The National Society for Human Rights has urged the Saudi Embassy in Damascus and the Syrian Embassy in Riyadh for assistance in locating a number of Saudis who are missing in Syria. Dr. Mufleh Al-Qahtani, chairman of the monitoring and follow-up committee, said the society had urged both embassies to ascertain whether the media reports concerning the disappearance and arrest of Saudis in Syria were true. There have been unconfirmed reports that some gangs involved in human trafficking are handing Saudis over to American forces in Iraq after smuggling them out of Syria for $10,000 per person.
Dr. Saleh Al-Kathlan, deputy chairman of the committee, said he had not ruled out the possibility that the Saudis who had disappeared might have been kidnapped by gangs who were selling them to American forces. âAnother possibility is that they might have been kidnapped by the gangs who kept them as hostages in order to make money,â he pointed out.
And then there's always the likelihood that they exploded...
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2005 00:00 ||
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unconfirmed reports that some gangs involved in human trafficking are handing Saudis over to American forces in Iraq
#3
Most likely, they infiltrated into Iraq, and died there.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
09/18/2005 18:18 Comments ||
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perhaps Syrian gangs are stripping them and using them as boy-toy whores throughout the Mideast. It's worth publishing just to see the repercussions
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/18/2005 18:22 Comments ||
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Frank, you are assuming those smooth bottomed Saudi boys think that's a bad thing.
Posted by: ed ||
09/18/2005 18:51 Comments ||
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The dying father of a Bahraini detainee held at Guantanamo Bay has made a final heart-rending plea to see his son, a Bahraini newspaper reported yesterday. Mohammed Al-Dossary, who suffers from throat cancer, is urging Bahraini authorities and rights activists for help in getting his son Juma released, said the Gulf Daily News. Al-Dossary was admitted to the intensive care unit at a hospital in Dammam on Thursday for complications following surgery. He has not seen his son for nearly four years and is said to be in and out of consciousness.
Stop tugging at my heartstrings like that. You're getting them all stretched out of shape.
The plea was made Friday by the Bahrain Center for Human Rights. âHis family contacted us and conveyed the request of Jumaâs father to see his son before he dies,â its president Nabeel Rajab said. âThe father even sent a letter to the center before undergoing the operation, pleading to see his son for fear that he would die without having the chance to do so,â he added.
I wonder if the Bahrain Center for Human Rights might consider taking up the cases of the people Sonny bumped off before being captured? Maybe they can arrange some sort of deathbed meeting with the parents, wives, children, and other close relatives of the dear departed.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2005 00:00 ||
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maybe streaming video? Allow him to watch his son starving himself to death.
What other angles will they try here. This is just unbelievable
Posted by: Jan ||
09/18/2005 0:16 Comments ||
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He is a murderer. Send his family a bill for the bullet to put him down.
A Saudi security source has revealed to "Asharq al-Awsat" that the reason for the difficulties in identifying the body of Ahmad al-Suwaylimi, was the very strong resemblance between him and his brother Muhammad, who is listed in the latest list of the 36 most wanted terror suspects. It added that this is in addition to the DNA results that showed they were the same as their parents' genes and this caused the mix-up.
Well, at least they know they had the same Dad. At least the one who's still alive does.
It said, "Ahmad was not listed on the publicized lists but he was known and wanted by us. Not every wanted person has his name included on the publicized lists." Ahmad al-Suwaylimi was wanted for terrorist activities was killed with other wanted individuals in clashes with the Saudi security forces in a house in Al-Mubarakiyah neighborhood of Al-Dammam city, eastern Saudi Arabia, on 5 September.
We're hoping his departure from the gene pool was very painful...
The source went on to say, "The security wanted him because his family informed the relevant authorities that he was absent and they feared that he would fall under the influence of his brother Muhammad."
Sounds like that's what happened, dunnit?
It pointed out that Ahmad sent a letter to his family after he disappeared in which said "he was going to Iraq for jihad and told them that he had left his car next to Al-Nasim cemetery in Riyadh. Wanted Muhammad al-Suwaylimi tried to insinuate in his statement that only Al-Qaeda knew the identity of the third person and was keeping it secret. This is not true. The third person killed in Al-Mubarakiyah clashes was certainly Ahmad al-Suwaylimi, Muhammad's brother." Some internet websites carried an audio statement by Muhammad al-Suwaylimi before few days in which he denied the report of his brother's death in Al-Dammam's confrontation, which the Saudi Interior Ministry had forestalled by announcing that Ahmad al-Suwaylimi was the dead person and not wanted Muhammad and added that the dead person was the brother of Muhammad for whom the search was continuing.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2005 00:00 ||
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Saudi Security Source Disclose Reasons for Mix Up in Identifying of Dead Terrorist
so who's fault was it?
/slo hanging curv..
Posted by: Red Dog ||
09/18/2005 0:36 Comments ||
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hell, slo curves are a bastard
Posted by: Bobby Lee ||
09/18/2005 18:05 Comments ||
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#3
especially in grenades. <)
Posted by: Red Dog ||
09/18/2005 20:12 Comments ||
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BRITAINâS race relations chief is to warn that the country is âsleepwalkingâ into New Orleans-style racial segregation, with Muslim and black ghettos dividing cities.
Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), is to say the July terror attacks have exposed a racial ânightmareâ where some districts are becoming âfully-fledged ghettos â literal black holesâ where people fear to go.
In a stark warning to Tony Blair, Phillips will say in a speech this week that race relations policy is failing to tackle the roots of ethnic alienation and extremism.
He will suggest new measures that he admits critics will regard as social engineering. These could include forcing âwhiteâ schools to take larger numbers of ethnic minorities to help to encourage integration.
He will admit that his message is âbleakâ but sees Americaâs experience after Hurricane Katrina as a warning to Britain to avoid similar complacency in believing that it has an integrated society.
âThe fact is we are a society which, almost without noticing it, is becoming more divided by race and religion. We are becoming more unequal by ethnicity,â he will tell Manchester Council for Community Relations on Thursday.
âOur ordinary schools . . . are becoming more exclusive and our universities are starting to become colour-coded with virtual âwhites keep outâ signs in some urban institutions.â
In a side-swipe at Oxford, Cambridge and other top universities, he will say: âIf you look closely at the campuses of some of our most distinguished universities you can pick out the invisible âno blacks may enterâ messages.â
Some districts, he will say, are on their way to âliteral black holes into which nobody goes without fear and trepidation, and from which nobody ever escapes undamagedâ.
He will warn that if this continues, the first century of black immigration would end in a âNew Orleans-style Britain of passively coexisting ethnic and religious communities, eyeing each other uneasily over the fences of our differencesâ.
Assessing where Britain stands in the aftermath of the July 7 attacks, he says: âWe are sleepwalking our way to segregation. We are becoming strangers to each other and leaving communities to be marooned outside the mainstream.â
Phillips cites new evidence from the CRE that âresidential segregationâ is increasing even as some Asians are moving into middle-class areas. âWhat is left behind is hardening in its separateness,â he will say.
The number of people of Pakistani heritage in ghettos, which he defines as those with more than two-thirds of any one ethnicity, trebled between 1991 and 2001. In Bradford, 13.3% now live in such communities compared with 4.3% in 1991; in Leicester it has risen from 10.8% to 13.3%.
According to Phillips, new research also pours cold water on hopes that children mixing in schools might break down the barriers between communities. The study by Bristol University found that children are slightly more segregated in the playground than they are in their neighbourhoods. âThat means that not only arenât the children meeting â nor are their parents,â Phillips will say.
New CRE research will also show that most white people do not have a non-white friend, while young Asian and black people have almost exclusively Asian or black friends.
Phillips will suggest that schools could be given cash incentives to increase their ethnic mix and local education authorities could be forced to broaden their catchment areas to include a more even racial mix.
He also has concerns about white working-class ghettos in places such as Barking, Essex, and parts of Yorkshire.
Critics will dismiss his warning as alarmist. But Phillips will argue: âAmerica is not our dream but our nightmare. When the hurricane hits â and it could be a recession rather than a natural disaster â those (segregated) communities are set up for destruction.â
#1
"New Orleans-style racial segregation"? Huh? New Orleans is a black city. How's it segregated? The British have really gone off the deep end. The only positive part is that they're finally, finally realizing that multiculturalism is a total crock.
#2
how about requiring they meet standards and providing adequate equipped staff to meet those standars....oh yeah, and those stds should relate to gaining employment in other than madrassahs
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/18/2005 20:04 Comments ||
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How about packing the Asians and blacks back to where they came from?
Posted by: mac ||
09/18/2005 22:18 Comments ||
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Asians and Muslims have always been tight knit and secretive subcultures in England and the U.S. Cincinnati has been bussing kids all around the city for years to try to get their schools "integrated". Black kids and white kids don't get along any better now than they did before. Muslims are shut out because they want to be shut out, they want absolutely no contact with apostate dogs like us. I know several university students that are muslem, they chose to take on American ways and they fit in just fine. Some choose to recoil into their little prayer groups and seethe about america, and freedom and everything un-muslim.
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain has had to abandon plans for a sharp reduction in its troop numbers in Iraq next year because of fears the country is sliding toward civil war, the Sunday Telegraph newspaper said. Britain's Ministry of Defense (MoD) disputed the report, saying it had never set a timetable for withdrawing its 8,500 troops and that any reduction in troop numbers would depend on conditions in Iraq.
