A Saudi security officer was killed Wednesday and eight hurt in a shootout with wanted militants, two of whom were captured, the interior ministry announced. "One security officer was martyred while eight of his comrades were injured" during a shootout at a house in Al-Qadissiyah quarter in the town of Unayzah, 370 kilometers (230 miles) north of Riyadh, the official SPA news agency quoted a ministry spokesman as saying. Five men were arrested, "two of whom are wanted for security-related matters and belong to the deviant group," SPA said, using a term referring to Al-Qaeda sympathizers in Saudi Arabia. One of them was seriously wounded, SPA added.
The security squad found a cache of religious materials weapons in the house, including machine guns, pistols, grenades and ammunition, the official said. A car had been spotted leaving the house and was chased by security forces to a desert location where "the passengers were later arrested." Local daily Al-Riyadh had reported that one militant was arrested after he was wounded during the battle. Two militants managed to escape after firing two rocket-propelled grenades at the security squad, the paper said, adding that security forces were still combing the area for the suspects. Al-Watan newspaper reported that 11 security officers were also wounded, while five wanted suspects "were probably captured, including one suspected of figuring on the list of the kingdom's 26 most wanted militants."
"Stick 'em up, Mahmoud! Yer prob'ly under arrest!"
"You prob'ly ain't got nothin' on me, coppers!"
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/17/2004 9:38:32 AM ||
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#1
Interesting that the Saudis label him a martyr.
More catch and release, I'd guess. Still haven't cut anybody's head off...
Saudi police have arrested five suspected militants following a shootout that killed a policeman, the state-run Saudi Press Agency reported Wednesday. The agency, quoting an unidentified Interior Ministry official, said the clash took place Tuesday in al-Qassim, 220 miles northwest of Riyadh, the capital. The official said two of those arrested were suspected terrorists, adding that one was severely wounded in the shootout that also killed one policeman and wounded eight others. Police seized automatic rifles, pistols, pipe bombs and ammunition from the militants, plus computers, communication equipment and more than $10,000.
Posted by: Steve ||
11/17/2004 9:03:26 AM ||
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Al Qaeda militants have defied a crackdown and the loss of senior leaders in Saudi Arabia by using the Internet to win over new recruits in Osama bin Laden's birthplace. Despite the killing of top contributors, including one of its leading Web magazine editors Issa Saad bin Oshan, the group has continued to publish its two widely distributed magazines regularly for the past year. "It's testament to the strength of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia that they've been able to bring out the magazines twice a month for a whole year despite very heavy losses," said Paul Eedle, a London-based analyst who closely follows Qaeda sites. "This shows how a small group can continue a campaign using the Internet. Before the days of the Internet a group would pretty much fade from view if they were reduced in numbers like al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia," he said.
Oshan ran Sawt al-Jihad (Voice of Holy War) -- the most important vehicle for disseminating the group's ideas in which he detailed how Saudis could take up the armed struggle. He called on Muslims to evict "crusaders" from the cradle of Islam and praised comrades fighting pro-U.S. rulers. Another key publication is Muaskar al-Battar (Battar Camp), an al Qaeda guerrilla manual named after a favourite sword of Prophet Mohammad which disseminates knowledge about the use of arms and explosives and how to kill officials. Oshan was killed in a raid by Saudi security forces on a hideout that led to the discovery of the head of Paul Johnson, the American hostage who was killed by his Qaeda captors in Saudi Arabia in June.
He had it in his refrigerator...
"I have been astonished by the magazines' continuity, even though their content has suffered lately. This is one of the best media campaigns by a terrorist group," said an analyst from a European defence studies institute who declined to be named. London-based Islamic activist Yasser al-Sirri said a small group of followers may be helping publish the magazines under the control of Saudi al Qaeda leaders. The magazines often carry interviews with senior militants vowing to fight until death. Authorities have tried to block access to the magazines and other Islamist sites to curb the spread of extremism.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/17/2004 2:45:43 AM ||
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#1
Hmmmmm.... the insidious cross pollination of RoadsideAmerikka with RB continues.
#2
You can bet they're visiting western blogs like rantburg, as well. Looking at Islamic sites alone would be as humdrum and grating as listening to a childhood sermon.
Bombs have exploded at three banks in the Argentine capital, two owned by US giant Citibank, killing one man and injuring a bomb disposal expert, but police said the identity of the attackers remained a mystery. No prior warning was given and no claim of responsibility made for the three blasts, police said. One booby-trapped package exploded at a branch of Citibank in the Caballito district, killing a security guard who was just about to open doors to the public. The 38-year-old man suffered serious injuries when he picked up a suspicious package and it exploded in his hands, police said. He died later in hospital.
Police experts deactivated a second device at the bank. A blast outside another Citibank branch in the Barrio Norte district injured a police bomb squad officer trying to defuse the bomb. The officer suffered leg injuries. A third explosion went off outside a Banco Galicia branch also in Barrio Norte. The bomb had been left at the foot of a tree outside the building, which was damaged but there were no casualties. All of the bombs went off in the morning rush hour and caused widespread disruption. The attacks were staged as China's President Hu Jintao visited Buenos Aires.
Police said all four bombs were homemade but had no indications of who was behind the attacks. The authorities recommended that the public stay away from banks and use automatic cash machines to get money. Police said any suspicious packages should be reported. Buenos Aires mayor Anibal Ibarra expressed his "deep displeasure" at the attacks after attending a ceremony with the Chinese leader. "Violence cannot be allowed to get established in Argentina," he said. Police commissioner Francisco Miglino told a press conference that the security guard had entered the bank with the manager and saw a supermarket box, which exploded as he picked it up. Citibank's main branch in the capital of neighbouring Uruguay, Montevideo, was later evacuated after a bomb threat was made by a telephone caller. Hundreds of people were made to leave nearby buildings.
Posted by: God Save The World ||
11/17/2004 4:48:13 PM ||
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A blast has shaken two branches of US-based Citibank in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires, reports say. Police say one man, a security guard, was killed in one blast which occurred in the bank in the Caballito district. "There were two artefacts - just one exploded. The second one must have been detonated by the fire squad," Police Chief Francisco Santos Miglino said. A third blast at another bank in the city was reported but no further details were immediately available.
Posted by: Lux ||
11/17/2004 10:15:33 AM ||
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A top Kazakh security official today said that Kazakhstan has extradited 14 Uyghurs to China and Kyrgyzstan in the past six years for alleged extremist activities. Vladimir Bozhko, the deputy chairman of Kazakhstan's National Security Agency, made the announcement today in Astana. "Due to facts of involvement into Uyghur separatist organizations, 14 individuals have been extradited to Kyrgyzstan and China," Bozhko said. Bozhko said all those extradited were Uyghur members of a group called the Eastern Turkestan Liberation Party, which he described as an Uyghur separatist organization. Bozhko's statement comes five days after he announced the detention of 14 alleged members of an extremist group having strong ties with Al-Qaeda.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/17/2004 2:53:37 AM ||
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#1
sigh...we need a rantburg map for those of us more geographically challenged.
European countries were on the trail of militants linked to the slaying of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh for months before the murder, but lacked evidence to break up the cell until too late, security sources say. The fact that the alleged killer was known to the authorities as a suspected Muslim militant has raised questions as to whether the security services were asleep on the job.
"Probably because of lack of urgency resources, the Dutch services didn't maintain very sure, precise, serious surveillance of this group. It's clear a mistake was made," said security analyst Claude Moniquet. But security sources said that even though they were monitoring the cell now suspected of plotting the murder, there was little they could have done to stop them. The cell had no name, was not engaged in terror finance or acquiring explosives, and until Van Gogh was shot and stabbed while cycling to work on November 2, it had apparently committed no crime.
"If these people had been trying to buy precursors to build bombs in their kitchen or brew sarin gas, and they had not been spotted, you would say there was a blind spot in the mirror," a European Union security source said. "But what can you do about a bunch of guys who decide to assassinate someone?"
I dunno. You're the COPS, fergawdsake. Figure something out. What NOT to do: Sit around wringing your hands and going to "sensitivity training."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/17/2004 3:31:45 PM ||
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#1
They all eventually figure out that you can't treat terrorism as ordinary crime. Arresting them after they blow up the train/plane/etc. is unacceptable.
#2
It's going to take a lot more murders and time before Europe wakes up to the Islamofascist threat.
Freedom-oriented, representative government is not geared to deal with such predators. Thieves, we arrest, judge, throw in jail, and release. That's relatively easy. Murderers, in some countries are judged and executed, and in others they're released after 20-40 years to possibly repeat their murders. Terrorists are not mere murderers.
