JALALABAD, Afghanistan - A car bomb killed at least six people and wounded 16 outside a mosque in eastern Afghanistan on Monday, but the apparent target, a provincial governor, was unhurt. The blast took place in the city of Jalalabad where thousands of people, including the governor of Ningarhar, Gul Afgha Sherzai, were gathered in front of the mosque. Sherzai escaped unhurt. I was the target and it was the work of Afghanistans enemies, he told Reuters, referring to a term usually used by Afghan officials for describing Taleban insurgents and their al Qaeda allies.
The people had gathered in the mosque to attend a prayer ceremony for Maulvi Younis Khalis, a mujahideen commander who died last week. The car followed Sherzais convoy as he was returning after the ceremony. His four guards and two men in the car in police uniforms were killed in the blast, security officials said. However, it was not immediately clear whether it was suicide attack or the car bomb was triggered remotely.
There was no immediate comment from the Taleban who have stepped up attacks against the Afghan government and foreign forces in recent months, mostly in southern and eastern Afghanistan. The blast took place hours after NATO forces took charge of security from U.S.-led coalition forces in the volatile south.
Posted by: Steve ||
07/31/2006 08:47 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
#2
Anyone know how long this NATO expansion was planned and if we are reducing our troop count there? Timing of this seems interesting as we approach Iran's nuclear announcemnt.
The trial of Uzbek Muslim cleric Rukhiddin Fakhrutdinov is scheduled to start in Tashkent city court today. Fakhrutdinov faces a number of charges, including terrorism and religious extremism.
Fakhrutdinov fled Uzbekistan after a series of bombings in Tashkent and Bukhara in 2004 that were blamed by authorities on religious extremists. He was detained in Shymkent, Kazakhstan, last year and forcibly returned to Uzbekistan.
In a statement released on July 28, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Fakhrutdinov had been abducted by Kazakh security agents, who "have yet to acknowledge any role in Fakhrutdinov's transfer to Uzbekistan." HRW also expressed concern about Fakhrutdinov's right to a fair trial. The group says Fakhrutdinov was denied access to his attorney of choice for two months after his return to Uzbekistan and that he had indicated to his lawyer that he had been beaten while in Uzbek custody.
HRW says Fakhrutdinov is one of about 80 Uzbek nationals who fled to Kazakhstan to escape religious persecution. It says they have faced harassment, surveillance, and the threat of forced return.
WASHINGTON -- The prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay during the war on terror have attacked their military guards hundreds of times, turning broken toilet parts, utensils, radios and even a bloody lizard tail into makeshift weapons, Pentagon reports say.
Incident reports reviewed by The Associated Press indicate Military Police guards are routinely head-butted, spat upon and doused by "cocktails" of feces, urine, vomit and sperm collected in meal cups by the prisoners.
They've been repeatedly grabbed, punched or assaulted by prisoners who reach through the small "bean holes" used to deliver food and blankets through cell doors, the reports say. Serious assaults requiring medical attention, however, are rare, the reports indicate.
The detainee "reached under the face mask of an IRF (Initial Reaction Force) team member's helmet and scratched his face, attempting to gouge his eyes," states a May 27, 2005, report on an effort to remove a recalcitrant prisoner from his cell.
"The IRF team member received scratches to his face and eye socket area," the report said.
Since its creation in early 2002, the U.S. detention camp on Cuba's coast has been a controversial symbol of the Bush administration's war on terror, bringing allegations of prisoner mistreatment, debates over civil rights and a landmark legal battle to win rights for the detainees.
At one point, more than 600 foreign men captured in the war on terror were kept there. Many have been released to their home countries, reducing the current population to about 450. Ten detainees have been accused of war crimes, but no one has been tried.
The Supreme Court has ruled that the men are entitled to lawyers and access to the courts and that the administration's original plan to give them justice through military tribunals was illegal.
Guards currently stationed at Guantanamo describe a tense atmosphere in which prisoners often orchestrate violence in hopes of unnerving their captors, especially with attacks using bodily fluids.
"I mean, seeing a human being act that way, it's terrifying. ... You are constantly watching before you take your next step to see if something is about to happen," Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Mack D. Keen told AP in an interview from Guantanamo.
"You see little signs. They kind of show their hand every once in a while. They'll take their Quran and they'll cover it up," he said. "When you see a group of detainees taking their Quran and putting it away, you know something is about to happen."
Moazamm Begg, 38, a prisoner for more than two years at Guantanamo before being released to Great Britain, said he was suspicious of the Pentagon's description of incidents, especially allegations that Muslim men tore their Qurans or used sperm in attacks. The Pentagon continues to publicly question Begg's claim of innocence. But, the WaPo would never question a detainee's motivation.
"This just doesn't make sense _ especially since for Muslims this would be something that was disgusting, something that just wouldn't be done," he said. He added that some detainees told him they had mixed toothpaste and spit in the cocktails to make it look like semen. mooslimbs would never do anything like that! After all, we are members of the 'religion of pieces'.
Begg, who has written a book and spoken frequently about his experience, said most incidents he witnessed were spontaneous reactions "when word spread" among prisoners that a guard had done something wrong.
"I rarely saw lone prisoners acting out on their own for no reason except if they had some sort of mental illness or if they were on medication," he said.
Nonetheless, the incident reports released under the Freedom of Information Act and reviewed by AP, provide a rare chronicle of events inside the prison from the guards' perspective.
Entire wings of prisoners were reported to become riotous after complaints emerged that guards mishandled a Quran or mistreated prisoners. On two occasions, however, prisoners themselves were reported to have destroyed their Muslim holy books, the reports state.
"Detainee residing in cell (redacted) block tore his Quran into small pieces," a guard reported in May 2003. A month later, a prisoner "did intentionally destroy his Quran and throw (it) out of his cell," another report stated.
The reports detail more than 440 incidents between guards and prisoners from December 2002 through summer 2005 that resulted in recommendations of discipline, an average of about three per week. The names of guards and prisoners as well as the final discipline were blacked out by the Pentagon.
Often, guards went weeks without reporting problems; other times incidents were bunched together during times of frustration and tension.
For instance, nearly a quarter of the incidents occurred in July 2005, the month dozens of detainees started an extended hunger strike.
Tensions likewise flared during Christmas week 2004, with inmates frequently spitting on guards. On Christmas Eve, a prisoner who was angry that he couldn't finish his meal was said to have used a plastic fork-spoon utensil _ called a spork _ to attack a guard collecting his tray.
"Detainee stabbed the MP guard ... in the hand with his spork from chow meal," the report said, adding the prisoner later "made a slicing motion across his neck" and vowed to kill the guard.
With many nearing five years in U.S. captivity, the prisoners "have a Ph.D. in being a detainee" and "know our procedures and they try to turn them against us and try to make us question what we are doing," said Army Lt. Col. Michael J. Nicolucci, the prison's executive officer.
"They'll take the smallest things, be it a piece of rust," he said. "They told us they are going to take that piece of rust and they are going for the jugular, they are going for the eye. They know what our vulnerabilities are, anatomically speaking."
Meal plates, shower flip-flops, cleaning brushes and other items deemed harmless in civilian life also are commonly turned into weapons, the reports said. For instance:
_"Detainee in cell (redacted) grabbed the radio from an MP and then threw the radio at the MP. The detainee then threw rocks at the MP," a Dec. 23, 2003, incident report stated.
_A detainee "reached out of his bean hole and attacked MP (name redacted) with a piece of metal foot pad from toilet striking him on the left hip area," a July 15, 2005, report said.
_"Detainee broke off the top of his sink, subsequently broke out the window then began throwing the sink and pieces of pipes at the Block Guard," a March 25, 2005, report said.
One of the most unusual incidents detailed in the four-inch stack of incident reports occurred when a detainee in the prison recreation yard assaulted a guard with a bloody tail torn from a lizard.
The detainee "caught the iguana by the tail at which time the tail detached," the May 2005 report described. When the guard turned to talk to a commanding officer, "he felt something strike him in the lower right back" and then "saw the tail on the ground at his feet and blood was in the same area of his uniform." The detainee said he was "just playing."
Nicolucci said one of the most serious incidents occurred this May, too recent to be recorded in the Pentagon's released reports. A prisoner staged an apparent suicide attempt while his inmates slicked the floors with human waste, seeking to overpower guards when they slipped, he said.
"We provide fans in order to keep them cool," Nicolucci recalled. "And they were using the basket, or the grate of the fan as a shield, the blades as machetes, the pole as a battering ram."
That disturbance was turned back in a few minutes with some guards and prisoners sustaining minor injuries, he said.
The Landmark Legal Foundation, a conservative legal group that fought to force the Pentagon to release the reports under the Freedom of Information Act, said it hopes the information brings balance to the Guantanamo debate.
"Lawyers for the detainees have done a great job painting their clients as innocent victims of U.S. abuse when the fact is that these detainees, as a group, are barbaric and extremely dangerous," Landmark President Mark Levin said. "They are using their terrorist training on the battlefield to abuse our guards and manipulate our Congress and our court system."
Though all detainees are foreigners, many are clearly Americanized when it comes to their insults and gestures. Male guards are frequently derided as "donkeys" while female guards are routinely called "bitches" or harassed by references to their breasts or genitalia, the reports said. Respecting women is a key part of Islam, no?
In all, nearly a quarter of incidents involved female guards, the reports show.
"They absolutely target female guards," Nicolucci said. "They have a lot of cultural biases about females, and we let them know in our culture that females do everything males do in a professional job environment, and we just hold firm."
James A. Gondles Jr., executive director of the American Correctional Association that sets standards for U.S. prisons, said much behavior inside Guantanamo mirrors that of civilian prisons though the attacks with bodily fluids seem more numerous.
"It happens from time to time at facilities here, but it seems the majority of ... assaults at Gitmo were either spitting, or bodily fluids being thrown on the guards," said Gondles, who has visited Guantanamo twice at the Pentagon's invitation and reviewed the reports at AP's request.
The bodily fluid attacks are so numerous that guards now frequently wear specialized shields to protect their faces.
The incident reports show waves of orchestrated behavior.