But it confirmed that soldiers from the 7th Armored Brigade, better known as the Desert Rats, would be redeployed to Iraq before the end of the year, suggesting thousands of British troops will remain in the country well into 2006. "The formal announcement of that redeployment will be made during the autumn and they would be scheduled to go out around the end of November," a MoD spokesman said.
Britain, the main ally of the United States in Iraq, has frequently said its soldiers will stay there "until the job is done" and until the Iraqi government asks them to leave. It said 6,000 Desert Rats would go to Iraq in what it described as "an unexpected redeployment."
The MoD described the figure as speculative and said the redeployment was part of a rotation of troops and did not mean Britain was increasing its presence in Iraq.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/18/2005 00:44 ||
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Getting ready to do Iran then
Posted by: War supporter ||
09/18/2005 3:48 Comments ||
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Yeah, I wondered about that too. or, at a minimum, countering Iranian provocateurs and forces in southern Iraq.
#3
A telling point will be if the US starts quietly bringing in large amounts of heavy armor. While the Strykers have shown themselves to be good, having Abrams tanks waiting in the wings is just warm and fuzzy.
Other things to look for are a major increase in the number of anti-missile batteries in both Iraq with several in western Afghanistan.
I still suspect that we are waiting for Iran to make the first major move, such as launching a salvo of missiles, some nuclear, most likely targetting a US fleet. First of all, their military would demand the first attack be against the most major threat. Second, they believe we will attack them with the same strategy as Gulf War I, in which more than half the air attack was done from naval forces.
This could be done in concert with having their armies on the Iraq border advance, or just trying to form an effective defense against an American ground attack.
It could also include missiles directed at other targets as well, in a "Hail Mary" approach. The US will also have to assume that they plan for several missile salvos, so our regional anti-missile defenses will have to be significant, including Patriot batteries, aircraft energy weapons and ship defenses. Iran could also work with North Korea for both to launch attacks simultaneously.
Surprisingly, I do not think they will attack Tel Aviv at first. While they detest Israel, they fear the US, and figure if they drive the US from the region, Israel will be an afterthought.
If the US is going to use a counter-punch technique against Iranian aggression, it will have thoroughly coordinated its strategy with the other nuclear powers, to minimize the risk of escalation. It will have given them a list of a dozen or more likely scenarios the US has war-gamed, along with indications of possible US responses.
There is no concern that these plans may be given to the Iranians, in fact, we would prefer that they knew that *we* were on to their little tricks, and can not only effectively counter them but consistently defeat them in every scenario.
It's bothering me though, that we have removed the regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan but not remade the countries as complete friendlies.
We would be so much further on the way to winning the WOT if those countries had western-friendly leadership and western-friendly policies such as banning Islamist mullahs, compulsory secular schooling for boys and girls, etc. Some of the philosophical underpinnings that would weaken extemist Islamism and drag them into the 21st century.
I think the lack of will to remake a broken society (fear of being hated as imperialists?) is holding back the WOT.
Most British Muslims back the government's plans to deport radical Islamist "hate preachers" it says could inspire bombers like those who attacked London in July, a poll published on Sunday showed. The ICM poll found that 65 per cent of Muslims backed the new government measures and 27 per cent opposed them. Ninety per cent said they would immediately tell police if they suspected someone was planning or had carried out a terrorist attack. Just over two thirds of those questioned said Britain's 1.8 million Muslims bore "a lot" of responsibility for rooting out Islamist extremists, 19 per cent said they bore "a little" responsibility and nine per cent said they bore none.
ICM interviewed 500 Muslims by telephone between Sept. 1 and 7 for the poll, published in the News Of The World newspaper. Home Secretary Charles Clarke has published a list of "unacceptable behaviours" which would prompt immediate action â either deportation or a ban on entry.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
09/18/2005 00:08 ||
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Most British Muslims back the government's plans to deport radical Islamist "hate preachers" it says could inspire bombers like those who attacked London in July, a poll published on Sunday showed.
duh. I wish I could somehow profit from conducting polls like that one.
Who gives a shit what a poll of Muzzies says? You don't govern a country based on polls, anyway - if you're sane. Could easily label this Muzzy Taqiya Watch, as well. The only thing the poll might indicate is that some of them realize they might have to go back and live in the shitholes they came from if they don't appear to Get Brit Lickety Split. But it's still a farce, at most. Never forget and never be fooled:
London 15.09.05 | The existence of systematic political prosecution in Venezuela, as established in article 7 of the Rome Statute, has been been argued for some time now. Apologists of Hugo Chavez maintain that it is nonsense, just another cry wolf allegation against the 'democratically elected' leader. Many people have complained about the existence of a list, compiled by chavista assemblyman Luis Tascon with a group of collaborators, that is widely utilised by government officials at all institutional levels to deny passports, contracts, IDs, employments, benefits, etc. The creation of said database was ordered by Hugo Chavez himself, who in a memo dated January 30th 2004...
...Researching a bit about this topic I was able to find, download the list via emule and install the software in my PC. It contains details of 12.394.109 citizens, that is to say Venezuela's entire electoral register up until July 6 2004. The images speak for themselves. The questions: what would happen should any of the leaders of the democratic nations of the world be caught ordering the construction of such database? What would happen to the electoral institutions of any European country and its officials should they be caught passing critical information with respect to the political tendencies of the electorate to politicians of a given ruling party?
Then he has screenshots, two of which I link to below.
#1
As a IT Manager I got into many a discussion about our voting machines after 2000. Your first thought is efficency and the sheer in-efficency of our equipment. Then you start thinking about corruption and cheating.
A can almost guarantee you this database was built using the new E-voting machines Venezuela used for the first time in 2004. One dept in charge of voting, one set of equipment, etc.
The following article describes the new voting process and how it would obviously give the gov't and immediate database of who voted for who.
#3
Yep, DieBolt in Ohio and Venazasulat, ummm... Venizwaylaa, ummm.... Hugo's place. LOL Why did he have to steal an election? He had Halibuirton, the military and oil.
Posted by: Bobby Lee ||
09/18/2005 18:09 Comments ||
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Japan's new opposition leader on Sunday sought to revise the nation's pacifist constitution and lift restrictions on Japanese troops' use of weapons overseas.
Seiji Maehara, fresh from his slim victory in the Democratic Party of Japan's leadership election on Saturday, said Japan should stipulate its right of self-defence in the US-imposed constitution.
"We have to clarify the right to defend ourselves," Maehara said in a television interview.
The 43-year-old, nicknamed the "security geek" by his colleagues for his knowledge of national security and North Korea, said Japan should also have the right to back up the United States if its ally was involved in an armed conflict in the region.
The constitution, which says Japan forever renounces war, bans Japanese troops from providing support for the US military even if US bases in Japan were under attack.
China and to a lesser extent South Korea have been alarmed by moves away from Japan's official pacifism.
The new opposition leader also sought to lift restrictions on Japanese troops' use of arms in their peacekeeping activities in other countries, including Iraq.
Japan has some 550 troops in the southern Iraqi city of Samawa on a non-combat, humanitarian mission in its first military deployment since 1945 to a country where there is active fighting.
The troops, barred by the constitution of 1947 from firing their weapons except in self-defence, have relied on Australia and other countries for their security in Samawa.
The largest opposition party held the leadership election after former head Katsuya Okada resigned to take responsibility for a major loss in the September 11 general election against Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's ruling coalition.
#1
To me this has the sound of someone like John Kerry coming out sounding like a hawk right after having been whipped, campaigning on a dove platform.
After marathon negotiations in early March, Japanese officials accepted the American draft with only minor revisions. General Whitney's comment at the outset -- "if the cabinet [is] unable to prepare a suitable and acceptable draft.... General MacArthur [is] prepared to lay this statement of principle directly before the people" -- probably helped. Emperor Hirohito, chagrined at having lost so much power but grateful that the throne had been retained, issued an "imperial rescript" endorsing the draft. That fall, after the Japanese people had voted overwhelmingly for candidates who backed the new consitution, Hirohito himself promulgated it before the Diet (Japanese Parliament). Although it ignored his own role in its birth, General MacArthur's message to the nation offered a pretty fair assessment: "The adoption of this liberal charter, together with other progressive measures enacted by the Diet, lays a very solid foundation for the new Japan."
The Japanese people supported the constitution then and have so for almost 60 years. It is not a "US-imposed constitution". US-authored? Yes, but Japanese adopted and adhered to since. It is a legitimate geoverning document despite the author's egregious insinuation.
#3
You better revise it dude, china is going to have to be dealt with at some point and you will need more than a toll free number to the white house to do that.
Via DhimmiWatch
Since the murder of the Islam critical Dutch film director Theo van Gogh, and the violent attack on a lecturer at the Danish Carsten Niebuhr Institute, Danish artists are fearful of criticising Islam.
Author, KÃ¥re Bluitgen, is due to publish a book on the profit Mohammed in two weeks time, but so far no one has agreed to illustrated the work through fear of reprisals from Islamic extremists. According to the author, three artists have turned down an offer to illustrate the book based on their fear of being attacked if they do so.
The president of the Danish Writers Union, Frants Iver Gundelach, said that it is a gross attack on freedom of speech, and the issue will be taken up at the next union meeting.
Posted by: ed ||
09/18/2005 20:59 ||
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a book on the profit Mohammed
there's a verb clause missing after Mohammed, methinks. Raisins and virgins to the Rantburger who can supply the best one.
Mine: "a book on the profit Mohammed earned on his investment in Mecca Cola futures, whose title is "The jihadi's five steps to financial independence"
#3
There might be a lesson somewhere in this for Christians who are tired of seeing pictures of Jesus made out of feces or crucifixes dunked in urine. I'm just saying.
