Despite the increased freedoms in the city of one million people, many are still conservative. There may be miniskirts in the shop windows but not on the street
WITH a flawless face and marble-smooth arms, a busty blonde mannequin dummy displays a miniskirt in a boutique in Afghanistanâs western city of Herat, where most women wear the bag-like burqa. In the war-scarred capital Kabul, the dummy would hardly attract a second glance. But in Herat, once ruled by powerful warlord Ismail Khan who oppressed women almost as much as the fundamentalist Taliban, the display is a revolution. âHer name is Venus,â says shopkeeper Aresh Azizi of the mannequin in a glittering window display in his newly opened Western-style shop. âUnder Khan you had to cover the faces of mannequins just as women cover their faces,â recalls the 25-year-old who has himself had a style change, recently abandoning the traditional shalwar kamiz of baggy trousers and a long shirt for a Western-type suit.
Since the former holy warrior was transferred to Kabul by US-backed President Hamid Karzai in September 2004, more women visit Aziziâs shop. Most would have not dared to enter just over a year ago. The removal of Khan, who ruled Herat as his own personal fiefdom, was part of a plan secretly backed by the United States and the United Nations to reduce the power of Afghanistanâs regional warlords and their private armies. Karzai ordered the silver-bearded Khan to the capital to serve as energy minister, a sector in which he has some experience. He guaranteed 24-hour power to Herat, much of it from Iran, while Kabulâs supply lasts only a few hours a week.
Khanâs departure met with resistance. Several people were killed in riots and the offices of UN and other aid agencies were torched by his supporters opposed to the appointment, which Khan took several months to accept. While the ethnic Tajik strongman was criticised by rights groups for his strict stance on women, including barring them from being alone with men who were not relatives, he won local support by putting money into public works.
One such project is Bagh-i-Milat park on a hillside on the outskirts of the city. Young men and women now visit its several fountains and restaurants on dates; in Khanâs time they would have been arrested. âI come here with my girlfriend - itâs fun,â says a 22-year-old student, who asked not to be identified. âIsmail Khan would have killed me if I was seen here with a girl,â he told AFP.
Sitting cross legged in one of the restaurants, filled with smoke from bubbling chilams (pipes), two students sip from Pepsi cans filled with vodka smuggled from a base of about 800 mainly Italian NATO-led peacekeepers in the city. Drinking alcohol is prohibited by both Islam and by Afghanistanâs constitution, a ban Khan enforced strictly.
Despite the increased freedoms in the city of one million people, many are still conservative. There may be miniskirts in the shop windows but not on the street. âYoung women wear them only to wedding parties,â Azizi said. Men and women sit in separate rooms at weddings in Afghanistan. âGod knows what women wear inside their room,â jokes a director of a popular wedding hall.
Despite being cut off from his regional power base, Khan remains an important figure in Herat. About 10 of his supporters made their way into the parliament elected in September, said university lecturer and journalist Ahmad Saeed Aqiqi. âHe will have his own men at the parliament,â he told AFP.
Many in the well-ordered city miss Khan. âHe built streets, clinics and schools. He brought us electricity, good security - he was good, but Karzai took him away from us,â says car parts salesman Ali Reza. âHe is a good Muslim. He was working for the good of his people,â says 34-year-old teacher Mohammad Shafiq.
Khan, now in his 60s, declared himself governor of Herat province after he and several other former mujahideen helped the United States topple the Taliban in late 2001. While governor he refused to hand over to the central administration millions of dollars in tariffs from trade with neighbouring Iran and Turkmenistan, annoying Karzaiâs cash-strapped government. Instead he used the money on roads, schools, hospitals and factories, turning the war-damaged city into the most prosperous in Afghanistanâs 34 provinces. âHe was bad at limiting our freedoms and he was good because he worked on reconstruction,â recalls Shaker Payman. âI like him for the one and I donât for the other.â
Posted by: Fred ||
11/29/2005 00:14 ||
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Article: While governor he refused to hand over to the central administration millions of dollars in tariffs from trade with neighbouring Iran and Turkmenistan, annoying Karzaiâs cash-strapped government. Instead he used the money on roads, schools, hospitals and factories, turning the war-damaged city into the most prosperous in Afghanistanâs 34 provinces.
This is too bad - I've always thought Afghanistan was better off with warlords ruling the provinces. What I don't get is why State Department people always seem to think the foreign countries are better off with Chinese-style central government rule where the capital appoints local officials instead of the federal model we have stateside. At the very least, the governor of Herat should have been elected. Afghanistan's traditions were ripe for a federal-type government, but State seems to have either bowed to Karzai's overbearing instincts or insisted upon centralized government. Either way, State is paving the way for tyranny.
#2
Historically, warlords have been the bane of Afghanistan. They were the flip-side of invasion by foreigners, evolving decentralized power to combat the foreigners. However, when the foreigners left, the warlords were at each others' throats, each wanting to be the Khan.
This resulted in constant warfare that lasted for unending centuries.
They really need to evolve beyond the warlord system, to have a national presence before they can evolve a federal presence.
This individual is also needed at the national level for the best of all reasons: he is efficient with public works. Efficiency in government is the most stabilizing factor around, to help keep a government in power.
#3
Anonymoose: This individual is also needed at the national level for the best of all reasons: he is efficient with public works. Efficiency in government is the most stabilizing factor around, to help keep a government in power.
I don't think this suggestion would go over too well stateside. The fact is that a governor appointed by the central government will try to please the central government, not the people of his province. A federal system is a better idea for the same reason that a feudal system worked better for England back in the day - the nobility kept the king in check, first forcing upon him the Magna Carta, while retaining the right to defy him by force of arms if necessary. These weren't mere formalities - Oliver Cromwell finally defanged the English monarchy by taking off Bonny Prince Charlie's head. A governor appointed by the central government is worse than no governor at all.
#4
England at that time was more or less ethnically and linguistically homogenous (pace the Scots and the Welsh).
This is most certainly NOT the case in Afghanistan. Afghanistan has only a limited identity as a country and needs a coherent Afghan identity to be constructed. In the United States, that occurred in part through (believe it or not) the creation of West Point, where future military and political leaders identified with the nation as a whole and not with their original state.
Until that sort of common identity is formed, federalism is a recipe for conflict and corruption rather than for accountability.
GENEVA - A yellow fever outbreak in Sudan has killed another 10 people, bringing the known toll to 131 deaths out of 530 cases in less than three weeks, the World Health Organisation said on Monday.
Might be easier if you guys became Presbyterians ...
Lamb's blood on the door posts sometimes helps, too...
All reported cases have been in South Kordofan state in central Sudan, but the WHO has said it fears the mosquito-borne disease could spread rapidly among people who are poor, nomadic and unvaccinated.
Which is about 99% of Sudan ...
The case fatality rate is 25.2 percent in the outbreak, which the health ministry said began on November 10. More than half of the known cases are in the town of Dilling. Some 1.7 million doses of vaccine against yellow fever, sent from an emergency stockpile, arrived in Sudan at the weekend and a mass vaccination campaign is to begin soon, according to the WHO, a United Nations agency.
Unless someone issues a fatwa saying that the vaccine is going to sterilize Moose-Limb men or something.
There is no immunity against the disease in the region, where it is not endemic, and there is no history of vaccination of the population over the past 10 years, according to the WHO. Spraying of mosquitoes and their breeding places, as well as public education campaigns on the need to wear protective clothing, were under way.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/29/2005 00:00 ||
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A yellow fever outbreak in Sudan has killed another 10 people, bringing the known toll to 131 deaths out of 530 cases in less than three weeks, the World Health Organisation said on Monday.
False. Since there is no genocide in Sudan, then there is neither any yellow fever. Now go away.
#2
Yellow Fever is spreading for the same reason Dengue is spreading.
Aedes aegypti is the type of mosquito that usually carries yellow fever from human to human. These mosquitoes have adapted to living among humans in cities, towns, and villages. They breed in discarded tires, flower pots, oil drums, and water storage containers close to human dwellings. Urban yellow fever is the cause of most yellow fever outbreaks and epidemics.
#3
What is needed is a good dose of DDT, aided by the DDT-efficacy booster my father discovered in 1958. But that they aren't going to get. Oh... if there is a fatwa against innoculation because of male fertility concerns, surely it could be argued that only affects adult males, thus leaving more doses for the women and children? Evolution in action and all that...
#4
I'm with BaR on this one. Even without the genocide that has no name(tm), I've gotta wonder what the natural (i.e. without yellow fever, genocide, etc.) death rate is in Sudan. For some reason, and I don't mean to sound harsh, 131 more dead Somalis probably is within their national standard deviation of death-rates. Especially when AK-47s go off at weddings and such!
Posted by: BA ||
11/29/2005 13:04 Comments ||
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Egyptian police arrested 150 activists from the Muslim Brotherhood on Monday in areas where the opposition Islamist group will contest legislative elections this week, a police source said. The officially banned Brotherhood has made a strong showing in four days of voting held so far despite arrests of its activists and the blocking of polling stations in Islamist strongholds.
The police source said the arrests were made in areas north of Cairo, including the Nile Delta provinces of Sharkia and Dakahlia, where voting will take place on December 1 and 7. The Brotherhood's Web site said the authorities had "launched a wide arrest campaign" against delegates of its candidates in the final two days of voting. It said 110 had been detained so far.
The Brotherhood has won 76 of parliament's 444 seats so far -- more than five times its strength in the outgoing chamber. The ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) has won at least 195 seats. The Brotherhood, whose candidates stand as independents, is only contesting about a third of the seats in parliament. It is fielding 49 seats in the final two days of voting for 136 seats.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/29/2005 00:00 ||
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ALGIERS - The health of Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has âclearly improvedâ after being admitted to a French military hospital in Paris, a government official said in Algiers on Monday.
Good Gawd! He's not... stable, is he?
Bouteflika, re-elected for a second-five-year term last year, was being examined at the Mal de Mer Val de Grace hospital after being flown to Paris on Saturday. The presidential office in Algiers said Bouteflika, 68, had problems with his digestive system and doctors in Algiers advised him be flown to Paris for checks.
Puking, was he? That's a bad sign. A very bad sign...
You weren't praying for sepsis again, were you?
âThe state of his health has clearly improved after undergoing a medical check-up in Paris,â the official told Reuters. âHis health situation is not a cause of concern,â he added, when asked to elaborate.
Of course not, that's why you rushed him to Paris.
The official, who did not want to be named, declined to give further details, including on when Bouteflika would be discharged from hospital.
"No, you can't have ice in your drink. Now scram."
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/29/2005 00:00 ||
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So, that is why we no longer get ice cream for dessert.
Posted by: French Patient ||
11/29/2005 0:39 Comments ||
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Damned good thing we don't have an indignation meter...
Saudis returning from Iraqi will receive government assistance, according to the Kingdomâs Deputy Interior Minister Prince Ahmad bin Abdulaziz on Sunday. âAn appropriate plan and procedures have been implemented to contain [the returnees] and examine their situation. We hope they become good citizensâ, the Prince said
Guess it depends on your definition of a "good citizen," doesn't it?
So far, a small number of Saudis who had joined the insurgency in Iraq have returned to the Kingdom, the prince reported. âWe hope that if anyone remains in Iraq they return safely.â
I'm hoping they're rotting in the Anbar sun, but maybe that's just me...
âThe plan is aimed at making the men understand the error of their ways from the perspective of Shariah law (Islamic law). This is undoubtedly a grave and great problem, which brings about the destruction of people and resources. This is in inadmissible in Shariah and inexcusable.
So why the hell would you excuse it?
Therefore, the men need to understand the correct Shariah knowledge they are in need of from religious leaders. We hope this will lead them onto the right path.â
I'm sure Sheikh Hawali will pitch right in...
Prince Ahmad was speaking to reporters after returning to Riyadh from Manama , where he attended the 24 th Interior Ministers meeting of the Golf Cooperation Council (GCC) on behalf of Prince Naif bin Abdulaziz, the Saudi Minister of Interior... On the discussion of terrorism and how best to deal with terrorist attacks, the Prince added, âterrorism is known. It is an international concern and the GCC countries are affected by it. Currently, the situation is much better.â He added, âThe fight against terror using a number of ways will succeed, not only from the security perspective but other angles as well. We hope and believe terrorism has been defeated.â
I hope and believe my hair's gonna grow back and Patti Anne's gonna get the hotz for me...
Posted by: Fred ||
11/29/2005 00:00 ||
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Any "War on Terror" that doesn't includes the eradication of the "Saudi Royal family", is a joke.
November 29, 2005: While new police and military tactics have reduced kidnappings over fifty percent in the last year. In response, the kidnapping gangs have used extortion more often (demanding payment by a certain date and time, or else the victim would be killed). However, the extortions involve less money, and are only about half as common as the kidnappings. In the last few years, the number of police and troops has been increased by about 30 percent (to 328,000). Quality has been increased as well. This has enabled the government to get police or troops to every part of the country.
Out in the bush, the police presence is sparse, and the rebels groups (FARC, ELN, AUC) have some camps that would require a major military operation to eliminate. But this is happening regularly, and the camps generally fall. The rebels face a bleak, but not hopeless, situation. The rebels are moving more operations into urban areas, realizing that's where they have to fight to beat the government. But the people have turned against the leftist rebels, and the rightist rebels have made peace and accepted amnesty.
Posted by: Steve ||
11/29/2005 08:57 ||
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Kremlin-backed candidates swept parliamentary elections in Chechnya, officials announced Monday, November 28, as European observers cast doubts over the vote.