For instance, prisoners repeatedly grabbed their guards' whistles over a five-day period in June 2004. In July 2005, guards reported several instances of rock throwing, spitting and flip-flop hitting. Rocks were hidden under shower mats, the reports said.
The incident reports also are noteworthy for information that is missing. With redacted names, it is impossible to tell whether bad behavior is widespread or the work of a few repeat offenders. Likewise, the documents don't tell whether certain guards are prone to confrontation.
Prisoners' hunger strikes, suicide attempts and threats to injure themselves aren't considered disciplinary matters and thus aren't recorded in the incident reports. Yet the Pentagon acknowledges there have been scores of such incidents.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a prisoner of war during Vietnam, said the treatment of the guards has been overshadowed by the legal and political debates surrounding the detainees, but he has been impressed with the guards' professionalism.
"Our personnel there have perhaps the most difficult task you can have in the military outside of being in a combat zone. ... These are bad guys and some of the most hardened of hardened criminals. And some I think will need to be kept permanently," he said.
McCain said the detainees' behavior and the likelihood of permanent confinement only hastens the need for the administration and Congress to finalize detention and trial policies consistent with the Supreme Court's direction.
While Washington addresses those questions, the guards look to stay one step ahead of the detainees.
"Yes, you do get upset but you get somebody to take your place," Keen said in explaining how he survives the tensions of the cell block. "You go outside. You walk it off and you come back and (say) I want to be back in the fight." The lesson is: Never take prisoners.
The interrogation of a 32-year-old engineering dropout, Faisal Sheikh, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT)'s western India commander, arrested for his alleged role in the 11/7 blasts, established that the outfit's city module was being funded by its Pakistan-based leadership through hawala channels.
Investigation also revealed links between the LeT's local module, under Faisal's direct command, with the Kashmir based modules of the outfit.
According to Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS)'s chief joint police commissioner K.P. Raghuvanshi, Faisal told his interrogators that he had received 25,000 Rials (Saudi Arabian currency) barely a few days before the 11/7 blasts from Pakistan and 12,000 Rials - through the same channel - just after the blasts. The total sum - 37,000 Rials - is worth Rs. 4.4 lakh.
"The recovery of the money - from Pune and Mumbai - sent to Faisal is an important circumstantial evidence that would help the sleuths zero in on the perpetrators," Raghuvanshi said. The money, according to ATS and Mumbai crime branch officials, was sent to Faisal by LeT's India commander Azam Cheema.
Cheema sent the money through hawala channels to a conduit Rizwan, from Pune. Rizwan befriended Faisal, who also stayed in the city with his family and was pursuing a course in Industrial Electronics at Eklavya College few years ago. Rizwan, in turn, re-routed the money to Faisal. Faisal's brother, Muzammil(22), a software engineer with a global software giant in Bangalore, has also been arrested for his alleged role.
Another brother, computer engineer Rahil is based in UK. Investigations have also revealed that LeT's top commander Raheel Abdul Sheikh, the alleged mastermind of the 11/7 blasts, had visited Kashmir's border towns twice before the blasts. During one such visit, Raheel, said a senior CB officer, had spent "two months" in the border areas, trying to cross over to Pakistan.
The police suspect Raheel was one of the 11/7 plotters along with LeT's Mumbai, Bangladesh and Nepal modules.
Posted by: john ||
07/31/2006 20:30 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
QUETTA: Three more commanders of tribal chief Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti on Sunday surrendered to the government, vowing to cooperate with Islamabad until the Nawab's ouster from Dera Bugti and the establishment of government writ in the area, government sources said.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
QUETTA: Three soldiers were killed and another two were seriously injured when their vehicle hit a landmine in the tense Marri tribal area of Kahan on Sunday. Sources said that the soldiers were travelling in Karmu Wad in Kahan when their vehicle hit a landmine, killing three of them instantly. The injured soldiers were admitted to a hospital. No militant group has accepted responsibility as yet.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
Good work, lads. This article is a local paper showing some pride in their citizens' accomplishments.
A series of audacious raids by soldiers from Northamptonshire resulted in the capture of the most wanted terrorist in southern Iraq. Soldiers from C Company, made up of many county-based recruits, some as young as 18, were deployed on to the streets of Basra to search and arrest a notorious militiaman responsible for countless attacks on peace-keeping troops in the country's second city.
Their 2nd Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment, which recruits from the county, are half-way through a seven-month deployment in Iraq. Nicknamed The Poachers, they are part of 20th Armoured Brigade with some 8,000 British troops stationed in southern Iraq.
In perhaps the greatest breakthrough in recent months, The Poachers led two daring operations, arresting terrorist Sajid Badir, leader of the Shiite-based Mahdi Army, who are loyal to the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. He was believed to be responsible for a number of terrorist attacks on British troops and had been on their wanted list for a long while. Highlighting the dangers of their work, a colleague from the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment was killed in clashes with gunmen during the operation. And the following day, C Company was scrambled again to an area of the city where terrorists had launched retaliatory mortar attacks. Three people were arrested and more than two tons of weapons and explosives were seized.
In what is thought to have been the largest seizure since British troops have been based in southern Iraq, the haul included a range of deadly weapons.
Special forces soldiers had blasted a hole in the wall for the Royal Anglians to enter the building and make the arrests. The sheer scale of the cache took the soldiers by surprise. The weapons were made safe and catalogued, which meant the raid ran into dangerous daylight hours. Once word got round in Basra, The Poachers came under attack themselves. The Royal Anglians received incoming fire from rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds and small arms as they dealt with suspects and the explosives. Once The Poachers returned fire supported by Warrior armoured personnel carriers, they returned to base. As one soldier put it: "When The Warriors (armoured personnel carriers] opened up with their chain guns, there wasn't much left of the building from where they were firing at us from."
The haul included home-made rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, pistols, hand grenades, mortars, fuses, rockets, timers, charges, mines and mobile phone detonators, as well as important intelligence documents. There was also a number of IEDs improvised explosive devices made to look like rocks which are left by the roads patrolled by British troops. An attack with one of these weapons, claimed the lives of two members of C Company early on in their tour of Basra. Privates Adam Morris, 19, from Leicester, and Joseva Lewaicei, 25, from Fiji, died on May 13 when a device exploded near their armoured Land Rover while they were on a routine patrol outside Basra. The riflemen, from the 2nd Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment, died from their injuries in the blast from what was thought to be a roadside IED.
Despite the dangers and being on constant 30-minute alert to move, the recruits of C Company still believe they have what could be considered one of the best jobs in Basra. As reserve company for 20th Armoured Brigade, they are frequently called upon to arrest and search for terrorist cells. Lt Colonel Des O'Driscoll, aged 42, is the commanding officers of the five companies and up to 600 recruits of the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Anglian Regiment, who are currently working with forces from the multi-national division. He said: "We've had some important successes. I'm delighted for them as it's great they have one of the key jobs in the battalion. "They are one of the main companies involved in dedicated operations to search and arrest anti-Iraqi forces and terrorists in Basra."
The operation's success was sadly marred by the death of Corporal John Johnston Cosby, 27, of the Devonshire and Dorset Light Infantry. He had been working alongside the Royal Anglians to "apprehend the key terrorist leader and accomplice" when he was shot dead. His death brought the total of British soldiers killed to 114. Basra is Iraq's second city, predominantly Sunni, and is vital to rebuilding the country due to its oil reserves and deep water port at Um Quasar.
#1
Article: An attack with one of these weapons, claimed the lives of two members of C Company early on in their tour of Basra. Privates Adam Morris, 19, from Leicester, and Joseva Lewaicei, 25, from Fiji, died on May 13 when a device exploded near their armoured Land Rover while they were on a routine patrol outside Basra. The riflemen, from the 2nd Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment, died from their injuries in the blast from what was thought to be a roadside IED.
I sure hope they were wearing body armor and helmets instead of just berets when they were hit.
#3
I don't read British newspapers often, but it seems when their doing 1st hand accounts of their squadies the coverage is always positive (if a wee bit breathless).
#4
Good work, but shouldn't have taken him prisoner. An unfortunate work accident should've taken place. I'm waiting on somebody at the civilian leadership to grow some big ones and make the call to "off," Moqtada "Crest Whitestrips" al-Sadr.
The trial court found Abd-AL-Rahman Shakh Ru Dinor guilty of illegal border crossing, in violation of Article 24 of the Foreigner Resident Law, and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Coalition forces apprehended the defendant after he illegally entered Iraq from Iran.
The trial court found Hussein Awadh Hussein Awwad guilty of illegal border crossing, in violation of Article 10 of the Iraqi Passport Laws, and sentenced him to 15 years imprisonment. Coalition forces apprehended the Libyan national after it was discovered he did not have a passport. They take their immigration violations seriously!
The trial court found Mohammed Hamdan Hussein guilty of possession of illegal weapons, in violation of Coalition Provisional Authority Order 3, and sentenced him to six years imprisonment. Coalition forces apprehended the defendant after a search of his house revealed two AK-47s, one RPG launcher and several RPG rockets. On the other hand, maybe they could learn something from our BATF.
#1
To date, the CCCI has held 1,318 trials of insurgents suspected of anti-Iraqi and anti-Coalition activities threatening the security of Iraq and targeting Multi-National Force-Iraq. These proceedings have resulted in 1,128 individual convictions with sentences ranging up to death.
Mebbe this should be a regular feature?
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/31/2006 11:24 Comments ||
Top||
...During a large-scale attack on Easter Sunday, Wilson says, he spotted six gunmen on a rooftop about 400 yards away. In about 8 seconds he squeezed off five rounds hitting five gunmen in the head. The sixth man dived off a 3-story building just as Wilson got him in his sights, and counts as a probable death...
Technically, Wilson is not a sniper he's an infantryman who also patrols through the span of destroyed buildings that make up downtown Ramadi. But as his unit's designated marksman, he has a sniper rifle.
Does that mean he didn't do the formal Marine sniper training, but he's still the designated marksman because he's a dead-eye? Is that a distinction without a difference?
#8
Last haji dived off the building to avoid being Martyred(Tm), after watching the heads of his buddies being punctured in rapid succession leading to him?