Angela Merkel's conservatives were the leading party in today's German election but her center-right alliance lacked a parliamentary majority, exit polls indicated as voting ended.
Polls by leading institutes broadcast on German television put Merkel's conservatives - the Christian Democrats (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU) - the biggest share of the vote at 35.5-36.0 percent and their preferred partners, the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), at 10.5 percent - not enough to form a governing coalition.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's SPD stood at 33.5-34.0 percent, its partners the Greens at 8.5 percent and the new Left Party at 7.5-8.5 percent.
With her conservatives the top vote-getters, Merkel, who grew up in the ex-communist east, seems likely to replace Schroeder, who has ruled Germany for seven years.
But without enough support to govern with the FDP, Merkel could well be forced to share power with Schroeder's SPD in Germany's first "grand coalition" since the 1960s.
EFL
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
09/18/2005 13:12 ||
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Sigh. Forced into a coalition with the fools who've screwed a once-great economy into the ground. Brilliant. And thus we see why TGA, and other intelligent Germans who remember pre-nanny-state times of prosperity, is joking about looking for property in the US. I sincerely empathize with the people who have the clarity of thought to realize you just can't get something for nothing - every giveaway program has costs which exceed the benefits. All of them. Every time. Forever. Full stop.
[insert favorite stupidity & insanity sayings here]
Stupid is as stupid does.
Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.
yadda³
#3
Stupidity is a terminal illness. That's just as true of governments and nations as it is for individuals. It appears that the Germans are gradually waking up. Hopefully it won't be too late to save their nation and its people from disaster.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
09/18/2005 14:32 Comments ||
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#4
I don't care anymore. The only thing we should be doing with the Germans is keeping an eye on them. As active antagonists to our foreign policy they and no longer our allies and never have been friends. That campaign poster was the last straw.
This will lead to a weak and useless government that will stick to the foreign policy of the former government. A policy of seeming support but in reality undercutting the US in the WOT.
#5
My biggest concern is .com's: building a coalition with nutcases will dilute or nullify the gains made by the election of Frau Merkel. Some gains may be made, but the serious issues won't wait for anyone.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/18/2005 18:57 Comments ||
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All coalitions totally make government unworkable. They will be voting again soon in any case.
The SPD could still govern Germany as well. Schroeder is not dead yet.
Despite its refusal to fight in Iraq, Canada is complicit in the U.S. war on terrorism and should withdraw from Afghanistan, an outspoken left-wing British MP said Saturday.
"I'm amazed that so many people in Canada believe they're not a part of this crime," George Galloway said at the sixth annual conference of the Islamic Circle of North America and the Muslim Association of Canada.
"Canada has sent an army of 1,000 soldiers to occupy the Muslim country of Afghanistan (and ships to the Persian Gulf)," Galloway said.
"Your ships in the Gulf and your soldiers in Afghanistan are doing the dirty work of George W. Bush and Tony Blair. They are freeing American ships and soldiers to go to Fallujah and massacre the people of Iraq."
Galloway also called Canada's reputation as peacekeepers a lie, pointing to comments by Gen. Rick Hillier, who said soldiers are fighting "detestable murderers and scumbags."
Hillier has said the Canadian Forces has a job to do and that involves killing people.
"That doesn't sound very much like neutrality to me," Galloway said to a receptive crowd. "You should raise the demand to end the Canadian occupation of Afghanistan."
Galloway is known for his vocal criticism of the war in Iraq and was kicked out of the Labour Party in 2003 for urging British soldiers not to fight in the war.
He launched his own anti-war party and this year won a seat in Parliament, unseating the Labour Party incumbent.
In his speech Saturday, he repeated statements he made recently in New York about why he believes Sept. 11 happened.
"These airplanes on 9-11 may have seemed to have come out of a clear blue sky but, in fact, these monstrous mosquitoes flew out of a swamp of bitterness and hatred and anger which exists in the Muslim world (because of) the injustice of western policy," Galloway said.
"It is a crime, it is a sin, in any language, in any religion, to punish innocent people for the crimes of guilty people," he said.
"But it is a crime and a sin whether it happens in Britain or New York or Fallujah or Baghdad or Palestine or Afghanistan or anywhere else the bombs and rockets are falling."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
09/18/2005 01:00 ||
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Re-watched his debate on C-SPAN. IFF I ever see him on the road, the Trailblazer accelerates ...
#2
Not if I see him first. I'll cap his bodyguards and pound his pimp ass into the asphalt. Anyone who would work to protect his ass deserves to be triple tapped as they are not human beings.
#4
Because in the country he lives in this kind of person is looked up to and admired. His kind of politics are normal in the UK. Ask his pal Ken Livingstone mayor of the largest city in the UK. They are 2 peas in a pod and not atypical of UK politicians at all.
#5
His constituency beat him up prior to the elections. I note he's been spending a lot of time being away from his district...generally at least an ocean away, as a matter of fact.
A decade ago, when I was investigating counter-terrorism cases for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), our targets were just as murderous as today, but they were decidedly less suicidal. However twisted, their operations were designed with at least enough pragmatic restraint that the terrorist could hope to emerge unscathed. The current generation of terrorist embraces martyrdom, that oddly archaic end that suggests dying for a cause is equivalent to achieving it.
Who chooses terrorism and the hope for death over anything this life has to offer?
In pursuing the answer to this question, National Post reporter Stewart Bell tells the story of Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, a Kuwaiti-Canadian who decided at the age of 14 to become an Islamic holy warrior. The portrait that emerges in The Martyr's Oath is frequently obscure, but nonetheless captivating.
Jabarah was not the product of some squalid refugee camp or an oppressive regime. He grew up in middle-class St. Catharines, Ont., his father a service station owner, his mother a lawyer. He hadn't suffered any traumatic discrimination. He spoke English and was at home in the West. He held the promise to be anything he wished. Bell proposes, "He would have made an excellent addition to the Canadian military, intelligence service or police." Fluent Arabic-speakers who understand Muslim culture are prized recruits.
But Jabarah would choose a path to the extreme opposite pole, falling under the influence of a radical cleric during his summer visits to family in Kuwait. In 2000, he made his way to Pakistan and on to the al-Qaeda training camps across the border in Afghanistan. There, he was so successful that he was given advanced training offered only to the very best students. He met with, and reportedly impressed, Osama bin Laden. After brief exposure to the fight against the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, Jabarah moved on to Karachi, where he was given a mission by Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the infamous mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.
Jabarah's assignment was to conduct surveillance of the U.S. and Israeli embassies in Manila in preparation for a bomb assault. But the targets were deemed too difficult, and the scheme abandoned. Following 9/11, he landed in Singapore, where he became the key logistician for a plot to detonate six suicide bombs at six different locations associated with Western embassies, businesses and military facilities. However, he and his co-conspirators caught the attention of Singapore's ubiquitous Internal Security Department. Though he got away, the authorities were on to him and he was eventually arrested in Oman.
Because of his citizenship, he was deported back to Canada, where CSIS was anxious to speak with him. He was courted by an officer to whom his father bitterly refers as "the cunning Mike." In truth, as Bell relates it, Mike performed masterfully, building rapport, winning Jabarah's trust and extracting reams of intelligence about al-Qaeda before convincing him to turn himself over to U.S. authorities. For Jabarah had committed no indictable offence against Canada. However, by conspiring to kill Americans, he was prosecutable in the United States. Today he sits in a Manhattan detention centre, facing an indeterminate sentence.
Bell has done an admirable investigative job in amassing so much detail about Jabarah's terrorist recruitment and activities. He accessed classified material and spoke at length to Jabarah's father, who sways pathetically between lamenting the decisions made by his son and blaming intelligence officials for his fate. It's unfortunate that Bell was denied the opportunity to speak with Jabarah, but given the letters he quotes at some length, I suspect such conversations would have yielded only self-righteous soliloquies about perceived injustices in place of genuine insight.
Jabarah did not turn to jihad out of desperation, but as a deliberate expression of his ideals and dreams. He was raised in Canada, but pledged allegiance to bin Laden. We don't really know that he was prepared to die, but we are certain he was ready to kill. I came away from the book feeling that there is still a deep void at Jabarah's core, which is not a negative reflection on the book so much as reinforcement of the sense that hardcore terrorists are so alien to the values most Westerners are raised to cherish as to be incomprehensible. Resourceful reporters like Bell can meticulously reconstruct a chain of events, but the essence of the character, the configuration of the synapses that compels the behaviour, remain inexplicable.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
09/18/2005 00:03 ||
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Iran struck a strident note Sunday on the eve of a meeting with the U.N. nuclear agency, warning that referring Tehran to the U.N. Security Council could lead it to expand work on a program that can make nuclear fuel â or weapons grade uranium. Foreign Minister spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said Iran was not yet contemplating uranium enrichment but warned that it may change its mind if the country is hauled before the U.N.'s top decision-making body to answer questions about its suspect nuclear activities. "Enrichment is not on the agenda for the time being but if the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) meeting on Monday leads to radical results, we will make our decision to correspond to that," he said.
A European official said the Security Council option remained on the table, suggesting much of it depended on whether the European Union and the United States were successful in eroding the resistance of council member Russia to such action. She said that senior representatives of the European Union, the United States and Russia would meet Monday in New York to explore common ground. Results would determine whether the Europeans and Americans would push for immediate Security Council action or settle for something less during the IAEA board of governors' meeting in Vienna, the official told The Associated Press. Washington and the European Union began lobbying for Security Council referral last month after Iran resumed uranium conversion, a precursor to uranium enrichment, which can produce both fuel for energy or the core of nuclear weapons.