Terrorists are beasts; in particular, Islamofascists are savage beasts. We need to deal with them as we deal with mosquitoes -- kill them whenever we notice them and they buzz in our direction. There is no reasoning with them. Don't just throw them in jail. Kill them. And expel their friends and families (drain the swamp). If that means eradicating Islam from the West, so be it. Islam seems to be to civilization what malaria is to mankind.
Spain's top anti-terrorist court confirmed an indictment against 21 suspected members of a Spanish cell of Al Qaeda believed to have played a major role in the 11 September attacks on the United States.
Spain's National Court rejected moves to dismiss charges against 21 of the 35 men indicted in the case, including several fugitives, the most notorious of whom is Osama bin Laden. The court found that the investigating judge, Baltasar Garzon, found "rational evidence of criminality that, in his judgment, attends each of the accused as members of the terrorist organization Al Qaeda in Spain."
Can we nominate Judge Garzon to be US Attorney General? Please?
In June, Garzon finished putting together the case against Al Qaeda in Spain, with Saudi citizen Osama bin Laden as chief suspect. Another is Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, known as Abu Dahdah, alleged head of the Spanish cell, which authorities believe ceased to exist as a result of Operation Date - named after the nut of an Arabian palm tree - conducted following the 11 September attacks.
In his indictment, Garzon concluded the accused used Spain as a base for preparing the U.S. attacks, as well as for obtaining funds and support for the organization. Garzon charged each of the defendants, a dozen of whom are behind bars in Spain, with a count of terrorist homicide for each person killed in the 11 September attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. He also charged Bin Laden and other members of Al Qaeda with belonging to or collaborating with terrorists, tax evasion, forgery of a business document, fraud and weapons possession.
In the course of his investigation, Garzon sought and obtained information from Germany, the United States, Indonesia, Greece, Great Britain, Belgium, Yemen, Syria, Sweden, Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
[Theo van Gogh's assassin] was an avid contributor to an internet discussion forum for Moroccans and his comments regarding Iraq had become more strident in the lead up to the murder, it has been reported. An investigation by Radio 1 News discovered Mohammed Bouyeri took part in a discussion about Jews around midnight on 2 November. He used the username Rifo79, on marokko.nl, a discussion forum with 65,000 registered members. About 15,000 comments are posted on the site daily. The operators of the site confirmed on Tuesday that they had removed his posts and handed the information to police.
Newspaper De Telegraaf reported that Bouyeri signed up as a member of the forum on 27 March. From then until the month of the murder he posted comments 266 times. In the three days before the killing, he made about 100 posts, which progressively became harder in tone and subject.
Following a police raid on the home of a Muslim family in Utrecht in October, he responded to a pro-American user on the forum: "The more innocent Muslims get arrested the better, then they will come to realise how Nazi-like your sort is." The people arrested in the raid in Utrecht turned out to be innocent and they were released.
Responding to a person who described foreign Muslims who go to Iraq to fight the Americans as a rabble, he answered: "They come to chop of the heads of your brothers and that fat pig [Interim Prime Minister Ayad] Allawi. The people you call a rabble, I call men with balls who — unlike the little homos — don't attack from Apache helicopters and F-16 jets." He posted a further 32 comments from the evening on 1 November to the early hours of the next morning. In one post referring to Western troops in Iraq, he wrote: I really hope that each and every one of them returns as roasted little pigs. Without their ugly heads, naturally."
#2
Article: The people you call a rabble, I call men with balls who â unlike the little homos â don't attack from Apache helicopters and F-16 jets.
But they don't actually attack US troops from the front. They used to backshoot them, and now that they're too afraid of even backshooting them, or even Iraqi soldiers, they're backshooting Western and Iraqi civilians. Note that this jihadi hero bravely ambushed, with a gun and a knife, a completely unarmed Dutchman. A fair fight would have involved a frontal challenge with his fists. Sounds like his claim to jihadi bravery is just a taunt try to get the other side to disarm. When a jihadi actually fights, he arms himself to the teeth. Note that the 9/11 hijackers used boxcutters instead of their bare hands to kill female flight attendants.
#3
"The people you call a rabble, I call men with balls who â unlike the little homos â don't attack from Apache helicopters and F-16 jets.... I really hope that each and every one of them returns as roasted little pigs"
Are they sure they haven't confused this guy with Kos?
An Algerian man has been expelled from the Netherlands because he was believed to be a "threat to public safety", the government confirmed on Wednesday. Abdelhamid Bouchema, 38, was sent to Spain where he has a residence permit.
"Give our regards to Judge Garzon, loser!"
Immigration and Integration Minister Rita Verdonk took the decision to expel him last week. She acted on a report from the security service AIVD which claimed he had taken part in meetings to recruit people for a Jihad, or holy war. Bouchema and 11 other people were arrested back in 2002 on suspicion they were trying to recruit young Muslims to take part in terrorist acts. A Rotterdam Court ordered their release last year after dismissing the prosecution's case as insufficient.
The 240-pound Kuwaiti engineer said he feared he was "a little chunky" for riding a motorbike into Afghanistan on his mission to arrange humanitarian aid.
Part of the "Arms and Ammunition for the Poor" operation...
But just when Fouad Al Rabia's story takes a comic turn, he admits to having four meetings with Osama bin Laden, who he describes as "an eccentric millionaire who became a revolutionary."
"Oh, yeah. I just popped in to say 'hello.' It ain't like I was a terrorist or nothin'!"
Turkish national Murat Kurnaz complained that he was captured in Pakistan and turned over to U.S. forces because a friend from Germany may have been a suicide bomber: "I don't need friends like that."
Yeah. They're not there when you need 'em, are they?
And Martin Mubanga, a British businessman, denied having any ties with al-Qaida after he was arrested in Zambia. But according to a summary of classified evidence, Mubanga was preparing for "possible terrorist attacks against 33 Jewish organizations based in New York City."
From Jihad Unspun
.... The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent reported that there is a leadership of major Mujahid organizations in Fallujah that is still pursuing the fight as before. One of them is the group of Shaykh Abdallah al-Janabi, the Chairman of the Consultative Council of the Mujahideen of Fallujah. According to Quds Press, Shaykh al-Janabi spoke Tuesday to a gathering of Resistance fighters defending the city, saying "the Mujahideen control firmly and completely 60 percent of the territory of Fallujah. The rest of the city is a battle zone where fighting is going on in fits and starts between the American aggressor forces and the Resistance that is defending Fallujah."
Shaykh al-Janabi said that Fallujah Mujahideen had used a captured American tank in their assault on US military positions and the operation accomplished its goals completely. He said that the Iraqi flag had been raised in official ceremonies over 12 positions regarded as battle zones.
The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent in Fallujah commented that .... every Resistance group helps out the others despite their differences as to their ultimate aims. A proof of that can be seen in the meeting held last Tuesday that took place under a unified leadership. The source of differences among the Fallujah Resistance organizations is the issue of the unarmed civilian population and what to do regarding them. Some organizations believe the best course is to continue to resist, particularly since other fronts of struggle against the US forces have now been opened elsewhere. But other groups believe that the civilians cannot bear the pressure of the siege any longer. Another source of difference of opinion among the Resistance groups is that some believe it is necessary to open another big front to confront the aggressors on their rear lines, while other Resistance organizations fear that this could result in the fall of the city.
Quds Press reported that extremely fierce fighting was underway on Tuesday on the edges of the al-Jawlan neighborhood of Fallujah. Powerful explosions shook the area and could be heard throughout the city, though their exact cause was difficult to determine.
A field Commander for the Mujahideen disclosed to a correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam in Fallujah what he called the "tragedy of the street fighting" in reference to the way that the invading American troops were using Iraqi women and children as human shields. The Commander said that the tragedy began last Tuesday and that before that, he had never seen such things, when the Americans used used women and children to shield their tanks. The Commander commented: "this state is living through a type of savagery that history has never known before. ... We could hear the cries of the children and the women's calls for help from atop a column of tanks that was driving along ath-Tharthar street last Tuesday. Some of our fighters closed their eyes in pain and wept at the sight." ....
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
11/17/2004 11:57:05 PM ||
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From Harpers Magazine, an article by Patrick Graham, a Canadian freelance journalist who covered the Iraq war for the London Observer.
Early one morning in April, a Monday, an Iraqi doctor and I piled medicine for the Fallujah hospital into the back of his car. I had dyed my hair black, and a friend had made me a fake Iraqi I.D. By then, various groups around the country were holding dozens of foreign hostages; driving out of Baghdad was like slipping into a shark tank. Ahead of us on the road were convoys of trucks, carrying aid and probably weapons. Men from all the Sunni areas, I was told, were coming to Fallujah to fight, a situation that one U.S. Marine had called the Sunni "Super Bowl."
