, asked Israeli commentators, that even Palestinian children are now attacking us?
This article is trying to tell you what happened. They were recruited and trained.
In Rafah, the answer is that activities like bombing have become a rite of passage. In the 28 months of the al-Aqsa intifada, Rafah's jumble of camps and scruffy lanes have been transformed into a Mad Max world of bullet-perforated buildings and shattered neighbourhoods, patrolled at their edges by Israeli tanks and personnel carriers. It is a place where the normal routines of childhood struggle to survive against the ever-present evidence of destruction and death.

Headscarved girls walk home from school beneath Israeli observation towers, past walls painted with huge murals of dead Palestinian fighters. Eight-year-olds ferret in the rubble, oblivious to warning shots from Israeli Jeeps. Toddlers, led by their parents, play peek-a-boo with the stationary tanks from behind their father's legs. In the lanes, the youngest children swarm about the armed Palestinian policemen, out of sight of the Israeli snipers, as they smoke their cigarettes.

What is most shocking to outsiders is the physical domination of Rafah by the Israeli army. Their guns point down every street and alley from metal-clad watchtowers, dividing the city into an invisible grid of high-voltage channels of danger that every resident, both child and adult, knows by instinct to avoid or cross at a quicker pace.

And it is along the city's southern-most edge, among the camps, that this domination is most striking. It is here the Israeli army has bulldozed its free-fire zone - 75 metres deep - through the houses closest to the Egyptian border. Along this wasteland, Israel's soldiers are building a metal fence 5 metres high, and five metres deep, to prevent the digging of tunnels that could be used to smuggle arms and goods and ammunition. Along this wall runs a line of observation posts bristling with guns.
Given recent events, they should build it bigger.
If the fence to the south is solid steel, the barriers in every other direction are no less formidable. Blocking access to the Mediterranean sea and its long beaches are heavily fortified Israeli settlements that curl around the city like two enfolding arms, their perimeter roads patrolled by armoured Jeeps. Access to Rafah is by a single road controlled by the Israeli army. In the middle of all this are the recalcitrant residents of Rafah. Half are children under the age of 15.

The situation of Rafah's children - say Unicef officials - is uniquely bad even in a conflict where the rate of child fatalities has doubled in the past year. At 70, the city - according to Palestinian health officials, who are not always the most reliable source you don't say) - has the highest number of intifada child fatalities for any major town. What is in no doubt is that it has the highest rate of child participation in the intifada across all occupied areas.

It is commonplace for Israelis to blame Palestinian parents, institutions and Arab television for indoctrinating a new generation of 'terrorists'. There is some truth in this. But it evades Israel's responsibility in turning places such as Rafah into virtual prison camps whose social fabric is so eroded that the values of the gunman and the suicide bomber are replacing that of the family.
As the writers veer sharply left. This is the Guardian, after all.
According to a survey by the Palestinian Ministry of Social Affairs - supported by Unicef, which accepts the figures - 75 per cent of the children in the Occupied Territories are suffering emotional problems from their experience of the conflict, with repeated exposure to the sound of shelling and shooting cited as the major cause of psychological damage.

There's lots more; personal stories, children longing to be martyrs, ruined lives. Arafat and the Hamas politburo must be so proud.
Posted by: Steve White || 02/09/2003 02:27 am || Comments || Link || [336075 views] Top|| File under:


East/Subsaharan Africa
Ivory Coast stampedes into chaos
At the army recruitment centre in Abidjan, the scenes were extraordinary. Thousands of young men, many naked, swarmed in a vast, walled compound. Occasionally the tension became too much and they stampeded, raising clouds of red dust. Then uniformed soldiers swung in, driving them back with heavy rope belts used as whips. Every now and then a young volunteer would stumble off, wounded and dazed. In their midst a tall paramilitary gendarme, dressed in red T-shirt and blue beret, had a look of distress on his face. What authority was left seemed to reside with him.
This gendarme might be the only person left in the Ivory Coast with any clue as to what his job is.
This was recruitment day - a call for volunteers to join the fight against the rebels who since September have split Ivory Coast in two. But for this gendarme, it was a sign his country was plunging over the brink. The officer removed his thick leather belt and cracked it, forcing back a hundred or so men away from a row of tables where naked volunteers lined up for a crude fitness test.
These guys aren't going to be soldiers, they're going to be a mob with guns.
The men were among 20,000 or so responding to a government call in Ivory Coast's main city for recruits to put down the rebellion in the north and west. Many were disaffected, jobless and allied to a 'patriotic' youth movement led by firebrand loyalist Charles Blé Goudé. His movement is based primarily on political and ethnic affiliation to President Laurent Gbagbo, a southern Christian swept to power in a popular revolt after contentious elections in 2000.
Latest in a long string of stiffs.
The recruitment drive threatened an escalation of the conflict that has displaced nearly a million people and killed 5,000. As rebel numbers in the north and west swell along regional lines, there are potentially catastrophic consequences for one of the world's poorest regions.