Ignoring their demand for a renewed conversion freeze, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proclaimed his country's "inalienable right" to produce nuclear fuel in a speech Saturday to the U.N. General Assembly.
Russian President Vladimir Putin refused to be pinned down ahead of Monday's negotiations. "Today, the Iranian side is working sufficiently in cooperation with (the) IAEA ... so let's proceed from the circumstances of today," Putin told Fox News Sunday, suggesting he was leaning against Security Council involvement. Still, he added that Moscow stands ready "to coordinate our activities, both with American and European partners, and I must say that our positions here are quite close."
Diplomats accredited to the IAEA, meanwhile, suggested Iran may have another card up its sleeve, saying it may offer new concessions during the board meeting to take deflect the Security Council threat. The diplomats, who are familiar with the Iran file, told the AP that Tehran may announce that is ready to grant agency experts access to high-ranking military officials or military sites. The agency has been trying to determine if gaps in Iranian reporting on more than 18 years of clandestine nuclear activity first revealed three years ago are attempts to cover up military involvement in what Iran insists is a purely civilian program meant only to generate power. Establishing such involvement would bolster arguments by the United States and its allies that Iran's program is a cover for trying to make nuclear arms.
The IAEA has been rebuffed in attempts to revisit Parchin, the site of alleged experiments linked to nuclear weapons and to inspect Lavizan-Shian, the possible site for equipment that can be used both for peaceful and nuclear weapons-related purposes. Additionally, the agency has been denied permission to interview senior officials linked to the military. With the board already closely divided on whether to haul Iran before the Security Council, any new concessions by Iran could increase the number of countries opposed and leave the Europeans and the Americans in the minority, said the diplomats. They, like the European official, demanded anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Posted by: ed ||
09/18/2005 20:19 ||
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Foreign Minister spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said Iran was not yet contemplating uranium enrichment but warned that it may change its mind if the country is hauled before the U.N.'s top decision-making body to answer questions about its suspect nuclear activities.
"If you tell us not to do it, we'll do it."
Yeah, like they really care what anyone thinks. I'm betting they'll test something -- possibly inside another country -- before the end of 2006.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
09/18/2005 21:47 Comments ||
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If they do get the bomb, I hope they do test it (on their own territory).
That in itself will put an end to the UN, IAEA, EIEIO, and any other vowel agencies thought up by the UN. It will have the added effect of putting egg on the EU's face, dragging them into irrelevance (assuming they haven't already accepted the inevitability that tyrannical regimes, such as in Iran, will get the bomb sooner or later). If Iran gets the bomb, would it still matter anymore what the EU/UN says?
Posted by: Rafael ||
09/18/2005 22:20 Comments ||
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The entire sequence of events, an unbroken string missteps really, since the revelation of the Iranian nuke program has been surreal. It would be laughable - and panned, were it published as fiction. The "you just can't make this stuff up" thought has hit with almost every story - going back at least to mid 2003.
Once revealed, in August, 2002 by the "terrorist" org MKO (anti-Shah when founded, anti_Mullahs now), this Dec, 2001, article suddenly made real-world sense - not just the usual Islamic bravado and breast-beating we were accustomed to out of PaleoLand.
To be here, at this point, in this situation, just boggles. If there were two sane neurons to rub together in the entire pile of Black Hats and their minions, they would've kept below the radar. No one would've taken seriously the first reports of their nuke program if they had been cool, smart, cagey. But nope, they just couldn't contain themselves and lie low, they had to bray and bellow. Nukes are Islamic Viagra - or Cialis, if you prefer. Mad Mullahs. Never has a derogatory slur proven to be more accurate. Moron Mullahs would be true, too, but miss the vital element that makes these assholes uniquely dangerous: they are well and truly insane.
NEW YORK â Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed US support on Friday for political transition in Lebanon and its efforts to mitigate Syrian influence in the country. Rice met Saad Hariri, the son of Lebanonâs late prime minister Rafic Hariri, and âunderlined the support of the international community and the United States for Lebanonâs political transition as it emerges from the shadow of Syrian influence,â a spokesman said.
Rice also reiterated US support for âfull implementationâ of UN Security Council resolution 1559 which calls for dismantlement of all militias in Lebanon, notably Hezbollah. Rice plans to attend a multinational meeting on Lebanon to be held on September 19.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/18/2005 00:27 ||
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UNITED NATIONS - The European Union said on Saturday that referring Iranâs nuclear program to the UN Security Council was its sole option after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad affirmed Tehranâs plans to press ahead with producing nuclear fuel. âThe EUâs reaction to Mr. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejadâs speech is that the language he used leaves us no alternative but to pursue a U.N. referral,â an EU spokeswoman said.
She spoke with Reuters after a meeting in New York of top diplomats from the 25-nation bloc. âHowever, we want to build an international consensus on the matter. So we will be consulting with everybody,â she said.
The statement did not rule out a delay in the EU and the United States asking the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency to refer the Iran dossier to the 15-nation Security Council. The board of the UN nuclear watchdog is meeting on Monday in Vienna.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/18/2005 00:18 ||
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Yea by the time the UN is done Iran will have a few 100 ICMBMs and have used a few.
#2
This reminds me of a Jeff MacNelly cartoon of about 20 years ago. A voice is heard from the Hotel Wyoming saying, "Boy this new MX system will really put Cheyenne on the map!" In the next frame can be seen a Soviet general briefing Andropov, pointer in hand, pointing at "The Map."
Posted by: Curt Simon ||
09/18/2005 9:41 Comments ||
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This boy's really good at saying all the wrong things in a grating voice...
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the UN General Assembly yesterday his country had the inalienable right to produce nuclear fuel and accused the United States of violating global nuclear treaties. Saying that real sustainable order âcan only be realized on the two pillars of justice and spirituality,â Ahmadinejad said the world âis rife with discrimination and poverty... which produces hatred, war and terrorism.â Noting âterrorism and weapons of mass destruction are two major threats to world peace,â Iranâs president said his country was the âsymbol of true democracyâ and pledged to actively promote âpeace and stability in the region.â
Turning to what he called âthe nuclear issueâ, he slammed the signatories to the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty who had âtransferred to the Zionist regimeâ the âmaterial, technology and equipment for nuclear weaponsâ, making it impossible for the Middle East to be a nuclear-free zone. He said it was necessary to ârevitalize the NPT and create an ad hoc committee so that it can combat nuclear weapons and abolish the apartheid in peaceful nuclear technology.â To provide âthe greatest degree of transparency,â Ahmadinejad said, Iran âis prepared to engage in serious partnership with private and public sectors of other countries in the implementation of uranium enrichment program in Iran.â
Speaking to CNNâs Christiane Amanpour hours before his UN speech, Ahmadinejad lashed out against ânuclear apartheidâ and suggested his nation might consider taking action to hike oil prices in order to scare off further action from the United States and parts of Europe. Asked about remarks by some Iranian officials that Iran may provoke a rise in oil prices, he responded, âI think any intelligent, healthy, smart human being should use every resource in order to maintain his or her freedom and independence.â
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2005 00:00 ||
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1939: [fill in the blank] is our last territorial demand!
2005: It's Israel's fault that the Middle East cannot live in nuclear free peace and tend our ducklings and baby bunnies.
#2
I wish someone would take care of the "breathes" part....
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/18/2005 14:37 Comments ||
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As the Iranian's play the tough guy card, somehow assuming that the current President is a nuanced fool like Carter or Clinton, I'm more troubled about what their national intelligence assets here and their Hizbollah fellow travellers are planning and running recon on as we speak. In CA we have a huge population of Iranians and Lebanese with Hiz connections. What are they doing, and what are they planning. These people have demonstrated repeatedly no sense of manners in a myriad number of ways, and their current presence in the US is very troubling. I have a clear sense of the limitations of what state and local intell systems can do (not very much) but what are the FBi and the shadow presence of the agency doing about tracking these very dangerous people? There are several people in RB who routinely give a glimpse that they might some idea. Love to hear from them.....
Posted by: Just About Enough! ||
09/18/2005 19:22 Comments ||
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NEW YORK (Agencies) - President General Pervez Musharraf while defending the recent Pak-Israel contacts has described this initiative only to gear up support for Palestinians and build pressure on Israel.
He categorically stated that until we are 200 per cent sure of setting up of a sovereign independent Palestinian State, Pakistan would not recognise Israel nor would it establish diplomatic relations with them, he added.
The President in an interview with Arabic newspaper representatives, said he was not afraid of taking any bold decisions nor someone who compromised on principles. Pakistan, he said was also concerned about the build up of Indo-Israeli defence cooperation, he told the Arabic newspaper.
But foremost in our mind was to help Palestinian movement and to see them duly establish an independent state and play a part towards this important objective.
Our whole approach and recent initiatives are aimed at achieving that goal, which was not possible without our direct involvement in the process. Our Foreign Minister, Khurshid Kasuri, had duly taken President Mahmood Abbas into confidence, prior to his recent meeting with Israeli counterpart.
We have a clear cut approach and set objectives in our policy, which aims at seeking establishment of independent Palestinian Sate with its capital at Jerusalem and retrieval of occupied territories from Israel. In this regard, exit from Gaza by Israel was an important first step, he said.