But... I thought they loved death more than we love life?!?!? That's so confusing!
Obviously, you just can't please some people, even if you try your best.
#9
Mark E, I'm a Carlos Hathcock fan myself. Great read and I could live with a fictional version (hint to good writers). A sniper has to have the patience to wait for days while bugs bite him, and rain, sun, and every possible inconvenience nibble at his endurance. And, even after that, he has to outthink his target. Focus, focus, focus.
Hathcock was great because he loved to 'play' soldier, and also because he held the marine corps in the highest regard and each marines life in high esteem.
#10
Indeed.... his story is so good as to make for bad cinema; sniping guy at 2500 yards with a 50 cal with a scope on it, sniping the guy through the other guy's scope, the NVA general, scope zeroed at 700 yrds, his amazing drive and patriotism, etc.
Posted by: Mark E. ||
07/31/2006 14:00 Comments ||
Top||
#11
He's not using a .50 Cal. Most likely an M-14 with a scope. The M-14 is still one of the best sniping rifles you can use for "common" units.
Most sniper teams use 30.6 Remingtons. Only Special OPS and EOD teams use the Barret .50 Cal.
The reason I bring this difference up is that it highlights this Marines' skill. Hitting a target with an M-14 at that range is worth acolades.
#13
X, a lot of Marine grunt battalions usually come w/a sniper platoon located either in the H&S company or in the Weapons Company - they are usually called STA Platoon (Surveillance & Target Acquisition pronounced "Stay"). "Scout Snipers" (their full name) are at a premium and a lot of times the regular line companies will cross train their own riflemen in sniping tactics. A lot of these grunts are not "school trained" snipers per se, although the resident battalion snipers will teach the regular line grunts some things. I had the good fortune to do some minor training w/our battalion snipers a long time ago. Talk about fun. Anyways the "scout" part is often more important as they are normally the eyes and ears forward for the battalion commander. BTW - Hathcock was one bad mofo. Some of his exploits were copied in the movie "Sniper" w/Tom Berrenger.
#14
"As a result of his skill Sergeant Hathcock was twice recruited for covert assignments. One of the them was to kill a Frenchman who was working for the North Vietnamese as an interrogator. This individual was torturing American airmen who had been shot down and captured. One round from Carlos' modified Winchester Model 70 ended the Frenchman's career. On another occasion Sergeant Hathcock accepted an assignment for which he was plainly told that his odds for survival were slim. A North Vietnamese general was the target, and the man died when a bullet fired by Carlos struck him from a range of 800 yards. Hathcock returned to Hill 55 unscathed. In one incredible incident an enemy sniper was killed after a prolonged game of "cat and mouse" between Carlos, with his spotter, and the NVA sniper. The fatal round, fired at 500 yards by Hathcock, passed directly through the NVA sniper's rifle scope, striking him in the eye.
Hathcock would eventually be credited with 93 enemy confirmed killed, including one Viet Cong shot dead by a round fired from a scope-mounted Browning M-2 .50 caliber machine gun at the unbelievable range of 2500 yards."
BAGHDAD, July 30 -- Gunmen killed at least 23 Iraqis on Sunday on a highway south of Baghdad, commandeering three minibuses and herding their occupants into nearby palm groves, where they were lined up and shot, according to police and a witness.
The ambush occurred about 10 miles south of Baghdad where two major highways intersect near the town of al-Rasheed. The witness, Mohammed Mohan al-Janabi, said at least 15 masked gunmen positioned themselves Sunday morning on both sides of the expressway that links western and southern Iraq. "We knew they wanted to kidnap or kill someone or even hit the American convoys that come to this part of the road, because it is really bumpy and drivers have to slow down" to about 12 mph, said Janabi, 43, a teacher.
...the attackers took their identification cards and lined them up against the palm trees and shot them all...
The gunmen stopped three minibuses that were traveling together, Janabi said. The passengers and drivers were taken into one of the groves of palm trees lining the highway, where the attackers took their identification cards "and lined them up against the palm trees and shot them all," said Janabi, who lives about 500 yards from the expressway.
I thought most men in Iraq were armed. Even if the pilgrims didn't bring the family AK on vacation, shouldn't the drivers be packing heat? If a bunch of gunmen try to stop and off-load a bus, that should the time to put the pedal to the metal and whip out a rod.
The three Kia minibuses were carrying pilgrims to the Shiite holy city of Najaf, 90 miles south of Baghdad, said police Capt. Nadhim Jassim, who is in charge of Interior Ministry checkpoints around nearby Mahmudiyah.
The bodies of 23 victims of the ambush have been counted so far, according to a hospital worker in Mahmudiyah, who spoke on condition of anonymity, adding that there may be more. Other victims may have been taken to hospitals in Baghdad, the source said.
The roads connecting Baghdad with Najaf and two other Shiite holy cities, Karbala and Kut, traverse a region known as the Triangle of Death, where kidnappings, killings and robberies have been rampant for about two years. The area is populated by a volatile mix of Shiites and Sunnis, and sectarian tensions are invariably high, but the violence there has been blamed as much on criminal gangs as on religious or political factions.
Sounds like a job for an Iraqi police unit to fix once and for all.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/31/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Lions of IslamTM attacking unarmed civilians...again. The only people these wankers can handle without a car bomb or homicide explosive vest.
#2
Me thinks the "Lions of Islam" are a bunch of limp weenied sissie boys afraid of real battle and real conflict.
I thought you had to die in battle or kill in battle to be heaven bound in their sphere of theology?
I guess not.
Seems wanton rape, murder and indiscriminate blood shed are acceptable ways to earn eternal life.
I tend to think some parts of the Quran are being interpreted by a bunch of woman hating pedophiles who get off on killing the innocent.
KIRKUK: Insurgents detonated a car bomb on Sunday in a protected enclave housing the US and British consulates in Iraqs oil city of Kirkuk in the latest in a string of deadly blasts, security sources said. City leaders described the two-month-old bombing campaign as the work of Islamist extremists bent on terrorising the population and fomenting civil strife in the ethnically and religiously mixed city.
The blast, which killed two and wounded six, came overnight beside a row of shops in the previously untouched Arafa Naftiya area, a predominantly Christian neighbourhood containing the headquarters of the Northern Oil Company and foreign consulates. The terrorists are no longer targeting police, army, US forces, or political leaders, but are now going after gatherings of civilians to spread fear and hatred in the souls of the innocent, Rizgar Ali, chairman of the provincial council, told AFP. We are studying measures to control the deteriorating security situation with local elected leaders, said Ali.
Kirkuk police chief Major General Shirku Shakr Hakim told AFP the Sunni extremist Ansar al-Sunna and Al Qaeda in Iraq organisations were believed to be mainly responsible for the attacks. Kirkuk is being targeted because of its oil and its mix of ethnicities and religions that have been living in peace for dozens of years, he said. In other violence around the country, a police patrol in Hilla, 120 kilometres south of Baghdad, was targeted by a roadside bomb that killed two civilians and wounded 10 others.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
A US plane launched an air strike Sunday against a building used by al-Qaida in Iraq, killing two operatives, the US military said. Four suspects were detained after the air attack, which took place southwest of Baghdad against extremists who had been staging mortar attacks on civilians, a US statement said. US troops tracked the operatives to a building and "coalition aircraft successfully executed the strike," the statement said.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
Israeli air force Monday bombs Hizballah battery at Taibe, NW of Metulah shortly after it fired 2 Katyusha rockets at Kiryat Shemona. No casualties
This was the first air strike since 0200 when Israels 48-hour suspension of air strikes went into force. Exception was made for targets posing any immediate threat or transporting weapons supplies. Kiryat Shemona sustained a record 100 hits Sunday. Taibe is one of the three villages where 6 Israeli soldiers were injured, 4 Hizballah killed, in a ground operation to destroy Hizballah firing positions.
Aircraft and helicopter cover was also provided Israeli ground forces fighting Hizballah in those three villages. Another contingent of Israeli armored infantry and tanks is heading into the Eastern Sector of south Lebanon along the road from Metullah to al Khiam.
(IsraelNN.com) Israel Air Force fighter pilots have been prevented from carrying out air strikes on Hizbullah terror targets in Lebanon for the next two days, but that has not stopped them from providing air cover for Israeli ground operations. IAF warplanes fired warning shots on Tuesday as IDF ground forces continued to operate in the village of Tayibeh, another HIzbullah stronghold. IAF aircraft will continue to provide cover for IDF forces as they continue their mission to end rocket attacks on northern Israeli communities from south Lebanese territory.
Posted by: Steve ||
07/31/2006 08:39 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Exception was made for targets posing any immediate threat or transporting weapons supplies.
That little tidbit seems to have gotten dropped from most media reports about the 'air-strike halt'.
#2
In other words, it's a "halt" that isn't a halt. In fact, one might call it a minor change in the rules of engagement.
Posted by: Mike ||
07/31/2006 9:45 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Now that's interesting! I was just reflecting that a "cease-fire" in that region means Israel is ceasing fire. You always see headlines like, "Hezbollah attack threatens fragile cease-fire." Not breaks -- threatens. The cease-fire is only broken when Israel hits back. I'm surprised the media has missed this opportunity.
#7
You wonder if the IDF is taking a page from the Iranians. They keep this up and we'll start having to use the 'minuet' and 'groundhog day' graphics when talking about Israeli 'ceasefires'.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/31/2006 11:00 Comments ||
Top||
#8
I hope the Israelis are learning the Principals of Counterbattery fire without the use of air.
Click on the title to follow the link to the full article if you want to view the videos and other links, but in any case check out my hopefully not nutcase theory highlighted below.
(VIDEO) IDF continuing to check difficult incident at Qana village, and attempting to account for strange gap between time of the strike on the building midnight and eight in the morning, when the building collapsed - Hanan Greenberg
VIDEO - An IDF investigation has found that the building in Qana struck by the Air Force fell around eight hours after being hit by the IDF.
"The attack on the structure in the Qana village took place between midnight and one in the morning. The gap between the timing of the collapse of the building and the time of the strike on it is unclear," Brigadier General Amir Eshel, Head of the Air Force Headquarters told journalists at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, following the incidents at Qana.