Inside the city itself, the resistance had set up checkpoints every 100 feet. At the tenth checkpoint we were stopped and interrogated. A gun was put to the head of the doctor's uncle, who had accompanied us. We had planned for this eventuality: I was to pretend to be the doctor's mentally ill brother. For this reason I was wearing a suit. I muttered my Iraqi name to the guard. They took us to a mosque at the edge of the industrial zone, where the fighting had been the heaviest. Occasionally a bullet pinged into the asphalt. "Snipers," said the guard.
In the courtyard of the mosque, armed gunmen stood around boxes of medicine. We were taken to an inner room, where a man in the white robes of a conservative Muslim cleric quizzed me. I mumbled in a way that sounded, I hoped, like the product of some sort of brain aneurysm. Upstairs in the mosque, I learned later, the resistance was holding sixteen foreign hostages. We left with a note from the imam of the mosque that asked resistance fighters to let us pass. The guards were very concerned about my health, and were angry at the doctor for having brought his sick brother to such a dangerous place.
Fallujah, which sits along the Euphrates River, is a drab market town, filled with two-story apartment buildings and walled houses the color of a dust storm. Most of the streets are lined with low buildings; piles of old tires and pieces of cars sit in front of small shops. As we drove through the nearly empty streets, hundreds of fighters stood around in small groups. For a while, we followed an ambulance with a single bullet hole in its back window: a clean shot at the driver. Most families had left the city, our escort told us. We heard tanks firing, the low buzz of a circling drone, and the repetitive thud of heavy machine-gun fire. Jet fighters dropped the occasional missile. This was supposedly a cease-fire. The hospital reported that more than 600 people had already been killed, and the Marines had taken only a few neighborhoods. The Western press often had described the insurgents as supporters of Saddam, but the former dictator was clearly irrelevant. There were probably foreign fighters there, too, but in such small numbers as to be militarily insignificant. The fighters were connected to one another by clan; their only political representation was the Association of Muslim Clerics, a Sunni party that had been formed during the summer. This was a tribal uprising, controlled by religious leaders.
As we left the city, a family in a car ahead of us was killed by tank fire. At the resistance lines, cars were driving like mad back into the city, honking. From open windows, passengers screamed that the American tanks were approaching. A young fighter with a Kalashnikov yelled, in reply, "Ahlan bik"— welcome.
* * *
I first visited the tribes of the Sunni Triangle at the end of March 2003, just days before the Marines rolled into Baghdad. When a family I had met before the war offered to smuggle me out to the countryside, it seemed worth the risk. It would be a break, at least, from the guided tours of hospitals and bombed telephone exchanges and from the paranoid boarding-school atmosphere of the Palestine Hotel, where the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi secret police, patrolled the halls.
A Western-style highway, with its familiar guardrails and blue-and-green signs in English and Arabic, took us out across a rock-filled wasteland of desert. Gray-brown sand blew across the road like dirty snow. Oil fires, burning in long trenches by the side of the highway, sent deep black clouds into the air. No one could figure out the point of this, but it looked dramatic on television, as if a set decorator had been told to make the place look doomed. Iraqi soldiers wearing old green coats hid with their tanks under overpasses or camped out in the tree-lined median pitted with foxholes, in a vain attempt to survive the nightly laser-guided Armageddon.
After 50 kilometers, a dozen minarets appeared as the highway merged with the main boulevard of Fallujah. We crossed the river and drove west, along the southern boundary of the Sunni Triangle—an isosceles-shaped area covering, roughly, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers up from Baghdad, on the southern apex, to Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit in the north and to Ramadi in the west. As we drove west out of Fallujah, the highway separated two landscapes. On our left, past sandstone bluffs, the western desert stretched 400 kilometers to the Jordanian border. On our right, muddy irrigated farmland, flat as a billiard table, ended sharply at groves of date palms and eucalyptus. Obscured behind the trees, the Euphrates River wends south from its headwaters in Turkey, through Syria, and, finally, links up with the Tigris River in southern Iraq, where, according to the guidebooks, Adam took the apple from Eve. We drove through a few small, dusty towns like Khaldiyah, where merchants and hustlers denied their Bedouin past and threw up square, pillared stone houses with ornate facades. The more cosmopolitan among them added a pagoda or a Crusader castle's keep to the roof. One saw the same style in Baghdad, a nouveau riche school of architecture I came to call Baath Party Babylonian.
Turning off the highway toward the river, we traveled past long, narrow fields and green-domed mosques, as bored boys sat on the embankment watching their sheep graze. At a checkpoint, militiamen in head scarves recognized our driver and waved us through. Two women in bright dresses, their faces wrapped in scarves, carried shovels as they led a cow down a dirt track. The village itself was hidden under a spiked canopy of date palms, their rough trunks curving upward between the houses, which were separated by gardens and cinder-block walls or dried, brown palm-frond fences. We parked in the grass courtyard of a walled house. Our host, the village Sheikh, greeted us and led us into the diwan, the long traditional living room, where men sat on cushions along the walls eating smoked river carp, mazgouf, from large platters. It was my first experience of male Iraqi tribal life, with its formal elegance. In Baghdad the dress code before the war had been suits; even the Mukhabarat had showed up for work in Syrian-made Italian knockoffs. Here, the men wore impossibly white, nightshirtlike dishadashas, with imameh—gauzy white head scarves—or the red-and-white houndstooth kaffiyeh. Every man had a mustache, and most had prominent, well-fed bellies that hung over their crossed legs.
The women disappeared, and the young boys of the family became the household servants. They carried in immense, round aluminum trays of food and laid it on long plastic sheets, which they had rolled out across the floor beforehand like tablecloths in a Chinese restaurant. After the meal they rolled up the sheets, carried out the plates, and returned with strong, dark tea in slender tulip-shaped glasses. With each new arrival the men stood, as the newcomer went around the room shaking hands. When the men sat down there was another greeting—Allah bil Kheir, God in goodness—said with the right arm slightly raised and a forward motion of the body, as if one were about to stand.
After dinner, packs of stray dogs began barking in distress. Soon we, too, heard the B-52 bombers, a rumbling so deep they could have been slowly opening an abyss in the night sky. We went out onto the road and watched the flashes over the Habbiniya air base, which were followed by the thunder of missiles. Behind us, the windows of the house shook and the door blew open.
* * *
I returned to the village that May, when Baghdad was in chaos. The article continues.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
11/17/2004 11:48:17 PM ||
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TUESDAY OCTOBER 19: Margaret Hassan, a British-Iraqi national born in Ireland, was seized by gunmen on her way to work in western Baghdad at 7.30am. Hassan, 59, had lived in Iraq for 30 years and headed humanitarian group CARE International's operations in the country. She was employed through CARE Australia. Hours after the kidnapping, video footage of the hostage, her hands bound behind her back and looking "very distressed", was shown on Arab TV station Al-Jazeera. It reported that an unnamed "armed Iraqi group" said it had kidnapped her. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said British diplomats in Baghdad were in touch with CARE International about the case. Prime Minister Tony Blair promised to do "whatever we can" to secure Hassan's release.
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 20: CARE International announced it had halted its operations in Iraq following the abduction and was doing all it could to secure Hassan's release. The charity worker's husband, Tahseen Ali Hassan, a retired Iraqi economist, made an emotional appeal to the kidnappers to free her. Blair and Irish premier Bertie Ahern stressed that every effort possible was being made to free her. The Iraqi government condemned Hassan's kidnappers as despicable.
THURSDAY OCTOBER 21: Former Australian prime minister and founder of CARE Australia, Malcolm Fraser, issued a joint statement with former Japanese prime minister Kiichi Miyazawa, his co-chairman of the InterAction Council of former heads of government and heads of state, appealing for Hassan's release. The Australian government was willing to talk to the kidnappers, but would not offer to pay a ransom or change its Iraq policy, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said. Hassan made a second appeal to the kidnappers to free his wife. Colleagues of Hassan said they were hopeful she would be released and that an enormous amount of work was being undertaken on the ground in Iraq to try to secure her freedom. The Irish government and Palestinian Authority issued a joint appeal on her behalf.
FRIDAY OCTOBER 22: Al-Jazeera aired a new video of a weeping Hassan in which she pleaded with the British people to save her life. She said she did not want to die like Ken Bigley.
SATURDAY OCTOBER 23: CARE International's secretary-general, Denis Caillaux, made a plea for Hassan to be freed which was read on Al-Jazeera, but the appeal met with silence by her kidnappers.
SUNDAY OCTOBER 24: The Foreign Office refused to be drawn on a report in The Observer that British security officials were trying to find the intermediary who established contact with the captors of Briton Ken Bigley during his kidnap ordeal. The newspaper claimed they wanted to ascertain if she was being held by the group, controlled by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which seized and eventually killed Bigley. A Foreign Office spokesman reiterated that efforts were continuing on her behalf, saying: "We are working closely with the Iraqi authorities to secure Margaret's release."