Results from 171 of the 430 polling centers showed the pro-Kremlin United Russia party taking about 60 percent of the vote, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP). The communists were in second place with around 12 percent of the vote followed by the liberal Union of Right Forces who scored around 10.5 percent, according to the preliminary results announced by Ismail Baikhanov, chairman of the province's election commission. Other Russian political parties, including the liberal Yabloko party led by reformer economist Grigory Yavlinsky and the ultranationalist Rodina party, picked up under five percent apiece. Authorities said turnout was above 66 percent of the approximately 600,000 registered voters.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/29/2005 00:00 ||
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that election was a joke. Many of the Chechen fighters are terrorists, but terrorists that the Russians made. The difference between the U.S.'s war in Iraq and Russia's in Chechnya is that the U.S. is trying to give a former dictator-ruled country democracy and freedom, while Russia invaded a sovereign country that had had elections and have been trying to make Chechnya a Russian state ever since.
North Korea on Monday demanded compensation from the United States over a scuttled project to build two nuclear reactors in the communist nation under a 1994 agreement.
Last week, the United States, South Korea, the European Union and Japan terminated the project promised under the 1994 so-called agreed framework, where the North agreed to scrap its plutonium-based nuclear weapons program.
The decade-old light-water reactor project had been mothballed for the last two years with the outbreak of the latest nuclear crisis, after U.S. officials said in late 2002 that the North violated the earlier deal by admitting to a secret uranium-enrichment program.
"Now that the construction of the (light-water reactors) came to a final stop, (North Korea) is compelled to blame the U.S. for having overturned the (agreed framework) and demand it compensate for the political and economic losses it has caused to the former," an unnamed North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by the country's official Korean Central News Agency. The spokesman claimed the move to shutter the reactor project proved the North was "quite just" in demanding simultaneous actions to build mutual confidence with the United States in exchange for disarmament.
To resolve the latest standoff, the United States has sought to convince the North to disarm at six-nation talks hosted by China. In September during those negotiations, the North pledged in principle to disarm, but afterward maintained that it would first need light-water reactors for electricity.
In the latest agreement, Washington and other countries agreed to consider the issue of giving the North a reactor at an appropriate time. At a summit this month of Asia-Pacific leaders in South Korea, President Bush said no reactors would be considered before the North gives up its nuclear weapons program.
#1
And the child, a spoiled brat of Russian manufacture and Chinese rearing, stomped its little feet, made tiny little fists and waved them about, and demanded dessert before dinner.
French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin on Tuesday announced tightened controls on immigration, part of the government's response to riots and vandalism that shook the country this month. Marriages abroad between French citizens and foreigners will no longer be automatically recognized in France, Villepin said. Consulates must screen couples first before foreign partners can be granted French identity papers, he said. The measure is to be adopted by parliament in the first half of 2006, Villepin said.
The prime minister also said the government should be able to enforce a law outlawing polygamy. There are 8,000-15,000 polygamous families in France, according to official figures. Some French officials cited polygamy as one reason that youths from underprivileged Muslim households joined in the rioting, saying that children from large polygamous families often have social-behavioral problems stemming from a lack of a father figure. The suggestion outraged opposition politicians, human rights groups and others.
The government has moved swiftly to address the problems that led to the violence this month in France's impoverished suburbs, home to many immigrant families from North and west Africa. While promising to ease unemployment for youths and fight racial discrimination, the conservative government also promised tighter controls on immigration.
President Jacques Chirac said two weeks ago that France must be stricter in enforcing the regulations of a law that allows immigrants to bring spouses and children to France. Villepin said he would not put that law into question, but wants to extend the period from one year to two years that immigrants must live in France before being able to bring their families here. The measure concerning families is the second source of legal immigration to France today after marriage, concerning some 25,000 people in 2004.
Posted by: Steve ||
11/29/2005 08:54 ||
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Sen. John McCain is leading the charge against so-called "torture" techniques allegedly used by U.S. interrogators, insisting that practices like sleep deprivation and withholding medical attention are not only brutal - they simply don't work to persuade terrorist suspects to give accurate information.
Nearly forty years ago, however - when McCain was held captive in a North Vietnamese prison camp - some of the same techniques were used on him. And - as McCain has publicly admitted at least twice - the torture worked!
In his 1999 autobiography, "Faith of My Fathers," McCain describes how he was severely injured when his plane was shot down over Hanoi - and how his North Vietnamese interrogators used his injuries to extract information.
"Demands for military information were accompanied by threats to terminate my medical treatment if I did not cooperate," he wrote "I thought they were bluffing and refused to provide any information beyond my name, rank and serial number, and date of birth. They knocked me around a little to force my cooperation."
The punishment finally worked, McCain said. "Eventually, I gave them my ship's name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant."
Recalling how he gave up military information to his interrogators, McCain said: "I regret very much having done so. The information was of no real use to the Vietnamese, but the Code of Conduct for American Prisoners of War orders us to refrain from providing any information beyond our names, rank and serial number."
The episode wasn't the only instance when McCain broke under physical pressure.
Just after his release in May 1973, he detailed his experience as a P.O.W. in a lengthy account in U.S. News & World Report.
He described the day Hanoi Hilton guards beat him "from pillar to post, kicking and laughing and scratching. After a few hours of that, ropes were put on me and I sat that night bound with ropes."
"For the next four days, I was beaten every two to three hours by different guards . . . Finally, I reached the lowest point of my 5 1/2 years in North Vietnam. I was at the point of suicide, because I saw that I was reaching the end of my rope."
McCain was taken to an interrogation room and ordered to sign a document confessing to war crimes. "I signed it," he recalled. "It was in their language, and spoke about black crimes, and other generalities."
"I had learned what we all learned over there," McCain said. "Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine."
That McCain broke under torture doesn't make him any less of an American hero. But it does prove he's wrong to claim that harsh interrogation techniques simply don't work.
Posted by: Captain America ||
11/29/2005 12:18 ||
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Well DUH! Who didnât know that torture does in fact work? Trust me you deprive a person or cause them discomfort long enough they are going to crack. Only the LLL still believes torture doesnât work. But what out guys are mostly doing is called âaggressive interrogationâ because it doesnât cause (lasting) physical harm. What McCain wants to do is redefine aggressive interrogation as torture and that would be a bad thing. With all due respect to McCain, does he expect our people to just as âpretty pleaseâ until the terrorists give them any information?
#2
Not only a two faced liar, but a fucking traitor also. I'm glad you didn't lie to them, asshole.
Why don't you do the most damage you can to the Democrats and switch parties. You already vote their way the majority of the time anyway.
#3
so the second time he broke, and signed something that wasnt true. Wouldnt that show that torture is ineffective? And the first time he gave them info of low value - is anyone suggesting we use torture to get low value intell?
#4
LH, the second time they got him to make a political statement by signing the war crimes confession. By that time they had all the operational information they needed. So they were being sadistic and just using him for propaganda. As far as I know we are not using the prisoners for propaganda and I doubt we could get much mileage out of them that way.
#5
LH - Mebbe, except he would've signed the paper if it WAS true. At that point, it seems he would've told them anything, or done anything, true or false. If anything, it argues that a broken man will tell you what he thinks you WANT to hear.
Posted by: Bobby ||
11/29/2005 13:12 Comments ||
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#6
But what out guys are mostly doing is called âaggressive interrogationâ because it doesnât cause (lasting) physical harm.
And also because it's done by Americans, ofcourse. But when any other country in the world did it *to* Americans, there was no doubt at all that it was torture.
As a sidenote, I think that rape usually doesn't cause lasting physical harm either. Would you claim that the rape of prisoners wouldn't qualify as torture?
#7
Aris, rape can certainly cause lasting physical harm in addition to the obvious psychological damage that it does. Stop already with the idiotic hair-splitting you always get into.
#8
remoteman, "psychological harm" is besides the point, as we've been told (only permanent *physical* harm matters, it seems).
And certainly rape *can* cause lasting physical harm, depending on the levels of brutality involved, but in cases it might also not. So would you claim that if rape was done with the proper care so as not to cause lasting *physical* harm (eg you may drug female jihadists first and then rape them "gently"), it would not be torture but rather a legitimate "aggressive interrogation" technique?
This is not "hair-splitting", babe. This is determining how far your idiotic definition about "lasting physical harm" is about to take you. This is determining how low you are willing to fall as a society.
Perhaps *you* know differently on gut instinct, but I'm not at *all* sure that the male Rantburgers here atleast aren't just a few years away from condoning rape of jihadis using the very argumentation I outlined above (also with a few more jeers inserted about how those mooselimbs are all a bunch of pedophilic homosexuals anyway, so what are they complaining about?)
Please learn basic logic...stating that aggressive interrogation does not cause lasting physical harm is not an endorsement of ANY technique that doesn't cause lasting physical harm. It is merely differentiating our true current policy from what the media widely confuses as current US policy-which we would likely all agree was torture. Your response seems to assume that, if one endorses a form of interrogation that does not produce lasting physical harm, they are then implicitly indifferent to whatever psychological harm might be caused. If that were the case, then we would not have prosecuted an officer for firing his weapon during an interrogation DESPITE the fact that no physical harm was caused. The US military is the most powerful and benevolent in the world because it does not err in its logic or consistency the way you do in your argumentation.
True regardless of how many straw man arguments you erect so that you may browbeat us with your EUrophiliac moral superiority.
Indeed. But your racism is besides the issue. My posting here in violation of past promises is also besides the issue (I'm not asking you to vote for me, after all). The issue is not about me at all, the issue is about torture and the definition thereof.
Tell me whether you consider torture as to include or exclude rape. And then justify it based on whichever definition of torture you support.
jumped on rape pretty quick, butt boy. You truly don't think, do you? It's all about meeeeeee
When I hate you for being a moron, I call you a moron. When I hate you for being a fascist, I call you a fascist. When I hate you for being a lowlife amoeba-like non-sentient creature, I call you a lowlife amoeba-like non-sentient creature. When I wish you dead I say "Drop dead".
But when you hate my arguments or my debate tactics, you call me "butt-boy". Or you bring my nationality into this. Or you search my livejournal for ugly photographs of me. Or a number of other nice little tactics, all meant to avoid the actual issue.
Well call me whatever you wish, but that doesn't make your support of torture any less vile. Or your evasive tactics any less cowardly.
#15
"Please learn basic logic...stating that aggressive interrogation does not cause lasting physical harm is not an endorsement of ANY technique that doesn't cause lasting physical harm"
Mjh, that's ofcourse a very legitimate position to take. Namely, that there are tactics that may not be, strictly speaking, "torture", but they are equally vile to torture on a moral level.
But please see for yourself that it's not actually the position taken by the vast majority of conservative debaters. They use "It was not torture because it didn't cause permanent harm" as a by-definition moral argument of superiority.
If *your* argument was the one they believed in, namely that there are lots of deplorable things that are not torture, but are equally vile to it, then these debaters wouldn't find it sufficient at all to proclaim something as "not torture" in order to defend it. As is currently being the case.
Your response seems to assume that, if one endorses a form of interrogation that does not produce lasting physical harm, they are then implicitly indifferent to whatever psychological harm might be caused.
An assumption borne on the quite easily *seen* indifference to psychological harm, displayed in Rantburg : see defending waterboarding tactics, dismissing them with commentary like "Me and the Mrs do worse things on each other every night"
"If that were the case, then we would not have prosecuted an officer for firing his weapon during an interrogation DESPITE the fact that no physical harm was caused"
It's not the Rantburg majority that prosecuted said officer, and as far as I remember nor did the Rantburg majority want his prosecution. Rantburgers can't take credit for things that they *opposed*.
True regardless of how many straw man arguments you erect so that you may browbeat us with your EUrophiliac moral superiority
My EUrophiliac moral superiority is also besides the issue.
To go along with all the other ongoing transformation, this gearbox approach of Rumsfeld's is producing two huge philosophical sea changes in the Pentagon that have implications for the entire United States government that will reach across the decades to come. First, the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review, to be released in the fall, will shift China from "near-peer competitor" to a rising power whose emergence we need to guide. It also will enshrine the notion that nation building is something the military does, finally reversing the long-standing Powell Doctrine to conform with what's happening in the real world, because dealing with failed states is a fact of life in a global war on terrorism, especially when terrorists seek sanctuary in them.
But perhaps most stunning are Rumsfeld's plans for something he calls the National Security Personnel System, which will radically redefine civilian and military service in the Defense Department, changing from a longevity-based system to a performance-based system. Already, radical new features of this plan have been field-tested in the Navy, where, in the past, so-called detailers told sailors where they were going on their next assignment-with little warning and like it or not. Eager to break that boneheaded tradition, the Navy is experimenting with an eBay-like online auction system in which individual servicemen and -women bid against one another for desired postings. As Admiral Vern Clark told me, "I've learned you can get away with murder if you call it a pilot program."
...
SOMEONE TOLD ME this story about Donald Rumsfeld. Before becoming a public man, Rumsfeld grew up in Illinois, and fifty years ago, he married his high school sweetheart, Joyce. Recently, he told his wife, "I'm concerned that because I've been written about so much, our grandchildren will know all they need to know about me, but they won't know their grandma in the same way." So he decided to write his wife's life story himself in his spare time. So when he has spare time, that's what he does.
The man who told me this was a four-star admiral who got misty-eyed as he sat there talking in his Pentagon office. As a rule, four-star admirals do not get misty-eyed.