Since the death in 1993 of its autocratic independence leader, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, a combination of Machiavellian plots by its politicians and economic crisis after world cocoa and coffee prices collapsed has led Ivory Coast to the brink.
Economy collapses. Politicans screw around. Sound familiar?
Sensitive to the country's ethnic and religious mix, Houphouët kept a careful balance, or dispensed largesse to aggrieved groups. Successive heads of state - all from rival factions of the Christian-dominated south - have been less careful. During the Nineties their main Muslim rival, Alassane Ouattara, was gaining in popularity. A series of voting and identity laws directed against his supporters and based on a concept known as 'Ivoirite' were introduced. This defined Ivorian nationals according to their ethnicity, casting millions of second and third generation West African immigrants into stateless limbo. By association, Muslims from the north, who share ethnicity with immigrants from neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso, were made foreigners in their own land. Ouattara has been barred from standing for election because he once used a passport from Burkina Faso and could not prove his Ivorian ancestry.
I'm beginning to understand why the people up north are fighting. It isn't jihad; they've been screwed over.
'Ivoirite' set the stage for civil war, unleashing a wave of xenophobia in the Christian south at a time when tensions over jobs and land were rising. At the same time it focused the sense of grievance and disenfranchisment felt by Muslims, northerners and immigrants. This came to a head last September when soldiers from the mainly Muslim north attempted a coup. They failed but took the north, and precipitated another allied rebellion in the west.

The African Development Bank, Ivory Coast's largest foreign employer, yesterday announced the first evacuations of staff from the country. The bank has long been seen as a bellwether of foreign firms in Ivory Coast. Its departure shows that big business doubts the once-stable country can pull out of a four-month-old civil war.

Two weeks ago in Paris, Gbagbo, the rebels and political parties signed a power-sharing agreement, including a commitment by the government to unravel exclusionist policies. But rebel claims they were given the Interior and Defence Ministries, effectively putting them in charge of the army and gendarmes, provoked outrage.
The side that didn't get Interior and Defense was bound to scream.
On cue Blé Goudé's patriotic youth went on the rampage in Abidjan, looting French business and attacking foreigners while security forces stood by. The Burkina Faso embassy was burnt, the French embassy mobbed. French families trying to evacuate from the airport were jeered and told never to return in an attack that took on the flavour of a second bid for independence.
I'm trying to figure out what the French had to do with this, other than general principles, of course.
Gbagbo was ominously silent about the power-sharing agreement for two weeks, until a televised address late on Friday. 'We are tired of war. Let us try this new remedy,' he said. Gbagbo is under huge international pressure to accept the deal. But his speech contained many caveats, and he is a past master of saying one thing and doing another.
Sounds like a politican.
He has to take the army with him - and that may be difficult enough.
Sounds like the army has enough problems.
He also has to convince the rebels. But his most immediate problem is the streets - populated by Christian youth brought up on 'Ivoirite'. They put Gbagbo in power, they may yet bring him down. It depends to some extent on the leadership provided on the streets by Blé Goudé, whose attitude is unambiguous. 'I don't believe there can be a peaceful solution because I am sure the rebels don't want a peaceful solution. When they came on 19 September they came to kill and to take power.' They failed then, he said, but he believes they're prepared to renew civil war.
They sure sound like it. Tell you what, Gbagbo and Goude, why not talk your way out of this? The rebels have the best land and they're on a roll. Best make a deal.
His enemies respond that, like many before him, Blé Goudé is riding a tiger he cannot control.
Yep.
Posted by: Steve White || 02/09/2003 01:55 am || Comments || Link || [336092 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Your comments are generally defensible, but you fail to grasp that this is in large part a religious war. The southerners were not attacking the north, but the reverse...this situation is repeated all over west and central
Africa. And of course, the southerners--who are the majority--objected to giving the northerners control of the army! Most commentary on Africa attempts to play down the religious strife. Most Americans, getting their news from the normal sources, would not know of the religious aspect of this. Yours, Don Baker
Posted by: donald baker || 02/09/2003 9:39 Comments || Top||