Rockets being fired from Qana village (Video: IDF Spokesperson Unit)
Eshel and the head of the IDF's Operational Branch, Major General Gadi Eisnkot said the structure was not being attacked when it collapsed, at around 8:00 in the morning.
The IDF believes that Hizbullah explosives in the building were behind the explosion that caused the collapse.
Another possibility is that the rickety building remained standing for a few hours, but eventually collapsed. "It could be that inside the building, things that could eventually cause an explosion were being housed, things that we could not blow up in the attack, and maybe remained there, Brigadier General Eshel said.
Rescue operations in Qana (Photo: Reuters)
"I'm saying this very carefully, because at this time I don't have a clue as to what the explanation could be for this gap," he added.
Meanwhile in Lebanon it is being reported that the number of those killed in the collapse of the structure climbed to 60.
My ideas:
The building didn't look all that damaged and people reentered it either to go about their lives or because they wanted to use it for shelter against the nearby attacks. Two things could have then happened:
1) Nearby attacks may have collapsed the already weakened buiding.
2) Hezb'Allah collapsed the building once people were inside.
Under normal circumstances, there should have been witnesses who would have seen any obvious activity by Hezb'Allah to collapse the building. In this case, people may have been too busy sheltering, or Hezb'Allah pre-wired the building before firing rockets from nearby hoping for just such an incident to develop. Any demolition explosions could be accounted for in the minds of residents by blaming Israeli bombing. In any case, if witnesses said an explosion coincided with the collapse of the building at a time other than when the IAF was dropping bombs, that may well explain the whole thing as a Hezb'Allah setup. If there was an Israeli attack just 30 minutes prior to the building collapsing, the timing would be about right for Hezb'Allah to pull this off. Even if people wanted to leave the building, they could just tell them to stay inside a little longer because another attack was imminent, then level the building.
Or it could be that Israel just bombed the building with a bunch of civilians inside.
In both cases, residents must have been aware of the rockets firing from behind the building. Not much sympathy for Hezb'Allah or the locals if this is the case.
I haven't yet seen much in the way of the details on how this unfolded, but it will be interesting if it fits the theory that Hezb'Allah dunnit.
Please post details that could confirm or deny this!
This could be devastating to Hezb'Allah if seems that they did it.
All targets struck accurately
Eshel said that an additional attack took place at 7:30 in the morning, but added that other buildings were targeted. "This was an attack on three buildings 460 meters away from the structure we are talking about. Four bombs were dropped and all of them are documented by the planes' cameras. They all struck their targets. In addition, we carried out a filming sortie that photographed the village during the afternoon showing that the three targeted buildings we struck. We have verification of strikes on the building and that the bombs reached their targets," Eshel said.
"An attack that took place at two in the morning struck two targets, both of them 400 meters away from the building (that collapsed). They were also destroyed. The attack between 12 and 1 a.m. struck the area of the affected house, and there were accurate strikes on the target. We are asking the question what happened between 1 in the morning and 8 in the morning we understand this building was attacked between 12 and 1 in the morning, seven hours before it was seriously damaged," he said.
Brigadier General Eshel explained that "since the start of fighting in Lebanon 150 rockets from a very high number of rocket launchers have been fired from the village and its surrounding areas, at a number of sites in the State of Israel. Within the village itself we have located a diverse range of activities connected to firing of rockets, beginning from forces commanding this operation because such an operation needs ongoing command to direct it and logistical sites that serve this end."
"From this village rockets are fired almost every day across Israel. The operation carried out overnight is an extension of operations that didn't start last night but before, and during this night we struck a number of targets in the village. All of the targets are being meticulously sifted," Eshel added.
#1
Why focus on this one incident? The Shiite-Sunni battles in Iraq are costing thousands of lives each month. What are the Eurabians saying about that? Other than blaming the US for internal social divisions.
#5
It's very possible that the bomb hits weakened the building, and it just collapsed later. It's still Hezbollah's fault for setting up a battery in a civillian area.
Posted by: Mike ||
07/31/2006 10:00 Comments ||
Top||
Their faces were ashen gray. While medical examination clearly is called for to arrive at a definitive dating and cause of their deaths, they do not appear to have died hours before. The bodies looked like they had been dead for days.
I'm no expert on dead bodies, but that was my reaction as well. Looks like the whole thing was staged.
#9
I wondered about the stiffness of some of the bodies, so looked up Rigor Mortis.
Assuming mild temperatures, rigour usually sets in about 3-4 hours after clinical death, with full rigour being in effect at about 12 hours, and eventually subsiding to relaxation at about 36 hours. Times for the onset of rigour mortis can vary from a few minutes to several hours depending on the temperature of the environment in which the body is found.
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
07/31/2006 16:21 Comments ||
Top||
#10
OK, we've got our own resident physician. Dr. White, any observations about the photographs of the bodies on display? Some do look rather grayer and stiffer than others.
EU Referendum also has some archival shots of Mr. Green Helmet at the scene of an attack on children in 1996 by the evil Joooos.
#11
Merely another button on the coat. The IDF needs to concentrate on one thing only, namely wasting Hezbollah so regularly you can set your watch by it.
#12
I didn't see a lot of blood on the bodies, sheets, ground, or rescuers. As a layman, I expect the bodies to have visible signs of being crushed to death. What I see are whole, uncrushed bodies, that may well have been killed by a concussion at another location. Before I was thinking they collapsed the building on live people. Now I'm beginning to think they stocked the building with bodies and demolished it, which would be much more "palatable" to the terrorists and their supporters. I didn't see any signs of maggots or decomposition, but I'm just looking at pictures. That would suggest these deaths are recent or, unlikely, the bodies were refrigerated. The whole thing, from beginning to end, just has the markings of a what may well have been a trap. And they've been know to have done this kind of thing before almost exactly with that incident involving the "beach shelling" in Israel. Except there they used live terrorists to play the dead bodies.
If all this turns out to be an act, I wouldn't be surprised if half of the point of this would be to pass their hate down to their children to validate their stupid ideology. That would be desperate.
It would be interesting to match families who claimed to lose relatives to DNA of the bodies. We already know it's OK to exhume the bodies to move them from the statements made at the mass gravesites in Beirut . . . .
#13
But by then it will be way too late to make a difference. The MSM, the UN etc. have already bought this hook line and sinker, because it's what they want to believe. Even if there were conclusive proof it was faked, not only would they not retract what they have said, they would carry on saying, because for them belief is more important than facts or the truth, and they believe Israel is culpable.
Kofi -- this is what a deliberate attempt at targeting a UN facility looks like.
GAZA (Reuters) - Palestinian protesters stormed the main U.N. compound in Gaza City on Sunday during a demonstration against Israel's bombing of southern Lebanon that killed around 60 civilians, witnesses and U.N. staff said.
Hundreds of members of the Islamic Jihad militant group, some rolling their eyes throwing stones and others having gun sex firing assault rifles, attacked the compound at the end of a rally, witnesses said. At least five people were wounded, police said.
U.N. staff were inside the compound at the time, but managed to escape after U.N. guards let off tear gas canisters. A U.N. official said the compound, which includes scores of buildings, was ransacked and eight vehicles damaged.
Just deduct it from the next aid check, right Kofi?
Members of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's special guard arrived shortly after the assault began and managed to disperse the crowd by having more spirited gun sex firing into the air.
Witnesses in Gaza said extensive damage had been caused to the U.N. compound, from where the world body directs its relief and aid operations for the Gaza Strip's 1.4 million people. The attack came hours after thousands of Lebanese demonstrators deliberately attacked the U.N. headquarters in Beirut, smashing windows and ransacking offices.
Several thousand people massed outside the building in the center of the capital chanting "Death to Israel, death to America. We sacrifice our blood and souls for Lebanon."
Uh-huh, sure, you guys can't even defend Gaza.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/31/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
This morning, July 30, 2006, the IAF attacked missile launch sites in the area of the village of Qana, an area from which hundreds of missiles were launched towards the city of Nahariya and the communities in the western Galilee.
The IDF will defend the citizens of Israel from attacks by the Hizbullah and the responsibility for any civilian casualties rests with the Hizbullah who have turned the suburbs of Lebanon into a war front by firing missiles from within civilian areas.
Residents in this region and specifically the residents of Qana were warned several days in advance to leave the village. Eighteen Israeli civilians have been killed and over 400 have been wounded by these rocket attacks which have disrupted the lives of tens of thousands of Israeli citizens.
The IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved civilians, but this is the result of Hizbullah terrorist organization's contemptible use of Lebanese civilians as human shields.
IDF warns Lebanese citizens to evacuate villages (July 25):
"To all citizens south of the Litani River
Due to the terror activities being carried out against the State of Israel from within your villages and homes, the IDF is forced to respond immediately against these activities, even within your villages. For your safety! We call upon you to evacuate your villages and move north of the Litani River."
#6
Take off the gloves and kill all of Allan's people now. The world was a safer place when they were on caravan in the desert, only stopping to have sex with their animals once a week.
Come on, human race, wake up.
Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin told the cabinet in Sunday's meeting that efforts to rescue kidnapped Cpl. Gilad Shalit were not succeeding. However, Diskin said, it was "extremely likely that Shalit is alive and well in the Gaza Strip." Noam Shalit, Gilad's father, said on Sunday that he wasn't aware of attempts to secure his son's release other than those of Egypt. Noam Shalit said that the family had not received any new information from the government regarding their son's condition.
That probably accounts for the yo-yo operations in Gaza...
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
The captives are probably being held in Teheran. This is an Iranian operation. Ahmadinejad was threatening something well before the Hizbollah provocation. This conflict is Iran v America. That is why a status quo ceasefire would be a catastrophe. The Iranian tyrants have to be eliminated by any necessary means.
