lotp: I have 'disrepect' for no one here, nobody. I don't give a giant rats ass about diplodink, XPAT or IC bonefides, gray beards or anybody else above the ranker, 11b or 18b level. You wanna dress me down, or throw a frag my way...send me an e-mail dzso2000@yahoo.com
A federal judge denied on Friday a request from a group of Mendocino women who wanted to protest topless on the grounds of the state Capitol.
U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell said the group made no compelling argument that showing their breasts constitutes free speech. "Being topless is not inherently expressive" speech It depends on cup size., Burrell said. The group, Breasts Not Bombs, had scheduled a protest for noon Monday. The California Highway Patrol threatened to pummel into unconciousness arrest anyone who went topless.
Sherry Glaser, a leader of the group, said the protest may take place without bare breasts. "All we really have is the power of ourselves," she said. "Our bodies bring attention." I've seen the pics. Most of your bodies repel attention.
Group members, whose protest on the west steps of the Capitol is intended to contrast the "indecent" initiatives backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on the November ballot with their "sagging and wrinkled natural and decent" breasts, sought a temporary restraining order prohibiting CHP officers from arresting women who protest topless.
The First Amendment protects their right to protest bare breasted, the group argued. "The very act is a dynamic and fully expressive statement worthy of constitutional protection," their brief asserts.
But Burrell didn't buy that argument. "Do you think the fondling founding fathers had this in mind when they drafted the First Amendment?" he asked Matthew Kumin, the lawyer representing Breasts Not Bombs.
Lawyers for the state said no previous group has been allowed to protest on Capitol grounds unclothed. Those protesters who have disrobed were ordered to put their clothes on or face arrest. "It has always been our policy that we do not allow nudity on the Capitol's grounds," said Tom Marshall, a CHP spokesman.
Allowing public nudity on the Capitol grounds would also be disruptive and possibly dangerous, the state argued. "The state Capitol is a destination for California residents and tourists from around the world. Hundreds of California schoolchildren visit on a daily basis. They often enjoy their lunch on the west steps of the Capitol," the lawyers for the attorney general's office wrote. "What visitors to the Capitol do not and cannot expect is to see topless adults and children engaged in public nudity under the guise of political protest."
#1
Wait till this thing goes Feral Federal and it winds up on the docket of the 9th Circuit.
The decision will come down in favor of the Boobs (pun intended) and the school kids will be denied lunch on the state Capitol steps because they are a special interest group.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/06/2005 16:40 Comments ||
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#2
insufficient evidence
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/06/2005 17:16 Comments ||
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#3
Keep me abreast of further developments.
Posted by: Captain America ||
11/06/2005 22:36 Comments ||
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he wife and daughter of Islamist Metin Kaplan, who is serving a life prison sentence in Turkey for treason, were told by judges Friday that their 13-year stay in Germany was over.
Kaplan, dubbed the "Caliph of Cologne" because of his campaign from exile to set up a theocratic state in Istanbul, initially enjoyed political asylum in Germany but lost it for inciting the murder of a former supporter. He was deported in October 2004.
The Cologne administrative tribunal said the wife and daughter had only been granted political asylum in 1992 because of him. He had lost that right, and the two women were not at risk of persecution themselves, the tribunal said.
Neither woman was personally present at the tribunal session on Friday. Their lawyer said she would consult them before announcing if they would appeal to a superior administrative tribunal.
The case started with a letter from the German federal agency for refugees that informed the women they no longer had asylum. Once this has been upheld, the next move would be for Cologne municipal officials to serve a deportation order.
#1
The Islamist death cult meme requires gene pools to spawn in. Dislocating its preferred reservoirs must take equal nearly priority with ongoing efforts at chlorination.
FRENCH authorities have stepped up police action against youths responsible for more than a week of urban riots as suspicions grew that the gangs were becoming increasingly organised.
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy called a meeting of police chiefs to discuss tactics Police: We want martial law, shoot to kill. Politician: No, let's give them welfare instead... and threaten them with a few months in jail, that'll scare them. Now go out there and get shot at and catch those rioters so our magistrates can set them free from court on account of them being so underprivelidged. as they braced for another night of violence that has so far defied all efforts did I miss something? to stamp it out.
In a sign of the government's resolve, police said more than 250 people were arrested during Friday night alone, doubling at once the number of detentions recorded since the troubles first erupted on October 27. Didn't do any good though did it. Bring out the tanks
Nearly 900 vehicles were torched that same night, making it the worst in terms of the arson attacks that have come to characterise the rampages.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin held a crisis meeting with Mr Sarkozy and other key ministers overnight, as the rioting dominated world headlines and prompted the United States and Russia to warn its citizens against travelling through Paris suburbs.
Officials were "unanimous in their firmness" in seeking an end to the violence,But didn't authorise the use of lethal force so they were as firm as port wine jelly Mr Sarkozy said after the meeting.
"The violence is not acceptable," he told journalists. But we'll take it in the arse anyway. Is there someone I can surrender to?
The prospect of co-ordinated actions is of special concern in France, given that the areas most affected by the violence are downtrodden suburbs with high concentrations of Muslims, some of whom have been influenced by radical forms of Islam.When Mussies reach critical mass it's time to jihad. I put a jihad on you, france!
The country is home to Europe's biggest Muslim community, estimated at more than five million, or nearly 10 percent of the population.
Here is the problem
Since the riots started, there has been evidence it has been fanned by tough rhetoric by Mr Sarkozy, who has been preparing a bid to run in 2007 presidential elections on the strength of "zero tolerance" law-and-order policies.
Time for the PC multi culti moral equivalence bit. It's all the gummint's fault, see, for inflaming the Muslims with bad words.
Most contentious was his choice of language just before the rioting, when he called delinquents "rabble" and vowed to clean their districts "with a power-hose."
It's all his fault. Mussies can't be expected to be law-abiding citizens when someone INSULTS us with WORDS. It's not our fault!
"It was calm for a long time here. If there hadn't been Sarko's words, 'power-hose,' 'rabble', there wouldn't have been all this," a 22-year-old man in the northern tinderbox suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois said.
"He makes us suffer, he's a racist. He's put fuel on the fire," Fatou, a 14-year-old boy of African background, said.
Yasss, the real problem is racism. Just walk on eggshells and never insult us and there won't be any problems...
In total, since the beginning of the rioting, more than 2,000 vehicles have been burnt and around 500 people arrested.
A few shots have been fired at police but did not cause any injuries.
There have been no deaths so far, but at least two people have been badly burnt by Molotov cocktails: a fireman, and a handicapped woman unable to get off an ambushed bus.
A 61-year-old was also in a coma after being hit by an assailant in a public housing estate. Brave jihadis, picking on the old and weak kuffrs. Way to go I'm sure Allan has some virgins ready picked for you
Honestly, I missed it (I do not watch much tv news anymore, especially public channels), but this has surprized many people; the article linked and its downloadable vids are in french, but there is an auto-translation button (expect not-so-good results).
Meat of the article is that the french teevees interviewed the daughters of the disabled 56 years old woman who was set on fire in an attacked bus (and who wasn't muslim despite what has been said, her name is Joëlle Mallard), and offered two diverging versions about the religion of the victim.
The France 3 channel first interviewed two girls with judeo-christian firstnames, Yaël (which incidentally is a jewish version of Joëlle) and Anastasia, who appear moved and disturbed during the interview. Theses two girls were also interviewed in newspaper, so there is no doubt they exist and are her daughters.
However, 30 minutes later, the TF1 and France 2 channels only talked about one daughter, and aired an interview with a girl named Fadella, who not only has a muslim first name, but also wears typically north african clothes (and is more casual in her interview, to the point some oversuspicious viewers thought she was an actress). No mention is made of Yaël and Anastasia.
Now, Ms. Mallard can certainly have three daughters, and one of her can certainly be born of a muslim man or a convert, so this is not troubling in itself. I have no real doubt Fadella is her daughter too.
What's disturbing is the idea of a possible manipulation.
Did the two channels which only mentioned her muslim daughter intend to lessen the racist and "anti french" aspect of that attack, by "islamizing" the victim through her family?
Usually, France 2 and France 3 share the same footages, filmed by France 3 regional crews, and have the same redaction and thus the same editorial line. Why did they not show the same vids, as they usually do?
I'm not saying there was a manipulation, it just it is curious.
Btw, french tv is not above manipulation... in fact, France 2 is at the heart of a huge scandal, the Al dura death (the Netzarim crossroad shooting), in which the public channel has been at leat passively complicit with the most important paleostinian "blood libel" of the second intifada war.
(for a reminder of that case, see http://www.truthnow.org/)
#3
The real pearl was yesterday: in the FR3 TV there was a broadcast about "the inflitration of American society by evangelists". The problem of the day was not "the gauntlet thrown by the gangs and the islamits to French society" or "the infiltration of the French media by trotskits ie proponents of an undemocratic, fascist-like ideology" (before last presidential elections in a blank, secret vote at "Le Monde", ie the paper who molds the thinking in French society, there were fifty percent votes for the trotskists candidate") or "the shameless brainwashing of kids by leftist teachers and caretakers" (1). Nooooo, the problem of the day was not muslims but evangelists, not France but America. There was more honesty in the Pravda of yore than in today's French media.
(1) One day when collecting my then 3 years old daughter at the daycare center I found the caretaker was singing her an anti-american song. Apparently there is no problem in abusing a there years old mind (not to mention that this was done on taxpayer's money)
#4
You know, somebody ought to tell them that Trotsky is passe, like using an ice pick on block of ice. Perhaps they are trying to emulate Andre Breton and the Surrealists because they think it's "cool?"
#5
Imo: These people are stuck-on-stupid living a tribalistic, death based faith. Everyone laughed and made jokes about koolaid, Jonestown, and the "Peoples Temple" in the late 70's. These buggers are just as looney, but in far far greater numbers. If the lie is big enough, it will eventually be believed.
#6
A5089: I'd like to point out to you that the woman _and_ all of her three kids might have been Moslem, and it still would have been a grave injustice.
Street gang insurgencies have as one of their primary objectives keeping _their own_ populations (or what they claim as their own populations/jurisdictions) in line and following _their_ party line. The Intifada, over the years, killed a lot of Palestinians for being "collaborators" and "informants." This could be more of the same.
AFAIK the vast majority of the people oppressed by the Taliban in Afghanistan were moslem.
Posted by: Phil ||
11/06/2005 13:46 Comments ||
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#7
Hmm... the gulliable in France would certainly fall for it... and a few others like Raptor would buy off on it as truthful media reporting.
"...There was more honesty in the Pravda of yore than in today's French media."
The way I understand the situation, all French newspapers are printed by the same printers labor union. If you start venturing opinions which fall outside of the labor unions political philosophy ( socialist-communist and intensely anti-US) you risk a national printing shutdown. It's happened before and editors are loath to publish articles with any line that will tick off the printers unions.
Night falls and the violence can begin. The blue light of a passing police van flashes across the sweat on 17-year-old HB's forehead. 'They're provoking us by driving around like that. We are not going to stop until Sarkozy resigns,' he says.
For five nights in a row, HB and his mates have been battling with riot police on the notorious Mille-Mille housing estate, buried deep in the high-rise suburbs that line the motorway to Charles de Gaulle airport. They have burnt cars, businesses and a school but, really, they want the head of Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. 'He should go and fuck himself,' says HB, who was born in France of Algerian parents. 'We are not germs. He said he wants to clean us up. He called us louts. He provoked us on television. He should have said sorry for showing us disrespect, but now it is too late.'