Excerpted from a long but worthwhile article by Thomas Barnett. Very interesting read.
Posted by: Tater Tot ||
11/29/2005 12:05 ||
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"First, the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review, to be released in the fall, will shift China from "near-peer competitor" to a rising power whose emergence we need to guide. It also will enshrine the notion that nation building is something the military does"
These are both Barnett obsessions, so I can see why hed be pleased. The former should be pretty controversial with some of the folks who generally like Rummy, and the latter will represent a change in longstanding positions held by Rummy. Should be interesting, if true.
#2
THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE'S suite of offices in the Pentagon is on the third deck, outermost, or E-ring of the five-sided building, in the wedge between corridors eight and nine. It's one of the older wedges, on the far side of where the new ones are to be found or are being renovated, and on the opposite side of the building, one thousand feet away, from the section that was destroyed on September 11, 2001. Room 3-E-880 overlooks the Potomac in the direction of the White House and Capitol,
jeesh. Why not just put the freaking coordinates and the hours Rumsfeld is expected to be in.
#3
2b---I hear ya. What about Google Earth et al? Talk about lat-long targeting capability on the cheap! People do not realize what they say sometimes, even with the best of intentions.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/29/2005 15:59 Comments ||
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Great article, further proof that the CSMonitor is hands down the best non biased international paper in print today. Their reporters are on the ground chasing stories, and doing a damn fine job of reporting the real progress our troops are seeing in Iraq! Hoorah!
BROOK PARK, OHIO - Cpl. Stan Mayer has seen the worst of war. In the leaves of his photo album, there are casual memorials to the cost of the Iraq conflict - candid portraits of friends who never came home and graphic pictures of how insurgent bombs have shredded steel and bone.
Yet the Iraq of Corporal Mayer's memory is not solely a place of death and loss. It is also a place of hope. It is the hope of the town of Hit, which he saw transform from an insurgent stronghold to a place where kids played on Marine trucks. It is the hope of villagers who whispered where roadside bombs were hidden. But most of all, it is the hope he saw in a young Iraqi girl who loved pens and Oreo cookies.
Like many soldiers and marines returning from Iraq, Mayer looks at the bleak portrayal of the war at home with perplexity - if not annoyance. It is a perception gap that has put the military and media at odds, as troops complain that the media care only about death tolls, while the media counter that their job is to look at the broader picture, not through the soda straw of troops' individual experiences.
Yet as perceptions about Iraq have neared a tipping point in Congress, some soldiers and marines worry that their own stories are being lost in the cacophony of terror and fear. They acknowledge that their experience is just that - one person's experience in one corner of a war-torn country. Yet amid the terrible scenes of reckless hate and lives lost, many members of one of the hardest-hit units insist that they saw at least the spark of progress. I've heard a lot of this from soldiers in the field, complaining that Americans don't know and don't care about the real progress of the war, but almost every time I hear this its from someone over there in the field.
A friend of mine told me this when he was over there. He just got back from his tour and after a month of being back in the world I asked him what was going on with the war, almost in jest, and he didn't have a fuckin clue. Now this guy's a great soldier, but because of the pressure of life and work at home and because he refuses to watch MSM news he either can't or just isn't keeping up with the war. I ain't knocking him, but I will say that its a choice each one of us has to make to understand what we're accomplishing in Iraq and to tell others the truth of what we're doing in Iraq on a daily basis. Or else, they won't know. I turned him on to the Burg though, so hopefully he'll get some real news from now on.
"We know we made a positive difference," says Cpl. Jeff Schuller of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, who spent all but one week of his eight-month tour with Mayer. "I can't say at what level, but I know that where we were, we made it better than it was when we got there."
It is the simplest measure of success, but for the marine, soldier, or sailor, it may be the only measure of success. In a business where life and death rest on instinctive adherence to thoroughly ingrained lessons, accomplishment is ticked off in a list of orders followed and tasks completed. And by virtually any measure, America's servicemen and women are accomplishing the day-to-day tasks set before them. No shit they are, and with gusto!
Yet for the most part, America (he should say the MSM) is less interested in the success of Operation Iron Fist, for instance, than the course of the entire Iraq enterprise. "What the national news media try to do is figure out: What's the overall verdict?" says Brig. Gen. Volney Warner, deputy commandant of the Army Command and General Staff College. Bullshit, what they're doing is the same shit they always do, sensationalize until the fuckin cows come home. The MSM don't give a shit about anything but ratings and new schools don't get the ratings that car bombs do!"Soldiers don't do overall verdicts." They just make them happen one dead terrorist at a time.
Yet soldiers clearly feel that important elements are being left out of the media's overall verdict. On this day, a group of Navy medics gather around a table in the Cleveland-area headquarters of the 3/25 - a Marine reserve unit that has converted a low-slung school of pale brick and linoleum tile into its spectacularly red-and-gold offices.
Their conversation could be a road map of the kind of stories that military folks say the mainstream media are missing. One colleague made prosthetics for an Iraqi whose hand and foot had been cut off by insurgents. When other members of the unit were sweeping areas for bombs, the medics made a practice of holding impromptu infant clinics on the side of the road.
They remember one Iraqi man who could not hide his joy at the marvel of an electric razor. And at the end of the 3/25's tour, a member of the Iraqi Army said: "Marines are not friends; marines are brothers," says Lt. Richard Malmstrom, the battalion's chaplain. "It comes down to the familiar debate about whether reporters are ignoring the good news," says Peter Hart, an analyst at Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, a usually left-leaning media watchdog in New York.
In Hit, where marines stayed in force to keep the peace, the progress was obvious, say members of the 3/25. The residents started burning trash and fixing roads - a sign that the city was returning to a sense of normalcy. Several times, "people came up to us [and said]: 'There's a bomb on the side of the road. Don't go there,' " says Pfc. Andrew Howland.
Part of the reason that such stories usually aren't told is simply the nature of the war. Kidnappings and unclear battle lines have made war correspondents' jobs almost impossible. Travel around the country is dangerous, and some reporters never venture far from their hotels. "It has to have some effect on what we see: You end up with reporting that waits for the biggest explosion of the day," says Mr. Hart.
To the marines of the 3/25, the explosions clearly do not tell the whole story. Across America, many readers know the 3/25 only as the unit that lost 15 marines in less than a week - nine of them in the deadliest roadside bombing against US forces during the war. When the count of Americans killed in Iraq reached 2,000, this unit again found itself in the stage lights of national notice as one of the hardest hit.
But that is not the story they tell. It is more than just the dire tone of coverage - though that is part of it. It is that Iraq has touched some of these men in ways that even they have trouble explaining. This, after all, has not been a normal war. Corporals Mayer and Schuller went over not to conquer a country, but to help win its hearts and minds. In some cases, though, it won theirs.
Schuller, a heavyweight college wrestler with a thatch of blond hair and engine blocks for arms, cannot help smiling when he speaks of giving an old man a lighter: "He thought it was the coolest thing." Yet both he and the blue-eyed, square-jawed Mayer pause for a moment before they talk about the two 9-year-old Iraqis whom members of their battalion dubbed their "girlfriends." My personal experiences in the Arab world were very similar, I once gave an ink pen to an old man in Egypt and he wept over my kindness. It was extreme for me as a 17 year old never having ventured far from the cotton fields. But you won't see shit like that in the news, nope just a "Countdown to Destruction" or "Another Roadside bomb" ticker sponsored by Nasdaq, fuckin ludicrous!
The first time he saw them, Mayer admits that he was making the calculations of a man in the midst of a war. He was tired, he was battered, and he was back at a Hit street corner that he had patrolled many times before. In Iraq, repetition of any sort could be an invitation of the wrong sort - an event for which insurgents could plan. So Mayer and Schuller took out some of the candy they carried, thinking that if children were around, perhaps the terrorists wouldn't attack.
It was a while before the children realized that these two marines, laden with arms to the limit of physical endurance, were not going to hurt them. But among the children who eventually came, climbing on the pair's truck and somersaulting in the street, there were always the same two girls. When they went back to base, they began to hoard Oreos and other candy in a box. "They became our one little recess from the war," says Mayer. "You're seeing some pretty ridiculous tragedies way too frequently, and you start to get jaded. The kids on that street - I got to realize I was still a human being to them."
It happened one day when he was on patrol. Out of nowhere, a car turned the corner and headed down the alley at full speed. "A car coming at you real fast and not stopping in Iraq is not what you want to see," says Mayer. Yet instead of jumping in his truck, he stood in the middle of the street and pushed the kids behind him.
"But it's not," adds Mayer. "You are in the service of others."
For Mayer, who joined the reserves because he wanted to do something bigger than himself, and for Schuller, a third-generation marine, Iraq has given them a sense of achievement. Now when they look at the black-and-white pictures of marines past in the battalion headquarters, "We're adding to that legacy," says Schuller. And making us all damn proud!
This is what they wish to share with the American people - and is also the source of their frustration. Their eight months in Iraq changed their lives, and they believe it has changed the lives of the Iraqis they met as well. On the day he left, Mayer gave his "girlfriend" a bunch of pens - her favorite gift - wrapped in a paper that had a picture of the American flag, the Iraqi flag, and a smiley face. The man with the lighter asked Schuller if he was coming back. He will if called upon, he says.
Whether or not these notes of grace and kindness are as influential as the dirge of war is open to question. But many in the military feel that they should at least be a part of the conversation.
Says Warner of reaching an overall verdict: "I'm not sure that reporting on terrorist bombings with disproportionate ink is adequately answering that question." Obviously the pollsters at Fox News and CNN think differently with the shit they report on, but hey, when you don't leave the green zone what can you report on besides conjecture and loud booms in the distance?
Kudos to the reporter who walked the streets of Iraq to report what's really going on.
#1
ElvisInTheBuilding with that report. CSMonitor has some good people. thx
Posted by: Red Dog ||
11/29/2005 1:17 Comments ||
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#2
CSMonitor is hands down the best non biased international paper in print today.
So long as Israel isn't involved, anyway, or so it seemed to me the last time I looked closely at their site. On the other hand, the international standard is embarassingly low. ;-)
#3
We as a nation should be so tremendously proud of our young military men and women; they're the best, on every level, this world has ever seen. Of all the many faults of the MSN, besmirching their reputations is by far the worst, and one for which I will never forgive them.
This article is one small but choice nugget in the scale opposing the mountain of usual MSM garbage on the other side. For that much I am grateful. Would that the truth this article depicts was told a lot more often!
Posted by: mac ||
11/29/2005 6:13 Comments ||
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#4
I talked with a marine Unit commander to whom I regularly sent care packages after he was rotated home to the states: He is 1000% behind the program, and has seen his men re-up for the same reason. Even the atheists in the unit are being swept up in what they see as the righteousness of their being there helping the Iraqui people.
A 1,000-strong NATO force sent to Pakistan to help earthquake victims has been impeded by bureaucracy and Pakistanis' fears about foreign troops on their soil. Commanders' resentment about being designated the task is another factor. The deployment has been one of the most controversial in NATO's 56-year history.
It is the first relief mission in which the organisation has "put boots on the ground" and has been criticised in Pakistan by both Islamist parties and secular commentators. Some Islamist leaders spread stories that the force had come only to look for Osama bin Laden and al-Qa'eda terrorists, or that it was part of some subterfuge to establish a presence in Kashmir. Spanish commanders have complained that it is not much more than a flag-waving exercise to show that President Pervez Musharraf's support for the American-led war on terrorism has paid dividends for Pakistan. Critics also claim that it is merely an exercise to enhance NATO's image in the region as the multi-national force is committed to an increasingly prominent role in neighbouring Afghanistan.
NATO responded that an airstrip was established and aid transported from Germany and Turkey within days of the disaster on Oct 8, in which 76,000 people died. A spokesman said that 139 flights had lifted more than 2,300 tons of supplies. NATO medics had also set up a field hospital in the Bagh region that was treating 150 people a day. However, the ground operation has been slow. On Oct 21, in response to a further request from Pakistan, NATO agreed to send specialist troops, equipment and a headquarters.
Although the first troops of the Spanish-led force began arriving on Oct 29, they did not reach the earthquake region until 10 days later. Since then, apart from a small amount of road repair and wall-building, little has taken place. Air Cdre Andrew Walton, the British commander of the NATO relief team sent to Bagh, a district of 400,000, said that speed was essential.
Ninety British engineers from 59 Independent Commando Squadron Royal Engineers and 42 Commando Royal Marines, who will work under the command of Nato, will reach Pakistan today. Their arrival was delayed by the authorities, who were worried that the presence of commandos would create yet more consternation.
The millions of survivors in mountainous Kashmir faced further misery yesterday as persistent rain and the first winter snows cut off roads and caused airlifts to be suspended. Three people who survived the quake died and more than 100 were taken to hospital with hypothermia.
European countries and their Muslim neighbours vowed to unite in the fight against terrorism yesterday, but only after papering over a deep disagreement about who is a terrorist and who is a freedom fighter. Tony Blair, who was co-chairman of the Euromed summit in Barcelona, hailed the joint code of conduct on tackling terrorism as "a very important moment". The leaders of the European Union and Mediterranean countries agreed that "terrorism can never be justified", promised to "condemn terrorism in all its manifestations without qualification" and said they would refuse to give a safe haven to terrorism.