Hamas claimed responsibility for the Kassam rockets that were fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip on Sunday. One woman was moderately wounded when a rocket landed in Sderot and had to be evacuated to Soroka Hospital in Beersheba.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
Four Kassam rockets landed in the western Negev shortly after 4 p.m. Sunday afternoon. No one was wounded in the attack, although a building was reportedly damaged in the attack. Earlier, a woman was moderately wounded by a Kassam rocket that landed near Sderot.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
IDF forces arrested a Palestian man in Hebron on Sunday evening after a routine search revealed that he was carrying a nine-centimeter knife. The man was transferred to security forces for questioning.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
I carry a 7 cm folding pocketknife around all the time. I will stay away from Hebron.
COLOMBO - Sri Lankas four-year ceasefire is now void and the islands two-decade civil war is back on, a top Tamil Tiger rebel told Reuters on Monday as the guerrillas and the military entered a sixth straight day of fighting.
S. Elilan, head of the Tigers political wing in the restive eastern district of Trincomalee, said army troops had resumed a bid to advance towards land they control in the east and had fired artillery and mortars at their territory in the north.
The ceasefire agreement has become null and void at the moment, Elilan said by telephone from Trincomalee, adding government troops were continuing an advance towards their forward defence line in the east in a water supply dispute. The war is on and we are ready, added Elilan. The war has begun. It is the government which has started the war ... Militarily, we have decided to fight back if the Sri Lankan army enters our area. Elilan is not the Tigers main spokesman, but he is one of their top officials and their political head in Trincomalee. He has repeatedly warned of a return to war.
The rebels, angry at President Mahinda Rajapakses outright rejection of their demand for a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils in the north and east, have pulled out of peace talks indefinitely and have been cranking up the rhetoric for months.
The Tigers say Sri Lankas air force killed 15 rebels in five days of aerial bombing in the east and injured several others. The military said the death toll was much higher. The army says it has sustained no new casualties, despite becoming bogged down in a minefield on Sunday as they tried to reach a sluice they accuse the Tigers of blocking to choke water supplies to Sinhalese farmers in government territory. The government says troops are still trying to clear the mines in their first open advance on rebel-held areas since the 2002 ceasefire, and face intermittent firesights. They say they have purely humanitarian goals but that the Tigers have simply gone too far.
Under international law, denial of water is a crime and people have gone to the gallows for less, said head of the government peace secretariat Palitha Kohona. The government says categorically that it is totally committed to the ceasefire. But the most important thing is to provide water for 50,000 people.
The head of the islands Nordic truce monitoring mission said on Saturday the truce was dead in all but name after fresh violence killed more than 800 people so far this year. But he said he expected low intensity fighting rather than a full-blown return to a conflict that has killed more than 65,000 people. Janes Defence Weekly analyst Iqbal Athas fears the clashes could soon spread elsewhere across the island.
Many diplomats fear Black Tiger suicide bombers, blamed for a failed assassination attack on the army commander, could bring the war to Colombo, further hammering investor confidence in the $23-billion economy. I think right now theyre at war, Athas said. If you look at the (army) operation that has started now, it is becoming clear that the confrontation has begun.
Posted by: Steve ||
07/31/2006 08:50 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
COLOMBO - Sri Lankan troops moving to secure a Tamil Tiger rebel-held water supply came under fire on Sunday and found themselves in a minefield, the military said, as they launched the first deliberate advance since a 2002 truce. The closing of a water channel from an eastern rebel-held area to goverment-held farms prompted a surge in violence in recent days including air and artillery strikes.
On Sunday, ground forces were sent in to secure irrigation for the ethnic majority Sinhalese farms in the area, south of the northeastern port of Trincomalee. A clash erupted shortly after but there was no word on casualties. They are so close to the sluice gate but there seems to be a confrontationa firefight, said a military spokesman, referring to the troops. There are also mines all over the place. They are clearing them now.
Both the government and the Tigers claim control over the site of the reservoir, which lies in an area where the border between the foes is ill-defined. However the ground reality is that the Tigers control the area, military sources said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/31/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
Israel approved plans to widen its ground offensive against Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon early Tuesday. The country's Security Cabinet also rejected calls for a cease-fire until an international peacekeeping force, preferably headed by NATO, was in place.
A participant, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters, said Israel's airstrikes in Lebanon would resume "in full force" after the 48-hour suspension expires in another day.
Meanwile, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Monday the offensive in southern Lebanon would continue "in the air, at sea and on land."
Olmert addressed a group of Israeli mayors after Israeli planes carried out two "protective" airstrikes Monday on Hezbollah targets just hours after declaring the respite in air attacks on southern Lebanon.
"The fighting will continue," Olmert said. "There will be no cease-fire, and there will not be any cease-fire in the coming days."
Olmert said that the fighting in southern Lebanon would end only with the return of the two soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah guerrillas three weeks ago.
Until then, the prime minister said Israel would "destroy the infrastructure of terror there," pledging to go after the arms supply routes Hezbollah uses along the Lebanese-Syrian border. "This is an almost one-time opportunity to change the rules of the game in Lebanon," he said.
Monday's airstrikes hit targets in Tyre and near the town of Taibeh where three Israeli soldiers were injured after Hezbollah guerrillas attacked a tank, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) told FOX News.
Later Monday, Hezbollah claimed successful missile strikes upon an Israeli warship in the Mediterranean Sea. The IDF denied the attack took place and FOX News reporters in Tyre, Lebanon, did not witness any explosions off the coast.
The attack on Tyre hit a car carrying Lebanese Army troops, killing one. The IDF expressed regret over the incident, but said it believed a Hezbollah official was inside the vehicle. Lebanese officials said the car was hit by a rocket from a pilotless drone aircraft.
Officials in Jerusalem and Washington told FOX News Monday that the IDF will expand ground operations in Lebanon over the next 48 hours and hope to conclude the war effort "by the end of next week."
The airstrikes Monday broke a brief respite in 20 days of fighting, called so officials could investigate a Sunday airstrike on Qana, Lebanon, which killed at least 56 people, including 34 children. The incident prompted rioting in Beirut and global criticism of Israel.
Olmert again expressed regret Monday for the civilian deaths in that airstrike. "I deeply regret the civilian adults and children that were killed in Qana," he said. "We had no intention of hurting them; we did not want their deaths."
Television footage from Taibeh showed two Israeli tanks side by side, with flames suddenly covering one of them. Soldiers soon emerged from one tank and did not appear to be badly hurt.
Despite the break in air attacks, Israeli artillery continued ground offensives in Lebanon, as troops tried to secure a mile-wide Hezbollah-free zone along the northern border.
Before the fighting resumed, pickup trucks and cars loaded with people streamed north as thousands of civilians trapped in south Lebanon's war zone for three weeks took advantage of the brief lull to escape.
Israel had said, in announcing the halt to airstrikes earlier Monday, that it would suspend that pledge to end airstrikes for 48-hours depending on "operational developments" in Lebanon.
Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Israel plans to "expand and strengthen" its attack on Hezbollah, diminishing hopes that the 48-hour halt in air strikes could be turned into a longer term cease-fire.
President Hosni Mubarak, whose Arab country was the first to sign a peace treaty with Israel, warned that the entire Middle East peace could collapse because of Israel's fighting in Lebanon.
"Egypt, which triggered the peace process, warns of the consequences of its collapse," Mubarak said in a nationwide televised statement. "The Israeli aggression undermines the opportunities to continue it and its success."
Fighting was heavy in the northeast corner of south Lebanon around Taibeh and other border villages. Constant Israeli artillery blasts â not covered under the air halt â shook the hills.
Hezbollah guerrillas in the area fired a volley of rockets at the nearby Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona, their first since Israel's suspension began. No casualties were reported.
In many border areas, Israeli pilotless aircraft also were heard buzzing â though it was not clear whether they were over Lebanese territory.
Still, the suspension of the air campaign brought relative quiet to much of southern Lebanon.
Israel called the 48-hour halt under U.S. pressure amid worldwide outrage over the Qana strike. It was the deadliest single strike in the Israeli onslaught against Lebanon, aimed at reining in the Hezbollah guerrillas who sparked the conflict July 12 by snatching two Israeli soldiers. Some 519 people have been confirmed killed by Lebanon's Health Ministry since the fighting began.
The pause meant the first relative relief for thousands of Lebanese who have been hiding in their homes, in schools or hospitals in the dozens of villages that dot the mountainous south. While huge numbers had fled already, those who remained were mostly the old, the sick and those too afraid of intense Israeli bombardment on the roads to risk the drive.
Early Monday, hours after Israel called the pause, few southerners took to the roads, likely wary over whether the news was true. But by early afternoon, the roads from villages into the port city of Tyre, then from Tyre heading north along the coast were packed.
The stunning bloodshed in Qana increased international pressure on Washington to back an immediate end to the fighting and prompted U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to cut short her Mideast mission to return home Monday.
In a nationally televised speech before leaving Israel, Rice said she would seek international consensus for a cease-fire and a "lasting settlement" in the conflict between Lebanon and Israel through a U.N. Security Council resolution this week.
"I am convinced that only by achieving both will the Lebanese people be able to control their country and their future, and the people of Israel finally be able to live free of attack from terrorist groups in Lebanon," Rice said.
But Peretz made clear in a speech to parliament that Israel would not agree to an immediate cease-fire and had plans to expand its operation in Lebanon.
"It's forbidden to agree to an immediate cease-fire," Peretz told parliament, as several Arab legislators heckled him and demanded an immediate cessation. "Israel will expand and strengthen its activities against the Hezbollah."
Israel's top ministers also were to discuss expanding the army's ground operation at a meeting later Monday, while thousands of reserve soldiers trained for the possibility that they will be sent into Lebanon.
It was unclear whether the senior ministers would approve a broader ground assault at their meeting, defense officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Olmert told Rice over the weekend that Israel would need 10 to 14 more days to finish its offensive, and Justice Minister Haim Ramon told Army Radio on Monday that he did not think the fighting was yet over.
"I'm convinced that we won't finish this war until it's clear that Hezbollah has no more abilities to attack Israel from south Lebanon. This is what we are striving for," Ramon said.
#2
Bush certainly gave his full support today not changing a thing from what he said over a week ago. He quashed the spin we've seen about a cease-fire - and dismissed Qana as a reason for any change. There's absolutely no pressure from the US to hold back.