Posted by: john ||
09/18/2005 07:34 ||
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Let me check my Stun Metre
Posted by: Bobby Lee ||
09/18/2005 18:01 Comments ||
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and the Israelis explained what they sold the Indians and said STFU LOL
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/18/2005 18:17 Comments ||
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The accounts are disturbing: beatings, forced sex and imprisonment with shackles and leg irons. Abuse accusations from hundreds of children sent to study at Islamic schools are prompting growing calls from parents and rights groups for a full-scale investigation.
Posted by: john ||
09/18/2005 07:39 ||
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Beatings, forced sex and imprisonment?
Pakistani education at its best. And these graduates are the cannon fodder sent out by the Pakistan army.
Posted by: john ||
09/18/2005 11:47 Comments ||
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The Indo-US counter terrorism exercise in Mizoram will have a special guest in US Army Pacific Commandâs Deputy Chief Maj Gen Ronald G Crowder who reached here today on a five-day visit.
âYudh Abhyas-05,â the third exercise in successive years at the Indian Armyâs prestigious Counter-Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School (CIJWS) at Vairangte Mizoram, started this week on Tuesday.
The first and the second exercises were held in April 2003 and March-April 2004, respectively.
Around 50 US soldiers and an equal number of Indian soldiers are participating in the exercise. They will also undergo specialised training for counter terrorism and counter insurgency operations.
Posted by: john ||
09/18/2005 08:36 ||
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India will vote with the United States, France, Britain and Germany in the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) board of governors if forced to make a choice on referring the question of Iran's nuclear intentions to the United Nations' Security Council.
Highly-placed South Block sources told The Hindu that such a decision to vote with the U.S. in a crunch situation was taken even before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh went into a meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush in New York.
At this bilateral meeting Iran is said to have come up for discussion.
According to reports from New York, it appears that the U.S. and the European Union "three" are backing off from asking the IAEA's board to refer Iran to the Security Council on September 19 itself.
The board is meeting in Vienna on Monday,
In such a scenario, where the E.U. "three" Foreign Ministers have had diplomatic contacts with the new Iranian leadership in New York, it appears that India will not immediately be called upon to vote one way or another in the IAEA board.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
09/18/2005 00:51 ||
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Highly-placed South Block sources
What's South Block?
Posted by: Bobby Lee ||
09/18/2005 18:03 Comments ||
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NEW YORK - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf held an unprecedented meeting on Saturday with leaders of the American Jewish Congress as part of his campaign to press for moderation in the Muslim world.
Musharraf is the first leader of a Muslim nation, which has no diplomatic relations with Israel to hold a public dialogue with Jewish leaders, officials of the Council for World Jewry said.
The Pakistan military general was given a standing ovation and big round of applause as he stepped into the conference room for the meeting cum dinner at a leading hotel in New York. âI cannot imagine that a Muslim and that too a Pakistani and more than that a man in uniform would ever get such a warm reception and such an applause from the Jewish community,â Musharraf said, as gave a military salute to the audience, which included Pakistani Americans.
Jack Rosen, the chairman of the American Jewish Congress, described the function as âan unprecedented evening.â It resulted from two years of secret talks, culminating with a May meeting with Musharraf in Islamabad. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke before the congress in January last year but his nation already has diplomatic relations with Israel, congress officials said.
âPresident Musharrafâs decision to be with us tonight is an act of individual courage, leadership and vision,â said Rohen, who is also chairman of the Council for World Jewry, which includes the American, French and Russian chapters of the Jewish community.
Sharing the dais with Musharraf, senior US legislator Tom Lantos, a Hungarian Jew who resisted the Nazis and then narrowly escaped the Holocaust for America, greeted the Pakistani leader as âa man of vision.â âAt a time when the civilized world is engaged in a global war against extremist Islamic terrorism, you have emerged as the quintessential Muslim leader of moderation, decency, reason, and acceptance of pluralism,â said the Democratic Representative of California.
Musharraf unveiled his so called âenlightened moderationâ doctrine encouraging Muslims to embrace pluralism, openness and tolerance at the Organization of Islamic Conference last year.
Pakistan has stressed that it will not officially recognise Israel until the Palestinians get their own independent state. Israel has long hoped that its historic withdrawal from the Gaza Strip after a 38-year occupation could usher in a new period in Israelâs hitherto largely non-existent ties with many of the worldâs Muslim countries. It currently has full diplomatic relations with only three Arab states -- Mauritania, Egypt and Jordan -- and a handful of Muslim majority states including Turkey.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/18/2005 00:30 ||
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Pakistani passports have the caveat - "not valid for travel to Israel".
The pakistani textbooks (not the madrassa books, the ones used in government schools) inculcate anti-semitism in a country without any jewish minority whatsover.
Perv has found love beacuse he wants to derail Indo-Israeli militray ties and purchase Israeli AWACs and ABM systems.
Posted by: john ||
09/18/2005 11:58 Comments ||
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THERE is no substitute for war as a way of separating out talented field commanders from the rest. In Iraq, America's terrorist enemies have benefited from these winnowing effects as much as any conventional force. Now the jihadists have a hardened cadre of leaders, and none is more brutally distinguished than Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
With a $25 million price on his head and the United States military desperately trying to corner him, Zarqawi has become the face of the insurgency, if not exactly "the new face of Al Qaeda," as the subtitle of Jean-Charles Brisard's disjointed biography, "Zarqawi," asserts. His organization may be committing only a fraction of the attacks in Iraq, but, as Brisard and his collaborator, Damien Martinez, rightly observe, "His are the ones that are commented on throughout the world." These attacks have included the destruction of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad and large-scale bombings of Shiite targets in Najaf and Karbala, which have helped speed the way toward wider sectarian violence and the current undeclared civil war.
A Jordanian with a background as humble as Osama bin Laden's is grand, Ahmad Fadil Nazzal al-Khalayleh (Zarqawi's nom de guerre is taken from his hometown near Amman) traveled a route sharply different from that of Al Qaeda's first generation of leaders. Unlike the patrician surgeon Ayman al-Zawahiri, the group's second-in-command and chief ideologist, or bin Laden himself, a member of the Saudi elite who studied engineering and economics, Zarqawi was a high school dropout, an abuser of alcohol, a drug dealer and possibly a participant in an attempted rape.
According to Brisard, this rebel from a criminal background went to fight in the Afghan jihad in 1989 after a quarrel with his father, a minor city official. He missed the glorious struggle against the Soviets but saw action in later battles among the various Afghan factions. He was arrested in his native country in 1994 for trying to bring the jihad home. In prison, Zarqawi came under the tutelage of a prominent radical imam, Abu Mohammed al-Maqdisi, and matured into a hard-edged takfiri, a believer in the excommunication - and slaughter - of Muslims deemed guilty of apostasy. He became the leader of a jailhouse Islamist cell, acquiring a reputation for being relentlessly aggressive against those he opposed and extravagantly devoted to those who supported him.
These qualities have served him well in Iraq. While bin Laden, who is fastidious about the details of his violence, has been off making video addresses from the caves of Waziristan and casting himself as a world leader, Zarqawi is claiming credit for a dozen bombings a week. His videos show him personally beheading captives, like the young American Nick Berg. His passionate hatred of Shiites, whom he has compared unfavorably to Americans, has made him perfectly suited to be the catalyst for an Iraqi civil war - a role that probably could not have been filled as well by bin Laden, since Al Qaeda has historically sought to avoid provoking Shiite Iran.
Zarqawi could be an excellent window into understanding radical Islam's appeal to the Arab world's swelling underclass, the various currents running through the movement (including its powerful anti-Shiite sentiment) and the way the jihadist struggle has been changed by the war in Iraq. But this biography has little to say about any of this. Nor is it helpful in explaining Zarqawi's volatile relationship with Al Qaeda. In the period preceding the war, while the Bush administration was portraying Zarqawi as the key intermediary between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, many Western intelligence services saw him less as a lieutenant of bin Laden than a rival - a view now widely accepted. (The charge that Zarqawi was collaborating with Hussein's regime has long since crumbled.) The merger of his Tawhid and Jihad group with Al Qaeda in 2004 was a case of mutual exploitation. Zarqawi was able to show that he had the blessing of the greatest jihadist and bin Laden could create the illusion that he was a real presence in today's central field of battle.
Brisard describes a chaotic series of conspiracies, mostly failed, and he provides the names of legions of insignificant co-conspirators, but he scarcely explores Zarqawi's differences with the Al Qaeda leaders over doctrine (it may be hard to believe there are people more radical than bin Laden, but takfiris, with their "slaughter them all approach," are just that). There is also little discussion of the disagreements over strategy, in which Zarqawi pushed for bringing the jihad to the Middle East to topple Jordan's rulers and attack Israel, while bin Laden favored a global focus on the United States.
What's more, numerous errors of fact and a shabby use of sources makes this a self-undermining book. For example, Brisard refers to a mid-90's plot "to crash several airplanes simultaneously over the United States"; the goal of that plot was actually to blow up 12 wide-bodies over the Pacific. Brisard appears not to know that Pakistan's ruler in the late 90's was Nawaz Sharif, and he identifies Benazir Bhutto as the victim of Gen. Pervez Musharraf's 1999 coup, when in fact she was in exile at the time. Most bizarre is Brisard's claim that the United States has been trying to incite a "direct clash" between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq "so as to justify its presence in Iraq."