#2  Joining the army gets them clothing and food.
Posted by: Anonymous || 02/09/2003 12:13 Comments || Top||

#3  Don, no doubt there is a religious aspect, and some of the Muslims have certainly been infected with the jihad virus. But it seems that the "Ivorite" political philosophy has boomeranged on the south. After all, if you treat some of your citizens as non-citizens long enough, they'll eventually get the idea that they have no vested interest in the current political structure. After that it's a short step to civil war.
Posted by: Steve White || 02/09/2003 12:51 Comments || Top||

#4  The Ivory Coast's South is populated by genuine anti-jihadis, who understand that Bush's Saudi allies in Burkina Faso, infiltrated jihadis into the Ivory Coast with an intent of Islamizing the country. However, Bush's State Department is supporting France's Islamo-centrist status quo "peace." Islamo-fascists are on the war path everywhere, under the protective blanket of the U.S. President's "islam is peace" fiction. They saw this guy coming. This is how the Wahabis look at relations with the U.S.:
King Fahd: PIMP
President Bush: WHORE
Posted by: Anon || 02/09/2003 14:02 Comments || Top||

#5  " Joining the army gets them clothing and food."

And a gun. Don't forget the gun, it's important.

Sure it may be a Lee-Enfield, or something similar, but it beats the hell out of sharp sticks and stones.
Posted by: mojo || 02/09/2003 21:44 Comments || Top||


Home Front
Shuttle looters arrested as search goes on
Two people have been charged with looting wreckage from the space shuttle Columbia. The arrests are the first to be made in Nacogdoches County since the expiry on Friday of the authorities' amnesty for individuals who had collected, and kept, spaceship debris.
Just shoot these sons-o'-bitches. This is Texas; they understand the "he needed killin'" defense.
The shuttle exploded into thousands of fragments last Saturday, with most falling over eastern Texas. All seven astronauts on board were killed. Nasa engineers are desperate to recover as many parts of the shuttle as possible in a bid to unravel the reasons why Columbia broke up as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere at the end of a 16-day mission. Their task has been hampered by souvenir hunters, although the authorities warned people not to go near any shuttle fragments. In a bid to encourage people to give up any debris they had collected, police declared an amnesty. 'That grace period has now expired and people are now subject to prosecution since they made no effort to come forward,' said Sheriff Thomas Kerss. If convicted of stealing federal property, individuals could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison and fined $250,000.

Police added that they expect to make further arrests. 'We do have a number of names we have forwarded to the FBI so if things are not turned in we'll be following up on them at a later time,' Kerss said. 'Citizens are concerned because they know of friends or neighbours or relatives who have removed material from the shuttle.' In addition, government officials have revealed they are now searching the internet and local flea markets to ferret out shuttle pieces - a development that reveals how desperate they have become to discover the cause of the loss of Columbia.
We're not desparate, we're angry that some nimrods would do this.
Investigators are particularly anxious to recover pieces of the shuttle's left wing - now thought to be the source of its destruction. One ragged wing tip has already been recovered, though Ron Dittemore, shuttle programme manager at the Johnson Space Centre, said it was still not known if the fragment came from the shuttle's left wing or from the right wing, which gave no indication of problems.

'Certainly we're more interested in the left wing,' added Dittemore. Each of 27,000 pieces of the shuttle's tile system carries a heatproof serial number so engineers do expect to be able to pinpoint the origin of the scorched component.

However, Dittemore said a high-definition military photo shot in the final moments of Columbia's flight is 'not very revealing', despite reports yesterday that it showed a ragged leading edge on the left wing and a plume of vapour or smoke trailing behind. 'It is not clear to me that there is something there,' he said. Dittemore also presented diagrams at a press conference that show the gradual thermal changes detected by sensors in the left wing and along the base of the adjoining fuselage. Some sensors registered a gradual increase in heat while others abruptly stopped working, as if wires had been severed or burned through.
Godspeed to the seven, and to hell with the looters.
Posted by: Steve White || 02/09/2003 08:08 am || Comments || Link || [336080 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I find these peoples' behaviour absolutely detestable. I hope they get the maximum penalty. Bastards.
Posted by: Tony || 02/09/2003 11:25 Comments || Top||