But the impact of their agreement was irreparably weakened by the absence or boycott of seven of the eight Arab leaders who had been invited. Moreover, key proposals had to be watered down to maintain the show of unity on terrorism and the future of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
A Spanish adviser was caught on microphone telling the Spanish prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, that Israel, whose prime minister Ariel Sharon was absent, was being "intractable". He also complained that Mr Blair was "ready to throw in the towel" on drafting the summit's "common vision". In the end, a joint vision could not be agreed and Mr Blair resorted to issuing a "chairman's statement" fudging the most contentious issues.
The Prime Minister played down the disappointment, saying: "The Euromed summit is not going to resolve the Middle East peace process, not at this conference." Instead, he emphasised the importance of "practical" measures - the agreement on terrorism and a five-year "work programme" on promoting economic and democratic reforms in southern Mediterranean countries and improving co-operation on curbing immigration.
The biggest stumbling block was the problem of how to define terrorism. The Syrian foreign minister, Farouq al-Sharaa, was among those demanding that the fight against terrorism had to protect "the right of peoples under foreign occupation to resistance" - a reference to insurgencies by Palestinians and Iraqis.
In the end the definition of terrorism was left undecided, with merely a commitment to negotiate an acceptable one at the United Nations by next year. Mr Blair said the arguments should not overshadow the achievement.
"It's quite clear that people are united in their total condemnation of killing innocent civilians by terrorism," he said.
Erbil, 29 Nov. (AKI) - A Norwegian oil company has begun oil prospecting in Iraqi Kurdistan in what's believed to be the first drilling by a foreign group in the area since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The firm, DNO, said drilling in the well near the city of Koysanjak, some 70 kilometres from the regional capital Erbil, is expected to reach a depth of 3,000 metres within sixty days and that there were other reserves to be explored in the area.
The company said this was the first oil exploration undertaken following a production sharing agreement signed with the Kurdish authorities in June 2004.
At the opening ceremony, the Kurdish prime minister Neghervan Barzani, who said that "this wealth will be dedicated to the service of the people of Kurdistan who have suffered many years from being excluded from the resources of the country, which were used by Iraqi governments to oppress and persecute them". For its part the director of the Norwegian company declared that "this first project is an important step forward for the region."
Currently there are more than 180 wells and refineries in the region which over the past five years have provided for the local energy needs of the population, even if they fall below accepted international standards. The Iraqi government has also decided to build a new refinery in the region that meets world standards to guarantee Iraqi Kurdistan a flow of energy which from time to time is lacking.
Posted by: Steve ||
11/29/2005 16:19 ||
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BRUSSELS â A Belgian woman who married a radical Islamic and converted to Islam after her marriage carried out a suicide bomb attack in Iraq several weeks ago. It is the first time that a European has been confirmed as a suicide bomber, various Francophone news reports revealed on Tuesday. Western intelligence services have been informed about the woman's actions.
According to anti-terrorism experts, more and more women are becoming involved in terrorist operations. However, a new phenomenon is the involvement of foreign women. In the past 25 years, about 10 percent of suicide attacks have been carried out by women, newspaper 'Le Soir' reported. The attacks were exclusively carried out by women from the Middle East or South-East Asia, but now western women are starting to carry out suicide bombings.
Posted by: Steve ||
11/29/2005 09:57 ||
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#1
That's one, and probably only, way to get out of an islamic marriage.
Posted by: ed ||
11/29/2005 10:31 Comments ||
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#2
on the positive side...that's one less cockroach to breed.
November 29, 2005: Despite problems getting new recruits, the U.S. Army is having a lot more success getting troops who have done their time and left, to come back. In 2004, the army got 8,246 troops, who had recently gotten out, to sign up for another tour of duty. Thatâs up from 4,565 in 2003. This year, the trend continues, with the help of cooperative recruiters, and cash bonuses (up to $19,000) if you have a skill that is in high demand right now. The main target of recruiters is people who have been discharged in the last five years. Those with needed technical skills, and combat experience, are particularly sought after. The recruiters job is made easier because, with email, itâs easier for former soldiers to stay in touch with friends who are still in the service. That connection makes it easier to join up again, if only because the army buddies remind you that thereâs still a war going on.
Posted by: Steve ||
11/29/2005 09:23 ||
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WASHINGTON (AP) - Rep. Tim Murphy, one of two members of Congress treated at a military hospital after a weekend accident in Iraq, said Monday that wounded soldiers had told him the United States should remain in Iraq. ``Every soldier I talked to said, 'Don't pull out. Do not make it so those who have been wounded and those who have died have done so in vain. We know we can take care of this cause. We got to finish this,''' said Murphy, R-Pa., at a Capitol Hill news conference.
I bet he gets less airtime than Rep. Murtha did.
Murphy appeared at the news conference in hiking boots and sporting a small bandage on a cut above his right eye. He said he is still experiencing soreness in his neck, arms and back. Murphy, 53, was traveling on a back road to the Baghdad airport with Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., and Rep. Jim Marshall, D-Ga., on Saturday night when an oncoming vehicle sideswiped the small armored bus in which they were traveling.
President Bush telephoned all three members Monday ``to express his concern about them and to wish them all a speedy recovery,'' White House press secretary Scott McClellan said aboard Air Force One en route to Tucson, Ariz., for a presidential speech.
Murphy, a psychologist from Pittsburgh, said he was impressed with the care he and the injured soldiers around him received at hospitals in Baghdad and Germany. He said the trip reaffirmed his resolve that the United States should be in Iraq and not pull out by an ``artificial timeline.''
In a Baghdad hospital, Murphy said, he saw a small Iraqi orphan boy who who had been shot. Doctors called the boy ``Tater Tot.'' ``I could not help but think if we were to walk out now, we would see a lot more fellows like this young kid and hear a lot more awful stories about kids who were orphaned,'' Murphy said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/29/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
In a Baghdad hospital, Murphy said, he saw a small Iraqi orphan boy who who had been shot. Doctors called the boy ``Tater Tot.''
Are they sure 'Tater Tot' was a term of endearment and not one of political faction identification?
The other good reason to prevent these enemies of the Iraqi people from attending the trial is that the trial is a national Iraqi one and not Qatari or American trial.
The Palestinian Authority has welcomed the flow of Iranian funds for Islamic projects. Senior PA officials have endorsed Iranian-funded charities in the Gaza Strip. These charities have been administered by Iranian-sponsored groups, such as Islamic Jihad, regarded as the most active insurgency organization against Israel.
The endorsement of Iranian funding of Palestinian institutions has included PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. On Oct. 13, Abbas sponsored a ceremony in which the Iranian-funded Al Ansar Charity Association distributed funds in the Gaza Strip. Al Ansar distributed $1 million to the families of Palestinian insurgents in the Gaza Strip. The funding was said to have gone to families of so-called martyrs, who include those killed in operations against Israel or those detained by the Jewish state.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/29/2005 00:00 ||
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A senior member of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's new party Kadima said the party will seek the creation of a demilitarised Palestinian state and keep Israeli control of occupied East Jerusalem. Presenting party plans ahead of March 28 parliamentary elections, Sharon confidante and current Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said the centrist Kadima Party would seek a "demilitarised Palestinian state not involved in terrorism."
Right. That'll work. They'll never accept not being able to have parades, preferably with SCUDs rolling past the adoring masses.
Livni said Kadima wants to keep Israeli control of all Jerusalem, including its Arab eastern sector which was occupied in 1967 and is home to some 200,000 Palestinians. It also wants to retain the larger Jewish settlement blocs elsewhere in the occupied West Bank, which account for the majority of the 240,000 Jewish settlers there.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/29/2005 00:00 ||
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Israeli elder statesman Shimon Peres may leave the Labour Party that ousted him as its leader and join Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's new centrist list, a spokesman for Peres says.
I'm not sure I'd want him if I was Sharon. Peres is a warm milk kind of guy, in a region where the warm milk curdled long ago.
The defection of Peres, 82, would represent a vote of confidence by the Nobel peace laureate in Sharon's oft-repeated pledge to make "painful concessions" for peace with the Palestinians. Branded a "loser" by political satirists for repeated defeats in national elections, Peres may nonetheless be a vote-getter for Sharon by attracting some of Labour's liberal electorate in Israel's 28 March ballot.
I'd guess he's overrated as a vote getter, too...
Israeli media reports said Sharon had offered Peres the job of peace envoy if the prime minister's new Kadima party wins the general election, Israeli media reports said. "They very much want him," Yoram Dori, a spokesman for Peres, said about officials in Kadima.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/29/2005 00:00 ||
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#2
peres did have a vision of a "new middle east" that proved faulty, but i dont know about warm milk. You might talks to some Palestinian "militants" who were at the receiving end of Israeli bomb strikes in Lebanon when Peres was briefly, PM in, I think, 1987. Also he played a huge role in building Israel defense industries. He wants to get out of the territories for pretty much the same reasons Sharon does.
And yes he has a history of losing elections when hes at the top of the ballot. But that doesnt mean he cant add votes to a Sharon led party.
The US Air Force has unveiled its first hand-held laser weapon that gives security forces a non-lethal option for controlling crowds and protecting areas like checkpoints, according to service officials. While only in prototype form and years away from fielding, the weapon, known as the Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response (PHaSR) system, holds great promise, they said.
You just know the Star Trek geeks in the lab worked overtime to come up with that accronym
The PHaSR is about the same size and weight of a fully loaded M60 machine gun - around 9 kg - but shoots a low-power beam of laser light instead of bullets. The light it generates is capable of temporarily impairing an individual's vision, much like the disorienting glare one sees when looking into the sun, said the officials.
Upon completion of testing, one prototype will be handed over to the Department of Defense's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD) and the second to the National Institute of Justice (NIJ): the law enforcement arm of the US Department of Justice. Both organisations support the programme, with the latter interested in its civil applications.
Posted by: Steve ||
11/29/2005 13:11 ||
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#1
They're paying how much for this? You can get the same effect at night with a big flashlight.
#2
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!! Moose....This new weapon is just a diversion. The secret weapon is jacklighting, like hunting deer during poaching season. Mums the word...
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/29/2005 15:37 Comments ||
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News like this makes me think we need a Blowback category at RB.
Enraged by the arrest of terror suspect Syarif Tarabubun, hundreds of people attacked and burned down on Monday a Muslim boarding school believed to have been harboring terrorists.
The residents of the Muslim subdistrict of Haya, Central Maluku, went on a rampage after they learned that the school principal, Batar, had allegedly harbored Syarif and other terrorists who had been involved in terror activities in the formerly riot torn city of Ambon.
Central Maluku Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Ngurah Gunawan said that no fatalities had been reported in the incident.
The police officer said Batar was not in the school at the time of the incident as he had already left the area last year after he became the target of a police investigation for his alleged key role in an attack in Wamkana subdistrict, Buru regency in May last year, leaving three civilians dead.
Of five suspects in the case, only Batar and another person, Nurdin, are still at large while three other suspects have been arrested. These three have admitted to police investigators that they were involved in series of attacks in Maluku, particularly Ambon city. "Batar has been our priority. We received a tip-off that he already recruited other persons to mount terror attacks," said Ngurah Gunawan.
In a separate development, police investigators in Ambon are still questioning Syarif Tarabubun, who is also a police officer, for his role in an armed attack on a cafe in Ambon that killed two people. Syarif and 16 other people were arrested on Friday last week for their alleged roles in attacks in Ambon city over the past year.
Syarif was also named a suspect in February two years ago for allegedly masterminding the killing of civilians Tengku Fauzi Hasbi, Edy Saputra and Achmad Saridu.
The three were abducted from a hotel in the Waihaong area, Ambon city, and were then murdered. Syarif and the three dead people were believed to have all been members of a radical group affiliated to regional terror network Jamaah Islamiyah, but an internal rift led Syarif to commit the murders. Syarif was arrested in May 2003, but was released after a court found him not guilty.
The preliminary investigation into Syarif and the other 16 persons arrested recently in Haya subdistrict, Central Maluku, has found that they knew leading terrorists Azahari, Noordin M. Top and Imam Samudera. Azahari was killed in a raid in Malang, East Java, recently while Noordin is still at large. Imam Samudera was convicted for the first Bali bombings and he is now on death row.
During questioning, Syarif and the other gang members admitted that the three terrorists had trained them in Haya in 2000 when sectarian conflict was tearing Maluku apart.
Ambon and other islands in Maluku were the scene of Muslim-Christian violence between 1999 and 2002 that left thousands of people dead. The conflict also drove hundreds of thousands of people from Maluku province. A government-sponsored peace pact in 2002 has restored a semblance of normality in the area but sporadic bombings and attacks still persist.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said on Tuesday an American expert on terrorism had been expelled because of a previous administration's decision that had not been updated by immigration authorities.
But a spokesman for Yudhoyono, Andi Mallarangeng, stopped short of saying Sidney Jones, 53, could return to Jakarta.
The comments follow a statement by the justice minister on Monday who said Jones had been turned back at Jakarta's international airport last Thursday because she was a security threat.
Mallarangeng said the president had asked the justice minister and the chief security minister about Jones after reading news of her expulsion in the press.
"He asked what the reason was and it come back that it was a reason adopted by the last government. After being reviewed, this is not relevent anymore," Mallarangeng told Reuters.
"If it's not relevant, then there's no reason for doing that. Unfortunately the record (in immigration) has not been updated."
Asked if immigration had been instructed to fix the problem, he said: "Automatically, if there is no reason for doing that. The record will be updated."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/29/2005 02:51 ||
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SIDON: Rouqayya Bizri, the sister of Sidon mayor Abdel-Rahman Bizri, condemned her summons for interrogation Monday by the UN probe investigating the murder of former Premier Rafik Hariri.