MONDAY OCTOBER 25: Deaf schoolchildren helped by Hassan joined 200 of her colleagues at a rally in Baghdad to call for her immediate release. Protesters gathered outside CARE International's Baghdad headquarters, carrying pictures of the hostage and banners calling for the release of "Mama Margaret".
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 27: Hassan was shown on a new videotape on Al-Jazeera pleading for Britain to withdraw its troops from Iraq. She also asked for the release of all female prisoners in Iraq and for CARE International to close its offices in the country.
THURSDAY OCTOBER 28: CARE International announced it had closed down all its operations in Iraq and again pleaded for the release of the hostage.
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 2: Hassan's kidnappers threatened to hand her over to al-Zarqawi if their demands were not met within 48 hours. The group made the warning in a shocking new video that also showed the aid worker in a terrible state pleading for her life. The footage was sent to al-Jazeera, which declined to broadcast the images of Hassan on humanitarian grounds. We all know what happened after that
Please include a source with posts.
Posted by: God Save The World ||
11/17/2004 8:27:42 PM ||
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#1
I'm very sorry for her. But dealing all the publicity and high level pleadings is just giving these sadists what they want.
They are serial killers , plain and simple. They ENJOY this - they aren't EVER going to give them back alive. They thrive in the fact that they made us watch the torture and sadism - and the more saddened we are the better. First contractors, now care workers - expect the ante to be upped in terms of how sympatheic the character for the next time. Maybe children... or who knows...
Sure, I know some are kidnappings for ransome- but it's really not that hard to tell when the captors are getting off on the event v/s when they want cash.
It's a shame that when the Zarqawi types do this that our goodness compells us to give them what it is they want.... our horror and tears.
The most wanted terrorist Asim Ghafoor, alias Qasim Sukkurwala was killed in an encounter with a team of the Crime Investigation Department (CID) Civil Lines Police early Wednesday in southern Karachi, the official Associated Press of Pakistan reported. A senior police official was quoted as saying in Karachi that Asim was a close associate of Omar Sheikh and Amjad Farooqui and he carried a head money of 50,0000 rupees (about 8,500 US dollars).
Sheikh, the top associate of Osama bin Laden, was arrested in 2002 in Lahore, capital of Punjab province and handed over to the United States.
Not yet, he hasn't been...
While Farooqui, the leader of al-Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan, was killed by the security forces two months ago in central Pakistan.
CID had reports that Asim was hiding in a house located in Saeedabad area in Baldia Town for the last couple of days and the department constituted a team to arrest him. When the team surrounded the house, Asim opened fire on the police. The alleged terrorist was seriously injured in the exchange of fire. He later succumbed to lethal wounds, said the police official.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/17/2004 3:33:13 PM ||
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A joint team of secret agencies and Punjab Police has arrested seven alleged terrorists for having strong links with Al-Qaeda, sources said on Tuesday. Out of seven arrested persons, they said, three were Afghan national while four hailing from NWFP. All arrested terrorists had strong links with Al-Qaeda and were activists of Al-Qaeda's logistic wing.
The three arrested Afghans came from Wana and they are also involved in several militant activities including war with security-men in Wana. Sources said all seven persons were living in a rented house situated in Singh Pura a locality situated at Grand Trunk Road in front of University of Engineering and Technology (UET).
Sources were of the view that around 20 days ago they got a rented house with the reference of a local person Muhammad Rasheed who was also arrested later. Raiding team recovered huge quantity of weapons from their possession, the sources added. Officials of secret agencies found tips about terrorist from some other terrorists who already were under custody of secret agencies and a huge quantity of explosive devices were recovered from their possession and later they were handed over to the Punjab Police.
The arrest of the said seven terrorists was also made on the tips obtained from the two terrorists those were arrested a few days ago from GOR with huge quantity of weapons including rocket launchers and hand grenades after a shootout.
Squeezed 'em a bit, eh?
Sources said that during the initial investigations the arrested people revealed about their companions hide in different parts of the city. A number of joint teams of secret agencies and officials of Punjab Police's Elite Fore conducted several raids in various vicinities of the city till late night on Tuesday but found nothing. Investigators of secret agencies believed that all the seven arrested persons came from Wana for some terrorist activities in the provincial metropolis.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/17/2004 3:30:19 PM ||
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#1
good catch...
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/17/2004 16:21 Comments ||
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Love the verbage, sounds like the Times circa 1888.
Via Powerline - check out photo 2 in the slideshow - the Sarin package instructions are in Russian and German
Photos look more like a test kit to me. German lable on one package reads "Handhabung siehe Anleitung".
That's my sense, too. Someone sent me the photo. I'll double check it with a chem def guy... No need. Powerline's already come to the same conclusion for the same reasons.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/17/2004 2:07:11 PM ||
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#1
Could be wrong, but they look like the emergency stick-in-thigh-during-nerve-gas-attack antidote to me (disposable one-use syringes).
#2
The one on the left is in English! Of course we can't see the one on the right. It must be Phrawnch.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
11/17/2004 14:39 Comments ||
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To judge by the typography (and Russian text) this should be East German... and why is the expiry date hidden?
The Charge Number looks like a date, which would mean it's from 1981 which sounds just right.
#4
I've heard a senior officer saying that anything you can hit with chemical weapons, you can hit harder with explosives. My feeling is that unless we can find at least several forklifts worth of artillery shells, it's much ado about nothing.
#5
In the beginning of the Fallujah fight, the Marines also found some nerve gas test kits with Sarin vials. They are probably used to calibrate the detectors. The total quantity is small and militarily insignificant (unlike the artillery shell found filled w/ 5 quarts of old Sarin). The terrorists may have wanted to fill a mortar shell with it, but that don't matter crap in the battle. A more ominous use would be to smuggle it into the west and release it into the ventilation system of a crowded concert.
A bigger question is where are the up to 500 tons of Sarin and 3.7 tons of VX (+ a LOT of Mustard + 38000 liters of Botulinum) the Iraqis admitted having after the GW1. The Sarin and VX were never verified as being destroyed.
Posted by: ed ||
11/17/2004 15:06 Comments ||
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according to the caption, this was found in a briefcase located in a truck. Heard a Marine intel guy in a radio interview a couple of days ago. He found what he said were Sarin test kits in a briefcase located in a truck. He stated that he about pissed himself when he first saw it, but latter determined that they were tests for Sarin and not Sarin itself.
I suspect the photo is actually the test kits in question.
#8
yep - Powerline has updates from readers who know:
These are what we would call "Draeger Tubes" (a brand name, though several companies manufacture them... Draeger is possibly the biggest) commonly used in industry and other places (the military, too) for measuring airborne gas concentrations. Quite ingeneous little chemical reactors, which progressively change color along their as the chemical to be measured is drawn through the tube. A specified volume of air is sucked through the tube, and the length of the color change tells you what the concentration of the chemical is. They are actually quite accurate, as long as you don't have interferences to deal with.
In other words, no story here, other than the bad guys being prepared to measure gasses that might for some reason be present. Who knows... they might have been dumb enough to think that these tubes actually contained Sarin.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/17/2004 16:19 Comments ||
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#9
the dammer rethugs stolen all my Anleitung can ich roller it?
#10
Oh for gosh sakes: The NYT, U.N., IAEA, WAPO, and John Kerry have assured us there were never any WMD in Iraq, the island of peace and stability pre-Bush.
/bs button off
Posted by: Mark Z. ||
11/17/2004 17:46 Comments ||
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My feeling is that unless we can find at least several forklifts worth of artillery shells, it's much ado about nothing.
At this late stage in the game, any CW found would only be worth an I-told-you-so. The bigger purpose of this war (as I see it) goes beyond the WMD question, and I thought it was silly for the administration to have penned a lot of their case on WMDs.
Not Sunday's incident in the mosque.
The US military has charged an Army officer with premeditated murder for his part in the fatal shooting of an injured Iraqi man in Baghdad's Sadr City slum in August, officials have said. Army 2nd Lieutenant Erick Anderson was charged with premeditated murder and conspiracy to commit premeditated murder, according to a statement provided by Lieutenant Colonel James Hutton, a spokesman for the 1st Cavalry Division in Baghdad. If tried and convicted in a US military court, he could face the death penalty. Military investigators had looked into whether Anderson authorised two subordinates, Staff Sergeant Cardenas Alban and Staff Sergeant Johnny Horne, to shoot a young Iraqi man already grievously wounded and unlikely to survive. Some US military officials have referred to the incident as a mercy killing. Read the rest at the link.
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
11/17/2004 11:02 ||
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#1
Let me see if I understand this. They might charge these guys for showing mercy, and might charge the Marine in Fallujah for not showing mercy?