#2  "Hangin's too dang good fer 'im!"
Posted by: mojo || 02/09/2003 21:48 Comments || Top||


Korea
Starving North Korea pleads for aid amid nuclear standoff
North Korea is appealing to the outside world for assistance as aid workers and diplomats in Pyongyang warn that this impoverished state is on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.
I think we all saw this one coming.
In a rare direct entreaty to international public opinion, the top government official responsible for disaster prevention urged donors not to cut support because of the country's ongoing nuclear insanity stand-off with the US. 'Please let the world know of the needs of our country,' said Yun Su-chang, head of the Flood Damage Rehabilitation Committee. 'Some countries, such as the United States, are trying to link food with politics. That is a flagrant violation of humanitarian principles.
"Only we commies are allowed to do stuff like that!"
'Our people are trying to overcome their problems, but we face a shortage of food. I sincerely hope that international humanitarian assistance will continue.'

The appeal, made during an exclusive interview with The Observer, is remarkable for a proudly defiant country that would usually rather starve than try to elicit sympathy. That it came through the media - rather than quietly behind the scenes through the UN - underlines the desperate concern of the North Korean government as international donations of food have dried up since the start of the nuclear crisis.
This is fairly objective evidence that the Bush administration's "rope-a-dope" tactics have worked again. Sit back and let the other guy hang himself.
North Korea, the world's most isolated nation, is stuck in an Orwellian 1984. As far as the lives of the people in Pyongyang are concerned, the Cold War never ended and globalisation has passed them by completely. The country retains a political system built around utter devotion to the 'Great Leader' Kim Jong-il and a paranoid fear of the outside world, particularly the US.

But isolation has come at an appalling price. Formerly one of only two industrialised nations in Asia, North Korea has steadily regressed into an economic basket case as natural disasters, sanctions and calamitous policy decisions not to mention genocide, murder and starvation have steadily deprived the nation of energy, both calories and kilowatts.

Power has ebbed away faster in recent months because of the nuclear crisis. America - foolishly usually its biggest donor - has not offered a single grain of rice to Pyongyang in the four months since it confronted the regime with evidence of a uranium enrichment programme. Japan, an important provider in the past, has given nothing for more than a year.

In Europe, which is still supplying maize, it is becoming harder but not impossible for governments to justify providing assistance to a country that withdrew two months ago from the global treaty to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

The World Food Programme has been forced to axe support for three million people and reduce rations for 3.2 million of the armed forces of the most needy, including babies, orphans, lactating women and the elderly. Cuts in the government's food distribution system mean that school children must now get by on 300 grams a day, compared with 500 grams in the past.

'Since November, the situation has steadily deteriorated. It is now very dramatic, very depressing,' said Anahit Sadoyan of the World Food Programme, which has been forced to close a production line at a Pyongyang food processing factory because donations of maize ran out. 'It is hurting the children the most. They shouldn't suffer because of the political situation. It is not their fault.'
We'll agree with you, Anahit, it shouldn't be the childrens' fault. Now then, what would you do about it?
Poverty is apparent even in Pyongyang. Although there are few signs of malnutrition, electricity is in such short supply that the government has closed the Children's Palace - one of the centrepieces of national culture - because it cannot heat the building.

The deprivation gets worse the further you get from the capital. On the road to Shinchon, a town about an hour's drive south of Pyongyang, cars are scarce but an almost endless stream of farmers, soldiers and children walk along the paddyfields.
Looking for missed grains of rice.
Only one tractor was visible even though this is one of the most important agricultural regions of North Korea. The biggest vehicles were open-backed trucks, overflowing with people. Some vehicles were powered by wood burners rather than petrol.

The worst-hit areas are in the north and east, where The Observer was denied access. 'The situation in the north-east is worse than the Horn of Africa or Chechnya,' said one aid worker. 'I have never seen children suffering so badly from malnutrition. The growth of children has been stunted to such a degree that 11-year-olds look like six-year-olds. Generations of North Koreans will be mentally retarded.'
If even a tenth of this is true, it makes the Ethiopian disaster of the early 1980's look tame. Jeebus.
Although last autumn's crop was good compared with previous years, it was still more than a million tonnes below the minimum needs of the population of 22 million. With the lean season beginning in April, the fear is that North Korea will plunge back into the dark days of the late Nineties when hundreds of thousands are believed to have died of starvation.
Make that millions.
Since that time, more than one in four of the population have been fed by the World Food Programme - which has its biggest project in North Korea. A nationwide health study, due to be released within the week, is expected to show a 33 per cent improvement in nutrition rates. But even with the gains, two out of every five children remain malnourished.