"You have to know who reported my name to the judiciary!" she shouted, during a gathering in the home of the late minister Nazih Bizri. Rouqayya Bizri, along with citizens Hassan Hashisho and his wife Sukayna, were summoned by the judiciary for interrogation into the case on Sunday. "He who gave my name to the investigators is capable of doing the same to someone else tomorrow," Rouqayya added.
"Tell us who the stoolie is so we can shut him up!"
In the Bizri residence, a gathering of more than 100 representatives of various confessions and of several Lebanese and Palestinian parties, social, cultural and educational associations in addition to MPs Osama Saad and Antoine Khoury, was held to discuss the interrogation. Rouqayya called for justice, urging the city officials to identify her "informant." Hashisho and his wife did not comment.
The absence of Sidon MP Bahia Hariri, the sister of Rafik Hariri, as well as the absence of a representative of the Amal Movement and Hizbullah was noticeable.
Participants reported that Abdel-Rahman Bizri received a telephone call from Prime Minister Fouad Siniora inquiring about the issue. The mayor asserted that the family "is keen on preserving the unity of the Lebanese despite their viewpoints, but it is keener about knowing the truth behind Hariri's assassination." Commenting on Siniora's phone call, he said: "The premier is now aware of the situation." He added that the decision is now his and said: "I hope that Siniora will proceed to what is proper, not only to preserve the dignity of the Bizri family, but also the credibility of the investigation."
He said: "Summoning my sister is regrettable; as for the family's friend Hashisho and his wife, they are absolutely innocent and could have no possible information regarding the investigation." The mayor stressed that the family anger is a response to "the disrespect caused to the family name." "Such a summoning does not only tarnish the reputation of people and their social status and profession, it also misleads the investigation and could depict a feeling of carelessness in the probe." He indicated that lawyers were contacted about the issue.
He denounced the way the summons was carried out arguing that "those who summoned my sister and Hashisho are well aware of the privacy, the dignity and nobility of the house as well as the nature of conversations that take place in it, so if it [the judiciary] believes that they hold information that might help in the investigation, there are more proper and legal ways to do so."
Well, we could do it the traditional Arab way. Knock down the door in the middle of the night and drag the whole family off to a secret basement cell for a quiet talk. That better for your "family honor"?
Bizri revealed that Bahia Hariri contacted him, and stressed that if the Sidon MP wished to preserve the credibility of the probe, she should proclaim that she contacted him.
Posted by: Steve ||
11/29/2005 10:17 ||
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In a new indication that the balance of power within the administration of President George W. Bush has tilted strongly in favour of the realists, Washington's influential ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, has disclosed that Bush has authorised him to open direct talks with Iran about stabilising Iraq.
The announcement, which came in an interview with Newsweek magazine, marks a major change in policy. The two countries have not held direct talks since mid-May 2003, shortly after the U.S. ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, when the influence of neo-conservatives was at its zenith.
At that time, the administration charged that al Qaeda attacks carried out in Saudi Arabia had been coordinated from Iranian territory. It promptly broke off an ongoing diplomatic dialogue with Iran in Geneva that was led by Khalilzad himself and dealt primarily with Afghanistan and Iraq.
"I've been authorised by the president to engage the Iranians as I engaged them in Afghanistan directly," Khalilzad told Newsweek. "There will be meetings, and that's also a departure and an adjustment (to U.S. policy)," he added.
The decision to reopen direct talks with Iran, which has not yet reacted to Khalilzad's announcement, provoked a heated intra-administration debate earlier this fall about engaging Iran more deeply, particularly in light of U.S. concerns -- and threats -- concerning Tehran's nuclear programme.
Some hard-liners, including neo-conservatives associated with the Committee on the Present Danger, have urged the administration to open an interest section in Tehran to gain more direct access to and intelligence about opposition groups. They argue that with sufficient U.S. support, these groups could subvert the regime in much the same way that U.S. support for Solidarity in Poland allegedly helped create the conditions for the end of Communist rule there.
But others have warned against any steps that could be seen as granting the regime international legitimacy would be a mistake, particularly in light of the hard-line rhetoric of the country's controversial new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
"On the one hand, I think it's a good idea to maintain back-channel contacts with adversaries," says Raymond Tanter, a former National Security Council staffer whose Iran Policy Committee has called for Washington to deploy the Iraq-based Mujahadin-e Khalq, which is listed as a "terrorist" group by the State Department, against Tehran.
"On the other hand, when you go public after Ahmadinejad says he wants to wipe Israel off the map, it seems to reward Iranian belligerence. I don't know why it's being done," he says.
But to a critic of the hard-liners, University of Michigan Middle East historian Juan Cole, the message was clear. "It's a sign of desperation and a recognition that (the administration) needs Iranian goodwill to get out of Iraq," he told IPS. "To the extent you can have a soft landing in Iraq, the Iranians have to be involved."
Indeed, Khalilzad depicted the decision as part of a more general strategy, long urged by realists such as Bush Sr.'s national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, and some Democrats, including the party's ranking foreign policy spokesman, Sen. Joseph Biden, to enlist the cooperation of Baghdad's neighbours in stabilising Iraq sufficiently to permit a substantial drawdown of U.S. troops.
That goal has become far more urgent in the past month as public support for the U.S. presence in Iraq has plummeted, as has confidence in Bush's performance there and in the general "war on terror".
As Bush's poll numbers have dropped to levels not seen since the Richard Nixon administration in the early 1970s, Democrats have become more aggressive in urging a major policy shift toward realism, while Republicans have grown restive. The White House was badly shaken earlier this month when a majority of Senate Republicans voted with Democrats to require the administration to submit regular reports on prospects for withdrawing substantial numbers of troops in 2006 and progress in training Iraqi troops to take their place.
Even if the administration has been slow -- at least rhetorically -- to react to the erosion of public support, the Pentagon, and particularly senior military officers who have been talking up the necessity of a substantial withdrawal in 2006 since last summer, has seen the writing on the wall for some time.
According to a number of published reports, the Pentagon has prepared plans to begin withdrawing large numbers of the nearly 160,000 U.S. troops currently deployed in Iraq to about 140,000 soon after next month's elections, to about 115,000 by next July and around 100,00 or less by next November's mid-term Congressional elections.
But those hopes are based not only on the military's ability to train and equip tens of thousands of members of Iraq's armed forces and police, but also on a political strategy to both reduce the strength and virulence of the largely Sunni insurgency. At the same time, it is key to ensure that Shiite groups, especially the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), that are most closely tied to Tehran, are prepared to go along with any measures that may be needed to pacify the Sunnis.
It is in this light that the intensified diplomacy within the region of the past several weeks should be seen -- particularly last week's Arab League meeting in Cairo where both Sunni and Shiite Iraqi parties, as well as the predominantly Sunni Arab governments that make up the League, joined together to call for reconciliation and a withdrawal of non-Arab troops. The fact that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who has long been close to Iran, flew immediately to Tehran after the meeting did not go unnoticed.
Nor was it missed here that, two weeks after Secretary of State Rice publicly raised the possibility of direct talks with Iran, Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, a long-time friend of Khalilzad who had fallen out of favour in Washington 18 months ago amid charges that he was working with Iranian intelligence, held high-level talks in Tehran just before arriving here in early November for the first time in two years.
While Chalabi was received rapturously by hard-line neo-conservatives at the American Enterprise Institute, who did so much to champion his efforts to bring U.S. troops to Iraq, it now appears that his official reception here by senior administration officials, including Rice, national security adviser Stephen Hadley, and Vice President Dick Cheney, was linked to his perceived usefulness in extricating those troops from a political quagmire -- and, more specifically, gaining Tehran's cooperation in doing so.
"Perhaps that's why he was given such a good reception," noted Cole.
Washington's growing reliance on and support for regional diplomacy marks a serious setback to neo-conservatives who, long before the Iraq war, had championed the unilateral imposition of a Pax Americana in the Middle East that would put an end to what in their view constituted the chief threats to Israel's security -- Arab nationalism and Iranian theocracy.
Now, two and a half years after invading Iraq to put that peace into place, the administration finds itself seeking the support of both forces, just as the realists had warned. (END/2005)
#1
"...sign of desperation..." - yeah right, more like Dubya giving Iran a last chance or chances becore invading. The Moslem nations of central Asia, like Iraq and more moderate, pro-Western Govts., are far more interested in LR economic and democratic development than Iranian-style armed violent revol jihad - taking the wealth, lands, women, homes and pet dogs of the Infidel(s) by force is at best a [very] short-term profit measure, and does little to nothing to resolve Islam's triple challenges of LR Relevancy, Modernization, and closure of the ever-widening wealth/econ gap between Ruling Elites vs Camel & Mud House Masses vs Everyone else in World.
#3
Interpress Service, which published this opinion piece, is a Marxist organization - it finds whatever it wants to find. First off, its characterization of the realist position is nuts. Scowcroft isn't a realist - he's perhaps an idealist who doesn't believe in the power of deterrence. Realists believe in thumping the enemy - his reaction to our invasion of Iraq should be - "There but for the grace of Uncle Sam go I".
I am a realist. I don't believe in democracy abroad or any of that stuff. However, if we have to establish a democracy in the Mid East to justify thumping the living shit of an important part of the Arab world (as a warning to the others), so be it. I don't think Scowcroft is even an idealist - he just thinks we have to get along with his friends in the Arab world who just happen to help pay his bills.
Second, Khalilzad, unlike me, is a neo-conservative, not a realist. When he served as the ambassador to Afghanistan, he ruled Afghanistan like the viceroys of old (what he said went), but established a democracy. He is now doing the same in Iraq. A realist would simply establish a Shiite dictatorship to replace the Sunni one, or simply partition the country. Note that Khalilzad is doing neither.
What I find amusing is that Marxists used to think "realists" were the devil incarnate. Now that they've redefined what realism means into appeasement-oriented and corrupt foreign-lobby-funded functionaries of past administrations, they now like "realists".
#4
The other thing that the writer of this essay has ignored is that Khalilzad took down Ismail Khan, Warlord of Herat, aka Iran's man in Afghanistan (There's another article about Khan's defenestration in today's Rantburg). What does this say about Khalilzad making any deals with Iran? If deals were made, they are transparently not in Iran's favor. But that's the thing with Interpress - facts and logic are all foreign to their opinion writers.
#5
I was always taught to keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. Seems it has always worked out for me. Maybe then it is kinda like an old Eagles song....... You can't hide your lying eyes.
#7
This is a fucking fish wrap story. If not, someone better give Bush a shot of manhood.
Juan Cole is a fucking nut job professor of Creme de Pantz
Posted by: Captain America ||
11/29/2005 2:56 Comments ||
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#8
CA - you give him too much credit - he's also an anti-american POS
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/29/2005 9:56 Comments ||
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#9
You want realism? Take a baseball bat with you, and be prepared to do some swatting. Explain to the Mullahs just exactly how fragile and land-locked their economy is, should some nasty superpower take it into their heads to shut down all access routes to your Islamic shithole.
#10
i tend to agree that this story is not trustworthy - in particular it mixes up some very different positions. It states that some neocons want nothing to do with Iran, while some (Ledeen?) want to open an interests section in Teheran to contact the opposition. It then brings in Juan Cole, as if he were a neocon!!!!!!!! It conflates Coles desire for a grand bargain with Iran, with Scowcroft and Bidens general desire to approach Iraqs neighbors. And of course Biden and Scowcroft part ways on many other issues.
The point made about Khalilzad in elementers second comment is right on. He was talked to Iran on narrow short term issues, while working against Irans long term interests. I would expect something similar here.
Much confusion comes from the conflation of very different points of view under the simplifying rubric "neocon".
The meeting of the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at Vienna last week on the Iran nuclear issue turned out to be a poker game. The United States dealt from a weak hand, likely knew it had a weak one, but thought that with some bravado and luck it could carry the day.
An atmosphere of suspense was created in the run-up to the meeting, a lot of dust was raised, and under the cloud cover the US gained another few months until March to put pressure on Iran.
Washington hopes that by March there may be greater clarity about the shape of things to come in Iraq - and, in turn, how much regional clout Iran may come to wield that could have a bearing on its nuclear policy. Iraq is due to stage parliamentary elections in December.
In the face of Iranian "intransigence" over the IAEA's September 24 resolution, conceivably, Washington should have upped the ante at Vienna on November 24. But it hasn't. In September, the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors formally accused Iran of non-compliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), paving the way for referral to the United Nations Security Council and possible sanctions.
The US apparently allowed itself to be persuaded to give Iran more time to ponder over a "Russian proposal" that would involve the construction of an enrichment facility in Russia in which Iran would have management and financial interest, but not a technical interest.
The Russians themselves say in some embarrassment that their "proposal" is nothing new and that it was first put across to Iran a year ago. Iranians maintain that they want to hear more about the "Russian proposal". Meanwhile, they, too, came up with a "proposal" that they were open to foreign participation in any uranium enrichment activity within Iran.
Immediately before the IAEA meeting began last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki said in Vienna, that "enrichment [of uranium] and the fuel cycle are things that the Islamic Republic of Iran considers to be its natural and legitimate right and within the framework of the NPT."
A spate of American statements has appeared alongside, claiming that Russia and China have been "enlisted" by Washington on the Iran nuclear issue. These statements create an impression that the international community now onward (comprising the US, the EU-3 - Germany, Britain and France - Russia and China) will be working in concert to get Tehran to agree to the "Russian proposal".