Posted by: Mike ||
11/17/2004 12:22 Comments ||
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Mike, it's not about logic or justice. It's about perpetuating the MSM's twin Grand Memes:
-- the US military is incompetent
-- alternatively, where the US military succeeds, it does so only by committing war crimes.
Facts, logic? Not relevant here. La resistance continue
#3
This is complete bullshit. The dead guy already had half his brains spilled out of his head. The only question was how long it would take for him to die in agony. Fuck these political REMF Monday morning quarterbacks. Give these soldiers a medal for compassion (Bleeding Heart) and grief counselling (something the leftists can support). Lesson for the troops: better to stand around and watch these terrorists die slowly than to risk your freedom and your family's finances defending yourself in some politically contrived self righteous court. Take a cigarette break and watch them die.
Posted by: ed ||
11/17/2004 12:27 Comments ||
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Asinine. Insulting. Outrageous.
Yet more evidence why it's incumbent on bloggers, Rantburgers, anyone with a commitment to logic and facts to build an alternative news engine to rival the MSM.
Screw these idiots. Bloggers and Rantburger-types need to start sourcing and reporting stories ourselves.
#5
you got that right, Lex. In my perfect world, it would look like this:
From my cellphone - I have either audio and or (more cool) streaming video capapbility that I can view through an eye piece.
Audio: From my "cellphone" Ilog onto the internet and access any website I wish through voice commands "access rantburg" and software converts the text to a computerized reader who reads to me as I drive, walk, etc. Just like listening to the radio only I get to choose the programming. Fred can then obtains advertising based on what advertisers believe his target market will bear.
As for streaming video - same thing only I use one of those cool eye pieces and perhaps eye, rather than voice or mouse commands.
When the search engines try to gobble it all up and deny access to certain sites - new search engines are formed to allow me access to whatever I desire.
The technology already exists to do the audio - and possibly even the video.
Adios MSM. And it would free me from sitting at the computer to get my fill.
#6
The best thing that could happen to this country would be to line up all the lawyers and shoot 9 out of 10. Exception: for ACLU members the rate should be 10 out or 10 and they should all be double tapped to make sure.
Posted by: Random thoughts ||
11/17/2004 13:08 Comments ||
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I said this in a previous post; I know some Marines who had to double tap dying Iraqis during Gulf I - almost an unwritten rule. No one made an issue of it, only the pansies with a political axe to grind seem to have a problem w/it now.
#8
Good thing MSM doesn't follow the Rangers around or delta guys for that matter, the Arabs would realy get pissed. I don't get it we are supposed to show mercy, but none of this is asked when they cut/saw off our heads. I think we need to have a Warrior Channel. It would go like this
"We are here with the second Ranger Battalion for our first episode of "This Old Kill Zone" we are talking to SSGT. Jackson and his blood thirsty squad of young killers"
"SSGT. Jackson what is on the agenda for today"
"Well, see here Norm, about a block down the street here we have a known area of enemy activity, me and my troopers are going down that way to hopefully draw fire and kill anything that shoots at us"
"Thats excellent SSGT."
"Hey Norm why don't you just stay down here and we will be back in about 10-15 mikes, roger that"
"Uh! Roger"
15 minutes goes by
"Norm the SSGT. Jackson sent me to get you sir, its all clear, the good news is we killed the hell out of those Haji's"
cut to commercial of Robinson Arms weapons.
You could have this channel showing armed conflict all over the globe, lots of industry adds, etc... like Mtv but it would be Wtv.
Posted by: SGT. Rock ||
11/17/2004 13:50 Comments ||
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Lex, the first obvious step is a multi-blog that would take the various news stories of the day and edit them to seperate opinion from fact. If all of the blogs then linked to that website rather than AP, Reuters, etc, it would be a nice start.
Follow that up with real news culled from bloggers on the scene in different locations. Fires in San Diego, well there are a few dozen San Diego bloggers, post exerpts and news from them.
#10
Yeah, a news operation is gonna spring up from all your fatasses sitting around eating Doritos and posting here.You nuts are in a fantasy world.
Posted by: Me ||
11/17/2004 15:38 Comments ||
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Since they've charged him, he'll face courts martial. Note well, that the Area Defense Council who will represent him at the courts martial is not subject to the chain of command and must have performed as a prosecuting attorney in a previous assignment [both aspects are fallouts of the Vietnam period]. The military judge is also not subject to the command chain. While the case would normally be processed in the command and the officers of the board would be of the command, military law is explicit that any attempt by the command is unlawful. I personally sat on a retrial at Ft Leavenworth after the Court of Military Appeals found the command had interfered with the trial at the originial duty station.
It will be interesting to see how the government is able to verify that the victim was not already brain dead as neither the sergeants nor the officer are competent medical authorities. Its not good enough to say that in some circumstances people suffer such injuries and survive. The question is whether this individual meet those conditions and how it was determined by competent authority.
Posted by: Don ||
11/17/2004 15:46 Comments ||
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Brilliant, 2b. Exactly what I was thinking. As to the multi-blog site itself, some other thoughts:
Do our own sourcing and reporting, borrowing a page from the open-source software development model. Key is to show how the (news story) sausage is made. Present journalism as a process rather than a series of self-contained little products. Specifically:
1) Strip the story of the author's weasel words, blind sources, hints, oblique allusions etc and highlight the raw meme in its nakedness. The MSM Meme du Jour in this case is "US Military Wins Battle, Loses in Court of World Opinion". Has zip to do with justice, facts, logic, human rights.
2) Provide links to the author's sources, his bio and ideological bent. Who the f*** is Kevin Sites? What's his bgrd, his agenda? Bring it front and center.
3) Use the interactive comment format of weblogs to gather counter-memes. Display them next to the original meme and let each story evolve, dynamically, dialectically, as site visitors provide input. What do other marines have to say? Anyone have more bgrd on the hard boyz who were shot? Create a counter-meme.
#13
Lex,why don't we just ban all media except those who agree with Rantburgers?
Posted by: Me ||
11/17/2004 16:22 Comments ||
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Me: tee hee! you funny!
As I said above, I want first and foremost to change the news format from static, centralized story-pushing to dynamic, multi-sourced, multi-memes. I want more competition, not less.
The mainstream media are the last profession to cling to centralized, hierarchical info dissemination, with utterly no peer review or professional standards applied, and to resist all efforts by outsiders to offer competing product. Not even the AMA is as arrogant-- and they're true professionals who've engaged in grueling training over more than a decade in their scientific craft.
MSM journalists are just guys who write stuff. Chiropractors show more professionalism than these jokers. The Rantburger community alone contains more expertise on the war and combat operations than you'd find in all the MSM's journalists and editors combined. Long past time we smashed the media monopoly, exposed the inside of the sausage factory, and brought some glasnost to the process.
#15
Ban all media? Seems the media has pretty well censor opposing views itself. When a few outlets actually present opposing views, the media scream and howl at being challenged. Go ask Danny boy.
Posted by: Don ||
11/17/2004 16:36 Comments ||
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Lex, Don.. Very interesting. You can see the transition to what you are envisioning right here on rantburg.... The peer review is instant, varied and hyperlinked. Spin is unspun and respun and as varied as the posters.
The idea of hierarchial info dissemination is indeed a thing of the past - passed into the night like the horse and buggy did at the turn of the 20 Century. It won't go away completely - it just will be forced onto the backroads and where it won't get run over.
As for the media monopoly. I believe it is already smashed. Think how much changed in news dissemination in the past 4 years! Think how much it changed in the last 8!! Maybe in the next election, the MSM will still have an impact - but I believe by the election in 2008 - the MSM will no longer be a viable player in shaping the news.
#17
But I don't like you. I'm having to go to therapy twice a week because of goons like you who ripped off my election.
Posted by: me me ||
11/17/2004 17:19 Comments ||
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The news format needs to change as well. Get rid of linear and static; shift to mutli-leveled, dynamic, contextual. Link to sources, trackbacks, background and bios of authors. Show contrary memes side by side. Show the readers stories as they evolve. Throw back the curtain.
#19
Yo,minime,us fat-assed dorrito munchers sure put a hurtin on New York Times,Dan Rather,and CBS.With out us fat-ass' they would have gotten away with thier lies,That being the case"Eat sh$t and bark at the moon".
#20
Let's stipulate that most media is left-biased.Your position stills assumes that you are smarter than those who are brainwashed by that media.Ironically,just the type of superior mindset that many of you point at on the left side of the aisle.
Posted by: Me ||
11/17/2004 19:55 Comments ||
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Your position stills assumes that you are smarter than those who are brainwashed by that media.
I submit that there's a difference between 'smart' and well-informed.
#22
The premise is that when most people have access to a wider choice of sources of information, as well as less biased analysis, the end-result is love of freedom -- neither socialism nor Islamofascism.