#6
"Israeli planes carried out two "protective" airstrikes Monday on Hezbollah targets just hours after declaring the respite in air attacks on southern Lebanon."
I had to rub my eyes a couple of times to make sure I was reading this right. Has Israel learned something from the terrorists, getting on top of the PR game? Hamas and PLF have been calling cease fire and attacking Israel in the middle of the cease fire, for years. It's about time that Israel started out terrorizing the terrorists. Way to go IDF!
#10
Before the fighting resumed, pickup trucks and cars loaded with people streamed north as thousands of civilians trapped in south Lebanon's war zone for three weeks took advantage of the brief lull to escape.
I suspect that this was the real reason. I bet they wanted to let as many people out as they could. From what's transpired so far, I'm guessing that they are going to push in hard. Wouldn't be surprised if they push all the way to Damascus.
With Iran going nuclear, they really have few other choices but to conduct all out war, that is if they intend to survive.
#11
Clerert Uneamp2772 - You just can't get happy, can you.
Yesterday you're declaring defeat. Today you're pissed cuz they tell the world what everyone would know in, oh, about 5 minutes anyway cuz there are reporters with cellphones all over Lebanon.
#12
hehe maybe i am your ex-wife. Kidding :)
But you are seeing my critic wrongly. I would have loved that after cabinet public decided to not expand ground offensive 2-3 days ago Israel would attack by surprise. Unfortunately operational decisions of IDF go to the street minutes after being reached.
I suspect IDF generals squezed Olmert and Peretz balls or implanted new ones. Not forget that for now it is just talking, "expanding" can be only another brigade for incursions.
#13
LOL. You're right, you could be my ex, heh. Never know with these names...
From what Bush said today in a speech and in an interview on Fox with Cavuto, there is no doubt at all that he's behind whatever Israel decides. And after the cabinet meeting, Olmert is serious about using the next 2 weeks to make a much deeper buffer - killing as many Hezb's, capturing caches, destroying bunkers, taking out launchers, etc. as he possibly can. From what one of the Generals said, it looks like they're aiming for the Litani, but not sure. He said they'd gone 6 miles in (average?) already and were holding 7 or 8 towns right now.
As for balls, I don't doubt that the military people shared with the politicians - that's what they should do. The pols ask, what can you do and what do you need - and the mil guys give their best estimates. What's certain is that they have decided to get serious.
Bush is behind them all the way. He pulled no punches and made no excuses. Ignore the reporting on what Rice may say - I don't think she's on the same page as Bush - and The Prez Sez. It was clear he wants Israel to decide for themselves what they need - no Band Aid BS this time.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told the Syrian military on Monday to raise its readiness, pledging not to abandon support for Lebanese resistance against Israel.
"We are facing international circumstances and regional challenges that require caution, alert, readiness and preparedness," Assad said.
"The barbaric war of annihilation the Israeli aggression is waging on our people in Lebanon and Palestine is increasing in ferocity," Assad said in a written address on the occasion of the 61st anniversary of the foundation of the Syria Arab Army.
Diplomats in Damascus say the Syrian army has been on alert since the Israeli onslaught on Lebanon began on July 12 after Hizbollah fighters captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border operation. They have been on readiness alert for almost three weeks now. That would take a toll on a well disciplined, well armed military. If they have already been deployed out of barracks to forward positions, then they will already be facing degradation.
#9
Foxnews just reported a minute ago that the Iranian ambassodor flew to Damascus met with Assad then flew to Beruit today (Assad declared high alert last night or today?) met with the Lebonese government and is reported right now 7-31-2006 7:30 eastern according to Fox to be in meeting with the French delegation in Lebonon.
#10
Yep; its in a crisis where all the beasts of all the land and sea, reveal thier true colors. French Socialism in service to the International communist party will sell out the French people, and align with the new communist move. Religion for assad and achtuneminnnidad, are appendeges, of thier respect need for useful idiots, like the french, thier servce is to elitist international subversion via socialism. NO the players for what they are...
Hizbullah said its guerrillas hit an Israeli warship with rockets off the coast of the south Lebanese port city of Tyre on Monday.
Hizbullah said in a statement the attack was the start of its retaliation for Sunday's bombing of a building in south Lebanon that killed 54 civilians, including 37 children. An Israeli security source said no Israeli vessel had been hit. (Reuters)
#1
Now wouldn't it be interesting if they hit a humanitarian aid ship? Fox's guy in Tyre is reporting seeing no missiles launched and no ships of any sort.
#3
they mustn't be that quick at learning lessons or else they wouldn't be expressing regret for killing women, children and United Nations Peace keepers so often
Israel has been upstaged many times by terrorist propaganda.
Never have they said before an operation that they were fighting terrorists who use human shields, who pretend dead terrorists are dead civilians and who coerce civilians into pretending to support them.
This would be easy to do at the beginning of a conflict where Israel's leader gets some verbatim TV time.
I grant you it wouldn't convince some of the pro appeasement Europeans, but it would help loads with our American version of the same thing.
#5
they mustn't be that quick at learning lessons or else they wouldn't be expressing regret for killing women, children and United Nations Peace keepers so often
What could the Israelis do better? Specifics, not generalizations, please. Not a problem list so much as an answer list, too.
#6
Related topic, an opiniated letter from one of my ML
GO HERE
-----Original Message-----
From: Naomi *** [mailto:*****@*****.net.il]
Sent: Monday, July 31, 2006 16:13
To: *****@****.ca
Subject: Bombing of Nahariyah hospital
From a listmember:
Dear Mrs. ****:
I did not see in any foreign report, any picture, about the bombing of Nahariyah Hospital and the destruction of its fourth floor and the Department of Eye Diseases, in which Arabs and Jews have been treated, and where Arab and
Jewish interns work.
Israeli propaganda is poor, weak and miserable.
Israeli propaganda even hides the truth.
Israeli propaganda depends mainly on this poor and stammering lady, the speaker of IDF, a nice woman I would not keep employed even to be a phone operator.
Israeli propaganda depends on the arbitrary opinions of unofficial people.
Our defeat in the media is worse than a defeat on the battlefield.
Best regards
Marcos ****,MD
Kibbutz Matzuvah,
Western Galilee
#8
Hey people, even USA didn't do all that well in the propaganda war. So sorry, but you can't disabuse a tranzi from something he/she learned during the brief period their minds were capable of learning.
July 31, 2006: The Hizbollah tactic of firing rockets from residential areas, and forcing civilians to stick around when the rockets are fired, has paid off. One rocket launching site in a large building in southern Lebanon, for which Israel released video of rockets being launched, before bombing the building, turned out to contain over fifty women and children. The civilians know that the Israelis bomb any place where rockets are fired from, but Hizbollah gunmen will force the civilians to stay. This has caused many Lebanese, even Shia in the south, to turn against Hizbollah. Some journalists have even been able to get out of Lebanon with pictures of this, but most of the world media prefers to call Israeli response to Hizbollah attacks a war crime and leave it at that. This is going to be one of those situations where, down the road, historians are going to wonder just what the world was thinking during all this.
#2
The blood of innocents cover Hezbollah, and Iran/Syria. Only genuinely evil people would force their own women and children to take a bullet for them. It only confirms in my mind that we need to close Gitmo, and take no islamofascist prisoners.
#3
Assuming the histories aren't being written in Arabic.
That's what I'm worried about. One side puts everything it has in the fight and doesn't play by the rules (he subverts them instead, very successfully), while the other half-heartedly struggle back for one part, and actively collaborate for the other.
Really, if this goes forth like that, I'm not betting on us, especially for old Europe which will probably end up part of the muslim world much earlier than its Enlightened Elites hope.
#4
Re #2: Only genuinely evil people would force their own women and children to take a bullet for them.
What makes you think it's their women and children? It certainly could be Christian, Druse, or even Jewish folk, yes?
Or -
"Hey, Mahmoud! Ya wanna git ridda your first wife and kids? Put 'em in the 'safe house' over there."
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/31/2006 13:18 Comments ||
Top||
#5
I've been reading that volume of ancient inscrutable Western wisdom, known as Aesop's Fables, lately. The fable of the tortoise and the hare comes to mind in this instance.
#8
Sad as it may seem, Hezbollah may just as well be doing all of us a favor. Assuming that they are not launching out of Christian or Druze neighborhoods, they are then merely chlorinating the Shia gene pool with their irresponsible launchings. As always, the faster these maggots expunge themselves and all their kin from the face of this earth, the better.
#2
Not much in the way of new details here. Hezs are using civilians as pawns in their propaganda war. They don't give a fig for the civilian population they put in harms way. They are cowardly and perpetuating war crimes. By association, Iran and Syria are also perpetuating war crimes.
#3
Notice the man in the pic carrying the child? There is an interesting "sequence" of pictures of this man with other children, and with this child at http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/07/milking-it.html
I guess "timing" is everything. Photographs do lie in this case.
TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran is to publicly hang five men convicted of carrying out bombings in the southwestern oil city of Ahvaz as well as a militant convicted of involvement in a massacre in the southeast.
Mohammad Ali Surai, Yahya Naseri, Nazem Barihi, Abdolemam Zaeri and Abdolzahra Helichi, were all sentenced to death by a revolutionary court in Ahvaz, the hardline Kayhan newspaper quoted a judiciary official as saying on Sunday.
The paper said the convictions and sentencing were upheld by the Supreme Court.
It did not say when the executions would be carried out, nor which specific bombings the group were linked to. Two Arab separatists have already been hanged over attacks in October 2005, although a further attack took place in January.
Ahvaz, the capital of Khuzestan province and home to a large community of ethnic minority Arabs, has been plagued by a wave of unrest over the past year.
Another man will be publicly hanged for involvement in the killing of 21 people on a highway in Sistan-Baluchestan province, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan, Justice Minister Jamal Karimi-Rad told the ISNA news agency.
Regime officials had put the blame for the Khuzestan unrest on Britain and its troops based just across the border in southern Iraq. They have also pointed the finger at foreign involvement in the Sistan-Baluchestan unrest.