Yes, you've been so horribly provoked.
HB's views are clear. 'The only way to get the police here is to set fire to something. The fire brigade does not come here without the police, and the police are Sarkozy's men so they are the ones we want to see.'
If you set enough fires you'll graduate to seeing the Foreign Legion.
All the dustbins were burnt long ago. 'Cars make good barricades and they burn nicely, and the cameras like them. How else are we going to get our message across to Sarkozy? It is not as if people like us can just turn up at his office.'
No, no! Certainly not! It's not like you could be a productive citizen and assemble peaceably to present your grievances.
HB, who is at college training to be a chef, claims he likes his estate and the unity he feels between people with Caribbean parents, black Africans, a few people of standard French descent and first, second and third-generation Moroccans and Algerians who have made up the majority of Aulnay-sous-Bois's population for the past 30 years.
The eldest of five, his father came to France at the age of seven and has been employed ever since by the municipality. HB feels a 'tremendous togetherness' at Mille-Mille, but he does not feel 'French'. Jobs? 'There are a few at the airport and at the Citroën plant, but it's not even worth trying if your name is Mohamed or Abdelaoui.'
What do they know that you don't?
HB admits the parallel economy
lovely euphemism for drugs and gun trafficking, shakedowns ....
nope, dealing drugs isn't criminal, it's the 'parallel economy'. Actually there are other more benign non-taxed informal businesses in places like this. But this kid's own words make it clear that's not what he's talking about. Unfortunately, he probably DOES think drug dealing is an ordinary, okay form of commerce.
When asked if he considers himself integrated in France, HB claims that is not his aspiration. 'I am not sure what the word means. I am part of Mille-Mille and Seine-Saint-Denis, but I am not part of Sarkozy's France, or even the France of our local mayor whom we never see. At the same time, I realise I am French, because when I visit my parents' village in Algeria that doesn't feel like home either.'
Poor HB, doesn't feel at home anywhere, so he's forced into a life of thuggery, yobbism and loutishness. Nightstick, please.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/06/2005 00:12 ||
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Stupid farmers burning Micky-dees and blocking roads helped create his stupid worldview.
Posted by: General Bulge ||
11/06/2005 3:58 Comments ||
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#4
If he had any wits about him, he'd examine what he thinks and feels in depth, consider the opportunities lost, wasted, the stupidity and futility of his world view and desires, and kill himself.
#5
This bastard, and the rest of his ilk, need to find themselves back in Algeria post haste, preferably with a few bullet holes in them to remind them just how welcome they are in France. They need to be shot down in the streets and their bodies left to rot, and the rest of the Muslims need to be presented with the simple choice: leave France or die now.
Posted by: mac ||
11/06/2005 7:05 Comments ||
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#6
What demonstrates is the inability to deal with a modern society. This attitude, whether it shows up in Iraq, "Palestine", anti-globalists in Seattle or Argentina all comes back to one thing.
They want a reversion to tribalism. These RFSP can't deal with organization on a larger level.
Historically it was easy to see that the Tribe came first even at the cost of losing everything.
Think Scottish clans vs. England. The clans couldn't get together because of historic differences so they all fell to England.
These folk really want to belong to something that is small enough for their enfeebled brains to comprehend, but, powerful enough to stroke their egos.
#8
I also think much of Bush's loss in popularity is due to his failure to acknowledge the menace of Islam. Posted by: mhw|| 2005-11-06 10:10|| Comments|| Top||
mhw, interesting observation. His previous statements referencing "the wonderful faith of Islam" cost him 25 percentage points with me alone.
They're really going to regret the NYT's attempts to nail the Bush administration over Plame.
A divided federal appeals court for a second time has rejected four journalists' appeal of a judge's order directing them to testify about their confidential sources as part of nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee's lawsuit against the government.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit refused, by a 4-4 vote, to grant a rehearing of the journalists' case before the full court. A majority of the court's 10 judges was required to grant a rehearing; two judges recused themselves.
One who favored hearing the case, Judge David S. Tatel, wrote in his dissent that Lee's claim for compensation pales in importance to people's right to know about what was believed to be nuclear espionage.
"It's hard to imagine how his (Lee's) interest could outweigh the public's interest in protecting journalists' ability to report without reservation on sensitive issues of national security," Tatel wrote.
There were no written rulings from the judges who voted against hearing the case.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson held the reporters in contempt of court for refusing to identify their sources for stories about Lee, who in 1999 was suspected of spying while he worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
A three-judge appellate panel upheld Jackson's ruling in June.
Lee is seeking the identity of the sources for his lawsuit against the departments of Energy and Justice. He alleges the agencies gave reporters private information about him and suggested he was a suspect in the investigation into possible theft of nuclear secrets.
All but one of 59 counts against Lee eventually were dismissed and then-President Clinton apologized for Lee's treatment. He was never charged with espionage. He pleaded guilty to one felony count of mishandling nuclear weapons information.
The reporters are H. Josef Hebert of The Associated Press, James Risen of The New York Times, Robert Drogin of the Los Angeles Times and Pierre Thomas, formerly of CNN and now of ABC. The court's decision was released Thursday.
LAST TUESDAY, Senate Democrats fired the opening shot in the coming battle over prewar intelligence on Iraq when Minority Leader Harry Reid took the Senate into a closed session. The offensive began in earnest this weekend with a New York Times article:
A high Qaeda official in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Al Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to newly declassified portions of a Defense Intelligence Agency document. The document, an intelligence report from February 2002, said it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, "was intentionally misleading the debriefers" in making claims about Iraqi support for Al Qaeda's work with illicit weapons.
The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi's credibility. Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi's information as "credible" evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.
The article, based on declassified excerpts of the DIA report provided by Michigan Senator Carl Levin, goes on to strongly suggest that Bush administration officials simply ignored this warning to scare the public into supporting war in Iraq.
The truth, as it so often is these days, is considerably more complicated.
The Times article cites a claim George W. Bush made in a speech he gave in Cincinnati in October 2002. Bush said: "we've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases."
Why would Bush make such a claim when a DIA report had raised the possibility that al Libi was lying? One possibility: The CIA was saying that al Libi was credible.
On February 11, 2003--a year after the DIA report--CIA Director George Tenet testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee. He said: "Iraq has in the past provided training in document forgery and bomb-making to al Qaeda. It has also provided training in poisons and gases to two al Qaeda associates. One of these associates characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful."
In July 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee released "Phase I" of its evaluation of prewar intelligence on Iraq. The 511-page document focused on the collection and analysis of intelligence by the U.S. intelligence community. Senate Democrats are pushing now for the completion of "Phase II." They hope to use that report to demonstrate that the Bush administration, in the words of Levin, "went way beyond the intelligence, particularly as it relates to any relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda."
The Phase I report criticized Tenet for his failure to note that the intelligence on Iraqi training of al Qaeda had come from sources of "varying reliability." It may be a reasonable criticism. But if Levin and his colleagues want to show that statements from senior Bush administration officials went "way beyond the intelligence," this seems like an odd way to do it. The head of the U.S. intelligence community made the same claim Bush did--using almost exactly the same words--some four months after Bush's speech.
The Times article also provides Levin a platform to criticize the inclusion of al Libi's claims in Colin Powell's presentation to the U.N. Security Council on February 5, 2003. From the article:
Mr. Powell relied heavily on accounts provided by Mr. Libi for his speech to the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, saying that he was tracing "the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to Al Qaeda."
At the time of Mr. Powell's speech, an unclassified statement by the C.I.A. described the reporting, now known to have been from Mr. Libi, as "credible." But Mr. Levin said he had learned that a classified C.I.A. assessment at the time went on to state that "the source was not in a position to know if any training had taken place."
Why, then, did Carl Levin endorse Phase I of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report? On pages 366-370, the committee evaluated the terrorism portion of Powell's presentation and offered its conclusions.
Conclusion 103. The information provided by the Central Intelligence Agency for the terrorism portion of Secretary Powell's speech was carefully vetted by both terrorism and regional analysts.
Conclusion 104. None of the portrayals of the intelligence reporting included in Secretary Powell's speech differed in any significant way from earlier assessments published by the Central Intelligence Agency.
Neither of these conclusions is mentioned in the Times piece.
LEVIN TOLD the Washington Post that he did not have the DIA document until after the Phase I report was completed. That's possible. But given his history on the issue, it's also possible that Levin was simply waiting until he could be sure his claims would be most politically damaging to the administration. (This is the man who released his own personal "study" of the intelligence on October 21, 2004, two weeks before the presidential election.) Whatever the truth of the matter, if history holds, Levin was almost certainly cherry-picking the intelligence, using only the information that supports his charges and ignoring the rest.
The rest is important. It provides much-needed context to the Bush administration's prewar claims. For example, we learn from the Phase I report that the CIA produced a classified analysis in September 2002 called Iraqi Support for Terrorism. The report assessed: "The general pattern that emerges is of al Qaeda's enduring interest in acquiring chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) expertise from Iraq."
Among the conclusions of Iraqi Support for Terrorism were these:
Regarding the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship, reporting from sources of varying reliability points to . . . incidents of training . . . [ellipses in original]
The most disturbing aspect of the relationship is the dozen or so reports of varying reliability mentioning the involvement of Iraq or Iraqi nationals in al Qaeda's efforts to obtain CBW training.
There is no question that al Libi's claims that Iraq trained al Qaeda on chemical and biological weapons were important. But one of the reasons that the CIA and Bush administration policymakers took them so seriously is because they fit a pattern of earlier reporting, albeit reporting from sources of "varying reliability."
These claims did not begin with the Bush administration. Senior Clinton administration officials repeatedly claimed that Iraq had provided chemical weapons expertise--at least--to al Qaeda in 1998. After al Qaeda terrorists struck two U.S. embassies in East Africa the Clinton administration retaliated by striking an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan and the al Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. In its defense of the al Shifa strikes, Clinton administration officials cited an al Qaeda presence at suspected chemical weapons facilities in Sudan. These facilities, according to both Clinton administration spokesmen and senior intelligence officials, were the result of a collaborative effort between Iraqi scientists, the Sudanese Military Industrial Corporation and al Qaeda terrorists. Clinton administration officials stand by those claims today.
Does Carl Levin think they are wrong?
ONE FINAL POINT: For two years Carl Levin has led the Democratic assault on the credibility of Bush administration's claim of an Iraq-al Qaeda connection. It is worth moment to examine his credibility on these same issues.
In the months after the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, Levin repeatedly accused the Bush administration of pressuring intelligence officials to reach conclusions that supported the case for war. He provided an example in an appearance on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on June 16, 2003, saying, "We were told by the intelligence community that there was a very strong link between Iraq and al Qaeda."
But Levin's allegations were undermined as the Senate Intelligence Committee interviewed analysts to determine whether they were pressured to change their analyses. None of the analysts supported his claim, a finding that was later confirmed in the Phase I report.
So Levin adjusted his allegation. "The intel didn't say that there is a direct connection between al Qaeda and Iraq," he said in an appearance on Fox News Channel on February 2, 2004. "That was not the intel. That's what this administration exaggerated to produce."
So which is it? Did the intelligence claim a "very strong link" or no direct connection?