Charges like this only reinforce the reputation for reckless conspiracy theorizing that Brisard acquired with his last book, "Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for Bin Laden." (There he alleged that the 9/11 attacks were a response to American pressure on the Taliban to permit oil and gas pipelines to be built in Afghanistan.) In a letter early this year, Osama bin Laden asked Zarqawi to start work on an operation against the United States. The world's foremost jihadist evidently thinks the Jordanian upstart has the resources to carry out such an attack, and surely this is reason enough for us to know more about him. But "Zarqawi" is a squandered opportunity. I've got my own copy of the book and tend to think that Benjamin's selling it quite a bit short. While I agree with him on the factual errors (substituting Bhutto for Sharif), I think that this more than a hatchet job intended to sell Benjamin's own views on Zarqawi rather than to actually critique Brisard's.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
09/18/2005 00:11 ||
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Operative phrase is "Ex Clinton Offical"
-- Case closed
Posted by: Captain America ||
09/18/2005 0:29 Comments ||
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"a background as humble as Osama bin Laden's" WTF?
Humble? Son of a Millionaire? Huimble my butt. Pure propaganda of the Clinton kind which is why one of these clown worked for him.
#3
The world's foremost jihadist (Bin Laden) evidently thinks the Jordanian upstart has the resources to carry out such an attack, and surely this is reason enough for us to know more about him. But "Zarqawi" is a squandered opportunity.
I thought I read Zarqawi is a chemical expert, with at least one "dirty chemical bomb" averted. Propane-like canisters in a vehicle combined with explosives, thwarted in Jordan. I also thought he was familiar with parts of Europe, like Rome, and the Balkans or Chechnya, known to disguise himself, and to have multiple passports. He also supposedly met in Herat with Al Qaeda and Taliban, having lived there for a time. I'd say he's capable of most anything, has Al Qaeda funding, and certainly won't squander an opportunity. My biggest fear is that he gets one. Given a chance, he'll leave Iraq with the local battle-hardened jihadis to keep the fireworks going to screen his departure, just as I believe Bin Laden did, and actually pull something horrific off. We aren't looking for him in Greece....
#4
I thought I read Zarqawi is a chemical expert, with at least one "dirty chemical bomb" averted
Zarqawi has less than a highschool diploma, failed at several small businesses in Jordan and set up as a thug, doing prison time for it. That's when he decided his future lay in Islamacism instead.
He's no chem warfare expert. Al-Q has got its hands on some materials and recipes and has some chem engineers working with/for him. But Z is just a Saddam wannabe, i.e. a virtually illiterate thug who has risen to power based on a willingness to kill civilians indiscriminately.
#6
Zarqawi's camp near Herat Afghanistan was reputed to specialize in chem weapons and poisons. It was Zarqawi's boys (Ansar al Islam) who were arrested in the aborted Ricin attacks in Europe.
Posted by: ed ||
09/18/2005 18:29 Comments ||
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Nato officials fear that the "pacifism" of several European governments is undermining attempts by the American-led coalition in Afghanistan to hunt down the Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden and the remnants of his al-Qaeda terrorist network.
Washington is keen for other Nato countries to take a stronger role in Operation Enduring Freedom, the bitter campaign being waged against al-Qaeda and the Taliban on the Afghan/Pakistan border.
But Nato officials say the transatlantic alliance is being prevented from taking a more active role in the fight against militant Islamic groups because of the concerns of several European governments about incurring casualties.
"Nato is being hampered by the pacifism of a number of member states," a senior official, who asked not to be named, told The Sunday Telegraph. "Countries like Germany and Spain are just not prepared to put their soldiers in a position where they might get killed. They are happy to sign up for peacekeeping operations, but they are not prepared to deploy their troops on the front line. They are deeply averse to the notion of their soldiers coming home in body bags."
Last week, as Afghanistan prepared for its parliamentary elections, which take place today, Britain announced that it was sending an extra 5,000 troops to Afghanistan to assist the coalition in the military campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The deployment is part of Nato's plan to expand its control in the turbulent areas to the south, where Taliban fighters have refused to surrender following the war of 2001 and are waging a vicious insurgency campaign against United States troops.
So far this year, more than 50 US soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan - the highest number since the military campaign to overthrow the Taliban in 2001.
There are currently two separate military missions in Afghanistan: 18,000 American troops are involved almost exclusively in waging the war against al-Qaeda in the south, while 11,000 Nato soldiers are involved in peacekeeping in other parts of the country.
By persuading Nato to deploy further south, Washington was hoping to induce its European allies to commit military resources to fighting al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
The British force is to be deployed in the lawless Helmand province, where its first task will be to assist with the programme, spearheaded by the British government, to destroy Afghanistan's billion-dollar illegal heroin trade.
But as most of the heroin traffickers have close links with the Taliban, it is inevitable that the new British contingent will find itself in the front line of the war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Last week John Reid, the Defence Secretary, made it clear that the new British contingent - which will include 1,000 paratroops, backed by Apache attack helicopters - will be expected to confront the Taliban, and called for closer co-operation between the Nato and US forces.
"I think we would achieve more with the two missions coming closer together than we would if we were off doing our own things," said Dr Reid.
Mounting tensions between Washington and Europe over Nato policy in Afghanistan came to a head at a meeting of Nato defence ministers in Bonn last week, when Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, sarcastically remarked that it would be "nice if Nato developed counter-terrorist capabilities" - in other words, prepared to tackle the Taliban.
France, Spain and Germany insisted that Nato's peacekeeping operation should be kept separate from the US military campaign in the south.
Peter Struck, the German defence minister, said: "I would not like to expose our soldiers to more danger by linking these two mandates together."
The reluctance of Europe to put troops at risk in Afghanistan threatens to cause a serious rift in the Nato alliance.
"The whole point of Nato is to defend the West from attack," said a senior Bush administration official. "Al-Qaeda poses a threat to the whole of the West, not just the US. It is unfair to expect American soldiers to do all the dirty work. We don't like our soldiers coming back in body bags either, but we don't have any choice. This is war, and in war you have to make painful sacrifices."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
09/18/2005 00:06 ||
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Cowardice. Betrayal. No other words suffice. Just as with the UN, NATO is dead. What remains are the death throes and petulant excuses.
#2
France Germany and Spain. Get us out of NATO now. France doesn't even have a say in NATO as thay cuit and ran already once before. France should know when to keep quiet. The German are back stabbing bastard who can rot in hell. Spain is full of little girls who run it's socialist government. They all can and are going to hell in a hand basket.
#3
Form a new alliance with countries like Poland and the other former Eastern European states that have stepped up to the plate. Not only would inviting them vastly increase good relations with them, but these countries are eager to show they are in the fight against terror.
#4
Screw it let these selfish socialist fools defend themselves. Get us the hell out of NATO. It's a useless waste of time and the Germans are the biggest and most useless cowards of the bunch. Led by the leaders of all teh German political parties. Get us out of NATIO now. Germany can watch it's own 6 and pay for it. If countries want to be our friends and allies they can do it outside of NATO.They can also pay for it themselves. We have a War gonig and refugees in our own country to take care of. Acting to screw the US means you are not our allies. Get over it grow up and get us out of NATO.
#8
Germany France and Spain also have large amounts of rabidly anti-American population.
The US should absolutely STOP giving a shit what everyone else thinks anyway. Anything you do will be deeply unpopular. Who gives a shit about the hearts and minds, just get the job done.
Just remember: Australia is your ally and there are many people here who will go to war for you.
We remember you were there for us in WW2. We don't forget.
#9
The US should pull out of NATO. Then the Euros could rename it the Pacifist Treaty Organization (PTO). PTO troops could then go to troubled places (only if accessible via commercial airlines) and offer group hugs. PTO force working hours would be restricted to seven hours a day on weekdays including a two and a half hour lunch break.
#10
What this article shows is that
1) Europeans are more concerned about image than about security.
2) They really aren't interested in the US capturing the Taliban and prosecuting the
9/11 terrorists. If they were, they would be aggressively helping us capture Osama and the rest of the 9/11 criminals in Afghanistan today through unified and principled NATO action. No, somehow, 9/11 put the world right for them.
Iraq was a very convenient cover for European pacifism and anti-Americanism for a while, but their cowardly betrayal of a faithful ally who has pulled them out of the fire more than once is revealed in this refusal.
So here's my own American twist on the oft-repeated Euro phrase that they don't dislike our people, just our president and his policies:
"I don't dislike Europe, just its peoples and their lack of basic decency."
#11
R: That would be a mistake. Poland is 50% rabidly anti-American (probably much higher).
I don't doubt it. Poland pulled its troops out for precisely that reason. Don't get me wrong. They like our wealth. They like our technology. But that's not the same as actually liking Americans. Poles are not as bad as the Indians. But they're not the bosom buddies boosters would have you believe (any more than India is).
#12
It's the domestic hyphen lobbies, just like Greece and Israel.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
09/18/2005 13:41 Comments ||
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#13
Your source for that is ???
Informal survey of friends and family in Poland, and online forums (like gazeta.pl).
There are three things at work here:
1) anti-semitism is strong in Poland; you won't find someone who is anti-Jew and pro-American at the same time
2) disillusionment with capitalism; there are a lot of people (even those who are relatively well-off) who claim they had it better under communism; capitalism of course, is synonymous with America
3) simply put, there are those who say Poland's place is in Europe (the EU, specifically) and that entails mimicking the behemoths France & Germany
Posted by: Rafael ||
09/18/2005 16:20 Comments ||
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#14
NATO was created to keep the Russian bear from gobbling the rest of Western Europe. It worked well. Once the Soviet Union collapsed, however, its reason for existence disappeared, and so did the unity of purpose required to face the threat. It's obsolete. It needs to be abolished. Unfortunately, there's "nothing so permanent as a temporary government agency". It works with International alliances, as well.