American statements claimed that President George W Bush raised the issue with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, during his recent Far East tour - and Putin was in "a problem-solving mode" (to quote US National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley).
Hadley added that the Russians were feeling "frustrated" with the Iranians. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice claimed separately that China, too, by abstaining over the September 24 resolution, was distancing itself from Iran.
Moscow and Beijing, however, seem uncomfortable that Washington is arbitrarily hijacking their Iran policy. Their foreign ministries have since crisply restated their consistent position favoring a solution to the Iran nuclear issue within the IAEA.
There is also ambiguity whether Russia will be a participant or be an honest broker, or just a facilitator at any future meeting between the EU-3 and Iran.
What stands out is that Washington resorted to grandstanding in order to cover up the accelerating collapse of its regional policy in Iraq, which surely casts a shadow on the US capacity to force its will on the Iran nuclear issue.
All protagonists - the EU-3, Russia and Iran - seem to realize this stark reality. The danger now is that Iran may overreach. Moscow and Beijing have counseled Tehran to be flexible.
But, on the other hand, Russia does seem to be in a "problem-solving mode" over Iraq. At a meeting in Busan, South Korea, between Bush and Putin on November 18, Iraq figured in the discussions. Bush, who faces a nasty domestic crisis over the Iraq war and who might even be keen to avoid a showdown with Iran, could do with some Russian help.
According to Hadley, Bush was "anxious to find ways" to get Putin "to be supportive of what the Iraqis are doing" so that there was "progress" in Iraq. Bush and Putin discussed "a couple of ways that might be done". Hadley wouldn't publicly discuss such a sensitive topic but, essentially, the US was "trying to find ways in which Russia can contribute to the progress [in Iraq]".
It does not need a second guess to divine that Washington will be much obliged if Russia can use its traditional influence with Ba'athist elements in Iraq to settle for a reconciliation. The Iraqi elections are due in mid-December. The Arab League is working on an intra-Iraqi conference in February. The success of the conference hinges on the participation by the Ba'athist faction.
For the Americans, there is a tight calendar ahead. Opposition to the war is cascading in the US. The three-day Iraqi national reconciliation conference that ended in Cairo last Monday agreed on two major points: that there should be a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq, and, second, that resistance to foreign troops was the right of all Iraqis, while terrorism remained reprehensible.
The influential daily al-Hayat reported that the participants of the Cairo conference envisaged the withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraqi cities within six months (say, mid-May) and that the withdrawal would be completed over a period of two years (by end 2007).
According to al-Hayat, the American ambassador in Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, concurred with this timetable, and, in Cairo, Sunni insurgent groups met with American functionaries.
Following the Cairo conference, the two Kurdish leaders, President Jalal Talabani and Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, headed in two directions - Tehran and Moscow. The Kurds are naturally anxious about new patterns appearing on the Iraqi political tapestry. They have maximum stakes in limiting any Ba'athist role in Iraqi politics.
Following Zebari's "working visit" to Moscow, the potentials of Russian involvement in Iraq have been clarified. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov strongly supported the forthcoming intra-Iraqi conference in February and offered Russia's help in the Arab League's efforts toward a "deepening" of intra-Iraqi dialogue so as to "narrow the base for violence".
But Lavrov emphasized that Russia expected Baghdad to honor Russian oil companies' multi-billion dollar contracts signed with Saddam Hussein's regime. Zebari's response was ambivalent. "The Iraqi government recognizes its responsibility for the contracts Russia signed during Saddam Hussein's rule," Zebari said, but "regulating Iraq's political and economic ties with Russia would be up to the next permanent Iraqi government".
So, what about the "next permanent Iraqi government"? That was what Talabani's visit to Tehran was about. Talabani, who has kept close contacts with the Iranian regime for the past few decades, was naturally given a red-carpet welcome.
Talabani's discussions brought out the following. Iran will not easily countenance an accommodation of Ba'athist elements in Iraq's power structure - something that suits Talabani, too. Second, the US attitude toward Iran (over its nuclear program) will impact on Iran's willingness to cooperate over orderly US troop withdrawal from Iraq. Third, instead of a pan-Arab identity for Iraq, Tehran visualized that Iraq "will glitter in the world of Islam in the near future" (to quote Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei). Fourth, Iran is determined to play an assertive role in shaping Iraq's political future.
Thus, on balance, Washington has sought Moscow's help in stabilizing Iraq and thereby facilitating an early American troop withdrawal. Moscow on its part is willing to move in tandem with (pro-American) Arab regimes in the region in persuading alienated Sunni groups to reconcile. And Iran has reminded all concerned about the influence it wields in the region.
As things stand, never before have the two strands - the Iraq problem and the Iran nuclear issue - become so closely intertwined.
M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).
United Nations investigator Detlev Mehlis, who heads the probe into the killing of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri, is expected to interrogate five leading Syrian officials implicated in the incident on Tuesday, according to Lebanese media. The Lebanese paper An-Nahar Sunday cited Syrian sources as saying the date had been agreed between Mehlis and the Syrian leadership. Damascus has been keeping secret the names of the suspects who are due to be interrogated at the U.N.'s Vienna base by the German official. Since Mehlis had requested interrogations with six rather than the agreed five officials, there was speculation that Damascus might have refused the interrogation of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's brother-in-law Asef Schaukat.
Expanding on the Sex and the Suicide Bomber post. In a November 15, 2005 article in the Saudi daily Al-Iqtisadiyya, Sa'ad Al-Sowayan, a reformist Saudi researcher and columnist argued that religious cassettes, which are widely available in Saudi Arabia, advocate Jihad by emphasizing the sexual reward awaiting the martyr in Paradise. This is aimed at tempting teenagers who can find no sexual release in conservative Arab society. An English translation of the article was published in the Saudi Gazette on November 17. [1]
The following are excerpts from the translation:
Religious Cassettes Promoting Jihad
"So ubiquitous are the religious cassette shops that they are outnumbered only by groceries⊠The bulk of cassettes sold in these stalls are motivational. On closer scrutiny, you will realize that their contents are confined to a system of thought that serves to prepare youth to accept its ideas, yield to them, and adopt its Jihad program.
"These cassettes mostly urge people to carry out Jihad through taking up arms, without specifying the zero hour or the Jihad battlefield. As such they advocate Jihad for Jihad's sake. It's a mobilization campaign in which Jihad becomes a state of mind, a mode of living. They want you to give up this foul and mean earthly life, renounce worldly pleasures, devote your life to Jihad, and seek to die in the Jihad battlefield so as to win martyrdom."
Spiritual Martyrdom is Reduced to Jihad for Lust
"The basic Islamic issue - carrying out Da'wa (Islamic propagation), calling people to Allah, spreading monotheism (Tawheed), security and Islam, establishing justice, and treating people on equal terms - is reduced to a marginal matter in comparison to the pleasures in the Hereafter that the martyr can win, pleasures that supersede worldly pleasures and must be given up.
"The modern martyr has thus reduced spiritual martyrdom [for the sake of Allah] to a Jihad for lust, for the utmost pleasure and intoxication a Nirvana state of mind.
"The Jihad cassette describes the path that must be followed in order to win martyrdom and deserve the Hoor Al-Een fair females with wide, lovely eyes. It reduces the lofty objective of spiritual martyrdom to mere lust and a selfish search for sexual pleasure, regardless of what martyrdom can achieve for the public interest or for upholding Allah's word.
"In their call for giving up this world in preparation for the hereafter, and through their description of the martyr's reward - they are trying to program the mind to accept as principle the idea of committing suicide by blowing up oneself. Whoever is convinced of the reward of lust awaiting him will not hesitate to commit suicide: He will seek death with no fear, focused on the pleasures of the hereafter as compensation for the worldly pleasures abandoned.
"The sweetest thing for a teenager, especially in a conservative society like ours, is sex, and the discourse of the religious cassettes is directed toward these very youngsters in their sexual peak of life. They access these youth through the Hoor Al-Een, just as how the youth of our time were drawn to slide pictures of actresses and female singers. So should we not consider sexual suppression in conservative societies as one of the factors leading to such deviation?âŠ"
A Magical Prescription to Join the Hereafter: Blowing Yourself Up
"You never hear them speaking about worldly matters of so much concern to the people. The only reform program they offer is for the Hereafter. They speak as if they - and not the all-forgiving and merciful God - have the keys to Paradise in their hands. They have a magical prescription with which you can join their program of the Hereafter; that is, by blowing yourself up.
"Listen carefully to what these religious cassettes convey and you will find that the mythical supersedes the religious intent. They have converted this world to a filthy and mythical place and the Hereafter into a fabled utopia⊠They first divide the world into two parts: one belonging to God, which you are for, and the other to Satan, which you are against. The next step is to step up the value of the myth and draw the recipient into a world of mythical thinking in which rational thinking stops and the mind becomes receptive to suggestions and irrationalism."
Arab Culture Suffers from Sexual Phobia
"Then again, maybe the phenomenon of Jihadists seeking martyrdom in order to win the Hoor Al-Een is just a symptom of a vein-deep disease within society, which is ravaging the cultural system. The disease I mean is the sexual phobia that Arab culture is suffering from. Before the Arabs solve their problems with their governments or before their governments solve their problems with terrorism, they must first solve their problem with the other sex."
Posted by: ed ||
11/29/2005 10:39 ||
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#1
"... all-forgiving and merciful God ..."
I keep seeing these words parroted, but I've seen precious little evidence of any mercy or forgiveness from said god. Whistling past the graveyard, I'm sure.
The first blast struck at 1:25 p.m., shattering the walls of the Bombay Stock Exchange, leaving a grisly scene of broken bodies, shattered glass, and smoke. Next to be hit was the main office of the national airline, Air India, followed by the Central Bazaar and major hotels. At the international airport, hand grenades were thrown at jets parked on the tarmac. For nearly two hours the carnage went on, as unknown assailants wreaked havoc upon one of the world's largest cities. In all, 10 bombs packed with plastic explosives rocked Bombay, killing 257 and injuring over 700.
What happened in Bombay on that day, March 12, 1993, was a chilling precursor to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a careful choreography of death and destruction, aimed at the heart of a nation's financial center and intended to maximize civilian casualties. Engineered by Muslim extremists, the attacks were meant to exact revenge for deadly riots by Hindu fundamentalists that had claimed over a thousand lives, most of them Muslim. But more than vengeance was at work in Bombay. Indian police later recovered an arsenal big enough to spark a civil war: nearly 4 tons of explosives, 1,100 detonators, nearly 500 grenades, 63 assault rifles, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Within days of the attacks, police had gotten their first break by tracing an abandoned van filled with a load of weapons. The trail soon led to a surprising suspect: not a terrorist but a gangster. And not just any gangster but an extraordinary crime boss, a man known as South Asia's Al Capone.
Virtually unknown in the West, Dawood Ibrahim is a household name across the region, his exploits known by millions. He is, by all accounts, a world-class mobster, a soft-spoken, murderous businessman from Bombay who now lives in exile, sheltered by India's archenemy, Pakistan. He is India's godfather of godfathers, a larger-than-life figure alleged to run criminal gangs from Bangkok to Dubai. Strong-arm protection, drug trafficking, extortion, murder-for-hire--all are stock-in-trade rackets, police say, of Dawood Ibrahim's syndicate, the innocuously named D Company.
Dawood, as he is known in the Indian press, is very much on Washington's radar screen today. Two years ago, the Treasury Department quietly designated Ibrahim a "global terrorist" for lending his smuggling routes to al Qaeda, supporting jihadists in Pakistan, and helping engineer the 1993 attack on Bombay. He is far and away India's most wanted man, his name invoked time and again by Indian officials in their discussions of terrorism with U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers. As a result of those discussions, the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration each have active investigations into Dawood's far-flung criminal network, U.S. News has learned.
Understanding Dawood's operations is important, experts say, because they show how growing numbers of terrorist groups have come to rely on the tactics--and profits--of organized criminal activity to finance their operations across the globe. An inquiry by U.S. News, based on interviews with counterterrorism and law enforcement officials from six countries, has found that terrorists worldwide are transforming their operating cells into criminal gangs. "Transnational crime is converging with the terrorist world," says Robert Charles, the State Department's former point man on narcotics. Antonio Maria Costa, the head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, agrees: "The world is seeing the birth of a new hybrid of organized-crime-terrorist organizations. We are breaking new ground."
Some scholars argue that terrorists and traditional crime groups both now exist on a single, violent plane, populated at one end by politically minded jihadists and at the other by profit-driven mobsters, with most groups falling somewhere in between. Mafia groups and drug rings in Colombia and the Balkans, for example, commit political assassinations and bomb police and prosecutors, while terrorist gangs in Europe and North Africa traffic in drugs and illegal aliens. Both crime syndicates and terrorist groups thrive in the same subterranean world of black markets and laundered money, relying on shifting networks and secret cells to accomplish their objectives. Both groups have similar needs: weapons, false documentation, and safe houses.
But some U.S. intelligence analysts see little evidence of this melding of forces. Marriages of convenience may exist, they say, but the key difference is one of motive: Terrorist groups are driven by politics and religion, while purely criminal groups have just one thing in mind--profit. Indeed, associating with terrorists, particularly since 9/11, can be very bad for business--and while crime syndicates may be parasitical, most do not want to kill their host.