At his press conference last week, Levin went even further. "The intelligence was not far off as it related to the nonexistent relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein."
Carl Levin may believe that there was no relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. But his claims are at odds with the views of the CIA.
As noted above, the CIA assessed in Iraqi Support for Terrorism that "the most disturbing aspect of the relationship is the dozen or so reports of varying reliability mentioning the involvement of Iraq or Iraqi nationals in al Qaeda's efforts to obtain CBW training." [emphasis added].
Fortunately, we are no longer reliant on Carl Levin's claims or even CIA analyses for our understanding of the Iraq-al Qaeda connection. Documents uncovered in postwar Iraq allow us to test Levin's views and CIA prewar assessments against the words and deeds of the former Iraqi regime.
On June 25, 2004, the New York Times reported on an internal Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) document that discussed relations between Saddam Hussein's regime and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda. The document, authenticated by the U.S. intelligence community, reports on meetings between bin Laden emissaries and Uday Hussein in 1994. The document further reports that the Iraqi regime agreed to a request from bin Laden to broadcast sermons from an anti-Saudi cleric. The IIS document advises that "cooperation between the two organizations should be allowed to develop freely through discussion and agreement." And when bin Laden was ousted from Sudan in 1996, the document reports that Iraqis were "seeking other channels through which to handle the relationship."
All of which makes one thing clear: Carl Levin may still believe there was no relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.
But the Iraqis, who might have had unique insight into such matters, thought otherwise.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/06/2005 10:36 ||
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Must take weed whacker to Levin's noggin
Posted by: Captain America ||
11/06/2005 22:48 Comments ||
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#2
He's the consummate dem Shapeshifter. Nothing more can be expected of him.
#3
as an NRA member, I'm ashamed to say that he votes correctly, if only on that one issue - personal security and arms....he's a moron on so much else.......
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/06/2005 23:00 Comments ||
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WHEN SENATE MINORITY LEADER HARRY Reid abruptly took the Senate into closed session last Tuesday, he sought to portray the move as a desperate, last-ditch attempt to force intransigent Senate Republicans to complete the second phase of an investigation into the use of intelligence before the Iraq war. The procedural move is rare, one of the few things a minority party can do to seize the agenda--and the spotlight--from the Senate's majority.
After he called the Senate into closed session, a red-faced Reid sputtered his way through a press conference. "Finally after months and months and months of begging, cajoling, writing letters we're finally going to be able to have phase two of the investigation regarding how the intelligence was used to lead us into the intractable war in Iraq," he proclaimed, shortly before shouting down a reporter in mid-question.
He was just getting started.
The only way that we've been able to get their attention is to spend three and a half hours in a closed session. We have spoken to all of the Republican leaders asking for this information, letters have been exchanged, conversations had, statements on major news programs, Meet the Press, all kinds of commitments being made, and they simply were not followed through.
It's a slap in the face to the American people that this has been--this investigation has been stymied, stopped, obstructions thrown up every step of the way. That's the real slap in the face. That's the slap in the face. And today, the American people are going to see a little bit of light.
It was not a strong performance. As the session ended, Reid was asked about a statement from Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. Roberts had spoken of the work already completed by the Republican staff on the Intelligence Committee. Reid was dismissive. "They've done nothing, nothing substantive. And that's been the problem. Nothing substantive."
On that last point, as on several others, Reid was wrong. A week before Reid's tirade, Roberts had instructed the majority staff to "drop everything" in order to complete "Phase II" of the report. By May 2005, the majority staff had already completed much of its work--some of it with the assistance of the minority staff--in preparing a review of public statements about the intelligence. But that review never happened for a rather simple reason: politics.
On November 5, 2003, talk radio host Sean Hannity read on air from a memo prepared by the Democratic staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The memo described the desire of Democrats to reveal "the misleading, if not flagrantly dishonest, methods and motives of senior administration officials who made the case for unilateral and pre-emptive war."
To achieve this objective, the memo continued, Intelligence Committee Democrats should "prepare to launch an investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority [Republicans]. We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation of the administration's use of intelligence at any time--but we can only do so once . . . the best time would probably be next year"--that is, during the presidential election.
These plans were thwarted, in no small part by the public attention given this internal Democratic strategy memo.
In July 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee released Phase I of its investigation into prewar intelligence on Iraq. Although the report was unanimous--it was signed by all members of the committee, Republican and Democrat--its 511 pages undermined the two main allegations of Bush administration critics: (1) that the Bush administration's case for war was at odds with the reporting policymakers were provided by the intelligence community; and (2) that the Bush administration pressured intelligence analysts to reach their deeply flawed conclusions.
But several Senate Democrats--led by Intelligence Committee members Carl Levin, Richard Durbin, and Vice Chairman Jay Rockefeller--were undeterred. Despite signing on to the findings of the exhaustive report, they pressed for a second report analyzing how the Bush administration had misused intelligence. In so doing, the Democrats trumpeted the presumed results of the investigation even as they pressed for its conclusion.
Their interest in using the forthcoming report as a political tool was laid bare when Senator Carl Levin released his own "study" of prewar claims on October 21, 2004--two weeks before the presidential election. Levin had grown increasingly frustrated that Phase II of the Senate report would not be completed in time for the election. So he decided to go public with his "findings." If the timing of the report's release suggests Levin's motivations were political, its contents remove any doubt. The 45-page study is riddled with inaccuracies. Quotations are taken out of context. Bush administration claims are misrepresented. Even names and dates are wrong.
In one section, the Levin report describes the testimony of former CIA director George Tenet. The testimony in question came on March 19, 2002, in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee. (The Levin report places it before the Senate Intelligence Committee in "February 2002," a minor but revealing error.) The Levin report quotes Tenet this way: "[I]t would be a mistake to dismiss the possibility of state sponsorship [of al Qaeda], whether Iranian or Iraqi and we'll see where the evidence takes us." Note the editorial insertion: "[of al Qaeda]." The intent is to demonstrate that Tenet stopped short of claiming that Iraq had been a state sponsor of al Qaeda, leaving the impression that this contrasted with statements made by the Bush administration.
Set aside the fact that Levin was disputing a claim the Bush administration never made--that Iraq was a "state sponsor" of al Qaeda, a relationship that would have implied Iraqi command and control of Osama bin Laden's Islamic Army. Tenet's actual words were quite different from those Levin's report put in his mouth. What Tenet refused to dismiss was Iraqi or Iranian state sponsorship of the attacks of September 11, 2001. Here is the quotation in context:
Levin: And relative to Iraq, a couple other questions: Do we--do you have any evidence that Saddam Hussein or his agents played a role in the September 11th terrorist attacks or that he has links to al Qaeda?
Tenet: Well, as I note in my statement, there is no doubt that there have been contacts and linkages to the al Qaeda organization. As to where we are in September 11th, the jury's out. And as I said carefully in my statement, it would be a mistake to dismiss the possibility of state sponsorship, whether Iranian or Iraqi, and we'll see where the evidence takes us. But I want you to think about al Qaeda as a front company that mixes and matches its capabilities. The distinctions between Sunni and Shia that have traditionally divided terrorist groups are not distinctions you should make anymore, because there is a common interest against the United States and its allies in this region, and they will seek capability wherever they can get it.
Consider. Carl Levin's "report" misquotes Tenet, then mischaracterizes his comments to demonstrate that the Bush administration's claim of an Iraq-al Qaeda relationship was not supported by the judgments of intelligence professionals. Except in his response to Levin, Tenet was categorical. "There is no doubt that there have been contacts and linkages to the al Qaeda organization" with Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Levin today speaks of the "nonexistent relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda. Who is distorting intelligence?
After the election, Democrats continued to push for the completion of Phase II of the Intelligence Committee's report. They have done very little to disguise their motives, insisting at every turn that the Bush administration "fictionalized" its case for war.
But the Republicans on the committee, led by chairman Roberts from Kansas, wanted to broaden the inquiry to cover the public statements made by members of Congress, including, potentially, the same Senate Democrats pushing hardest for the Phase II inquiry. Democrats, for reasons that will soon be clear, protested. Their objections grew more vehement when Roberts described how he intended to conduct the inquiry.
Roberts and his Republican staff collected public statements--about 500 in total--made by Bush administration policymakers, members of Congress, and former Clinton administration officials. The Democratic staff came up with the list of Bush administration statements; the Republicans gathered the rest. All of the statements were entered on a spreadsheet that put each public statement side-by-side with the underlying intelligence reporting that came closest to supporting it. Senators on the committee were then invited to evaluate the public statements to determine whether they were supported by the intelligence provided to policymakers. But for Democrats eager to demonstrate administration distortions, there was one catch: The statements were to be evaluated without attribution. That is, the claims would be assessed without any knowledge of who made them. Although the plan seemed like a reasonable way to take politics out of the evaluation process, the Democrats balked. For good reason.
Consider the statements below. They are provided without attribution.
1. There has been some debate over how "imminent" a threat Iraq poses. I do believe that Iraq poses an imminent threat, but I also believe that after September 11, that question is increasingly outdated.
2. The fact that Zarqawi certainly is related to the death of the U.S. aid officer and that he is very close to bin Laden puts at rest, in fairly dramatic terms, that there is at least a substantial connection between Saddam and al Qaeda.
3. There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years.
4. In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001.
5. I want to be real clear about the connection with terrorists. I've seen a lot of evidence on this. There are extensive contacts between Saddam Hussein's government and al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
6. The terrorist threat against America is all too clear. Thousands of terrorist operatives around the world would pay anything to get their hands on Saddam's arsenal, and there is every reason to believe that Saddam would turn his weapons over to these terrorists. No one can doubt that if the terrorists of September 11 had had weapons of mass destruction, they would have used them.
7. The question is not whether we will disarm Saddam Hussein of his weapons of mass destruction but how.
All of these statements are those of Senate Democrats. The first three were made by Jay Rockefeller, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The fourth, by Hillary Clinton. The fifth, by Joe Lieberman. The sixth, by John Edwards. The seventh, by Ted Kennedy. And the list could go on.
The Phase II report will likely be released by the end of November. In his own press conference last Tuesday, Senator Levin did the White House a favor by signaling that Democrats will focus on the Bush administration's claims about Iraq's support for terror, particularly the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. "There's a lot of evidence that the administration went way beyond the intelligence that was provided to them," said Levin. "We know that the intelligence was way off, it was false in many, many ways. But the administration went way beyond the intelligence, particularly as it relates to any relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda."
Levin hasn't always felt this way. "We were told by the intelligence community that there was a very strong link between al Qaeda and Iraq," he said on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on June 16, 2003. But that comment came at a time when Levin was still claiming that the Bush administration had pressured intelligence analysts to shape their assessments, something three authoritative reports have since debunked.
It is hard to imagine a more serious charge than the one Senate Democrats are now making: The Bush administration took the country to war in Iraq on the basis of lies. The White House seems to hope that by refusing to engage seriously in this debate, it can somehow make the issue go away.
It can't.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/06/2005 10:34 ||
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The Bush Administration is correct not to engage in this debate. It's a political question that will be debated by others in the summer of 2008 and resolved for a while in November 2008 by the American people, after which all Democrats will recognize they are a minority party and wish for the good old days of Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay.
A top member of Al Qaeda in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Al Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to newly declassified portions of a Defense Intelligence Agency document.