#3
gorb...Not entirely correct. Though they have extensive oil reserves and pumping capacity...Iran has limited gasoline refining capability. My recollection is they import almost 70% of the refined gasoline (from their own crude). Hence, 100 or so well targeted TLAMs (or SOF) would take out all of the Iranian gasoline refining capacity, and all of the gas import terminals. It would leave the mad mullahs completely paralized.
After repeated Israeli efforts to destroy Hizbullah's al-Manar television station have failed, an IDF intelligence unit succeeded this week in hacking the station's live broadcasts, planting Israeli PR messages in the transmissions..
The al-Manar channel regularly airs juicy propaganda against Israel, including reports of "heroic" and "successful" operations by Hizbullah fighters against IDF special forces.
However, this weekend the IDF prepared a surprise for the Lebanese and Arab viewers of the channel: The broadcast was interrupted and caricatures of Nasrallah appeared on the screen, accompanied by captions reading: "Your days are numbered" and "Nasrallah, your time is up. Soon you won't be with us anymore."
Additionally, Hizbullah and al-Manar internet sites also received "special treatment" by Israeli technical specialists, and several were erased from the internet.
Posted by: Mike ||
07/31/2006 9:46 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Kinda like our guys during the invasion of Iraq. They put false data in the Iraqis computers. So bagdahd Bob might have truely believed they were winning.
#7
What's not to like? They need to inject footage of Hezbollah deploying their anti-aircraft and rocket launchers in civilian neighborhoods, with before and after shots (as it were).
#8
Stupid waste of a good opportunity. So the Israeli's hacked al-Manar and then only used it to toss a few childish insults. They should have taken advantage to show the viewers the nasty crap Hezbulllah is doing to their own people. Shouldn't be hard to use Nasrullah's own word against him, point out some of the hypocrisy. But no, missed it again.
Four soldiers were lightly wounded on Sunday evening in fighting in the south Lebanese village of Taibe. According to reports, the soldiers were wounded when their vehicle was hit by an anti-tank rocket.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Sent an order in to PizzaIDF.org tonight. I really hate the way the world treats Israel. If someone in Mexico was launching rockets at the US, you know we'd be hammering them flat and telling the world to screw itself.
#3
I don't think you need to, gromgoru - Bush just gave a speech about 40 min ago in Miami and reiterated full support for Israel being allowed to defend herself, to not be forced into an unsustainable ceasefire, that the Lebanese must be sovereign over their own territory and that can't happen with an armed Hezbollah. He paid lip-service to Qana, deploring the incident, but said it does not change the situation or the support of the US for Israel. I was surprised how he dismissed Qana. I'm sure the MSM will go bonkers over it and that pleases me immensely.
When I hear him speak directly, with no MSM filters applied, the message is very different from what we're seeing here. We're being subjected to endless editorial spin and selective quotes. Hearing it from George directly was very encouraging and puts the lie to all of the back-peddling articles we've seen over the last few days.
Posted by: Elder of Zion ||
07/31/2006 11:14 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Cleash Uniger9103.
I should've added, and USA can't/doesn't want to tell the reat of the World (especially friend Tony)[1] to go fuck themselves.
[1] Are you happy with how the WOT is going?
#7
gromgoru - LOL. Is anyone ever happy with the progress of anything run by a government?
I try, very very hard, not to be an idiot regards bitching about the government not meeting my personal schedule. That's a foolish position to take. Instead, if events are leading where I'd like to see them go, I take the positive signs from that fact. It's hard, LOL, but I try to keep reality in mind when composing my comments.
I have few illusions about the "root causes" of terrorism: Iran and Saudi Arabia.
I am happy that, increasingly, Iran is taking a front-burner position - and they're doing it to themselves. The "wipe Israel off the map" comments, the nuke program and obvious stalling - making fools of the EU3, the Hezbollah attacks and supplied weapons, etc - they are making some serious mistakes unless they can deliver a nuke - and I mean now.
Bush made a clear point today in that speech that Iran is behind the current situation. I don't know how such things are taken in the Israeli press, but here that is a very good signal that Bush is educating the public - preparing the ground for what's to come. Fast enough to make me "happy"? LOL. Never quite.
Does that answer your question? I am amused by the knee-jerk crowd who're not satisfied unless their personal wishes are immediately adopted and executed, which never has and never will occur, except by a fluke of history.
Iran is center-stage and the spotlight is getting brighter every day. They will fall. That will produce several orphans who can then be dealt with much more directly.
#9
I think even Iran is smart enough not to use a nuke. I almost wish they would, it would make the current ME situation evolve much more rapidly then we've seen to date. Many, Many people will die, it is only a question of the exact number on each side and the rate at which it happens and by what means. Hard not to be depressed about it but that is the way I see it.
#11
What you don't know 6 is that everyone else here is an AI (Artifical Intelegence) unit running on a bunch (ok... several thousand) of old Commodore 64 computers. This is just an elabrate Turing Test to see if anyone can figure it out. So far noone has.
The hardest part was getting the spelling mistakes *just*right*. And then there's Joe M....
Magen David Adom reported that it treated 69 victims of Katyusha attacks today. Four of the victims were moderately wounded, 18 were lightly wounded and the rest were treated for shock.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
And how many Eurabian mediasnots will express Qana outrage over Hizbollah's use of scrapnel for urban impact?
Europe is lost for the truth concerning the War on Terror and the barbarous crimes of islamism.
In France, we have more than 5 million Muslims, and the government is afraid of them, fearing that they could resume their destructions of suburbs as they did in last November. The criminality of Muslims in France is 30 times higher than the one of non-Muslims. 30 years ago, there were 100 mosques in France; now there are more than 1700; and licences for the construction of 2200 more mosques are currently 'studied' by the authorities (that means that they will say 'amen' to all of them).
#3
Leroi David,
I agree with you.
anyone who has listned to the french rhetoric in the last couple of days including the vile statements about "Irans major stabilizing role in ther middle east" cannot avoid noticing the strong smell of French fear in the air.
I think that the IDF would continue airstrikes and ground attack until we purify the south of lebanon from the Shiite scum I cannot wait to see the "good moslems" of Sarcelle and other French islamo getto towns ignite Paris in a new racial and religious war the like of which France has not experienced yet.
I am sorry to be such a pig but every dead antisemitic halfwitted neo-multiculturalist Frenchmen will give me immense joy.
I am even willing to be tolerant about "Seething of Arab Masses"TM provided it occurs in Paris.
By the time the Islamist get done with the impotent French France would be a very useful addition to the IAF target Bank.
I have already stopped buying French wines and buying French merchandise, I think it may indeed be time to take some more active steps in teaching them a lesson.
Posted by: Elder of Zion ||
07/31/2006 9:51 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Since Leroidavid has commented on this already, perhaps he would elaborate. I must tell you part of my family originated south of Strasburg, and I can see that Al-Shirag has been in bed with Arabs for years. Why do the french citizens tolerate this. Why don't they overturn the government. Why do they not massively respond when the youths take the street ? Just a few hundred deceased youths would cause pause for the remainder. Can you not expell these scumbags ? I'm sure most arrived illegally and now you have literal bunker towns within your territory. Why is there no will to address these very serious issues ?
#6
For those not familiar with the German language, "Kein Juden" means "no Jews".
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/31/2006 13:31 Comments ||
Top||
#7
SOP35/Rat : just a few ideas at random...
because we're hammered by an oligarchy which brainwashes us in permanence (technocrats/civil servants + leftist gramscists) to feed us multiculturalism and transnational progressism. It works;
because France is deadlocked on its "social model" elaborated after WWII and won't change until after it's bankrupted... everybody knows that, so everybody's afraid and won't dare to move until it's too late;
because the historical narratives set up right after WWII are false (left = resistance, right = collaboration, while it was historically pretty much the reverse) and designated to validate the oligarchy (and explain why there is no real conservative movement in France);
because after Robert Paxton, this WWII narratives turned the whole french people into accessories to the Shoah (which we weren't), and that guilt is perpetuated by the Oligarchy to justify its existence ("it's either us, or the nazi/pépé Le Pen/Bushitler/Sharon/...") and erase our identity (anything "french" is bad and sucks, it is nazi-like, so just die old white male, and embrace diversity);
because after the 60's counterculture apotheose, men are devirilized and feminized (triumph of the "soft", "feminine" "hedonistical" values), and thus unable to cope with the violent "hypervirility" of the migrants and their traditional society values (manhood, honor, conflict, tribalism);
because "ethnic french" are individualistical, unorganized, have small families... while Youths come in force, in group, can call on "cousins" from extended families at will (Youths weaponry most feared by the police? Cellphone, which enable to bring in instant reinforcement and drive back any police intervention short of a full force riot unit);
because Europe has been struck with the (american made) "Shoah bigbang" (the expression was made by jewish conservative William Goldnadel, a remarkable guy), along with the 60's attack on its core value... thus any legitimate use of force is "nazi", while any persons resisting the State's monopoly on violence are "WWII jews" (by the way, this is why the israelis are "nazified" and why the paleos can take the mantle of the "persecuted jew" so easily);
because since the 30's, gun ownership is more and more restricted in Europe, so the only people who owns guns do it illegally;
because self-defense is frowned upon by the Oligarchy, which really fears more a french reaction than migrant crime (which in fact helps subjugate the rival middle class), and so anyone who defends himself is asking for trouble (true story : one froggie in a train comes to the rescue of a mugged man; he faces the Youth armed with a knife, and subdue him with a bludgeon, sustaining several cuts in the process... what happens? He ends up sued by the mrap islamo-communist "antiracist" org, subsisized byt he french gvt, for excessive use of force and being a racist, and he pays 7000 euros/$9000 in fine);
etc, etc...
Endline : France is a socialist country ruled by a nomenklatura which knows the collapse is nearing (80's quote by late socialist president Mitterrand, "we are partying on a plane about to crash") and is scared stiff of its people (they would probably ask the army to shoot french citizens like de gaulle did, to protect Youths if push came to shove), and so neuters him very successfully to keep that cash coming as long as possible.
Add the transnationalist Europe/EURSS, and the Eurabia suicide pact, and you've got a winner.
#8
Thanks 5089. It's worse than I even imagined. I've never visited and probably won't even though I have a desire to. That's why I'm a LIfe Member of NRA and will never consent to a disarming of the American people.
