The ability of London's bombing suspects to elude police, slip through borders and fade into ethnic communities suggests a broad network of support.
When the bomb he tried to detonate aboard a London Tube train failed to explode, police say Osman Hussain jumped out a carriage window, ran along the track, then hopped through backyards before melting into the city's bustle.
After going underground for five days, Hussain boarded a train at Waterloo station -- possibly walking past his picture and those of three other suspected July 21 attackers on posters that blanketed the city. Then he slipped away, traveling from London through France to Rome.
His ability to escape a massive British dragnet, coupled with the arrest of another suspect in Zambia with al Qaeda ties, raised fears about the global reach of today's terrorists and the depth of their networks.
"The way people fanned out after the bombings, it's brought it home to people . . . that it is part of a kind of a network, interconnected -- all the fingerprints are there," said Michael Cox, a professor at London's Royal Institute of International Affairs specializing in the post-Sept. 11 terrorism threat.
"They'd have to have a much wider support base than just those who are active suicide bombers."
Hussain, an Ethiopian-born Briton, was captured Friday at his brother Remzi Isaac's house in Rome, where police traced him through his use of a relative's cellphone. Italian newspapers said investigators suspected Hussain's real name was Hamdi Isaac.
Hussain admitted Saturday to a role in the attack but said it was only intended to be an attention-grabbing strike, not a deadly one, according to a legal expert familiar with the probe.
Grilled by a pair of Italy's top anti-terrorism prosecutors, Hussain said that months ago in London, his chief -- who he identified as "Muktar" -- taught him how to assemble explosives using fertilizers and stuff explosives and timers into backpacks, the Rome daily La Repubblica said.
Hussain was referring to Muktar Said Ibrahim, 27, one of the other bombing suspects captured Friday in a London raid, the newspaper said. Ibrahim is suspected of planting explosives on a London bus on July 21.
"Muktar urged us to be careful," La Repubblica quoted Hussain as telling his interrogators. "We didn't want to kill, just sow terror."
The arrest sparked more than a dozen follow-up raids across the country, as Italian authorities tried to determine if any attacks on Italy were being plotted.
In addition to Hussain, at least two of the other July 21 suspects were of East African origin, and Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said the country was watching the area closely.
"We are following the evolution of the overall situation in the Horn of Africa where, in stateless lands, al Qaeda has arrived, has settled, and from where it tends, in various ways, to dispatch its followers into Europe and the rest of the world," Pisanu said.
Though officials have not yet said they found links between the deadly July 7 attacks and the failed attacks exactly two weeks later -- both of which targeted three subway trains and a bus -- police chief Sir Ian Blair said there was a "resonance" between the two.
If it turns out there was a single mastermind for both events and a common bomb maker, experience shows they probably would have fled Britain before the attacks, said Alex Standish, editor of Jane's Intelligence Digest. A likely hiding place would be in western Europe, where they could flee without having to undergo tough border security checks.
"They'll go to ground in areas that they will not be conspicuous," Standish said. "Most European Union countries have a significant Muslim population where these guys can just sit there and fade into the background."
Britain was seeking Hussain's extradition and said it was seeking the return of one of its citizens detained in Zambia.
Though the Foreign Office has not released the person's name, it is widely reported to be Haroon Rashid Aswat, whom Zambian officials have said was being questioned about 20 phone calls he allegedly made to some of the men involved in the July 7 attacks, which killed 56 people, including four suicide bombers.
Aswat is implicated in a 1999 plot to establish a terrorist training camp in the United States and has told Zambian investigators he once was a bodyguard for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, Zambian officials said.
Before he was detained in Zambia, Aswat had been hiding in Johannesburg, South Africa, and was followed after entering the country from Botswana, the Zambian officials said.
"Every single terrorist event we've had, and the failed ones we've had, there usually are foreign connections, even though the cannon fodder may be home grown," said Magnus Ranstorp, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
British authorities were fortunate to have good quality closed-circuit television pictures of the July 21 suspects. That could have spooked them into a "panic" response counter to known terrorist training methods, with three failing to immediately flee the country and Hussain using a cellular phone that could be traced easily, Ranstorp said.
Well put. The supporters are part of that middle group -- not gonna blow themselves up, not gonna fight for reform in the muslim world. But more than happy to provide a little support here and there to a brother.
The fallacy is that the middle group is the moderate group. That's a western wish, driven by western values, not a geopolitical reality.
The majority of muslims would, in some way, support terror.
There IS no "moderate muslim" faction. If there were, we would have heard from them by now.
#2
I agree. This segment is much larger than the homicide bombers and in some respects more dangerous.
The thornier issue is how they are to be dealt with? Pulling of finger and toe nails is a start, but under general sentencing guidelines and liberal judges, they spent little to no punishment. Yet they are the enablers.
Posted by: Captain America ||
07/31/2005 10:32 Comments ||
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#3
The thornier issue is how they are to be dealt with?
I vote for eviction to their home country of all non-citizens, revocation of citizenship and eviction to their home country of all naturalized citizens, and long jail sentences for American-born citizens for "aiding and abetting."
Well put. The supporters are part of that middle group -- not gonna blow themselves up, not gonna fight for reform in the muslim world. But more than happy to provide a little support here and there to a brother.
The fallacy is that the middle group is the moderate group. That's a western wish, driven by western values, not a geopolitical reality.
The majority of muslims would, in some way, support terror.
There IS no "moderate muslim" faction. If there were, we would have heard from them by now.
Well, it might look that way if the only countries you look at are Britian and Pakistan (where most of the moslems in the UK come from).
OTOH, it appears as if the conflict in Iraq is mainly Al Qaeda trying to fight other moslems. I'd like to suggest that Al Qaeda is doing those attacks for a reason, and that they believe in "too moderate moslems" even if the westerners don't.
To some extent, terrorist attacks like the ones in London (and Israel, and even 9-11) are cheap parlour tricks. They let people like OBL, and Saddam Hussein, and the Assad Dynasty, pretend they're in business to "resist" western countries, when by the numbers they're mainly involved in killing Moslems. The Taliban killed many more Afghans than there were New Yorkers killed in the 9/11 attacks, and noone can claim that the Afghans were killed as part of a general resistance against Westerners, or Christians. Saddam Hussein's government killed many times more Kurds (who are Moslems) and Shi'ites than it did "Zionists." But financing blowing up a pizza kitchen in Tel Aviv lets him pretend he's Saladin (who by the way was a Kurd with an army with a substantial number of Turkish soldiers) fighting the Crusaders.
To date, it's a cheap parlor trick. We need to keep the governments in question (who are more intolerant than their populations) from getting enough WMD to cement their authority on their own populations; this is probably more important than doing anything wrt the moslems in the west.
Trailing wife allegedly wrote:
I vote for eviction to their home country of all non-citizens, revocation of citizenship and eviction to their home country of all naturalized citizens, and long jail sentences for American-born citizens for "aiding and abetting."
I was under the impression that your parents were naturalized citizens. Could someone check the IP on that message, make sure it's from the usual location?
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
07/31/2005 12:36 Comments ||
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#5
Phil, Americas Muslims are so moderate the largest mosque on the east coast just selected a jihadi apologist as their imam.
And I'm unaware that trailing wife has been involved in supporting or committing acts of terrorism.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
07/31/2005 13:30 Comments ||
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#6
British television has provided the USA with many entertaining repackaged shows like Trading Spaces and American Idol. Maybe it's time for a British version of COPS and America's Most Wanted.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
07/31/2005 14:27 Comments ||
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#7
Consider this as a naive first approach:
If a Mohammadan is trying to establish a universal caliphate, he is presumably loyal to a foreign power. We can choose not to allow such dual citizenship, and if someone is found advocating for the caliphate, revoke their citizenship and send them elsewhere.
They are free to practice their religion so long as it remains religion and not service to hostile governments.
OK, I'm sure I'm missing some details (and the devil is in the details), but what do you all think? Any lawyers in the house?
(Since the Pope hasn't been a secular power for a long time, this approach doesn't seem to apply at all to Catholics.)
Posted by: James ||
07/31/2005 14:36 Comments ||
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#8
Phil, Americas Muslims are so moderate the largest mosque on the east coast just selected a jihadi apologist as their imam.
They're also more likely to have Al Jazeera available via satellite.
It's easy to find the modern radical moslems in the West because to a large extent it's an offshoot of a western-originated and taught-as-gospel-in-western-universities school of thought, namely leftism of the Marxist/Trotskyist/Maoist/Gramsci school. It just substitutes other rationales and a different elite than the "vanguard of the proletariat."
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
07/31/2005 14:54 Comments ||
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#9
I don't why you would you would suggest TW's comments weren't hers. Terrorism is just the tip of a much larger iceberg of unassimilated minorities with many attendant social problems. This is a problem that is not going away and the numbers say is going to get progressively worse. Some of us have been saying for some time that expulsion is really the only answer. The only issue is how bad things will have to get before its generally recognized. And note that Europe has a long history of doing this.
#10
The statement about a blanket deportation of naturalized citizens seemed out of character. Maybe she meant something else, but she's usually also clearer than that.
As long as there are people running around who think that Che Guevara t-shirts are cute there's going to be a serious problem with terrorism. And the answer to that problem isn't deportation, it's the other way around: maybe all the sane people should secede.
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
07/31/2005 15:13 Comments ||
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#11
How suprised would you be to find out that the guy who was trolling here last week (or the week before) from Oxford wasn't Moslem?
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
07/31/2005 15:24 Comments ||
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#12
My distinct impression was that they were not. More like a member of the religion of commmunism. There is no way we can deport native citizens without preverting the constutition. If that is done the terrorists have won. Naturalized citizens can and have had their citizenship revoked however.
We need to start monitoring all religious instutions better than we have been as a nation. Not interfering with but monitoring. We then can be prepared to act against religiously inspired sedition. The is no legal restraint on monitoring public acts.
#13
Phil F., the statement in question did indeed come from me. I'm sorry I was unclear, but it is awfully sweet of you to be concerned -- I'm flattered!
I was responding to Capt. America's post, and I intended to give my answer to his question about how to handle those who deliberately shelter suicide bombers and their co-conspirators from capture. I am indeed the child of two naturalized citizens, so I take very seriously those who betray the trust of citizenship that they consciously chose.
Oh, and phil b and Robert, thank you, too. I feel very appreciated at the moment -- much more than I deserve. :-)
#16
It's easy to find the modern radical moslems in the West because to a large extent it's an offshoot of a western-originated and taught-as-gospel-in-western-universities school of thought, namely leftism of the Marxist/Trotskyist/Maoist/Gramsci school. It just substitutes other rationales and a different elite than the "vanguard of the proletariat."
Sorry, but while both Marxism/leftism in general and Islamism make the West the enemy, I don't think one has origins in the other. The Mahdi that Churchill wrote about had likely never heard of Marx, and the conquerors of Constantinople or the Barbary pirates certainly had not.
I'll grant they borrow language from one another, though I think that's because they find it useful.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
07/31/2005 18:14 Comments ||
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#17
But Bin Laden and Zarqawi and co. aren't following the Madhi's tactics and strategies. They follow Mao's.
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
07/31/2005 19:02 Comments ||
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#18
Naturalized citizens can and have had their citizenship revoked however.