The document, an intelligence report from February 2002, said it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, âwas intentionally misleading the debriefersââ in making claims about Iraqi support for Al Qaedaâs work with illicit weapons.
The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libiâs credibility. Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libiâs information as âcredibleââ evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.
Among the first and most prominent assertions was one by Mr. Bush, who said in a major speech in Cincinnati in October 2002 that âweâve learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases.ââ
The newly declassified portions of the document were made available by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Mr. Levin said the new evidence of early doubts about Mr. Libiâs statements dramatized what he called the Bush administrationâs misuse of prewar intelligence to try to justify the war in Iraq. That is an issue that Mr. Levin and other Senate Democrats have been seeking to emphasize, in part by calling attention to the fact that the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee has yet to deliver a promised report, first sought more than two years ago, on the use of prewar intelligence.
An administration official declined to comment on the D.I.A. report on Mr. Libi. But Senate Republicans, put on the defensive when Democrats forced a closed session of the Senate this week to discuss the issue, have been arguing that Republicans were not alone in making prewar assertions about Iraq, illicit weapons and terrorism that have since been discredited.
Mr. Libi, who was captured in Pakistan at the end of 2001, recanted his claims in January 2004. That prompted the C.I.A., a month later, to recall all intelligence reports based on his statements, a fact recorded in a footnote to the report issued by the Sept. 11 commission.
Mr. Libi was not alone among intelligence sources later determined to have been fabricating accounts. Among others, an Iraqi exile whose code name was Curveball was the primary source for what proved to be false information about Iraq and mobile biological weapons labs. And American military officials cultivated ties with Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group, who has been accused of feeding the Pentagon misleading information in urging war.
The report issued by the Senate intelligence committee in July 2004 questioned whether some versions of intelligence report prepared by the C.I.A. in late 2002 and early 2003 raised sufficient questions about the reliability of Mr. Libiâs claims.
But neither that report nor another issued by the Sept. 11 commission made any reference to the existence of the earlier and more skeptical 2002 report by the D.I.A., which supplies intelligence to military commanders and national security policy makers. As an official intelligence report, labeled DITSUM No. 044-02, the document would have circulated widely within the government, and it would have been available to the C.I.A., the White House, the Pentagon and other agencies. It remains unclear whether the D.I.A. document was provided to the Senate panel.
In outlining reasons for its skepticism, the D.I.A. report noted that Mr. Libiâs claims lacked specific details about the Iraqis involved, the illicit weapons used and the location where the training was to have taken place.
âIt is possible he does not know any further details; it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers,ââ the February 2002 report said. âIbn al-Shaykh has been undergoing debriefs for several weeks and may be describing scenarios to the debriefers that he knows will retain their interest.ââ
Mr. Powell relied heavily on accounts provided by Mr. Libi for his speech to the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, saying that he was tracing âthe story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to Al Qaeda.ââ
At the time of Mr. Powellâs speech, an unclassified statement by the C.I.A. described the reporting, now known to have been from Mr. Libi, as âcredible.ââ But Mr. Levin said he had learned that a classified C.I.A. assessment at the time stated âthe source was not in a position to know if any training had taken place.ââ
In an interview on Friday, Mr. Levin also called attention to a portion of the D.I.A. report that expressed skepticism about the idea of close collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda, an idea that was never substantiated by American intelligence but was a pillar of the administrationâs prewar claims.
âSaddamâs regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements,ââ the D.I.A. report said in one of two declassified paragraphs. âMoreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control.ââ
The request to declassify the two paragraphs was made on Oct. 18 by Mr. Levin and Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee. In an Oct. 26 response, Kathleen P. Turner, chief of the D.I.A.âs office for Congressional affairs, said the agency âcan find no reason for it to remain classified.ââ
At the time of his capture, Mr. Libi was the most senior Qaeda official in American custody. The D.I.A. document gave no indication of where he was being held, or what interrogation methods were used on him.
Mr. Libi remains in custody, apparently at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where he was sent in 2003, according to government officials.
The Senate intelligence committee is scheduled to meet beginning next week to review draft reports prepared as part of a long-postponed âPhase IIââ of the panelâs review of prewar intelligence on Iraq. At separate briefings for reporters on Friday, Republicans staff members said the writing had long been under way, while Senate Democrats on the committee claimed credit for reinvigorating the process, by forcing the closed session. They said that already nearly complete is a look at whether prewar intelligence accurately predicted the potential for an anti-American insurgency.
Other areas of focus include the role played by the Iraqi National Congress, that of the Pentagon in shaping intelligence assessments, and an examination of whether public statements about Iraq by members of the Bush and Clinton administrations, as well as members of Congress, were substantiated by intelligence available at the time.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/06/2005 09:25 ||
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In February 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency questioned the reliability of a captured top al Qaeda operative whose allegations became the basis of Bush administration claims that terrorists had been trained in the use of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq, according to declassified material released by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.).
Referring to the first interrogation report on al Qaeda senior military trainer Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the DIA took note that the Libyan terrorist could not name any Iraqis involved, any chemical or biological material used or where the training occurred. As a result, "it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers," a DIA report concluded.
In fact, in January 2004 al-Libi recanted his claims, and in February 2004 the CIA withdrew all intelligence reports based on his information. By then, the United States and its coalition partners had invaded Iraq.
Levin, ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he arranged for the material to be declassified by the DIA last month. At the same time that the administration was linking Baghdad to al Qaeda, he said, the DIA and other intelligence agencies were privately raising questions about the sources underlying the claims.
Since then, Levin said in an interview Friday, almost all government intelligence on whether Iraq pursued or possessed weapons of mass destruction has proved faulty. In addition to the allegation of training terrorists loyal to Osama bin Laden, there were government claims that then-Iraq President Saddam Hussein had stocks of chemical and biological weapons, that he had reconstituted his nuclear weapons programs, and that unmanned airborne vehicles posed a threat, Levin said.
He said that he could not be certain that White House officials read the DIA report, but his "presumption" was that someone at the National Security Council saw it because it was sent there.
Administration officials declined to comment for this article.
Levin noted in a prepared statement that, beginning in September 2002, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet, and then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell used the alleged chemical and biological training by Baghdad as valid intelligence in speeches and public appearances to gather support for the Iraq war.
In none of the speeches or appearances was reference made to the DIA questioning the reliability of the source of the claims, Levin said. The doubts about al-Libi were contained in the DIA's February 2002 "Defense Intelligence Terrorist Summary,"which was sent to the White House and the National Security Council and circulated among U.S. intelligence agencies.
"The newly declassified information provides additional dramatic evidence that the administration's prewar statements regarding links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda represents an incredible deception," Levin said.
Levin pointed specifically to an Oct. 7, 2002, speech in which the president outlined what he said was the "grave threat" from Iraq days before the House and Senate voted on a resolution giving him the authority to go to war.
"We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases," Bush said, an assertion that was based, according to Levin, primarily on al-Libi's material. Other less important intelligence on the training of al Qaeda members, carried in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, also came from questionable sources, Levin said.
Bush also said in his October 2002 speech: "We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade." Levin said the DIA's declassified February 2002 report points out that "Saddam's regime is intensely secular and wary of Islamic revolutionary movements. Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control."
"Just imagine," Levin said, "the public impact of that DIA conclusion if it had been disclosed at the time. It surely could have made a difference in the congressional vote authorizing the war."
Levin also pointed out that before the war, the CIA had its own reservations about al-Libi, although the agency did not note them in its publicly distributed unclassified statements. In those, Levin said, it described the source -- without naming al-Libi -- as "credible." In the classified version, however, the CIA added that the source "was not in a position to know if any training had taken place."
Levin said: "Imagine if the president or the others had added that the source of the information might have been making it up for his questioners or wasn't in a position to know. . . . Would he have delivered that in his speech?"
Levin said he first obtained the DIA document as part of his continuing investigation as an Armed Services panel member into intelligence activities that took place within the office of Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Feith's Office of Special Plans undertook a review and analyses of prewar al Qaeda intelligence.
Levin said Friday that he was not aware whether the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, on which he also serves, has the document. That panel did not have the DIA document in July 2004 when it completed its Phase 1 report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.
The committee is now conducting its second-phase investigation of the use of Iraq intelligence, one part of which is to compare prewar public statements by officials and members of Congress with the information known at the time.
Levin took part in a news conference Friday with two other intelligence committee Democrats in which they raised questions about whether the panel had received all the classified material on Iraq, including the February 2002 DIA publication, that Bush administration officials had when they made their public statements.
At that news conference, Levin urged that the process be slowed down to make sure the committee had gathered all the intelligence material.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/06/2005 09:23 ||
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Come on Senator, get a life. The L-29 was no closely guarded secret. They've got cam footage of the damn thing flying racetracks.
Not for Defense - Secretary State Colin Powell, Feb 5, 2003
Saddam Hussein's intentions have never changed. He is not developing the missiles for self-defense. These are missiles that Iraq wants in order to project power, to threaten, and to deliver chemical, biological and, if we let him, nuclear warheads. Now, unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs. Iraq has been working on a variety of UAVs for more than a decade. This is just illustrative of what an EAV -- UAV would look like. This effort has included attempts to modify for unmanned flight the MiG-21 and, with greater success, an aircraft called the L-29. However, Iraq is now concentrating not on these airplanes but on developing and testing smaller UAVs, such as this. UAVs are well-suited for dispensing chemical and biological weapons. There is ample evidence that Iraq has dedicated much effort to developing and testing spray devices that [are] being adapted for UAVs. And in the little that Saddam Hussein told us about UAVs, he has not told the truth. One of these lies is graphically and indisputably demonstrated by intelligence we collected on June 27th last year. According to Iraq's December 7th declaration, its UAVs have a range of only 80 kilometers. But we detected one of Iraq's newest UAVs in a test flight that went 500 kilometers, nonstop, on autopilot in the racetrack pattern depicted here. Not only is this test well in excess of the 150 kilometers that the United Nations permits, the test was left out of Iraq's December 7th declaration.
The UAV was flown around and around and around in this circle, and so that its 80-kilometer limit really was 500 kilometers, unrefueled and on autopilot, violative of all of its obligations under 1441. The linkages over the past 10 years between Iraq's UAV program and biological and chemical warfare agents are of deep concern to us.
Iraq could use these small UAVs, which have a wingspan of only a few meters, to deliver biological agents to its neighbors or, if transported, to other countries, including the United States.
#2
Levin is cherry picking intel sources that support his claims but ignore the totality of the information. The testimony of one Iraqi was NOT the entire case against Saddam and not his WMD program. Al-Lib was but one of many bits of information that was used to assess Sadsams' program. What the Dems are going to expose is the institutional group-think that has been going on at the CIA, State, NSA, and DIA under the Clintonistas. Of course they will blame it all on Bush.