What many intelligence analysts do see today, however, is terrorist organizations stealing whole chapters out of the criminal playbook--trafficking in narcotics, counterfeit goods, illegal aliens--and in the process converting their terrorist cells into criminal gangs.
The terrorist gang behind the train bombings in Madrid last year, for example, financed itself almost entirely with money earned from trafficking in hashish and ecstasy. Al Qaeda's affiliate in Southeast Asia, Jemaah Islamiyah, engages in bank robbery and credit card fraud; its 2002 Bali bombings were financed, in part, through jewelry store robberies that netted over 5 pounds of gold. In years past, many terrorist groups would have steered away from criminal activity, worried that such tactics might tarnish their image. But for hard-pressed jihadists, committing crimes against nonbelievers is increasingly seen as acceptable. As Abu Bakar Bashir, Jemaah Islamiyah's reputed spiritual head, reportedly said: "You can take their blood; then why not take their property?"
The implications are troubling because organized crime offers a means for terrorist groups to increase their survivability. A Stanford University study conducted after the 9/11 attacks looked at why some conflicts last so much longer than others. One key factor: crime. Out of 128 conflicts, the 17 in which insurgents relied heavily on "contraband finances" lasted on average 48 years--over five times as long as the rest. "If the criminal underworld can keep terrorist coffers flush," says Charles, the former State Department official, "we will continue to face an enemy that would otherwise run out of oxygen."
The growing reliance on crime stems from the end of the Cold War, when state sponsorship of terrorism largely faded along with communism, forcing groups to become much more self-sufficient. Accelerating the trend, analysts say, is the crackdown since 9/11 on fundraising by Islamic radicals from mosques and charities, which has pushed their operations further toward racketeering. "The bottom line is if you want to survive today as a terrorist, you probably have to support yourself," says Raphael Perl, a counterterrorism specialist at the Congressional Research Service. The drug trade, in particular, has proved irresistible for many. Nearly half of the 41 groups on the government's list of terrorist organizations are tied to narcotics trafficking, according to DEA statistics.
The new face of terrorism can best be seen in western Europe. "Crime is now the main source of cash for Islamic radicals in Europe," says attorney Lorenzo Vidino, author of the new book Al Qaeda in Europe. "They do not need to get money wired from abroad like 10 years ago. They're generating their own as criminal gangs." European police and intelligence officials agree: The Continent's most worrisome cells, composed largely of immigrants from Morocco and Algeria, have in effect become racketeering syndicates. Their scams are as varied as the criminal world: Drugs, smuggling, and fraud are mainstays, but others include car theft, selling pirated CD s, and counterfeiting money. One enterprising pair of jihadists in Germany hoped to fund a suicide mission to Iraq by taking out nearly $1 million in life insurance and staging the death of one in a faked traffic accident. Some cells are loosely bound and based on petty crime; others, like the group behind the Madrid bombings, suggest a whole new level of sophistication.
The terrorists behind the Madrid attacks were major drug dealers, with a network stretching from Morocco through Spain to Belgium and the Netherlands. Their ringleader, Jamal "El Chino" Ahmidan, was the brother of one of Morocco's top hashish traffickers. Ahmidan and his followers paid for their explosives by trading hashish and cash with a former miner. When police raided the home of one plotter, they seized 125,800 ecstasy tablets--one of the largest hauls in Spanish history. In all, authorities recovered nearly $2 million in drugs and cash from the group. In contrast, the Madrid bombings, which killed 191 people, cost only about $50,000.
Similar reports of drug-dealing jihadists are coming out of France and Italy. In Milan, Islamists peddle heroin on the streets at $20 a hit and then hand off 80 percent of the take to their cell leader, according to Italy's L'Espresso magazine. The relationship, surprisingly, is not new. As early as 1993, says Vidino, French authorities warned that dope sales in suburban Muslim slums had fallen under the control of gangs led by Afghan war veterans with ties to Algerian terrorists. What is new is the scale of this toxic mix of jihad and dope. Moroccan terrorists used drug sales to fund not only the 2004 Madrid attack but the 2003 attacks in Casablanca, killing 45, and attempted bombings of U.S. and British ships in Gibraltar in 2002. So large looms the North African connection that investigators believe jihadists have penetrated as much as a third of the $12.5 billion Moroccan hashish trade--the world's largest--a development worrisome not only for its big money but for its extensive smuggling routes through Europe.
Along with drug trafficking, fraud of every sort is a growth industry for European jihadists. Popular scams include fake credit cards, cellphone cloning, and identity theft--low-level frauds that are lucrative but seldom attract the concerted attention of authorities. Some operatives are more ambitious, however. Officials point to the case of Hassan Baouchi, a 23-year-old ATM technician in France. Baouchi told police last year that he'd been held hostage by robbers who forced him to empty six ATMs of their cash--about $1.3 million. Investigators didn't quite buy Baouchi's story and soon put him under arrest; the money, they believe, has ended up with the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group--the al Qaeda affiliate tied to the bombings in Casablanca and Madrid.
Another big racket for European jihadists is human smuggling. "North Africa and western Europe are somewhat like Mexico and the United States," says a U.S. counterterrorism agent. "But now imagine if Mexico were Muslim and jihadist cells were the ones moving aliens across the border." Jihadists do not dominate Europe's lucrative human smuggling trade, but they are surely profiting by it. Authorities in Italy suspect that one gang of suspected militants made over 30 landings on an island off Sicily, and that it moved thousands of people across the Mediterranean at some $4,000 a head. Particularly active is the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, an Algerian al Qaeda affiliate known by its French acronym, GSPC. Two years ago, German authorities dismantled another group moving Kurds into Europe, tied to al Qaeda ally Ansar al-Islam, a fixture of the Iraq insurgency. A recent Italian intelligence report notes that jihadists' work in human smuggling has brought them into contact with domestic and foreign criminal organizations. One partner in the trade, sources say, is the Neapolitan Camorra, the notorious Naples-based version of the Mafia, which operates safe houses for illegal aliens. Italian court records show contact between Mafia arms dealers and radical Islamists as early as 1998.
The prime training ground for Europe's jihadist criminals may well be prison. There are no hard numbers, but as much as half of France's prison population is now believed to be Muslim. In Spanish jails, where Islamic radicals have recruited for a decade, the number has reached some 10 percent. Ahmidan, leader of the Madrid bombing cell, is thought to have been radicalized while serving time in Spain and Morocco. Prison was also the recruiting center for many of the 40-plus suspects nabbed by Spanish authorities last year for plotting a sequel to the Madrid bombings--an attack with a half ton of explosives on Spain's national criminal court. Nearly half the group had rap sheets with charges ranging from drug trafficking to forgery and fraud.
Al Qaeda's leadership, however, has proved more wary about jumping into the drug trade. Holed up in the forbidding mountain refuges of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Osama bin Laden and his remaining lieutenants have steered clear of the largest horde of criminal wealth in years: the exploding Afghan heroin trade. Press reports of bin Laden's involvement in the drug trade are flat wrong, say counterterrorism officials. Long ago, al Qaeda strategists reasoned that drug trafficking would expose them to possible detection, captives have told U.S. interrogators. They also don't trust many of the big drug barons, intelligence officials say, and have encouraged their members not to get involved with them.
Bin Laden continues to come up with funds raised from sympathetic mosques and other supporters, but the money no longer flows so easily. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have banned unregulated fundraising at mosques, and western spy agencies now watch closely how the money flows from big Islamic charities. One result: Cash-strapped jihadists in the badlands of the border region are staging kidnappings-for-ransom and highway robberies, Pakistani officials tell U.S. News . "Those people are now feeling the pinch," says Javed Cheema, head of the Interior Ministry's National Crisis Management Cell. "We see a fertile symbiosis of terrorist organizations and crime groups." Some jihadists have joined in wholesale pillaging of Afghanistan's heritage by smuggling antiquities out of the country--a trade nearly as lucrative as narcotics. Among the items being sold clandestinely on the world market: centuries-old Buddhist art and other works from the pre-Islamic world. Apparently, al Qaeda's interest is not new; before 9/11, hijack ringleader Mohamed Atta approached a German art professor about peddling Afghan antiquities, Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office revealed this year. Atta's reason, reports Der Spiegel magazine: "to finance the purchase of an airplane."
Al Qaeda may be avoiding the heroin trade, but nearly everyone else in the region--from warlords to provincial governors to the Taliban--is not. The reasons are apparent: Afghanistan's opium trade is exploding. The cultivation of opium poppies, from which heroin is made, doubled from 2002 to 2003, according to CIA estimates. Then, last year, that amount tripled. Afghanistan now provides 87 percent of the world's heroin. "We have never seen anything like this before," says Charles, the former State Department narcotics chief. "No drug state ever made this much dope and so quickly." The narcotics industry now makes up as much as half of Afghanistan's gross domestic product, analysts estimate, and employs upward of 1 million laborers, from farmers to warehouse workers to truck drivers. And now Afghans are adding industrial-level amounts of marijuana to the mix. U.N. officials estimate that some 74,000 to 86,000 acres of pot are being grown in Afghanistan--over five times what is grown in Mexico.
And if al Qaeda itself is staying out of drugs, its allies certainly are not. The booming drug trade has given a strong second wind to the stubborn insurgency being waged by the Taliban and Islamist warlords like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Both the Taliban and Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami army control key smuggling routes out of the country, giving them the ability to levy taxes and protection fees on drug caravans. Crime and terrorism experts are also alarmed over the corrosive, long-term effects of all the drug money, not just within Afghanistan but across the region. The ballooning dope trade is rapidly creating narco-states in central Asia, destroying what little border control exists and making it easier for terrorist groups to operate. Ancient smuggling routes from the Silk Road to the Arabian Sea are being supercharged with tons of heroin and billions of narcodollars. Within Afghanistan, drug-fueled corruption is pervasive; governors, mayors, police, and military are all on the take. A raid this year in strategically located Helmand province came up with a whopping 9 1/2 tons of heroin--stashed inside the governor's own office.
The smuggling routes lead from landlocked Afghanistan to the south and east through Pakistan, to the west through Iraq, and to the north through central Asia. Throughout the region the amounts of drugs seized are jumping, along with rates of crime, drug addiction, and HIV infection. Particularly hard hit are Afghanistan's impoverished northern neighbors, the former Soviet republics of Kirgizstan and Tajikistan. Widely praised demonstrations in Kirgizstan this year, which overthrew the regime of strongman Askar Akayev, have brought to power an array of questionable figures. "Entire branches of government are being directed by individuals tied to organized crime," warns Svante Cornell of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University. "The whole revolution smells of opium."
Neighboring republics are little better off. Central Asia's major terrorist threat, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, has largely degenerated into a drug mafia, officials say. In Kazakhstan the interior minister tried to investigate corruption by going undercover in a truck packed with 9 tons of watermelons, motoring 1,200 miles from the Kirgiz Republic to the Kazakh capital. His team had to pay bribes to 36 different police and customs officials en route--some as little as $1.50. (Others merely accepted their bribe in melons.) The cargo was never inspected. What is happening in Iran, meanwhile, is "a national tragedy," according to the U.N.'s Costa. So much Afghan dope is being shipped into the country that it now has the world's highest per capita rate of addiction. The ruling mullahs in Tehran have taken it seriously; Iranian security forces have fought deadly battles with drug traffickers along their border, losing some 3,600 lives in the past 16 years. But even as their troops fight, the corruption has reached high officials of the Iranian government, who are using drug profits as political patronage, sources tell U.S. News. "There are indications," says Cornell, "that hard-line conservatives are up to their ears in the Afghan opium trade."
Nor has Russia escaped the heroin boom's impact. From central Asia, growing amounts of Afghan heroin are entering the south of the country; drug-control officials report that large numbers of Russian military are on the take, even trucking the stuff in army vehicles. The level of corruption has, in turn, raised concern over the ultimate black market: in radioactive materials. Russia's "nuclear belt"--a chain of nuclear research and weapons sites--runs directly along those heroin smuggling routes. How bad are conditions in the area? Bemoans one intelligence expert: "We know so little."
Iraq, too, is starting to see its share of narcotics, but drugs are but a bit player in an insurgency that has also blurred the lines between terrorism and organized crime. Within Iraq's lawless borders exists an unsavory criminal stew composed of home-grown gangsters, ex-Baathists, and jihadists. "Terrorists and insurgents are conducting a lot of criminal activities, extortion and kidnapping in particular, as a way to acquire revenues," Caleb Temple of the Defense Intelligence Agency testified to Congress this July. Among the biggest cash cows: The insurgents take part in the wholesale theft of much of Iraq's gasoline supply, earning millions of dollars in a thriving black market. Extortion and protection are also rife, and kidnapping for ransom has ballooned into a major industry, with up to 10 abductions a day. Among those targeted: politicians, professors, foreigners, and housewives. Those with political value may find they've been sold to militants.
The insurgents are also key players in the graft and corruption that have enveloped Iraq. So much foreign aid money has disappeared that two U.S. intelligence task forces are now investigating its diversion to the insurgency, U.S. News has learned. Western aid agencies, Islamic charities, and U.S. military supply programs all have been targeted, analysts believe. Occupation authorities cannot account for nearly $9 billion of oil revenues it had transferred to Iraqi government agencies between 2003 and 2004, according to an audit by a special U.S. inspector general set up by Congress. "Even if a little bit ends up in insurgent hands," says one official, "it doesn't take a lot to build a truck bomb." The implications are troubling: The insurgents may be using America's own foreign aid to fund the killing of U.S. troops.