Yes but that course of action is vanishingly rare, among the rarest of all penalties meted out by the government and thus it is highly unlikely that it will become a common punishment for terrorist sympathizers. Far more likely (and far easier to accomplish legally) would be choking off the steady influx of reinforcements by closing our borders to the Islamist horde ⦠of course thatâs not going to happen either.
#19
But Bin Laden and Zarqawi and co. aren't following the Madhi's tactics and strategies. They follow Mao's.
Tactics are not intellectual background. The US military was willing to adopt the Nazi's combined arms tactics without having politics rooted in Naziism.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
07/31/2005 20:11 Comments ||
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#20
Tactics are not intellectual background. The US military was willing to adopt the Nazi's combined arms tactics without having politics rooted in Naziism.
I didn't mean tactics as in method-of-handling-a-firefight. I was thinking more of the "hold the headman of the village's family hostage" sort of tactics. Which is increacingly a political and ideological system of its own. The practicioners in Iraq don't really care about Islam any more than Mao really cared about the proletariat.
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
07/31/2005 21:45 Comments ||
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#21
More to the point, we adopted Nazi combined-arms tactics without adopting the forced-labor death camp.
The Maoist guerilla-terrorism hybrid strategy is a combination political/military strategy and death-camp-like political power enforcement system combined.
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
07/31/2005 21:47 Comments ||
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#22
I also found this statement of Arthur Chrenkoff's over at Roger L. Simon's:
We are told that London bombings are a result of Tony Blair's decision to participate in the illegal invasion of Iraq. We are told that the continuing occupation of Iraq, and the carnage and humiliation inflicted upon Iraqi people by the United States, Great Britain and other occupying powers have radicalized some British Muslims to such extent as to push them into becoming suicide bombers on the buses and subways of their adopted country (in some cases their country of birth).
There are 250,000 Iraqis living in Great Britain - that's quarter of a million people, one of the biggest communities in Iraqi diaspora, and just under one sixth of the total British Muslim population of some 1.6 million.
So why, among the original 7/7 bombers, the next lot of recently captured bombers, and all the other people arrested in connection with the attacks, aren't there any British Iraqis?
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
07/31/2005 23:15 Comments ||
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The London train bomber suspect captured in Italy is expected to be returned to Britain under a new fast-track extradition law, police said. Hussain Osman, 27, accused of trying to detonate his device on a train near Shepherd's Bush, is still being questioned by detectives in Rome. Scotland Yard confirmed they have asked for him to be handed over under a European Arrest Warrant, a legal procedure which only came into effect in Italy last Thursday.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2005 00:00 ||
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#3
Even after admitting guilt, they are going to fight extradiction. May I just ask one question? When, in a state of war, did the scum of the earth. pork eating, sheep ****ing, low life's have more rights than I do??? Do I hate them? Gee, ya think?
The massive police investigation into the July 21 London bombings is now centred on 12 people being held, Scotland Yard said. Twelve are in police stations in central London, while another man is in Rome awaiting extradition. The British suspects are being held under the Terrorism Act 2000 following a week of armed raids across the capital and in Birmingham.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
In this case, lets hope there are more bad cops there than good cops doing the questioning...
"So what a bite of my banger? Made from fresh pork! Awww go ahead! Take a bite..."
#3
Ah aye there chaps, ou' about we taulk a bit longer and see if we get some answers to our questions, aye mate? T'all about gettin' at the truth now my good rumbly Paki friend.
Wonder if the Terrorism Act contains any clauses regarding renditions? Ole boomers could find themselves on their way to say an Afghan prison.
Two men were arrested in Leicester under the Terrorism Act, said police. Leicestershire Constabulary officers carried out a planned operation at two addresses in the city. The men were detained, one from each of the premises, and they are being held at a police station in Leicestershire.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2005 00:00 ||
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#3
UK terror harborers are not singing. UK police are relying on phone records. That is plenty of foundation for investigative detentions.
Posted by: Vlad the Muslim Impaler ||
07/31/2005 3:18 Comments ||
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#4
Was going to say what are they singing? I am pretty sure if these are foot soilders and they will talk their butts off. Only the trained higher ups will keep quiet, even plenty of them talk. The foot soilders have very little to tell sadly. Being what they are, just grist for the mill.
Yasin Hassan Omar, Mukhtar Said Ibrahim, Ramzi Mohammad and his brother Wahbi Muhammad, and Osman Hussain â these are the names of the five failed suicide bombers who tried to create murder and mayhem on the London transport system on July 21. Fortunately, they are all in custody, four of them at the top security Paddington Green police station in Edgware Road, and Osman Hussain in Rome, awaiting extradition to Britain. Police sources now confirm that the fifth would-be bomber was Wahbi Mohammad, the brother of Ramzi Mohammad, who disposed of an explosive device similar to the other four in bushes in Workwood Scrubs, not far from the housing estate where he was arrested Friday.
The immediate manhunt is over, but according to Scotland Yard, there are many more months of hard work ahead. Police are in the process of meticulously building up the prosecution case against the suspected five would-be suicide bombers, and they are careful not to do anything that might jeopardize a fair trial. They are recording every interview with the suspects, keen to find out how deep the terrorist network is; if there are any other active cells in the UK; if so, how many; and the identities of the key individuals behind the plot. One source stressed that there are over 1,000 more leads still to be followed up, but Londonâs police are already overstretched and simply do not have the time nor the resources to do this at this moment. Police are quick to defend the half million pounds of extra funding a day spent on policing London after the first wave of suicide bombings on July 7.
This funding, stressed John OâConner, a former Scotland Yard commander, âis not sustainable indefinitely. It has been good value and money well spent.â However, he disagreed with Lord Stevens, the former Metropolitan Police chief, and London Mayor Ken Livingstone, that the terrorist threat and situation can go on for the next 20 years. Security officials believe there were many more involved in plotting the bombings and who are still at large. âWe must not be complacent. The threat remains and is very real,â warned Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yardâs Anti-Terrorist Branch, yesterday. Of the 28 people arrested in the aftermath of the 7/21 attempted suicide bombings, 12, including the five would-be suicide bombers, are still detained.
What is both a cause for concern and revealing about these five young men is that according to their neighbors and football mates they were all normal in their dress and behavior, going about their daily business and life. They were always polite and helpful. However, in the last six months, this behavior changed and they started becoming very religious and started wearing âtraditional dressâ. They became inward-looking and kept to themselves. There wives and womenfolk similarly took to wearing the head-to-toe hijab. What police are now trying to piece together is what and who precipitated this sudden slide into extremism and suicide bombing.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
What is both a cause for concern and revealing about these five young men is that according to their neighbors and football mates they were all normal in their dress and behavior, going about their daily business and life. They were always polite and helpful. However, in the last six months, this behavior changed and they started becoming very religious and started wearing âtraditional dressâ. They became inward-looking and kept to themselves. Their wives and womenfolk similarly took to wearing the head-to-toe hijab. What police are now trying to piece together is what and who precipitated this sudden slide into extremism and suicide bombing.
The radical so-called imams, without putting themselves at risk, convinced the recruited terrorists - that there were 72 very good reasons for suicide bombing...
#2
"Police are quick to defend the half million pounds of extra funding a day spent on policing London..."
That's £180m per year. Not much when it comes to avoiding further attacks that kill 50+ people and maim hundreds more. Gives a lower cost estimate for the War effort at home.
It's going to be a lot more expensive if Moslem leaders are not caught and executed soon. We can let the moderate ones alone, if someone gets around to finding them.
#3
I'm becoming a bit suspicious about the second bombing attempt. If what is being told is true, that they don't understand why all those bombs didn't go off, then Al Qaeda is sneaky enough to have planned that whole event as a diversion. The would-be bombers of the second attempt would not even need to know that they are part of a diversion. It would be a clever idea and certainly one that would have occurred to the AQ planners.
Let's review, shall we. The reports say the investigators aren't sure why their bombs didn't explode. They've caught all five. The guy is traced through his cell phone records and they say that "panic" probably caused them to not follow the plan and make such stupid mistakes.
It's impossible to know, of course, especially since I'm sure we are fed all sorts of misinformation, but the "masterminds" of the second bombing seems to have consistently made assumptions that would have been obvious to Al Qaeda, such as cameras getting good shots of the bombers, the bombs not detonating, and the use of a cell phone to capture the guy.
I'm beginning to wonder if the second bomb isn't just a goose chase that was planned to trhow off the hounds from the real masterminds.
Ever since the first WTC bombing - the AQ planners have played the investigators like a fiddle. Remember how in the first WTC bombing that one of the players was left behind. I'm beginning to wonder if every major AQ bombing has patsies/scapegoats to be left behind that are a part of the original plan.
From Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
The Russian military says one of its officers has been indicted on suspicion of being involved in a recent deadly mopping-up operation in the Chechen village of Borozdinovskaya. The announcement comes as hundreds of Borozdinovskaya villagers this week crossed into neighboring Daghestan for the second time in nearly two months to demand that action be taken against the perpetrators of the raid. They also demand that security be improved to protect them.
Media reports yesterday quoted Russiaâs chief military prosecutor in Chechnya, Maksim Toporikov, as saying one officer serving in a unit known as the Vostok (East) battalion had been indicted on suspicion of leading the raid on Borozdinovskaya. This was the first time a Russian official publicly acknowledged the possible participation of the Chechen-manned battalion in the raid. ....
On 4 June, troops believed to be operating under federal command raided the predominantly ethnic-Avar village of Borozdinovskaya, killing two residents, abducting 11 others, and setting several houses on fire. Fearing new abuses, nearly all of Borozdinovskaya's 1,000-strong population sought refuge among their ethnic kin in neighboring Daghestan.
Usually reluctant to denounce abuses committed by their own troops in Chechnya, the Russian authorities this time expressed outrage at the raid. President Vladimir Putinâs representative in the Southern Federal District, Dmitrii Kozak, called the Borozdinovskaya mop-up operation an âact of sabotageâ against Russia.
The Vostok battalion is made of Chechen recruits, but formally answers to the Russian Armyâs Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU). The Borozdinovskaya raid has raised concerns of possible troubles between the Chechen and Avar communities. Also named âYamadayevtsyâ after their commander, Sulim Yamadaev, members of the Vostok battalion have gained a reputation in eastern Chechnya of unyielding ferocity. Yamadaev is a former separatist field commander who switched to the Russian side at the beginning of the second Chechen war.
Addressing reporters a few days ago, Yamadaev denied ordering the Borozdinovskaya operation, or receiving any instruction to raid the village. .... But in a statement carried by Russiaâs Interfax news agency, Yamadaev yesterday acknowledged members of his unit were in Borozdinovskaya on 4 June.
Yamadaev, who claims he was ill and lying in bed at the time of the incident, said in the statement that his troops entered the village in search of a man allegedly responsible for the killing of one of the Vostok battalion's soldiers. But Yamadayev denies any responsibility for the attack, which he said took place after his troops had left. ....
After the pro-Moscow Chechen government promised to search the abducted villagers and pay compensation for the damage caused by the attackers, Borozdinovskaya refugees agreed to return to Chechnya. However, the majority of them crossed again into Daghestan this week, setting up a makeshift tent camp near the town of Kizlyar. They have cited different reasons to explain their decision to leave Borozdinovskaya. Some refugees said they want to protest against the inaction of the Chechen government in looking for their abducted relatives. Others said they fear further abuses from Yamadayev and his men.