Hypocrisy is on show in a Manhattan courtroom today. The New York Civil Liberties Union will argue for the second day before Judge Richard Berman that the city's subway bag search policy is an "unjustifiable erosion of the privacy rights of the American public." Yet take a walk into the NYCLU's Manhattan headquarters - which it shares with other organizations - and you'll find a sign warning visitors that all bags are subject to search. One of the city's lawyers, Jay Kranis, pointed this out yesterday in court while cross-examining a witness. Either the NYCLU believes its headquarters are at greater risk of a terrorist threat than the city's subway system, or it believes ordinary New Yorkers don't deserve the same safety precautions that they do.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA was eager to whisk captured terrorists off to secret locations around the world where its operatives could interrogate them out of the reach of the U.S. legal system and human-rights organizations. But four years later, with about three dozen of al-Qaeda's most hard-core agents in CIA custody, America's new spy chief seems less enthusiastic about the leeway his operatives have had. At a secret briefing for U.S. Senators on Oct. 26, a senior U.S. intelligence official tells TIME, Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte was pointedly neutral on Vice President Dick Cheney's Capitol Hill lobbying to have the CIA exempted from legislation banning mistreatment of detainees. "It's above my pay grade," the spymaster said, then artfully dodged another question about whether the harsher interrogation tactics Cheney wants the agency to be free to use actually produce valuable intelligence.
Negroponte's surprising hedge comes at a time when the once dominant Bush hard-liners, including the Vice President, appear increasingly isolated within the Administration. An intense internal debate has erupted over whether new Pentagon procedures for handling captured terrorists should adopt the Geneva Conventions' ban on cruel and degrading treatment. A senior Administration source says National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and top military officers favor including the Geneva standards, while Cheney has managed to round up only a few senior Pentagon civilians, such as Under Secretary of Defense Stephen Cambone, to back his opposition to them. Adding to the pressure is the growing international controversy over what amounts to a clandestine CIA prison system. The Washington Post reported last week that the agency at different times has had top al-Qaeda detainees stashed at "black sites" in several East European countries, as well as in Thailand, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Counterterrorism sources have confirmed to TIME that the CIA has had covert detention centers in Thailand and Guantanamo Bay, which are no longer operating, and that the agency continues to run similar facilities in Afghanistan and Eastern Europe. In Afghanistan, the agency's prison was once located in an old brick factory near Kabul's airport, nicknamed the Salt Pit by the CIA and the Darkness Prison by inmates. Detainees who have escaped or been released from the prison claim they were kept in cold, dark cells underground, fed once every three days and sometimes chained wet and naked to the wall overnight.
At the request of senior U.S. officials, the Post didn't identify the East European sites. But Human Rights Watch, which has tracked flight routes for a Boeing 737 the CIA has used to transport prisoners, says agency detention facilities have probably been in Poland and Romania, staunch U.S. allies in the Iraq war. Officials from both countries have denied holding CIA prisoners, as have Thai authorities.
The CIA refuses to comment, but Hadley insists that prisoners being held secretly are treated humanely: "The United States will not torture." Friso Roscam Abbing, spokesman for the European Union, to which Poland belongs and Romania aspires, says secret prisons would be illegal under E.U. rules requiring member states to abide by such legal conventions as due process and the right of prisoners to a lawyer. But Abbing added that the E.U. would accept the denials of Poland and Romania "unless we see hard evidence to the contrary."
So far the CIA has been able to escape the kind of congressional scrutiny the Pentagon endured after the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal. Only a few senior members of the congressional intelligence committees are briefed on the CIA's secret prisons, and the agency refuses to publicly disclose its interrogation procedures. But the agency may not be able to enjoy such latitude in the future. Cheney is meeting fierce resistance from Senator John McCain, a former Vietnam pow, in the Vice President's campaign to persuade Congress to exclude the CIA from a measure that McCain easily got through the Senate prohibiting cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoner in U.S. custody. And Negroponte's muteness on Cheney's push to exempt the CIA seemed to signal a reply of "thanks, but no thanks" from the chief of the spies.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/06/2005 09:31 ||
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"The United States will not torture."
And what is the definition of "torture?" The ACLU, Human Rights Watch, and John McCain would tell you that it's anyone wearing a sandbag or unable to reach "friends and family on his cell."
Indelible Memories For Veterans of Iraq
He prayed that every Marine entrusted to his care would make it out of Iraq alive. But a roadside bomb claimed one of his men, then two more fell in Fallujah. Now, almost a year after Capt. Michael Pretus returned from the war, he said, "There's not a day, not an hour that goes by that I don't think of them."
So, on a Sunday afternoon last month, he walked into a Fredericksburg tattoo parlor and had their names etched into his right shoulder in precise lettering fit for a plaque. Above each is the symbol of a fallen warrior: a pair of empty boots and an erect rifle, adorned with a helmet. In the background, silhouettes of 20 other Marines represent the surviving members of Pretus's platoon.
Behind them is the orange-red glow of a sunset -- or a sunrise. Pretus, a 30-year-old from Fredericksburg with a Marine's muscular build, a sniper's intense gaze and a scholar's sense of history, hasn't decided which.
"This is my tribute to them," he said, as the artist's buzzing tattoo machine injected ink into his arm. "They are my heroes. . . . As a platoon commander, these parents look at you and say, 'Take care of my son.' It eats at you. I wish I could have brought them all home alive."
Commemorating combat experience with a tattoo is a warrior ritual that stretches back centuries, a practice "as old as war itself," said C.W. Eldridge, a historian for the National Tattoo Association and owner of the Tattoo Archive, a Berkeley, Calif., tattoo studio.
Like their counterparts in past wars, Iraq veterans are choosing traditional patriotic symbols -- U.S. flags, eagles, names of units -- for their tattoos. But some images are strikingly personal. Aided by improved pigments and more sophisticated equipment, they reveal in graphic detail the pain and permanence of war.
Mike Ergo, 22, a former Marine, had specific instructions for his tattoo artist. The enemy's hair had to be curly and dark, the beard thick. This was part of a face etched into his memory, that of the first insurgent he killed during the battle of Fallujah last November.
Ergo wanted it to come out just right.
In the tattoo, inked onto the inside of his left forearm in April, the enemy fighter is being slain by Saint Michael, the archangel, who stands, sword drawn, with his foot on the back of the man's head. The image is a reminder, Ergo said, that he survived one of the deadliest, bloodiest battles of the war -- and the other guy didn't.
"The tattoo kind of just helps me to see that this guy got what was coming to him," said Ergo, who lives near San Francisco.
His unit was going house to house when it came across a group of insurgents hiding in a small room underneath a stairwell. As soon as the Marines opened the door, the enemy fighters slammed it shut and started firing. "Bullets were everywhere," Ergo recalled. "I couldn't believe they missed us."
The Marines unloaded scores of rounds into the door, Ergo said, and just when they thought all the insurgents were dead, one popped out and threw a grenade at them. After it went off, Ergo charged.
"Thinking, 'Oh, I'm going to die,' doesn't help the situation," he said. But he "was definitely scared that I'm going to get shot in the face."
He kicked open the door and found himself standing just a few feet from a man who raised his gun and yelled "Allahu Akbar!" -- God is the greatest! Ergo fired eight to 10 shots into his chest, he said.
"It's one of those things you can't really forget, you know?" Ergo said. "I see his face every day anyway. It just flashes through my mind when I go to sleep."
Matthew Brown's tattoo begins with a bluish-green N just below his knee, followed by the letters O-V-E-M-B-E, descending to the R inked above his ankle. Instead of numerals, the 11 is spelled out by a pair of bullets.
NOVEMBER 11.
It's the day Brown was shot by a sniper in Fallujah. So much blood spilled from his sliced femoral vein he turned a ghostly white, and a chaplain read him his last rites as he lay in a morphine daze.
" 'God be with you, son,' " he remembers the chaplain saying.
"I'll never forget it," said Brown, 21.
That's why he decided to have the date tattooed on the side of his right calf. He and several other Marines were holed up in a former convenience store when he was hit in the upper thigh. Medics quickly put a tourniquet on his leg and evacuated him to a field hospital, where the priest blessed him.
When the doctors sedated him, he said, he went into a coma and didn't wake up until almost a week later and thousands of miles away at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. Brown, who was a lance corporal, has since received a medical discharge from the Marine Corps and has returned to his home outside Carlisle, Pa.
Not long after Carmine Castelli returned from Iraq, he turned his back into a shrine for his fallen friends. In ornate script between his shoulder blades, the 20-year-old Marine Corps lance corporal carries the words, "Rest In Peace U.S. Marines." The names of five of his buddies flank the empty boots of the fallen warrior.
Remembering the dead was not enough for Castelli, who is based at Camp Lejeune, N.C.; he wanted to make them part of him. So in May he decided to have their names inscribed into his skin. "They were my best friends," he said. "I'll never regret it. These are guys I'll always have in my heart. . . . They should have their names shown off. They earned that right."
At the bottom of the tattoo, near his waist, are the words, "Burn Down Fallujah." That was, he said, a Marine mantra as they went block by bloody block, rooting out insurgents during intense urban combat.
Last year, when members of the 101st Airborne Division were first coming back from the war, many of them stopped by Donna Vinge's tattoo parlor, not far from the front gates of Fort Campbell, Ky., to get tattoos commemorating the war.
But as the 101st headed back to Iraq for another tour recently, the soldiers wanted talismans, symbols to give them strength and protection in battle. Vinge's artists have been busy inking angels fighting off demons with swords, names of loved ones, horseshoes and centaurs, she said.
One soldier, shipping out the next day, said he wanted a four-leaf clover.
"I better get something that'll give me good luck."
SAN DIEGO -- Two men were behind bars Friday night for a strange immigrant smuggling case, 10News reported. Police say a 15-year-old Mexican girl hired two men to bring her into the U.S. Thursday night. Once across the border, the girl called her mother, who didn't know about her daughter's plan, and told her to come pick her up and bring $2,200, dollars, 10News reported. When the girl's mother showed up with only $300, dollars, the men refused to let the girl go and told the mother she had an hour to get the money, 10News reported. Instead, the mother called police and the men were arrested. The girl is being allowed to stay in the U.S. for now because she is a material witness in a crime.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/06/2005 00:00 ||
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Behold the historically unsurpassed audacity and chutzpah of this action - the UN, and Iraqis, lecture the US on corruption
U.N. auditing board has recommended that the United States reimburse Iraq up to $208.5 million for contracting work carried out by KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, in the last two years.
The International Advisory and Monitoring Board of the Development Fund for Iraq said in a report that the work, paid for with Iraqi oil proceeds, was either overpriced or done poorly by the Virginia-based company.
Presumably, the tens of BILLIONS of dollars of UN-laundered oil-for-food funds were spent more carefully .... on palaces, military articles, and bribes to UN officials and friends of fascism in France, Russia, etc.
Compiled from an array of Pentagon, United States government and private auditors, the report did not specify how or what work has been done poorly.
Note: this is a continuing theme - incredibly powerful allegations, no evidence
Halliburton said its subsidiary had cooperated with the auditing process and that questions raised had to do with documentation rather than the costs incurred by the company. It pointed to findings by the Pentagon's Defense Contract Audit Agency.
"Many of DCAA's questions have been about the quality of supporting documentation for costs that KBR clearly incurred," Halliburton spokeswoman Cathy Mann said in an e-mailed statement. "Therefore, it would be completely wrong to say or imply that any of these costs that were incurred at the client's direction for its benefit are 'overcharges.'"
The report said because the audits were continuing, it was premature to specify how much of the $208,491,382 must ultimately be paid back.
In other words, both the UN announcement AND this article are outrageous distortions -- no one has actually documented a problem OR directed that there be payback for said problem. SOP for slandering the US/Halliburton/military - first the innuendo, later the silence or page 11 retraction.
But the board said that once its analysis was completed, it "recommends that amounts disbursed to contractors that cannot be supported as fair be reimbursed expeditiously."