Back at home, U.S. officials are looking warily at the growing rackets of terrorist groups overseas and voice concern that the trend will grow here. "We see a lot of individual pockets of it in the United States," says Joseph Billy, deputy chief of the FBI's counterterrorism division. "Left unchecked, it's very worrisome--this is one we have to be aggressive on." Federal investigators have uncovered repeated scams here largely involving supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah, and they have traced tens of thousands of dollars back to those groups in the Middle East. "There's a direct tie," says Billy. The list of crimes includes credit card fraud, identity theft, the sale of unlicensed T-shirts--even the theft and resale of infant formula. Most of these U.S. rackets have been low level, but some, involving cigarette smuggling and counterfeit products, have earned their organizers millions of dollars.
The big fish--the Indian mobsters, Moroccan hash dealers, and Afghan drug barons--are swimming overseas, however, and U.S. law enforcement is starting to train its sights on the worst of them. After being shut out of Afghanistan for two decades, the Drug Enforcement Administration is making progress in going after top Afghan traffickers tied to the Taliban. DEA agents are applying the same sort of "kingpin strategy" that helped to break the Medellin and Cali cartels in Colombia by targeting whole trafficking organizations. The agency has identified some 10 of these "high-value targets," led by Afghans who have amassed fortunes of as much as $100 million, officials say. Two already have fallen this year: In April, agents nabbed a man they've dubbed "the Pablo Escobar of Afghanistan," Taliban ally Bashir Noorzai, by enticing him to a New York meeting. Noorzai is said to have helped establish the modern Afghan drug trade, and so lucrative were his operations that the indictment against him calls for the seizure of $50 million in drug proceeds. Then in October, the Justice Department announced the extradition of Baz Mohammad, another alleged "Taliban-linked narcoterrorist," charged with conspiring to import over $25 million worth of heroin into the United States and other countries. Mohammad, according to an indictment, boasted that "selling heroin in the United States was a 'jihad' because they were taking the Americans' money at the same time the heroin was killing them." He is now awaiting trial, in a New York jail.
The DEA's experience, however, illustrates some of the problems in grappling with the nexus between organized crime and terrorism. Despite post-9/11 calls for cooperation, the DEA's ties to other U.S. agencies are often strained; the drug agency is not even considered part of the U.S. intelligence community. Pentagon officials, worried over "mission creep," routinely refuse to give DEA agents air support in Afghanistan. Other turf issues still plague the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, and other agencies, making collaborative work on the crime-terrorism issue problematic. The intelligence community, for example, remains leery of seeing its people or information end up in court. "It's the same wall we saw between law enforcement and the intelligence world," says one insider. "Only now it's between terrorism and other crimes."
"We have stovepiped battling terrorism and organized crime," agrees Charles, the State Department's former top cop. "You cannot meet a complex threat like this without a similar response. And we don't have one." Indeed, interviews with counterterrorism and law enforcement officials in a half-dozen federal agencies suggest that cooperation across the government remains episodic at best and depends most often on personal relationships. "The incentives are all still against sharing," complains one analyst. "The leadership says yes, the policies say yes, but the culture says no. The bureaucracy has won."
Washington looks like a model of cooperation compared with Europe, however, where the walls between agencies and across borders stand even higher. "If we don't get on top of the criminal aspect and the drug connections, we will lose ground in halting the spread of these [terrorist] organizations," warns Gen. James Jones, head of the U.S. European Command, who has watched the rise in terrorist rackets with mounting concern. "You have to have much greater cohesion and synergy."
For a brief moment in the early '90s, American cops, spies, and soldiers did come together on a common target of crime and terrorism--Pablo Escobar and his Medellin cocaine cartel. Escobar's killers were blamed for the murder of hundreds of Colombian officials and the bombing of an Avianca airliner that killed 110. To get Escobar, firewalls between agencies came down, information was shared, and money and people were focused on destroying one of the world's most powerful crime syndicates. During the 1990s, transnational crime continued to be seen as a national security priority, but it fell off the map after 9/11. Until January of this year, the federal government's chief interagency committee on organized crime hadn't even met for three years. The intelligence community's reporting on the area, although boosted in the past year, remains a near-bottom priority. One knowledgeable source called the quality of work overseas on crime "sorely lacking" and said the best material comes from other governments. Domestically, meanwhile, years of neglect by the FBI of analysis and information technology have left the agency without much useful information in its files. "Everyone thinks we've got huge databases with all our materials on organized crime," says one veteran. "We've got nothing close."
Still, the growing criminal inroads by terrorist groups have raised alarms among a handful of tough-minded policymakers in Washington, and they are pushing for change. The National Security Council has begun work on a new policy on transnational crime that promises to make the crime-terrorism connection a top priority. The CIA's Crime and Narcotics Center is spearheading the work of a dozen agencies in revamping the government's overall assessment of international crime; their report, with special attention to the nexus with terrorism, is scheduled for release early next year. One program that has caught U.S. attention is underway in Great Britain, where London's Metropolitan Police now routinely monitor low-level criminal activity for ties to terrorism, checking over reports of fraud involving banks, credit cards, and travel documents. Similar work is being done by the feds' Joint Terrorism Task Forces in some U.S. cities. And Immigration and Customs Enforcement has prioritized cracking rings smuggling people from high-risk countries, with good success.
In some ways, the deeper involvement by terrorists in traditional criminal activity may make it easier to track them. Criminal informants, who can be tempted with shortened prison time and money, are much easier to develop than the true believers who fill the ranks of terrorist groups. Acts of crime also attract attention and widen the chances that terrorists will make a mistake. Take, for example, a case uncovered this July, in which four men allegedly plotted to wage a jihad against some 20 targets in Southern California, including National Guard facilities, the Israeli Consulate, and several synagogues. Prosecutors said the planned attacks, led by the founder of a radical Islamic prison group, were being funded by a string of gas station robberies. The break in the case came not by an elite counterterrorist squad but by local cops who found a cellphone one of the robbers had lost during a gas station stickup.
Getting a handle on terrorism's growing criminal rackets will not prove easy, however. "Draining the swamp," as counterterrorism officials vow to do, may require more than even a seamless approach by intelligence and law enforcement can offer. Many of the worst groups owe their success to a pervasive criminality overseas, to failed states and no man's lands from Central Asia to North Africa to South America, where the rule of law remains an abstract concept. In other places, it is the governments themselves that are the criminal enterprises, so mired in corruption that entire countries could be indicted under U.S. antiracketeering laws. Together, they help make up a criminal economy that, like a parallel universe, runs beneath the legitimate world of commerce. This global shadow economy--of dirty money, criminal enterprises, and black markets--has annual revenues of up to $2 trillion, according to U.N. estimates, larger than the gross domestic product of all but a handful of countries. Without its underground bankers, smuggling routes, and fraudulent documents, al Qaeda and its violent brethren simply could not exist. But taking on a worldwide plague of crime and corruption might be more than the public bargained for. "Ultimately, cracking down means trying to impose order where there's instability, good governance where there's corruption and crime, and economic growth where there's poverty," says the University of Pittsburgh's Phil Williams, a consultant to the United Nations on crime and terrorism finance. "As long as the only routes of escape are violence and the black market, then organized crime and terrorism will endure as global problems."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/29/2005 03:01 ||
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#1
"The world is seeing the birth of a new hybrid of organized-crime-terrorist organizations. We are breaking new ground."
Bullshit! Twas always thus. Terrorists have always needed a steady cashflow to fund operations and that has been various rackets, unless of course you plug into EU and UN cash handouts like the PLA.
#2
Wait. You're saying there's a difference between the UN and organized crime?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
11/29/2005 7:37 Comments ||
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#3
Wait. You're saying there's a difference between the UN and organized crime?
Organized crime does not tolerate failure.
Posted by: Steve ||
11/29/2005 11:03 Comments ||
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#4
a soft-spoken, murderous businessman from Bombay who now lives in exile, sheltered by India's archenemy, Pakistan.
Now that Musharraf (literally) has his pants down in the snow, isn't it time to make sure there is some sort of house-cleaning in Pakistan? The outrageous and repeated attacks upon India need to be addressed. They are part and parcel of all the other terrorist activities in Kashmir and Waziristan. Pakistan is hurting badly right now after the quake. With its and the terrorists' infrastructure at low ebb, this would be the time to put a major hurt on them.
Those squawking about "how dare we hit them while they're down!" can form a line on the right.
#5
Engineered by Muslim extremists, the attacks were meant to exact revenge for deadly riots by Hindu fundamentalists that had claimed over a thousand lives, most of them Muslim
These reporters need to make up their minds.
First the bombings were revenge for demolition of a disused mosque build over the site of a hindu temple.
Now they are revenge for riots?
What about the recent bombings in Delhi? What were they in revenge for?
The jihadis need no excuse for their terror.
Posted by: john ||
11/29/2005 14:36 Comments ||
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How do we measure the progress being made in the War on Terrorism? That is the theme of a recent Congressional Research Service report prepared by CRS terrorism expert Raphael Perl. The report reflects concerns that we really have not developed the criteria necessary to judge the effectiveness of our anti-terrorism actions. Perl holds that in the absence of such criteria the Administration has simply measured progress retrospectively against what it has done. âAnd of course since we've done some stuff, we've made progressâŠ.â Rather than measure progress against agreed benchmarks, he says, the administration has cited statistics on kills, captures, and funds frozen. But, this does not mean that we actually know just how much damage has really been done to terrorism infrastructure, recruitment or financial support.
Charles Pena of the Cato Institute made similar point lasts year. He noted President Bush State of the Union claim that ânearly two-thirds of [al Qaeda's] known leadership have been captured or killed.â But, according to Pina, this is a misleading metric for gauging progress. Pina points out that âal Qaeda is not a centralized network that depends on its leaders.â Rather its cells or largely âorganicâ and can operate independently. Leaders are replaced as needed, and recruitment continues to rebuild its ranks. The fact is that each year, since 9/11 has seen an increase in terrorist violence, not a diminuation.
The same can be said for judging our progress in dealing with terrorism financing. The freezing of $150 â $200 million in bank accounts around the world really tells us quite little about the effect we are having on terrorism financing. Most of this money was frozen just after 9/11 and about 2/3rds of it had nothing really to do with al Qaeda. It was Afghan money subsequently returned to the Karsai government. These freezing actions had little effect in putting Al Qaedaâs identified financiers out of business. Youssef Nada, Ahmed Nasreddin, Yasin al-Kadi, Hamza Julaidan (to name only a few) are still out their managing portfolio investments. Nor have we effectively closed down the charities identified as channeling funds to al Qaeda. Many have simply reorganized under new names to accomplish the same ends. See for example by blogs on al Haramain and Lashka e Taiba.
Our success in dealing with terrorism has to be measured in inches, not miles. And we must be very cautious when claiming progress or success, least we begin to let down our guard. We have to recognize that the war on terrorism will be around for some time to come; and, to win, that we must place an even greater emphasis on countering and dismantleing the structures that finance and support the indoctrination and recruitment of new militant jihadiâs willing to sacrifice innocent lives in ways no legitimate religion should preach.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/29/2005 02:48 ||
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#1
He doesn't think # of kills,captures and funds seized are not accurate"benchmarks of progress.I wonder if he considers letters and other communiques whining and crying about insufficient numbers of recruits, lack of and poor quality of leadership.Plus Al Q begging Zargi for money are sufficent"benchmarks"?
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GENEVA - A yellow fever outbreak in Sudan has killed another 10 people, bringing the known toll to 131 deaths out of 530 cases in less than three weeks, the World Health Organisation said on Monday.
Egyptian police arrested 150 activists from the Muslim Brotherhood on Monday in areas where the opposition Islamist group will contest legislative elections this week, a police source said. The officially banned Brotherhood has made a strong showing in four days of voting held so far despite arrests of its activists and the blocking of polling stations in Islamist strongholds.
ALGIERS - The health of Algerian President 
Saudis returning from Iraqi will receive government assistance, according to the Kingdomâs Deputy Interior Minister 
Kremlin-backed candidates swept parliamentary elections in Chechnya, officials announced Monday, November 28, as European observers cast doubts over the vote. 
North Korea on Monday demanded compensation from the United States over a scuttled project to build two nuclear reactors in the communist nation under a 1994 agreement.
European countries and their Muslim neighbours vowed to unite in the fight against terrorism yesterday, but only after papering over a deep disagreement about who is a terrorist and who is a freedom fighter. Tony Blair, who was co-chairman of the Euromed summit in Barcelona, hailed the joint code of conduct on tackling terrorism as "a very important moment". The leaders of the European Union and Mediterranean countries agreed that "terrorism can never be justified", promised to "condemn terrorism in all its manifestations without qualification" and said they would refuse to give a safe haven to terrorism. 
The other good reason to prevent these enemies of the Iraqi people from attending the trial is that the trial is a national Iraqi one and not Qatari or American trial.
The Palestinian Authority has welcomed the flow of Iranian funds for Islamic projects. Senior PA officials have endorsed Iranian-funded charities in the Gaza Strip. These charities have been administered by Iranian-sponsored groups, such as Islamic Jihad, regarded as the most active insurgency organization against Israel.
A senior member of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's new party Kadima said the party will seek the creation of a demilitarised Palestinian state and keep Israeli control of occupied East Jerusalem. Presenting party plans ahead of March 28 parliamentary elections, Sharon confidante and current Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said the centrist Kadima Party would seek a "demilitarised Palestinian state not involved in terrorism." 
Israeli elder statesman 