The socialist economy is in a dire state, though no one knows quite how bad because figures are either unreliable or totally made up unreleased. In a sign of how desperate the situation has become, the government introduced market-oriented reforms last summer, but so far they appear only to have pushed up prices.
Looked to me like it was a clever ploy to suck the remaining currency out of the pockets of the people.
True to the principles of Orwellian Newspeak, the darker the situation becomes, the brighter the state-controlled media reports the news. Despite the fact that millions have been shivering in flats with no heat and dim lights despite temperatures as low as minus 21C (minus 6F), the Pyongyang Times recently ran a report lauding the success of the power industry.

Unusually, though, government officials have admitted on record to me that the situation is bleak. Oh Yong-il, external director of the Economic Promotion Committee, said shortages of electricity meant machine-tool factories were only able to run at 60 to 70 per cent of capacity and the furnaces at steel and iron works were not functioning. 'It is hurting people in their daily lives,' he said. 'Shops and factories are not producing the things people need.' Blaming the US for isolating North Korea, he said the cutting of 500,000 tonnes of heavy oil a year was creating huge problems around the Unggi power plant where the fuel was used.
So persuade your government to shut down the nuke program. We could be flexible. Maybe.
But in words that would have been sacrilegious a year ago, he said the incentive of profits - one of the aims of the recent reforms - was necessary. 'Contrary to before, people can earn profits,' he said. 'This will inspire people to produce more because it is in their self-interest.'

But this modernising chink in the country's socialist ideology has been overwhelmed by the nuclear crisis, which has taken the country back to the Orwellian mindset. Instead of the looming humanitarian crisis, the nation is fixated on the threat of a US attack. Even at the General Hospital of Koryo Medicine in Pyongyang the doctors are preparing to fight America, not malnutrition. 'If Kim Jong-il calls us, I'll leave the hospital and fight in the army,' said Hyon Chol, the deputy director. 'A lack of food and energy does not really have an effect on our people's health,' he insisted. 'We want help but we are not going to beg for peace.'
As you wish. We're just going to wait.
Posted by: Steve White || 02/09/2003 01:19 am || Comments || Link || [336089 views] Top|| File under:

#1  "An army marches on its belly."
I've heard reports that even the military is short on fuel.
Either they've hoarded enough food and fuel for the military, in which case they maybe planning to grab reserves from South Korea... or it's already over and we're just waiting it out.
Posted by: Dishman || 02/09/2003 3:19 Comments || Top||

#2  The Observer is being a bit disingenuous.The US food programme has been stopped because NK refuses to let independent observers (no pun)to verify that the food reaches the right people.Kim,like Stalin before him,uses starvation to get rid of people classified as "unreliable".
Posted by: El Id || 02/09/2003 5:17 Comments || Top||

#3  They're committing demographic suicide. By feeding the army and starving the children, they are killing off their draft levy in future years. Since this has been going on for a number of years already, it is only a short period of time before the actual strength numbers of even the army begins to decline as there are no replacements in the overall population.
Posted by: Don || 02/09/2003 8:35 Comments || Top||

#4  Being malnourished in childhood doesn't make you any smarter when you reach adultery. I wonder if that's intentional?
Posted by: Fred || 02/09/2003 8:55 Comments || Top||

#5  FLASH: Satellite photos reveal that the North Koreans also have possession of the world's smallest violin, playing just for them. The Pentagon has commented that the NKors are certainly well ahead of America in terms of stringed-instrument miniaturization technology, but asserted this was due to America not being filled with complete blithering idiots.
Posted by: Just John || 02/09/2003 10:52 Comments || Top||

#6  I haven't heard a peep out of China about this situation lately. Are they still trying to keep the monkey on our backs? We need to keep reminding the world that the NKor army takes the resources away from the kids. Just like Sammy does. Of course the UN does not address that issue, either.
Posted by: Alaska Paul || 02/09/2003 15:26 Comments || Top||

#7  "Generations of North Koreans will grow up retarded"

Good, no reason they shouldnt mix with the south koreans as equals...
Posted by: flash91 || 02/09/2003 16:32 Comments || Top||

#8  We'll give 'em all the food they need - if they let the ROKs deliver it to the peasants.
Posted by: mojo || 02/09/2003 22:13 Comments || Top||


Home Front
Pravda on Guantanamo
From Pravda, read at your own risk.