Refugees in Kizlyar told RFE/RLâs North Caucasus Service that after police forces deployed near Borozdinovskaya in the wake of the raid were removed and sent to the village of Znamenskoye after the car bomb attack that killed 14 people there on 19 July. They said that since police left, masked gunmen have made incursions into the village to extort money from the residents.
Pro-Moscow Chechen officials claim that most Borozdinovskaya refugees have now returned to Chechnya. But RFE/RLâs North Caucasus Service correspondent Nutsar Chumchayev reported from Kizlyar that 400 villagers were believed to be remaining there today [July 29]. ....
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
07/31/2005 08:46 ||
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Ahmed Ressam's lawyer expects him to be locked up a long time. "Anything less than 20 years would be a miracle," says Tom Hillyer. The Algerian's nervous tics caught a U.S. Customs inspector's eye as Ressam arrived from Canada in December 1999 with the makings of four powerful bombs. A year later he was convicted of plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport. Faced with a prison term of up to 130 years, Ressam gave evidence that helped authorities round up numerous alleged associates. In the months before 9/11 he told U.S. investigators about a network of Qaeda fixers and sympathizers in the United States, Canada and Europe with links to Osama bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan.
Ressam's sentencing hearing is due next month. Prosecutors have promised him no more than 27 years behind bars. But some of the suspects he fingered in Britain and France are already going free, despite his testimony and corroborating reports from intelligence agencies across two continents.
One worrisome case is that of Fateh Kamel. Labeled a jihadi "mastermind" by law-enforcement sources in Europe and North America, he allegedly helped to recruit Ressam to the cause. He was arrested on a visit to Jordan and extradited to France, where in 2001 he was sentenced to eight years for trafficking in forged ID papers and "association" with terrorists implicated in subway bombings there. The evidence against him included Italian wiretaps. "I'm not afraid of dying, and killing doesn't frighten me," he was quoted as saying. "If I have to press the remote control, long live the jihad!" France released him in January, reportedly for "good behavior," and a Canadian government source confirms Kamel is back in Canada.
Al-Zarqawi set up a British terror cell that Qatada may have led
Reuters
Al-Zarqawi set up a British terror cell that Qatada may have led
A former roommate of Ressam's is among at least six other alleged associates being freed in Britain. They were jailed under a post-9/11 law saying foreign militants could be detained indefinitely based on intelligence reports, but British judges struck down the law late last year on human-rights grounds. Last week they were all set free. British court documents say the former roommate, identified only as "S," received Qaeda training in Afghanistan. He and the others were said to be close associates of a British-based jihadi known as Abu Doha, who once helped run Al Qaeda's Afghan training network, according to British authorities. Ressam tagged him as a key contact in the plotting of the L.A. airport attack. He's in jail awaiting extradition to the United States.
Among those released was another London jihadi once labeled "truly dangerous" by a British judge. Radical imam Abu Qatada claims to be a religious scholar with no terrorist ties. But he has been described by investigators as Al Qaeda's "ambassador" in Europe, and had been held without charges for two years. German government documents describe him as the onetime leader of a British terror cell set up by the notorious Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, a fellow Jordanian, but no one has produced the kind of evidence that would convict the imam in a British court. Under Parliament's newly approved antiterror controls, Abu Qatada and other former British detainees will be on the streets, but their activities are supposed to be closely monitored. U.S. officials won't say what they're doing to guard against the threat of new attacks by former detainees. Other countries failed to make a solid case against them. It's far from certain that America could do better.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/31/2005 13:36 ||
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#1
It's truly sad that liberal Europe and especially the UK doesn't get it when it comes to the threats to the western world and the United States these persons are.
I think this country needs to have a group of concerned citizens, who take it upon themselves to make sure these clear and present threats to our folk, whom are given refuge in Europe, stop sharing our air.
#2
A start would be to add the names, upon conviction, to the Turn Back at the Border list, and not take them off when released from prison.. If the Europeans want to let such people run freely in their neighborhoods, fine, but we needn't import the freed terrorists to our own neighborhoods.
#3
A start would be to add the names, upon conviction, to the Turn Back at the Border list
How about a "shoot on appearing at the border" list?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
07/31/2005 16:52 Comments ||
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#4
Nothing is ever quite as it appears. For example, one of the biggest problems the west has is penetrating sleeper cells. Once a handler has set up a cell and left, the string is cut and it is very hard to bust. However, if we release known offenders, they have a habit of beelining right to where their comarades are holed up.
#5
You're right, Sock, the only time the alarm goes off is when reality bites them in the ass. Then the only question is do they revert to a Madrid track or do they respond the way the US and Britain (apparently) have.
Posted by: Captain America ||
07/31/2005 23:06 Comments ||
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While U.S. officials tout their success in disrupting suspected Al Qaeda plots inside the United States, a growing cadre of Islamic militants across Europe is overwhelming the resources of security agencies and raising concerns about the threat of more major attacks on the Continent, European officials tell NEWSWEEK.
More than a year after the Madrid railway bombings that killed 191 people, European security agents and counterterrorism experts estimate there may now be more than 1,000 suspected militants with known connections to Islamic fundamentalist groups operating in their territoryâand many are not being monitored because of a lack of manpower and legal constraints.
The militants are operating through little-known networks that are only loosely affiliated with Al Qaeda but no less dangerous. For example, authorities say one groupâthe Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (known as GICM, from its French abbreviation)âhas been linked to the Madrid attack, bombings of Jewish targets in Casablanca in 2003 and a recent rash of violent attacks in the Netherlands. Key leaders of the GICM are still on the loose, and even their general whereabouts are unknown despite intense manhunts. What is clear, officials say, is that the numbers of suspected members of the GICM and other militant groups are far larger than previously thought.
Sir John Stevens,the former head of Scotland Yard, recently estimated there may be up to 200 graduates of Afghanistanâs training camps at large today in Britain. The intelligence service in the Netherlandsâwhere militant Islamists were allegedly behind last yearâs killing of filmmaker Theo van Goghâhas identified nearly as many people with known terrorist connections in that country, a senior official tells NEWSWEEK.
The New York Times recently quoted Spanish officials who estimated there are âhundreds of people scattered in cells around the country committed to attacking centers of power in Spain.â
âThe situation in Europe is very tense right now,â says Jean-Charles Brisard, a French counterterrorism researcher who tracks militant groups in Europe. âWe are seeing more and more of these groups because the war in Iraq and the Madrid bombings gave them a signal.â Brisard puts the numbers of violent extremist groups in Europe at between 1,000 and 1,500.
The situation in Holland is emblematic, officials say. The countryâs traditional calm was shattered last year with the murder of Van Gogh, the director of a documentary critical of Islamic attitudes toward women. An Islamic fundamentalist has been charged with the murder. Today, political leaders critical of Islamic militancy have to have 24-hour police guards and are sleeping in prison cells for their own protection.
An official of the AIVD, the principal Dutch intelligence service, tells NEWSWEEK that his agency is aware of around 150 people âwho can be related to terrorist networksâ and âwho might be able to launch an attack.â But his agency simply does not have the manpower to monitor all known suspects closely, the official said.
To monitor even one such suspect around the clock requires a team of 20 watchers. So intelligence officers have to set priorities and rank suspects on the basis of risk. Sometimes they miscalculateâas they may have done in the case of Van Gogh murder suspect Mohammed Bouyeri. Dutch authorities say they knew that the Moroccan-born Bouyeri sympathized with fundamentalist groups but had no reason to suspect he might be capable of violence. Indeed, he once wrote an article in a community publication extolling interfaith brotherhood. Since being charged with Van Goghâs death, however, authorities say they have linked Bouyeri to a network of GICM militants in Hollandâtwo of whom hurled a hand grenade, wounding three police offices, during a standoff with police in The Hague a few weeks after the Van Gogh murder.
British intelligence officials are more reticent about their limitations in tracking Islamic militants. But shortly after Parliament last weekend voted to update a post-9/11 antiterror law, which the courts had invalidated on human rights grounds, Stevens, the recently retired head of Scotland Yard, issued an alarming warning.
"As you read this, there are at least 100 Osama bin Laden-trained terrorists walking Britain's streets," Stevens wrote in a column published by the News of the World. âThe number is probably nearer 200 ... the cunning of al-Qaida means we can't be exact. But they would all commit devastating terror attacks against us if they could, even those born and brought up here."
The difficulty British authorities may have keeping tabs on such suspects, whether they number 100 or 200, has been illustrated by the problems British authorities face in putting their updated antiterrorism laws into place.
Under legislation rammed through Parliament in solidarity with Washington after the 9/11 attacks, the Blair government gave authorities the power to detain foreign terrorist suspects indefinitely based on secret intelligence. The law was a response to complaints by the Bush administration and other governments that Britain was offering sanctuary to Islamic militants with known connections to Al Qaeda and other violent groups.
But Britain's highest court, the House of Lords appeals committee, struck down the detention law late last year on the grounds that it was a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, an international treaty incorporated in British law because it discriminated against foreigners.
Under a revised antiterror law approved by the British Parliament last weekend, the government agreed to release 10 militants detained under the old law but would subject them to "control orders," which are supposed to severely restrict their ability to travel, hold meetings and communicate with the outside world. The government has indicated it will have to hire private security firms to carry out the monitoring because the government itself does not have the manpower.
The release of two of Britain's post-9/11 detainees is of particular concern to U.S. authorities. The most notorious suspect released last weekend is the radical cleric known as Abu Qatada, whom U.S. authorities once described as Al Qaeda's ambassador in Europe.
A second released British detainee was only identified by British authorities in public court papers by the letter S. The court papers describe S as a former Montreal roommate of Ahmed Ressam, the Algerian-born militant caught by U.S. Customs officials in December 1999 when he drove in from Canada in a car loaded with bombmaking materials. According to the British court document, S trained at an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan and was for a while was Ressamâs accomplice in an apparent plot to blow up Los Angeles International Airport. The British say S had to drop out of the plan when U.K. authorities arrested him for holding a fake passport. Now, S is back on the streets, and British agencies are trying to ensure that he stays away from his former associates.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/31/2005 13:31 ||
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No offense intended, but I dropped Newsweak from my credibility list with the flushed Karen.
Posted by: Captain America ||
07/31/2005 23:02 Comments ||
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SECURITY officials on Sunday linked the Abu Sayyaf, which is tied to al-Qaeda terror network, to the two bombings in the southern Philippines that left four people wounded.
"We have reasons to believe the Abu Sayyaf is behind these attacks. There is an ongoing operation against the terror group and the blasts could be diversionary," the commander of the Army's 6th Infantry Division, Maj. Gen. Agustin Dema-ala, said.
Police and military said four people were wounded in separate explosions Saturday in the southern Philippines. A 14-year-old student of Notre Dame school was wounded when a home-made bomb exploded in Cotabato City before noon time.
Authorities said the bomb was planted near the administrative building of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) inside a compound in Cotabato City.
"We are still investigating the blast. A 14-year-old student was slightly wounded in the explosion that occurred inside the ARMM compound," local police chief Inspector Joey Ampong said.
A second bomb explosion, which occured four hours later in Koronadal City, left three civilians wounded. The bomb, placed in a cardboard box, exploded on a motorcab parked in front of the city's main market, the military said.
No groups claimed responsibilities for the two attacks and authorities would not say if the explosions were connected or not.