#9
Bear in mind I'm not the most qualified person to talk about the Real World(Tm), since I'm carefully avoiding it, these are just my thoughts and are probably over-the-top gross generalizations, truth is more complex I'd say...
For example there is a substantial pocket of gun ownership in France, mostly hunters and a few security men, sportive shooters, businessmen under threat,... though it is specialized and increasingly regulated (last hardening of the law was after the 2002 urban council shooting by a psycho, prompting the socialist gvt to further restrict access to guns)... IIRC, to become a legal owner of a sporting handgun, a would-be recreational shooter must wait one year, gun has to be registered and kept in a safe, it cannot be transported freely, ammo is counted, etc, etc... hunting weapons are more available and less restricted, and can include quite serious weapons, like Ye Olde 12 ga pump shotgun (I remember when they were on sale at supermarket back in the late 80's, now capacity is restricted and they're harder to buy without a "legitimate" hunting purpose, though it remains a popular self defense weapon) or .35, .308, 7mm,... rifles. Target carbines like .22 or .222 are also somewhat available, with fixed/limited magazine, and no semi-auto allowed from what I know (through a few hunters in my entourage).
Anyway, it's far from (most of) the USA or neighbouring Switzerland, but less restricted than the UK. Ironically, the gang firepower has increased tremendously since the 90's, with eastern assault rifles, handguns, the occasional rpg, flowing from albania and kosovo. (Hand)Gun toting was once reserved for "beau mecs", IE organized crime gangsters, now it is very common in the underworld, with an increased forepower. It is in France that prisons had been breached with Akm, rpg-7 and plastic, not in the USA.
JFM would be more qualified to answer your initial question, but, still, IMHO, the general idea is there, broadly speaking.
#10
Well, if you want to see Europe as you thought it would be, see it now. I have been living here since 1999 and the Muslim growth has been exponential.
I liken it to cancer when you smoke; you know its bad, it will kill you sooner or later but right now it gives you pleasure. That pleasure is the Euros belief that multi-culturalism will prevail.
There are already shirts worn by young Muslim men in Sweden that say "in 2030, we take over". They are refering to the exponetial rate of reproduction Muslim families are effecting the democraphic.
#12
I listened to a Democrat Congressman on MSNBC yesterday state catagorically that the rockets being fired by the Hezzies are "little more than firecrackers." That's funny because I remember friends being killed by those rockets in Quang Tri in '69. Kinda went all PTSD and lucky for the Congressman, he was not there in person. We are losing the Media WOT with the help of idiots like that.
The IAF struck the road leading to Damascus from Lebanon near the Syrian border, eyewitnesses reported Sunday evening. It was reported that the attack occurred in the same place as on Saturday, by the Lebanese and Syrian migration offices on the Lebanese side of the border. The Syria-Lebanon border was open on Sunday; however, those coming and going were asked to leave their vehicles and cross on foot.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
I wish they were thinking about the broader strategic goal of ending Hezbollah permanently. The whack-a-mole game, no matter how satisfying or entertaining, will never, ever, end.
Perhaps the Iranians, being such brilliant foreign policy wonks and wizards, will soon provide the clear opportunity. Jumping the shark seems to be a specialty of both twisted branches of Islam.
In the deadliest attack since Israel started its offensive against Hizbullah 19 days ago, 57 civilians - most of them children - were killed on Sunday in a building in the southern Lebanese village of Kafr Kana, apparently as a result of an IAF missile strike. While the entire Israeli political echelon expressed regret for the results of the strike, Air Force Chief of Staff Brig.-Gen. Amir Eshel said Sunday night that the three-story building had been struck by the missiles a little after midnight and that it only collapsed seven hours later, at close to 7 a.m.
Eshel refrained from specifying what had caused the structure to collapse seven hours after it was hit
Eshel refrained from specifying what had caused the structure to collapse seven hours after it was hit, but senior IAF officers said Sunday night that the explosion could have been caused by an unexploded missile or by a Hizbullah-planted explosive device. "It could be that there was something in the building that caused the explosion," Eshel said.
Eshel said that close to 150 Katyusha rockets had been fired from the Lebanese village over the past 20 days. Hizbullah had hidden rocket launchers, Eshel said, in civilian buildings in the village. Video footage he presented at a press conference in Tel Aviv Sunday night showed rocket launchers being driven into the village following attacks on northern Israel. The dead were old people, women and children from four families whom residents said had gathered to spend the night on the ground floor, where they felt they were safe from Israeli attacks. The bodies of at least 27 children were found in the rubble, said Abu Shadi Jradi, a civil defense official at the scene.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Not that the truth matters anymore, but I buy the General's version simply because it has the ring of truth to it.
As for the children, the truth is harsh: It sucks to be stupid and captive to people who have been steeped in stupidity for their entire lives. Those are the parents. The got the outrageously PC leaflet drops telling them to get out. They ignored them. That's stupidity. The children would've grown up to be just like them.
Qana is a target for good reason and they were hit accordingly. This brouhaha is bullshit and propaganda for the witless - and absolutely nothing more.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah declared victory on Saturday after Israel announced it was withdrawing its forces from the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbail where Israeli troops found unexpected difficulty in dislodging the guerrilla group from its strongholds.
The Israelis are ready to halt the aggression because they are afraid of the unknown...
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev defended the decision to pull troops from Bint Jbeil, saying Israel had never intended to occupy the town, but Nasrallah's quick declaration of victory underscored the propaganda gains Hezbollah is reaping across the Muslim world as it battles Israel to a stalemate. "The Israelis are ready to halt the aggression because they are afraid of the unknown," Nasrallah said in a speech in which he also expressed measured support for the Lebanese government's efforts to reach a peace agreement.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Give 'em 24 to move back in, then wipe the place.
#2
Hezbollah will declare victory no matter what happens. The question is how seriously people take them. Unfortunately, many of our fellow Westerners, who are normally smart and skeptical people, who pride themselves on being able to see through transparent spin of their own ruling parties, suddenly become susceptible, credulous fools who will swallow any piece of Jihadi propaganda, no matter how ridiculous.
#3
It's an Arab tradition to claim credit for just about everything, no matter how absurd. It's a human tradition for the moonbats and morons and symps and Arabs to believe what suits their fantasies.
You can't fix stupid, you can only tolerate it or kill it.
#6
French msm have already declared the hizbillies the victors of all this...
No doubt -- the press, by uncritically accepting and repeating the Hezbollah lies, helped them win. The press has a major victory on their hands in this one. I'm sure they feel it makes up for their loss during Rathergate.
Reporters are, by and large, scum. They're traitors to civilization.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
07/31/2006 7:19 Comments ||
Top||
#7
If there ain't no more hizbillies, there ain't no more rockets on Israel. There ain't no more war on the border. There ain't no kind of victory. You can't make a victory out of abject defeat. Israel needs to accelerate through the green light and get it done. World opinion usually goes with the winner.
#11
Well, as long as they don't start worshiping Great Cthulhu, I'm okay with that... but of course, since old mo' actually was a power-hungry fool deluded by one of the masks of Nyarlathotep, it's practically the same thing, isn't it?
#12
Dump Olmert !
What do they intend to do, go back home for a week and then fight and die for the same piece of dirt again ?
Israel, wake up and attack.Take ground, kill every hezby there and drive the people into refugee camps. Repeat until you run out of hezbies or Lebanon. At that point, replace Lebanon with Syria and repeat the process. Anything else is smoke and baseless rhetoric.
And when the EU comes knockin at your door with a stop action decree, ask them who among them will stop you. France ? Ha, keep attacking.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
QUETTA: Three more commanders of tribal chief Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti on Sunday surrendered to the government, vowing to cooperate with Islamabad until the Nawab's ouster from Dera Bugti and the establishment of government writ in the area, government sources said.
QUETTA: Three soldiers were killed and another two were seriously injured when their vehicle hit a landmine in the tense Marri tribal area of Kahan on Sunday. Sources said that the soldiers were travelling in Karmu Wad in Kahan when their vehicle hit a landmine, killing three of them instantly. The injured soldiers were admitted to a hospital. No militant group has accepted responsibility as yet.
The trial court found Abd-AL-Rahman Shakh Ru Dinor guilty of illegal border crossing, in violation of Article 24 of the Foreigner Resident Law, and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Coalition forces apprehended the defendant after he illegally entered Iraq from Iran.
BAGHDAD, July 30 -- Gunmen killed at least 23 Iraqis on Sunday on a highway south of Baghdad, commandeering three minibuses and herding their occupants into nearby palm groves, where they were lined up and shot, according to police and a witness.
KIRKUK: Insurgents detonated a car bomb on Sunday in a protected enclave housing the US and British consulates in Iraqs oil city of Kirkuk in the latest in a string of deadly blasts, security sources said. City leaders described the two-month-old bombing campaign as the work of Islamist extremists bent on terrorising the population and fomenting civil strife in the ethnically and religiously mixed city. 
A US plane launched an air strike Sunday against a building used by al-Qaida in Iraq, killing two operatives, the US military said. Four suspects were detained after the air attack, which took place southwest of Baghdad against extremists who had been staging mortar attacks on civilians, a US statement said. US troops tracked the operatives to a building and "coalition aircraft successfully executed the strike," the statement said.
Four Kassam rockets landed in the western Negev shortly after 4 p.m. Sunday afternoon. No one was wounded in the attack, although a building was reportedly damaged in the attack. Earlier, a woman was moderately wounded by a Kassam rocket that landed near Sderot.
Four soldiers were lightly wounded on Sunday evening in fighting in the south Lebanese village of Taibe. According to reports, the soldiers were wounded when their vehicle was hit by an anti-tank rocket.
The IAF struck the road leading to Damascus from Lebanon near the Syrian border, eyewitnesses reported Sunday evening. It was reported that the attack occurred in the same place as on Saturday, by the Lebanese and Syrian migration offices on the Lebanese side of the border. The Syria-Lebanon border was open on Sunday; however, those coming and going were asked to leave their vehicles and cross on foot.
Hezbollah leader 