Large bowls of warm milk snipped from this story. I hope PM Singh knows what he's doing; the fact that his army had to kill two assassins before his speech in Kashmir and that he had to give his "Let's be friends" speech from behind bulletproof glass might indicate that now is not the time to pull your troops home. Unless you really don't *want* Kashmir.
SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - Indian troops killed two heavily armed rebels in the heart of Kashmir's biggest city on Wednesday, and said the gunmen planned to attack a meeting nearby which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh addressed just hours later. Singh, on his first visit to the region since taking office in May, vowed to hold talks with all Kashmiri groups and held out hope of further scaling back the number of troops deployed there if tensions eased. "I have extended a hand of friendship to Pakistan, our doors are open to everyone who wants to talk to me calmly," Singh said at the public meeting at a cricket stadium in Srinagar city, speaking from behind a bullet-proof enclosure.
Just hours before Singh landed in Srinagar, Indian soldiers fought a gunbattle with two rebels who had been holed up since late Tuesday in a run-down building overlooking the stadium. Television footage showed dramatic pictures of flak-jacketed troops firing from behind armored vehicles and running forward to get to better firing positions. The militants, equipped with AK-47 assault rifles, pistols and grenades, later climbed a nearby hill and took cover in a semi-constructed building from where they fired intermittently. Soldiers later surrounded the building and shot the men dead. Troops then clambered onto the building looking for booby traps and scoured the hillside to ensure that there were no more guerrillas hiding nearby. "We consider it as a major success because we were able to detect them and eliminate them before the PM's program," said Ranjit Singh, a police inspector general. "If not, they could have caused major havoc." Two soldiers and a civilian were wounded.
Earlier, about 1,000 Indian soldiers withdrew from a southern Kashmiri town as part of a highly publicized move to scale back some forces in the Himalayan region. "If conditions improve and if the incidence of infiltration and of violence remain under control, it will make it easier for me to seek a further reduction of troops," Singh said.
But a pro-Pakistan Kashmiri guerrilla leader said the withdrawal was staged to divert attention from Indian army abuses. "The mujahideen and Kashmiris are not fighting just for troop reduction. We took up guns for a complete withdrawal," said Syed Salahuddin, commander of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen guerrilla group.
Posted by: Seafarious ||
11/17/2004 10:22:33 AM ||
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The family of Sheikh Omar Jummah had no idea he was in Iraq until a midnight caller told them he had died fighting alongside al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Omar, 35, a Jordanian like Zarqawi, fought for a year with other Islamic militants battling to expel U.S.-led forces from Iraq. But he kept his family in the dark. "He told us he was leaving for Saudi Arabia to take up a teaching job," said his 64-year-old father Youssef Jummah. Jummah recalled that his son was deeply religious and had memorized the Koran by the age of 13. But no one in his family expected that his piety would drive him to militancy.
"No, no! Certainly not! Not our boy!"
Zarqawi's group has claimed responsibility for the beheading of foreign hostages and some of the bloodiest suicide attacks in postwar Iraq. His followers are believed to form a hard core within a wider insurgency by Iraqi nationalists and Sunni Muslim fighters loyal to ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. With their religious fervor and ideological commitment, the U.S. military says Arab volunteers like Omar are behind some of the most audacious and lethal attacks.
"Other than that, he was a good boy..."
Like the other Jordanian militants who kept their "jihad" plans secret, kick-boxing champion Bahaa Yahya, 23, told his family he was going to a tournament in Beirut. When he arrived in Iraq, Yahya phoned his family to disclose where he had hidden a letter to be read after he died. "I am in need of the prayers of my mother and brothers and to tell them the world is fighting our religion," Yahya said in the letter which his family opened after his death in September. He had been fighting U.S. troops in Falluja, Iraq's most rebellious town, from where Zarqawi was thought to have been holed up, directing the insurgency.
Just more cannon fodder expended. Cheap, and easily replaced...
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/17/2004 9:37:36 AM ||
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Moderate clerics say Iraq is transforming pious, once non- violent Muslim extremists who shun mainstream Islamic parties seen as tainted by the politics of compromise. Which is to say, people with rigid minds, who cannot tolerate tolerance, an essential characteristic of democracy. Perhaps it is just better for everyone else if they are killed--or, more properly, culled.
#2
Article: Moderate clerics say Iraq is transforming pious, once non- violent Muslim extremists who shun mainstream Islamic parties seen as tainted by the politics of compromise.
It's amazing how moderate Muslim clerics have no compunction about lying at the drop of a hat. But then again, these are the same guys who praise the 9/11 bombing as America's just desserts, deny that bin Laden did it and claim that Israel carried it out.
Article: For many young Jordanian militants, the dangers of Iraq only strengthen their resolve to go.
Not that many, it seems. Considering that Jordan is right next door, even if 1% of Jordan's 2.8m (majority Palestinian) male population showed up, there would have been 28,000 Jordanian guerrillas in Iraq. But it appears that only a few hundred bothered to make the laughably easy passage. Where are all the angry Jordanian jihadis? Perhaps they love life just as the Marines love sending them to meet Allah?
#3
--"I am determined to punish the tyrants and let them taste what we tasted to stop them from killing our women and children," said Yaseen Rabei, a Muslim militant with ties to Iraqi fighters operating in the western desert near the city of Ramadi.---
How dare the infidels!!!
Only we're allowed to kill our women and children. Except for Arafat.
Sounds oddly reminiscent of the Afghan jihad, where the Afghans complained that the Arabs would show up, make lots of noise, get in the way, but contribute very little to the actual fighting.
#5
How is it that the jihadies are so intent on defending saddams honor? I'm so let down by our propoganda effort in this regard. aL jiz and other arab media need to have their mouths washed out with soap. Shows how childish the arab mind is. That is the easiest mind to propogandise. C'mon CIA, wake up!
#10
The interesting subtext of this is astounding. All of these guys were afraid to tell their families where they had gone until it was too late. EIther they were ashamed or knew they might be talked out of it if shown a dose of common sense.
#11
I'm so let down by our propoganda effort in this regard. aL jiz and other arab media need to have their mouths washed out with soap.
The question is, would it be worth the effort? Keep in mind, if the Arab media presented propaganda and U.S. officials released facts, who would Abdul-on-the-street more readily believe, the Arab or the infidel?
#12
"It has turned many gentle clerics and young men with strong religious convictions, but who (previously) could not stomach the sight of blood, into eager suicide bombers and executioners,"
Sorry but anyone that gets fired up by seeing innocents heads cut off was sick well before heading to Iraq.
#13
Tomorrow our brave Marines in Iraq will be handing out lollipops and ass whoopings, and I've just been informed they're fresh out of lollipops. I think they'll be punchin' a couple tickets to paradise.
American mortars have pummelled parts of Falluja as troops hunted for guerrillas still fighting in the Iraqi city after nine days of bombardment. U.S. officers said Marines were "cleaning up" fragments of an insurgent force of Iraqi and foreign Islamists and Saddam Hussein loyalists that Iraq's interim government says has left some 1,600 rebels dead in the rubble of the urban battlefield. But elsewhere in the northern heartlands of the formerly dominant Sunni Muslim minority, trouble flared again as it has done repeatedly since U.S. and Iraqi troops launched a major offensive more than a week ago in Falluja, west of Baghdad. Five Iraqis were killed when a car bomb went off close to a U.S. patrol in the northern oil refining town of Baiji. But Mosul, Iraq's third biggest city, was relatively quiet after a week of clashes between guerrillas and U.S. and Iraqi allies. Two Turkish truck drivers were killed and their vehicles destroyed in a rocket attack on a civilian convoy near Samarra.
It is not clear how widely coordinated insurgent activity is, however, and so hard to assess whether violence in other Sunni towns has been led by figures formerly based in Falluja or simply a reaction to events there by sympathisers. More widely, the bloodshed in Falluja, including the alleged shooting dead of an unarmed and wounded guerrilla in a mosque by a U.S. Marine has provoked dismay among many in Iraq and the Arab world, where U.S. President George W. Bush has hoped the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would foster stability.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/17/2004 9:35:55 AM ||
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Article: "I am not a jihadist, I am just a normal Muslim but such scenes are pushing me to Jihad," said one engineer in the tranquil Gulf emirate of Dubai, who gave his name as Abdallah.
Then in the name of Allah, go. Today, not tomorrow.
#5
âMore widely, the bloodshed in Falluja, including the alleged shooting dead of an unarmed and wounded guerrilla in a mosque by a U.S. Marine has provoked dismay among many in Iraq and the Arab worldâ
Some have called for the ending of the embedding of reporters because of this incident. I disagree. This incident is being played up as the worst abuse in the battle. What do we have? An Iraqi âinsurgentâ dedicated to the death of US soldiers is killed in a tense battle situation.