Police in Cotabato said they recovered parts of a shattered cellular phone, raising suspicion that it was used to trigger the explosion. "They're using cell phones as initiators to set off explosive devices. This could be part of a bigger plot to sow terror. We are in heightened alert now," Ampong said.
Police could not say who was behind the blast or the motive in the attack. "It could be a rehearsal, to test whether cell phones are effective tool to trigger explosion," Ampong said.
Abu Sayyaf terrorists tied to al-Qaeda network had also previously used cell phones to detonate bombs in Zamboanga City. Instead of the phone ringing, it sends the power to an explosive charge and detonated it.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/31/2005 13:13 ||
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OSAMA bin Laden sent a bundle of Australian dollars to fund last year's bombing attack on the Australian embassy in Jakarta, the terrorist who led the attack has told Indonesian police.
Rois, who also goes under the name of Iwan Dharmawan, told police under interrogation that a courier had delivered the cash to Malaysian master bomber Azahari bin Husin and it came directly from bin Laden.
Rois said Australia had been chosen as a target for the bombing because of its support for the US in Iraq, according to a transcript of his police interview. As the right-hand man of Azahari and co-conspirator Noordin Mohammed Top, Rois was in charge of logistics and regularly discussed operations and planning with his two militant superiors.
His claim is significant because it indicates bin Laden maintained direct contact with Indonesian operatives after the 2003 arrest of Hambali, the militant linkman between al-Qaeda and Indonesia's extremist Jemaah Islamiah network. Rois was caught by police in West Java last November, two months after the truck bombing at the embassy killed the suicide bomber and 10 innocent people, and wounded scores of others.
"What I know, from what was said to me by Dr Azahari when we were still in the rented house in Purwakarta, the bombing cost as much as $10,000, which Dr Azahari said would convert to around 50million to 60million rupiah," Rois told police in an official interview on November 10 last year.
"According to Dr Azahari's explanation to me at the time, the funds came from Osama bin Laden, and they were sent by a courier, but he didn't say the name, or when he received it."
Rois did not tell police whether he had been told why bin Laden sent Australian dollars rather than any other currency.
The reason for attacking Australia, Rois said, was because it was a US ally.
"The intention to bomb the Australian embassy was because the Australian Government is the American lackey most active in supporting American policies to slaughter Muslims in Iraq. It had the aim of preventing Australia again leaning on Muslims, especially in Iraq," he said.
The police dossier on Rois provided the foundation of the prosecution's case against the militant, who is now standing trial on terrorism charges.
With transcripts of four official interrogations conducted with Rois between November and February, the dossier lays out the planning for the bombing on September 9 in central Jakarta.
Rois, a 30-year-old trader from West Java, told police the plan to attack the Australian embassy was the brainchild of Top, and he also revealed that Azahari and Top planned further attacks in Jakarta. Asia's most-wanted men have successfully eluded police since the 2002 Bali bombings.
Azahari and Top had about 50kg of TNT stashed somewhere, Rois said, adding that after the bombings he was told by Top not to leave West Java. "Because, God willing, we still had other targets in Jakarta," Rois quoted Top as saying. The order followed the militants' disappointment with the embassy attack - only 10 innocent people dead, all Indonesians and, they suspected, mostly Muslims.
Rois said the attack plan was for the suicide bomber Heri Golun to drive the truck through the embassy gates as they opened to let a vehicle out or, alternatively, to crash through them. Yet Golun, who was a novice driver, detonated the truck metres before the gates.
In late September, more than a fortnight after the embassy bombing, Top ordered two of the attack operatives, Jabir and Abdul Fatah, to an area in Java. Rois added: "I found out later they went to the Ngruki school in Solo." The order was yet another loop of evidence linking extremist cleric Abu Bakar Bashir's notorious Ngruki school to the spate of terrorist bombings that has shaken Indonesia in recent years. The alma mater of dozens of militants accused and convicted of terrorism, Ngruki has yet to be shut down by Jakarta.
A senior Australian government security expert said yesterday that it was quite possible that al-Qa'ida had funded the Jakarta embassy bombing but there had been no intelligence that proved the claim.
"You would keep an open mind about it. It is certainly possible," he said.
The expert judged it unlikely that Rois would have known if any money had been transferred directly from bin Laden to Azahari and Top. With his trial now under way in South Jakarta district court, Rois faces stiff terrorism charges, and the prosecutors could even recommend that the three judges sentence him to death.
He managed the logistics of the attack: renting houses, giving orders, buying the truck, recruiting and watching over the suicide bomber candidates, teaching the suicide bomber Golun to drive, accompanying Azahari and Top on journeys, and planning escape routes. Expected to testify in his own defence tomorrow, Rois has denied he was a member of JI. He helped with the embassy blast because he had been inspired by the master-bombers.
"I joined Noordin Top and Dr Azahari because Mr Top always motivated me about jihad, and explained the condition of jihad today, which had already become a universal jihad, unlimited by region," he said.
Wearing bum-bags filled with a suicide pack of TNT, a detonator, bullets and a detonation cord, Rois and an associate were caught in West Java.
In the interview transcript, he said police tricked them by sending free meals of fried rice into the boarding house. He also told police his bosses, Dr Azahari and Top, had confirmed they took part in planning the 2002 Bali blasts, which killed 202 people including 88 Australians, and the bombing at Jakarta's Marriott hotel in 2003, which killed 12.
Four people were wounded in two bomb attacks yesterday in the southern Philippines, police and military officials said. The first bomb exploded just before noon close to the administrative building of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) in in Cotabato City, injuring a 14-year old girl, said regional police chief Sukarno Ikbala. Four hours later, another bomb went off under a tricycle near the gate of the public market in nearby Koronadal City, about 970 kilometers southeast of Manila. Koronadal police chief Florendo Quidilla said there were indications that the second bomb was home-made.
Quidilla said bomb-sniffing dogs found after the first explosion an unexploded bomb made from a mortar round and attached to a cellular phone that was apparently designed to trigger the device. It was later defused, he said. No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but the police suspect the Al-Qaeda-linked group Abu Sayyaf was behind at least one of them.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2005 00:00 ||
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Ah, lemme guess ... it was those darn Scandinavian terrorists insurgents!
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You might eventually be right, .com, that the EU will not persist effectively in this dispute with Iran. Many factors -- economic, political, and social -- work to weaken and disintegrate the EU's position.
Nevertheless the EU's position has persisted effectively so far. The EU is still impeding and fracturing Iran's position.
I think the EU is motivated by 1) genuinely strong feelings opposing the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and 2) a determination to prove that it can prevail over Iran in this dispute using only diplomatic and economic (non-military) methods.
I still think that the EU will prevail and that Iran will yield.
.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
07/31/2005 17:53 Comments ||
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"Nevertheless the EU's position has persisted effectively so far. The EU is still impeding and fracturing Iran's position."
Simple question - how do you know? Relying on MSM reporting - which is merely repeating the Mad Mullahs' statements, or IAEA reports - which has been denied access to several sites and only intermittent access to a few of their own list of "sites of interest"?
In fact, you have no earthly idea if the EU "negotiations", which are an effort to bribe the Mad Mullahs with goodies for unverifiable cooperation, is going anywhere. The IAEA is utterly ineffective in any situation where the country does not wish to voluntarily cooperate.
The Mad Mullahs are doing exactly what they want - a full push, with no breaks, to develop nukes. Period. Full Stop. The E3 and IAEA are repeating the ineffective hand-wringing diplo-dance show we saw in Bosnia and elsewhere.
It all comes down to: What do they need nuclear power plants for?
If you believe the MM's, then your gullibility factor exceeds your intelligence factor by a wide margin.
Over the past fortnight Israeli intelligence agents have noticed something distinctly odd happening on the internet. One by one, Al-Qaedaâs affiliated websites have vanished until only a handful remain, write Uzi Mahnaimi and Alex Pell.
Someone has cut the line of communication between the spiritual leaders of international terrorism and their supporters. Since 9/11 the websites have been the main links to disseminate propaganda and information.
The Israelis detect the hand of British intelligence, determined to torpedo the websites after the London attacks of July 7.
The web has become the new battleground of terrorism, permitting a freedom of communication denied to such organisations as the IRA a couple of decades ago.
One global jihad site terminated recently was an inflammatory Pakistani site, www.mojihedun.com, in which a section entitled How to Strike a European City gave full technical instructions. Tens of similar sites, some offering detailed information on how to build and use biological weapons, have also been shut down. However, Islamic sites believed to be âmoderateâ, remain.
One belongs to the London-based Syrian cleric Abu Basir al-Tartusi, whose www.abubaseer.bizland.com remained operative after he condemned the London bombings.
However, the scales remain weighted in favour of global jihad, the first virtual terror organisation. For all the vaunted spying advances such as tracking mobile phones and isolating key phrases in telephone conversations, experts believe current technologies actually play into the hands of those who would harm us.
âModern technology puts most of the advantages in the hands of the terrorists. That is the bottom line,â says Professor Michael Clarke, of Kingâs College London, who is director of the International Policy Institute.
Government-sponsored monitoring systems, such as Echelon, can track vast amounts of data but have so far proved of minimal benefit in preventing, or even warning, of attacks. And such systems are vulnerable to manipulation: low-ranking volunteers in terrorist organisations can create background chatter that ties up resources and maintains a threshold of anxiety. There are many tricks of the trade that give terrorists secure digital communication and leave no trace on the host computer.
Ironically, the most readily available sources of accurate online information on bomb-making are the websites of the radical American militia. âI have not seen any Al-Qaeda manuals that look like genuine terrorist training,â claims Clarke.
However, the sobering message of many security experts is that the terrorists are unlikely ever to lose a war waged with technology.
#1
Good work, keep closing those virtual mental assylums down. I personally would like to see legal action taken against any company which approves hosting for these websites.
Posted by: God Save The World ||
07/31/2005 21:23 Comments ||
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Someone has cut the line of communication between the spiritual leaders of international terrorism and their supporters.
There's an even better way: kill those "spiritual leaders". It should only require dispatching three or four before the jihadis get the message.
American troops have reported killing 11 insurgents in fighting near Iraq's border with Syria, on a day of violence which saw at least six other deaths. Marines came under mortar fire from militants in an empty school near the town of Haditha, the US military said. The insurgents died after forces bombed the building, setting off explosions from the ammunition stored inside...
#1
You are Dead. Do not pass Go, do not collect 72 virgins, because it was all a joke dreamed up by a sadistic madman who liked little girls.
Posted by: Bad Luck ||
07/31/2005 18:02 Comments ||
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meh miss characterizing, however it might be spelled :-p
I've never seen anything that would indicate actual saddism in the muslem prophet...
He was vicious bastard and very much a product of his time. He used religion to build a powerful warmachine out of a primative tribal people, not an unusual strat.
liked little girl's? so what? The greeks liked little boys, a boy and an old man would have a 'special' kind of love. I've yet to see someone find fault in the greeks for it either.
different times different standards
pls don't lower yourself to the pointless name calling standards of the left
#3
No, because Mo is considered the most "perfect of men", and his example holds for all time. Hence Khomeini lowered the age of consent to 9 in Iran, and the Saudi government pays bail money for its citizens who are accused of rape in foreign countries.