14 attempted suicides at Guantanamo says all about the psychological state of the detainees at this concentration camp maintained by the USA in Cuba for political reasons.
Hmmmm, I think I'm getting the drift of this one rather early on.
The prisoners were taken in Afghanistan, were transported to Guantanamo base, dressed in orange shell-suits and held in conditions of high security under suspicion, but not charges, of belonging either to Al-Qaeda or to the Taliban regime.
That and the fact that they were illegal combatants as defined by the Geneva Convention. Doncha just hate when the U.S. actually resorts to international law?
The psychological problems appear because these people are being treated like sub-humans by a regime which does not even concede to them the right to the status of "prisoner of war", which would entitle them to protection under a number of conventions, the most famous of these being the Geneva Convention.
As we were just saying. But if you wish we could compare and contrast the treatment of these clowns with the Chechers that actually get captured by the Russians. Any bets on that one?
Instead, they are considered as "illegal fighters", a term which has no precedent whatsoever and as such is not covered by any legal structure. These "illegal fighters" are incarcerated in deplorable conditions, many of them for more than a year and without any formal accusation, without access to legal counsel and without the right to have visitors.
Any time you want to start comparing, I'm game.
Guantanamo is an American concentration camp on Cuban soil, a country which is accused of being totalitarian.
As it turns out Cuba is totalitarian.
What an excellent example the USA sets, what a great difference they illustrate between the regimes of these two countries.
Should we compare the Gitmo camp and one of Fidel's instead?
One is democratic and practises democracy. That being the U.S. The other claims to be democratic yet maintains concentration camps on foreign soil away from the prying eyes of its journalists.

Shame Hooray on the Bush administration. Guantanamo brings back memories of Belsen and Dachau, which speaks volumes about the nature of the George W. Bush regime.
Someone needs to buy the guys at Pravda a clue.
Posted by: Steve White || 02/09/2003 07:39 am || Comments || Link || [336089 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Ack, Fred, I think I munged another . Aargh.
Posted by: Steve White || 02/09/2003 1:31 Comments || Top||

#2  Perhaps the kind folks at Pravda need to visit Dachau or Belsen and get the guided tour. Auschwitz would do... then they wouldn't throw these terms around so loosely.
Posted by: anon || 02/09/2003 7:07 Comments || Top||

#3  Anon,
All they need to do is visit one of Russia's recent camps. A book entitled "The First Guide To the Prisons and Concentration Camps of the Soviet Union", published in the 1980s IIRC, described as many as the authors could find. What amazed me was that directions to some of the camps consisted of something like "Take the L trolley to 9 Blaggardovitch Prospekt."

Three inmates have already been released from Gitmo some time ago. When questioned the worst that one had to say about it was that he hated it there because the jailers were not Muslims.
Posted by: Michael Lonie || 02/09/2003 18:53 Comments || Top||

#4  Right. Shame on the U.S. for not applying international law. Spies and illegal combatants are supposed to be shot.
Posted by: Caton || 02/09/2003 18:58 Comments || Top||

#5  "14 attempted suicides..."

Among how many prisoners, all of whom are religously inclined to self-destruction?

Big whoop.
Posted by: mojo || 02/09/2003 21:51 Comments || Top||



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Two weeks of WOT
Sun 2003-02-09
  Belgium to Block Turkey Plan
Sat 2003-02-08
  Grandest of Muftis prays for Muslims' victory
Fri 2003-02-07
  Hamas Urges Muslims to Hit Back
Thu 2003-02-06
  NKors warns US of pre-emptive action
Wed 2003-02-05
  Powell speaks...
Tue 2003-02-04
  Big Parade in Mosul; US urges citizens to leave Gulf
Mon 2003-02-03
  Sammy issues blood-curdling threats...
Sun 2003-02-02
  Still working on that Saddam exile plan...
Sat 2003-02-01
  Shuttle Columbia breaks up over Texas
Fri 2003-01-31
  U.S. advises its citizens to leave Saudi Arabia, Kuwait
Thu 2003-01-30
  Abu Hamza faces deportation
Wed 2003-01-29
  Americans already in northern Iraq
Tue 2003-01-28
  Eighteen hurt in Philippines blast
Mon 2003-01-27
  Blix Speax!
Sun 2003-01-26
  Poison warfare suits found in mosque raid

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