There are many good people in Europe. I've met several thousand of them. There are a preponderence of people who believe their own propaganda, however, and ALL of them want a free ride. Also, Europe has a ton of internal problems they've ignored for 30 years, and it's catching up with them. They made decisions in the 1970's and 1980's that they're finding they can't pay for now, can't undo, and can't live with. Expect to see HUGE internal turmoil, similar to the 1920's, throughout Europe in the next ten years. This time, however, they're going to have to solve their own problems - we're busy.
We DO have some staunch allies, especially Britain and Australia. I believe the Japanese want to be equally as strong, but their own constitution limits their role. Canada and New Zealand - two nations that USED to be staunch allies - have followed the European model, and are in terminal decline.
Remember the Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times..."? Well, we're there.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
09/18/2005 16:35 Comments ||
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The unemployed gather like blown drifts where jobs are to be had. They queue around the block in weary, patient lines at barracks and police stations, clutching their identity papers. They queue to dig ditches or shovel rubbish from the streets, or gather in the early morning in dusty streets and squares where builders tout for labourers.
Last week the bombers came to al-Uruba Square in Kadhimiya, a Shia area of Baghdad. With its vast, important, gold-domed mosque, it has been a favourite for the suicide bombers. On Wednesday the driver of a van, pretending to seek day labourers, called men to his vehicle. As they approached, he detonated 220 kilos of high explosives, killing 114 people and injuring 150 more.
This was the beginning of one of Iraq's bloodiest days, but, despite the carnage, far from its most murderous. In a series of bomb explosions and shootings, 150 people would lose their lives and 500 would be injured.
It was followed by yesterday's toll of 30 people killed and 38 wounded in a car bombing in Nahrwan, around 30 miles from Baghdad. Earlier in the day police in Baghdad found nine bodies shot in the head and chest in three separate incidents, while in Baquba one man died and 17 people, including three Iraqi soldiers, were wounded when a car driven by a suicide bomber exploded near an Iraqi army patrol.
As officials of Iraq's Shia-dominated government, including those at the overworked Institute of Forensic Medicine, study the aftermath of the latest bombings, it is with a new fear: that they will find the bomber was not a Syrian, Yemeni, Saudi or even a Briton, but a brother Iraqi recruited by al-Qaeda.
A year ago analysis of the identities of suicide bombers deployed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaeda in Iraq suggested the vast majority of suicide volunteers were foreign fighters smuggled across the Syrian border.
That was then. A year on, the government, and its multinational allies, are confronting a shocking new reality: an emboldened and reinvigorated al-Qaeda that for the first time is attracting increasingly large numbers of young Iraqi Sunnis to its cause - and to die in suicide operations.
Following a week in which Zarqawi 'declared total war' on the country's Shia majority after the co-ordinated series of attacks that began in Kadhimiya, British and American officials have admitted that there is growing evidence that al-Qaeda is strengthening its grip in Iraq.
In the most alarming development, officials concede that for the first time that a significant number of suicide attacks in the country are now being undertaken by Iraqis.
The recruitment of Iraqi suicide bombers by al-Qaeda comes at a time when Iraqi Sunnis also appear to be taking increasingly senior roles in al-Qaeda in their country, and at a time that the leadership and aims of the wider insurgency have become increasingly blurred.
Some American officials have claimed that as much as half of Zarqawi's organisation is now Iraqi, but their British counterparts are more careful, admitting only that they are alarmed by the number of Iraqis volunteering to carry out suicide operations.
'Everything points to the fact that Iraq has become the main point of effort for al- Qaeda now,' said one British official. 'There is evidence that al-Qaeda globally is sending human and financial resources to support the struggle in Iraq.'
What is not clear is the nature of the links between al-Qaeda's current poster boy for international jihad and senior members of Osama bin Laden's operation, and what role they are playing in the organisation in Iraq, although some officials strongly suspect that they are involved.
What has emerged is that al-Qaeda in Iraq has three explicit targets: to hurt the US and Britain on the ground; to attack democracy; and to attack Shias, whom they regard as schismatic apostates.
'There is a feeling in al- Qaeda that Iraq is the springboard for their wider ambitions,' said the official. 'To that end they have upped their game in Iraq significantly in the last 12 months.'
That view is endorsed by a US official who told the Los Angeles Times last week: 'They are the best game in town, the most organised organisation.'
What is doubly worrying for the US and Iraq is evidence that, where once even many Sunnis who actively supported the wider insurgency still regarded al-Qaeda and its tactics as deeply unpalatable, now - despite rejecting al-Qaeda's vision of a return to a medieval caliphate - they are more willing to accept Zarqawi's methods as a valid weapon in their struggle.
The emerging picture of al-Qaeda and its operations is increasingly alarming Washington, London and Baghdad. Although few feel safe estimating the size of Zarqawi's network, one places the hardcore of the organisation as around 10 per cent of the total of Iraq's insurgency, itself thought to command upwards of 20,000 committed fighters. By this account, Zarqawi's organisation would be between 1,000 and 2,000 in total, not including the suicide bombers who pass through its hands.
At the head of the Iraq organisation is Zarqawi and a series of key aides who co-ordinate strategy and logistics. Beyond this small, central group are locally com- manded al-Qaeda groups in major cities and areas of activity which are under the command of individual 'emirs'.
According to officials, each of these emirs, who are in charge of operations, logistics, finance and planning, is paired with a propaganda chief in charge of communicating al-Qaeda's recruitment message to the local organisations. 'Zarqawi's organisation is the most secretive operating in Iraq, and probably the best,' said one British official. 'For that reason, it has probably always looked bigger than it is.'
Yet the existence of such an effective terrorist organisation, even if it is just a small part of the insurgency, has created another paradox that Western military and intelligence officials are grappling with: the willingness of Iraqis to fight where al-Qaeda is under assault.
In Falluja, 40 miles west of Baghdad, and the northern city of Tal Afar 'what has been extraordinary on both occasions is the number of people who picked up weapons', said one official. 'The orthodoxy had been to expect more resistance from the foreign fighters.'
One explanation for al-Qaeda's new appeal to Iraqi fighters is supplied by Mowaffak Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser and a former Shia activist, who said last week that 'there's no doubt' that once-nationalistic elements of the insurgency were now drifting toward Zarqawi. 'There's a tendency to religionise the insurgency,' he said. 'Religion is a strong motive. You're not going to find someone who's going to die for Baathists.'
It is not only the apparent resilience of al-Qaeda in Iraq as an organisation and its ability to replenish itself after setbacks that is worrying military and intelligence officials: the organisation's ability to refresh the ranks of its volunteers for suicide operations is also causing alarm.
'What is striking,' said one Whitehall analyst, 'is that a year ago al-Qaeda would have extravaganzas and then run out of suicide bombers, so there would be a lull. We had 11 on a single day last week.'
Iraqi and Western officials are not the only ones who are waking up to the new potential of al-Qaeda in Iraq. After two years and more of ignoring the problem, Iraq's neighbours are now taking an urgent interest in the group's ability to flourish, conscious that, after Iraq, their own regimes are in the crosshairs.
If last week's bombings were designed to deliver one message - the provocation of the Shias into a broadening civil conflict - Zarqawi's declaration of total war, broadcast by al-Qaeda's 'Jihad Media Battalion' on the internet, had a different audience in mind. That audience was potential recruits, urging them to abandon moderate Sunni clerics in favour of al-Qaeda's apocalyptic agenda.
Describing the joint US-Iraqi assault on Tal Afar, Zarqawi sought to cast the Sunnis as victims of a vicious sectarian war. 'Sunnis who managed to escape from the hell of the crusader bombing,' claimed Zarqawi, 'were seized by the treacherous hands of the treacherous [Badr] corps and others, who abused and murdered the men and who desecrated the women's honour and stole their jewellery and ornaments.
'This is an organised sectarian war, whose details were carefully planned, against the will of those whose vision has been blinded and whose hearts have been hardened by Allah.
'Beware, oh Sunni scholars - has your sons' blood become so cheap in your eyes that you have sold it for a low price? Has the honour of your women become so trivial in your eyes? Beware.' It is a declaration of war on Iraq's Shias last week, Western officials fear, that has exploded in the middle of the rapidly souring relations between even those Sunnis and Shias who had previously sought to ignore the country's sectarian differences. In the directness of its call to arms, it suggests an al-Qaeda in Iraq that is emboldened and far from worn down by the long months of war.
It is this that is alarming US and UK intelligence officials most. The most frightening development of all is the way in which Sunni nationalist insurgent leaderships and al-Qaeda's leaderships are growing closer in a number of areas. 'There used to be a clear division in our minds between what we used to call "terrorists" and "insurgents" in Iraq,' said the Whitehall official. 'Now there is a blurring as these groups come closer together.'
From a political point of view, any closing of the gap between the wider insurgency and al-Qaeda is deeply problematic for the policy of trying to engage those insurgents who could be incorporated into Iraq's political process, and thus isolating al- Qaeda and the hardliners.
None of which is any consolation to the families of the dead labourers of Kadhimiya.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
09/18/2005 00:01 ||
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#1
The sooner my generational cohorts are dead the better off this country will be.
#2
What is happening is the MSM is portraying a relative increase as an absolute increase. If we go from 5 Iraqi recruits and 5 foreign recruits to 2 Iraqi recruits and 1 foreign recruit then it is factually true that Iraqi participation has increased by 100%.