And btw, I am on the left ;-)
Posted by: Bad Luck ||
07/31/2005 19:58 Comments ||
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I think you'll need to define "being on the left," Bad Luck. Clearly you aren't an unthinking, meme-spouting, neo-Stalinist (is there such a thing? Only Liberalhawk would know for sure!) Progressive in the MoveOn.org mold. Are you an honest member of our long-sought Loyal Opposition?
American troops have established the first long-term military base along a major smuggling route near the Syrian border in a new effort to block potential suicide bombers from reaching targets in Baghdad and other major Iraqi cities.
A force of 1,800 U.S. troops, responding to continuing concerns that foreign fighters are crossing the Syrian border into
Iraq, recently began an operation that includes setting up the base, three miles from the crossroads town of Rawah.
By establishing for the first time a base north of the Euphrates River along the strategic route that connects the Syrian border to roads leading north toward Mosul and southeast to Baghdad, military strategists hope to prevent foreign fighters, who they say are aligned with Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab Zarqawi, from reaching their targets.
"Religious extremists entering Iraq are a threat to the government. They're being used to do to Iraqis what they are unwilling to do to themselves â commit mass murder of innocents. [Zarqawi] is trying to use them to foment civil war," Army Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, the top ground commander for the coalition in Iraq, said in an interview.
"So in addition to assisting the Iraqis in reestablishing control of the borders," Vines said, the military needs to deny access to "areas that are being used to train, indoctrinate and coordinate the movement of these religious extremists into areas where they're being used as suicide murderers in the eastern provinces, including Baghdad and Mosul."
The American forces began arriving July 16 in the region, where they occasionally have carried out incursions in the last two years to fight insurgents. The region has long been viewed as a key staging area for insurgent activities, but U.S. intelligence suggests that the problem has increased in recent months as foreign fighters have used it to smuggle an increasingly lethal variety of explosives, including car bombs...
U.S. military officials in Iraq say the operation near Rawah is their top priority. In the last two weeks, the military has been building structures at the new base and American troops have begun arriving at the facility. The base as been set up far enough from the town so that insurgents seeking to launch mortar and rocket attacks would have to do so from the open desert, where they are more likely to be seen.
A mission statement viewed by a Los Angeles Times reporter states the military's goal is to disrupt Zarqawi's organization, Al Qaeda in Iraq, and establish Iraqi government control of the border, driving a wedge between the militants and the Iraqi population and eliminating a "safe haven" for insurgents.
The battle plan calls for U.S. troops to launch a series of raids, secure the area and bring in Iraqi security forces. Iraqi Defense Minister Saadoun Dulaimi referred briefly to the operation after meeting Thursday with President Jalal Talabani.
"Our forces will start from the Syrian border ⊠till we reach Ramadi, then to Fallouja," he said. "We have taken precise measures on the ground and acquired the president's approval to start the operation."
As in Fallouja, in western Iraq, where U.S. forces fought in November to oust insurgents, U.S. military officials have asked the Iraqi government to issue emergency laws that could include a curfew and a travel ban.
The operation, the largest in western Iraq since May when 100 alleged foreign fighters were killed in Operation Matador, is key to fulfilling an order from Casey: that Iraq's borders be secured by November.
Foreign fighters are believed to have been crossing into the country from Syria since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. After a recent crackdown along the rocky northern border near Mosul, they have been forced to enter farther south, U.S. officials said. Rawah is of strategic importance for insurgents seeking to reach Baghdad from that portion of Syria because it is just north of a bridge on the Euphrates River that links the area to the road to Baghdad.
Smugglers who for years trafficked in cigarettes, gasoline and sheep are now being paid to bring in foreign fighters, explosives and weapons, senior military officials said. Commanders are especially eager to seize members of Zarqawi's group who are believed to have escaped there from Fallouja in November.
The 2nd Infantry Division's Stryker Brigade Combat Team is leading the operation and is the first to take up a permanent presence in the area. Officials say it has been difficult, if not impossible, for U.S.-led forces to control the region without such a commitment.
"It's a huge, desolate place and if somebody wanted to hide out it would be a good place to hide out," Marine Maj. Gen. Stephen T. Johnson, commander of coalition forces in western Iraq, said in an interview in Fallouja.
As the operation unfolds, Marines would continue to hold the region south of the Euphrates, while the Stryker Brigade, which has been based in Mosul, pushes south, putting insurgents in a "vice," a senior U.S. military strategist said.
The unfamiliar whoosh of helicopter rotors and the sight of the Army brigade's Stryker vehicles engaged in battles along largely rural roadways have prompted hundreds and possibly thousands of the estimated 20,000 people in Rawah to flee in fear of an attack similar to the one in Fallouja, officials said.
Local media have reported that as many as 80% of the residents have left. American military leaders say that the actual number appears to be far lower.
U.S. military surveillance photos said to be of the area near the town of Qaim separating Syria from Iraq show breaks in a massive berm. U.S. military strategists say the photos also show "personnel loading trucks" and a lookout point atop one building with a view across the border.
Troops from the Stryker Brigade recently chased a suspected car bomber across the river at Rawah and forced him out of the car, a senior military officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity. A second car arrived and apparently detonated the first vehicle, killing the bomber before driving off.
A U.S. military official said the incident revealed the extent to which "handlers" monitored would-be suicide bombers to prevent them from backing out. In the first four days of the military operation, U.S. troops encountered two car bombers and several mortar and rocket attacks, officials said.
Military spokesmen did not release any information on whether there had been any injuries or deaths related to the operation.
The effort to install more Iraqi border posts and seal the frontier with Syria would have its limitations, commanders acknowledged.
Even then, "there'll probably still be smuggling across the border, as there are on a lot of borders," said Johnson, the Marine commander.
But American military strategists say insurgents will have to work harder and travel farther as a result of the operation.
"They want an area where they can plan, train, indoctrinate terrorists before they are employed elsewhere in country. In western Al Anbar they were less likely to be disrupted before they are ready to be employed, due to the relatively small presence of coalition and Iraqi security forces," said Vines, the coalition's ground commander. "Insurgents must not be allowed sanctuaries where they feel safe and operate with impunity. Indicators are that terrorists felt that parts of western Al Anbar had become a sanctuary."
#1
Troops from the Stryker Brigade recently chased a suspected car bomber across the river at Rawah and forced him out of the car, a senior military officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity. A second car arrived and apparently detonated the first vehicle, killing the bomber before driving off.
A U.S. military official said the incident revealed the extent to which "handlers" monitored would-be suicide bombers to prevent them from backing out.
I thought they wuz all volunteers, lookin' for their 72 raisins.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/31/2005 17:43 Comments ||
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Rebels?
Jihadists from outside Iraq are now "rebels" ?
Posted by: john ||
07/31/2005 18:56 Comments ||
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It's an L.A. Times article. The officer quoted in the article used the terms insurgents, religious extremists and terrorists. Elsewhere in the article potential suicide bombers and foreign fighters are used. So the misleading title must be LAT editors editorializing as best they can under the circumstances.
#4
Kind of like trying to curb your dog... them violent extremists ain't house broke yet and fit to linger about in the company of real human beings. If they can just embrace the one true God and shed their path to achieve the position of God then perhaps some humility may sink in and a sense of compassion for God's creations. Meanwhile... git along little doggies!
Sheik Horn floats around the room in white robe and headdress, exchanging pleasantries with dozens of village leaders. But he's the only sheik with blonde streaks in his mustache â and the only one who attended country music star Toby Keith's recent concert in Baghdad with fellow U.S. soldiers.
Officially, he's Army Staff Sgt. Dale L. Horn, but to residents of the 37 villages and towns that he patrols he's known as the American sheik.
Sheiks, or village elders, are known as the real power in rural Iraq. And the 5-foot-6-inch Floridian's ascension to the esteemed position came through dry humor and the military's need to clamp down on rocket attacks.
Late last year a full-blown battle between insurgents and U.S. and Iraqi forces had erupted, and U.S. commanders assigned a unit to stop rocket and mortar attacks that regularly hit their base. Horn, who had been trained to operate radars for a field artillery unit, was now thrust into a job that largely hinged on coaxing locals into divulging information about insurgents.
Horn, 25, a native of Fort Walton Beach, Fla., acknowledges he had little interest in the region before coming here. But a local sheik friendly to U.S. forces, Dr. Mohammed Ismail Ahmed, explained the inner workings of rural Iraqi society on one of Horn's first Humvee patrols.
Horn says he was intrigued, and started making a point of stopping by all the villages, all but one dominated by Sunni Arabs, to talk to people about their life and security problems.
Moreover, he pressed for development projects in the area: he now boasts that he helped funnel $136,000 worth of aid into the area. Part of that paid for delivery of clean water to 30 villages during the broiling summer months.
"They saw that we were interested in them, instead of just taking care of the bases," Horn said. Mohammed, Horn's mentor and known for his dry sense of humor, eventually suggested during a meeting of village leaders that Horn be named a sheik. The sheiks approved by voice vote, Horn said.
Some sheiks later gave him five sheep and a postage stamp of land, fulfilling some of the requirements for sheikdom. Others encouraged him to start looking for a second wife, which Horn's spouse back in Florida immediately vetoed.
But what may have originally started as a joke among crusty village elders has sprouted into something serious enough for 100 to 200 village leaders to meet with Horn each month to discuss security issues.
And Horn doesn't take his responsibilities lightly. He lately has been prodding the Iraqi Education Ministry to pay local teachers, and he closely follows a water pipeline project that he hopes will ensure the steady flow of clean water to his villages.
"Ninety percent of the people in my area are shepherds or simple townspeople," said Horn. "They simply want to find a decent job to make enough money to provide food and a stable place for their people to live."
To Horn's commanders, his success justifies his unorthodox approach: no rockets have hit their base in the last half year.
"He has developed a great relationship with local leaders," said Lt. Col. Bradley Becker, who commands the 2nd Battalion, 8th Field Artillery Regiment. "They love him. They're not going to let anyone shoot at Sheik Horn."
Thousands of rockets, mortars and anti-aircraft ammunition have been seized in central Afghanistan in the largest cache of militant weapons discovered in months, a government spokesman said Sunday.
The arms were to be used to subvert crucial legislative elections on Sept. 18, Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammed Saher Azimi said.
The raid in Ghazni province's Khogyani district Saturday netted some 2,000 surface-to-surface rockets, 3,000 mortar rounds, 500 artillery shells and 100 boxes of anti-aircraft bullets, he said.
"The enemy planned to use them to sabotage the elections," Azimi said. "This was a very important operation to prevent the killing of civilians." tells you just how threatened the Islamacists are by real elections
He declined to give any other details about the find, including whether the Taliban were suspected to have stockpiled the cache or whether anyone had been arrested.
Afghan officials have warned that the Taliban and al-Qaida have launched a joint campaign to disrupt the September elections -- the next key step toward democracy after a quarter century of war. Since March, a major upsurge in fighting has left more than 800 people dead, more than half of them suspected insurgents, according to U.S. and Afghan officials.
Posted by: too ture ||
07/31/2005 12:04 ||
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#1
First of all, these weapons are probably left over and in some Soviet built bunker. Second, the reason the Talbs and the Al-Q have been dying like flies is because they have been rousted from Pak. They can't go into villages alone or in small groups, so they have to stay in the mountains in bands of brigands from platoon to company size. Most if not all of the company sized groups have been eradicated, which just leaves these brigand platoons.