Without the embedded reporter footage, the Arab ânews reportersâ would be showing films of women and children maimed by US bombs or killed by US snipers. Their Arab audience would not know that the footage did not come from Fallujah or was staged. As it is, some Arabs are going to hate the US no matter what. This footage will only add to what they already believe. Others will see the professional US military in action, US military killing âinsurgentsâ, not women, children, or Iraqiâs living in peace.
In the US some anti-war people will see the footage a good propaganda for their cause. However for most Americans I believe it will generate sympathy for the extreme stress under which our soldiers live and more disdain for MSM reporting.
#6
When these holdouts are located, grind 'em into dust. These are the worst of the lot, and would present a challenge in the rehabilitation department that isn't likely to be worth the money or effort spent.
#7
Anon5032, I'd argue that the worst abuse was those soldiers who made two guys jump into a river. One (both?) died. At first when this story broke, thanks to an Iraqi blogger, I didn't believe it. Nor did many others. But, it turned out to be true. Thank God there was no footage of that incident.
#8
Growler: âI'd argue that the worst abuse was those soldiers who made two guys jump into a river.â
I read some of the Iraqi bloggers so I followed the âdenialâ, âdoubtâ, and final âapologyâ stages of that incident. I was impressed that the Iraqi blogger did not turn against the US. I also doubt the US soldiers would have been discovered and punished without blogger pressure.
I have sympathy for the soldiers involved in that incident. The young Iraqi men were out late after curfew. I suspect the soldiers believed they were out planting bombs and decided to scare them. I doubt they intended that the boy drown. Bad judgment and bad behavior that led to an innocent death and justified punishment for the soldiers.
Would footage have made the incident worse? If there had been an embedded reporter, I donât believe it would have happened. If a witness caught it on tape, it might depend on the events shown. If the soldiers were shown acting like callous thugs who harassed and then deliberately murdered a young Iraqi then it would play badly in Iraq and in the US. But if that is what happened then I believe the truth should be shown and reviled. If US soldiers were behaving badly we should know it since such behavior will make re-building Iraq much harder. (I donât believe that it should be made into a media circus, as the MSM is wont to do. The MSM promoting ânewsâ to garner ratings is a problem in our society.)
The Nairobi residence of the newly elected Somali president has been attacked by unknown gunmen. Two armed men exchanged gunfire with security guards outside Abdullahi Yusuf's house in the Kenyan capital early on Wednesday for 10 minutes. The unidentified attackers then fled. No injuries are being reported.
Ten minute shootout and no one was even scratched. Just another day in Africa.
Mr Yusuf was elected last month by the transitional parliament based in Kenya. He has not yet returned to Somalia due to security fears. Somalia has been without a functioning national government since before recorded history 1991. Many of Mogadishu¿s ministry buildings, universities, schools and colleges have become refugee camps. It has been divided into fiefdoms by rival warlords. The BBC's Muchiri Kioi says it is not clear if Mr Yusuf is still in his Nairobi residence. Since his election, he has been treated as a head of state by the Kenyan authorities, with tight security. The number of Kenyan troops around the house has now been increased. A spokesman for Mr Yusuf said he had full confidence in the Kenyan security forces.
Posted by: Steve ||
11/17/2004 8:35:56 AM ||
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On a dusty field outside Fallujah, where wounded American soldiers were rushed off the battlefield, a young Sudanese man lay bleeding and trying to talk his way out of trouble. Mohammed Khalid had a small spot in his left shoulder where an American bullet had entered and a large gaping hole on his biceps where it had exited. The identification number "14-5" was written on his chest in black marker. Khalid, a gaunt 19-year-old with a scraggly beard, screamed as a doctor dressed his wounds. "I came here for the work," he said. "I know nothing about Iraq."
Allahu akbar, bub.
The troops who brought Khalid in said he and the three other foreigner fighters lying on field stretchers were found with weapons in a covered ditch. A Marine Corps intelligence sergeant, who wouldn't give his name, said the men "came out of their holes and just surrendered."
"Don't kill me! Please don't kill me! I don't wanna be a martyr!"
There was no talk here about video footage that purportedly shows an American Marine killing a wounded insurgent, an incident that Marine officials are investigating. Military personnel here didn't know about the video or the incident.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/17/2004 3:10:34 AM ||
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Daddy may, indeed, be the worst of his problems. Now that he's out of the fight and under control, he'll be treated fair and square - the opposite of what he and his buddies would do were the tables turned. I hope they wring 'em dry for info. After that, I guess give him to Daddy in front of Jordanian Intel Services, insert ear plugs, and walk away.
#3
"wasnât getting along with his parents..."So instead of getting a job and moving out of Daddy's house he go's to Iraq and gets shot-up.And here I thought American,young adults tend to be dumb-ass'.Sheeesh!
#4
"...the four foreigners - two Jordanians, the Sudanese and a Palestinian..."
"...heâd gone to Syria from Saudi Arabia..."
No Iranians here -- the Iranians just pay the bills.
Posted by: Tom ||
11/17/2004 9:03 Comments ||
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#5
Army chaplain Capt. Ric Brown...37, from Reno, Nev., [said], "Iâve had the opportunity to talk with the average Joe Iraqi, and they say the Quran teaches tolerance, tolerance of others and peace"
Chaplain Brown learned a lot about tolerance in Reno and Vegas, I'm sure.
The insurgent safe house in Fallujah looked like every other one on the block, except that it was carefully marked with two new bricks, hanging from cord on the outer wall. Explosives experts had already been in the carport, and blown up several mortar tubes set up in the back of a truck - a mobile artillery unit favored by rebels. But Tuesday 1st Sgt. Rodolfo Sarino wanted to take the counterinsurgency effort one step further, in keeping with the volumes of new information US troops are learning every day about the rebellion they are trying to crush.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/17/2004 2:57:40 AM ||
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Even though the patient may be feeling better, he should keep taking the medicine until it's completely gone, well after the apparent symptoms have disappeared. This is necessary to prevent leaving behind resistent strains or creating the dreaded superbug.
So be good little jihadis germs and take your best shot.
#4
Marines say they have found lots of drugs in safe houses, probably amphetamines similar to speed, to keep them awake. Al Qaeda safe houses in Kabul, after the Taliban fell in November 2001, contained such drugs.
Death Cult has its raves. Another recruiting tool?
Within minutes, the store was on fire, adding belching black smoke to Fallujahâs acrid skyline - and depriving mobile bands of insurgents of at least one life-giving larder.
U.S. and Iraqi troops fought to crush the spreading insurgency in Iraq (news - web sites)'s third largest city Tuesday, recapturing police stations and securing Tigris River bridges as they battled to oust fighters who had moved into Mosul as a distraction to the Marine offensive in Fallujah. Troops met "very little resistance" in securing several of the dozen or so police stations that had been captured by insurgents, the U.S. military command said. Nineveh province's deputy governor said militants blew up the Zuhour police station ahead of the U.S. advance, but the U.S military denied any stations were destroyed.
Loud explosions and gunfire could be heard as U.S. warplanes and helicopters circled over Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city with more than 1 million residents. Mortar shells hit two areas near the main government building in the city center, killing three civilians and wounding 25, hospital officials said. One American soldier was wounded when a car bomb exploded near a U.S. convoy in western Mosul, the military said. The U.S.-led offensive is aimed at seizing control of the city 225 miles north of Baghdad, where gunmen stormed police stations, bridges and political offices last week. The city's police force was overwhelmed and in many places failed to even put up a fight. Some officers also allegedly cooperated with insurgents. The operation was launched after U.S. and Iraqi reinforcements were rushed to Mosul. A U.S. Army infantry battalion was recalled from the fighting in Fallujah, 300 Iraqi National Guard soldiers came from garrisons along the borders with Iran and Syria and a special police battalion was sent from Baghdad. U.S. military spokeswoman Capt. Angela Bowman said the attack began Tuesday as troops closed Mosul's five bridges and American soldiers began securing police stations in the western part of the city. "We are in the process of securing all of the police stations and returning the police to these stations," she said.
U.S. Marines continued to hunt for fighters hiding in Fallujah, but airstrikes and gunfire waned considerably after a week of heavy fighting that left the Americans in control of the city west of Baghdad that had been the main insurgent bastion. U.S. aerial missions over Iraq are beginning to slow after a 50 percent jump that accompanied the Fallujah offensive, said Rear Adm. Barry McCullough, commander of the USS John F. Kennedy battle group in the Persian Gulf. "The operation is starting to wind down now. That doesn't mean there aren't pockets of insurgents and terrorists in Fallujah," McCullough told The Associated Press.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/17/2004 2:55:38 AM ||
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There must be a Law of Islam that all Arab "Hospital Spokesmen" belong to the Everyone's a Civilian Union.