Mann said KBR continues to work with its client, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, regarding the settlement of government audits of fuel costs and other disputed issues.
"As these negotiations continue, KBR will confirm the total of all outcomes once complete. No timeline has been set for resolution of these issues," she said.
In Washington, U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman of California, one of the leading Democratic slanderers critics of Halliburton, said the international auditors "have every right to expect a full refund of Halliburton's egregious overcharges."
Ex-squeeze me, you f##kwit -- what "egregious overcharges"? Waxman has been making unsupported allegations, and twisting audit reports, for years now.
"For more than a year, administration officials concealed Halliburton's overcharges from international auditors responsible for monitoring the use of Iraqi funds. WTF? Specifics, please.The Bush administration repeatedly gave Halliburton special treatment and allowed the company to gouge both U.S. taxpayers and the Iraqi people." Specifics, please? You've had years and produced nothing that passes either a laugh test or a serious review, STFU already
Kubba said Iraqis have been complaining for months about projects that should have cost $5,000, such as painting schools, that ended up costing $100,000.
"Having too many middlemen doing contracts to too many subcontractors has wasted money and resulted in little return to the Iraqi people," he said.
Thanks to Allah, soon all Iraqi contracting will be in Iraqi hands, where we can expect MUCH better results and accountability .... right, Laith?
He said the waste of Iraqi money would be an issue in parliamentary elections slated for Dec. 15.
I get it. America liberates the country, spends thousands of lives and billions of dollars trying to rebuild it, while idiot enemy attacks impede progress and "our" Iraqis steal everything that's not nailed down .... so WE are the problem.
"I'm sure once we have an elected assembly and a government for a four-year term, they'll be looking at all these issues," Kubba said. And you'll probably be out of a job, pal, since Jaafari's a weak sister who's allowed corruption -- on the Iraqi side -- to flower with little opposition.
Posted by: Verlaine in Iraq ||
11/06/2005 04:14 ||
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#2
The dem's never stop digging. Tired and unhappy with their position, they now demand that Halliburton bring in their heavy equipment to dig them in deeper. Maybe they are in so deep already that they might as well keep going on the off chance they might finally strike oil.
#3
Just take it out of the funds for the UN as a downpayment that the organization owes the Iraqis for the 'pain and suffering' they had to endure because of the UN's participation in a criminal conspiracy to deprive them of their 'natural' rights.
#4
Waxman's an idiot. Where was he during the oil for food scam that netted the UN officials millions in kickbacks. I really love helping a country free itself only to kicked in the nuts by the internation body that was supposed to be the one to free them, and of course that moonbat Waxman. Then after WE free them the UN bitches about how we do it. The UN need a large dose of STFU! I think the sour grapes pic would fit here just fine.
Posted by: 49 pan ||
11/06/2005 11:08 Comments ||
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#7
at $10 million a pop for an American - we hve a debt they owe us. Boot the UN and take pig-nosed Waxman with them
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/06/2005 16:37 Comments ||
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#8
Didn't the US organize a forgiving of most of Iraq's debt (in effect taking up part of the tab)? Including pressuring other states to forgo compensation claims?
Posted by: john ||
11/06/2005 19:00 Comments ||
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TEL AVIV â Israeli President Moshe Katsav issued a public invitation to King Mohammad of Morocco on Wednesday to visit Israel on an official visit and help sow the seeds of peace in the region. The invitation was relayed via Andre Azoulay, a long-time financial and economic adviser to the king and to his late father King Hassan II, and former government ministers Robert Asraf, President of the World Federation of Moroccan Jews; and Serge Berdugo, President of the Jewish Communities of Morocco.
The king is a descendant of Mo'-man. This is going to upset someone, I just know it.
The three men are in Israel at the head of a large delegation of Moroccan Jews.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/06/2005 00:00 ||
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KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysiaâs hardline opposition Islamic party is gearing up for a fierce by-election in the only state it controls in a contest seen as a test of its popularity.
The fundamentalist Pan-Malaysia Islamic Party (PAS), which rules northern Kelantan state, was left in the political lurch after one of its lawmakers died unexpectedly on Monday.
No, they don't tell us how he died.
PAS Deputy President Nasharuddin Mat Isa said the partyâs top leadership would meet in Kelantan in the coming days to choose a candidate and strategise for the election. He said the party expected a tough battle against Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawiâs ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), which has already signalled it is readying for an all-out fight. âThey are going to come at it with full force, using the media and the full facilities they have. As usual weâre not just fighting UMNO, but the whole government machinery,â Nasharuddin told AFP in a telephone interview.
PAS narrowly controls Kelantanâs state assembly with 24 seats compared to the 21 seats held by Abdullahâs ruling UMNO-led National Front coalition. The death of PAS state lawmaker Wan Abdul Aziz Wan Jaafar, 55, has left party officials worried it will be hard to rule effectively and pass legislation. âThat will be the case, because with a very tiny majority as such, we wonât be able to move anywhere,â said Nasharuddin.
PAS was trounced in Malaysiaâs general and state elections in 2004 when the ruling coalition headed by the freshly-appointed Abdullah won in landslide results. While PAS retained Kelantan, the traditional heartland it has controlled since 1990, it lost northern Terengganu state to the National Front.
Its defeats in the 2004 elections were widely interpreted as a vote against the partyâs approach to Islam, and it has since undergone a series of leadership changes to tone down its hardline reputation and woo young voters.
In Kelantan, the stateâs chief minister Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat recently sanctioned a rare pop concert despite opposition from some Islamic scholars. Other liberalisation efforts include allowing cinemas to operate, although PAS officials say dim lights will be on to prevent any improper behaviour.
Analysts say the by-election will allow PAS and UMNO to test their influence following the 2004 elections. Since last year, optimism over Abdullahâs administration has dissipated.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/06/2005 00:00 ||
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The chief UN investigator into the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, armed with new powers from the Security Council, has summoned six senior Syrian intelligence officers, including President Bashar Al Assadâs brother-in-law, for questioning, a Lebanese official said yesterday. Surprising the Lebanese official could stop laughing long enough to leak this.
The official, close to the UN team investigating Haririâs killing, said chief UN investigator Detlev Mehlis sent the summons to the Syrian Government via the United Nations last week.
If he absolutely, positivley wanted it to get there overnight he should have used F-16 Express.
âMr Mehlis has sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan demanding to question at least six Syrian officials,â the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity. Demanding of Kofi? Mehlis much have copies of some interesting money transfers.
The London-based Al Hayat reported yesterday that Mehlis wanted to question six senior Syrian officers at the UN commission's headquarters in Beirut, and not in Syria. We have loudspeakers on the building. If you do not cooperate, we will broadcast your name loudly before we throw you out on the street. Are you ready to cooperate?
Last weekâs Security Council Resolution 1636 gave Mehlis the power to question any Syrian at the location and under conditions of his choosing.
Al Hayat said the men Mehlis wanted to question included Basharâs brother-in-law, General Assef Shawkat, chief of Syriaâs military intelligence service; Major General Bahjat Suleiman, former chief of Syriaâs internal intelligence apparatus; and Brigadier General Rustum Ghazale, the last Syrian intelligence chief in Lebanon who was in charge when Hariri was assassinated. Surprising those names aren't followed by four digit numbers
The other officers listed in the summons did not include Basharâs brother Maher, whose name was mentioned in Mehlisâs report to the Security Council last month.
The Syrian probe into the slaying of former Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri has called on anyone with information to telephone or stop by its offices, the Ath-Thawra daily reported yesterday. The commission of inquiry was set up after a UN probe into the February killing implicated Lebanese and Syrian officials, also criticizing Damascus for a lack of cooperation.
Syriaâs inquiry has asked for anyone âwith information on the assassination of Rafik Hariri to contact it by telephone or by visitingâ its offices in Damascus, the Ath-Thawra daily reported. The probeâs head, Judge Ghada Mourad, has said that she will question Syrian citizens, civilian or military, on everything related to the UNâs commission of inquiry mission.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/06/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
Thank you for calling Judge Ghada Mourad. Unfortunately the judge is not currently available to take your call. If you are calling in regard to the re-scheduling of a court appearance, pleased press 1. If you are calling with regard to a traffic violation, please press 2. If you are calling in reference to law classes at Damascus University, please press 3. All other callers please stay on the line, someone will be with you shortly... en-shala.
Syria will let UN investigators, trying to identify the killers of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri, question its officials in Damascus on their own, the Syrian ambassador to London has said. Chief United Nations investigator Detlev Mehlis has complained that Syrian security figures interviewed in Damascus last month appeared to give only prepared responses. The Syrians had insisted that other officials attend the interviews.
"There shouldn't be a problem to meet with them as witnesses any time," the ambassador, Sami Khiyami, told Reuters on Friday. "Mehlis can meet them completely alone, even choose a place in Damascus with a UN flag," he said, adding that the investigators would be free to produce their witnesses at the interviews, while keeping their identities secret if necessary.
"But they ain't goin' to Beirut," he added. "Fuggeddaboudit."
Posted by: Fred ||
11/06/2005 00:00 ||
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The chief UN investigator into the assassination of a former Lebanese premier has reportedly summoned six senior Syrian intelligence officers for questioning. A Lebanese official close to the UN team investigating Rafiq al-Hariri's killing said Detlev Mehlis sent the summons to the Syrian government via the United Nations on Wednesday. "Mr. Mehlis has sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan demanding to question at least six Syrian officials," the official told the Associated Press.
There was no immediate Syrian comment on the summons due to the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr. The London-based pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat reported on Saturday that Mehlis wanted to question six senior Syrian officers at the UN commission's headquarters at the hilltop Monteverde Hotel east of Beirut, and not in Syria. Despite its declared readiness to cooperate with the UN probe into Hariri's killing, the Syrian government, citing the country's sovereignty, is reportedly against allowing Syrian witnesses or suspects to be questioned by UN investigators outside Syria. It is particularly sensitive for Syrians to be questioned in Lebanon because of security concerns for their own safety.
Al-Hayat said the men Mehlis wanted to question included Assad's brother-in-law, General Assef Shawkat, chief of Syria's military intelligence service; Major General Bahjat Suleiman, former chief of Syria's internal intelligence apparatus; and Brigadier General Rustum Ghazale, the last Syrian intelligence chief in Lebanon who was in charge when Hariri was assassinated. The other three senior officers listed in the summons did not include Assad's brother, Maher, whose name was mentioned, along with Shawkat, in Mehlis' report to the Security Council last month. Lebanese prosecutor-general Saeed Mirza declined to comment on Al Hayat's report when contacted by The Associated Press. "I don't know. You have to ask Mr. Mehlis," Mirza said on Saturday.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/06/2005 00:00 ||
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Worth reading to see how history looks to some ...
Lamenting Our Missed Opportunities
Dr. Khaled Batarfi, kbatarfi@al-madina.com
There is nothing more bitter than missed opportunities. In the Arab world we had lots of that to mourn. And unlike the rest of the human race we canât find a better time to do so than during our Eid celebrations. While others enjoy theirs, we tend to ruin our happy anniversaries remembering the worst moments in our history and keep asking what an Arab poet asked 1,000 years ago, âEid, what kind of Eid did you bring with you?â
I hate to do the same and ruin what are supposed to be happy moments with similar remembrances. But since everyone else is doing it, why not me? Here is what I would mourn most: Our missed opportunities for freedom, democracy, progress and peace. I wonât go far in history, limiting my memory to the last hundred years.