#2
The raid in Ghazni province's Khogyani district Saturday netted some 2,000 surface-to-surface rockets, 3,000 mortar rounds, 500 artillery shells and 100 boxes of anti-aircraft bullets,
#3
Very likely these were left over from the Soviet period. These rockets were the principal offensive weapons of the Afghan resistance, used to bombard Soviet bases with dozens or hundreds fired per attack.
Whats interesting is how few have been used over vs US/Afghan govt forces since 2001. Onesey-twoseys, when used at all.
The other reason for doubting that this is new stock is the very size of the find, maybe a couple of hundred tons of munitions. Thats a lot of truckloads/packmules. The ISI built a system in the 80's capable of sneaking that much stuff into the country, but it was expensive. These days ?
From Jihad Unspun An Iraqi Resistance martyrdom fighter drove an explosives-packed car into a US military column on 20 Street in the middle of ar-Ramadi .... destroying two Humvees and killing seven US troops and wounding three more.
An Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a US patrol in the at-Taâmim area in the south of ar-Ramadi .... The explosion destroyed a Humvee, killing two US troops and wounding two more American soldiers. ....
Iraqi Resistance forces twice attacked a US column on the main road in the az-Zaydan area in western Abu Ghurayb (which is 30km west of Baghdad) .... the first attack took place at 2pm local time when two Resistance bombs that had been planted on a farm road at the eastern entrance to the az-Zaydan area exploded. The first bomb blew up as the US column was passing, destroying one Humvee. After that explosion had brought the column to a halt, the second bomb went off, witnesses said, some five meters from the place where the first device had detonated. The second bomb set another American vehicle on fire. After the second explosion, Iraqi Resistance forces fired four 82mm mortar rounds into the Americans. The witnesses reported that the multiple attack left nine Americans dead or wounded.
An Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a US armored column on the main road leading to the ash-Shurtah al-Khamisah area in the city of ar-Ridwaniyah southwest of Baghdad .... blew up as a column of four US armored vehicles and three Humvees passed by. The explosion set one of the American armored vehicles on fire, killing or wounding all the members of the six-man crew.
An Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a US column on the highway in the northern Baghdad suburb of at-Taji .... as a column of two US armored vehicles and six Humvees passed by. The blast set one Humvee on fire, killing three US troops and wounding one other American soldier.
.... Resistance forces bombarded the joint US-Iraqi puppet camp in Khan Bani Saâd with six mortar rounds, totally destroying the camp and killing or injuring nine US and Iraqi troops.
The Resistance also bombarded the joint camp set up at the western entrance to the city of Diyala with four medium-range Katyusha rockets ... Fierce battles erupted between the Resistance armed with light and medium weapons, including RPG7 rocket-propelled grenades and BKC machine guns, and US forces together with their Iraqi stooges in several neighborhoods of Baâqubah, leaving more than 20 US and Iraqi troops dead and wounded.
An Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a US column on the main road near the northern entrance to Tall âAfar .... .... as a column of six US armored vehicles passed near the entrance to the city. ... the explosion set one American armored vehicle on fire, killing two US troops and wounding three more. These casualties have not been confirmed by the US Government.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
07/31/2005 08:12 ||
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#2
Another source says - An Iraqi civilian was killed in a bomb blast early Saturday as a US Army patrol was passing through the Dourah suburb south of Baghdad, a police source said. The source said a roadside bomb went off this morning in Baghdad's southern suburb. The source, who declined to be identified, said no American troops were hurt in the incident.
IN WW II, 'resistance fighters' fought against the occupying enemy and tried to avoid killing their own people. The so-called Iraqi resistance stupes don't have any other real people on their side, so they can kill anybody, and claim a victory.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/31/2005 9:03 Comments ||
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#3
Iraqi Insurgents
Actual Iraqis or foreign imports from countries that shall not be mentioned?
#9
I have a theory about some of Mikey's JU posts, but I still don't know why he posts this crap. Anyone who's studied history -- and it's getting clearer and clearer Mikey hasn't -- knows these kind of claims are invariably false. The Japanese claimed to have sunk some of our carriers three or four times, by name in some instances.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
07/31/2005 11:45 Comments ||
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#10
Mikey al Sylwester Troll loves the thought of spilled American blood, even if it's fiction -- it vindicates his position that Kofi and Kojo should rule the world. Who can tell me that he's not an attention whore? He's Aris without the intelligence. Why is he not banned?
Posted by: Neutron Tom ||
07/31/2005 13:45 Comments ||
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#18
I post articles that I think other people will find to be interesting. I myself am still amazed that these absurd reports of US casualties are reported every day. I think this self-delusion among many Moslem radicals is a significant factor in their stubborn determination to keep fighting in Iraq.
Sampling these articles periodically shows that the phenomenon continues.
I have posted hundreds of article on Rantburg. I don't fisk any of them beyond identifying the source. I assume that the average Rantburg reader can understand and evaluate them about as well as I can. I don't feel that I have to instruct other Rantburgers what opinions I or they should have about the articles. If I want to exercise my sense of humor, I so so in my comments.
That's my own, consistent attitude. Other posters fisk their articles heavily. That's their preference, and I have never commented about it.
Although I did not start posting these absurd casualty reports in order to offend other Rantburgers, I indeed have been amused to see that a few people pretend to be seriourly offended by the articles. In general, these same people are constantly rude and offensive themselves, and so I don't take their supposed sensitivities seriously.
These same people criticize me likewise when I post articles from The New York Times, The Washington Post and the rest of the so-called "mainstream media."
This outrage about posting Jihad Unspun articles is funny to me for the same reason that liberal "political correct" outrage is funny. In both cases some people are trying to use guilt-tripping and prissiness as methods to try to limit the free distribution and discussion of information. The idea here is that nobody should post Jihad Unspun articles only if the poster very carefully and explicitly explains to all the readers how they must perceive and understand the articles in a "politically correct" manner. I consider that attitude to be just another ludicrous form of "political correctness."
.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
07/31/2005 17:05 Comments ||
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#20
"...a few people pretend to be seriously offended by the articles... These same people criticize me likewise when I post articles from The New York Times, The Washington Post..."
We want news and entertainment, not your incessant irritating fictions and delusions.
Posted by: Neutron Tom ||
07/31/2005 17:26 Comments ||
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#21
Like you, Neutron Tom, I am interested in discussing the subjects that are Rantburg's focus. I think we agree on much more than we disagree on. It's more productive and enjoyable if we discuss our disagreements civilly. If, however, you reflexively charactize all my opinions as fictions and delusions, then discussion between us is useless, and I suggest that we ignore each other.
.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
07/31/2005 17:37 Comments ||
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#22
It's hard to ignore regular doses of Jihad Unspun. Are you trying to be the next Jane Fonda?
Posted by: Neutron Tom ||
07/31/2005 17:39 Comments ||
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#23
I don't post Jihad Unspun articles because I agree with them. I post them because I think they will interest other people. I think also that these casualty articles are funny.
I think you understand all that. So do practially all of the other people who read Rantburg.
Instead of trying to attack and demonize me personally at every opportunity, you could discuss and debate real issues with me.
.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
07/31/2005 18:02 Comments ||
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#24
I myself am still amazed that these absurd reports of US casualties are reported every day. I think this self-delusion among many Moslem radicals is a significant factor in their stubborn determination to keep fighting in Iraq.
The rest of us have been aware of this phenemona for years, having bothered to read beyond the basic school requirements of history. I think I've pointed out before that the Japanese claimed to have sunk American carriers multiple times, often naming the specific carrier with each claim!
In other words, that the jihadis claim to be killing Americans in droves, and keep making those claims, is about as interesting as drying paint, without any interesting side effects from fumes. That's what annoys me about these idiotic kill count articles -- nothing here to learn, no new information, nothing to tell us about the degree of threat or how to deal with it.
Nice of you to finally explain your reasoning, though. Now we can explain why it's invalid.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
07/31/2005 18:06 Comments ||
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#25
I think also that these casualty articles are funny.
Is that why you highlight the numbers of supposed American dead?
That's a laugh-riot, let me tell you.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
07/31/2005 18:07 Comments ||
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#26
Re #24 (Robert Crawford): is about as interesting as drying paint
Not every article is interesting to every reader here. It isn't a moral issue that I'm interested and you're not. There's a lot of articles here that don't interest me, and I simply ignore them.
I highlight the numbers simply to show the count, and the count is the entire point.
.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
07/31/2005 18:12 Comments ||
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#27
I highlight the numbers simply to show the count, and the count is the entire point.
I think we all understood months ago that the jihadis lie about their degree of success, everywhere.
There's no argument over that point, so why keep beating that dead horse?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
07/31/2005 18:16 Comments ||
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#28
There's no argument over that point, so why keep beating that dead horse?
Because this absurd reporting of casualties does continue day after day, week after week. I post an article like this once in a while to show that it indeed does continue and continue.
You seem to take these articles much, much more seriously than I myself do.
.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
07/31/2005 18:19 Comments ||
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#29
Re #10 (Neutron Tom) He's Aris without the intelligence. Why is he not banned?
Aris was very foul and abusive. I am sweetness and light personified.
.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
07/31/2005 18:22 Comments ||
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#31
Because this absurd reporting of casualties does continue day after day, week after week. I post an article like this once in a while to show that it indeed does continue and continue.
That's like occasionally posting that the sun comes up every morning.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
07/31/2005 18:52 Comments ||
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#32
An observation:
Mike, I don't see you seriously trying to discuss anything. It would be helpful if you made some observations, pro or con, about the articles you post. It's all well and good to say you put them out as examples, but by refusing to comment one way or the other you certainly leave the impression that you intend to provoke.
And other commenters, we've had a bunch of knockdown dragouts later. Many of us have gotten hooked into them, myself included. Can we please try to make Fred's bandwidth of some use beyond WWF bouts?
Okay, that sounded grouchy. Please excuse the grouch and turn this into a useful thread.
#35
No one MAKES anybody come here, rkb! Let the children play! Just so long as they don't hurt themselves.....
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/31/2005 19:02 Comments ||
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#36
At some point this sort of repetitive annoyance both degrades Rantburg for others. I've had backchannel complaints by people who have been longtime, USEFUL Rantburg commenters and article submitters. Some of them are getting fed up.
It also uses up Fred's bandwidth and I haven't heard that people are kicking in lots of $$ to help pay for it.
#37
Re #32 (rkb): I don't see you seriously trying to discuss anything. It would be helpful if you made some observations, pro or con, .... you certainly leave the impression that you intend to provoke.
Recently I was involved in long discussions about 1) whether Joseph Wilson ever claimed he was sent to Niger by Cheney and 2) whether extraordinary interrogation methods at Gitmo led to the arrest of KSM. In both of those discussions I provided many facts and links to support my arguments.
If you think back, you will remember that I have discussed many, many subjects in that manner.
Do you hold other posters to the same standard? Do other posters have to add their own observations, pro and con, to every post to satisfy you?
Also, do you hold other people here to the same standard about provoking other Rantburgers? Do you not notice that several people here provoke constantly? How often do you remark about that with regard to other people?
I mean, except for the case of Aris. We all agree he was too foul and abusive. But he's banned. Is there anyone else, still here, who you think might be too provocative?
.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
07/31/2005 19:06 Comments ||
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#38
Mike, I'm not going to get into a game with you on this.