Protection of injured combatants once they are out of action was a basic rule of warfare, but the US Marine who shot and killed a wounded and apparently unarmed Iraqi in Fallujah may have acted in self-defence, international legal experts said. Coalition forces in Iraq said the US military was investigating whether the Marine who shot the man in a mosque on Saturday "acted in self-defence, violated military law or failed to comply with the Law of Armed Conflict". The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which upholds the Geneva Conventions on warfare, said today it was up to US officials to determine what happened in this case and that self-defence was possible. "It's clearly recognised that people in combat situations are under enormous strain," said ICRC spokesman Florian Westphal. "Obviously, we were not on the spot so we cannot judge the precise circumstances of what was being shown here."
Hey! Careful with that feather! You almost knocked me over!
But, Westphal said, the Geneva Conventions are clear: protection of wounded combatants once they are out of action is an absolute requirement
The question becomes whether he was out of action — or thought to be so.
The wounded man's status as a prisoner - which would have put him out of action - was unclear. A different Marine unit had come under fire from the mosque on Friday. Those Marines stormed the building, killing 10 men and wounding five, according to Kevin Sites, a reporter for the US television network NBC who was embedded with the Marines 3rd Battalion, 1st Regiment. Sites reported that the Marines treated the wounded, left them behind and continued on Friday with their drive to retake the city from insurgents battling US-led occupation forces. The same five men were still in the mosque on Saturday when members of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Regiment arrived.
Therefore they weren't prisoners at that time, though the first group had considered them out of combat.
Posted by: tipper ||
11/17/2004 2:53:42 AM ||
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The ICRC? Hell, I'll never do the Int'l Red Thingy Cross again. Who'da thunk it?
As for the others, especially someone who isn't embarrassed as hell by the title High Commissioner - well, sorry Em, but fug 'em. With a barbed-wire fence post. Dipped in pig shit.
#5
bar, it's the Salvation Army. They get to disasters faster than the RC and they don't waste time there blowing their own trumpet. And if you donate enough, I'm sure they'll give you a subscription to their magazine War Cry
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
11/17/2004 11:21 Comments ||
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Salvation Army is the way to go for donations. I actually worked as a bell-ringer one Christmas season while in college. One day two WWII vets stopped to chat with me, and each other. One had been in the Pacific, the other in Europe. One told how the Red Cross tent was charging GIs for donuts and coffee. The other told how the Red Cross had no room for him to sleep, but the head officer at the Salvation Army tent(s) gave up his own cot for him.
The Salvation army also did a FANTASTIC, and largley uncredited, job here in NYC post 9/11.
#9
As a Marine Da Nang near 3rd Div,a an Army SGT. tried to get me to salute a RED Cross puke saying he had "officer" status.I refused.He took my name,rank and serial number.Next day,I was outa there with 2/3 and my Marine C.O. said screw them.
#10
Note how the whole accusation depends entirely on the account of Kevin Sites. That the people were the same from one day to another, that they were not threatening, that they were "prisoners" etc. etc.
He is trying to set up the Marine. What's the penalty going to be for that?
As the war continued to take its toll, parents in Live Oak and Gilroy learned this week that their only sons had been killed in Iraq.
Marine Lance Cpl. Jeramy Ailes, 22, of Gilroy was killed Monday in Al-Fallujah by small arms fire.
``They had finished mopping up in Fallujah and they went back to double-check on some insurgents. From what we gathered, somebody playing possum jumped up and shot him,'' said his father, Joel Ailes, who learned of his death Monday evening. ``It's extremely hard.''
Posted by: Jack Bross ||
11/17/2004 16:41 Comments ||
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Growler:
When my Dad was on a Pacific transport returning from an operation the red crap (dad's words) gave him a razor and shaving cream and crackers, and demanded a receipt. The Salvation Army gave him $2 (10 percent of wages) and asked to be remembered in the future. The Salvation Army has been remember, the Rc despised even unto his grandchildren.
#13
Most US bases have a Red Cross office. The Red Cross has done countless good deeds for US servicemen all over the world. When a serviceman wants to go home to attend a funeral and doesn't have the money to go, the Red Cross pays his way. When a serviceman has a family emergency, the Red Cross might give him a loan. And so on and so forth.
I'm sorry, Shipman, that your father passed on his petty anger about this petty incident (if it really happened, which I doubt) down to his children and grandchildren.
.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
11/17/2004 22:44 Comments ||
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I have been donating to Iraqi projects of Jim Hakes' Spirit of America.
Marines here are making a difference. Especially in the areas that they are sponsoring. Here is the link.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/17/2004 22:58 Comments ||
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#15
Gee, Mikey - I bet Kofi and Kujo also contribute from their pot o' dictater fund the red thingy...whotta surprise to see you in this thread
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/17/2004 23:06 Comments ||
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Taliban gunmen raided a police post near an Afghan hydro-power dam and killed six policemen, including their commander, a provincial official said on Wednesday. The Kajaki Dam, which supplies power to southern Afghanistan's main city, Kandahar, was not damaged in the late-night attack, said Haji Mohammad Wali, spokesman for the governor of Helmand province, where the dam is located. One Taliban fighter was killed and two wounded when police returned fire, he said. "We have the body of the Taliban fighter," Wali said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/17/2004 2:46:45 AM ||
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Redacted by moderator. Comments may be redacted for trolling, violation of standards of good manners, or plain stupidity. Please correct the condition that applies and try again. Contents may be viewed in the sinktrap. Further violations may result in banning.
#4
I looked at that - and it makes no sense. Zipperhead could put anything in the http field - and even hosed the TLD. I don't think our fuckwit has anything to do with cerc.com or cer.com - looked at them both.
Militants early Wednesday launched an attack near a stadium in Kashmir where Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is due to address a rally later, police said. Witnesses said an intense gunbattle was raging between the militants and the security forces in Kashmir's summer capital Srinagar, while Indian television channels reported that a civilian had been killed in the crossfire. Singh, paying his first visit to Kashmir since taking office in May, was due Wednesday to address a public rally at Sheri Kashmir stadium, just 200 metres (yards) from the Sulaiman Center complex where the gunfight was under way.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/17/2004 12:19:58 AM ||
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A BOMB exploded in a cinema during a movie screening early today in north-western Pakistan, killing two people and injuring 29 others, police said. The explosion occurred after midnight (local time) at the cinema in Mingora, the main town in the hill resort district of Swat, about 120km north-east of Peshawar, local deputy superintendent of police Kalam Khan said. The area is not known to have active Islamic militants or a history of sectarian violence. It was not known how many people were inside the cinema when the bomb exploded under a seat. Two men died of their injuries at a hospital. At least three of the 29 injured were in serious condition while many others were treated for minor injuries at a hospital in Mingora, Mr Khan said.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/17/2004 10:19:35 PM ||
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Moving graven images? No wonder someone acted to stop this blasphemy - or to kill his rival for that hot ninja who makes schwarmas down on Peshawar Street.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Saudi police have arrested five suspected militants following a shootout that killed a policeman, the state-run Saudi Press Agency reported Wednesday. The agency, quoting an unidentified Interior Ministry official, said the clash took place Tuesday in al-Qassim, 220 miles northwest of Riyadh, the capital. The official said two of those arrested were suspected terrorists, adding that one was severely wounded in the shootout that also killed one policeman and wounded eight others. Police seized automatic rifles, pistols, pipe bombs and ammunition from the militants, plus computers, communication equipment and more than $10,000.
Al Qaeda militants have defied a crackdown and the loss of senior leaders in Saudi Arabia by using the Internet to win over new recruits in Osama bin Laden's birthplace. Despite the killing of top contributors, including one of its leading Web magazine editors 
A top Kazakh security official today said that Kazakhstan has extradited 14 Uyghurs to China and Kyrgyzstan in the past six years for alleged extremist activities. Vladimir Bozhko, the deputy chairman of Kazakhstan's National Security Agency, made the announcement today in Astana. "Due to facts of involvement into Uyghur separatist organizations, 14 individuals have been extradited to Kyrgyzstan and China," Bozhko said. Bozhko said all those extradited were Uyghur members of a group called the 
European countries were on the trail of militants linked to the slaying of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh for months before the murder, but lacked evidence to break up the cell until too late, security sources say. The fact that the alleged killer was known to the authorities as a suspected Muslim militant has raised questions as to whether the security services were asleep on the job.
The most wanted terrorist 
A joint team of secret agencies and Punjab Police has arrested seven alleged terrorists for having strong links with Al-Qaeda, sources said on Tuesday. Out of seven arrested persons, they said, three were Afghan national while four hailing from NWFP. All arrested terrorists had strong links with Al-Qaeda and were activists of Al-Qaeda's logistic wing.