In the beginning of the 20th century, Hussein ibn Ali, grand sharif of Makkah made a deal with the Allies. He was to lead a revolution against the Ottomans. In return he was promised to be declared the new caliph of the Muslim Ummah and the king of all Arabs. He did his part betraying the Muslim Caliphate that installed him but never received his ultimate reward. The English were kind enough to recognize him in 1916 as the king of Hijaz, install one son as the king of Iraq, a second as the emir of Jordan. But that was it. Not even the rest of Arabia and the Gulf area were to be under his control.
Still, there was a great opportunity for him and his sons to cooperate with the other Arab leaders, like sultans (later kings) Abdul Aziz in Riyadh and Fuad in Cairo to free and improve the rest of the Arab world. The colonizers were open to gradual progress starting with freeing slaves and giving women and minorities their due rights. Instead he insisted on pursuing his dream of being the king of kings. In the process, he antagonized the Saudis and ended up losing his fiefdom and destroying the dream of Arab unity. Later, the independent and semi-independent Arab governments decided in 1945 to start a process of unity under the Arab League banner. But even today, after more than half a century, we are still at square one.
When Nasser led the era of military revolutions in the Arab world, we were promised unity, freedom, reforms and progress. Instead, every colonel wanted to rule the rest. Even young Qaddafi of small Libya felt he deserved to lead the horde. Marriage projects like those between Egypt and Syria; Egypt, Sudan and Libya; and, in recent history, the cooperation councils of the Gulf states, the Western Arabs (Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia) and the Eastern Arabs (Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Yemen), either failed to achieve their set goals or disintegrated disgracefully. We had peace opportunities with our main foe, Israel, and lost them. The best chance was the road Egyptian President Sadat opened for us. Instead of working with him to negotiate as a group, most leaders felt insulted that he didnât consult with them first. For this mistake they were willing to forgo the golden opportunity and fragment the Arabs into two camps â the small peace group and the âcountries that are standing up and challenging.â Later the war party members were warring among themselves. We lost. Israel won. The end of the first Gulf War between Iraq and Iran presented another golden opportunity. We were then more in agreement than not. With the eight-year costly war no longer a distraction, we could have concentrated on getting our act together and working on achieving our goals and dreams.
Not so fast! Saddam couldnât have a break of more than a couple of years before he started another adventure. This time against his brotherly allies who supported him in the previous aggression. We deserved this because we missed our opportunity to forge good relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran. We had more in common with the new Muslim regime than we did with the Baathists.
One war led to another. The Third Gulf War, like the second divided and distracted the Arabs once more. Again, Arab leaders found a good excuse to delay reforms. Even with democracy a priority in the Anglo-Saxon agenda for the Middle East, Arab governments managed to find ways not to reform. A few improvements here, a couple of basic or meaningless elections there, and we convinced the world we are moving in the right direction. The Americans and British found something to show for their costly war, and the Arab governments managed to avoid costlier confrontations with the neo-Crusaders.
After 1426 Eid anniversaries we are mourning once more, unable to positively answer the Shakespearian question (to be or not to be). What a waste!
#1
Instead, every colonel wanted to rule the rest. Even young Qaddafi of small Libya felt he deserved to lead the horde.
This is the direct result of a endemic congenital disposition towards having balls bigger than your brains.
Even with democracy a priority in the Anglo-Saxon agenda for the Middle East, Arab governments managed to find ways not to reform. A few improvements here, a couple of basic or meaningless elections there, and we convinced the world we are moving in the right direction. The Americans and British found something to show for their costly war, and the Arab governments managed to avoid costlier confrontations with the neo-Crusaders.
Not "avoid", you moron, merely delay. Oh, and you got the "costlier" part exactly right. The price tag for decades centuries of Arab perfidy will be the complete and total dismantling of your intensely corrupt and eliteist power structures. Good f%&king riddance!
#2
an Arab poet asked 1,000 years ago, âEid, what kind of Eid did you bring with you?â
Dr. Batarfi is painfully honest. A historical legacy based on a tribal, death-based faith dating back more than 1000 years. How in the world does our leadership think they can affect any permanent change? Knocking over Saddam was an honorable goal. Attempting to build democracy is purely arrogant, a fool's goal. They must "democrasize" themselves or one day vanish. All other roads lead to a hopeless quagmire.
#5
They must "democrasize" themselves or one day vanish.
To date, America has demonstrated uncommonly good husbandry of the democratic tradition. In our efforts to ensure its ongoing survival we are obliged to look beyond our national boundaries and periodically innoculate other promising Petrie dishes cultures with this robust strain of freedom. Our national security demands that we assist wherever possible in spreading this vibrant meme.
#7
innoculate other promising Petrie dishes cultures with this robust strain of freedom.
Zemster: Yes, so I've noticed, but was 50,000 KIA (not counting the French cost) in our Vietnamese laboratory experiment worth it when you consider the end result was still communism? I'm for staying home and watching it on the tube. Just a thought.
The Communist Party of India sinks to new lows - coercing flood victims and extorting money from them
KHARAGPUR, NOVEMBER 5: When a 150,000-strong Left mob demonstrates outside the Kalaikunda airbase here for a planned four hours on Monday, many thousands of participants will be victims of Midnaporeâs devastating floods a fortnight ago.
For them, the journey from shattered hutments and devastated paddy fields to a protest against George W. Bushâs foreign policy will be a party-dictated compulsion.
District CPI(M) leaders have issued instructions that not only must people turn up, they must pay Rs 10 each for expenses. âThis is a policy of the improved Left,ââ says Madan Mohan Karan, gram panchayat member, âearlier we used to take them for free, provide food ... When it pinches them, it adds worth to such participation.ââ
Said Dipak Sarkar, district secretary of West Midnapore, who is coordinating the protest: âWest Midnapore has been given a target of 1 lakh supporters and East Midnapore has been given a target of 35,000.â
East Midnapore is where the floods were the worst. A visit to villages two days before the rally shows that even those hit by floods in late October were not spared the ââmobilisation targetââ.
No less than 35,000 demonstrators are required from the flood-hit areas of East Midnapore â Egra, Contai, Bhagabanpur, Heria and Tamluk. In neighbouring West Midnapore, inundated areas like Ghatal, Sabong and Pingla are not exempt from anti-America duty.
Sabong, 45 km from Kalaikunda, is a case in point. A CPI(M) zonal committee member, Amalesh Basu, admitted rather reluctantly that the partyâs district leadership had set him a target of 1,000.
In Basuâs words, 11 of 13 anchals (clusters of villages) covered by the Sabong zonal office were hit by floods on October 19, destroying 5,000 houses and affecting 160,000 people.
ââBut sending 1,000 people from these areas is not difficult,ââ says Basu, ââthe zonal committee is sure to exceed the target and send not less than 3,000 ... because of the positive response against US imperialism and the joint military exercise.ââ
Behind the big words is a sad story. In Ruinan village, for instance, flood waters have not receded yet. Acres and acres of standing paddy has been damaged. Watermarks on the mud houses are still fresh. In the midst of this misery, has come the call to rally against Washington, says Gourhari Manna, a CPI(M) member in the village.
"For many,ââ points out Manna, "Rs 10 is a precious amount. How can one demand this from the flood afflicted? But itâs a party decision, and we will have to send not less than 50 from our village.ââ
Gourhari didnât have to leave his house during the floods. He was luckier than Indramohan Ghorai, a Dalit forced to take shelter in a school. Ghorai returned to his damaged hut only two days ago. Now heâs got the summons.
ââThere is hardly any way to ignore the partyâs call,ââ says Ghorai, ââI will have to go, come what may.ââ The landless, hapless man, a BPL (below poverty line) card holder will postpone rebuilding his life to take on Uncle Sam.
So will Madan Mohan Guchait and Ashok Pal and others from the 400 odd families in Ruinan. Madan Mohan Karan, local gram panchayat member, assures them itâs necessary to fight off the ââbigger threat of US imperialismââ.
Posted by: john ||
11/06/2005 10:40 ||
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#1
And this same CPI government is wooing US investors.
Posted by: john ||
11/06/2005 17:34 Comments ||
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#2
Probably too wet to start any new constuction, and the USAID helo's won't arrive till the clouds clear anyway. Might as well attend a good ole fashioned anti-American rally.
#3
The communist state goverment of West Bengal won't allow any american aid even if offered.
They would love Chinese help though. China is the commies ideal.
Posted by: john ||
11/06/2005 19:03 Comments ||
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NEW YORK - South Asian advocacy groups are urging Congress and the Bush administration to grant Pakistanis in the United States a chance to delay deportation to their earthquake-ravaged homeland until the recovery from the disaster is further along.
"These individuals don't have anything left to go back to," said Mohammad Razvi, executive director of the Brooklyn-based Council of Peoples Organization.
The effort to allow Pakistanis "Temporary Protected Status" has drawn the support of more than two dozen members of Congress.
Advocates say it wouldn't allow all Pakistani immigrants facing removal to stay; they would need to meet requirements including criminal background checks. But it could help Pakistanis with expiring visas.
"Pakistan's being an ally and helping the United States, we ought to show Pakistan that we are appreciative for the help that's been extended," said Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, who has introduced a bill with 28 co-sponsors calling for the designation.
"It's the humanitarian thing to do," Green said.
The designation is primarily allowed when the nationals would be in danger if sent back or if sending them back would put an extreme strain on their home country's infrastructure, said Crystal Williams, deputy director of programs for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
The Oct. 8 earthquake that hit Pakistan is believed to have killed about 80,000 people in the region and caused widespread destruction. But Williams noted that much of Pakistan is still functioning.
Only a handful of countries are on the temporary protected status list, including Honduras and Nicaragua, which suffered hurricane devastation, and Sudan, which has had ongoing armed conflict.
Chris Bentley, spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said the key factor was a request from the country in question.
Pakistan doesn't plan to make that request, an embassy official said. Asking for the designation would be akin to saying there are many Pakistanis living illegally in the United States, said Mohammad Sadiq, deputy chief of mission for the Pakistani embassy in Washington.
"We support the community effort, but our estimate is that there are very, very few people illegal here," he said.
In the large Pakistani community in New York, some Pakistanis here legally say they want to go home to help but fear endangering their applications for permanent U.S. residency.
With some 40 relatives lost to the earthquake, Rabia Muzaffar and her family desperately want to return to Kashmir to mourn. But they are too nervous to make the trip. Even a short trip might undermine their application for permanent residency, Muzaffar said.
"We can't sleep, we can't eat," said Muzaffar, 26. "We really wanted to see our friends, family, and ... I can't explain how we are feeling right now."
Posted by: john ||
11/06/2005 10:23 ||
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#2
Fine with me. He can have them all flown to Texas. I'm sure everyone down there will be well pleased and he'll be re-elected next time straight away.
#3
Let's not be too hasty, guys. I actually agree with this - PROVIDED:
1) they stay in the New Orleans Superdome.
2) they eat nothing but MREs until they leave.
3) if we catch them in the US again, their next job will be clearing houses in the disaster area for six months, and THEN be sent back, this time with a used tent and a couple of worn-out sleeping bags.