You regularly choose to post articles that are both repetitive and provocative. You claim they are interesting and informative, but many feel they aren't -- and you do not explain in what way you think they add to our understanding of events.
What I say to other posters - including off-line - is a separate matter.
Are you determined to step into the Aris role? Because that's the impression you're giving a lot of people, including some who have defended you up to this point.
#39
I like to fellate myself. Because I like it, other people like it too. Simple logic. Because other people like it, I'll keep posting articles about me licking myself. If anyone objects, they're wrong. Because someone else out there is right, even if they don't speak up in support of me licking myself.
Remember: Kofi can't be proven guilty until someone proves him innocent! It's LOGIC, I tell you!
#42
Re #36 (rkb): I've had backchannel complaints by people who have been longtime, USEFUL Rantburg commenters and article submitters. Some of them are getting fed up. It also uses up Fred's bandwidth and I haven't heard that people are kicking in lots of $$ to help pay for it.
Did someone threaten to stop donating?
.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
07/31/2005 19:21 Comments ||
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#43
(More information on earlier comment, #42.)
Now that I think about it some more, I wonder if someone threatened to withhold donations in order to get Aris banned.
At first I did agree that Aris was foul and abusive, but, but .... I really don't remember him that way.
Maybe the money threat is a better explanation of his being banned.
.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
07/31/2005 19:44 Comments ||
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#45
If I remember correctly, Aris got banned and I chipped in. Aris came back, and I still chipped in.
Last I knew Aris had joined the army and was unable to post. Or did he get banned again? Somebody help me out here; do I need to chip in again?
Judge a tree by the fruit it bears, Lordy ha ha is low hanging stink fruit.
Posted by: Red Dog ||
07/31/2005 21:04 Comments ||
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#49
Aris was banned, not for his opinions, but for the way he expressed them.
I'm with Robin. I remind you that the primary purpose of Rantburg is to keep up with the ins and outs of the war on terror. Occasional looks at what Jihad Unspun is posting are fine, though lately they've been pretty repetitive, just funneling propaganda pieces from the bad guys. Overkill is another matter, and provoking screechfests is another matter still. I find the claims tedious and tend to ignore the postings.
Rantburg's subject matter's too important for flame wars and ad hominem attacks. I'd much rather see postings that have information on actual enemy operations, organizational structure, arrests, captures, and that sort of thing.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2005 21:33 Comments ||
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#50
I'd like to add my voice to Fred and Robin. Rantburg is for hard news, information, and analysis first...and for ranting and snarking a distant second. Please keep that in mind as you read and post.
#54
Okedoke,
Ima proud RB pfc, and I will zip it, a day at a time.
Posted by: Red Dog ||
07/31/2005 23:59 Comments ||
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#55
I just gave on the account of Mike Sly.
To have such banter is great. Mike supplied a protein today. Get over it. Enjoy your new thought process and turn the anger into picking your targets.
Long distance High Five Mike Sly!!
Airheadious Aris is banned...bummer...I liked it when I called him a goat fucker and then would read his gibberish response
BTW - is it not the time to drop the PC bullshit and to start labeling this form of humanity in a term we can all agree upon hating like we did with the Jap and the Nazi's or did I just offend some of you? To fucking bad!!
The camel fuckers and the Sand NIg...almost..that want to turn your woman into a burke wearing robot need to die and die now.
Search and find your local mosque. Now you have your target. 1 American dies means 1000 Muslims die. It will be easier on your conscience if you think that way, as you pull the trigger.
They don't assimilate then annihilate.
I think General George Washington would feel the same way don't you?
From Jihad Unspun
Religious leaders order parents, guardians not to let children The Council of Islamic Legal Rulings in al-Anbar Province issued a ruling that was posted on mosques in the area forbidding parents to allow their children into the street alone from today onward. The Islamic religious authority said that parents could let their children out only if they exercise supervision over them or allow them out near the doors of their houses so that they would be able to run home before US troops can approach them.
The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent in ar-Ramadi reported that the Council issued its statement in response to the growing number of incidents of sexual attacks on children in rural areas, particularly by US soldiers.
US forces have also used Iraqi children as human shields to protect them from Resistance attacks when they invade towns and villages â a practice that has dramatically increased lately in the cities of ar-Ramadi, Hit, al-Khalidiyah, and al-Qaâim.
The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam in Mosul, meanwhile, reported that the Mufti (Islamic Jurisconsult) for the city issued the same ruling Friday night.
Among Iraqâs Shiâi population, the preacher representing the Muqtada as-Sadr movement, Shaykh Muhammad Husayn al-âAmidi, made the same call in his Friday sermon. Shaykh al-âAmidi said: âit is shocking and shameful that the occupation forces are taking the children of Iraq as easy playthings and use them as human shields to ward off the blows of the Resistance. .... We call on guardians of children not to send their children out of the house if they want to protect them. The massacre in Baghdad al-Jadidah should be a sufficient example for guardians of what can happen otherwise to children.â
The same has happened in Diyala Province, northeast of Baghdad, where numerous religious leaders held an emergency meeting of directors of schools and kindergartens and parents and told them not to let the children in their care out into the street for fear that they would be used as human shields or be molested by US soldiers.
In Baghdad the puppet so-called âministry of human rightsâ confirmed that there were at least 17 cases of sexual molestation of children coming home from school by occupation soldiers in June. The puppet âministryâ said that seven of the victims were little girls between the ages of eight and ten. The source in the puppet âministryâ refused to specify the locations where the attacks occurred, saying only that they were in the east and south of Baghdad. Mafkarat al-Islam published similar reports more than two months ago concerning US soldiers molesting Iraqi children and using them as human shields. Dubious.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
07/31/2005 08:00 ||
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#1
molesting Iraqi children and using them as human shields.
Methinks a wee bit 'o projection is going on here. Similar to how we reflexively assume that our opponets are sane and rational, even when they are demonstrably not.
Posted by: N guard ||
07/31/2005 8:35 Comments ||
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#2
We saw the same crap in the Philippines. Every time the troops would go to an area some girl would cry that she was taken to the hotel by Marines and raped. After all the spin was over and many hours of investigation it would finally be revealed she was paid by the NPA to make the false claims. But by then the damage in public perception was done. I am sure there is a team of US officers investigating this and wasting their time.
Posted by: 49 pan ||
07/31/2005 9:07 Comments ||
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#3
Not just projections, Nguard.
The interactions between our troops in Iraq and the local populace - especially the kids - strikes at the heart of the jihadi and Ba'athist objectives. It connects ordinary Iraqis to US soldiers and Marines. Our troops hand out toys and food and school supplies. The kids see how it is possible to be a soldier and act humanely and as an ordinary person with compassion.
The jihadis and Ba'athists have to put a stop to that if they are to achieve their aims. And so they are putting out lies, painting the US with the actions of their own forces and attempting to convince parents to keep their kids away from our troops.
Posted by: too true ||
07/31/2005 9:50 Comments ||
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#4
Is this the first time Jihad Unspun has reported such a claim? If so, this could be a sign that Al Qaeda is getting a tad desperate... a good thing, yes? Mike Sylwester, you've been willing to wade through their muck, what do you think, beyond the dubiousness of the claim?
#9
Methinks the real problem is that the "Lions of Islamâ¢" are taking heat for blowing up children eating Hershey bars. Human shields indeed. The LoI⢠should be boiled in lard.
#10
The kids want dollars and gum. The soldiers enjoy interaction with anyone not hocking a loogie in their direction. The human shield claim is laughable as I think any reasonable person can see that the Islamists seem to feel they get an extra virgin or two for booming some Shiite kids along with a GI. It's best if the kids stay away though.
As for the pedophelia charge, any soldier who did that would be highly likely to be executed on the spot by his squad. Pedophelia is usually perpetrated by lone wolf types. GI's operate in squads and certainly aren't being granted weekend passes in Bahgdad.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
07/31/2005 14:23 Comments ||
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#11
Parents should be worried about the Imams, they are the ones sodomizing kids.
While no religious seminary in Pakistan is ready to admit that the three London suicide bombers ever visited them, the Pakistan Government has itself declared that the three came to Pakistan between November 2004 and February 2005.
That was after the Brits pointed it out, in a loud voice...
Muhammad Siddiq Khan and Shehzad Tanweer stayed in Lahore and Faisalabad while Haseeb Hussain chose Karachi. Six months after their return from Pakistan, they committed such bloody acts of terror that it could change Europe much more than 9/11 changed America.
That's because 9/11 didn't happen in Europe...
The tragedy highlights the superficiality of Pakistani President General Pervez Musharrafâs rhetoric about changing the countryâs direction. During their stay at the seminaries, the bombers learnt to make explosives from recovered Al-Qaeda manuals. The information provided to Islamabad by the UK authorities show that Khan and Tanweer came to Pakistan in mid-2004. After landing in Karachi, the two militants traveled to Lahore from where they proceeded to Faisalabad.
I wonder if they met with the same people who put up Abu Zubaidah? I doubt we'll see any discussion of whether they did or not, since it'll become a Pak state secret. Haseeb went straight to terror central...
#2
I'll have to second Seafarious and say great article.
Even when I sprinkle the article from the source with plenty of salt, it just points out further that in the end, Pakistan can't be relied upon to help us win this fight. It really is one step forward and two steps backward for them. The ISI and Pakistani army are up to their necks in training these jihadi and support of islamic terrorism in the rest of the world. When is it occur to get anyone beside us few that Pakistan is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Just looking at Afghanistan it's apparent that Pakistan and Iran are âunhelpfulâ in many respects. Pakistan is providing many of the bodies who are fighting the establishment of a stable nation. It appears that Pakistan has decided that is not in it's long term interest that a stable government form in Afghanistan. Again that is plain to many of of but not to our âleaders.â
âHamidâs affidavit says that he was preparing to attack hospitals and shopping centers.â When will we wake up and just admit that these people are deserving of no quarter? Their very choice of targets show that this religious philosophy is antithetical to modern western life. It is so antithetical that we can't allow it to exist in the west unless if undergoes a major reformation. A reformation which by it's own religious texts it shows it is incompatible with. How are we going to deal with this without compromising the values that the "typical westerner" holds dear? The stuff that makes us who we are as western peoples?
Sorry for going off track. I had to think out loud some place someone might even give a rats behind.
#3
I can't think of any way to say, "It's ok, SPoD, we care," without sounding like a support group meeting, which is exactly how I don't want to sound. (Although I refuse to get involved with rats in any way other than medical research -- I hope you don't mind. ;-) ). But we seem to take it in turn to vent on a central concern: how can we win a war we must win, without giving up all that makes us different from those who've chosen to be our enemy? .com has posted about this several times, I wept on his shoulder on the same subject (and he offered me tea!, self-proclaimed barbarian that he is), rkb touched on it last night... now it's your turn.
The only conclusion I've come to, such as it is, is that if we are forced to it we will do what must be done, but I hope as Old Spook once said -- calmly and without hatred or anger. Their keystones are hatred and slavery; ours must be a love of freedom and justice for all, not just a favoured few, and acceptance of the cost to achieve that. A great many Rantburgers have already paid a portion of that price, and still do -- whether in blood or bone or disturbances in the night -- and we all honour them for it. And sadly, more still will do so in the future. And no matter what platitudes President Bush may utter for public consumption, I cannot imagine he hasn't thought about the kinds of things we discuss so passionately on Fred's bandwidth. But our boys and girls in uniform can't do everything at once, no matter how kewl their toys -- even including the latest things our remoteman and his buddies have been playing with in the labs ;-) -- so Pakistan and Iran and Saudi Arabia and the rest will just have to wait their turn.