#5
Most of Iran is Shia, so this civil war is just inflaming bigotries. I'm convinced Zawarhiri and Saad Bin Laden are in Iran, with the blessing of the mullahs. I think this latest rash of sectarian violence is influenced more by former Baathists who fled to Syria. They've also been tying everything to the Palestinian cause, gaining Sunni recruits through Hamas and Hezbollah. What ever happened to the red-haired Assyrian guy, al-Douri or something? My gut says everyone is focused on Zarqawi while missing the real power. No one has seen Imad Mugniyeh either. As for civil war, they will be unified when the Golden Imam arises to rule his glorious Islamic Caliphate in the true form of Islam, setting the stage for one far more dangerous than Hitler. Maybe the best foreign policy would be to let them kill one another so we don't have to.
#7
I think this civil war angle is overdone. I don't think Zarqawi wants civil war, because from a numbers standpoint, the Sunni Arabs will lose - they are outnumbered 4 to 1 and outspent big time because the Iraqi government has access to tens of billions of dollars in oil revenue. What Zarqawi wants is what every Mafia chieftain wants - to kill enough of anyone who opposes him that the rest give up and cry uncle. It's not that complicated. He wants total fear among his opponents accompanied by total submission. Could his tactics work?
Well - the Colombian drug gangs owned the government for some period of time. The Italian crime gangs owned the government for some period of time. Over time however, the government's edge in manpower and money will begin to tell. Government troops and police are starting to kill off mullahs and terror organizers and financiers without the benefit of a trial. And Iraq's tens of billions of dollars of oil revenue means that there is no shortage of money to pay pensions for the survivors of security men killed in action or hire replacements for them.
#8
ZF: The Italian crime gangs owned the government for some period of time.
The Italian government eventually ratcheted up the punishments (well short of the death penalty, which doesn't exist in Italy), and continued to prosecute mafiosi, until they became a spent force. In the interim, hundreds of magistrates and police officers were assassinated.
Crown Prince Sultan yesterday demanded Israel withdraw from more occupied Arab territories after its Gaza pullout, indicating there can be no change in the collective Arab stand on Israel unless occupation ends. In an interview with The Associated Press, Prince Sultan said Arabs had reiterated their commitment to a just and lasting peace through the Arab peace plan, initiated by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah and endorsed by Arab leaders in their Beirut summit in 2002. âWe have followed the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza very closely,â he said. âThis withdrawal should be followed by further withdrawals from the Palestinian and Arab territories occupied since 1967, and lead to the realization of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.â
What's the incentive, if any?
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
OK Prince how about unilateral anexation, no more problems.
#5
All fair with me as long as the Saudis withdraw from that 40 km-wide zone along the border of Irak they illegally occupied around 1925 as well of the Madinah and Maccah zone they also illegally occupied.
#6
âThis withdrawal should be followed by further withdrawals from the Palestinian and Arab territories occupied since 1967, and lead to the realization of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.â
In Friday sermons, some Shiite and Sunni clerics condemned the rash of insurgent attacks but also slammed the US-backed Iraqi government and American forces, holding them responsible for the violence because they were unable to improve security in the country 2 1/2 years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. Sheikh Abdul-Zahraa Al-Suwaidi, a Shiite, said the violence had tarnished the image of Islam and Muslims. He said, however, that the continued presence of 140,000 US troops was fueling sectarian tension. âYou have to know that Iraq will gain its security if the occupation troops leave this country,â Suwaidi told worshippers in Baghdadâs Risafaa district.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
Yea we know that the Holy men could run the show so much better. Everything would be happyness and sunshine and puppies, baby ducks and kittens if the Holy guys were in charge. These are teh same guys that helped keep Saddam in power by towing the line back in the day. They need a good dose of STFU like most "religious" leaders everywhere.
Egypt agreed to boost its support for southern Sudan following Januaryâs landmark peace deal between the government and southern rebels in talks between President Hosni Mubarak and his Sudanese counterpart Omar Bashir yesterday. Egypt agreed to open a consulate and a branch of the University of Alexandria in the main southern Sudanese city of Juba and to build a hospital in the region, Mubarakâs spokesman Suleiman Awad said.
During his three-hour visit to Egyptâs second city of Alexandria, Bashir also set out his governmentâs position on the continuing conflicts in Darfur and eastern Sudan, Awad said. âThe situation in Darfur is extremely complicated but not insoluble,â the spokesman said. A new round of peace talks between the government and the Darfur rebels opened in Abuja Friday without the participation of one faction of the largest ethnic minority rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Movement.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2005 00:00 ||
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Comes as a surprise, huh? I know. It floored me, too. Who'da ever expected that?
NWFP Senior Minister Sirajul Haq on Saturday said that the NWFP government would not allow fencing of the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan as proposed by President Pervez Musharraf to stop cross-border infiltration.
"Nope. Nope. Ain't gonna do it."
Addressing a gathering after a religious leader's funeral in Sarae Gambila, Siraj said that President Pervez Musharraf wanted to harm the brotherly relations between the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
... by trying to keep brotherly Pakistanis from subverting their Afghan brethren and bumping people off...
He accused President Musharraf of giving more importance to improving relations with India than Afghanistan, and added that the fencing of the Pakistan-Afghan border was an attempt to harm the centuries-old cordial relations between the two countries.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
That's an easy one for Perv. Just ask the Afghans if they have any objections to their being a fence. Even bring out the Afghan ambassador to say that the fence is a great idea, and will help make the border region safe and prosperous.
Of course, it's whistling in the wind. But it still helps to erode the foundation of the bad guy supporters.
LAHORE: The Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazlur Rehman (JUI-F) has expelled two provincial assembly members for violating party discipline, Geo News reported. Party spokesman Qari Abdul Bais said Maulana Nizamuddin and Mufti Hussain Ahmad, MPAs from Swat in the NWFP, had violated a party decision for a tripartite alliance between the JUI-F, Awami National Party and Pakistan People's Party-Sherpao to support Malik Sardar Ali as Swat district nazim.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2005 00:00 ||
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LAHORE: MMA General Secretary Maulana Fazlur Rehman met with former prime minister Nawaz Sharif in Jeddah on Saturday and discussed the country's political situation with him, Geo news channel reported. Both leaders exchanged views on the recent local council elections, besides discussing the political situation in the country. The two leaders pledged to continue struggle for the restoration of democracy in Pakistan and reiterated their stance not to give in to non-democratic forces, the channel reported.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2005 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The National Society for Human Rights has urged the Saudi Embassy in Damascus and the Syrian Embassy in Riyadh for assistance in locating a number of Saudis who are missing in Syria. Dr. Mufleh Al-Qahtani, chairman of the monitoring and follow-up committee, said the society had urged both embassies to ascertain whether the media reports concerning the disappearance and arrest of Saudis in Syria were true. There have been unconfirmed reports that some gangs involved in human trafficking are handing Saudis over to American forces in Iraq after smuggling them out of Syria for $10,000 per person.
The dying father of a Bahraini detainee held at Guantanamo Bay has made a final heart-rending plea to see his son, a Bahraini newspaper reported yesterday. 
A Saudi security source has revealed to "Asharq al-Awsat" that the reason for the difficulties in identifying the body of 
Most British Muslims back the government's plans to deport radical Islamist "hate preachers" it says could inspire bombers like those who attacked London in July, a poll published on Sunday showed. The ICM poll found that 65 per cent of Muslims backed the new government measures and 27 per cent opposed them. Ninety per cent said they would immediately tell police if they suspected someone was planning or had carried out a terrorist attack. Just over two thirds of those questioned said Britain's 1.8 million Muslims bore "a lot" of responsibility for rooting out Islamist extremists, 19 per cent said they bore "a little" responsibility and nine per cent said they bore none.
NEW YORK â Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed US support on Friday for political transition in Lebanon and its efforts to mitigate Syrian influence in the country. Rice met Saad Hariri, the son of Lebanonâs late prime minister Rafic Hariri, and âunderlined the support of the international community and the United States for Lebanonâs political transition as it emerges from the shadow of Syrian influence,â a spokesman said.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the UN General Assembly yesterday his country had the inalienable right to produce nuclear fuel and accused the United States of violating global nuclear treaties. Saying that real sustainable order âcan only be realized on the two pillars of justice and spirituality,â Ahmadinejad said the world âis rife with discrimination and poverty... which produces hatred, war and terrorism.â Noting âterrorism and weapons of mass destruction are two major threats to world peace,â Iranâs president said his country was the âsymbol of true democracyâ and pledged to actively promote âpeace and stability in the region.â
Crown Prince Sultan yesterday demanded Israel withdraw from more occupied Arab territories after its Gaza pullout, indicating there can be no change in the collective Arab stand on Israel unless occupation ends. In an interview with The Associated Press, Prince Sultan said Arabs had reiterated their commitment to a just and lasting peace through the Arab peace plan, initiated by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah and endorsed by Arab leaders in their Beirut summit in 2002. âWe have followed the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza very closely,â he said. âThis withdrawal should be followed by further withdrawals from the Palestinian and Arab territories occupied since 1967, and lead to the realization of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.â
In Friday sermons, some Shiite and Sunni clerics condemned the rash of insurgent attacks but also slammed the US-backed Iraqi government and American forces, holding them responsible for the violence because they were unable to improve security in the country 2 1/2 years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. Sheikh 
NWFP Senior Minister 
LAHORE: The 