Perhaps, just perhaps, they might learn something, and understand that Uncle Sam isn't the "sugar daddy" they take him for.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/06/2005 17:45 Comments ||
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#4
I'm sorry, that was a bit cold. Rather, nobody else gets to leave the country while their applications are being processed, regardless how pressing the personal need (I had a girlfriend whose father was busily dieing of heart failure and cancer the whole time her husband's green card was under review, and all she could do was sit by the telephone and hope not to receive that final call) so you can't either. If your concerns are about people who have already died, pay someone to put a stone on the grave so you can find it later... or give up your place in the queue and start over. If you are to be deported, stock up on supplies needed back home, and sell at a profit when you arrive, to finance building your new life.
#5
In the large Pakistani community in New York, some Pakistanis here legally say they want to go home to help but fear endangering their applications for permanent U.S. residency.
Well, where is "home." Which way do they frigging want it? Do they want to be US CITS, or are they just coming over here for work, and to send money back to Pakland or what. If they are here illegally (sorry, I know it's a four letter word), then illegal is still illegal no matter what mountain fell on your hootch.
Al-Qaeda members in Iraq will suffer the "horrors of hell" if they kill two Moroccan hostages and the victims will die as martyrs, Morocco's influential organisation of Islamic scholars said on Saturday.
Al-Qaeda insisted it was "God's judgment" to kill the two Moroccan embassy employees who were seized late last month, according to an Internet statement.
"The two Moroccans would be considered martyrs if this iniquitous verdict were to be carried out as they were carrying out a duty assigned to them by their nation and legitimate state," said the powerful Moroccan body which groups thousands of preachers and Islamic scholars.
"Killing the two Moroccan nationals would be considered as the assassination of all Moroccans," the umbrella body said in a statement, calling the hostage-takers "aggressor apostates".
It added that the Al-Qaeda kidnappers "will suffer opprobrium on the land and the horrors of hell in heaven".
But the statement from Al-Qaeda said: "Deviants ... try to prevent the Mujahideen (holy fighters) from carrying out God's judgment.
"They fill the world with criticism of the Mujahideen for targeting diplomatic missions allied with the criminal (Iraqi) government," said the statement, posted on a main Islamic Web site. It could not be authenticated but was signed by Al-Qaeda's spokesman in Iraq.
The group said on Thursday it had decided to kill the two hostages after it sentenced them to death over Morocco's support for the US-backed Baghdad government.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/06/2005 09:28 ||
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Boeing (St. Louis, MO) is being awarded a $62.5-million contract for 50 Harpoon All-Up-Round (AUR) Missiles that consist of 40 Tactical Block II Airlaunch AUR missiles and 10 Tactical Block II Grade B AUR missiles for the government of Pakistan.
The contract also includes 20 MK607 Airlaunch AUR containers and 10 MK631 Canister AUR containers for Pakistan; three exercise sections for the governments of Australia and Japan (two and one, respectively); and three MK592 exercise section shipping containers for Australia and Japan (again, two and one, respectively).
This contract combines purchases for the governments of Pakistan ($61.7 million), Japan ($265,384), and Australia ($530,766) under the Foreign Military Sales program.
Work is expected to be completed in June 2006. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured. The Naval Air Systems Command (Patuxent River, MD) is the contracting activity
Posted by: john ||
11/06/2005 07:25 ||
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#1
Question: all the lethal toys we've been selling to Pakistan over the years -- and Saudi Arabia, Khazhakstan,and wherever else our products may end up -- how much tricky and regular maintenance do they need to remain useful? I was pondering the quandary of suitcase nukes: the ones that, if they ever existed at all, would need monthly breakdown and rebuilding to remain operational, something a group of jihadi wannabes aren't likely capable of. How likely, O Rantburg Experts, is it that many of the toys we are worried about have rusted to the point of being more dangerous to the user than to the target?
#2
Not too many will have rusted I would guess. But a) many of them do take maintenance, b) they require training and practice to be used effectively and c) they don't necessarily get upgraded with the latest guidance etc. capabilities.
#5
I don't have a problem with sale of Harpoons to Pakistan. I don't see much chance that an ASuW weapon of that size would be transferable or useable by terrorists. If Pakistan became hostile to us, I don't think it would be very hard to take these toys away from them via airstrikes or by rendering the software unuseable through removal of tech support (like the Iranian F-14's.) The Harpoon would also serve as a cost-effective force multiplier for the Pakistanis to deter Indian naval agression.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
11/06/2005 13:48 Comments ||
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#6
Which gives the Pakistanis all the cover they need to continue the jihad terror war against India (which they started in 1987).
And this WILL spill over.
Need I remind you, it was Pak ISI Lieutenant General Mahmood Ahmed who wired 100,000 dollars to lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta...
Posted by: john ||
11/06/2005 17:40 Comments ||
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#7
Need I remind you, it was Pak ISI Lieutenant General Mahmood Ahmed who wired 100,000 dollars to lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta...
I don't remember knowing that, john, so I'm glad you did.
This is all the more remarkable when this is the same Omar Sheikh who, at the behest of General Mahmood Ahmed, head of the ISI, wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the leading 9/11 hijacker, before the New York attacks, as confirmed by Dennis Lormel, director of FBI's financial crimes unit.
Posted by: john ||
11/06/2005 18:22 Comments ||
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Posted by: john ||
11/06/2005 18:33 Comments ||
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#11
Omar Sheikh, 27, was born in London, attended the London School of Economics and was a close associate of Maulana Azhar Masood - founder of the banned Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) group, which India blames for an attack on its parliament in December 2001. His father, Saeed Ahmed, was a Pakistani clothes merchant from Wanstead in east London. Omar Sheikh was reportedly a contemporary of England cricket captain Nasser Hussain at the private Forest School, in Snaresbrook. Photos of Pearl were e-mailed by the kidnappers He moved to Lahore and studied at the elite Aitchison College for three years before returning to Forest School in the Sixth Form. After passing four A-levels with good grades, Omar Sheikh enrolled at LSE in October 1992. But he left before the end of his first year of an undergraduate degree in statistics.
Reports suggest he visited Bosnia as an aid worker and soon after, he moved to Pakistan. BBC News, 16 July 2002
Kind of kicks the poor, desperate, under-privileged theory in the arsss.
#12
On 9/11 there was a fight among UN peacekeepers in Africa (reported by the WSJ). News reports of the trade center attacks had just come in and the Pakistani contingent were celebrating, giving each other high fives. This angered European peacekeepers and there was a brawl.
Remember, the official motto of the Pakistani army is "Jihad and Piety in the name of Allah"
Posted by: john ||
11/06/2005 18:56 Comments ||
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#13
I don't have a problem with sale of Harpoons to Pakistan. I don't see much chance that an ASuW weapon of that size would be transferable or useable by terrorists. ... The Harpoon would also serve as a cost-effective force multiplier for the Pakistanis to deter Indian naval agression.
I fail to see where Pakistan deserves the least sort of enhanced leverage against any putative Indian threat. Democratic India opened the LoC (Line of Control) to help lost Pakistani soldiers return to their units, India sent material aid to Pakistani disaster victims and continues to make the most conciliatory gestures towards abating hostilities between these two nations.
Meanwhile non-democratic Pakistan has done nothing but deliver repeated kicks in the teeth to India in the form of the parliment attack and Diwali bombings not to mention constant incitement in Kashmir.
Pakistan may have recently lost significant nuclear capability in the form of cracked missile silos. America is insane to deliver any sort of insurance policy to Pakistan in light of their dismal failure at attempts to contain terrorism, the continued existence of their Islamist madrasahs and their hopelessly compromised ISI network.
We have coddled Musharraf and his cronies way too much for far too little in return. It is time for Pakistan to make some significant gestures towards the fight against terrorism and improvement of its relations with India.
Consider that India recently risked incurring Iran's wrath amidst a $5 billion natural gas pipeline deal in order to side with America regarding the IAEA's referral of Iran to the UN security council. While America offered many rewards to India for that gesture, the subcontinent has demonstrated a lot more good faith than Pakistan has to date. Why we are risking any compromise of our relationship with stable and democratic India in order to assist a viper like Pakistan is beyond me.
The last time Balochistan Chief Minister Jam Mohammad Yousaf created major trouble for the government was when he refused to allow the Parliamentary Committee on Balochistan to probe into charges of land embezzlement and misuse of millions earned from the sale and allotment of plots in Gawadar. This time round, the Shaukat Aziz government has received intelligence reports that Yousaf and two of his cabinet ministers are involved in tribal wars that are threatening to worsen the law and order situation in the already troubled province. According to a senior official, the intelligence report accuses Yousaf of backing tribal groups who were reportedly involved in attacks on the residence of former CM Sardar Attaullah Mengal. After the attack on Mengalâs house, Yousafâs house in Kalat was also attacked. Locals are now worried about how far the two leaders are willing to stretch this feuding.
CM Yousaf is also being accused of involvement in last weekâs attack on the son of federal minister Sardar Yar Mohammad Rind in which two bodyguards were gunned down. âIt is no coincidence that the attack on Rindâs son came right after rumours that the Islamabad central command was considering replacing Yousaf with Rind,â said a source. âRind enjoys power not just in Balochistan but in Sindh also and is hence expected to run the affairs of the province much better than Yousaf.â
Intelligence reports warn the government that the attacks on the residence of Baloch nationalist leader Attaullah Mengal could worsen the already precarious law and order situation in Balochistan especially since Mengal has publicly accused Yousaf for the attacks. The intelligence reports read that the government has been made privy to tribal feuds in the area and to the fact that these feuds could turn uglier because of the direct involvement of federal ministers Sardar Yar Mohammad Rind and Mengal, both of whom have lost men in tribal wars now being fought quite regularly. âWhile the federal government may have taken Mengalâs charges against Yousaf quite lightly, it is treating the allegation of Yousafâs involvement in tribal wars much more seriously, especially since Rind too has held Yousaf responsible for the attack on his son,â an official told TFT. âRind has really driven home the point that Yousaf has been extending all kinds of support to his [Rind] arch rivals. This is something that President Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz are both aware of now,â he added.
Reportedly, President Musharraf eagerly wants to sort out the differences between the chief minister and federal minister and has met Rind several times. Sources privy to these meetings say Rind has personally apprised the Presidents of Yousafâs involvement in tribal politics.
Personally, I can well believe it. People who wear hats like that are always up to no good.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/06/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
I think it would make a fine RB premium, better than the Accordion Hitz CD.
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.
Night falls and the violence can begin. The blue light of a passing police van flashes across the sweat on 17-year-old HB's forehead. 'They're provoking us by driving around like that. We are not going to stop until Sarkozy resigns,' he says.
SAN DIEGO -- Two men were behind bars Friday night for a strange immigrant smuggling case, 10News reported. Police say a 15-year-old Mexican girl hired two men to bring her into the U.S. Thursday night. Once across the border, the girl called her mother, who didn't know about her daughter's plan, and told her to come pick her up and bring $2,200, dollars, 10News reported. When the girl's mother showed up with only $300, dollars, the men refused to let the girl go and told the mother she had an hour to get the money, 10News reported. Instead, the mother called police and the men were arrested. The girl is being allowed to stay in the U.S. for now because she is a material witness in a crime.
Syria will let UN investigators, trying to identify the killers of former Lebanese prime minister 
The chief UN investigator into the assassination of a former Lebanese premier has reportedly summoned six senior Syrian intelligence officers for questioning. A Lebanese official close to the UN team investigating 