Note: by "our boys and girls in uniform" I'm referring to all those who fight on the side of Right, not just the Yanks. ... In case anyone was wondering.
And now I've used up more than my fair share of that self-same bandwidth, so I'll hop down from my high perch, ok? (That's the disadvantage of being almost but not quite 5' tall (152 cm for the rest of the world) -- if I don't climb up on my high horse, nobody can see who's speaking!)
#5
They're (the insurgents)regrouping and restocking for the constitution vote terror!! Voting is the root cause of terrorism. Slaps his head. Of Course! Actually the violence will be mostly (anti-vote) Sunni on (pro-vote)Sunni and some of us of here would encourage them to rearm for that.
#9
The statistics are meaningless unless put into the context of political events in Iraq and elsewhere. And into the context of major operations conducted by Coalition and Iraqi troops.
The number of fatalities was high in January because that's when the first round of elections occurred. They went quiet for 2 months while the jihadis and Ba'athists regrouped and watched to see what would result. As the Sunni and Shia failed to instantly create a dialogue with maturity and stability - no real surprise - two things happened. First, some Sunni got drawn into the political process thereby panicking the insurgents into attacking harder. And second, the Shia began their own backalley operations.
This will be a long slog, but progress is being made.
Posted by: too true ||
07/31/2005 11:31 Comments ||
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An Iraqi civilian was killed in a bomb blast early Saturday as a US Army patrol was passing through the Dourah suburb south of Baghdad, a police source said. The source said a roadside bomb went off this morning in Baghdad's southern suburb. The source, who declined to be identified, said no American troops were hurt in the incident.
In another development, the Iraqi police said it had found three bodies belonging to three blindfolded people in the Al-Amel suburb west of Baghdad. The police said the bodies, who were shot execution style, belong to three Baghdad International Airport personnel. They were not identified. Unknown armed men last Wednesday abducted Director General of Communications at the airport Maher Yassin Jassem along with two employees as they headed to work. A female employee who was in Jassem's car was released by the abductors.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2005 00:00 ||
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police ...found three bodies belonging to three blindfolded people
Well I hope the police question those blindfolded people to find out where they'd got the bodies! ;-)
#2
KUNA's a hoot, no? I think you could get a very fine position with them editing their Engrish story posts - and do it remotely, lol. Better yet, set up as an agency, a subscription service, for all of the foreign language news outlets. Just consistently send them pointers to their mistakes enough times and they'll see they need help. Eventually, in self defense, lol.
#3
I'd better leave the business end of things to you, .com -- I'm afraid money and I have never gotten on. It would be lots of fun though, if only I had the energy for such ventures. ;-)
The Iraq-based Multi National Forces (MNF) said on Saturday that nine terror suspects were arrested during different operations in various parts of of the northern city of Mosul. The MNF statement released here said that the search operations ended up in arrest of five in Telafar, two in southeast Mosul in addition to confiscatuon of a cache of arms, one in east Mosul and one in Rawa. Meanwhile the Iraqi police in Mosul said in a statement released today that one infant was freed and her kidnappers were arrested.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2005 00:00 ||
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Guess the US and Iraqi forces have "stormed" Mosul already, if they're there arresting kidnappers and such. They were so quiet about it, I somehow missed it, I guess.
A government source denied that the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad came under attack earlier Saturday, indicating that Iraqi security forces opened fire at a suspicious car on the street where the embassy is located. Several diplomatic missions in Iraq came under attacks recently that killed an Egyptian and a couple of Algerian diplomats. The assaults also targeted the Bahraini charge D'affairs in Iraq who survived an assassination attempt.
Earlier today, an Iraqi police official told a news conference that gunmen, using two civilian cars, attacked the Jordanian embassy with light weapons in Al-Mansour area, west of Baghdad. The official who requested anonymity indicated that the attack did not cause any property damages or human casualties. Many embassies are located in Al-Mansour area and witnessed the abduction of the Egyptian and Algerian charge D'affaires' who were murdered later.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2005 00:00 ||
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BAGHDAD -- Seven people were killed, and 24 others injured in a booby-trapped car explosion which occured here Saturday. The car, according to a police source, was driven by a suicide assailant into a number of Iraqi police vehicles near the National Theater. Medical source said there were five policemen and a woman amongst the dead and a number of policemen were injured too. Four civilian cars caught fire because of the explosion and other 12 vehicles were damaged.
Several nearby buildings also sustained damages including the National Theater, which was hosting a conference of Iraq's civic organizations at the explosion time. The conference was being attended by senior Iraqi officials. Also, a nearby social care center was demolished in the blast.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2005 00:00 ||
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SO how is this a "booby trap"? Are we talking about the booby trapped inside the car?
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/31/2005 9:12 Comments ||
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Secretary General of the National Dialogue Council, Khalaf Al-Aleyan survived Saturday an assassination attempt south west of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. A source in the council said in a press release that armed men disguised in police uniforms opened fire against the convoy of Al-Aleyan, injuring his son in the head, who was rushed to hospital for treatment. A member of the council and another member in the constitution draft committee were also assassinated on July 19th near a restaurant in Baghdad.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2005 00:00 ||
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Sooooooo many suspects. About 20 million of them, I figure.
A high ranking Iraqi police officer working in the conferences palace was arrested Saturday for leaking information to insurgents and armed groups on the movements of members of the national assembly and top state officials, an official source said. Chief Commander in the Interior Ministry, Major General Mehdi Sabeeh told reporters a major in the Iraqi police was arrested for leaking information, giving no further details. He added the suspect is being investigated.
"Mustafa! Investigate him!"
"Aaaaiiiieeeee!"
An official at the former Premier, Iyad Allawi's office was also arrested last year for leaking information. Meanwhile, the Multi-National Forces declared that 12 suspected terrorists were arrested and two weapons caches were discovered today with the cooperation of Iraqi security forces during different operations in northern Iraq.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2005 00:00 ||
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Security forces on Saturday stormed two buildings from where suspected militants were firing guns in Kashmir's main city of Srinagar, killing both attackers in a standoff that lasted more than 24 hours, police said. At least two soldiers were killed in a battle that began Friday after the suspected rebels launched a deadly grenade attack, said Gopal Sharma, the director general of police. "The operation has ended with the recovery of the bodies of two insurgents," Sharma told The Associated Press.
Sharma said Islamic separatists are intensifying attacks to scare away tourists who have started visiting the Kashmir Valley following an easing of tensions between India and Pakistan. On Friday, the attackers hurled a grenade at a police jeep and began firing into a security post on the central boulevard of Srinagar, the summer capital of India's portion of Kashmir, a Himalayan territory also claimed by Pakistan and divided between the two countries. As security forces fought back Friday, the attackers set off another grenade, wounding several civilians. The attackers slipped into the nearby buildings during the ensuing confusion, said S.A. Sayeed, a senior police officer.
Two Indian soldiers were killed and nine wounded in the gunfight. At least 10 civilians — eight of them journalists — were hurt in the crossfire, he said. Authorities have not named any militant group suspected in the attack, but The Associated Press received a fax that said it was from the Pakistan-based group Jamiat-ul Mujahedeen, and claimed responsibility for the attack.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2005 00:00 ||
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At least 10 civilians â eight of them journalists â were hurt in the crossfire,
I'll bet embedded reporter is not a popular occupation in India...
Posted by: Andrea Mitchell ||
07/31/2005 0:39 Comments ||
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Andrea, I gotta admit it sure was amusing to see you shoved around and treated like a disease in Sudan. Humbling, too, I hope. Too bad it didn't happen sooner, by someone other than those genocidal asstards... but then, on the other hand, you guys were busy apologizing for the UN's waffling around about the definition of genocide, so perhaps it was fitting, after all. Perhaps it will happen more often, now, too. Couldn't happen to a more deserving pack of hyenas. The Emperor Has No Clothes, and it's an ugly thing to behold..
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.
The London train bomber suspect captured in Italy is expected to be returned to Britain under a new fast-track extradition law, police said. 
The massive police investigation into the July 21 London bombings is now centred on 12 people being held, Scotland Yard said. Twelve are in police stations in central London, while another man is in Rome awaiting extradition. The British suspects are being held under the Terrorism Act 2000 following a week of armed raids across the capital and in Birmingham.
Two men were arrested in Leicester under the Terrorism Act, said police. Leicestershire Constabulary officers carried out a planned operation at two addresses in the city. The men were detained, one from each of the premises, and they are being held at a police station in Leicestershire. 
Yasin Hassan Omar, Mukhtar Said Ibrahim, Ramzi Mohammad and his brother Wahbi Muhammad, and Osman Hussain â these are the names of the five failed suicide bombers who tried to create murder and mayhem on the London transport system on July 21. Fortunately, they are all in custody, four of them at the top security Paddington Green police station in Edgware Road, and Osman Hussain in Rome, awaiting extradition to Britain. Police sources now confirm that the fifth would-be bomber was Wahbi Mohammad, the brother of Ramzi Mohammad, who disposed of an explosive device similar to the other four in bushes in Workwood Scrubs, not far from the housing estate where he was arrested Friday.
American troops have reported killing 11 insurgents in fighting near Iraq's border with Syria, on a day of violence which saw at least six other deaths. Marines came under mortar fire from militants in an empty school near the town of Haditha, the US military said. The insurgents died after forces bombed the building, setting off explosions from the ammunition stored inside...
An Iraqi Resistance martyrdom fighter drove an explosives-packed car into a US military column on 20 Street in the middle of ar-Ramadi .... destroying two Humvees and killing seven US troops and wounding three more.
The Iraq-based Multi National Forces (MNF) said on Saturday that nine terror suspects were arrested during different operations in various parts of of the northern city of Mosul. The MNF statement released here said that the search operations ended up in arrest of five in Telafar, two in southeast Mosul in addition to confiscatuon of a cache of arms, one in east Mosul and one in Rawa. Meanwhile the Iraqi police in Mosul said in a statement released today that one infant was freed and her kidnappers were arrested.
BAGHDAD -- Seven people were killed, and 24 others injured in a booby-trapped car explosion which occured here Saturday. The car, according to a police source, was driven by a suicide assailant into a number of Iraqi police vehicles near the National Theater. Medical source said there were five policemen and a woman amongst the dead and a number of policemen were injured too. Four civilian cars caught fire because of the explosion and other 12 vehicles were damaged.
Secretary General of the National Dialogue Council, Khalaf Al-Aleyan survived Saturday an assassination attempt south west of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. A source in the council said in a press release that armed men disguised in police uniforms opened fire against the convoy of Al-Aleyan, injuring his son in the head, who was rushed to hospital for treatment. A member of the council and another member in the constitution draft committee were also assassinated on July 19th near a restaurant in Baghdad.
A high ranking Iraqi police officer working in the conferences palace was arrested Saturday for leaking information to insurgents and armed groups on the movements of members of the national assembly and top state officials, an official source said. Chief Commander in the Interior Ministry, Major General Mehdi Sabeeh told reporters a major in the Iraqi police was arrested for leaking information, giving no further details. He added the suspect is being investigated.
